As daylight broke over the Indian Ocean, spilling light the colour of chalk on the distant horizon, Captain Jean-Claude Thibault watched the outline of the huge ship emerge slowly from the darkness. He’d known she was there, just three kilometres away across the calm waters of the Indian Ocean, but now he could see her clearly. Indeed she was impossible to miss: a container vessel, probably four hundred feet long, painted a rich maroon with a yellow stripe at her plimsoll line just above the water. Fully laden, she was low in the water as she ploughed through the sea, heading south.
Standing on the bridge of his corvette, binoculars to his eyes, Thibault could see the Greek flag flying from the stern and make out the name painted in black along one side of the snub-nosed prow: Aristides. He’d been expecting her arrival; as part of a new international protection force, his job was to see her and other vessels safely through the dangerous waters off the Horn of Africa, on their way to port in Mombasa.
As Thibault watched her moving forward at a good rate of knots, leaving very little wake behind, his First Officer, standing beside him on the bridge, tapped him on the shoulder and pointed. Thibault shifted his binoculars and saw a skiff, so small that it took a moment for him to focus on it. It was close in, under the overhang of the larger vessel’s stern, hugging dangerously close to her side. He wondered momentarily if it were a dinghy let down by the Greek ship’s crew to make some repair, but dinghies didn’t look like that – a dilapidated wooden craft that couldn’t have been more than fifteen feet from bow to stern, with a mast that looked like the branch of a tree. Half a dozen figures sat huddled in the little boat, one at the stern holding the rudder of a massive outboard motor, which looked heavy enough to overturn the fragile craft.
Pirates. They must have crept up on the ship in the dark, lurking alongside until dawn began to break. They couldn’t have noticed the corvette waiting in the darkness and, if they saw it now, must be gambling on taking over the ship before it intervened. Captain Thibault watched with fascination as the men in the skiff began lifting a long thin metal ladder; it rose straight into the air like a construction crane, then tilted gently until it leaned against the side of the ship. It was being carefully extended, a segment at a time, aiming for the lowest point of the deck, at the stern. He could see the curved ends at the top of the rungs, designed to hook as tight as handcuffs over the deck rail.
Thibault gestured towards the tanker, and spoke tersely to the First Officer: ‘ En avant.’ Let’s go.
Though the corvette was small compared to the massive container ship, her engine packed a mighty punch. Within seconds she was closing in on the Aristides and her unwelcome visitors at maximum speed. Simultaneously the radio officer, Marceau, was trying to contact the bridge of the container ship, to warn them of the imminent attack. ‘They must all be at breakfast,’ he muttered after his repeated radio bursts received no reply.
When no more than two hundred yards separated the vessels, Captain Thibault gave further orders and two of his crew took up position behind the pair of.30 mm cannons mounted on the bow. Three more men armed with rifles stood by.
Ahead of them, a figure had detached itself from the huddle in the skiff and started to clamber up the ladder. He was soon halfway up, a rifle on a sling hanging from one shoulder as he climbed.
Suddenly the corvette’s radio crackled into life. ‘This is M.V. Aristides. Why are you approaching?’
The crew member did not sound alarmed; it would be evident to those on the container ship that the approaching vessel was a French patrol boat. Marceau replied sharply, ‘French Warship Tarasque. We are not your only visitors. Pirates are climbing a ladder at your stern.’
Thibault took over the microphone. ‘This is Captain Thibault, French Navy. One pirate is boarding you: stern, port side. Armed. There are others in a skiff at your stern. We’ll deal with them. Keep your crew below decks and out of range. Is that understood?’
‘Understood,’ came the confirmation.
They were less than a hundred yards from the tanker now, and Captain Thibault ordered the engines to be slowed to idling speed. He clicked a switch on a microphone, and his voice was transmitted clearly through an amplified speaker across the water.
‘This is the International Protection Force. Stay where you are, and do not attempt to board the ship.’
There was an eerie silence. Looking behind him at the French patrol boat, the solitary pirate on the ladder began a rapid descent. Suddenly the outboard motor started up and the bow of the little skiff swung round. The man on the ladder jumped, clearly hoping to land amongst his colleagues. Too late: the skiff had already accelerated away, and he landed with an enormous splash in the water.
Ignoring him, Thibault tersely issued orders and at once the corvette took off after the skiff. In less than thirty seconds she was closing in, though the pirates showed no sign of slowing down.
‘Two warning bursts,’ the Captain ordered, then watched as his men on the bow swung the.30 mm cannons towards the skiff. They fired a line of tracer shells that sailed just ahead of the smaller boat, a few of them skimming the surface like stones thrown from a beach.
Now the skiff slowed down, and the French ship slowed too, cutting the engine and floating towards the smaller craft. The French sailors on the forward deck watched the armed men in the skiff intently. They were close enough to distinguish the individual figures, wearing jeans and T-shirts; as they drew nearer they could see details of the men’s faces, some half-obscured by dark glasses. But it was the weapons they were watching most closely. Suddenly two men stood up, rocking the skiff with the abrupt movement. They raised their rifles and cracking sounds rang out above the low throb of the corvette’s engines.
The sailors on the bow hit the deck as it was sprayed with bullets. A second burst of gunfire rattled against the steel-plated bridge where Thibault was standing. He ducked, shouting, ‘Hole that boat!’
The gunners swung their cannons round to point directly at the skiff and fired. A hole appeared above the little vessel’s waterline, and the skiff began rapidly to take on water. One of the pirates stood up and jumped overboard just before the skiff tilted sharply to one side, dumping the rest of the crew into the sea. Then it sank beneath the surface.
What fools, thought Thibault, taking on an armed naval vessel. What did they think they were playing at?
Two hours later he was none the wiser. Below deck, in the long low room that doubled as both mess and lounge for his crew, the prisoners sat ranged on two benches. They included the hapless pirate who had jumped for it from halfway up the side of the Aristides. It turned out he could hardly swim; he would have drowned if a crewman from the container ship had not thrown him a lifeline.
Thibault had ordered his men to search the prisoners for weapons, but the three Kalashnikovs seemed to be the extent of their armoury – and they were now lying at the bottom of the ocean.
The pirates were uncommunicative, merely shrugging when Thibault attempted to question them. From time to time they spoke to each other in short bursts of Arabic. Marceau, Algerian by origin and an Arabic speaker from childhood, spoke to them but they just ignored him. Though Arabic was one of Somalia’s national languages, these men were not Somali – their appearance was Middle Eastern rather than African. Thibault was puzzled; he’d expected them to be local pirates, operating from the Somalian coast.
As he watched them, he noticed that one of the seven looked more Asian than Middle Eastern, and saw too that the other men didn’t include him in their muttered exchanges. He seemed to be younger than the others: average height, lean, with the scraggly beginnings of a beard that gave away his youth. His eyes wouldn’t stay still, searching anxiously around the room, and where the others looked coolly indifferent to their plight, he appeared terrified.
‘Marceau,’ said Thibault quietly. ‘The lad at the end there… the one with the blue shirt. I want him searched.’
‘We searched them all already,’ came the reply.
‘Yes, yes. Do it again – and a strip search this time. There’s something different about him.’
Marceau gestured to two sailors, and together they approached the youth at the end of the bench. His eyes widened as they motioned him to get up, then led him through the bulkhead to the adjacent shower room. The other prisoners watched sullenly.
Marceau was back a few minutes later.
‘Where’s the prisoner?’ asked Thibault.
‘Still in there,’ said Marceau with a shrug, gesturing to the shower room. ‘He’s not feeling well.’
I bet, thought Thibault, knowing how brutal Marceau could be. He was about to chastise his second-in-command when Marceau held out a little square of plastic, about the size of a credit card. ‘We found this in the lining of his back pocket.’
Thibault inspected the card. It was a driving licence, issued three years before and due to expire in another twenty-two. The photograph in one corner was of a young man, a boy really, clean-shaven and short-haired. But the eyes looked the same. His name, according to the licence, was Amir Khan.
Pakistani, thought Thibault. Or with Pakistani parents, perhaps, since this was a British driving licence. It gave Khan’s address as 57 Farndon Street, Birmingham.
Thibault shook his head in wonder. What on earth was a British national doing here, attempting to hijack a cargo ship in the Indian Ocean?