Musso had his gun on me and his eyes went wide.
“You get up here!” the Leader shouted and jumped down from the con.
“All right,” I said.
“Tell them to stop getting close to us,” the Leader said. “Tell them to let us back onboard.”
I got into the cockpit and we moved around the Maersk Alabama. It would cut across our bow, and then swing around and do it again. I held the wheel for thirty minutes, and finally the Maersk Alabama went dead slow in the water and lay off about a hundred yards.
Night fell.
The pirates got on the radio and were talking back and forth with Shane.
“Hey, we’ll come on back tomorrow,” they said.
“Oh sure, we’ll start afresh,” Shane said. “It was just a misunderstanding.”
“Yes, you let us on,” the Leader said.
“Definitely,” Shane joked. “Come back in the morning, we have food and water for you.”
Strange, really, but everyone was relieved at how things had turned out.
The only thing that was bothering the pirates was the sky. The Somalis were sitting on the stern of the lifeboat, scanning the night sky, looking for planes and helicopters. They still had in the backs of their minds, I thought, the idea that people were coming for me. The sky was so clear you could even see satellites passing overhead. And we did spot two planes—a big one and then a smaller one that flew over and came back and circled.
The pirates seemed to be expecting a plane to come to my rescue. They didn’t like that idea. They kept squatting down and listening for the buzz of a plane’s engine. It was like they thought the air force was going to start dropping bombs on us or drop a magical ladder and rescue me.
I keyed the radio. “Four pirates, two by the stern hatch, one at the cockpit, one at forward hatch. Two AKs at stern hatch, one pistol at cockpit.”
I heard Shane roger that. I continued: “I’m going to be coming out the rear door. If you see a splash back there, it’s me. Bring the ship to the splash and I’ll come to the other side of your ship.” If I escaped—and that was a big if—I wanted to get the Maersk Alabama between me and the lifeboat.
The Somalis installed me in the third seat, port side. It gave me a good view of the cockpit and the rest of the ship and I wanted to stay there. And I wanted to stay in one place, so any allies that pulled up on the scene would know exactly where I was located. Friendly fire will kill you just as dead as enemy fire. I keyed the radio and let my crew know what seat I was in.
The pirates closed both hatches. I guess they feared frog-men coming up and climbing down into the boat. That’s when the heat began: unbearable, unrelenting saunalike heat just permeated the entire vessel. It was pure hell.
I probably nodded off a couple of times. I came to at around 2 a.m., Thursday morning. I looked out and saw one of the most beautiful sights I’ve ever seen in my life: an American navy ship steaming toward us at thirty knots, bright lights shining from the deck, sirens wailing and loudspeaker blaring. The spotlight was so intense it lit up the inside of the lifeboat like it was a movie set.
“Shut off the light, shut off the light,” the Leader was screaming into the radio. “No action, no military action.”
My countrymen had arrived. I felt my spirits lift.
On Wednesday, the media was reporting that the pirates had taken me onto a lifeboat. Andrea said, My God, how did that happen?
The news channels had by this point reached my second mate on the Maersk Alabama, who told them, “They have one of our crew members. I have to go! I’m steering the boat!” Then he hung up. The second mate wasn’t steering the boat. I guess everyone was going a little crazy by then.
Thursday morning Andrea’s sister, Lea, did a brief interview for several national morning shows. That was the beginning of the national media descending on our house. By late morning, a whole stream of minivans with satellite dishes was pulling off the two-lane road that goes past our mailbox and setting up in our front yard. Any time Andrea walked outside, this huge pack of journalists would call out, “We want a picture, we want to talk to you, we want an interview.” Andrea went out and said, “Guys, I work in a very public place, and I just don’t want that kind of publicity.” She was also trying to protect our kids from the media frenzy. Soon it came to the point where Andrea looked out the window and saw an electrical line going from one of the news vans into a socket in our house. I’m sure the culprits asked Andrea’s brother or someone, and he was just like, “Sure, why not?” On any given day, we’re good-natured people.
One thing that was emotionally taxing for Andrea and my family was the constant barrage of rumors. Journalists would call the house and say, “Did you just hear X?” Or “We have unconfirmed reports of Y.” All kinds of gossip and speculation were flying around: other pirates were coming to help the hijackers, a ransom payment was in the works, the lifeboat was out of gas. Andrea and her friends were answering every phone call on the first ring, just praying it was good news. And when she was told things that turned out not to be true, she said, “Please don’t do this to me. You’ll drive me out of my mind.” The press even got her cell phone number. Andrea was amazed at that until she realized it was on the outgoing message on our home voicemail. She quickly changed the message, but the damage was done.
The reporters got more and more insistent. On Thursday, everyone said, “Just do it.” They naively believed that if Andrea spoke to the media, they’d go away. So Andrea arranged to do a very brief interview with the media. The only TV spot she did was on Wednesday. But it opened up a can of worms. The next day, all three networks were taking turns, competing to get her on the air. The phone was ringing constantly. That’s when Lea decided to speak to the press herself.
There was a constant flow of people through our house. Letters and postcards from strangers poured into our mailbox. The Boy Scouts came by and cleaned up our yard, without anyone asking them to. Vermont’s two senators, Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders, called, along with our local representatives and town officials. Even Ted Kennedy left his number and asked if there was anything he could do. Everyone was extremely supportive, including a couple from the local Somali community who came by to hand-deliver a note saying they were praying for Andrea and our family.
By Thursday afternoon, all of the calls and the letters and the constant barrage of news had become overwhelming. Even Maersk’s CEO, John Reinhart, called and was incredibly caring and attentive. “I need Richard,” Andrea told him. “I want Richard. Please just get me my husband home.” Andrea was scheduled to do a press conference and was freaking out. She hates public speaking and was hugely nervous about doing it. Finally, a friend from LMS ship management, Pete Johnston, called to see how she was doing and Andrea told him how stressed she was by the idea of speaking to the media. “You don’t have to do anything, you don’t have to say a word,” he told her. She nearly collapsed with relief. But someone had to go out and make the announcement. Our poor neighbor, Mike, who’d first told Andrea about the hijacking, marched into the front yard and told everyone the news, even though he hates public speaking as much as Andrea does. In a crisis, a good neighbor is worth his weight in gold.
Help was on the way for my beleaguered wife. Two wonderful women from the victims’ services department of the FBI, Jennifer and Jill, started phoning her the latest updates. The Defense Department also began giving her bulletins as they came in, so she didn’t have to jump from channel to channel on the TV trying to see if her husband was still alive. “I remember talking to Jennifer or Jill, I’m not sure which,” she remembers. “And I said, ‘To you, Richard is just another guy, but to me he’s my life, my future, my everything. I need him back.’”