A Captain's Duty (22 page)

I was ready for death. I straightened my back and sat up as tall as I could. The sweat was pouring down my face. My stomach was a knot, like I’d just done three hundred sit-ups at Four Corners back at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy.

“Military posture, verrrrry good,” the Leader mocked.

This went on for hour after hour. I staggered around trying to get ready for a dignified death while the
click, click, click
beat like a metronome.

Finally, I’d had it.

“Get someone back here who can fucking shoot that thing,” I said, collapsing on the chair, drenched in sweat. “I’m done. Do whatever you fucking want.”

The Leader looked down at me from the cockpit. “Okay, that’s it, no more action tonight, no action.” The other Somalis relaxed and the tension drained away.

But for the remainder of the night, they started a bunch of new rituals. They put the gun on me and told me to move from this seat to that seat, to pick up this object—a cloth, a hatchet—and place it over there. They hit me if my halal line touched the deck. And I couldn’t drag my ropes on the ground. All the while, they were calling me “animal…crazy…
typical American.” It was like I was dirty and they were trying to get me clean through these ceremonies. I was hopping from one place to the other, still bound. At one point, I just toppled over onto the deck when a swell hit the boat.

When morning came, I thought,
I won’t make it through another day like this one.
Something had to give.

W
hen I woke up Sunday morning, the boat was dark, gloomy. It matched my mood.

“Hey, Phillips,” the Leader said. “I have a new job
now. I’m going to a blue Pakistani tug and check it out for the navy, make sure they’re not Al Qaeda.”

I just grunted at him.

“I’m going to help them, tell them where to get food and fuel.”

The navy came calling again. They wanted proof of life, obviously. I saw them out the back door, floating by on a Zodiac about fifteen feet away, peering in at me. I gave them a wave. The pirates were grouped near the door, half shielded by the hull, their guns pointed outward at the navy guys.

The corpsmen took a quick look at me and asked if I was okay, and I said yeah, and that was it. No James Bond stuff, because there were very tense and paranoid pirates standing three feet away from me. “Here’s our Al Qaeda contingent,” one of the navy guys said, almost joking with the pirates. The Somalis were putting on their tough-guy faces, really playing the part. That feeling of familiarity was so clear. I wanted to shout, “Do you know these guys?” But the Zodiac just passed back and forth a couple of times and left.

The Leader left the ship. I couldn’t see where he went, or how he got there, but he claimed he was going to check out the blue Pakistani tug.

Young Guy took the opportunity to talk with me.

“When we get to Somalia, you want to go to the movies with me?”

“Oh, sure,” I said.

“I’m going out with my girlfriend,” Young Guy said. I looked over at him. The guy barely ever spoke, so this was new.

“You’ve got a date?”

“Yes, a date. With my girlfriend. And her mother’s there. You can go out with her mother.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“I will go with my girlfriend and you can go with the mother,” he said. “We will go to the movies.”

He leaned over to me. “And then, to a hotel.”

I laughed.

I wondered,
Where am I? Are we close to land, sitting in a little navy anchorage?
It was strange to me that there were three navy ships and all this activity that the pirates were describing to me—tugs and other vessels—that wouldn’t occur three hundred miles from shore. I was disoriented. Nothing about what was happening around me made sense.

All of a sudden, I saw a school of dolphins through the aft hatch. There must have been a hundred of them. I picked my head up and tried to track them through the water, but they were gone. A minute later, the dolphins reappeared right in front of the aft hatch. Surfacing and gliding through the water, spray shooting out of their blowholes.

To see a school of them swimming together gave my heart a lift. Maybe this would be a good day, I thought.

But the Somalis wouldn’t leave me alone. They were obsessed with the knots again. They would tie a knot and tell me to undo it. If I touched the wrong string, they’d slap me in the head and tie a second knot. Then, if I didn’t do things exactly right, a third. Pretty soon there were six knots I was trying to untie.

Even Young Guy got tired of the game. “What’s the point?” he yelled at Musso and Tall Guy. They went right back at him.

“What’s the matter? You want to be an American sailor? Huh? We’re Somalis, we’re twenty-four/seven.”

The tension was mounting. The Somalis were arguing constantly, Young Guy vs. the other two. Around noon, the navy dropped off more food, but that didn’t relieve the atmosphere on the boat.

The Leader had been off the ship for an hour.
He’s bailing,
I thought.
He sees something is coming and he’s selling these guys down the river.
I learned later that he went to discuss ransom and conditions with the navy, but I don’t believe that. I think the Leader got off that boat because he saw bad shit coming down the pike.

All the while, the other three pirates were still continuing the tutorial on Somali knots. But I’d had enough of that, too.

“That’s it,” I said, “I’m done.” It was 3 p.m. At that moment, I didn’t care if they killed me, I wasn’t going to tie another knot or take another command.

Suddenly, I felt weak. All the strength seemed to drain out of my body. I slumped back into my chair and things went blurry. I couldn’t focus on anything, it was like my mind had let go. I felt dizzy and lightheaded.

The pirates got nervous.

“You need doctor, you need doctor,” Musso said. He got on the radio and demanded that the navy send one to the boat. The Somalis brought water over to me and I drank some and I poured the rest over my head. They had gone from rationing my water to giving me all I wanted.

I was scared. I’d never felt this way before in my life.
My heart’s giving out,
I thought.
This is how it happens.
It must have
been heat fatigue. I’d always hated heat, but it’d never gotten to me like this.

The navy doctor arrived about an hour later.

“How are you doing?” he called to me from the inflatable.

“Well, I’m fine now. I think I just had a little heat stroke or something.”

“How are the sanitary facilities?”

“Well, you’re looking at it.”

“Can you show me where you go? We want to make sure it’s okay.”

I didn’t get it. I’d told them the pirates wouldn’t let me near the door for anything.

What I didn’t know was, at that moment, there were guns hidden under blankets on that Zodiac. The navy guys were trying to get me near the rear door, where they would have gestured for me to jump. Then they would have opened up on the Somalis. But the pirates weren’t letting me anywhere near that hatch.

They also used the nonduress password “suppertime.” But I didn’t know they had that code—Shane had given it to them.

Before the navy corpsmen left, they handed over more food, some fish and plums, and they told the pirates, “Make sure the captain gets this food. This is not for you. Captain only.” So I tried to eat it, even though I still wasn’t hungry. Those plums were the most delicious things I’d ever tasted. They’d brought four, one for each guy on the boat. I’d wolfed down two before I realized what I was doing.

“Oh, I’m sorry, did I eat yours?” I said to Musso. “Here, have my fish.”

He just waved his hand. They were scared I was dying or something, so they were just happy I was eating.

The navy had also sent a pair of blue pants and a bright yellow shirt. I didn’t want to put the clothes on, because I was filthy and the thought of getting this clean shirt dirty somehow offended me. I said to the pirates, “I’ll put it on after I take a shower.” But the pirates insisted. I put them on and the shirt immediately got wet and dirty from the water I was pouring over my head and the general filthiness of the boat.

It didn’t occur to me that the navy gave me a bright yellow shirt so the sharpshooters could tell me apart from the pirates. My brain wasn’t that sharp. I felt like a sluggish animal.

There also was a bottle of A.1. steak sauce. I didn’t find out until later, but a navy crewman had written a message on the label: “Stay strong, we’re coming to get you.” I was devouring the plums and never saw it. And I didn’t have my glasses, either, so I wouldn’t have been able to read the message even if I had spotted it. I did wonder why they gave me A.1. sauce with fish—I think that’s all they had aboard the ship as far as sauces go—but I quickly dismissed the thought and handed the bottle to the Somalis.

The Zodiac came back into view. “We’re going to tow you,” one of the navy guys called out.

“Tow us?” I said. I turned to Tall Guy. “What did you do, did you kill the engine? Is the rudder okay? What did you break now?”

The pirates quickly agreed to the tow, which was strange. Why would you want your adversaries to control your movement?

Unbeknownst to me, we were now within twenty miles of the Somali coastline. The navy didn’t want us to land, because the Somalis could have called for reinforcements or tried to sneak me off the boat. But the pirates didn’t want to land either because we’d drifted far from their home port and were nearing land controlled by a rival tribe. They didn’t want to land there because they thought their reception would be a violent one.

By 5 p.m., we were tied up to the
Bainbridge
’s winch that sat on its fantail, a metal line connected to our bow.

Finally, before they left, the navy handed something to Tall Guy. “Give this to the captain,” they said. He took it, gave it a glance, and handed it to me.

It was my watch.

“Where did you get this?” I said. The last time I saw it the Leader had it in his hand.

“From the pirate,” the navy guy called.

My mind reeled.

The tension on the boat mounted by the minute. As we were being towed from the
Bainbridge
’s stern, we began to hear splashes, then saw black shapes floating by, one after the other.

“What’s that?” the pirates cried into the radio. “No action, no action.”

I couldn’t make out what the shapes were, but I had an idea. Merchant ships can’t dispose of plastics on the ocean, but the navy can.

The navy confirmed it. They told the pirates it was just garbage floating away.

With the Leader gone, the cohesion among the pirates frayed even more. Tall Guy and Musso turned on Young Guy. Maybe it was the stress or the fact that he didn’t seem to be as gung-ho as they were—that had become clear when they were talking with the navy negotiators. Now they started to bully him.

“What, do you want to go drink a beer like an American? Do you?”

“No. I’m Somali.”

“
We’re
Somali sailors, we work around the clock. We don’t stop. You’re like one of those lazy Americans, drinking beer and going to the movies. You want to go to the movies?”

“Go to hell.”

“You go to hell, American. We’re here for the mission.”

And then they called him a nigger. I was shocked.

“Do you want to be an American? Are you a nigger?”

The Young Guy shot back at them in Somali and English. All three of them were seething with anger. And they each had a gun within easy reach.

I fell asleep for a few hours and woke up with a start. The idiots were still arguing.

“I feel better now,” I said. “But I want to go swimming.” I did want to hit the ocean again. The memory of that cool water had stayed with me.

To my astonishment, the Somalis began to untie me. My hands were swollen and painful as they undid the ropes, but relief just flowed through my body. They left a loose tangle of ropes around my feet so I couldn’t run and dive out the hatch.

“Come on, just let me dive in there,” I said. I just wanted to cool off.

“No, you’re too weak.”

“I’ll just jump in and jump out.”

“Too weak, too ill. Just sleep.”

Young Guy unraveled a couple of exposure suits and laid them out in the aisle next to me, making a kind of bed for me.

“Lie down,” he said.

“I’m not lying down, I’m not doing anything you say. Let me jump in the water.”

It was a standoff. I’d decided on total opposition. Cooperating hadn’t gotten me anywhere with these thugs.

The pirates berated me for a few minutes, then they went away and sat in their usual seats.

I moved my feet, loosening the ropes as much as I could. Young Guy noticed and came down the aisle with his flashlight. The bindings got looser and looser.

“He’s playing with the ropes.”

“No, I’m just stretching out.”

But then, I thought,
Enough
.

“I’m out of here, I’m not playing this game anymore.” I kicked the ropes free from my feet and stood up. The pirates’ heads popped up from fore and aft. I walked forward.

Musso jumped up. “Down, down! You can’t leave.”

“So shoot me,” I said. “I’ve had enough. I’m out of here.”

Musso dropped his gun and grabbed me around the waist. I felt Tall Guy come up behind me and grab hold of my leg.

“I’m sick of this.” I took two steps toward the forward end of the boat.

BOOOM
. A muzzle flash from the front of the boat. I reeled back and sat, landing on the third seat.

“What are you guys doing?” I shouted.

Young Guy had shot off a round from the front end of the boat.

“What’s going on in there? What’s the problem?” The voice was coming from outside and it sounded female.

The pirates were shouting at one another. “You can’t shoot in here!” “What are you doing?!” “No shoot!”

“What’s going on? What happened in there?” said the female-sounding voice, sounding urgent.

“No problem! Mistake!” The voices were coming from everywhere in the gloom of the boat. “Relax, okay, okay!”

Young Guy, pissed off for being cussed out, was in the cockpit now. Tall Guy was with him.

“It’s okay,” he was yelling at the woman who was outside the boat. “No problem now! All good.”

I went to lie down on the makeshift bed. As I turned, I saw Musso and Tall Guy walk up toward the forward hatch. “Mistake, no problem! Okay, okay!” They were raising themselves up as I slid down to the floor.

I was exhausted. I just wanted to rest.

All of a sudden, shots rang out.
Bangbangbangbangbangbang
. It sounded like six or seven in a row. As the noise echoed in the tiny boat, I dove into the row of seats, getting as low as I could. I felt something raining down on my face, jabbing my skin.
What now?
I thought.
What just happened?

It seemed like the shooting went on for fifteen minutes, but I’m sure it lasted only a few seconds. I felt raw terror and confusion as I burrowed down as far as I could.

“What are you doing?” I shouted. “What are you guys doing?”

I thought the pirates were shooting one another, and I was caught in the crossfire. They’d been arguing and it had escalated to gunfire. And now, after days of heat, punishment, and threats, there was complete silence.

All of a sudden I heard a voice. A male American voice. “Are you okay?” it said.

I couldn’t understand who was talking.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” I said. “But who are you?”