The Tears of Dark Water (14 page)

It was then that Derrick learned something about Masters, something that might prove indispensable in the end. This mission had a personal dimension for him. These weren’t just any Americans at risk; they were mariners. And mariners were family. Military, civilian, American, Indian, Russian, Chinese, the rules established on land were superseded at sea by a code of honor known to every sailor—that humanity was the highest dignity, and that transcended all.

The first stanza of the old Navy hymn came back to Derrick then. He’d memorized the poem at his grandfather’s house in Northern Virginia where he and Megan lived after the killings. Grandpa Chuck had left the service early for a lucrative career in defense contracting, but his blood had flowed Navy blue until the day he died.

“Eternal Father, strong to save,?

Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,?

Who bidd’st the mighty ocean deep?

Its own appointed limits keep;?

O hear us when we cry to Thee,?

For those in peril on the sea.”

Daniel

The Indian Ocean

05°20´14˝S, 54°45´51˝E

November 10, 2011

Daniel had never been fond of praying. He was a Parker and Parkers were Catholic. But attending mass on Sundays was as far as his devotion had taken him. The rituals of public worship and penitence had a certain resonance—he had always appreciated the gravitas of ceremony and tradition—but the more mystical aspects of faith made as much sense to him as sitting on Santa’s lap at the shopping mall and asking for a gift. Life at sea hadn’t altered his habits much. Even sudden storms didn’t inspire him to pray, only to batten the hatches and trust his sailing instincts and the workmanship of the hardy Swedes who built the
Renaissance
to stay upright and afloat on the heaving sea.

After thirty hours in captivity, however, he found himself reciting the rosary. At first the words arose in him unconsciously, like an effervescence of the heart, but it wasn’t long before he embraced them with intention. The sailboat that had been his dream—and Quentin’s rebirth—had become their prison. The Somalis were all around them like a virus in the bloodstream, their incessant chatter, the shine of their weapons, and the stench of their unwashed bodies infecting everything.

For a while, Daniel had maintained the stoical composure he had inherited from his father, planting his feet firmly in the moment and focusing his energies on survival. The sudden appearance of the plane yesterday had even given him cause to smile. The secret message had alerted the authorities. The Navy knew what had happened and where they were. The wheels of salvation were spinning.

But the hours upon hours of stifling confinement in the cabin, punctuated by the occasional gun being waved in his face, had turned his emotions against him in silent mutiny. The worst of it had come in the night when he tried to sleep. He saw his life flash before him, not in an instant but in slow motion, a cascade of mistakes and failures, poor choices and venial sins.

He saw the way his marriage to the firm—and his underlying quest for his father’s approval—had supplanted his marriage to Vanessa, the way he had left her to shoulder the burden of Quentin alone. He remembered the nights he slept at the office to get a deal just right, the Saturdays he had spent on the bay entertaining clients and ignoring his family, the meaningless fling he had with Rachel Perkins, one of his paralegals, out of lust and boredom, and the excuses he had made—how good he had been at making excuses!—to shut Vanessa up whenever she questioned his priorities.

There was blame to go around, of course. She had her own issues—the anxiety and panic attacks, her obsessive-compulsive tendencies, the tensions with her mother she never quite resolved. But the fault for the mortification of their love wasn’t hers as much as it was his. He had taken her for granted, living off the interest of their relationship and drawing from the principal whenever it suited him without regard to the way it made her feel. There had always been a reason for it—making partner, achieving financial security, and aiming for early retirement. But these were placeholders for the missing pieces of his identity, an attempt to answer the question that had beleaguered him since his youth: what does it mean to be a man?

When morning finally came and he opened his eyes to see Liban staring at him, his battered AK-47 resting casually on his lap, Daniel realized that his skin was taut with the residue of tears. He tried to shake off the cords of misery, to hold fast to the hope that rescue was coming and with it the possibility of redemption, but his powers of denial and obfuscation had abandoned him. He mouthed the petition silently: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.”

“Captain,” said the pirate called Afyareh, “my men are hungry. It is time for breakfast.”

Daniel sat up and glanced at his son, who looked like he had been awake for some time. Quentin spoke quietly: “I’ll help you, Dad.”

Daniel nodded, grateful for the distraction. “Why don’t you get some fruit?”

He left the booth and went aft to the galley, pulling out a tin of oatmeal and setting a pot on the stove to boil. The simple rhythms of food preparation did more to counteract his despondency than all his mental gymnastics in the night. Quentin brought him a bag of mangoes, and they cut them into bowls. If there was one bright spot in the ordeal it was Afyareh’s sense of propriety. He was a rogue like the rest of them, but at least he was civilized.

They ate the meal in shifts of three—an innovation of Afyareh’s that prevented overcrowding in the cabin. The pirates handled the food with their hands, except for Afyareh, who used utensils, and all of them gestured their appreciation—a few nods, a word of thanks from the skinny one, Dhuuban, and a quick smile from Sondare who looked to Daniel like he was fifteen.

Quentin had been the one to pick up their names. He had always had a gift for languages, and he had collected local phrases like souvenirs at their many ports of call. But his facility with Somali pronunciation, uttered as it was in rapid-fire bursts, surprised Daniel. He had addressed the pirates by name at dinner the day before, and they had looked at him in wonderment. Afyareh in particular had been fascinated with Quentin’s talent and had spent the evening teaching him Somali words. Quentin absorbed the lessons like a sponge, and repeated the words with such fluency that Afyareh clapped his hands. Only Mas, the pirate with the cut on his cheek, seemed displeased. He sat aloof in the companionway as the sky darkened behind him, cradling his gun as if it were his child.

After everyone ate breakfast, Afyareh ordered his men topside and spelled Liban on watch while Daniel and Quentin took showers and changed clothes. When they were dressed, the pirate beckoned them to come. “You should get some air,” he said and led the way to the cockpit.

Daniel blinked away the bright sunshine. The sea was as flat as a bathtub, the swells under a meter in height and the wind barely five knots. The sky was dotted with small clouds, and the air was thick with humidity. Almost immediately, beads of sweat formed on Daniel’s brow and his polo shirt stuck to his skin. He sat down beside Quentin and watched Afyareh scan the horizon with his binoculars. He felt a twinge of satisfaction.
He knows they’re coming. The only question is when.

An hour passed, and then two and three. The sun rose in the sky, warming the atmosphere with relentless intensity. After months at sea, Daniel’s skin was tan, as was Quentin’s. Still, they applied copious amounts of sunblock to ward off the ultraviolet rays. The pirates eyed the lotion with interest, and then, almost sheepishly, they asked to try it.

“They think it will make them handsome like David Hasselhoff,” Afyareh explained. “They saw
Baywatch
on satellite TV.”

Around noon, Daniel went below and fixed sandwiches and cheese, which the pirates devoured as if they had never eaten before. At the current rate of consumption, he guessed that their food stores would last for another four or five days, as would their fuel supply—long enough to reach the Somali coast. In a strange way, the adequacy of their provisions brought him consolation. The fewer the disruptions, the less likely something would go wrong before freedom arrived.

After cleaning up, they returned to the cockpit and saw a flock of frigatebirds circling on the thermals above them. Guray lifted his gun to shoot at them, but Afyareh shouted him down. When Guray saw that the argument was lost, he went to the bow to sulk. Afyareh sat down next to Quentin and spoke a string of agitated words to Liban. Liban shook his head derisively.

“What was that about?” Quentin asked after a time.

Afyareh hesitated, as if calculating the cost of a truthful answer. Then he shrugged. “He doesn’t like black birds. They remind him of the ones he saw when his father died. I told him these are sea birds. Those were Somali crows. He doesn’t believe me. He’s very superstitious.”

Daniel looked at the young pirate. “How is it that your English is so good?”

Afyareh fixed him with an inscrutable look. “I learned it in school.”

“You must have had an excellent teacher,” Daniel probed.

The pirate’s eyes narrowed. “Not good enough.”

The response caught Daniel off guard. Something about Afyareh didn’t add up—actually many things. He seemed to have two contradictory personalities: the professional corsair intent on bargaining with their lives, and the gentleman who let them take showers and sprung to the defense of frigatebirds and forced his fellow pirates to eat out of bowls and leave their belongings unmolested. Daniel listened as Quentin chatted with him in a curious blend of English and Somali, trying out new words with Afyareh’s encouragement. The pirate seemed to relish the mantle of teacher.
The cultivation came first
, Daniel thought.
Then the criminality. But why? What caused him to lose his way?

Daniel looked out over the waves and allowed his mind to drift. He didn’t know how long it was before he saw the ship, but when his eyes registered the sight everything else faded into oblivion. He didn’t move, didn’t speak, just watched the shape grow until he could distinguish the superstructure from the bow and the masts above that. None of the pirates seemed to notice it. Most of them were lounging in the cockpit or on the coachroof, taking in the sun.

It was Mas who saw it first. He shot to his feet and screamed something so violently that spittle flew from his mouth. The other pirates reacted as if Mas had tossed them a grenade. They swung their guns toward the ship, shouting and gesticulating, their faces naked with fear.

Afyareh raised his voice above the din. “Go below!” he ordered Quentin, grabbing his shoulder and shoving him into the companionway.

Liban took Daniel’s arm, but Daniel brushed off the pirate’s hand. “Don’t touch me!” he said angrily, following his son into the saloon.

The pirates clambered down the steps after them and huddled with their guns in every corner of the cabin, looking like sullen teenagers caught drunk at a party. They pointed their Kalashnikovs anxiously out the portholes, as if at any moment commandos might swoop out of the sky and cut them down before they could say a word.

Daniel sat in the booth and put his arm around Quentin. “It’s going to be all right,” he said, seeing in his son’s eyes the precise reflection of his own fears. “The Navy won’t do anything foolish. They know how to handle this.”

Even as he spoke the words, he wondered if he was right.

Paul

The Indian Ocean

04°39´50˝S, 54°22´35˝E

November 10, 2011

The SEAL team landed on the
Gettysburg
a few minutes before one in the afternoon. Derrick went with Captain Masters and his entourage to meet them in the hangar bay. Masters traded a few words with Frank Redman—a tightly built coil of a man with a lantern jaw, steel-blue eyes, and wavy brown hair—and introduced him to Derrick and Alan Rodriguez, Derrick’s second, who had arrived with a Somali linguist a few hours before. Masters left Lieutenant Commander Cardwell and Ensign O’Brien with the SEAL team while they prepped their weapons and equipment and led Redman and the negotiators to the Admiral’s cabin in the center of the ship.

Designed to host visiting dignitaries, the Admiral’s cabin had a private bedroom and bathroom, a lounge and kitchenette, and an array of flat-screen television monitors, cameras, and audio equipment for videoconferencing. Masters had designated the lounge to serve as a war room for the duration of the hostage crisis and reserved the bedroom for Redman. The SEAL commander dropped his bag on the floor and donned a headset with a wraparound microphone. He spoke into the mic, testing the link, then turned toward Masters and Derrick.

“This’ll work,” he said. “My sniper teams will take positions on the illuminator decks fore and aft. My attack team is on the
Truman
along with three RHIBs. They’ll deploy when the carrier is in position. We obtained the sailboat’s plans from the shipbuilder in Sweden. We’ve considered a number of tactical options, but all of them are high risk. We’d prefer a negotiated solution.”

Redman gave Derrick a frank look. “I’ve never worked with a negotiator outside my team, but the White House wants you on point, so that’s the way it’s going to be. Nevertheless, this is a military operation. You follow my orders. Is that clear?”