The Devil's Waters (7 page)

Yusuf drew himself to his full height. “If?”

Robow did not release his grin. “You are like a fish yourself, Yusuf. You see a bait and you go straight for it. Though you know there is a barb. Yes, if. If you do me one favor. A favor, by the way, which will benefit you, also.”

Yusuf looked to his cousin on the roof of his home.

“What is it?”

“I understand you have hijacked five ships so far.”

“Six.”

“Excellent. I want you to hijack one more. A very important ship to us.”

“What is on it?”

“Consider it empty for now. Capture it, and bring it to me here in Qandala. Once we have our hands on this ship, the West will pay a great deal to buy it back. More money than you have ever seen. We will, of course, split the proceeds. Each of our shares will be magnificent.”

“Why me? There are a
thousand pirates.”

“Because you have a reputation, Yusuf Raage. You are greedy but reliable. And more importantly, you are a blood-soaked man. Walk with me. I’ll tell you the rest.”

Yusuf pulled Suleiman from the party, into the house. Aziza shot the two a dour glance, unhappy to have her brother waylaid from the festivity. Yusuf closed the door solidly to leave no doubt that she should make no objection.

In the study, he unrolled a nautical chart across a table. He stabbed a finger on the sheet between Abd al Kuri and Cape Guardafui, where the Indian Ocean flowed into the mouth of the Gulf of Aden.

“Robow says the freighter will be right here.”

Suleiman smoothed a curling corner of the chart. “So will a hundred other ships. Why this one?”

Yusuf pointed to a chair. “Sit.”

Yusuf’s home had been built with pirate money. Others used their gains to buy property in Kenya or the Emirates, often driving up prices. Yusuf Raage kept the villagers of Qandala employed when the monsoons held them off the water. Let Mombasa and Dubai men care for their own. Three years back, when his house was done, he’d ordered a school constructed for the village, boys and girls alike. What would happen to it if Sheikh Robow came back, or the guns of Hizb al-Islam?

“I don’t like it,” Suleiman said, taking his seat.

Yusuf stayed at the table. With a story to tell, he needed his hands and legs.

“The ship will enter the gulf in twenty days.”

“What’s on board? Why do the Islamists care?”

“Robow says the freighter is empty. But there are armed guards.”

“That makes no sense.”

“What does it matter? When did
we start caring about cargo? We take ships and crews. We hold them for ransom. Tankers, freighters, fishing boats. Empty or not, all the same, they have men running them. We’ll take this ship and crew, bring them to Qandala, drop anchor, and sell them back. We’ve done it before.”

“I don’t like it.”

“You’ve said that.”

“I stand by it. Let this go, cousin.
Maya
.” No.

Yusuf put fingers inside his beard to find the right words.

“After this, we’re finished. We’ll be rich enough to quit.”

“I’m rich enough now. So are you. The monsoons have been over for two months. We haven’t gone out once. I figured we were finished already. And I don’t mind.”

Yusuf sat across from Suleiman. The two were
tol
, cousins through brothers. They’d grown up together, as children here in Qandala, then as young teens in Plumstead, East London, when their fathers left war-choked Somalia for the West. They’d attended public school together, and in the Somali gangs committed crimes shoulder to shoulder. Suleiman was never comfortable in the English mist. He longed for his desert homeland and the blue ocean. He’d stayed long enough to learn English, read the Qu’ran in that language, then, twenty-five years ago, at age eighteen, came home to Qandala. He joined the rebellion against the Barre government, then became a fisherman. Yusuf followed five years later. Now Barre was gone, the fish too, and the cousins were thieves again.

“Yusuf…” Suleiman tapped fingers together before his face, thoughtful with his words. He was the older cousin, but no one disputed Yusuf as chieftain. “Have you considered that our day has passed?”

This was all Yusuf had thought of for the two months since the monsoons. He’d paced behind his walls, watching other crews go out on the hunt. His investors in Kenya and Dubai had sent
messengers to ask when he might lead another venture onto
bad-weyn
.

Yusuf gave them no answer, because Suleiman was right. The Somali pirates’ day was fading. He’d seen the signs gathering, like rising wind and whitecaps.

In years past, even last year, freighters plowing the Gulf of Aden had been vulnerable and slow, somewhat careless. Full oil or chemical tankers lumbered low in the water, heavy container ships lacked speed; fishing boats were the easiest of all—a pirate could almost step on board. International crews would not fight to defend someone else’s cargo; captains lacked experience and preparation for hijackings. Ship owners had not spent enough money to protect their sailors and ships, and insurers made a windfall, tripling their rates to cover vessels passing through pirate waters. Governments around the world had turned a blind eye, deciding that moderate Muslim pirates who demanded only money were a lesser evil than Islamist radicals. Hundreds of millions of dollars in ransom had flowed into Somalia, a fractured land that had no other way to bring in that kind of wealth. The pirates had known to preserve this balance: do not kill hostages or steal cargos, never become so greedy that the insurers and owners feel the scales tip away from them.

Now the pirates were suffering from their own successes. It was inevitable. Silently, Yusuf had watched it happen. Impoverished shepherds and farmers from the mountains and plains, drawn to the coast to make what seemed easy money, brought with them no knowledge of the ocean or boats. The poorest of fishermen, though they knew
bad-weyn
, came to piracy with desperation and anger over their stolen livelihoods. These men and unschooled teenagers took low-paying positions in pirate gangs or formed their own. They went to the sea as hijackers; they failed time and again. Many died on the water. It was not uncommon to hear of pirate crews actually attacking naval ships by mistake. Whenever these miserable men did manage to capture
a tanker or freighter, they often behaved in barbaric or violent ways. Chewing
qaat
was giving way to gin and cocaine. More merchant seamen and yachters were being wounded or killed in the hijackings. Some captured crews had begun fighting back, mounting ambushes to retake their ships, costing more lives both Somali and foreign. The cost of ransoms had skyrocketed, and the delicate balance began to unravel. The money these new pirates gained made them more vulgar, and villagers began to resist their presence. This opened the door for Hizb al-Islam and al-Shabaab, fundamentalists who brought with them guns and the laws of
sharia
. Village elders simply exchanged devils, and pirates up and down the coast were being run out of town.

More and more, pirates like Yusuf also became warlords, hiring private armies to provide order in their villages and protect against the creep of the Islamists in Somalia.

On the Gulf of Aden, coalition warships took up their mission with more intent and danger. They escorted freighters traveling in convoys, staying close enough to respond in fifteen minutes to a distress call. At the first sign of a speeding skiff or a loitering dhow, the warships closed in, launching helicopters armed to the teeth. The pirates usually veered off, but if they did not, if they pressed the hijacking, more and more of them were shot to pieces. When they did manage to climb on board, they often found ships equipped with panic rooms, strongholds where the crews could lock themselves away from pirates. This left the Somalis with no hostages, wide open to commando assaults to retake the ship. Shipping companies had begun to explore deterrent technologies like sonic or water cannons and blinding laser guns. Less commonly, but growing more frequent, the hijackers encountered men armed to defend the cargo.

Warships, even submarines, prowled the gulf for pirate mother ships towing skiffs, doing no fishing, rusted, suspicious, sometimes with ladders blatantly in sight. These dhows were increasingly boarded by
the navies, even in international waters. When guns or grapples were found, they were thrown overboard.

For years, most pirates had been released when caught. Who would try them in court, who could punish them, when the Somalis, from a lawless land, assaulted a freighter owned in one country, flagged in another, sailed by citizens of two and three countries, captured by another nation’s navy in international waters? Jurisdiction was a stew. The warships usually chose to disarm the pirates and put them back to sea with a stern warning. Today, the patience of the coalition nations was at an end. Kenya and the Seychelles received huge stipends from maritime countries to take charge of prosecuting pirates in their courts. Pirates swelled the sweltering jails in Mombasa, Victoria, Puntland, and Somaliland.

But prison bars were for the luckiest of captured pirates. Yemen was now sentencing hijackers to death. Every day, stories flew up and down the coast of mother ships that never returned to land, sunk by the warships, crews gunned down by armed guards on freighters and tankers. Speeding skiffs were being sent to the bottom by helicopters. Some shipping companies had even begun to hire their own navies, private mercenaries to protect their shipments. While Yusuf did not disregard these tales, he suspected that the dead and missing pirates were probably victims of their own poor seamanship as much as the violence of guards and warships.

Still, with hunger and poverty driving them, legal ways to provide for themselves and their families dwindling, and no government to secure them, the pirates’ attacks on shipping continued to grow. The year before, over four hundred ships had been attacked, fifty captured and ransomed. More than $400 million had been paid for their release. The pirates had expanded their hunting grounds far beyond the Gulf of Aden. Freighters, tankers, and commercial fishing boats were being attacked a thousand miles from the Somali coast into the Indian Ocean, as far south
as Madagascar and Mozambique, east to the Maldives, west beyond Bab-al-Mandeb into the Red Sea. Yusuf had spent weeks bobbing in sun, star, and storm on his dhow, immense distances from his home waters, stalking prey that was increasingly expecting him and ready for him. He wanted no more of it. He was rich now; he preferred to die in a feather bed. He wanted no more of the blood of poorer men on his hands. The stakes were being raised every day. The bleakness in Somalia drove an ever-degrading quality of man to piracy, men who increasingly threatened to kill hostages or blow up ships, even sell off the organs and eyes of hostages when ransom demands went unmet or were too slow in negotiation. Torture of hostages remained rare, but was no longer unheard of.

Hijacking had become the province of the most reckless.

Suleiman had said it. Yusuf had no more taste for these risks and this life. He was finished. Until the visit today from Sheikh Robow.

Yusuf could not hold his older cousin’s eyes with his half-truth.

“It’s not about the money.”

Suleiman let fall a palm on the arm of his chair. The gesture said this much was obvious.

Yusuf related Robow’s thinly veiled threat. Either al-Shabaab or Hizb al-Islam would sooner or later make a move on Qandala and the other pirate strongholds. They’d already captured Harardhere, and they had designs on Eyl. The two factions’ rivalry and religion dictated it. Hijacking this one ship would keep them at bay from Qandala.

“Let them come.” Suleiman did not flinch in his chair. “When did we ever run? We have men and guns. We can get more.”

“I knew that would be your answer. That’s why I told you about the money first.” Yusuf pressed a hand on his cousin’s knee.

“Listen to me. They’ll come here. They will. These groups work with al-Qaeda. They want control over both sides of the gulf. They’re in Yemen, and
now they’re making moves in Somalia. You and I don’t want them here—fair enough. So we’ll stay and fight, our clan with us. If we win, how many will die along the way? If we lose, even if you and I survive, we will run. And that will be like death. Let’s take the damn ship.”

Suleiman scratched his beard. “Do you remember your mother’s story about the man who bargained with the shark?”

Yusuf was touched by the recollection of his mother. She’d died in England soon after he’d returned to Somalia, proud that he’d come home. She believed he might right his life here among his people, fighting to restore some dignity to their homeland. She didn’t live long enough to know if he had.

“The shark ate him last.”

“That’s all you’ve agreed to with these Islamists. You know this.”

“Yes.”

“Maybe that’s the best we can do for now. It will give us time to prepare for when they break their bargain. But, cousin, think. This ship is not empty.”

“I know.”

“Robow is lying. Or he doesn’t know what’s on it. Neither pleases me.”

Yusuf looked out a window at a serpentine and complex world. Secrets, power, treasure; what was so valuable, or dangerous, aboard this freighter that al-Shabaab came to pirates to grab it for them?