by Nick Lake
— Of course, if they’ve got radar, they’ll see us anyway, said Damian. Then he winked at me.
— Do pirates have radar? asked the stepmother, aghast.
Tony shot Damian a look.
— Some of them do, Tony said in his West Country voice. Some of them . . . They can be quite well equipped.
Dad made a dismissive gesture.
— I’ve already looked into it, he said. The chances are 0.1%. That’s why the big shipping companies still use the lane. Even with the risk of piracy, it works out cheaper to run their shipping this way rather than pay for the extra fuel to go round the Horn of Africa. The ransoms the pirates demand might be high, but the likelihood of coming across them is so infinitesimally small.
— 0.1% is not infinitesimal, said the stepmother. That’s one in a thousand.
I sometimes forgot that she worked in Dad’s bank as some kind of broker, before he got together with her, so she wasn’t completely stupid.
— Well, yes, he admitted. But that’s still small. Honestly, dozens of vessels go through the Gulf of Aden every day and don’t get taken. The navies of France, Britain and the US are on constant patrol. Besides, we’re not a big container ship. From a distance, or on radar, we’ll look like a fishing boat or something insignificant.
— Exactly, said Tony. We’ll also turn off the AIS.
— AIS? I asked.
— Automatic Information System, Tony explained. It broadcasts our identity, our position, our route, everything about us, by radio to anyone within fifty miles. It tells other ships who we are, basically. If we turn it off, a lot of the pirates simply won’t know we’re there. And those that do won’t know that we’re a yacht.
I thought for a moment.
— So that means the navy won’t know we’re there, either?
Tony frowned.
— Er, no. He paused. But that’s OK because we’ve got the SSAS, like I said. The alarm system. In any case, pirates use small attack boats, which means they’re pretty much confined to the coast of Somalia.
— It’s not going to happen anyway, said Dad. No chance.
And he was right.
It didn’t happen.
Not on the first night.
After the briefing, we all went round and hung stuff up in the windows and portholes – bin bags, cloths, towels, all sorts. We unscrewed the bulbs from the outside lights, the ones that lit up the deck at night.
That night, as we sailed out of the Red Sea and into the Gulf of Aden, we did so in darkness.
It was an odd experience. We couldn’t read or watch TV because that might produce glimmers of light, so once we’d had an early dinner, I went to my room and lay on my bed, listening to music in the dark.
When I woke up, it was morning, and my iPod was silent.
We had breakfast on deck. Felipe had made scrambled eggs and croissants to go with the usual cereal and fruit and coffee. It was a beautiful day, the sun a disc of molten metal in the sky, a few scraps of cloud floating overhead. The sea was calm, and there was a slight breeze, so the mainsail was up. Damian said it was always better to use it when we could; it saved us fuel.
After breakfast, I stayed out on deck, just watching the sea, the unending colours of it. Often it was like silver, or steel, flashing in the light. Then it would shift to petrol, all multi-coloured sheen, and then it would be blue, like you think the sea should be, but really only rarely did it look like that. It was properly hot now, too – forty degrees, easy.
Maybe an hour later, I saw something on the horizon, ahead of us. I watched it for a while, until I was sure it was a ship. It looked big, like a tanker or a trawler or something, so I wasn’t that worried.
Still, I went inside and up the steps to the bridge. Damian was looking out through the big windows with a pair of binoculars.
— You saw it, too, I said.
— Yep. Looks like a trawler, but I’ll give it a wide berth anyway. Good job the sails are up. I can squeeze eleven knots out of her.
— Er, OK.
He smiled.
— Sorry, sailors’ habit. You relax. There’s no way this is pirates. It’s a big old fishing boat, probably Yemeni.
I went back to the deck. Again, the bad thing about yacht travel: it’s so slow. It took a good hour before the trawler was close enough for us to see it properly, and then another half an hour for us to skirt around it, keeping the wind behind us, but staying a safe distance away.
Eventually, though, it was in our wake, and then it began dwindling to a speck until, finally, it disappeared completely.
I hadn’t realised I was tense until I felt my shoulders loosen. I lay back and picked up a copy of GQ that someone, probably Damian, had left there.
I was about halfway through the magazine when there was a blast from the ship’s horn, and I jumped, like, a metre in the air. I ran inside and up to the bridge.
Damian was at the wheel, cursing.
— What is it? asked Tony, who came clattering in behind me.
In my head, tritones were shrieking, like in Bernard Herrmann’s score for Psycho, when he does D and G sharp together, again and again, to mark the stabs in the shower, so I already knew this was bad because of the discordant music my mind was making – my instincts screaming at me, I guess.
— Dinghies, said Damian. Outboard motors. They came up behind us.
As he spoke, I saw the prow of a little boat appear to our left, just moving into our vision, before falling behind. I thought I caught a glimpse of a man, but then he was gone.
— Fuck, said Tony. The trawler?
— Yeah. Must have been a mother ship.
— A mother ship? I asked. It sounded sci-fi, which was just so incongruous on the bridge of this yacht, in the middle of a desert sea. Inevitably it also made me think of my mother, which wasn’t quite so incongruous. For me, the word mother isn’t one that means anything safe. It has a lot of danger in it already, even before you put the word ship after it and use it about pirates.
— I’ve only heard about them, said Tony. I didn’t know if it was a rumour.
— Shit, shit, shit, said Damian, spinning the wheel with a grunt, then pushing the throttle all the way forward.
The yacht lurched, but slowly, and a dinghy came surging up on our left-hand side, containing silhouettes of armed men.
— What’s a mother ship? I asked, my voice coming out a bit strangled.
— Pirates live on there for ages, said Tony. It’s a big ship with lots of supplies. They keep faster, smaller boats tethered to it. That way, they can go after ships from the middle of the sea, instead of being tied to just the coastline, and –
— Kind of busy here! said Damian.
— Oh, I said.
I felt sick – really, properly nauseous in the pit of my stomach.
— What’s going on? Dad said, coming in the door. He was in swimming trunks, his grey chest hair and portly stomach showing. He’d been sunbathing on the rear deck, I guess.
— Looks like pirates, said Tony, surprisingly calm. Head to your hose. I’ll go to mine.
— But Sarah, she’s sleeping –
— Leave her. Man the hose.
Damian pressed a red button on the console in front of him, then picked up the first of the two satellite phones. He grunted in frustration, put it back down and picked up the other. He dialled a number.
— Yes, Admiral, he said after a pause. This is the civilian yacht Daisy May. Our position is . . . 11.93 lat., 44.32 long. We are under attack by pirates. I repeat, we are under attack by pirates.
Just then, the dinghy appeared again, bouncing over the waves as it pulled ahead of us. Three men were on board, each clinging to the sides with one hand.
— Oh my god, I said, when I saw what they were holding in their other hands.
— Those are guns, said Dad, like it wasn’t bloody obvious.
Dad and Tony back-stepped out of the bridge and ran off. I heard Dad’s bare feet slapping on the
wooden floor. From the bridge, Damian and I had a good view of the front of the yacht, and a not-so-good view of the sides. But we did see the water from the hose start to spray to the left – is that starboard? It was where we’d just seen the boat, and now we watched it veer away from the stream of water, so much more manoeuvrable than us. That was the moment I first thought that we really, properly might get boarded, when that boat turned so quickly to avoid the hose. It suggested, I don’t know, a certain expertise.
Damian spun the yacht’s wheel all the way in one direction, and, after a moment, the room lurched to the left. Then he reversed, and I had to grab on to the table.
— What are you doing? I asked.
— Creating wake. So they can’t get up behind us.
— I thought the ropes were meant to do that.
— Yes. Well.
The VHF crackled; I guess Tony must have grabbed a handset as he ran:
— Another boat to portside! Four aboard.
Damian picked up the handset in the bridge.
— Roger that. Hose them.
— Shit, Tony said over the radio. He sounded out of breath. There’s a knot. Wait . . . OK.
We heard the roar as the water started, and then that was cut off, along with Tony’s voice.
— I can’t see what’s happening, I said.
— Me neither, said Damian. I don’t like it. He thumbed the VHF. Mr Fields? Tony?
There was no answer. I couldn’t take not being able to see what was happening any more. I ran to the door.
— Amy, what are you –
But I was gone, down the corridor, heading for Dad. When I came out on to the walkway, he was standing there with the hose at his hip, like a gunslinger. For a moment, the sea was still. Then a little wooden skiff came bouncing over the waves towards us. I saw that there was a pirate in it, struggling to manoeuvre a ladder, which he was clearly going to try to hook on to the rail of the yacht.
— Get back to the bridge, Amy! Dad shouted, as he loosed water at them.
The pirates veered away, the ladder bobbing. Then they started to cut in towards us again. I turned and saw a small fire extinguisher set into the wall behind me. Ignoring my dad, I pulled it off its bracket. When the pirate boat came into view below us, I hurled the fire extinguisher at them. I don’t know what I was thinking; I guess I was scared, and that got my adrenaline going.
One of the pirates who was waving a machine gun twisted to the side. I saw and heard the fire extinguisher clatter on to the boat beside him, then glance off and splash into the sea.
Oh crap, I thought.
I probably would’ve tried to grab something else to throw then, but I felt hands on my arms, and someone was dragging me backward. I turned to see Damian, pulling me inside, then back down the corridor. My feet were off the ground – it’s weird, but what I felt first was surprise at how strong he was.
— You can’t touch me, I said, thinking of him looking at me when I was sunbathing. Only that had been a man looking at a girl. Now he was all business, all urgency; it was like a person made of steel was dragging me.
— Oh yes I can, he said.
— Really? My dad –
— Made me captain, he said. My command, my rules.
— Yeah? You left the wheel.
— We’re going back there now.
A moment later, we were in the bridge again. Damian seized the wheel as soon as we entered, started doing his evasive turns. He lifted the VHF with one hand.
— Situation? he said.
— Holding them off for now, Tony said over the noise of the hose. Just . . . Agh, bastards. Get off !
There was a chaotic mix of sounds: whooshes and bangs, cracks, Tony’s grunting.
He was still talking when there was a bang, not as loud as I would have expected, and a glass spider’s web crackled into existence on the window of the bridge, and then, bang, another. One of the boats was cutting across our bow, shooting. I saw the headscarved men on board, clinging to the side even as they fired.
— Jesus, said Damian. Down! Get down!
I lay down on the floor, under the console. Damian dialled a number on the satphone again.
— No time to talk, he said into it. They’re firing. We’re going to surrender. He switched to the VHF. Mr Fields, Tony, drop the hoses. Put up your hands. Don’t move. Don’t engage. It’s not worth it.
— Already done, said my dad, his voice abrupt and weary-sounding over the radio static.
Then we heard someone say something in what I guessed was Somali. I couldn’t even tell where the words were in the foreign babble of it; it was just sound running on, sliced up by consonants so hard they stopped the breath. Then the man changed to English and told Dad to take them to the captain.
— Well, said Damian. That’s it.
— The engine room, I said, remembering the plans we’d had to submit to the canal authorities. We could hide there.
— Too late, said Damian.
The whole thing had taken maybe two minutes, three at a push. And that’s how easy it was for us to be taken captive. Another minute, then Dad came into the bridge, followed by two men in headscarves, one bearded, the other younger, smooth-skinned. The younger one had a pistol tied to the waistband of his too-big chino trousers by a length of multicoloured string. The older one was holding an AK-47.
— You all right, Amy-bear? Dad said.
I nodded.
— Good. I’m sorry. I tried.
— I know, I said. At that moment, I felt like hugging him, but it didn’t seem like the right thing to do in the circumstances. I didn’t know if I could move at all, actually. I felt like I was holding a very fragile vase inside me and, if I took a single step, it might break and fall to the floor. I was terrified. I assumed we were going to die.
I’d like to say that I noticed Farouz immediately, that our eyes met and there was instantly some kind of energy between us, but the truth is that I was just aware of two pirates in the room, on our luxury yacht, one of them younger than the other. No, that’s not totally true. I noticed his eyes, I remember that. I saw how light they were – true grey, just like mine. I know I did, because I distinctly recall thinking that it was something we had in common, and then thinking, no, that’s ridiculous, I don’t have anything in common with this man.
— Captain? said the older man, the one with the beard, pointing at Damian with his gun.
— Yes, said Damian.
— You surrender.
— Yes.
— Good. We don’t like hurt. Now stop. Stop boat.
Damian hesitated.
— We don’t like hurt. But we hurt if you don’t stop boat.
Damian reached out and powered down the engine.
— The sail is up, he said. We won’t stop completely.
The older pirate turned to the younger one, who said something in their own language. The older one nodded.
— OK. You take down sail, too. Later. He made a gesture to the other pirate.
Just then, Tony was dragged in, followed by Felipe. For a moment I felt bad that I’d forgotten about the cook, but then I looked at Tony properly and I gasped. He was bleeding from his leg, the blood streaking the floor behind him. He was conscious, but his eyes were kind of hooded. One of the pirates who’d dragged him in dropped to one knee, took off his headscarf and pressed it to Tony’s wound.
— What the – started Damian, angry.
The older pirate, obviously the leader, held up a hand.
— We sorry, he said. Accident. He . . . The pirate broke off, turned to his younger companion and said something quickly.
— He fired his hose, said the young, beardless man with the grey eyes, and I was amazed by his accent, the smoothness of his speech. That was one thing I did notice from the start.
— The hose caused one of the men’s guns to go off, he continued. We apologise. It is not our intention to cause injury. We are really very sorry. The man who shot him will be disciplin
ed and fined.
— Will be . . . ? began Damian, his voice weak – whether from fear or confusion, I don’t know.
— Disciplined, repeated the young man. And of course we will treat this man’s wounds. For now, though, please, give my boss here a full list of the people on board. Is there anyone not in this room?
— No, said my dad.
I glanced at him. The stepmother, I was thinking. Obviously he didn’t want the pirates to know about her.
— OK, said the pirate. OK. Please give me the passenger manifest.
Damian held his palms up.
— I don’t have that to hand, he said. I’d have to –
— You are lying, said the young pirate.
I noticed, tangentially, that he was wearing a Rolex. It seemed a surprising thing to see on his wrist. I was pretty sure his baggy trousers, held up with string, were Ralph Lauren, too.
— One more chance, he said. How many people on board?
There was something in his tone that suggested it wouldn’t be a good idea to lie to him again. At the same time, I could see his chest muscles under his shirt, and a strong feeling went through me just for a second, like lightning, like electricity.
— One more, Damian said, ignoring Dad, who was glaring at him. This man’s wife. She was sleeping in one of the cabins. I guess she’s probably awake now, he added, with a nervous laugh.
The leader evidently understood this because he waved at one of the pirates who had brought Tony in and barked out a command. I was thinking to myself that the stepmother must have heard the shots, so she must be hiding or had locked herself in the cabin.
As the pirate left to search for her, the leader said something else to the young man with the impressive English. He nodded back.
— Listen, said Dad. We have around ten thousand dollars in cash on board, in the safe in my room. We have traveller’s cheques. Laptops. The whole yacht is full of valuables. You can have it all. Just, please, leave us in peace.