of sounds. The speedboat’s engine, her captors laughing, waves thumping against the bow. Loudest of all was her stylist wailing. At first, the woman tried to hold on to her so tight, her fingernails dug into Emma’s flesh. Finally Emma just pushed her away.
Once they’d reached their destination, the pirates drove the speedboat right up onto a beach. Still blindfolded, Emma was pulled out kicking and screaming, dragged across the hard sand and thrown in the back of a loud, rattling truck that squealed away in a cloud of exhaust. And suddenly she was alone. Her stylist was no longer with her.
The truck rumbled along for about fifteen minutes. Emma heard waves crashing along the way. She was on a coastal road somewhere; she prayed it wasn’t Somalia, the most horrible place in Africa. Just the thought of that made her sick to her stomach.
Eventually the truck stopped and she was hauled out and tied to either a pole or a tree, it was hard to tell. There was a lot of noise around her now: people cursing, fighting, weapons being fired; voices yammering in some strange language, spoken a mile a minute.
Someone eventually tore off her blindfold; her eyes adjusted to the bare light. She was in a clearing surrounded by dense jungle. A campfire was burning at its center. About a dozen wooden shacks were nearby. Three smaller shacks were standing a couple hundred feet away.
There were about thirty pirates in the camp. All were heavily armed and, oddly, many were wearing her sunglasses, even though it was night. This infuriated her. She screamed at them to take them off, but the pirates ignored her. They were so arrogant and dirty; she vowed never to wear any of the sunglasses again.
The pirates had picked the perfect place to hide—even she could see this. The thick forest concealed the camp from the ground, from the sea nearby and almost entirely from the air. She could just barely make out the stars above the overhanging jungle canopy. Their shimmering reminded her of her jewelry box back on the yacht.
The pirates began to build the campfire into a bonfire, adding wood and trash to make the flames go higher. A white female suddenly appeared among them. She was dressed in threadbare coveralls with a kerchief drawn around her nose and mouth, and a fisherman’s hat pulled over her forehead. Only her eyes were visible.
The pirates were ordering her about, making her carry firewood, and kicking her when she did not move fast enough. She was obviously another captive.
When she came close, gathering more wood for the fire, Emma whispered to her: “Do you know who I am?”
The woman barely acknowledged her. “I do,” was her muffled reply. She had a slight British accent. “Everyone does, I suppose.”
“Then don’t worry,” Emma told her. “When people find out I’m missing, they’ll come to rescue me. And they’ll rescue you, too.”
But the woman hissed back to her: “No one comes here to rescue anyone. You better learn that right away. You leave here only when someone pays your way out. I’ve been here two years and I’m still waiting. Others haven’t been so lucky. Some were shot just for taking up too much space.”
But Emma began arguing with her. “These filthy monkeys must know who I am,” she insisted. “They must realize I’m more valuable to them alive than dead.”
“Oh, they know all about you,” the woman replied, pretending to fuss with some scraps of wood. “Too much in fact. They knew you were in the area because you made such a big deal about it. So, they were just waiting to snatch you. You mean millions to them.”
“Well, you see then,” Emma boasted. “If they’re not going to kill me, I have no reason to be afraid, right?”
The woman just shook her head and moved on.
* * *
THE PIRATES SMOKED cigarettes, chewed qat and passed around Emma’s sunglasses. They drank alcohol from old oil cans, and the more they drank, the more boisterous they became. After a while, several began fighting, cutting each other with knives. Others were so drunk they were barely able to walk.
Emma cursed at them the whole time. She demanded to be untied. She demanded water. She demanded they stop wearing her sunglasses. She called them criminals, gangstas—and worse. But the pirates continued to ignore her, preferring instead to watch their bonfire grow. Some even stuffed pieces of cloth in their ears, just so they wouldn’t have to listen