Free Hostage Three by Nick Lake Page A

east. I thought, that’s the navy. And I was glad – it felt like the cavalry were coming to get us, which is pretty stupid in retrospect. You don’t send commandos to liberate a yacht when there are men with guns on it. Too much chance of collateral damage, which is a polite way of saying that me and Dad and the stepmother and Damian and Tony and Felipe might get riddled with bullets.
    â€” Hostage One, said Ahmed, when he saw us. Hostage Three. What want?
    Ahmed was the only one of the pirates who wasn’t wearing our clothes. He’d told them to return our stuff, though this seemed to be a slow process. Instead, he still had on some kind of Somali hooded cloak, a djelleba, apparently, that went down to his knees. He didn’t wear shoes, but went barefoot everywhere, his feet surprisingly clean.
    â€” We need painkillers, said Dad. For, ah, Hostage Four.
    â€” Pain?
    Dad thought for a moment. Then he mimed pain in his leg, clutching it and moaning, before going through the motions of swallowing a pill and sighing in exaggerated relief.
    â€” Oh! said Ahmed. OK. We don’t have.
    â€” No, that’s all right, said Dad. We have.
    â€” You have?
    â€” Yes. In the medical supply cupboard. If we can just take them . . .
    I think Dad thought that Ahmed would let us go to the medicine cabinet and take what we wanted. Maybe he had some kind of idea of radioing for help, too, while we were at it. I could see it on his face – the desire to be a hero. But Ahmed wasn’t an idiot. He lifted the VHF handset from in front of him and spoke some words into it. Someone gave a reply, and he hung it up.
    â€” OK, he said. You show me.
    We led Ahmed back down the corridor, down the steps towards the rear deck. We stopped by a recessed cupboard door in the wall, one you wouldn’t notice if you weren’t looking for it. This was the medicine cabinet. Mom, being American, would have called it a hurt locker, which seemed like quite a good name for the situation we found ourselves in. Locked up by people who could hurt us.
    Dad opened it up and inside were rows of neatly packed first-aid supplies: bottles of pills, bandages, plasters, even hypodermic needles. Dad reached in and took out one of the pill bottles. He checked the label and put it in his pocket. Then, for good measure, he took some iodine, a needle and thread, plus a bandage.
    â€” For? said Ahmed.
    â€” Infection, said Dad. To clean. Yes?
    Ahmed nodded. He had a certain expression on his face – of what? wonder? sadness? both? He raised a calloused hand and touched the things inside the cupboard, like someone might touch a holy relic.
    â€” What is it? said Dad.
    â€” Is medicine things, said Ahmed patiently, as if Dad were stupid.
    â€” No, I mean, what’s wrong? Are you OK?
    Ahmed shut the cupboard. His brow furrowed in concentration.
    â€” My children . . . when sick, I can give nothing. No medicine. Here, on yacht, is easy.
    My stomach did a little flip. He had children? This guy with the scar on his face, and the AK-47? Well, of course he did. He must have been forty. Suddenly, and for the first time, I had a flash of what this yacht must look like to them. To people with no medicine to give to their children. With no shoes.
    Then Ahmed’s face went hard again, like it was clay that had come out of an oven.
    â€” You tell captain we move tomorrow, he said.
    â€” Move? I asked. I was thinking of the ship on the radar screen, the steady blip as it got closer; the navy coming to get us, I hoped.
    â€” Move. To Eyl.
    â€” Where is Eyl? said Dad.
    â€” Is small town. In Puntland. In Somalia.
    My heart sank. I’d been longing for land, thinking about the scary feeling of being adrift in wide, open ocean, and how nice it would be to see a beach. But I guess, in my head, it had been a neutral beach, not somewhere that made us even more powerless. Somewhere that we could . . . maybe . . . escape