that she could be heard over the VHF radio meant she couldn’t be very far off.
“Snowman, confirm you have the Somali pirates under your control.” The Russian combat controllers had a distinct accent, and their tone was never polite.
“Answer them,” said the pilot.
“You know what they’ll demand?”
“Answer them.”
The copilot replied to the Chabanenko, telling them where things stood. Then he radioed the Sveaborg: “Following the traffic?”
“We follow.”
“What’s happening?” asked Slunga, who’d been sitting silently in the cabin.
“We’ll explain later,” said the pilot.
“Just make sure to get a video of that damn boat down there,” the copilot reminded the gunner.
“Confirming your position,” said the Russians.
“They already see us on their radar,” the pilot explained to Slunga, and then added, resigned: “They’re taking over.”
“Mother, what are our orders?” radioed the copilot to the HMS Sveaborg.
“Wait,” said the Swedish combat controller.
It was obvious. The Russians had contacted their own military headquarters through other channels. Made their demands. Asserted their rights. Somewhere a Swedish admiral was sitting down with a lawyer, reading the fat paragraphs of rules and conventions: a Russian merchant ship attacked in international waters, a sailor seriously injured. Rights and wrongs—and politics. And keeping his hands clean. Chasing pirates was less about battle operations than about mastering these paragraphs.
The helicopter circled while the five men in the boat sat dazed and unsuspecting. A destroyer was on its way, doing at least forty knots. Somewhere in the Russian hull, weapons were being loaded and grenades readied.
“Snowman from Mother,” the Swedish ship radioed, “hand over the suspects.”
The copilot was silent for a second, letting it sink in before he answered. “Mother, we are handing over five men to the Russians. You are fully aware of this?”
“Drop it,” snapped the pilot, over the intercom. But the copilot had scored his point and wouldn’t do any more grumbling. The admiral had decided that he couldn’t put up a fight. Who knew what he really wanted? Certainly he realized what was happening. But Legad, the military lawyer, had pointed to some lines in the rule book and showed the admiral that, even though he was cornered, he could come out with his hands clean.
“Hand over the object and document your actions,” repeated the combat control on the HMS Sveaborg.
“You bet your ass we will,” muttered the copilot, and called out, “Confirmed.” Then he asked the gunner: “You noted the time of the order, right?”
“Of course.”
Then the Russian destroyer arrived, first a blip on the radar, then a dark gray shape through the haze. A warship on the open seas—for the Russians in the twenty-first century, everything was still about flexing their muscles: huge spinning antennas and guns in every direction. A death star.
Now it was their show.
“Snowman, stand by, boarding team on the way,” said a voice that no human being would want judging his fate. Two rubber boats shot out from the destroyer carrying the boarding team: black boats, with men dressed entirely in black. On the helicopter’s TV, the men in the pirate boat looked vaguely anxious—they’d probably seen the destroyer and the rubber boats coming. They raised their arms again, straight up like exclamation points, all five.
“You still filming?” asked the copilot.
“Yes,” replied the gunner.
“Turn it off now and put away the camera,” commanded the pilot.
Hands clean.
The rubber boats had barely another two hundred meters to go. The pilot turned, leaving the pirate boat and the whole scene behind them, while the copilot announced: “Admiral Chabanenko, we are handing over pirate suspects to you.”
“Affirmative,” answered the voice of doom. “Good hunting.”
The pilot looked at his wristwatch. “Note that when we left them at zero seven fifty-three, all five were still alive.”
The silence in the machine was palpable. The logistics officer must have been feeling some kind of internal moral struggle. They’d gone without a word for more than ten minutes when Slunga finally asked: “What will happen to …?”
“You don’t want to know,” replied the pilot.
And then, silence again.
They’d seen nothing. Hands clean.
Jenny never said it, could never stand to think it, but the MaryAnn II had been hijacked. Seven pirates on board, their two skiffs towed behind. They waved their guns around impatiently, everywhere, always a finger on the trigger. The first hour, they’d been full of victory and rage. Searching and looting, dragging Jenny along to open lockers, cabinets, and bulkheads. Mostly, they seemed to be looking for food, or racing to find valuables to stuff in their pockets. They’d wolf down a chocolate bar, clear out a bathroom cabinet, nab a little knife with nail scissors, and push on to the next cabin. The slightest misunderstanding was seen as defiance, and then the muzzle was up against Jenny’s face again. Worst was the crushing feeling of powerlessness, every time they grabbed or shouted at the children.
In one of the skiffs lay a dead man—the one Carl-Adam had shot. Carl-Adam himself had been shot in the hand, and there was a long gash in his thigh. But all in all he’d been fortunate, given the number of shots they’d fired. His luck had only held out so far, however, and now it was over. He’d armed himself, killed one of their own, and now he was the pirates’ defeated enemy. They forced him into one end of the cockpit. He was guarded the whole time, by the unlucky bastard who got back at his prisoner for missing out on all the looting. Random bursts of kicking, rifle-butting, and yelling. Carl-Adam tried to defend himself, barely noticing his wounds, but soon the cockpit was covered in long streaks of blood where he’d braced himself, crawled, and slipped as he was being beaten. His corner looked like a pen where some animal was slowly being slaughtered.
The whole time, the MaryAnn’s autopilot kept the boat on the same steady heading it was on before the pirate skiffs appeared.
Jenny managed to keep the children with her while she was being dragged around the ship. Only one thing mattered as long as she had them with her: preventing them from seeing what was happening to their father out on deck. When the first numbing terror subsided, her head spun with one recurring thought: it’s all on me! The thought didn’t exactly make her stronger, but it did make her more wary.
One face among the pirates, with his narrow almond-shaped
