On the screen Harry was smiling. So was Idris. Idris glancing at Harry.
“I had the feeling,” Dara said, “there was something between them they were dying to tell me. But Harry surprised me, started talking about a new president of Somalia, elected by the legislature meeting in Djibouti.”
“Get into all that, you gonna lose your audience.”
“I know, but I want to quote Harry saying the new president will bring peace, once the foreign fishing companies leave the gulf. I said, ‘That’s the stipulation? You’ll have pirates until the fishing boats go home?’ He said, ‘Unfortunately, yes.’”
Xavier said, “What you want with that?”
“Show how the Somalis see it. Their only way to make a buck is hijacking ships.”
“Or they starve? Come on, you gonna tell your moviegoers that?”
She said after a moment, “You don’t think it’ll work.”
“Not the way you pitchin it. Do it straight. Make a picture about guys committin armed robbery at sea. What’s wrong with that? They fun-lovin ’cause they found a way to get rich, but they still criminals…only with some class.”
“Change the tone,” Dara said.
“The one you have in your head. Shoot what you see, not what you want to see.”
“I know what I’m doing, but I sound dumb.”
“You are dumb,” Xavier said, “and you know better.”
“YOU MIGHT’VE NOTICED,” DARA said, “the two buddies making remarks to each other in Arabic, then raising their eyebrows, interested in what I’m gonna say. ‘Did you know we have an aircraft carrier in the gulf?’ ‘Really? When did it arrive?’ I tell them, ‘Yesterday, the nuclear-powered Dwight D. Eisenhower.’ Harry goes, ‘Good show.’ Idris says, ‘You need a giant ship with jet planes to chase my little skiffs?’
“I said to Idris, ‘Is there an Islamic group like al Shabaab behind pirate activities?’
“Idris said, ‘Al Shabaab, are you kidding me? They’re children playing like it’s olden times. They’re very serious.’ I told Idris I’ve heard hijacking has cost the owners much more than thirty million. He said, ‘Yes, perhaps as much as forty million. More coming in as we speak.’ I said to Harry, ‘Is that right, according to your estimates?’ Harry said, ‘He might be a bit low.’”
Dara said she asked Harry while Idris was out of the room how they met. He said he heard Idris might be interested in a sporting rifle he had for sale. “Over a few drinks we agreed on the price.” Harry smiled. “And from that meeting on we’re mates.”
Dara said, “I’m not sure why, maybe because we were in the Middle East, I asked him, ‘How many rifles did you sell Idris?’ Harry stared at me rather deadpan before he said, ‘Four hundred.’ He said, ‘Uzis I promoted off a chap in Tel Aviv,’ giving his tone a hint of cockney, like Michael Caine, and kept staring at me until I smiled.” Dara said, “You know why he told me? He wanted me to know he’s half British but is still part of the Arab world. I said, ‘And now you’re promoting a solution to end piracy?’ Harry said, ‘You might call it that, yes.’”
“You ever ask Idris what he did with the Uzis?”
“I’m guessing he found buyers in Somalia. Warlords always need guns.” Dara watched the screen. “This is where Harry’s saying to Idris, ‘Will you please tell her.’”
“I remember,” Xavier said, “both watchin TV and grinnin when we come in. Now I shoot Idris changin the channel from Al Jazeera to CNN and we see a container ship flyin the Stars and Stripes. The Maersk Alabama, the first American ship, captain and crew, taken by the Somalis.”
“The first American ship boarded,” Dara said, watching the screen, “in more than two hundred years.”
“This crew wouldn’t stand for it,” Xavier said. “Took the ship back and ran off the pirates. Only they had the captain a hostage by then.”
“He gave himself up,” Dara said, “so they wouldn’t harm the crew. Richard Phillips, fifty-three, from Underhill, Vermont. They put him in the Alabama’s deluxe lifeboat, tried to slip off to Somalia three hundred miles away and ran out of gas. Here’s the lifeboat.”
One like the Alabama’s was on the screen now: an enclosed twenty-eight-foot orange fiberglass boat designed for thirty-four passengers with food and water for ten days.
“No toilet,” Dara said. “It doesn’t look big enough for that many people. The Bainbridge, the destroyer on the scene, tied onto the lifeboat to keep it from drifting off. Talks began now by satellite phone, between clan elders in the pirates’ home port and I think navy brass and a hostage negotiator from the FBI. The elders wanted two million for Captain Phillips. The navy wanted the four pirates to surrender and stand trial, the only agreement they’d consider. The pirate spokesmen said if you don’t pay the ransom or try to rescue the captain, this will end in disaster. Words to that effect. The navy took it as a threat to Captain Phillips’s life.”
Dara was looking at the screen. “This is Sunday. Idris and Harry were watching Friday—why they were grinning. I wanted to ask Harry what he was so happy about, but I didn’t get around to it.”
Xavier said, “So they got SEALs for the job.”
“Three Navy SEALs were dropped on the Bainbridge with sniper rifles and set up undercover on the fantail. The lifeboat on the tow rope was less than a hundred feet away, like point-blank range for snipers. But waves were tossing the lifeboat, making it hard to get a target that wasn’t moving. They could barely make out the pirates through the boat’s windshield, and it was getting dark. Word came down from the White House. President Obama said, ‘If the captain’s life is in danger, take action.’ The SEALs watched one of the pirates put a gun to Captain Phillips’s head and they were given the word. Each fired one shot and the three pirates were taken out.”
Xavier said, “Wasn’t there four of ’em?”
“Four when they started out,” Dara said. “The Bainbridge sent a rubber boat to see if Phillips and the pirates needed anything, food, medicine. The fourth pirate jumped ship, went back to the Bainbridge in the rubber boat and gave himself up.”
“Had enough of bein a pirate.”
“He was sixteen,” Dara said. “I’m not sure how old the captain’s son is. On TV the captain’s wife, Andrea, sent a message after he was rescued that said ‘Your family is saving a chocolate Easter egg for you, unless your son eats it first.’”
“Lemme see do I understand your meaning,” Xavier said. “What you sayin, Somali boys don’t have chocolate Easter eggs, they get shot?”
Dara didn’t answer him. She thought of something else and said, “The Alabama was bringing four thousand tons of corn-soya to malnourished refugees in Somalia while Somali pirates were holding the captain for two million dollars. It was also carrying three hundred and twenty tons of vegetable oil for refugees in Rwanda.”
“You have reasons now,” Xavier said, “not to feel sorry for the pirates.”
“After the three in the lifeboat were killed,” Dara said, “bloggers all over the Internet were saying, ‘Don’t fuck with Americans.’”
“How’d that leave you?”
“It made sense. We have a problem, we don’t pay our way out, we go after it.” She said, “You know what I’ve learned since? It’s likely the rifles were mounted in gyroscopes and the snipers wore night-vision goggles and took aim through scopes on their rifles. Put red dots on the Somalis and they’re off to where Allah gives them all those hot-looking chicks. I thought, Shot by cool guys who know what they’re doing. I reacted like everybody else.”
She said, “Remember in Eyl I told you what I wanted to do? Get Idris to let us visit a ship he’s holding for ransom. Get back to work. Talk only to members of the crew, no pirates.”
“I believe I asked why would he let you? You said ’cause CNN’s put him in a good mood and you know how to talk to him.”
“I told Idris the afternoon we visited,” Dara said, “the world must wonder how you treat your hostages. I’ll ask the ship??
?s crew and they’ll say the Somali pirates are decent,” Dara said, “a couple of Saudis among fifteen Filipinos. And the first officer was Saudi. I mentioned it to Idris and Harry and Idris asked me how I knew about the crew. No, first he asked why I picked the Aphrodite with all the ships anchored out there. I said I was curious about it, an LNG tanker. I told him I looked at the crew list to get the names and nationalities and saw two Arabs among all the Filipinos.
“Harry asked if I happened to know what the vessel was carrying. I said, ‘I just told you, liquefied natural gas.’ Harry said, ‘Isn’t that highly combustible?’”
“Playin dumb,” Xavier said.
“Then Idris told him don’t worry, the ship will be gone in a day or two.”
“I remember we went aboard,” Xavier said, “we’re told we could speak to the crew all we wanted, as long as we know Tagalog. Idris havin fun with us. Idris said it wasn’t his ship, but he’d come along and watch over us. Said he’d tell the pirates aboard to duck if they saw me aimin the camera at them. Meanwhile you shootin away with your tiny spy pen while Idris is watchin me with the Sony.”
Dara brought the video spy camera out of her jacket and clipped it in the breast pocket, the top inch of the pen, its pinhole lens showing. “A pen if you didn’t know better.”
Xavier said, “I thought it was a pen.”
“It is. Anyone who stares at it,” Dara said, “I slip it out of the pocket, stop shooting and start taking notes.”
“Whyn’t you use it at Idris’s house?”
“Too dark in there. This one does need a lot of light. Push the button on top and I’m the camera. I did manage to get the two Saudis while they’re ducking away from you.” She said, “If there’s some kind of plot…You know what I mean, to use a highly combustible ship? I don’t think Idris would be in on it.”
“But you act like you suspect somethin’s goin on. Way you start lookin over your shoulder.”
“It was later,” Dara said. “After I found out Billy’s watching the gas ship and knows more about it than we do.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
BILLY WAS DRIVING HELENE nuts. He’d say, “You don’t mind living on the boat?” Helene would tell him she loved Pegaso, loved sailing.
Billy said, “I’m glad you go for champagne.”
“Love it.” Stay half in the bag it was easier to take the boring mind games he played.
“Champagne or coffee,” Billy said, “why stock beverages we don’t need.”
He was starting to sound weird. He said to her while they were moored off Eyl, seeing only a few lights ashore but hearing the generator from up on the slope, “You don’t feel cooped up?”
She wanted to hit him with something. The fire extinguisher.
“All I said was why don’t we go ashore and take a walk?”
“No, you said why don’t we go ashore and stretch our legs. Like they’re cramped from being stuck aboard a couple of weeks.”
Helene took a moment before saying, “Whether I said let’s go for a walk or let’s stretch our legs, I swear they both mean the same thing to me. I’m happy to be here, but I’d also like to fucking go for a walk. Okay?”
Billy liked it when she talked like that. He grinned saying, “I was teasing you. See if you’d hold your ground or start crying. Say it again.”
“What?” Helene said.
“You’d like to fucking go for a walk. Most girls use the word, it doesn’t sound right. You give it meaning. Let’s hear you use it in a sentence.”
The guy was unreal.
“You want me to say fuck or fucking?”
“Either one.”
Helene said, “You want to take a walk or fuck?”
“Lemme think,” Billy said, grinning at her.
“TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO,” Billy said, “the last time a U.S. ship was attacked by African pirates, a young naval officer by the name of Bainbridge skippered a ship that took part in the action. Today the USS Bainbridge, named for that young officer, in naval combat off the coast of Tripoli, is again confronting African pirates. You realize that?”
“You sound like the guy on CNN.”
They were in the Pegaso’s salon watching the coverage on television.
“This time the wogs picked on an American ship with an American captain and crew, the Maersk Alabama. Maersk is the owner, he’s Danish, but everybody aboard is a Yank. It’s a seventeen-thousand-ton container ship. This time the wogs bit off more’n they can chew.”
“But they have the captain.”
“The hero of this action. Giving himself up so the wogs won’t fuck with his men. Leave ’em alone. Captain Richie Phillips, they put him in that motorized lifeboat and thought they could sail off with him and ran out of gas.”
“And the guy who should’ve kept the gas tank full,” Helene said, “is thinking he’s fucked, he’s gonna get fired or go to prison for not doing his job. I wonder if anybody’s thought of him.”
“HON, THIS HAS NOTHING to do with some oiler’s misfortune. This is about the captain of the Alabama, now a hostage of the wogs. Four kids with automatic rifles have put Captain Richie Phillips in the most potentially heroic position of his life.”
“If he wants to be a hero.”
“One that could win him the Congressional Medal of Honor. Or whatever they award if you’re not military. That’s the chance, what puts him in the right place. Get him pictured on the cover of Time or Newsweek.”
“Or both. Sometimes they do the same stories.”
“This one about an American looking his fate in the eye. The wogs want two million for him.” Billy paused. “They aren’t Kafirs, Kafirs are Hindus, and they aren’t gooks. Wogs are in a huge area from the Middle to the Far East. I’m thinking there must be a special name for these guys.”
“Towelheads.”
“That’s crude. I’ll stick with wogs, or Mohammedans. Four of them are holding the captain for ransom. They don’t get two million for him he’s a dead man.”
“They said that?”
“Not in those words. This is a standoff between armed wogs who want money and the government of the United States represented by Captain Phillips. If we give in to their demand and pay the ransom, we’re pussy. We’re turning our back to what’s most precious to us, the ideals of a free people.”
She thought he was going to say “our precious bodily fluids.”
Helene, on the settee, put her glass down and looked at Billy. He was serious. He was the guy Sterling Hayden played in Dr. Strangelove, General Jack D. Ripper. How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, the subtitle. Sterling Hayden was so serious he was weird. Calm, talking about the Communist conspiracy to put fluoridation in our drinking water to fuck up our precious bodily fluids. They watched the picture twice while they were still in the Mediterranean. Billy said he’d watched it six or seven times at least and thought Jack D. Ripper was a martyr, giving his life for the sake of our precious bodily fluids. That’s who Billy sounded like at times, Sterling Hayden.
Billy said, “I’d be willing to bet Richie Phillips somehow got on the horn with the commander of the Bainbridge and told him, ‘Don’t pay them. Not one dime. Threaten to send a missile up their ass if they don’t surrender. Tell them how it works, you get caught you stand trial. Give ’em one minute to make up their minds, with a ticking clock next to the phone the wogs can hear. I bet anything the commander gave them a time limit. The wogs tell him, ‘But we have Captain Phillips, he will be killed too.’ The commander tells them, ‘Richie Phillips is willing to give his life for his country and what he believes. Are you?’”
Helene listened to the CNN report and said, “Well, it isn’t gonna happen tonight.”
She needed to get straight in her mind which guy was the real Billy Wynn. Serious enough when he was sailing the boat, but weird when they anchored and he sounded like Sterling Hayden. She wondered what he’d be like at home, if he wore a cowboy hat. Sooner or later she’d have to meet his friends dow
n in East Texas. Have people over for a cookout and square dance in their cowboy boots. She thought, No. Wait a minute. Billy didn’t listen to country, he liked—what was the guy’s name he played almost every day? His friends would come to the cook-outs in raggedy straw hats and move their shoulders in time to Jimmy Buffett’s “Margaritaville.” Jesus.
WHAT BILLY DID MOST of the day, anchored off Eyl, was listen to CNN and study the ships held for ransom, creeping over every inch of them with his huge binoculars. He’d get the names of the ships and look up their registry and then make a few satellite calls to his informants in Djibouti and Qatar, Billy lounging in the Pegaso’s salon.
Helene heard him say, “Well, it’s the Aphrodite now, a thousand-foot LNG tanker. I can see five tanks sticking out of the deck.” Billy said, “What I want to know is where it’s going,” and hung up.
He said to Helene, “They changed the name of the ship from Heureka to Aphrodite.”
“Yeah…? They sound like cool guys.”
“Originally it was out of Piraeus with a Greek master and crew. The owner now is from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates but lives in London. I said to my informant, ‘You sure the owner isn’t living in a cave up in Pakistan?’ If they don’t find that fucker soon I’m gonna get on it. We’re offering twenty-five mil to learn his whereabouts and nobody’s stepped up. You know why? We’re offering too much. What’s a former goat herdsman who delivers milk to him gonna do with twenty-five million bucks? Buy a car?”
Helene said, “Are you talking about whoever fingers Ben Laden?”
“Hon, it’s bin, Osama bin Laden with a small b. No matter who my informant tells me owns the ship, I think it could belong to bin Laden. I wonder if anybody calls him that? ‘Hey, bin, how you been?’ It was on the History Channel all the ships he owns. You ever watch it?”
“I love the History Channel.”
“You never saw it in your life.”
“I’ve heard of it.”