A Captain's Duty (23 page)

I looked up. Young Guy’s face was a foot from mine. He’d fallen from his perch in the cockpit and he had dropped to the deck. His eyes were wide open and he was struggling for air.

“Hu-hu-huuuuuhh.”
I watched as he was taking his last breaths. He let out a moan, and I knew he didn’t have long to live.

Then I saw the outline of a figure in front of me. He was dressed in dark clothes. That’s all that registered. The SEALs told me later they heard a muffled shout after they’d fired on the pirates. They’d thought it was one of the Somalis coming after me. So a SEAL slid down the towrope to the bow and entered the lifeboat.

The SEAL checked the pirates. They were all dead now.

“Do you know how to get out of here?” the SEAL shouted.

I untied the rest of my bindings and stood up. I climbed over a barrier of rope the pirates had tied across the seats. My legs were weak. I staggered to the hatch and started to untie a rope the pirates had tied to secure the hatch from being opened from the outside. I could feel someone on the other side of the door pushing and pulling, trying to force it.

“Hold on, let me get it open,” I yelled.

I got the rope free and the door was ripped open. A burly SEAL burst in and pushed me down into the boat. I could see his face hovering above me. Behind him I saw the enormous bulk of the
Bainbridge
looming above us. I felt like I could reach out and touch it.

“He’s wounded, he’s wounded,” the SEAL shouted. My face must have been bleeding from the flying debris caused by bullets ripping into the boat.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” I said.

I stumbled toward the aft end of the boat and they gunned the engine. There were five navy guys onboard with me and they gave me the thumbs-up. The whole thing had probably taken all of sixty seconds.

There was another boat buzzing around. The SEALs were yelling to their commanders, “He’s okay. We got him!” A voice crackled on the radio, “Is he injured? Repeat, is he injured?” One of the SEALs radioed back, “Might be injured.”

“I’m fine,” I called out.

The launch zoomed toward the
Bainbridge
. I saw the big ship coming closer and closer and I thought,
My God, it’s over. I made it. I’m out of there. I’m alive.

Andrea was sleeping early Sunday morning when she thought she heard my voice, saying, “Ange, I’m okay. Don’t worry, I’m okay.” She woke up, went into the bathroom, and then got back into bed.

“Andrea,” said Amber from the other side of the bed. “I just had an epiphany.”

“What is it?”

“I really think Rich is going to be all right.”

“Do you really think that? Because I was feeling the same thing.”

She said she knew then that something was going to happen. It was Easter Sunday. Good or bad, Andrea felt that things were coming to a head.

Amber fell back to sleep, but Andrea couldn’t. She kept thinking,
Enough talking. I have to do something. Rich has got to be tired and hot by now. How much longer can he hold on?
She wanted to send me some positive energy. But she was 7,500 miles away from her husband—what could she do?

Then it came to her. When the bishop of Vermont had called on Thursday, he’d graciously asked if there was any way he could help the family. All of a sudden, it seemed urgent to Andrea that she
do
something on Easter morning. And she knew exactly what it should be.

A few years ago, we’d gone to a mass out on Cape Cod with my family. The priest had just returned from Africa, where he worked as a missionary. And he talked about his work and how much it meant to him and he went into this homily that we always remembered. He would say, “God is good,” and the response was “All the time.” Then he’d say, “All the time,” and the response was “God is good.” This priest was trying so hard to get a crowd of very proper Catholics in stuffy Hyannis, Massachusetts, to really enter into the spirit of the thing, and it struck us as funny and moving at the same time.

That became one of our family sayings. We’d be saying good-bye to someone at the airport or we’d be hanging up the phone and one person would say, “God is good” and the other would answer, “All the time.” It was just one of those codes
every family has that binds you together. In times of crisis it was a reminder to be thankful for what we had.

Andrea lay in bed, unable to sleep. The minutes clicked by, 6 a.m., 6:30. She could have kicked herself. She was thinking,
Everyone, even the worst Catholic, goes to church on Easter morning. Why didn’t I ask the bishop of Vermont to request all the priests to use that little homily in their masses? I could have had the whole state of Vermont saying it!
That image of thousands of people from Burlington to the college kids in Brattleboro to all the sleepy little farming communities repeating those simple words was very powerful to her.

“I had to do it,” Andrea said.

She jumped out of bed, ran to Alison, and asked her if she could request that both Father Privé in Morrisville and Father Danielson in Underhill say the homily. Then she went about her morning routine. My mom arrived from Florida—she couldn’t stay away any longer. And my sisters were getting ready to go home to their families.

Little did Andrea know, Alison called the priest and couldn’t get a hold of him, so she jumped in her car and started driving. The GPS sent her the opposite way and she ended up driving mile after mile in the wrong direction, terribly afraid that she would miss the priest. But she finally turned around and made it to the church and Father Privé said he’d be happy to do it.

Around 11 a.m., Andrea thought,
Where the heck is Alison?
She’d been gone for five hours. Right then, her co-worker, Jonathan, walked in and said, “You’ve got to hear this.” And he took his iPhone, hit “Speaker,” and put the phone on the kitchen table. Alison, being Catholic herself, felt the need to stay at the church. And Andrea could hear a mass in progress,
and it came to the homily and the priest began to sing, “God is good!” and the people in the church called back, “All the time.” Father Privé had managed to put our family motto into a song. Andrea felt a huge wave of emotion sweep over her.

She leaned her head against the wall and started to cry. She thought of all those people who didn’t really know me, doing this for our family. Through her tears, she looked up and out the dining room window. It had begun to snow, which is one of my favorite things in the world.

Andrea felt this was her sign. She turned her face to the wall. And she said to herself, “Oh my God, he’s really going to be okay.”

T
he navy lifted the Zodiac onto the
Bainbridge
with a davit. I was walking with my hand on the shoulder of the SEAL striding ahead of me. We walked into the back hangar, where navy guys called out, cheering and congratulating me. But it was still very tense—there were corpsmen running back and forth, with headphones and voice sets, obviously checking for more pirates and getting the situation on the lifeboat squared away. I waved and called “Thank you”
as I was being led straight to the sick bay, where a medic was waiting.

Relief just flooded through me. Everything had happened so fast, it seemed like I’d been teleported out of that hellish boat onto this huge ship. The tension began to drain out of my body, slowly.

Thousands of miles away, Andrea hadn’t heard a thing by Sunday morning. People were still coming and going and calling the house. She said good-bye to my sisters, who had to go back to their families, then went upstairs around 11:30 a.m., hoping to take a nap. Her bedroom was her safe zone, and it was understood that it was off-limits. Thinking she would fall asleep to the TV, Andrea turned to a movie channel and there on the bottom of the screen was a little ticker that said, “Captain Richard Phillips freed.”

She didn’t believe it. She went flying down the stairs and found Jonathan, screaming, “YOU HAVE TO FIND OUT IF THIS IS TRUE!”

In the jubilation and the excitement, everyone had forgotten to call my wife. They just assumed someone else had done it. I guess when information is so ubiquitous, you can’t imagine anyone not knowing some important piece of news, especially when they’re married to the central character. So Jonathan had to call Maersk and the Defense Department to get the scoop. Andrea didn’t care—all she needed was to know that I was safe.

Jonathan got confirmation almost immediately. “I went running through the house shouting the news,” Andrea re
membered. “And then I called everyone I knew.” Soon, the house filled with family and close friends.

Soon Andrea started to see pictures of me on TV. That was when she really knew I was okay—when she could see my face. She became glued to the set, not caring how many times they played the same tape. “I just couldn’t get enough of it,” she told me.

Around 3 p.m., the phone rang. Her friend Paige answered it. The farmhouse was getting so many media calls that she adopted a tough tone when she said, “Who is this?”

And I said, “You mean to tell me you don’t recognize my voice?”

She screamed.

I could hear Andrea run over to the phone and I heard Paige blurt out, “It’s Richard.” I heard Andrea’s voice saying, “Hello, hello?”

I did my usual, “Is your husband home?”

“No,” Andrea said.

“Good. I’ll be right over.”

Andrea told me that she had tears in her eyes.

“I’m just so glad you’re okay,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. And then, “What were you
thinking
getting into that lifeboat?”

It was so good to hear her voice. That’s all I needed, just to listen to her. The words hardly mattered. I asked her about the kids and she asked if I was hurt anywhere and if I’d had anything to eat. She went into nurse mode.

The call was cut off. Andrea told me later that she started flipping out because she finally had her husband back but couldn’t speak to me. Paige called back a bunch of numbers
and ended up getting a Navy SEAL onboard the USS
Boxer
, which was sailing near the
Bainbridge.
She told him how happy and overwhelmingly grateful they all were, and he said, “Oh ma’am, we’re just doing our job.” She invited him and the other SEALs to Vermont for a home-cooked Italian meal. It was exactly what Andrea wished she could have said to the SEALs. Paige was crying when she hung up.

The medic cut off my clothes. For the first time, I could smell myself. On the lifeboat, I hadn’t realized how funky I’d become. I flashed back to the days onboard the
Patriot State,
the training ship at the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. That first summer, some of the other youngies and I had a contest to see who could go the longest without a bath or shower. There was no AC on that ship, so it was like a duel to our death. We called ourselves the Rude Family. I thought,
I would have won that competition.

The medic gave me the okay, and I was taken up to the deck and straight onto a helicopter and flown to the USS
Boxer,
a big navy assault ship that had arrived after the
Bainbridge.
Two of the Navy SEALs came with me, still mission-minded and completely focused on what they were doing.

After I got on the
Boxer,
I went through another physical exam. I was given some new clothes—a T-shirt, a blue jumpsuit, and a baseball cap. I was then escorted to VIP quarters. A guy came in. “Anything you need?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’d love a beer.”

The guy nodded. “We can do that.” I didn’t know it at the time, but it was the captain of the
Boxer.

He turned away and just as he began to walk off, I called out, “Hey.”

“Yeah?”

“Think I can get
two
beers?”

The captain smiled.

“Yeah, you can have two beers.”

The guy left and I stripped off my clothes and got ready for a shower. I was brushing my teeth buck naked when the captain returned, with two sailors hauling a huge cooler. It was full of beer.

“Holy crap,” I said. “How long am I going to be here?”

They laughed at that, and the captain told me I could make a phone call. He also let me know President Obama wanted to talk to me. I finished my shower, jumped into my clothes, grabbed a beer, and followed the captain.

The sailors showed me to my room and I just sat on the bunk taking it all in, drinking my first beer.
I’m free, I’m alive, I’m safe.
It felt unreal. It seemed like I’d been taken from the living hell of that lifeboat to this clean, calm ship in a split second.

President Obama called. I picked up the phone and there was that familiar baritone voice congratulating me.

“I think you did a great job out there,” he said.

“Well, all the credit goes to the military,” I told him. “I can’t thank them enough. And I want to thank you for the part you played.” And I meant it. I knew the order for the rescue had to go all the way to the top, so in a way I was speaking to the man who’d gotten me out of that hellhole in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

“We’re just glad that you’re safe,” the president said. Then we talked a little basketball—he’s a hardcore Chicago fan and I’m a Boston diehard, so we chatted about how the Bulls matched up against my beloved Celtics. I couldn’t believe I was chatting with the president from a navy ship halfway around the world, and talking about Kevin Garnett’s jump shot.

The next day, the corpsmen asked me what I wanted to do. “I want to look around, see the ocean full around on the horizon,” I said. I still had that feeling of confinement, of being trapped. They brought me up on deck and I just looked at the huge ocean all around me and the claustrophobic feeling started to dissolve. I could see the coast of Somalia and I realized how close we’d actually come to it. But I wouldn’t feel totally free until I got off the water and felt land under my feet in Kenya.

Then I got to meet my rescuers. The SEALs gathered on the
Boxer
and I went through the entire line, shaking hands and saying thanks. I’d always respected the military, but now I really felt how selfless and duty-driven these guys were. They didn’t want fame or money or recognition. They just wanted me safe and back with my family.

“You guys are the heroes,” I told them. “You’re the titans.” And I believe that. What I did is nothing compared to what the SEALs do every day.

They were happy as hell, too. “Our missions rarely turn out this way,” one of the SEALs told me. “We train for it to go down exactly as it did yesterday.” I saw that I was a kind of good luck token for them, something tangible that had come out of all their years of training.

The leader of the team that had rescued me came to my room. He asked me how I was sleeping.

At first, I didn’t want to tell him what had been happening with me. I was a bit ashamed, I guess. My first night after the rescue, I’d woken up in my quarters around 5 a.m., bawling my eyes out. I hadn’t cried like that since I was a boy.

What am I, a wimp?
I’d thought.
I’m lucky to be alive and here I am crying like a girl.

I’d kicked myself in the ass and taken a shower. The crying went away, until the next morning, when the exact same thing happened. Wailing and sobbing right out of a deep sleep.

The SEAL leader listened to me, nodding. “You need to talk to our psychiatrist,” he said.

“I’m not really into nut doctors.”

He smiled. “It’s accepted, we all do it. What you went through is a roller coaster of emotions. If you don’t talk about it, it’s going to stay with you.” He wouldn’t take no for an answer, insisting I see the psychiatrist.

Finally I did talk to the SEAL psychiatrist. I dialed him up and he explained to me that being a hostage had placed me between life and death, and when the body is faced with that kind of situation, it releases special chemicals to get you through the crisis. And these hormones were still surging through my body.

“Have you had episodes where you were crying?” he asked.

I was taken aback. “Exactly right.”

“It’s normal,” he said. “Everyone goes through it. So how do you handle it?”

“I yell at myself, tell myself to stop being a wimp, splash water on my face, and get over it.”

“Next time, don’t end it. Just let it run its course.”

I had my doubts. But the next morning, invariably at 0500, I woke up in my bunk crying. I swung my legs out and sat on the edge of my bed with my head in my hands, weeping. And I just let it go. For thirty minutes, tears streamed down my face and I didn’t try to stop them. Waves of sadness and grief washed over me. And I let them. It was the strangest feeling.

And it never came back.

I spent the next four days back on the
Bainbridge
. I’ve never felt so old in my life. I was surrounded by eighteen-to twenty-four-year-old navy personnel, both men and women, who were highly proficient, eager, and pushing for more. There was a sense of professionalism, duty, and honor that could be felt throughout. But one thing the navy couldn’t hide even if they wanted to: these men and women were dog-tired. I’m used to putting in long hours and I know the signs: coffee breath, bags under the eyes, tired-sounding talk, slow reactions. They’d been up for days, trying to rescue me. I learned later that Captain Frank had seldom left the bridge during the whole ordeal and I could see it in his face. That was dedication.

I went back to my quarters that night. As I was getting ready for bed, I noticed a painting hanging above my bed. It was an old-fashioned portrait and the man looked like an American sailor from the nineteenth century. I asked the captain about it later and he said, “Oh, that’s William Bainbridge.”

I laughed. The old pirate-hunter and Barbary captive was watching over me.

I had the run of the whole ship. I was there for the evening navigation briefing and listened to the men give the tide report for the upcoming docking at Mombasa. I was standing there for every promotion ceremony. I had seconds at the ice-cream social at 2100. I watched as the vessel met a supply ship in the middle of the ocean and brought on food, mail, and other cargo. Perhaps it would have meaning only for a guy who loves the sea and ships, but I felt privileged to see behind the veil of a great navy vessel.

I felt a little guilty. I explained to Captain Frank that I’d become the guy I hated to have on my own ships. The guy who makes it to the mess hall for every meal, sleeps fourteen hours a day, and does absolutely nothing. The useless one. But for once in my life, I accepted the role.

The navy personnel tried to impress upon me the media storm that had broken over my hostage-taking, as did Andrea when I spoke with her. But it never got through to me. The first day on the
Boxer,
I was sitting in the mess deck when I heard voices I recognized, voices from back home. Startled, I turned around: On the ship’s satellite TV, I saw the faces of my neighbors, my kids, Maersk officials. I turned my back to it. I didn’t want to hear it. A navy pilot said, “Don’t you want to see it?”

“I already know the story,” I said, “I don’t want to hear it again.”

The night before the
Bainbridge
was supposed to make port at Mombasa, the message came across the PA that we’d changed course and were now under way to save another American ship, the
Liberty Sun,
which was under attack by pirates. I ran into Captain Frank, who began to apologize for not getting me
to the rendezvous with my crew. I said, “Not at all, just go get ’em. Save those sailors.” We met the
Liberty Sun
and chased off the pirates, then turned back toward Kenya and docked amid high security and media scrutiny. I left the
Bainbridge
at 0400 on Friday morning.

The SEALs, meanwhile, had slipped off into the night, never to be seen again, without fanfare or recognition.