He nodded at Guray and then opened the weather hatch that led to the cockpit. The sky above was still dark, but the eastern horizon was brightening with the approach of the dawn. He took a breath and went up on deck, crouching behind the helm and taking his binoculars in hand. He scanned the moonlit sea and his heart clutched in his chest. In the night, the Navy ship had moved from a five-o’clock position off the sailboat’s stern to a three-o’clock position off the starboard beam. It didn’t seem any closer—though in the gloom he wasn’t sure—but its stance was more aggressive. He swept the binoculars south and west, and fear shot through him like a shower of sparks.
There were two more ships—one off the port beam and another off the stern.
Was!
he cursed under his breath, reverting to Somali. He heard Paul’s voice like an echo in his brain:
They’re not going to let you take the Parkers to Somalia. We need to find a different sort of compromise.
He studied the ships as the night slowly faded. One of them was identical to the
Gettysburg
, but the other—the one off the stern—had a flat deck and a tower off to the side. The truth came to Ismail suddenly.
They sent an aircraft carrier!
In a matter of hours, the Americans had surrounded the
Renaissance
with enough firepower to sink every ship in Somalia’s pre-civil-war navy.
Ismail launched himself down the companionway and closed the weather hatch. At the sight of his wild eyes, Guray leapt to his feet, gripping his Kalashnikov.
“
Maxaa ka khaldan?
” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
“There are Navy ships all around us! Wake up the men!” Ismail hissed.
He pounded on the door to the Captain’s cabin and heard rustling on the other side. The Captain emerged in sweatpants and a T-shirt, looking worn and disheveled.
“What do you want?” he asked, struggling to control his irritation.
“Come now!” Ismail ordered. “We have a problem.”
The Captain followed him into the saloon and stopped short, looking at Guray, Osman, and Mas, who were covering the portholes with their guns and chattering in hard-edged Somali.
“What’s going on?” he demanded.
Ismail shoved the binoculars into his hands. “Look,” he commanded, pointing out the window. “Your Navy is not listening.”
While the Captain surveyed the ships, Ismail roused Timaha from the berth and ordered him to sit beside Sondare and Dhuuban in the dining booth.
Ismail confronted the Captain. “Do you see?”
The Captain nodded. “They told you they weren’t going to leave.”
Ismail felt the anger growling like a lion inside of him. He grabbed the gun out of Guray’s hands. “Do you want to die?” he demanded. “
Do you want to die?
”
The Captain took a half-step backward, visibly shaken. “Of course not.”
“
Then make them go away!
”
The Captain hurried to the nav station and picked up the radio, his hands trembling. He fumbled with the controls and pressed the transmit button. “Warship, warship, this is
Renaissance
, come in.” He waited a moment and then hailed them again. “
Gettysburg
, this is Captain Parker, do you read?”
Long seconds passed before he got a response. “Captain Parker, this is Paul on the
Gettysburg
. How are you this morning?”
The negotiator’s insouciance infuriated Ismail all the more. He aimed the Kalashnikov at the Captain and repeated himself menacingly. “Make them go away.”
The Captain glanced at the gun and a stream of nervous words tumbled out of him: “
Gettysburg
, we’ve sighted two more ships. Why is the Navy escalating the situation? You need to tell whoever is in charge that the pirates aren’t going to release us until they get their money. They don’t want to harm us, so long as we comply. But if the Navy doesn’t go away, they will kill us. Over.”
The negotiator’s rely was sober. “Are they threatening you, Captain?”
“I am being held at gunpoint. You need to make the Navy understand. We will go to Somalia. We will pay their price. Over.”
“I read you, Captain, and I understand your distress. But the Navy is telling me they’re not going to let you reach the coast. We don’t know what is waiting for you there. Over.”
The Captain’s voice took on a higher pitch. “You
don’t
understand. This is not a game! The Navy is putting us needlessly at risk.”
“Captain,” said the negotiator evenly. “I want you to listen to me. Your safety is Ibrahim’s responsibility. If he kills you, he and his friends will be captured; they will be tried in an American court; and they will be sentenced for their crimes. They could be put to death. On the other hand, if they let you go, we will let them go. They can take your sailboat and return to Somalia.”
At this, Ismail’s rage bubbled over. He pointed the Kalashnikov at the coachroof and pulled the trigger three times, stitching holes in the wood paneling. In the confinement of the cabin, the gunshots sounded like detonations.
The Captain jumped out of fright. “
Stop it!
This is
madness
!”
“Get out of the way,” Ismail ordered, yanking the handset away from him. He spoke into the radio: “We are not interested in your deal. We don’t want the sailboat, and we’re not afraid of your courts. Back off now or you will have to explain to the American media why their countrymen died when they could have been ransomed.”
“Good morning, Ibrahim,” said the negotiator, not missing a beat. “As I said before, I’m open to ideas. But we’re not going to resolve this situation on your terms alone. You need to take care of the hostages. Hurting them isn’t productive for you or for us.”
Enough!
Ismail almost shouted. He pressed the transmit button and pulled the trigger again. The blast echoed in the narrow space and left his ears ringing. “That was a warning,” he said, forcing his voice to match the negotiator’s calm. “No more talk. Tell the Navy to go away or the Captain will die.”
Paul waited a moment before replying. “I’ll pass the message along.”
Suddenly, all was quiet in the cabin. Ismail stared at the Captain and saw beads of sweat on his brow, the limpid terror in his eyes.
Was!
he cursed again.
None of this was supposed to happen! The American troublemakers never should have found us. This is all the Captain’s fault.
But that wasn’t really true. It was America’s fault, too. The United States was an arrogant bully that treated its superpower status like a license to pick the world’s winners and trampled everyone who stood in its way. It was an American admiral who had ordered the slaughter of over fifty clan elders and intellectuals in Mogadishu in June of 1993, many of whom—including Ismail’s grandfather, Ibrahim—wanted to help the United Nations disarm General Aideed. The Americans had reacted in horror when Somalis dragged their dead soldiers through the streets three months later. But they had never taken responsibility for the massacre that turned the Somali people against them.
Nor had they learned their lesson, returning a decade later under the guise of the war on terror to support the warlords in fighting the Islamic Courts Union. Of course there were problems with the ICU. But the Courts had brought order to a nation that had known anarchy for half a generation. If only the Americans had given moderates like Adan a chance to marginalize the extremists, Somalia might have found its own path to peace. But instead the U.S. intervened, empowering the warlords who had oppressed the Somali people, supporting the Ethiopians in decimating the ICU leadership, and creating a power vacuum the Shabaab was only too happy to fill. Six years later, the radicals were in control of half of Somalia, launching terror attacks, assassinating politicians, and closing ranks with al-Qaeda. Yet still America soldiered on, acting as if its might guaranteed the righteousness of its cause.
Eventually, Paul came back on the radio. “Ibrahim, I’ve talked to my commander, and he’s going to speak to his superiors. But that’s going to take time. These decisions don’t happen quickly.”
“How much time?” Ismail demanded.
“I don’t know. I need you to be patient. In the meantime, the Navy is going to conduct normal flight operations. You might see planes taking off and helicopters in the air. Don’t let it alarm you.”
This is a diversion
, Ismail thought, but he didn’t have a choice. “Keep them away from us, or this will end badly.”
Then he put down the radio and explained the situation to his men.
The clock in the sailboat’s galley ticked away the hours as ponderously as the glaciers Ismail had read about in his father’s books. His crew stood by the curtained windows, seized with wonder and dread, as the Navy showed off its near-Promethean capabilities. The helicopters came first, rising off the decks of the ships as the sun rose above the sea. They flew lazy patterns in the air, hovering like dragonflies, dancing minuets, and then disappearing over the horizon, only to return minutes later like emissaries carrying news from afar. They kept their distance, never flying closer than half a mile, but the noise of their rotors drilled so deep into Ismail’s brain that he began to pine for silence.
Then came the jets. They shot off the carrier in pairs and climbed into the sky until they were little more than specks in the vast canvas of blue. Occasionally, they descended from the heights and circled the ships like vultures, the scream of their turbines rattling everything in the sailboat that wasn’t firmly attached. As the morning turned into afternoon, the flybys increased, throwing Ismail’s crew into agitation and triggering a rash of speculations about the Navy’s intentions. The men chattered like locusts, weaving their fears into a chorus of paranoia that Ismail was powerless to counteract. He allowed the Captain and Timaha to play their music, hoping it would lighten the mood, but the men were too mesmerized by the naval exercises to listen or care.
Finally, just after three o’clock in the afternoon, the jets returned to the carrier, leaving only the helicopters in the air. It was then that Paul came on the radio again.
“
Renaissance
, this is
Gettysburg
, do you read? Over.”
Ismail sat down at the nav station and looked at his men. He saw the lines of apprehension on their foreheads, the doubt in their eyes. Three of them—Liban, Sondare and Dhuuban—were watching him expectantly, waiting for him to find a way out of the mess. Osman was staring angrily at the radio, as if it were an agent of the enemy. Guray looked nonplussed, his trigger-finger twitching on the butt of his gun. But Mas’s expression was darker—at once wary and suspicious. His eyes spoke a challenge:
Do you have what it takes to bring this to an end?
“
Gettysburg
,” Ismail replied simply, “what is your answer?”
The negotiator replied with a dodge. “How are the hostages? The last time I talked to Captain Parker he had a gun pointed at his head.”
Ismail took a slow breath and played along. “They’re well. As I have told you, we have no desire to hurt them. We will let them go as soon as we negotiate with their family. They are the solution to this situation. Your Navy is the problem.”
“I understand that,” Paul said in an ingratiating tone. “And I’m working on it. I can’t give you an answer just yet, but the people in charge are telling me they want to have a conversation. At the same time, they don’t want the entire maritime community listening in. We have a secure radio we’d like to use instead of VHF. I need to get a handset over to you. Is that all right with you?”
Ismail furrowed his brow. “What are you talking about?”
“If you look out the window, you’ll see a boat in the water with two sailors. They’re unarmed and they have the radio. It’s easy to use. As soon as we get it over to you, we can talk further.”
Ismail picked up his binoculars and pushed aside the nearest curtain. He saw a small craft riding the meter-high waves behind the Navy ship. The sailors were like stick figures at this distance, but they had their hands in the air.
“What is happening?” his men were asking.
“They want to give us a different radio,” Ismail replied in Somali. “They want to keep talking, but they don’t want anyone else to hear.”
Liban was the first to understand. He moved to the window and squinted into the afternoon sunlight. “It’s a trap!” he said, shaking his head.
The others followed on his heels and pandemonium ensued. The men began to shout at the Captain and Timaha and denounce the Navy. Osman was most vociferous, spitting out curses like cobra venom, but all of their protestations had the same theme—the Americans couldn’t be trusted.
While his men carried on, Ismail took the opportunity to think. They were right to perceive a threat, but they were wrong about its origin. The boat was irrelevant; the Navy wasn’t going to attack them with two sailors. The radio was more of a concern. Paul’s explanation sounded like an excuse. They weren’t anywhere near the shipping lanes. Where were the other vessels that could overhear them? It was more likely that the Navy wanted to use the radio to get close to the sailboat. They couldn’t see in the windows, and they had no idea how well his men were armed.