I dashed back onto the bridge, ready to lock up and start our pullback into the depths of the ship. ATM was crouched on the floor, looking up at me anxiously, waiting for the next order while Colin was moving around the bridge. I opened my mouth to talk when I thought I saw a shadow in the corner of my eye. I turned. It was the first pirate, and he was outside the bridge door pointing a battered AK-47 at me through the window.
NINE
Day 1, 0735 Hours
“The key to our success is that we are willing to die, and the crews are not.”
Just as I turned, the Somali shot off two rounds into the air. POWWW. POWWW. Up close, that weapon sounded a hell of a lot louder than from down below.
“We’re fucked,” I heard one of my crew say behind me.
“Relax, Captain, relax,” the pirate yelled at me. He was short, thin, and wiry. His face was tense. “Business, just business. Stop the ship, stop the ship.”
I was so shocked I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t believe he’d gotten up so fast. He’d gone through the piracy cages like they were child’s play.
It was 7:35 a.m. The pirates had taken about five minutes to board my ship and take the bridge.
I still had the portable radio in my hand. I turned my back to the pirate, pressed the key, and, in a low voice, said, “Bridge is compromised, bridge is compromised. Pirates on the bridge.” This would let the first engineer in the after steering room know the pirates were in control. “Take the steering,” I half-whispered.
“No Al Qaeda, no Al Qaeda, no problem, no problem,” the pirate yelled, the AK-47 pointed at my chest. “This is business. We want money only. Stop the ship.” He was twelve feet away.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “It takes time, just relax.” When you stop a ship, you have to shift down gradually through a program. I pulled the ship back from our sea speed of 124 revs down to full ahead, which is the maneuvering speed we use in ports.
Different alarms were going off all around me, brrrrrrrtt, brrrrrrttt, brrrrrrrtt, whoo, whoo, whoo. The noise was incredible. I started dancing around the console, silencing them. I looked over at the phone. It was lying sideways on the desk where Colin had left it. I hoped to God UKMTO was on the other end listening to all this go down.
I realized the rescue center alerted by the security alarm hadn’t called and asked for the nonduress word. Did anyone know this was a hijacking and not just a malfunction?
I walked over to the stick and jiggled it. Nothing. The chief engineer had switched control over to his instruments in the engine control room. The first and third had control of the steering. They were now in control of the ship. They were on their own.
It was a small victory. Whatever happened, the Maersk Alabama wasn’t going to head to the Somali coast, unless the pirates hunted down my entire crew.
“Stop the ship, stop the ship,” I called into the radio. I left my finger on the key button so everyone could hear what the pirate was saying. I could feel the engineer kill the engines. That thrum that you grow so used to died away. We were now gliding through the water, going in circles.
That annoyed the pirate. “Stop this circling,” he called to me, and the muzzle of the AK-47 circled around as he talked. “Straighten the ship out.”
“Okay, no problem,” I said. I started working the stick and the wheel. Nothing happened, of course, because the first assistant engineer, Matt, was steering the ship down below. I gaped in astonishment and then looked over at the pirate.
“Ship broken, ship broken,” I said. I showed him how moving the wheel had no effect on the direction we were moving.
“What?!” he yelled. “Straighten out the ship.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “I’d love to, but you broke the ship. You wanted me to slow down, and we did it too fast.”
I pointed to the console and tapped on the bow thruster reading. The bow thruster is another screw at the front of the ship that enables us to maneuver. The indicator read “0.” Then I pointed to the rudder angle indicator. It was dead, too.
“Ship broken,” I said.
The pirate didn’t like that. “Shut off the water, shut off the water, stop the ship.”
ATM went out to help the other pirates get up the ladder. I was going around the consoles, shutting off alarms. I killed the fire pump and the spray from the piracy hoses died away.
As I was moving around the consoles, I came to the radar set. I looked up. The Leader was distracted, barking orders to ATM. The radar set has three knobs on it. The first is the gain, which controls the sensitivity of the radar to incoming data. I turned that all the way down. Then there were the anti-rain and the anti-sea-clutter knobs, which screen out things like ocean waves, swells, and precipitation. I turned those two all the way up. By doing so, I’d degraded the radar completely. You could have parked a battleship two miles away and the radar would have looked as clean as an empty dinner plate. I wanted to rob the pirates of an extra pair of eyes, in case the navy came calling.
I walked away, strolled to the VHF radio, and switched the channel from 16 to 72. No one used 72. If the pirates tried using the VHF, they might as well try calling the surface of the moon.
I looked up. ATM came through the bridge door followed by three pirates. One of them was the tall guy who’d been shooting up at me, the other was the one I would come to know as Musso. He had an AK-47 slung around his shoulder and a bandolier of ammunition. He looked like he was ready to face down Rambo. He was limping; apparently, he’d injured his foot climbing up the ladder. There was the other bandit I came to know as Young Guy, just because he looked like he was a college student. But with his Charles Manson eyes, he would turn out to be one of the more sadistic of the pirates. And there was the other Tall Guy, who never made much of an impression on me. There was no question who was in charge—the first pirate on-board, the Leader, gave the orders and the others obeyed them.
The three older pirates were probably between twenty-two and twenty-eight. Young Guy was no older than twenty-two, I would say. Between them, they had two AKs and several bandoliers of bullets. They also had what looked like a 9mm pistol, with a rope or lanyard hanging from the butt, and as I looked at it, I thought I saw a U.S. Navy insignia on the gun. What the hell were they doing with a navy sidearm?
That question would come back to haunt me later.
The pirates took up positions on the bridge. I could tell they had some experience. The Leader stayed with us. Tall Guy went to the starboard bridge wing, Young Guy went to the flying bridge, and Musso went to the port bridge wing. They told ATM and the third mate to sit on the deck, starboard side. Meanwhile, I was at the console, silencing alarms, because they were still going off continuously, whoop whoop whoop and ding ding ding. It sounded like a war had broken out and it just added to the stress.
The Leader gestured to me. “These guys are crazy,” he said. “They’re Somali pirates. I’m just interpreter.”
I looked at him, like, You can’t be serious. The good cop, bad cop routine? Really?