In NATO’s quest to collect data for the big picture on the growing piracy threat, they required commercial ships to radio their charts. The broadcasts of ships’ flag, ports of loading, course, and destination compounded the folly, since the network of soft protection openly shared radio transmissions with pirates and fishermen who eavesdropped from near and far.
In 2002, the AIS ship-tracking software system was implemented worldwide, continually transmitting critical shipping data between seafaring vessels — again handing over the specifics of route, course, speed at sea level, and position to the scouts and hackers every ten seconds. Qas hacking the ship relayed that information back to the pirates.
The captain and Peder, a sniper from Norway’s Forsvarets Spesialkommando (FSK) — “Special Forces” — monitored neither the weather nor the AIS tracker of an American-flag container ship heading toward them thirty nautical miles west. Instead, like the pilot, their attention shifted to the third boat on the radar cruising in their shadow of the starboard flank.
Peder spoke in Norwegian, which is similar to Danish, saying: “Captain, we must keep an eye on that craft. It looks suspicious.” He picked up binoculars, dialing the zoom. He tracked the forty-foot dhow as it raced across the sea. His trained eye identified the craft as a pirate mothership — a floating platform from which pirates launch skiff attacks to ensnare targeted vessels. That’s what he deduced from eyeing a large canvas sprawled over a hidden object. Did the canvas cover hauls of fish or bundled nets? Or did skiffs lie in wait underneath?
The captain, a dignified, gray-haired Dane, put his hand on the first mate’s shoulder, and ordered, “Take the crew down to the engine room and lock them in.”
“Ja, ja, run. Hurry,” Peder urged the Filipino, giving the pilot a first aid kit as he headed out the door. The pilot took the ship’s manifest and exited the bridge.
The captain hit the button to start the water cannons, but nothing happened. He hit the button again — no response.
Chapter Nine
Peder pulled a barrel-bag from under a cabinet and placed it on a seat. He aimed binoculars at a distant point beyond the bow and watched the dhow cut in front of the tanker. Seconds later, it launched a pair of skiffs with what looked like a mix of Yemeni and Somali pirates. The speedboats tore across the sea, moving ahead of the supertanker. But then, like in an eerie dream, the skiffs swept in a mirror figure eight and gunned it back toward the tanker.
“What the hell?” Peder observed, confused by the tactic.
“Are you sure that’s a pirate ship?” the Danish captain asked, zooming his binoculars.
“Ja. The skiffs are hauling,” Peder said. He eyed the coast of Yemen through the heat haze. “Captain, are we on the right course?” The captain checked the navigation, the GPS coordinates, and the electronic compass. Peder looked at him as if he were a bookish professor, then took out a compass. He swiveled it around in his palm until the needle aligned with the north cardinal point.
“Here, look—” Peder said, holding the compass over the ship’s electronic compass that showed the ship’s instrumentation was off by several degrees. “Something’s wrong, captain. Have you been hacked?”
“Hacked?”
“Ja, cyberterrorists,” Peder said, growing incensed at the captain’s lack of situational awareness. “Maybe it’s why you can’t turn on the water cannons.”
The mothership left the skiff and headed west toward the unseen American container ship, relatively close in nautical miles, but still out of sight in the haze.
Peder put down the binoculars. He watched the skiffs back into the shadow of the supertanker. With the mothership racing ahead, the other twin fishing dhows — well behind the vessel — released a trio of skiffs into the water. One by one, the boats, powered by twin-engine outboard motors, began to crisscross in the tankers’ wake to surround the vessel.
“Jesus Christ, they’re going to attack,” the captain said, alarmed.
“Jesus isn’t here.” Peder unzipped the barrel-bag. He assembled a folding-stock assault rifle with grenade-launcher. He zipped a bag filled with ammo, slung it over his shoulder, and said, “If I can’t turn away the skiffs, we’re fucked.”
The captain pressed a distress beacon, signaling a SOS to NATO and an international defense force stationed on the Yemen-owned island of Socotra off the Horn of Africa. But the base, equipped with rescue and attack helicopters, naval littoral ships, and Navy SEALs and Special Forces battalions, was located hundreds of miles east in the Indian Ocean from their present position. Knowing that, the captain picked up the radio and contacted the American vessel ahead. He warned the American captain about the pirate mothership moving toward his vessel’s direction in a coded message. Then he called mayday, spewing: “This is Blå Himmel, Blå Himmel. Mayday, mayday. We are under pirate attack.”
A staccato burst of gunfire punctuated his words. Bullets ripped across the steel deck below. Screams of panic followed the next exchange of gunfire. Pounding footsteps vibrated the metal stairs and across the decks and catwalks, as crewmen fled or hid to take cover.
An errant rocket-propelled grenade arced over the bridge, scorching the air in a hot vapor trail. The RPG projectile missed with a boom, exploding over the sea.
Peder opened a side portal. He placed the barrel-bag outside, turned to the shaking captain, and warned, “Be careful.”
A burst of shots pelted the metal deck and bridge; the captain ducked. When the shooting stopped, he opened the starboard door, slid outside onto the landing, and listened to the throttle of the skiff engines. He gazed over the raiclass="underline" the three skiffs from the dhows trimmed alongside and tied on to the supertanker. Skinny, dark-skinned Somali pirates, many of them teenagers, climbed up grapnels and rope ladders, like invasive lizards scurrying up a tree.
The pirate boarding party wore dark blue tee shirts and shorts, forgoing the white tees and tan shorts worn on previous raids, giving the tiny specks out in the gulf a hue harder to detect against the deep blue.
The captain peered down the stairs and saw one Filipino crewman lying in a pool of blood. A tall, sinewy pirate, gripping an AK-47 assault rifle, stepped over the body and raced up the steps. The captain retreated back into the bridge. He picked up the radio to call the distress signal again, when the door flung open with a hostile pirate aiming a rifle in the captain’s face.
In a deep, heated voice with a thick Somali accent, Samatar said, “Cup, no rad.” He swatted the radio out of the captain’s hand, pushing him away from the controls. A second pirate slipped behind Samatar and took over the ship, slowing it down to ten knots… then eight… then held her steady at six knots. “Cup, take me to da box.”
Samatar stared at the captain’s twitching lips and inspected his hollow gaze. The pirate slapped him across the face, pressed the gun’s hot barrel against his cheek, grinding it into the bone, singeing the Dane’s fair skin, barking, “Box, man. Show me the box now.” Samatar grabbed the captain and shoved him out the door into a captured Malay crewman, held under gunpoint by a trio of teenage pirates.
“Again. The box? Show me,” Samatar demanded, cocking the pistol to fire.
The captain shrugged. Samatar shot the Malay crewman in the face — a jet of blood shot out. The victim’s legs gave way; the pirates caught the lifeless body; the head slung to the side. Samatar dug his fingernails into the captain’s neck and pressed the smoking hot barrel against the Dane’s cheekbone, saying, “Money. Take me to da box.”