Stratton, Hopper and Sabarak weren’t the only ones transfixed by the attack. So was their armed guard. Stratton looked at the back of the guy, calculating the possible phases after incapacitating him. He looked at the four or five Somalis on the prow. Guns in hand. The odds were not good enough.
He stood on a pile of fish boxes in order to get a better look at the action.
The bulker leaned steeply over with each desperate turn, its decks empty. No sign of any crew on board. Stratton could imagine them all inside, hatches battened down, locked inside the citadel, hoping desperately that it would be enough to defend against the pirates. No doubt they would also be wishng they had done more defensive preparation before entering the Gulf of Aden. But like wild dogs, the Somalis had a reputation for pressing the attack for as long as there was a chance of succeeding. Stratton had heard of Somali pirates boarding a boat and staying on its deck for more than a day while trying to gain entry to it.
The two longer attack boats each carried five or six men, the others three or four. As Stratton watched, one of the little boats accelerated along the length of the cargo carrier. A bang followed by a rocket with a smoking tail shot from the speedboat and curved over the top of the ship, narrowly missing the bridge and dropping into the sea the other side.
A second speedboat tore up the starboard side and released a rocket of its own. This one struck the bulker’s funnel and exploded like a hand grenade with a sharp crack, leaving a dramatic black scar and indent on the red- painted metal.
A guttural shout went up from the Somalis on board the mother craft followed by a cheer from the others. One of the longer attack craft closed on the rear of the ship, which continued to manoeuvre desperately. But the experienced Somali coxswain mirrored the turns as he got closer to the stern. As he closed the gap to a mere metre from the back of the bulker, one of his boarding team raised a metal ladder a couple of metres long, formed into a large hook shape at the end. The carrier turned again. As it did so it leaned over. The pirate boat bumped the ship and the boarding team heaved the curved end of the ladder over the top rail, where it hooked on firmly. A Somali in back loosed off a burst of rifle fire while another scrambled up the ladder, quickly followed by others.
More shouts from the exultant Somalis on board the mother craft as they watched their comrades create a foothold. Within seconds, every pirate on the speedboat, except for the coxswain, had climbed aboard the cargo ship and was sprinting towards the superstructure.
The next long speedboat closed in for its turn. Stratton could hear the clatter of rifle fire increase as the Somalis already on board took their positions, tugging on doors, scaling exterior ladders and stairways all around the superstructure in an effort to gain entry. As the second boarding team attached its ladder and quickly clambered aboard, a burst shattered several windows on the superstructure. It looked like the Somalis were violently attacking a door with pieces of wood. Firing guns into locks. The cacophony went on. Smoke began to rise from a fire somewhere on board.
After a while, the vessel’s erratic swerving ceased and its speed reduced. The bridge wing doors on one side opened and a couple of the Somalis stepped out, their arms waving.
The cargo ship was theirs. Once again a cheer went up from the mother craft.
After the leader went on board the bulker, he didn’t return for several hours. By then the day had become warm and Stratton’s clothes had dried out. He and Hopper and Sabarak had been given a dish each of rice mush. Sabarak had begun striking up small conversations with the guards. He seemed to understand the language pretty well but wasn’t fluent, judging by the way the Somalis responded to him. Stratton and Hopper had listened, gaining what little they could. Which wasn’t much. Except for one thing.
The commander was called Lotto.
Stratton watched as two of the raiders returned to the mother craft carrying a hefty backpack between them. They looked like two of the original boarders. As they stepped down on to the deck, one of the mother ship’s crew who hadn’t boarded the bulker stepped up to them, put a hand inside the backpack, apparently deciding that a portion of it belonged to him, for whatever reason. He came up with a pair of shiny binoculars. One of the boarders got angry but the crewman walked away to the back of the boat. The situation changed in a second. As the crewman stepped up to the superstructure, the boarder caught him and hooked an arm around his neck. The crewman pushed him off, drawing a knife from his belt. By now a gallery of interested Somalis had formed to watch him. A fight ensued. As the brawl came their way, Stratton and Hopper moved out of the way.
The fight didn’t last long. The boarder went for the crewman’s arm holding the knife but the crewman twisted free and they fell together and he drove his blade right into the man’s guts. He stabbed him several more times, his final thrust going behind the boarder’s ribcage where it skewered his heart.
The crewman got to his feet, his hands and clothing soaked in blood. As he picked up the binoculars and inspected them, Lotto stepped out of the superstructure. The chief shouted at the crewman, evidently looking for an explanation. The crewman’s expression changed as he began to explain his side of the story. The man was frightened. Another Somali spoke but not in favour of the crewman, who argued with him. Lotto listened to the comments from one source and another. Then he withdrew a pistol from his side and shot the crewman in the middle of the chest. The man dropped like a lead weight and the binoculars fell on to the deck beside him. He opened his mouth a couple of times and started gasping.
Lotto shouted another command as he holstered his pistol and went back inside the boat and two Somalis lifted up the crewman and tossed him over the side. The dead pirate quickly followed. One of the crewmen took the binoculars for himself and Stratton and Hopper, with Sabarak close by, were left alone. A large pool of blood had formed in front of them.
By the time the sun set, the pirates had organised themselves, and the flotilla, along with its new and largest addition, continued south towards Somalia. By the next morning, they had changed direction and were heading east. The blood on the deck had dried and cracked across the deeper pools.
It had been a cool night but all of them had slept. Stratton looked over the side. He couldn’t see anything but blue-grey ocean. But the air smelled different. And there were seagulls. Not in any great abundance. A handful flying close to the vessel, inspecting it from on high. The flying scavengers were going to be disappointed though. These Somalis were harvesters of the sea all right, but a much different kind.
Stratton got to his feet and stretched his stiffened body and checked the horizon the other side of the bridge house. The guards were watching him but it was like they had become used to his curiosity and took it to be harmless.
He couldn’t see a distinct coastline but he knew it was there. A strong shadow divided the sea and sky. He looked back at the cargo vessel cruising behind them, attached by several thick steel cables. The speedboats were divided up between the stern of both mother craft and bulker.
Most of the pirates still appeared to be on board the carrier. Stratton could imagine the night they’d had looting the crew’s belongings, the cargo and getting into the captain’s safe, which always contained cash in several currencies. He leaned back on the edge of the boat looking at the water. He felt the urge to jump into it, but only to cool off. This was beginning to feel like it could be a drawn-out affair.
Stratton had been held captive many times before. But not by pirates. They were a new experience for him. On this occasion he was an economic commodity. He had a monetary value to them. They were going to put him and Hopper up for sale. That was unless the Saudi could change the stakes.
A craggy, arid scar of land became visible as the light improved, a lifeless spur of yellow and grey rock with few trees. As they drew closer to the coast, dozens of what had looked like bobbing seagulls hundreds of metres away became small fishing boats. When the pirate boat passed by them, the two or three occupants in each paused to watch, nets in their hands. There was the occasional wave of an arm. It wasn’t an unfamiliar sight to them. A couple of younger fishermen watched with envious eyes, perhaps wondering when it would be their turn to gain a chance of becoming rich.
Stratton could make out buildings beyond a golden beach that stretched as far as the eye could see in both directions. A pall of smoke hung in the air above the habitats like a thin, floating carpet. The town was on a slight incline from the water’s edge and at first looked like a sprawling caravan park until the structures became small single-storey brick and mud houses. A hundred or so in all, simple and square with flat roofs and nothing in between them but sand.
Dozens more fishing boats dotted the water in front of the town and along the coast in both directions. Several of the smaller, faster pirate boats left the flotilla and headed for the beachfront, their powerful engines
