grenade launchers. Five live goats had been ferried on board for the final feast. Somewhere on deck, cutthroat knives were being sharpened, fires readied. The Frenchmen in their plane circled and photographed all this.
Yusuf raised his head as if from a depth to open his eyes on the Bannon’s captain, Ashwin.
Yusuf held out an onyx-handled blade. In English, he said, “Come, Captain. You do the honors.”
The Indian, smaller than Yusuf by a head and a hundred pounds, stepped forward. The man had handled himself and his crew well during the ordeal of the ship’s hijacking and long negotiations. They’d surrendered the ship quickly; only a few had been fired upon by Yusuf’s pirates. In captivity, the discipline of Ashwin’s men’s had rarely wavered; they’d offered no resistance nor chicanery and had kept their ill opinions of their Somali captors largely to themselves. No one jumped overboard. Why would they, three miles from a lawless coast into shark- and seasnake–infested waters?
For twenty-seven weeks, Yusuf saw to it that the hostages were well fed, though the captain seemed too distressed to eat. Every Sunday the crewmen were allowed to contact their families by satellite phone. The trouble was made not by the seamen, who had no interest in anything beyond their liberation, but by the ship’s European owners, who poor-mouthed their ability to pay. After this, his sixth hijacking, Yusuf knew well all the ship owners’ ploys. The longer they allowed the pirates to hold their ships, the better their payouts from their insurance. The owners always waited until the economics shifted in their favor before settling up.
In front of the audience of his captive crew, the little captain held out a brown hand for the knife. Privately, Yusuf was sorry to see the weight Ashwin had lost.
Yusuf bent to the man’s ear. “Understand. You will open this barrel. If there is a bomb or anything unpleasant inside, it will surprise you first.”
The captain smiled wanly, beaten down by his imprisonment. Ashwin snipped the plastic straps. Yusuf retreated, motioning for the captain to crack the lid. Nothing emerged from the white barrel but the reflected glow of green.
Ashwin folded back the cask’s top. He did not step away but stayed rooted in front of the money. Yusuf, done with the captain now, retrieved the knife and shunted him aside. Suleiman walked the short man away on the end of his pistol, as Yusuf planted his broad palms on 3.7 million American dollars.
A rush charged up his arms, expanding his chest. He exhaled slowly through his nose, for everyone on the bridge to hear. The Indians and Malays watched him over Guleed’s leveled Kalashnikov. Funny. Of all the things Yusuf had held hostage—this weathered ship, three thousand cargo containers, the owners’ schedules and profits—these little brown lives were what the money had bought back. His gaze fell into the cask to the banded stacks of bills, sheaves of dollars. How wonderful to be worth this.
Yusuf considered his own two cousins and his clansmen, waiting. He knew their poverty because he’d shared it, and he’d ended it. Today, they had this value too.
Plucking one bundle of the cash, Yusuf held it with both hands over his head like the heart of a beast.
“Kill the goats.”
His cousins lowered their weapons. Suleiman came to Yusuf’s side. Guleed clapped and jogged out of the wheelhouse to issue the order that would begin the butchering and cooking of their last meal aboard the Bannon. The Indians and Malays, for the first time in months, were left unguarded. They moved unsurely, like men wearing shoes that were too big.
Yusuf spoke to the captain: “Take your men outside. Let the French snap your pictures from their plane to show your families you’re all right. We’ll eat, then we’ll be gone at sundown. The ship will be yours again.”
The little Indian asked, “Will your men return what else they have stolen? Our computers, cell phones, cameras, clothes?”
Yusuf waved a bundle of dollars beneath his nose to sniff it like a bouquet. He laughed down to his bare feet on the cool floor. He said only, “Suleiman.”
Yusuf’s lieutenant, narrow-faced and gold-toothed, raised his handgun. “Get some sun, man.”
The captain nodded in the manner of an educated fellow, completing his judgment of Yusuf and likely all Somalis as thieves and worthless. He stepped away with an incline of his head, still the pirate king’s prisoner.
Alone on the bridge, Yusuf and Suleiman counted the ransom. The cousins combed through banded bills to be certain