Nothing Shipshape
Chapter 1
The Liberty Bay was a soft target for the Somali pirates. She was hauling oil from the Persian Gulf to the port of Mombasa. To the captain and crew of eleven, it was just another routine sailing around the Horn of Africa and down the coast to her destination in Kenya. With a crew change in Mombasa, the ship would return to the gulf for another load of crude oil and repeat the journey.
The Liberty Bay flew a Liberian flag of convenience. Like Panama, Liberia was the other country chosen by many ship owners to register their vessels to avoid pesky maritime safety regulations, onerous taxes and other bureaucratic unpleasantness. Otherwise, the Liberty Bay was one hundred percent American. One wholly owned by a U.S. conglomerate listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
The Indian Ocean waters were calm as the two pirate longboats shadowed the Liberty Bay for a short while before attacking it at dusk. Two of the attackers attached grappling hooks to the stern of the big ship and shinnied up the long rope with their AK-47 rifles and rocket propelled grenades strapped to their backs. The modern day brigands easily boarded the ship and quickly overwhelmed the crew. One unfortunate crew member tried to sound the fire alarm, but was shot in the back before he could pull the handle A few sailors tried to put up a good fight, although they were rewarded with butts of rifles across their faces. The chief engineer lost the sight in one eye for his valiant efforts. They were called assault weapons for good reason. The crew was quickly outmaneuvered, outgunned and out of luck!
The captain barely had time to send out a distress call to the U.S. Navy’s 5th fleet based in Bahrain. Regrettably, it would be a futile exercise in too little too late.
The crew was rounded up and forced to stand before their captain on the bridge.
“Captain, set a course for Somalia and be quick about it. We now own you and your ship,” the pirates’ leader spoke in broken English, but with an authoritative voice.
However, Captain Van Hooten wasn’t cowed in the least by the ragtag thugs. He was a crusty, stubborn Dutchman who’d sailed these waters before the pirates were even born. He wasn’t about to give up his ship to these brigands or even Davy Jones Locker without a fight.
“You don’t know how to sail this vessel and I damn well won’t help you hijack my own ship!”
The leader didn’t bother to argue the point. He walked behind the first sailor in line, put him in a chokehold and slit his throat. Blood spurted forward to the captain’s feet.
He then moved behind the next man and was about to do the same thing.
“Wait, stop!” the captain screamed before the second man was executed. He couldn’t believe what he’d just witnessed.
The captain knew the Somalis’ reputation for toughness, but never expected they were coldblooded killers. That wasn’t supposed to be part of the hijacking game. It was always a brokered transaction and cost of doing business these days. One that rarely involved violence or so the captain thought, until now.
Captain Van Hooten moved to the ship’s control panel and punched numbers into the navigation system computer. The destination was not to be of his choosing.
The captain was ordered to sail the supertanker to the Puntland, the autonomous region of northeastern Somalia. There, the oil would be offloaded and sold to the highest bidder on the black market and the crew and ship held for ransom. It was merely business as usual in the hijacking trade these days. However, there’d been one important change, although not in the pirates’ modus operandi. Rather it was the conspirators who were now pulling the levers from behind the wizard’s curtain. The Somalis were just pawns unknowingly serving a powerful Middle East country bound-and-determined to influence the world price of oil to its advantage.