In January 2012, journalist Michael Scott Moore was captured by a gang of pirates during a reporting trip in central Somalia. He would spend a total of 32 months in captivity. Here, Moore tells the story of the day he tried to escape.
During the spring and summer of 2012, the pirates kept Moore aboard a tuna vessel, theNaham 3, which they had hijacked on the open sea. The ship stood at anchor just off the town of Hobyo.
In August, the generator sputtered. A team of Chinese mechanics made near-daily trips to the rear of the vessel to keep it running, but the Naham 3 was a dwindling resource.
When the ship ran out of rice in August, the pirates delivered new twenty-pound sacks from Hobyo, which the East Asian crew regarded as a deep misfortune. They were chauvinists about rice and preferred the fluffy, short-grained white stuff common in their part of the world. Now they had to eat brownish basmati imported from Pakistan. Nguyen Van Ha, from Vietnam, pulled a face when he tried his first bowl. He shook his head in disgust.
Near the end of August, water flowing from our shower hoses felt warmer, which meant the monsoon season had started to turn. Abdul the translator came aboard to question Li Bo Hai, again, on behalf of the pirate bosses, and again I overheard the conversation. How much life was in the generator? How much oil, how much fuel? Answer, about a month. Somehow we had a reprieve. But Abdul acted vague about whether the bosses would preserve the ship.
Later the same day, Abdul carried a round-screened instrument down from the bridge, trailing electric wire. "I want this working again," he ordered. "If you need parts from that ship over there"—he pointed across the water at the Shiuh Fu 1, a tuna long-liner similar to the Naham 3, once hijacked by pirates, leaning wrecked on the Somali shore —"we can get 'em. But we can't stay on this boat without a radar."
One by one the men squatted to inspect the colorful soldered guts of the radar monitor. Taso and Cao Yong fiddled the longest, with an air of resignation, under the warm shade near our conveyor belt. For the first time, Abdul had mentioned the ship on the beach. He'd named our worst nightmare. Our mood plummeted, but the radar wouldn't come on again. Arnel explained the problem to Abdul. Finally someone piled the parts into a box and shelved it in a closet.
Word went around the next day that the generator would have to shut down to save fuel. We ate breakfast in morbid silence. Afterward we rushed the electric kettles to brew coffee and tea and save it all in thermoses. Around 8:00 a.m. the motor quit, with a long and terrifying shudder that vibrated the hull and left us alone with ourselves. For the first time we noticed the desertlike silence on the water. The generator had not only powered a surprising number of instruments, including the TV, the kettles, the trickling seawater hoses, and the sizzling woks—it had muffled Somali voices, meaning it had sheltered us from an unbroken awareness of living at their mercy. We tried to play cards, but during the long afternoon the tropical heat mounted, and we had little to keep us from remembering our status as prisoners, or the tons of rigid tuna in the freezer, or the captain, who had been shot dead when the pirates boarded, now stored in there like a fish. We wondered if he would decompose. A smell rose from the corner grate we used for a latrine.
Abdul ended this day without power by four in the afternoon, I think because he wanted tea. But the threat had not been lost on the crew. The pirates had wanted to warn us about living on shore, and the shock of the silent ship was linked to a fierce rumor of freedom that had circulated for several days.
The source of the rumor was hard to locate, but a few days earlier Ferdinand had said, "I feel it in my heart. I think we're gonna go free by the end of the month."
"You mean August?" I said. Which was almost over.
"Maybe September. I think the owners have started to negotiate."
Then a friend of Ha's—another Vietnamese man called Nguyen Van Xuan—told me that one pirate had told him the whole ship would go free "in five days."
"Everyone?" I said. "Including Rolly and Michael?"
Rolly was my partner onboard, a fisherman from the Seychelles, not originally a member of the crew. The pirates had placed us both on this hijacked ship for safekeeping. It seemed unlikely that a deal for my freedom, Rolly's, and the release of the whole Naham 3 crew had succeeded at the same time. But Xuan was a modest man who did not like to give offense. He wore old tasseled loafers and had smiling, wideset eyes. He looked troubled by my question for a moment, then beamed with joy.
In broken ship's pidgin he answered: "Hai dao speak, all ship. Michael and Rolly, okay!"
The pirate said the whole ship, so Michael and Rolly, too!
I felt better for about three hours. But this gossip was pure sentimentality, nothing but junk food for the starving. I started to recognize the scam. In the scheme of the Five-Day Rumor, our day without power was Day Four. On the next morning, no one went free—the generator shutdown had been a scare tactic. Instead, Abdul presided over a long series of phone calls to Asia. Every crewman climbed the stairs to the bridge, to use the ship's telephone, on a warm tide of hope. They were shocked to hear protests of helplessness from their bewildered families. On their way down they endured sarcasm from the pirates, who saw it as the families' stubborn fault that the men would not go free.
Korn Vanthy returned from his call and flopped on my mattress. He covered his face with one arm. In ship's pidgin he said, "My parents can't send the money. I will die."
"Who said you would die?"
"The translator. Abdul."
"Korn Vanthy—"
"He said the pirates will shoot me."
"Korn Vanthy, listen. Hai dao bow-wow sa-sa," which in our shipboard pidgin meant: The pirates gab a lot. "They won't shoot you," I said. "Don't worry."
I didn't believe it myself, or not entirely. Evidence against my position was lying in the freezer. But I kept up my line of argument until Korn Vanthy appeared to relax.
After the day of failed telephone calls, the rumor of freedom dissipated. Everyone's apprehension focused on a new rumor about a massive fish feeding near the Naham 3. The hull of our ship had grown into a rich colony of barnacles and algae, which attracted grazing fish and predators of increasing size. I remembered a line in Der Spiegel about the sharks trailing a hijacked German freighter while it limped to freedom after a four-month anchorage off Somalia. "The large numbers of mussels attached to its hull slowed its progress, allowing an entire food chain to follow behind, with sharks bringing up the rear."
The next day, we spotted the fish. It was a lumbering shadow in the waves—not a shark, according to Ha, but maybe a fat ocean sunfish or even a little whale. The crew rushed over to look. The shadow vanished, and the ship lurched. I can't say now whether the lurching caused by the sudden movement of men stretched our rusted anchor chain, or whether the bulbous monster somehow swam into it and snapped it. The crew, afterward, would blame the fish. But when I sat down again with Rolly on the fiberglass bench, a sickening thunk vibrated through the hull.
"What happen?" Rolly said. "The anchor break?"
Hobyo and the Shiuh Fu 1 started to roll away toward the south. We were moving with a fast, shoreward-angling current. The ship began to turn.
"Yes," I said.
Our view of the shore gave way to a view of rough open water. Half a dozen Chinese men hurried toward the engine room. The rest of the crew pulled on gloves and went upstairs to haul in what was left of the anchor chain. Rolly and I stayed downstairs on the work deck with Tony, who, as a cook, had no heavier duties.
The ship spun in the water because of the way the heavy current caught the hull. The Naham 3had a deep keel, and the current must have caught it and turned us like a crank. We spun in long, lurching circles. I wanted to jump before things got worse, but Somalis had swarmed the upper deck with their weapons to yell at the laboring men. The shore twirled in and out of view. I wasn't sure whether to feel dizzy, sick, or terrified. Sooner or later we would beach. I didn't want to lose my last chance to jump, but I also didn't want to screw up. Any jump would have to be timed for the turning ship as well as the current.
While I thought about that, the twin-engine plane reappeared, flying in an aggressive circle. Rolly said, "Look!" and my blood seethed with adrenaline. Big Jacket appeared right away with his rifle, ordering us to cover our heads and hurry upstairs. Other Somalis bristled upstairs with their guns.
It seemed smarter to follow orders than to jump, so I went up the stairs with Rolly and hurried along the gangway. I had to lie on the bunk in my cabin and watch the horizon spin. I felt depressed and a little seasick. I missed my chance. I missed my chance. But an escape attempt would have been crazy. I'd never seen the Somalis so panicked and ready to shoot.
My own understanding of the problem, and my own resolve, were as straight and stable as the anchorless Naham 3, and together we turned like a merry-go-round on the edge of the Indian Ocean, moving northward for almost an hour, which wasn't long enough to wash the heavy vessel ashore. The engineers got the motor started. It rumbled twice as loud as the generator, with a rough dirty voice. The ship was soon puttering south in a line against the powerful current. At sundown the pirates ordered us back outside for dinner, under a monsoon sky, and everyone sat around the deck looking morose.
"What's going to happen?" I asked Hen, who sat by himself with his bowl of rice. "Are we going to Hobyo?"
"Hobyo!" he spluttered, with dark humor and frustration in his eyes, as if he couldn't believe the anchor chain was about to cause such a stupid shift in everyone's fate.
I felt no different. The sun sank in a gray-orange haze. I thought this would be our last night at sea. I didn't want to see Hobyo again, and I returned to my room feeling nervous and wired. Drones had to be in the air. Someone with the power to launch a twin-engine aircraft had noticed the accident and reacted, quickly, so it was possible that even an aircraft carrier stood not far off. This ship was moving an American hostage to an unknown destination. The Navy had to be watching.
Maybe the sea-craziness and lassitude had loosened my brain; maybe I'd lost some portion of sanity in five months on the water. I decided not to go to Hobyo. Instead I rolled the LED lighter into a plastic bag, sealed it as well as I could, using a tight elastic string, and lay in the fluorescent light of the cabin, running through what I hoped would be the order of events. Whoever had sent that airplane could send a rescue helicopter just as fast, I thought. I could leap with the LED lighter in my pocket and use it to identify myself in the water to any watching drone. Our engine was in such wobbly condition that the Naham 3 would have to keep chugging forward.
There could be a rescue, even in the dark, as soon as I swam out of range of the pirates' guns.
No, hang on, that's crazy.
If it failed, I would probably die. If I did nothing, I might go ashore.
I felt moody, depressed, and afraid. Ready to end the whole ordeal.
I lay flat on my bunk and wondered how it would feel to do nothing. I imagined Abdinasser waking me around midnight, and a series of skiffs shuttling us to a darkened beach. Then it would be goat liver and canned tuna for breakfast, and no more chances to escape.
I climbed down from my bed at about 8:00 p.m. to ask permission to use the bathroom. Abdiwali, the translator with a grizzled black-and-white beard, came into view on the bridge.
"What's the matter?" he said. "I need toilet paper."
"We don't have any."
I approached the bridge. "I have some downstairs, by the work area," I said. "Rolly and I have a bag in the closet."
"You can't go out there now."
"I need some," I said. "It's a problem."
Abdiwali turned to discuss the problem with another Somali.
"We will get you more tomorrow," Abdiwali said. "That doesn't help me now."
Abdiwali looked annoyed. They exchanged a few more words. "Okay. Come on."
The crew had rolled out sleeping mats; in the glare of white deck lamps they smoked cigarettes and watched TV. Abdiwali carried no rifle: that was good. He waited for me, unarmed, near the foot of the steps.
I smiled at the other hostages and found a random plastic bag in the closet. I rustled it and pretended to stuff something into my shorts pocket. When I returned to the open deck, Abdiwali started upstairs. There was no better chance. I kicked off my sandals so they skittered across the deck and ran for the cutaway section, launched myself off the gunwale with one bare foot, and dove, fingertips first, about twenty feet into the wavering, black, surprisingly warm water. ("Michael!" Abdiwali's voice hollered behind me.) The culmination of a dream that had percolated in me for more than five months at sea gave me a quick thrill of hope. But when I came up for air I noticed how buoyant I was, and how afraid.
I dove again, waiting for bullets. My only consolation was that pirates would have terrible aim. The Naham 3 churned forward, and I swam with the slanting current, toward the rear, keeping just under the waves like a dolphin. I raised my head to breathe. For days I'd calculated how long it might take to swim out of that margin of water where shooting me from the ship would have been all too easy for a pirate on an upper deck, like sniping a fish in a bucket. But the vessel's industrial hulk seemed to pass in a minute. Its forward speed, and the swift shoreward current, worked in my favor. Excited Somalis ran around on the upper decks of the ship to maneuver two searchlights across the water.
Nobody fired a shot.
Soon I was a ship's length away, about fifty yards. The swells were long and gentle. The water tasted brinier than other oceans I knew, and I floated easily because of the salt. I also wasn't cold. But my body felt electrified with fear. Before I jumped, I knew the chances of success were low, and the notion of escape was deliriously insane, half-suicidal, so I had left the ship with self-destruction at the front of my mind. I would go free or die trying. It took fear and desperation to urge me off the ship, but fear and desperation are forms of energy, which convert to something powerful if you express them well. Emotionally I had made no mistake: I felt fantastic. I no longer wanted to die.
I dove and swam again. The warm, pulsing swells were like black dunes. I stopped more than two hundred yards from the ship, and while the searchlights lanced across the water I decided to try the LED. I wanted to flash a signal up to whatever might be watching. It should have been clear to a drone that a hostage had jumped, and I thought an SOS pattern would help identify me. (I was also, by this point, quite out of my mind.) I rooted in my cotton shorts and came up with the plastic-wrapped lighter, waited for a large swell to shelter me—as if a black wave could hide what I was about to do— then aimed my plastic lighter at the sky. I clicked.
Nothing.
Of course not.
"Fuck!" I hollered and hurled the thing away. Now I had several choices. I could swim around, evade the searchlights, tread water, and hope for a helicopter. I could swim for the beach. Or I could drown myself.
The ship slowed. Searchlights traced the water. I wondered whether to tread here awhile or swim for the beach. The mile of ocean didn't bother me; what I feared was machine-gun fire. If a Somali caught a glimpse of my shoulder moving away in the searchlight, he could shatter the waves with a PKM.
I leaned back to keep my head low on the surface of the gentle swells and found a way to float on my back. It was easier than expected because of the salt. When a searchlight swept near me, I ducked, and it was blissful to submerge in the thick warm sea.
I blinked and squinted and listened for a helicopter. I watched the Naham 3 move on. Part of me still believed in the omniscience and desperation of a bureaucratic force like the Navy, a desperation as strong as my own, to recognize my poor figure in the water and glean my intentions and seize the slim chance to scoop me out as soon as I was free of the ship. I thought we'd have time. I thought it would take the pirates an hour or more to organize a skiff from land, since we weren't near Hobyo. And I thought I could still drown myself if necessary.
But the ship made an unexpected move. Instead of chugging away, it stalled and started to list. One searchlight beam found me but moved up and down, unsteadily, across the surface. I managed to duck and swim away. But the ship was leaning toward me on the swells. It was astonishing to watch. Everything—searchlights, running lights, water tanks, the still-turning radar antenna, all three decks and all the men at the rail—tilted like an oil platform in heavy weather. All two hundred tons of the Naham 3 were lurching in my direction.
I cleared my eyes and searched the sky for any artificial light. I listened for a helicopter. My buzzing blood was ecstatic, but the Naham 3 tilted and gathered speed on the waves. I wondered whether to swim around the stern, evade, and try to vanish into deep water, or turn and swim for the beach. I'd been floating for almost half an hour. I could comfortably survive the exertion, but I realized with dread that the massive ship would outpace me. It was a principle from surfing: a larger craft on any swell has more momentum. Whether I stayed put or swam for shore, I risked getting keelhauled by the barnacle-crusted hull.
The searchlight found me again while the ship listed. I could imagine a slow-motion chase, back and forth, if I swam around for deeper water.
And I could imagine drowning myself. I could see the hollering crew. Fuck. The ship lumbered close, lights blazing. Someone tossed a life preserver attached to a rope. I had to decide whether to swim around the hull—now—or grab the preserver. I swam and grabbed the rope. I held the ring close to my chest; the men pulled. It was only while I scaled the hull that I thought of a decent alibi.
"What were you thinking, man?" said Abdul frantically, his eyes manic and wide. "Why the fuck did you jump?"
Four men led me to the tuna bench, where somebody draped me with a blanket. Taso handed me a bowl of warm water to drink, in case I had hypothermia. Hen gave me disinfectant for my toes, which for some reason had started to bleed, and Tony handed me the sandals I had kicked away. I asked for bandages and tape.
My alibi was obvious. "Garfanji," I said to Abdul. "Al-Shabaab."
I said I didn't want to move ashore to be sold to terrorists; I didn't want to hang from a tree. Those threats had been half-serious in May, and now, almost four months on, they were like rotten fish. But Garfanji had made them, so he could damn well hear them again.
"Who told you that?" said Abdul.
"Everyone," I said. "Garfanji himself." Garfanji was a top boss. But a particularly cruel pirate named Bakayle sat further down the bench. I pointed to him."That man did," I said.
"Okay," said Abdul.
When the excitement subsided, two pirates escorted me back to my cabin. My blood still thrummed. I didn't sleep well, and in the morning I wasn't allowed outside with the rest of the crew. I would be condemned to three weeks of solitary confinement in my cabin. Meanwhile the Naham 3 would be tethered to a hijacked cargo ship called the MV Albedo, which had a sturdy anchor.
My mind felt wild and strange, like a caged animal's. I wondered how much ferocity and gnashing regret a human heart could stand. But the swim had been fabulous, invigorating, the very opposite of suicide. It had reminded me of freedom.
Michael Scott Moore's full account of his kidnapping and escape, The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast, is available now from Harper Wave.