Djibouti by Elmore Leonard Page A

then.”
    â€œHe gave himself up,” Dara said, “so they wouldn’t harm the crew. Richard Phillips, fifty-three, from Underhill, Vermont. They put him in the Alabama ’s deluxe lifeboat, tried to slip off to Somalia three hundred miles away and ran out of gas. Here’s the lifeboat.”
    One like the Alabama ’s was on the screen now: an enclosed twenty-eight-foot orange fiberglass boat designed for thirty-four passengers with food and water for ten days.
    â€œNo toilet,” Dara said. “It doesn’t look big enough for that many people. The Bainbridge, the destroyer on the scene, tied onto the lifeboat to keep it from drifting off. Talks began now by satellite phone, between clan elders in the pirates’ home port and I think navy brass and a hostage negotiator from the FBI. The elders wanted two million for Captain Phillips. The navy wanted the four pirates to surrender and stand trial, the only agreement they’d consider. The pirate spokesmen said if you don’t pay the ransom or try to rescue the captain, this will end in disaster. Words to that effect. The navy took it as a threat to Captain Phillips’s life.”
    Dara was looking at the screen. “This is Sunday. Idris and Harry were watching Friday—why they were grinning. I wanted to ask Harry what he was so happy about, but I didn’t get around to it.”
    Xavier said, “So they got SEALs for the job.”
    â€œThree Navy SEALs were dropped on the Bainbridge with sniper rifles and set up undercover on the fantail. The lifeboat on the tow rope was less than a hundred feet away, like point-blank range for snipers. But waves were tossing the lifeboat, making it hard to get a target that wasn’t moving. They could barely make out the pirates through the boat’s windshield, and it was getting dark. Word came down from the White House. President Obama said, ‘If the captain’s life is in danger, take action.’ The SEALs watched one of the pirates put a gun to Captain Phillips’s head and they were given the word. Each fired one shot and the three pirates were taken out.”
    Xavier said, “Wasn’t there four of ’em?”
    â€œFour when they started out,” Dara said. “The Bainbridge sent a rubber boat to see if Phillips and the pirates needed anything, food, medicine. The fourth pirate jumped ship, went back to the Bainbridge in the rubber boat and gave himself up.”
    â€œHad enough of bein a pirate.”
    â€œHe was sixteen,” Dara said. “I’m not sure how old the captain’s son is. On TV the captain’s wife, Andrea, sent a message after he was rescued that said ‘Your family is saving a chocolate Easter egg for you, unless your son eats it first.’”
    â€œLemme see do I understand your meaning,” Xavier said. “What you sayin, Somali boys don’t have chocolate Easter eggs, they get shot?”
    Dara didn’t answer him. She thought of something else and said, “The Alabama was bringing four thousand tons of corn-soya to malnourished refugees in Somalia while Somali pirates were holding the captain for two million dollars. It was also carrying three hundred and twenty tons of vegetable oil for refugees in Rwanda.”
    â€œYou have reasons now,” Xavier said, “not to feel sorry for the pirates.”
    â€œAfter the three in the lifeboat were killed,” Dara said, “bloggers all over the Internet were saying, ‘Don’t fuck with Americans.’”
    â€œHow’d that leave you?”
    â€œIt made sense. We have a problem, we don’t pay our way out, we go after it.” She said, “You know what I’ve learned since? It’s likely the rifles were mounted in gyroscopes and the snipers wore night-vision goggles and took aim through scopes on their rifles. Put red dots on the Somalis and they’re off to where Allah gives them all those