A Captain's Duty

with those guns and I wouldn’t have put it past them.
    Now I was like a rat caught in a tiny room. I had nowhere togo. I came up on the other side but I saw a shadow and heard voices coming close to me. I took a ragged breath and slipped under the water again. When I came up on the other side, I saw a pirate right above me with the muzzle of an AK-47 a foot in front of my head. It jerked up and fired two shots— BOOM BOOM —that slapped into the water just above my head.
    “Okay,” I cried out. “You got me. You got me.”
    The pirates kept the gun on me while they screamed, “We kill you! We kill you!” They pulled Tall Guy into the boat through the hatch and then they came for me. They were helping me into the boat at the same time they were beating me. They were so out of their minds with rage that they couldn’t even wait until I’d collapsed into the lifeboat before they started whacking me with their fists and the butt of the 9 mm. As I raised my arms over my head, they whaled away at me.
    After about a minute of kicking and punching, they brought me over the side of the boat and tied me to a horizontal bar on the canopy. Musso did the knots and he trussed me up good. I was on my knees and he took my hands and tied them to the bar and then pulled my arms up until my shoulders creaked. He tied my feet to the base of the seat in front of me.
    And then they really went to work on me.
    If I’d been captured by some burly guys, I’d probably still be getting plastic surgery, because the Somalis wanted to tear me apart. They were spitting mad, stomping on the deck, spittle flying as they abused me. But they were thin guys and they didn’t have a huge amount of power behind their blows. Honestly, my sister Patty hits harder. I could feel my face and my ribs getting bruised up but I knew I could survive that. Whatreally worried me was the gun. Young Guy was whacking me with it in the knee and every time he did, the muzzle would pass by my torso. He’s trying to beat me, I thought, but he’s going to shoot me instead .
    “We kill you now! Kill you!” They were like angry bees.
    They didn’t let up. One would take a break and pace up and down the boat and then come up and start slapping and kicking me again. But there wasn’t room enough for all four of them to get a shot at me. So they’d take turns.
    Finally they wore themselves out pounding on me. They were gasping for breath and so was I. And I was back in that oven. That hurt almost as much as the beating.
    “I’m losing sensation in my hands,” I yelled at them. “You have to loosen the knots.” I felt like the rope was going to sever my  hands. The pain was excruciating, like pins and needles multiplied a thousand times.
    Musso came over, untied the knots, and retied them looser.
    They stopped beating me.
    The Leader screamed at his guys in Somali, but I could tell what he was saying from his gestures: “There will be two guys on him always. And one by the door. Always .” From this point on, the guns were always on me, a few feet away, pointed at my torso.
    That was the end of any joviality on their part. I’d killed the jolly mood but good. The mask had been torn off. They were shocked that I’d tried to escape. I wasn’t playing by the rules and I’m sure they felt I was endangering them by trying to save myself.
    Their attitudes toward me changed completely in that instant. I’d been their hostage before, but I’d been a human being. I’d joked with Musso and Tall Guy and I’d even had some fun with Young Guy. Now that was broken. They looked at me like I was an animal, a thing.
    As I sat trying to catch my breath, I thought, Either I’m getting out of here alive or they are. But not both.
     
    We were a few hours away from sunrise on Friday. It felt like the escape attempt had taken half an hour, but I’m sure it was just five minutes, if that. I thought, Maybe I really am out here alone . If the navy was here to rescue me, if they had sharpshooters laid out on the stern waiting for their chance, they would have blasted these sons of bitches out of the water.
    Why hadn’t they done anything? I thought. They must have seen me. They must have watched it all go down. But their ship had never budged.
    Maybe they really are just here to observe, I thought. Some kind of no-shoot orders. I tried to think what the implications of taking down some Somali pirates would be on the world political stage, but my brain was too fogged