A Captain's Duty

there—he’d headed toward the power plant at the first sign of the pirate attack. As ATM and the Leader made their way through the snaking corridors, Mike was checking on some equipment. “It was pitch black, not a photon of light,” he recalled. The Maersk Alabama was sitting in the equatorial sun, the water reflecting the heat back onto the steel hull. The temperature inside was climbing toward 125 degrees. “We were starting to feel like we were dying,” said one crew member. And Mike could hear the increasing desperationof the pirates—and how they were directing their rage and confusion at me. “I can tell [Rich] is in danger,” he said, “just by the tone in people’s voices.”
    Mike walked through the engine room, carrying a knife in his hand for safety, when suddenly a beam of light swept across his face—the Leader, just yards ahead in the darkened corridor, had spotted him. Mike turned and dashed down the passageway, with the Leader racing after him, screaming loudly, the words bouncing off the steel walls. Mike came to a spot where the passageway took a ninety-degree turn, and he quickly rounded the corner, then pressed his back up against the wall. Waiting in the darkness, with the crazy flickering of the Leader’s flashlight drawing closer, Mike thought, Is this sane, what I’m going to do? His mind flashed back to the stories he’d heard of pirates forcing crew members to play Russian roulette in the bellies of their captured ships. “In my mind,” he says, “right there, the question was answered.”
    Mike heard the footsteps approaching, the knife with its razor-sharp serrated blade gripped in his right hand. The screaming voice was coming closer and closer. When the Somali’s face flashed around the corner, Mike snapped forward. “I lunged up at him,” he said. Grabbing him around the neck, Mike brought the edge of his knife up to the pirate’s throat. “All I had to do was move my hand sideways; it would have cut his throat wide open.” Mike body-slammed the pirate to the floor and the Somali, feeling the blade on his jugular, immediately stopped resisting.
    Mike didn’t know the pirate was alone. He thought that the other pirates were going to come around that corner, AKsin hand, and light him up. “In my mind, I thought, ‘Where’s the gunfire? Why is there no gunfire?’” He looked down. The Somali’s hand was cut badly in the struggle and blood dripped onto the metal deck.
    ATM and Mike picked up the Leader and marched him to the after steering room. They knocked on the door and Mike hollered for the crew to open up. He shouted out the nonduress password and the door swung open.
    Fifteen exhausted but grimly determined faces stared back at the Leader from the darkness. He’d finally found the missing crew. Just not the way he wanted to.
    “I grabbed my radio and I called out to let the captain and everybody know,” Mike said. “And I just said, ‘One down.’”
     
    The good news was that the giant life-and-death game of hide-and-seek we were playing with the Somalis was working. The bad news was they didn’t like it one bit.
    I could see Tall Guy’s eyes bugging out as the minutes clicked by. Young Guy was up on the fly bridge, but Musso and Tall Guy kept checking on me and my seaman on the bridge. One of these guys is going to go off, I thought. It was like the ship was eating men, and it was starting to freak them out.
    “Where is he?” Musso demanded.
    “Listen, I don’t know. My crew is crazy. I don’t know what kind of game they’re playing.”
    I wanted to play the dumb captain who couldn’t control his own men. But I knew that had a limit.
    “What about the big guy? Why hasn’t he come back?”
    I went back to the PA.
    “All crew members, please report to the bridge. Colin, report back.”
    The Somalis’ agitation increased by the minute.
    “Why won’t the boat go? Make the boat go!”
    I held my hands out to them. Calm down. I got back on the PA.
    “Chief engineer, please obey the pirates and come to the bridge.”
    Tall Guy and Musso were practically bouncing up and down with nerves. They’d found another handheld radio and were monitoring it. Mine was dying. I hadn’t heard Mike Perry or Shane in at least thirty minutes.
    The pirates started looking over the deck. They spotted something and Musso turned to me.
    “What is that boat?”
    “What boat? Where?”
    “Right there.” He pointed at the MOB, the Man Over Board rescue