A couple more guards stepped over when they saw the Dutchman intervene. The second guard, who had floored the Chinaman, set his eyes on the Dutchman, gripping his assault rifle like it was a club.
Hopper and Stratton couldn’t keep their heads down any longer. They’d been maintaining a low profile because it was advisable in hostage situations like this. A fundamental wisdom imparted to students on hostage survival training courses: never stand out in any way or take on a leadership role. If you do, you run the risk of being singled out if the group needs to be punished.
But neither man was able to sit back and see the situation escalate after watching two other men take on the wrath of the guards. Hopper was first to his feet. As a young marine, before he joined the SBS and before he got married to Helen, he’d been a brawler. He didn’t start them, being a polite and level-headed man, but he could finish them. If story-time among the lads ever got around to well-known brawls, the time Hopper took on four skinheads outside an Indian restaurant in Poole often came up. Hopper had simply been enjoying a take-away when one of the pinheads knocked his meal out of his hands. Hopper hit him so hard he broke his jaw. And then he took apart the other three. Then he lined them up in the recovery position in case they vomited and he called the police. Hopper even waited for the officers to arrive. He was the one charged with grievous bodily harm. But the restaurateur, who knew him, gave evidence in his defence and got the charge withdrawn.
With his hands tied, Hopper ran at the Somali about to butt the Dutchman and double-fisted him in his side with such force the man dropped his rifle and went down. Stratton focused on the Somali who was holding the girl’s hair and who the Dutchman was trying to control. He dealt him a savage blow across the jaw. The man dropped to the sand and remained there in a daze.
One of the other guards brought his rifle up on aim as all the other hostages got to their feet. They were unsure and feared the consequences of running or staying. Then the guttural command of the older Somali stopped the guards and the old fighter stepped in between the converging groups. He screamed at the guard who looked about to fire his rifle into the Dutchman. The guard lowered the end of his weapon. The old Somali shouted at the other guards while indicating the girl. He appeared to be arguing in her favour. He clearly possessed some level of rank or respect.
The old man had achieved a pause. He had controlled his men, for the moment at least, and so it was time to direct his malice at the hostages. He looked at Stratton and Hopper. Directed his rhetoric at them because they were the most aggressive. He shouted and waved for them to step back.
‘Move back,’ Stratton said to the others. Beside him, the girl was still seething and stood her ground. He took hold of her arm. ‘Easy. Just let it go,’ he said as he guided her back.
Hopper moved to help the prone Chinese man to his feet but the old Somali walked swiftly over like he was going to strike him. Hopper stepped back to avoid any blow.
The Somali inspected the Chinese man without kneeling down or touching him. He shouted a command at a couple of the guards. They hauled the man up by his arms, pulled him to his feet and tried to get him to stand up on his own. But the man could not, he had something seriously wrong with his side, perhaps more than just a few broken ribs, Stratton guessed. The Somalis showed no interest in the man’s condition and manhandled him away.
The remaining guards looked like they could care less about what had happened. All but two of them stepped off back to their spot in the shade. The one that Stratton had struck got to his feet in easy stages, feeling his bruised jaw. He sought out and found Stratton, looked at him like he was fixing the image in his head. The other downed Somali stepped beside him, looking at Hopper. He removed a long, crudely made blade from his belt and held it in a tight fist. He spat out some words to the other pirate.
The old Somali was still vigilant for trouble and did not miss it. He barked a command. The two guards showed no servility but decided to walk back to the shade. Stratton and Hopper glanced at each other, aware they had not made life any easier for themselves. Stratton wondered how much control the leadership had over its men.
The girl had watched her friend be taken away and stepped back into the shade provided by the stack of crates. She sat down, leaned back tired against them and stared into the sky like it could give her the answer to her problems.
Hopper and Stratton sat down in the sand near her.
After a glance at them and after some hesitation, she said, ‘Thanks.’ Then she looked away.
Stratton felt bad for her. This wasn’t a good place for her. He knew how common rape was in hostage circumstances. In a place like Somalia it would be practically inevitable. And the most apparently devout jailers would be among the worst offenders. In Iraq and Afghanistan he had seen the results of the rape of prisoners, male and female. On top of everything else a hostage had to contend with – the psychological stress of pitiful confinement, the fear of torture every day, the pain of the beatings, the threat of death at any time – a girl had to live with the great possibility that her jailers would come for her like animals. And once they began, they usually did it again and again. Until death or release. If a girl survived, she had to cope with everything that came after, the physical and emotional scars, the possibility of disease, even death. And then there was the potential pregnancy and all that entailed.
‘Where’re you from?’ Stratton asked. He didn’t know why he was attempting to ease her anguish because there was nothing he could do for her. But she was sitting there beside him and he felt a kind of obligation to try and ease her suffering.
She took her time replying, like she was deciding whether or not she wanted to talk to him. ‘China,’ she said eventually.
Stratton couldn’t help thinking how he had not talked to a single Chinese person in years and he’d met two in the same number of days. ‘What ship you off?’
Once again she took a long time to answer. ‘No ship.’
Stratton found the answer curious and wondered if she understood English that well. But something about the way she listened to him and responded suggested she knew the language well enough. ‘How’d you end up here, then?’ he said.
‘A yacht,’ she said. It was as though she felt guilty about it.
‘You were sailing? Out there?’
She nodded.
It sounded like a pretty dumb thing to do. ‘A regular sailing yacht, with a sail?’ he said.
‘Yes. With a sail.’
Stratton could only wonder why.
She looked towards the water and the carriers in front of them. ‘I don’t know where it is now,’ she said. ‘My friend and I were sailing around the world.’
‘I guess it was just as risky going around the Cape?’ he said.
She shrugged. ‘Statistically we should have been OK. Something like seventy boats a day pass through the Gulf of Aden. Only a couple a week are attacked. Maybe one or two a month get hijacked. We were almost in the international transit corridor when they saw us. We were unlucky.’
Stratton sympathised. The international corridor ran east–west across the Gulf of Aden between Yemen and Somalia. It was a protected route patrolled by various foreign navies and regarded as the safest way to transit past Somalia. It obviously didn’t guarantee complete safety from hijacking but it increased the chances of a navy vessel responding to a distress signal. Many pirate vessels actually hunted the corridor, knowing that it improved the chances of them finding a commercial vessel somewhere along it. The risk of running into a navy boat was all part of doing business.