Corsair (Oregon Files 6)

“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.

Hakeem screwed the pistol deeper into Kwan’s neck. “If you give any warning, I will kill you now, and my men will slaughter your crew.”

“You have my word,” Kwan said tightly. He keyed the mic, and his voice echoed from loudspeakers placed all over the vessel. “This is the captain speaking. There is a mandatory meeting in the mess hall for all crew members immediately. On-duty engineering staff are not exempt.”

“That is enough,” Hakeem snapped, and took away the microphone. “Abdul, take the wheel.” He waved his pistol at Maryweather and the helmsman. “You two, over next to the captain.”

“You can’t leave just one man at the helm,” Kwan protested.

“This is not the first ship we have taken.”

“No. I suppose it isn’t.”

With no discernible government, Somalia was ruled by rival warlords, some of whom had turned to piracy to fund their armies. The waters of this Horn of Africa country were some of the most dangerous in the world. Ships were attacked on an almost daily basis, and while the United States and other nations maintained a naval presence in the region the seas were simply too vast to protect every ship that steamed along the coast. Pirates usually used fast speed-boats and mostly robbed the ships of any cash or valuables, but what started out as simple larceny had expanded. Now entire ships were being hijacked, their cargoes sold on the black market and their crews either abandoned in lifeboats, held for ransom to the vessel’s owners, or killed outright.

So, too, had the sizes of the targeted ships increased along with the savagery of the attacks. Where once only small coastal freighters were the primary targets, the pirates now preyed on tankers and co

ntainerships, and had once raked a cruise liner with automatic fire for fifteen minutes. Recently, a new warlord had started putting a stranglehold on other pirates along the north coast, consolidating his power base until every pirate in the region was loyal to him alone.

His name was Mohammad Didi, and he’d been a fighter in the capital, Mogadishu, during the chaotic days of the mid-1990s, when the United Nations was trying to stave off epidemic starvation in the drought-ridden country. He had secured a name for himself plundering trucks loaded with emergency food and supplies, but it was during the Black Hawk Down incident that he cemented his reputation. He had led the charge against an American position and destroyed a Humvee with an RPG. He had then dragged the bodies from the burning wreckage and hacked them to pieces with a machete.

After the inglorious withdrawal of the U.S. Marine Corps, Didi continued to build his power base until he was one of only a handful of warlords controlling the country. Then, in 1998, he had been linked to the Al-Qaeda bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. He had given the bombers safe haven for the weeks leading up to the attack, as well as several men to act as lookouts. With an indictment at the World Court in The Hague and a half-million-dollar price on his head, Didi knew it was only a matter of time before one of his rivals would try to collect on the bounty. He moved his operation out of Mogadishu and into an area of coastal swamps three hundred miles to the north.

Before his arrival, most victims of piracy were set free immediately. It was Didi who had initiated the ransom demands. And if they were not met, or the negotiations seemed to be faltering, he unceremoniously had the crews killed. It was rumored that he wore a necklace of teeth with gold fillings extracted from the men he had personally murdered. It was to Didi that the pirates taking control of the old freighter had pledged their oath.

Hakeem and one of his men forced Captain Kwan to take them to his office, while the other pirates escorted the bridge staff to the mess hall. Kwan’s office was attached to his cabin one deck below the pilothouse. The rooms were spartan but clean, with just a couple of tacky velvet clown paintings on the otherwise bare metal walls. There was a framed photograph of Kwan and a woman, most likely his wife, on the empty desk.

Brassy light blazed through the single porthole.

“Show me crew manifest,” Hakeem demanded.

There was a small safe bolted to the deck in the corner of the office behind Kwan’s desk. The captain stooped over it and began to work the combination.

“You will step back when you open the door,” the pirate ordered.

Kwan glanced over his shoulder. “I assure you we have no weapons.” But he did as he was told. He swung open the door and took a step back from the safe.

With his assistant covering Kwan with his AK, Hakeem bent over the safe, pulling out files and folders and dumping everything on the captain’s desk. He made a sound when he opened one particularly thick envelope and discovered bundles of cash in several currencies. He fanned a wad of hundred-dollar bills under his beaky nose, inhaling as if testing a fine wine.

“How much you have?”

“Twelve thousand dollars, maybe a bit less.”

Hakeem stuffed the envelope into his shirt. He rifled through the papers until he found the crew’s manifest. He couldn’t read his native Somali, let alone English, but he recognized the various passports. There were twenty-two in all. He checked them, pulling out Kwan’s, Duane Maryweather’s, and that of the helmsman. He also found the passports belonging to the three men who had been on deck when they had boarded the ship. He was pleased. They had already accounted for a quarter of the crew.

“Now, take us to the mess hall.”