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Pirate State
Inside Somalia's Terrorism at Sea
By Peter Eichstaedt Chicago Review Press Incorporated
Copyright © 2010 Peter Eichstaedt
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-56976-774-0
CHAPTER 1
Attack on the Alabama
Two men stand on the bridge of the U.S.-flagged ship Maersk Alabama as it churns through the Indian Ocean some three hundred miles off the coast of Somalia. It is Wednesday, April 8, 2009, and in the growing light of dawn their eyes follow a blip on the ship's radar. They scan the steely gray sea, and in the distance a small boat races toward them, bouncing madly on the waves. Not again, they think. In the past twenty-four hours, the ship has been approached twice, the last time being just hours earlier, when navigator Ken Quinn was on watch. The Maersk Alabama had passed what Quinn suspected was a pirate "mother ship," a larger boat from which the pirates launch their armed attacks using skiffs powered by outboard motors. "They were telling us on the radio to pull over," Quinn said later. "They kept saying 'Stop ship, stop ship, Somali pirate,' but we just kept going."
An earlier attack had come the afternoon before, when pirates bristling with weapons had trailed the ship. Captain Richard Phillips had ordered evasive measures and speeding up and left the pirates in their wake. "The little boats couldn't catch up to us," Quinn said. Initially, the two men on the bridge, First Mate Shane Murphy and Captain Phillips, were not alarmed at this third attack. "I see pirates attack ships all the time," Murphy explained. But as the speeding craft closed in, each man drew a deep breath and squinted as the morning sun glinted off the rippling sea. The boat was coming "faster than anything" they'd see before, splashing through the waves. "This one didn't feel right," Murphy said later, recalling his sense of helplessness. Their heavy cargo — 4,100 metric tons of corn and soybeans, along with 990 metric tons of vegetable oil — had lowered the deck to less than twenty feet off the surface. Phillips and Murphy realized that if the pirates came alongside, they would have little trouble climbing aboard. Ironically, the Maersk Alabama was headed for Mombasa, Kenya, with food aid for millions of malnourished Africans who would suffer due to Somali pirates bent on hijacking it and holding it for months, if necessary.
When Phillips sounded the alarm, Quinn jolted awake, having left his watch shift just hours earlier for some badly needed sleep. He sensed trouble. "I was sleeping," he recalled. "I got off watch at four in the morning and I went to bed." With the alarm blaring, Quinn pulled on his clothes, grabbed his radio, and ran to the ship's safe room, where he made a head count. The first pirate boarded quickly, Quinn said, using a ladder that was easily hooked onto the side of the ship. A wiry young man brandishing an AK-47 that he fired repeatedly, he scampered up several flights of stairs to the bridge and confronted the captain. Fourteen of the nineteen crew members were already in the ship's safe room. Phillips and two others remained on the bridge. Murphy and Chief Engineer Mike Perry were already gone. Murphy had ducked into the interior corridors, where he secured as many of the ship's locks and doors as he could. He stopped short and swallowed hard when Phillips yelled over the ship's radio and intercom, "Shots fired! Shots fired!" When Murphy and the crew heard this, they knew they faced their worst nightmare. "They were coming aboard," Murphy told himself. "It's going to be a fight." But he refused to surrender. "I wasn't willing to give up the ship to these guys yet."
On the bridge with Phillips were Third Mate Colin Wright and crewman Zahid "ATM" Reza, who prepared to confront the pirates. The lead pirate, later identified as eighteen-year-old Abdiwali Abdiqadir Musi, and his accomplices leveled their guns at Phillips, Reza, and Wright. "You just hope you don't get killed," Wright said later of the ordeal. The pirates ordered Phillips to stop the ship and gather the crew. Murphy and the crew could monitor the conversation over the ship's radios. Phillips spoke in a calm, cooperative voice, but the tension was undeniable. "You could tell he had a gun pointed at his face," Murphy said later.
After Musi and the attackers quizzed Phillips about the ship and crew, they began to cheer. Learning that the ship and crew were American, they believed they'd hit the jackpot. Musi and his accomplices reassured the three hostages that if all went well, they would survive unharmed. "Don't worry. We just want money," Musi said.
The pirates then ordered Phillips to assemble the crew. Unknown to the pirates, however, the crew had a password that Phillips would use when the coast was clear. When he didn't use it, the crew hunkered down in their stifling confines. Minutes dragged on. When no one showed, the pirates again demanded that Phillips gather the crew. Phillips made another call, but when no one appeared, the pirates angrily threatened to kill their captives. The pirates then sent Wright to find the crew members and bring them to the bridge. Instead, Wright used this opportunity to disappear, and he remained hidden for the rest of the ordeal that day.
Moments after the pirates had boarded, Perry had told the helmsman "to try to swamp the pirate boat." It was a maneuver they'd done before and involved fishtailing the behemoth cargo ship from side to side, creating a downdraft of water as the ship slid sideways. The roiling waters sucked the pirate skiff under. The move turned out to be critical. The four Somali pirates were left with no means of escape, should the hijacking fail. With their skiff gone, the control of the Maersk Alabama had already begun to slip away from the pirates.
Suddenly the Maersk Alabama was dead in the water as Perry shut down the ship's engines, leaving only an emergency generator running that powered a few emergency lights. Determined that the pirates would have nothing at their disposal, Perry stealthily raced about the ship and, reaching the backup generator, turned it off as well. The ship fell silent, its interior passageways pitch black. Perry's actions were strategic. He knew the pirates probably planned to take the ship to the nearest Somali port while negotiations took place. But out at sea, the pirates were far from help and were vulnerable. Meanwhile, the crew huddled in the suffocating darkness of the safe room with no food or water as the temperature steadily climbed to 125 degrees Fahrenheit.
As Perry and Murphy hustled about the darkened ship, the pirates realized they had to force Phillips to gather the crew to get the ship moving. The pirates renewed their demand that the crew surrender. Knowing this was impossible, and with Wright gone, Reza engaged the pirate Musi in a conversation, explaining that the crew members had instructions to hide and would do so as long as they suspected they were in danger. Reza, a Bangladeshi, used their shared Islamic faith to convince the young pirate leader Musi to cooperate with him. "I told him, 'Trust me. I am Muslim; you are Muslim.'" Sensing he might be able get a jump on Musi, Reza agreed to help Musi find the crew but only if Musi left his AK-47 and pistol behind. Musi agreed. It was a fateful decision.
As Musi and Reza plunged into the darkened passageways of the ship, they were unaware that Perry, armed with a thick-bladed pocketknife, had taken up a position near the engine room. Anticipating that sooner or later the pirates would search the ship for the crew, Perry knew they would ultimately pass the engine room. His hunch proved correct when he heard the footsteps of Reza and Musi, lighting their way with a flashlight. Suddenly the light was in Perry's face. Perry retreated just enough to gain the advantage, then stopped as he rounded a corner. Musi gave chase, and Reza followed. As the light came closer with each of Musi's steps, Perry waited until the last moment before grabbing Musi and holding his knife at Musi's throat.
With Reza's help, Perry wrestled Musi to the ground, and in the process Musi's hand was sliced badly. "I held him. I tied his hands and tied his legs. He was fighting me," Reza said of the struggle. "There was a lot of yelling, shouting, and screaming. I was attempting to kill him. He was scared."
The struggle took place just outside the safe room door, Quinn explained later, leaving him and the rest of the crew to listen helplessly at the scuffling just inches away. "We could hear a commotion out in the engine room, and that lasted about fifteen minutes. I was right up against the door listening to see what was going on," Quinn said. "Then I heard voices, and I could tell the chief engineer was in there, and I could hear [the hijacker's] voice. Then [Perry] said, 'Dinnertime, suppertime, open the door.' That's our code word. We opened the door and he said, 'I've got this prisoner, and you guys are going to have to watch him.' So he pushed him in with us. The guy kind of went crazy at first. They pushed him down on the deck because they were mad. They said they were searching him for weapons. I won't go into the details. They had their knives out, and I was going, 'Remember, the mother ship could be here any minute. We don't want to mess up their leader too bad. I mean, if they show up with twenty more pirates, they're not going to be happy.'" The crew backed off, realizing that Musi was a valuable bargaining chip.
The loss of their leader did not sit well with the remaining three pirates, who again threatened Captain Phillips, saying that unless their colleague was freed, Phillips would be killed. "They said they would shoot someone if their friend did not come back," First Mate Murphy recalled. It was a threat that he and the others had to take seriously. There had been incidents in the past, Perry explained, in which pirates, high on khat and bored with long, drawn-out negotiations, forced captive crew members to play Russian roulette. "I was never going to go that way," Perry said, and he didn't want anyone else to go that way either.
With their leader now gone, the remaining three pirates grew increasingly scared and desperate. "For me, that was the toughest moment," Murphy recalled. Yet the crew had little choice but to hide and wait. With three pirates still on the bridge, Murphy collected what food and water he could from the galley. Seeing the crew's breakfast on the tables and untouched, he realized how crazy the situation had suddenly become. "It was kind of eerie," he said. Despite the tension, Murphy knew it was foolish to panic. "Our minds are the best weapons."
After delivering the food and water to the safe room, Murphy found the ship's emergency beacon and decided to send out a distress signal in addition to what had already been sent. To do that, he had to get to the highest possible point on the ship. Wrapping the transmitter in a blanket, he rambled down the darkened passageways. Passing the captain's quarters, he paused at Phillips's desk to scrawl a note on a yellow legal pad: "We have one pirate in steering gear." But Murphy didn't get much further before he heard the voices of Phillips and a pirate approaching. He ducked into the ship's medical room, where he hid under a desk. Since Musi had not returned, Phillips had been forced to lead one of the pirates on a room-by-room search for the crew. "The pirate was so close I could see his foot," Murphy recalled.
"See, there's no one here," Phillips told the pirate. Murphy chuckled to himself as they disappeared down the passageway. Murphy scrambled and soon found the high point he needed for the emergency signals. Knowing that the crew could now end the standoff, Murphy took the offensive and grabbed the ship's intercom. "I told them I was in charge now, and I had their friend." If they wanted their friend back, they would have to negotiate, he said.
Realizing that the ship's hijacking had been badly botched, the pirates conceded and said they wanted to get away from the ship and back to shore as soon as possible. With their skiff gone, Phillips offered the ship's lifeboat, a red-orange, rigid-hulled craft. As part of the deal, the pirates could take the ship's cash — a stash of some thirty thousand dollars — and agreed to exchange Phillips for Musi. It had been nearly twelve hours since the hijacking began, and a deal had been struck. Victory seemed near. But for the deal to move forward, the lifeboat had to be lifted off the deck and dropped into the water. This required an electric winch, and the winch needed power. The crew agreed to abandon the safe room if it meant getting rid of the pirates. As the pirates waited, the Maersk Alabama slowly groaned back to life.
With their leader, Musi, back among them, the pirates took advantage of a moment when Phillips agreed to show the pirates how to operate the motor and other devices. Instead of letting Phillips join the now free crew, the pirates kept Phillips, thinking that if they couldn't ransom the ship, they could ransom Phillips. "I thought he was going to jump" from the lifeboat, Murphy said later.
With Phillips as hostage, the pirates fired up the lifeboat engine and headed for the Somali coast. With Murphy now in command and Quinn at the helm, the Maersk Alabamafollowed the lifeboat closely. "I maneuvered the ship. I chased the lifeboat to get him even with the gangway, but it looked like they were headed for Somalia. I kept trying to cut them off with the ship," Quinn explained later, by steering the ship in front of the lifeboat to slow and divert it until help could arrive. "I was trying not to run over the lifeboat, but I kept it pretty close."
Word Spreads
Once an attack or hijacking is reported, the information is relayed to shipping companies and the navies on patrol in the Gulf of Aden and the region. Among them were U.S. warships patrolling the Gulf of Aden as part of a multinational force. The nearest U.S. ship was a guided missile destroyer, the USS Bainbridge, which reversed course and headed back toward Somalia. The Bainbridge was about 345 miles away from the Maersk Alabama, a trip of ten to twelve hours at best. Ironically, an advisory had been issued that day warning merchant ships that pirates were now operating much further from shore than in the past. The Maersk Alabama became the sixth vessel to be hijacked that week.
Although such hijackings had been going on for years, the stories had been largely ignored by the American news media. This was different. That an American ship had been taken made it a hometown story. Better yet, the crew had apparently recaptured it. The story went global, riding the uniquely American cowboy imagery and the defiant bravery of the crew in the face of despised banditry. In the early scramble to get the story, the jumble of information added to the mystery and excitement.
"The crew is back in control of the ship," a U.S. official said at midday, some twelve hours after the attack. "It's reported that one pirate is on board under crew control — the other three were trying to flee." Another U.S. official, citing an interagency conference call, told a news agency reporter: "Multiple reliable sources are now reporting that the Maersk Alabama is now under control of the U.S. crew. The crew reportedly has one pirate in custody. The status of others is unclear."
As reporters raced to find relatives of the now free sailors for comments, they swarmed into Underhill, Vermont, where Andrea Phillips, the wife of Captain Phillips, clutched a photo of her husband on her farmhouse porch. Her husband had sailed the Gulf of Aden "for quite some time," she said, so becoming a victim of piracy was "inevitable." Even so, the family closely monitored television news and fielded telephone calls from the U.S. State Department. "We are on pins and needles," said Andrea Phillips's half sister, Gina Coggio, twenty-nine, who talked with reporters as a light snow fell. "I know the crew has been in touch with their own family members, and we're hoping we'll hear from Richard soon." Explaining how and why Richard was with the pirates, she said he had surrendered himself to keep the crew safe. "What I understand is that he offered himself as the hostage. That is what he would do. It's just who he is and his response as a captain."
Meanwhile, the United States scrambled. The White House was notified and newly elected president Barack Obama was briefed. Strangely, this highly unpredictable event became the president's first test of military decisiveness as the new commander in chief of the world's most powerful military. While U.S. naval ships sped to the scene and Navy SEALs were alerted, an FBI team of negotiators was assembled.
The USS Bainbridge reached the Maersk Alabama in the dark hours of Thursday morning, roughly twenty hours after the hijacking, and found the crew safely aboard the ship with Murphy in command. Phillips was with the pirates steadily motoring to Somalia. Although armed guards from the Bainbridge boarded the Maersk Alabama, there was little they could do to help Phillips. As dawn broke over the sea some hours later, a U.S. Navy surveillance aircraft circled the scene and recorded it on video.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Pirate State by Peter Eichstaedt. Copyright © 2010 Peter Eichstaedt. Excerpted by permission of Chicago Review Press Incorporated.
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