It was hard for her just to get out of the house. But Thursday afternoon she managed to sneak away and walk back across our fields to visit an elderly neighbor who lives alone. Andrea knew she’d be worried about me and the kids and she wanted to let her know that everyone was okay. That little walk was one of the few times she could clear her head and be alone—except when she was in the bathroom.
The press frenzy was growing more intense. Andrea could see reporters from every window in our house as she paced from room to room. They were blocking the two-lane road in front—the only road into town—and barricading our neighbor’s driveway. So when the governor, Jim Douglas, called and asked, “What can we do for you, Mrs. Phillips?” she told him, “Send the state police and get these people off my front yard!” The town clerk offered to have everyone up in the parking lot of the town hall and finally the family asked the reporters to pack up and go there. That took an enormous weight off Andrea’s mind.
Later in the week, a neighbor told Andrea she was talking with a female television reporter while this whole circus was under way. This journalist said, “You know, I saw Andrea sitting out on the back porch and I so wanted to run up there and get a scoop, but this woman just looked so serene. She had a moment of peace and I didn’t want to take that away from her.” Andrea was so thankful that the journalist let her have those few minutes alone. Some of the reporters showed real humanity.
She kept getting updates throughout the night from the company and the two FBI women: the navy was on the scene and they’d had a visual of me, which, she later learned, in a hostage situation, they refer to as “proof of life.” “What’s he doing, getting a suntan?” Andrea joked to her friends. They understood that Andrea’s offbeat sense of humor was a coping mechanism. She was really thinking, What the hell was Rich thinking, getting on that lifeboat? But deep down she knew I was smart enough to do what was needed. There was also a report that the navy had had some communication with me and actually heard my voice. So she was getting some straight information and she was really grateful for that. And Thursday night, they gave her this cryptic message: “It’s either going to be a very good Friday, or it’s going to be a Happy Easter.”
“I went to sleep dreaming of you,” she told me.
FOURTEEN
Day 3, 0200 Hours
More Warships Head to Scene of Hostage American Ship Captain: Somali pirates and their hostage American sea captain were adrift Friday in a lifeboat off the Horn of Africa shadowed by a U.S. destroyer, with more warships on the way in a U.S. show of force.
As we passed into the early hours of Friday, I was able to catch some sleep, just sitting up in the seat. Other times, I would pretend to be dozing and see what the pirates were up to. Would they let down their guard? No such luck. The Leader in the cockpit would snap on his flashlight and shine it on me, to see if I was making a move toward one of the hatches.
Finally, I saw Musso make his way up the aisle from the aft end to the front of the boat. He put down his AK and lay down on the deck. After a while I thought I heard him snoring up there. The boat got very, very quiet. Pretty soon, I could hear two people snoring, Musso and Young Guy. The Leader was dozing in the cockpit; his head kept drooping as if he were at a bad movie. I was leaning out into the aisle to try to see if they were faking. They weren’t. That left Tall Guy.
After a while, he stood up and stepped through the hatch. I saw he was going to the rear hatch to take a piss. And I saw him put his AK down right next to the door, so that he could have both hands free.
Maybe this is it, I thought. My whole body was fully awake and I leaned forward and balanced on the balls of my feet. I felt my heart begin to race.
I watched Tall Guy, standing in the open door with the moonlit water beyond him. The boat was rocking slightly in the swells. He reached out a hand to get a grip on the door frame. Then both hands were in front of him. It was calm enough that he didn’t have to hang on.
Now, I thought. Quit stalling and take your chance. Do it! I tried to feel my feet. Were they asleep? I carefully put one down underneath me, trying not to make any noise, to see if it would support my weight.
It seemed like hours, but I’m sure it was just a few seconds. I got up from my seat and moved toward the guy. In two strides, I was out of the hatch and at the same time I extended my arms and shoved Tall Guy. He turned halfway, falling, and I pushed him again, harder. He screamed—My God, it was so damn loud—and just as I was getting ready to dive into the water I looked down and saw the gun. For a split second, I thought of grabbing it and turning it on the pirates. I would have been just able to stop my momentum and grab it and turn and fire, but I thought, You have no idea how to shoot an AK. And with that thought, I swept forward and dove into the water.
My first thought wasn’t Freedom or Swim like hell, it was just, Good Lord, this water is so deliciously cool. The pirates had never let me jump in and cool off and my body was so exhausted from the heat that I just had a sensation of pure refreshment. I almost wished I could lay back in the ocean and just relax and forget about the whole escape thing. The water felt that good on my skin. My second thought was: my glasses. I’ve lost them. They were mostly for reading, but I felt naked out there without them, exposed. I took a breath, dove under the water, and swam as far as I could. I did it again. I dove under the surface and swam, holding my breath for as long as I could. The water above me was surprisingly clear, with a greenish tinge to it, like swimming in a pool with a light above it. The moonlight actually shone through.
My lungs were burning and I had to surface. I came up, broke the surface, and gulped in lungfuls of air. I spotted the pirates immediately, one hundred feet away. They had started the boat and were going around in circles, hanging out the door of the lifeboat with their AK-47s pointing at the ocean’s surface.
Tall Guy was screaming in Somali and I could hear and see movement inside the boat. And I said to myself, Okay, what are you going to do now? I saw that there were clouds skidding across the sky but the moon was out and the Somalis would be able to spot my head, a white blob, in the dark water.
The boat turned and now the bow was pointing straight at me. If I didn’t do something, I’d end up as propellor chum.
I spotted the navy ship about half a mile away. I took a quick breath and began to swim with all I had in me, doing the Australian crawl. I kept an image in my mind of what I’d just seen, and it hit me: Man, the pirates are pissed. They were angrier than I’d ever seen them, swearing and yelling at the tops of their voices. Without me in that boat, the navy could strafe the vessel and they’d have more holes in them than Bonnie and Clyde.
I knew there were sharks off the coast of Somalia—great whites and tigers and even the ugliest of them all, the mega-mouth. Human smugglers had been known to toss their cargo off the sides of the boats in this area, and body parts would drift to shore with huge teeth marks on them. But I brushed aside any thoughts of getting eaten out there. If anything was going to kill me that night, it was the pirates.