A Captain's Duty

forehead and sting my eyes.
    Again, the deadline came and went. Tall Guy and Musso stared angrily at me before saying something to the Leader and walking off to the bridge wings. I felt my spirits lift. These guys were just businessmen, after all. Crooked, violent, thuggish businessmen, but they weren’t going to waste precious resources like human lives unless they had to.
    All of a sudden I heard a knock. I couldn’t believe my ears. Someone was knocking on the bridge door looking to get in with the pirates. I thought to myself, I bet I know who that is.
    The pirates didn’t hear a thing. They were too fixated on terrifying us. I prayed, Let him just go away .
    Knock, knock. Louder this time.
    The Leader looked at me.
    “Do you want me to get that?” I said.
    He nodded.
    I walked over to the bridge door and swung it open.
    It was one of my sailors. I pointed toward Colin and ATM. “Come on in,” I said. “You’re dead.”
    The newcomer looked at me.
    “Go sit over there with the rest of them,” I said.
    “Okay, Cap,” he said, and walked toward his mates.
    The sailor’s appearance seemed to give the pirates an idea. Instead of waiting for the crew to come to them, they would go track them down. After all, if this sailor was just wanderingaround the ship, knocking on doors, how hard could it be to find the rest of the sailors?
    The Leader pointed at me.
    “We want to walk around,” the Leader said. “You come with me.”
    I keyed my radio and started talking.
    “You want to go search the ship? Okay, fine. Let’s go. Let’s start on E deck. That’s a good place to look for the crew.”
     
    I walked through the bridge door and the Leader backed off. He didn’t want me too close to him. I pointed to the door to the chimney and he nodded. I led the way down the stairs to E deck.
    A ship that’s dead in the water on emergency power has a spooky feel. It’s just drifting, ghostly and very, very quiet.
    A container ship like the Maersk Alabama can be compared to a skyscraper laid flat on the ocean. It has multiple rooms, thousands of square feet of space, passageways and service corridors to hide in. My knowledge of the ship itself was really the only tactical advantage I had over the Somalis. I began to think of how to keep the sixteen men hiding below me away from the pirates and how to get the three remaining men on the bridge into one of those rooms and to safety.
    It was like a three-dimensional game of chess. I move my man here, you counter. I protect one player, you make a move on another. I just had to figure out the pirates’ strategy before they figured out mine.
    The Leader had left his gun with Tall Guy, so he was unarmed. He was maybe five foot nine, 135 pounds. Even though he was young and spry, I could have tackled him and stuffedhim in a room somewhere. But what would I have done then? I still had three crew on the bridge. My getting away solved nothing.
    “Open up this room,” the Leader barked.
    E deck held my room and the chief engineer’s. There should have been no one in any of the quarters up here. I took my key out and inserted it in the lock of the first door and swung it wide open.
    The Leader stepped in. There was a TV and a bed with the bedspread tossed aside and some clothes and a desk with a chair. The place was quiet as a tomb.
    We went down the corridor and inspected the chief’s room. I was chatting up a storm, in case one of the crew had somehow decided to lock himself in his quarters. My voice would act as a locator beacon, telling the men we were on the way. I also had the radio by my side with the key pressed down so anyone with a handheld set would know where we were.
    I was scared. Really scared. But I had to maintain that appearance of control. Without it, I had nothing.
    We went down, deck by deck. I unlocked another door and let the Leader pass by me to check it out. He let out a gasp. I thought, He’s found someone . I turned the corner quickly and rushed into the room.
    The Leader was pointing down. There was a prayer rug on the floor. Above it, swinging from a desk lamp, was a pointer that read “Mecca” with an arrow.
    “Muslim? Muslim?” the Leader said. He seemed happy and confused at the same time.
    “Sure,” I said. The room was ATM’s.
    We went back out to the corridor.
    “That’s it for C deck,” I said. “You want to go to B?”
    He nodded.
    “Okay, let’s do it.”
    As we went lower, I started to worry. On the ring I was using