the crowded bridge before plucking a hand mic from the two-way transceiver and thumbing the button. “Ahoy, nearby freighter.” His English was heavily accented but passable.
A moment later a voice burst over the tinny speaker. “Is this the fishing boat off my port beam?”
“Yes. We are in need of doctor,” the captain said. “Four of my men are very sick. Do you have?”
“One of our crew was a Navy medic. What are their symptoms?”
“I do not know this word
“How are they sick?” the radio operator on the freighter asked.
“They throw up bad for days. Bad food, I think.”
“Okay. I think we can handle that. Come abeam of us just ahead of the superstructure. We will slow as much as we can, but we won’t be able to stop completely. Do you understand?”
“Yes, yes. I understand. You no stop. Is okay.” He shot a wolfish grin at his comrades, saying in his native tongue, “They believe me. They’re not going to stop, probably because the engines wouldn’t refire, but that isn’t a problem. Abdi, take the helm. Put us alongside near the superstructure and match their speed.”
“Yes, Hakeem.”
“Let’s get on deck,” the captain said to the other two.
They met up with four men who had been in the cabin below the wheelhouse. These men had ragged blankets draped over their thin shoulders and moved as if crippled with cramps.
The freighter dwarfed the sixty-foot fishing boat, though with her so low in the water the ship’s rail wasn’t that far above their own. Crewmen had hung truck tires for fenders and retracted a section of railing near the superstructure to make it easier to transfer the stricken men aboard. Hakeem counted four of them. One, a short Asian man, wore a uniform shirt with black epaulettes. Another was a large African or Caribbean islander, and the other two he wasn’t sure.
“Are you the captain?” Hakeem called to the officer.
“Yes. Captain Kwan.”
“Thank you for doing this. My men are very sick, but we must stay at sea to catch fish.”
“It is my duty,” Kwan said rather haughtily. “Your boat will have to stay close by while we treat your men. We’re headed to the Suez Canal and can’t detour to take them ashore.”
“That is not a problem,” Hakeem said with an oily smile as he handed up a line. The African crewman secured it to a rail stanchion.
“Okay, let’s have them,” Kwan said.
Hakeem helped one of his men step onto their boat’s railing. The gap between the two vessels was less than a foot, and in these calm seas there was little chance of his slipping. The two of them stepped up and across to the freighter’s deck and moved aside for two more at their heels.
It was when the fourth jumped nimbly onto his ship that Captain Kwan became wary.
As he opened his mouth to question the seriousness of their condition, the four men with the blankets let them drop away. Concealed underneath were AK-47s with the wooden butts crudely cut off. Aziz and Malik, the two other crewmen from the fishing boat, grabbed matching weapons from a wooden chest and rushed aboard.
“Pirates!” Kwan yelled, and had the muzzle of one weapon rammed into his stomach.
He dropped to his knees, clutching his abdomen. Hakeem pulled an automatic pistol from behind his back while the other armed men hustled the freighter’s crew away from the rail and out of sight of anyone who may have been on the bridge wing high overhead.
The Somali leader dragged the captain to his feet, pressing the barrel of his pistol into Kwan’s neck. “Do as you are told and no one will be hurt.”
There was a momentary spark of defiance behind Kwan’s eyes, something he couldn’t suppress, but it was fleeting, and the pirate hadn’t noticed. He nodded awkwardly.
“You will take us to the radio room,” Hakeem continued. “You will make an announcement to your crew that they are to go to the mess hall. Everyone must be there. If we find anyone walking around the ship, he will be killed.”
While he was talking, his men were cuffing the stunned crew with plastic zip ties. They used three on the muscle-bound black man, just in case.
While Aziz and Malik took charge of the other crewmen, Kwan led Hakeem and the four “sick” pirates into the superstructure, a pistol pressed to his spine. The interior of the ship was only a few degrees cooler than outside, thanks to a barely functioning air-conditioning system. The halls and passageways looked as if they hadn’t been cleaned since the freighter had slipped down the ways. The linoleum flooring was cracked and peeling, and dust bunnies the size of jackrabbits lurked in every corner.
It took less than a minute to climb up to the bridge, where a helmsman stood behind the large wooden wheel and another officer was hunched over a chart table littered with plates of congealing food and a chart so old and faded it could have depicted the coastline of Pangaea. The windows were nearly opaque with rimed salt.
“How’d it go with the fishermen?” the officer asked without looking up. His voice had an odd British inflection that wasn’t quite right. He lifted his head and blanched. His big, innocent eyes went wide. The four pirates had the entire room covered with their assault rifles, and the captain’s head was bent sideways with the pressure of the pistol jammed into his neck.
“No heroics,” Kwan said. “They promised not to harm anyone if we just follow their orders. Open a shipwide channel please, Mr. Maryweather.”
“Aye, Captain.” Moving deliberately, the young officer, Duane Maryweather, reached for the intercom button located next to the ship’s radio. He handed the microphone to his captain.
