Transcript of Inside a Ransom Exchange With Somali Pirates | David Leaning

I've got a theory, and I don't know if— I've never heard this from anyone else, but it's like, I'm not sure if I believe it, but the theory goes for Somalis, gunfire isn't necessarily an attempt on your life. It's a form of dialogue.

East African proverb.

Yeah. So you could take it as that, or you could take it, you know, us in the Western world, you know, when someone shoots at you, you're like, okay, it's on. You mean to kill me and I am emboldened to use the same measures against you. But for them, maybe it's not quite the same as that. Maybe it's just an escalation in the dialogue or a way of saying, hey, I see you, eff off.

Hey everyone, I'm Jack Murphy. This is The Team House and tonight's guest is Dave Leaning. Dave served as a Royal Marine and then he worked for a number of different private military companies doing counter-piracy work in Africa. So this is sort of a unique episode, and I think Dave has some pretty unique insights working the piracy issue, doing things like ransom deliveries, hostage recoveries, and all sorts of interesting anecdotes as we go on. But Dave, welcome to the show. I'm happy to have you here.

Thank you very much, Jack, for the introduction, and thank you for having me. It's a huge honor, and I definitely feel a little bit of imposter syndrome being here, given that, you you've had some very eminent guests and speakers on before me, but I'll try and do my best and sort of recount some of the experiences I had and hopefully have something to share with your audience and shed light on a subject which I don't think many people have covered before. So yeah, let's, let's get into it.

So start at the beginning. Tell us a little bit about what your pathway was into the Royal Marines.

Uh, yeah, uh, so I, I've been to university, uh, college you call it here, and, um, I, I hadn't actually thought of joining, um, until I found myself with a sort of a loss as to what to do. And my old man had been in the military, he'd been an Army Commando, and, uh, yeah, I, I figured why not give it a go, why not do 4 years, see if I was as tough as my old man was, get the Green Beret and see if I can, you know, get a war under my belt. Because as a young man, all that kind of stuff seemed exciting and was definitely very appealing. So, you know, I showed up at a recruiting center, got fed all the lies about what I would, what great stuff I would get to do. And, you know, showed up at Limston Commando one day at that, that train station, that platform that you go through and began the the process to becoming a Royal Marine commander. I, you know, got through the commander course. I broke both my feet, had to spend 12— no, 16 weeks in rehabilitation, and then rejoined a troop.

And then, yeah, went on, did my service, did the minimum contract, the 4 years, 1 month, and 1 day. Not that anyone was counting by that stage. And yeah, I got a tour of Afghanistan. It was an adventure, you know. We can circle back to commando training and that experience and my time in Afghanistan, which interestingly enough actually sort of intersects with one of your recent guests, Jay Morton.

Yeah, yeah.

From 22nd SAS. He was talking about the exact same places that I was. We relieved his company. I think he was 3 Para and I was Lima Company, 42 Commando, and we It was Op Sarah, the relief in place of 3 Para. And so I know the exact position he was talking about. And he mentioned an orchard at that position in Sangin. Let me just cover up the, my oppo there. That is that orchard. Wow. And the river that he mentioned, that is that river. You went swimming in it?

You guys are crazy.

Yeah, you could bathe and you could wash your clothes, have a swim. The Afghan National Army would sit out there watching you. So we christened them cock watches after a while because they seem to derive enormous pleasure from watching Marines.

They're stroking their, stroking their beard.

No, whatever does it for them.

Yeah.

Really random to watch that on your show a couple of weeks ago and see that and be like, I was there. Yeah.

So tell us about Afghanistan with the Royal Marines.

Uh, well, I, I figured I would sort of skip past that, uh, and go to the, the unique selling point of my experience, because you've had tons of guys with way more operational experience than me. And really, I, I mean, I got to see some cool stuff, but I can't really add anything to that. But what I can do is talk about the piracy thing, which is a bit more unique. Yeah, yeah, your viewers clicked on this because they wanted to know about piracy.

We don't have to spend, uh, so much time dwelling on it, but if you want to share a couple, like, uh, formative experiences in Afghanistan, and we can move on.

Okay, well, all right. First, I'm gonna have to give myself a little bit of cerebral lubrication. And oh, wouldn't you know, it's an opportunity to show you a little relic from that time. Do you recognize one of these?

Is that a mortar round? Or no, that's an RPG. That's an RPG rocket. Yeah. Yeah.

And that was— I collected that from, it was the morning after a contact, a pretty decent one. And yeah, I found that near our position on a several-day fight at us. And it's got a neat trick as well. So yeah, that was the shittest business trip I ever went on, but I got a free bottle opener from it.

Good deal. You survived.

Yeah. Um, so yeah, I, I didn't do an awful lot, you know. I got out on the ground, I saw Sangin, I was there for a couple months. Um, I got like, and like, uh, the, the battle when we sort of relieved Kripal, uh, you know, some of my friends were on the ground convoy coming in. The ground convoy never quite made it in. We flew in on Chinooks. Just flying in was pretty— it was pretty raw. Like, they tore all the seats out of the Chinook so they could pack in as many guys as possible. We were sitting like 3, 3 side by side and as many deep as we could, with each Marine had his legs wrapped around the Marine in front to, to squeeze us in as tight as they could. So it was all very, uh, very intimate. Um, And I remember at a certain point, the door gunners tested their guns as we were flying along, and the Marine to the left of me turned and smiled, and we were punching each other and saying, it's just like, it's just like that movie. What's it called? Full Metal Jacket, where the door gunner is shooting at— Yeah, it was, it was kind of like a movie.

I'm probably going to say this a lot of times, but when, when you grow up watching movies and TV and something happens and that's your only point of reference, you're like, wow. This is just like a movie. And so, yeah, at a certain point, the loadmaster told us to get up, stand up. And once again, it was like that Band of Brothers where each man is lifting up the man behind them. And you have that moment where your eyes meet and you're like, okay, for most of us, this is our first time going in. We know Sangin has been the hottest, the hottest patrol base in the whole of Helmand, and it's likely it's going to get hot. On the way in, and, you know, for most of our time there. And then, you know, maybe my mind is playing false with me, but I do distinctly remember one of the loadmasters calling out, or maybe it was just being dramatic, but it's hot LZ, hot LZ. And then starting to hear the sort of clack clack of, you know, rounds going off and rounds being fired, incoming and outgoing, and feeling that helicopter start to sway.

And lurch, and everyone's sort of, you know, trying to grab onto the man next to them. And then it coming in for that landing, the door going— it being— I think the door was already down. The door was already down, of course it was. And then just seeing that orange haze and just being told go and running into it. And, uh, yeah, I didn't— I didn't expect to be leading off with this. I thought I'd start with the piracy.

Okay.

I'm just thinking about it is giving me a little bit of a But yeah, I, I had like a, almost like a, I was on top of the fire support tower for a lot of the battle and I saw, I saw some pretty cool stuff. I, I remember seeing there was this one wood line called Wombat Wood, um, the paras had christened it, or the unit before had christened it because they used to use these recoilless rifles known as wombats. From that particular place. And I swear I saw a— one of those French Mirage jets, the thing that has like a delta dagger type wing shape dropping. I like— I'm not even sure they were in Afghanistan at the time, but that's what I remember. And it flew over that tree line and dropped cluster bombs and seeing them crackle and burst like firecrackers, like fireworks. That was pretty cool. And then One guy taking potshots at us from around a wall and just seeing a mortar, an 81mm mortar dropped right on him and just seeing that disappear where he was, disappear in a cloud of smoke. And, you know, hearing RPGs coming overhead, Chinese 107s being fired, running for cover, falling down a staircase and landing at the bottom in a pile of, you know, in a disgusting pile of snot with a reporter, I think, who was actually from The Sun.

At a time. And then there was even like some guy who was doing a to-camera piece on the rooftop to a news channel with a cameraman behind, almost like Full Metal Jacket again. And I just happened to be in the background and I thought, I'm going to turn and look at the camera. I'm going to turn and look at the camera and give it a thousand-yard stare. So I did. And that must have been broadcast because although I'd been lying to my dad saying, no, I'm all right, I'm safe on, I'm on Camp Bastion. My aunt saw it and said, "Oh, I've seen Dave, I've seen him there, he's not on Count Bastion anymore, he's been sent to the front line, oh my God!" But yeah, there was that, and yeah, seeing the paras, man, they've been there for almost their whole tour, and their uniforms were all worn and faded, they all had beards, they were tanned, and we were just, you know, all our gear was fresh out of the issue, of the, um, the stores. Not a speck of dirt or dust on it. Every man was shaven. And then, I know, I guess, you know, 2 months later we must have looked kind of like they did because, well, you can see in the, in the picture I had a, had a good old operational beard going there.

Yeah, yeah, your starter set.

Yeah. Uh, but, uh, yeah, it was, it was some pretty wild experiences and, uh, But yeah, it was, I'm not being funny, but within the first 72 hours of getting on the ground and talking to the interpreters, I almost called them Terps again. I know it's kind of pseudo derogatory term for them, but yeah, talking to them and, you know, having a shura with the locals, of which of course I wasn't invited because I'm, you know, a bloody Marine. It was the, you know, the officers who would would do that. But you could see the different types of people coming to the shura. You could see Afghans who were clearly Taliban marking your positions, calculating your firepower and numbers, and the hate was just rising off them, almost like a, like a, like a shimmer, like a heat haze you see on a, on a road on a hot day. And then you could see locals or elders and, you know, local leaders who were just in the middle trying to trying to figure out the way for everything to, to get done with as least hassle as possible. And so it was like the 3 types that I came across: those who were just telling you what you— what they thought you wanted to hear, those who hated you with a passion and wanted to see you dead, and those who would just get— go along to get along.

And yeah, I'd been on the ground 72 hours and I thought, I don't think this is going to work. And 2021 was rough, man. I believe you did a tour of Ghana's as well.

Much earlier, like '04, '05.

Yeah. And it was a foregone conclusion, I believe. I mean, I'm not just being smart about it. I do remember thinking that at the time and like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Final conclusion being it was 2021, right? It fell.

That was 21 or 22. Yeah, 21.

Yeah, that was rough to see it happen. And yeah, I'm— I tried to make a rule for myself. If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. So, you know, we all know, we all know the score that we're there. So let's just draw a line under it and move on.

And when you got back from Afghanistan, were you pretty much dead set on getting out of the Royal Marines at that point?

Well, yeah, the Royal Marines made a huge mistake in losing me when they sent me on a scuba course in Egypt. And I'd been trying to figure out what do I want to do when I get out of the Corps? You know, am I going to stay for 4 years, 5 years, whatever? And then they sent me on this scuba course and I had like one of the best times of my life in this resort called Hurghada while we were doing a couple of PADI courses. And I was like, well, that's it. I'm going to be a scuba instructor when I get out. That's, that is, that is all I aspired to, living by the sea in the sunshine and teaching scuba diving to pretty girls in bikinis. Um, I figured there was no higher calling in life. And, uh, yeah, I made plans, had a, an internship lined up in Gibraltar, so as soon as I got out, I could use my post-operational tour leave to, uh to get on that and, um, yeah, get going. So yeah, when I got out, I, uh, spent the summer there, uh, first training as an instructor and then working and, uh, taking people out diving and working as a bouncer at a couple of bars and clubs in Gibraltar itself.

I was living on a dilapidated yacht that legend had it was owned by a, uh, a former London gangster. I don't know if he really was or not, but he would come out every now and again. The rest of the time it was myself and a bunch of young people, backpackers from Australia, Europe, living on this, uh, this yacht in the marina. They called it the party boat. We had a great time, uh, loved diving, loved the— yeah, loved everything about it. It was the best post-operational sort of decompression you go through. And yeah, one of the best summers of my life. Um, did that. And at the end of it, I was like, you know, I really miss having that 360 challenge. That's a challenge to mind, body, and soul that, to a certain extent, you get from uniform service. And so I came up with this plan to try and ski the length of Norway. It's an accepted sort of Norwegian challenge. They call it Nordpaarlangs, where you start at the southern tip of Norway, and then you ski— I thought it was 1,800 miles, but I read— I was researching it before doing this, and I saw someone say it's actually 1,600, so not as much as I thought.

But it took me 122 days in the snow, and, uh, yeah, I got there. Didn't think I would. There was a few things along the way that, you know, almost prevented me from doing it. And, uh, yeah, I had a huge sense of accomplishment from that, and thought, right, Now it's time for another season of scuba diving. Went to a place called Antiparos, which is in the Cyclades Islands in Greece. Had a great summer, another one of the best of my life. Beautiful island. And if anyone is considering going on a diving holiday, Antiparos in Greece is a great destination. It's a really small island. It's only got like a summer population, a winter population of 500. So it's much smaller and intimate than some of your bigger places like Naxos or, um, uh, what's the one where you— never mind. Um, and, uh, yeah, great diving, great little town, nice tavernas, nice bars, nice square. Had a great time, relaxed, and then got back home to my dad's house and said to myself, right, I'm in the mood for another challenge. And so I I had this sort of embryonic idea to try and do something with the skills that the, the, the Corps had given me, to do something positive that was beyond politics.

Because of course Afghan left a, a little bit of a bitter taste in the mouth, you could say. Um, and I'd seen a few years before about how there was a, a sort of poaching wars going on in, in, in East Africa, uh, with, you know, some former military guys trying to fight the, the poachers who are trying to kill the rhinos and the elephants for their, the ivory and the horn. And I thought that would be a cool thing to do. And, and then I heard through the grapevine that a figure from my service who is going to crop up a few times in this story was involved in that. And this figure was the guy who was the colonel in charge of the Commando Training Center when I passed through. A very charismatic and inspiring man, a huge man as well. And he gives you your speech, or he gave to my intake the speech on your first day after you sign the form and, you know, pledge your whatever to whatever. And then he was there at the end of the 30-miler and gave me the Green Beret when I completed that.

And again, when I passed out. And, you know, he was a kind of a legendary figure in the British Commandos, and he had also been in the SBS, and I believe he went on to command the SBS and the SAS, but I'm not sure. At least one of them, maybe both, but who's counting at that stage? He was a very accomplished soldier and kind of a legend in the, you know, British Commandos and British Special Forces, and anyone from my sort of generation who's been through will instantly know who I'm talking about. But I'm not going to mention him by name here, and please edit it out if I do. So yeah, I'd heard he was involved in anti-poaching work. I'd heard he'd been involved in East Africa and in the Congo, and I was able to dig up his number from somewhere and gave him a call out of the blue, as you do to, you know, a former Commandant of Lymston, who you probably haven't seen in however many years and has no reason to remember you. But he said, no, I do remember you, which I thought was a lie at the time.

But if we get the time later, I'll circle back to why that probably was.

Because you got in trouble and you had to go to his office?

Oh, I was in trouble enough, but not for that. Not that time. And I said, hey, I'm, you know, Marine so-and-so. You gave me a Green Beret one time and, you know, done this and that. And I heard you were involved in anti-poaching and I'd really like to get involved. What are the options? What are the opportunities, please? And he was like, yeah, yeah, I could probably hook you up with that. You know, the sort of thing you'd be doing is managing a team of 50 rangers, privately employed, and, you know, half dozen Land Cruisers. Covering a conservancy the size of however many thousand miles up in this district or this country. And yeah, yeah, send me a CV and I'll see what I can do. I'll be in touch. And I was like, wow, I can't believe it. I'm just talking to, you know, Papa Green Beret here. And he actually was, you know, didn't just put down the phone on me or laugh in my face. So I sent off the CV and, you know, took a moment and my heart was fluttering a bit, and he called me back 15 minutes later and he said, I know you've never done anything like this, uh, but would you be open to doing a job on the private security side?

Uh, now when I'd left the military, I'd known about guys going to PSD details, Iraq, Afghanistan, the money to be made. I had heard the stories and they even sent one of them back to lecture us on why not to do it, obviously so that they could keep up their attention. But yeah, not that I put much faith in that. And I'd said to myself, I'm never going to do that, I'm never going to go private security. And, um, it sounds dramatic, but I said I'm never working with a gun in my hand again. Uh, so yeah, I know I'd sort of become a hypocrite, and who doesn't, but wanting to work in anti-poaching would obviously be breaking that rule. But yeah, I mean, I'll have to, uh, I'll have to sort of stretch my head and conscience around that somehow. Uh, so yeah, I, I didn't think I would ever get involved in private security, promised myself I wouldn't, and here was the opportunity. So Colonel said to me, can you, uh, can you be on a plane tonight? And, you know, if you, if you go to Heathrow right now and present yourself at the, you know, the check-in desk for this airline, say your name, there will be a ticket for you.

And, you know, obviously I've said, what's the job? And he said, well, I can't tell you until you get here. Yeah.

Should I pack a coat or Hawaiian shirt? What are we doing here? Yeah.

He said it is, it is going to be taking a package from one location to another, exchanging that package for another package. And bringing it back out to another location. And if we— if you get here and you don't want the job, I'll give you $5,000 and a plane ticket back. That'll be the end of it. As in, you know, once I tell you the details of what you'll be really be doing, you're like, no, no, timeout, I don't want this. You'll get $5,000, a plane ticket back. Fine. If for whatever reason we get to the launch point and it's canceled, that will be $10,000. 'If we get to the exchange and it's unsuccessful, that'll be 15, and if the exchange is successful, you'll get 20, and it's going to be approximately, you know, 3 weeks' work.' And I was just blown away by this. He's got me on the phone, on the spot, decision go/no-go. And I said, yeah, okay, um, put the phone down and went and packed a bag.

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And like my inner 12-year-old was sort of saying to me like, I knew this was gonna happen one day, I knew it. But at the same time I was like, this is real, this isn't a movie, you know. Why? What do they want with you? What skills do you have that no one else could fulfill? Because this guy has got to have a dozen former Regiment, former Pool, or former, um, Hereford guys he could call on. Why do they want you? What, like, what do you bring to the table? You sure you've got one tour and a Green Beret, but that is not what— anyway, I had a lot of misgivings. I was concerned. I thought maybe I was going to be roped in to be a patsy or a fall guy for something. I told my dad and, you know, shared my misgivings with him, and he was like, yeah, I know, I've got the same misgivings, but if I was a young man like you, I'd probably go as well. So, but the main thing that decided it for me was I thought the Colonel would not betray one of his Marines. Because one of the, one of the main things that, one of the main takeaways you would get if you met the man was his integrity.

And that kind of shone through in everything he said and did. And I thought, there's no way he would knowingly or willingly betray one of his Marines. He's not setting me up to be the fall guy. This is genuine. And I don't understand why or what for yet. So yeah, I got on the plane, I got on the train, got to Heathrow. And a part of me had been saying, no, this is a bite, someone's having you on, someone's pulling your leg here, like, ah, a few minutes after you sent your CV, he called up, you know, Paul and asked, do you remember this guy? Do you remember this guy? Yeah, I know, it's Dave, pull his leg, get him on a bike. So I was genuinely surprised when I got to the check-in desk and said my name and there was actually a ticket there. And yeah, I got on the plane, obviously I didn't sleep on the flight, I remember looking down, it was a night flight as it flew over Africa and seeing some of those little lights below and thinking, you know, this is like deepest, darkest Africa. Like, like, what's that book where the guy's going down the river to meet with—

You mean Apocalypse Now?

Sorry?

Apocalypse Now.

Apocalypse Now, but it was based on a book called Heart of Darkness.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I'd read Heart of Darkness and, you know, Darkest Africa and all the sort of mystery and, and fear that's associated with that. Now, with the Marines, I had been on jungle training in West Africa, um, when I was a recce troop, and so I'd spent, you know, 6 weeks there. But when you're sort of enfolded in the bosom of the, the military, you're protected. You are you know that if you're a casualty, they'll get you out, they'll get you back one way or another. You have all the logistical support, the command support, the communications, the QRF, you know, everything is there. Well, there's a huge apparatus there to protect you and help you achieve your mission. And now I was going private, something I'd never contemplated doing before, and I'd just done it at the drop of a hat and, you know, sold my principles as well for for a considerable sum of money. In 2008, that was quite a lot. That was enough to pay off my student loan and buy a motorcycle. And yeah, so, well, anyway, this is what was going through my head. And, and the colonel said to me, when you get to the airport, there'll be a guy at the, you know, when you come out the terminal, there'll be a guy with, um, two numbers on a piece of paper, 4 and 2.

Just go with him, all right? I was like, oh, this is like some sort of spy stuff. It's like I've been dropped in the middle of Jason Bourne here and I'm just the comedy sidekick. But that's kind of how I felt at the time. So yeah, it was, it was kind of terrifying. And the guy was there at the airport. I got in his car. I said, where are we going? He said, we're going to the Colonel's house. So that's where we went. And being in, you know, a West African— sorry, an East African capital, It was, you know, the sights and smells. Have you ever been to Africa?

West Africa, not East.

Yeah. Well, you know, burning trash has the same smell wherever you go. And the call to prayer, that's, you know, a distinctive part of it. It's very different when you're in Asia and the Middle East to when you're in Africa. They have a different cadence, if you can call it that. Yeah, it was, it was kind of overwhelming seeing giraffe right outside the airport as well on the drive and got to the Colonel's compound, I should say, house and met him. And yeah, he was just as imposing as I remembered, except he now had a beard and he put me up in his guest house on his, on his property and he took, you know, took me to his office and he explained what the job was. It was taking ransom to Somalia and coming back out with not one but two ships that have been held hostage by the pirates for the last couple months. And, um, you know, he confirmed the terms. I think I had an NDA to sign. I think I had an insurance policy to sign, which had a kidnap and ransom clause to it which said that there would be 250,000, uh, in ransom if I was taken, you know, hostage.

That would be, you know, a paid-in-order-to-get-me-out. And yeah, I was shown to this guest house. It was a pretty nice place, beautiful setting, which I became very familiar with in later years, the area rather than the house itself. And yeah, at a certain point he came out from the house with a couple beers, and we sat in his garden having beers, me and the former head of UKSF, which was, well, you know, meeting your heroes. It's, uh, it was, it was pretty heady stuff, you know, just meeting him or speaking to him, but now being taken into his circle of trust and, you know, him telling me about the job and and he did confess, you know, we are, we are a bit undergunned, um, there are some risks involved, but, you know, we've done this once before and it went okay, and we're hoping to do it again with the same formula. And, uh, you know, and later that night I, I actually was invited to dinner with his family. His, his kids were there, his wife was there, and, uh, you know, after that the kids went to bed and the three of us, you know, Colonel, his wife.

We sat out on the, on the grass, saw sunset. They, they were drinking wine. I think I had a beer. And yeah, he really, um, you could say took me into his family and made me feel, uh, made me feel very privileged to sort of experience that hospitality. And, uh, and yeah, we talked about a lot of stuff. Uh, tell you, at one point, and this is an insight into the the man himself. At one point, he went back to the house to get another bottle of wine, and his wife, who was a very, very beautiful, graceful, uh, lady, um, it was just the two of us for 5 minutes, and she said to me, I don't suppose you can tell us where, where you're going, can you? Because I guess she knew something was coming, you know, she, she must have known that, uh, the Colonel was going to be away for a few days. And then she said, "I probably don't want to know, do I?" And that one thing kind of illustrated to me how the Colonel, he, with him, his larger-than-life personality, his sort of insane level of confidence and self-assurance, which you might have come across some characters in the military who have this, it wasn't just an act with him.

The man genuinely had ice in his veins because he hadn't even confided in his wife where he was going or what he was doing. Now, for me, my wife, that's my best friend, that's my confidant. I could not keep something like that from her. I would have to share that kind of thing. I mean, I don't have that level of crazy self-confidence that I could just keep it to myself. I would have to share it. He hadn't. I guess I I mean, you know, a guy who's done as many things as he has, has probably found that formula by trial and error, and that it's probably safest to, to protect them by not telling your loved ones what you're doing or what you're going into so they don't worry about it. But I just, I'm not made of the same stuff. I would have to share that fear, my fears and doubts, with my best friend. I, I couldn't not do that. So yeah, to me, that's like, that was the most, the most amazing thing about it is he, he, it wasn't just an act that he, he dropped when he was with family.

He was like that all the time. And yeah, it was kind of a, kind of a chilling thing for me a little bit. But, uh, yeah, you know, he came back, then the next day there was briefing. I met the rest of the team. It was very diverse, a mix of expats, Europeans, and Africans. And the briefing was extensive. And, you know, actions on what do we do if we are approached, what do we do if we're contacted. We were sailing in two tugboats from a port in East Africa up the coast. We had two ransoms, which we didn't have on us at the time. It would meet us somewhere in transit. So yeah, then the team split, half of us went by ground, well, the bulk of us went by ground to that port, embarked on tugboats, had all the stores on board. You know, we had to load quite a few stores for both for ourselves for the voyage and for the crew when we got there, we had to have food to supply them because they had been, you know, on starvation rations for months.

I was gonna, I was gonna ask Dave, I mean, when you say you go there, you're going there to collect these two ships. I mean, the crews are being held hostage as well, aren't they?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, if we have time to go back and get into the sort of the economics of maritime ransom and K&R, we will. But it is a complex and labyrinthine— labyrinthine. It's, it's messed up. The people who write the check are not really writing it for the people. Sorry, for the crews. They're writing it for the asset, the hardware or its cargo. And yeah, that's, that's just the business of private security, I'm afraid. It's, it's—

and the way—

I don't want to use the word, it's kind of mercenary.

The— is the way it worked that the shipping company hired the Colonel Security Company? To make this transaction?

It was subcontracted. Okay. So in the— as soon as a ship gets hijacked, everyone tries to put the blame or the responsibility on everyone else. You have the trifecta of the shipowner who owns the hull, the ship management company, Oh, I got you. I froze it. Okay, uh, the ship owner owns the whole ship management company that runs the day-to-day and employs the crew legally. And the charterer— charterer sends the ship to whichever port to pick up whichever cargo based on the relative value of that particular cargo at that particular time on the stock market or the international exchange. So they're kind of gambling with, is this going to go up or down? Let's move this to there. And when the ship gets hijacked, all three of them are like, no, not my problem, it's yours. And the only person you can really guarantee to step forward is the ship owner. They want to get their ship back. So the legal wrangling between all three of them lawyers is what takes up a lot of the time and effort before an agreement can be made. I'm still frozen. You still see me?

Yeah, yeah, I got you just fine.

Okay. And money actually ponied up. And then you've got to figure out the amount. But, you know, in that whole time, the— whoever the lawyers have agreed is actually going to lead this has got to appoint a K&R negotiator, and they might have an attached K&R policy already, or they might not. Probably not. And then that negotiator has got to make contact and start the process. And once again, going back to the film analogy, the movie with Russell Crowe and Meg Ryan, uh, Proof of Life.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Actually a cool movie. But actually, from— although I was on the delivery side, I wasn't one of the brains. I was just one of the thugs. Sorry, one of the private security contractors who was part of the final security around the delivery. But I gleaned little bits here and there over my course and my career in the industry that let me piece together a picture which actually, you know, says that the negotiation process that you saw in that movie is pretty much spot on. And I believe that movie was made with consultants from another company that I'm not going to name who are the main worldwide renowned experts in the field. And you probably already know who I'm talking about. Well, like I say, no names. And I believe they were also the appointee in this case, or the first one I did. And they then subcontracted the firm that the Colonel was, uh, one of the heads of. There were two heads, um, he was one, uh, and that's where I got brought in. Now, so to sort of clear up the mystery of why I was involved, it was because someone dropped out at the last minute.

Yeah. Are you still receiving?

Yeah, yeah, I got you.

Because I'm just seeing my frozen— okay. Someone dropped out at the last minute, and then I happened to call the Colonel in the same, you know, few moments that they had had it in their spurs or whatever. And actually, they quit because they were concerned about the lack of firepower. Which I alluded to before in my discussion with the Colonel about it, and I will come back to later on. That's what I found out, but I wasn't told it at the time. Um, so anyway, um, back to the timeline. We diverted a bit. Uh, we were loading the, the tugboats in this port, and, uh, yeah, it was pretty atmospheric with the smells of rotting mangrove and the, you know, the, the dockyard smells, the rubbish. The sounds of the port city and, you know, all that's wonderful about being in East Africa and eventually set sail in the dark. And, you know, the Colonel had joined us just before we set sail with a couple suitcases, one of which we stowed. And yeah, we sailed in the sort of loose convoy, I suppose, these two tugboats. Pretty dilapidated with a, a mixed crew of East Africa, which represented most of the countries in East Africa from the, the crew side.

And then the security team ourselves were about, oh, I don't know, 8 strong, I guess, divided between the two boats, uh, about 50/50. And yeah, uh, it was rough as soon as we got out to sea. I was seasick. One of the other European guys gave me a seasickness tablet that pretty much knocked me out and fell asleep while this thing was bucketing around on the waves. And woke up the next morning and the seasickness had passed, but, you know, and it was a beautiful sort of sunrise out, out at sea off the coast of East Africa. And came up to the bridge to find the Colonel vomiting over the side. So I was a bit sort of— I was kind of reassured that, you know, I wasn't the the greenhorn showing myself up for being seasick. At least he was as well. But, uh, yeah, and, uh, and then the next sort of—

this is—

these are the events that happened almost 20 years ago, so it's kind of like a string with knots in it at various intervals. And, and, uh, I might get the, the order wrong, and I might get details wrong, because a memory that old is more like a photocopy of a photocopy after so long. But there's certain things where you, you sort of mark them with a knot because it, it— you remember it because it, it evidence an emotional response. And the next one I remember is when we unwrapped the, the weapons and got those out. And I've been told in the briefing, the colonel said, are you a good shot, Dave? Yeah, yeah, I'm a pretty good shot. Okay, good. Uh, you'll be getting a SIG rifle. And I was like, oh cool, SIG rifle. Maybe like a SIG 550. That's awesome.

Yeah, yeah.

All right, yeah. So, um, it was wrapped in a, a blanket, like a woolen military blanket, tied at both ends with string. I still remember that detail. I untied it and flung back the blanket, and there was this bolt-action single-shot target rifle. And I hadn't been lied to so much. He had come straight out and said, yeah, I'm a bit concerned that we're under gunned. But, you know, I was fangirling so hard over the Colonel, over being, you know, taken into his trust and, you know, treated like family and asked to come on this cool, international, mysterious conspiracy piracy type. I was fangirling so hard, I wasn't really listening to what I was being told. And Besides that, I don't know what I'd have done if I had realized what he meant. Yeah, single-shot bolt-action 7.62 target rifle. Uh, a— it was called an SIG STR200, and I think the STR stood for Scandinavian Target Rifle. No magazine, so you have to drop each round in the breech, push it forward and down, and the sights were diopter sights. And if you don't know what those are, it's a very narrow peep at the back, and at the front is a hooded post, and in, in the middle is like a, a London Underground symbol of a, a circle with two arms either side.

And if you're doing biathlon, which funnily enough I, I did do, uh, then that will be very familiar to you, and They're great for shooting at round black targets 25 to 50 yards away. They are not very good for your peripheral awareness because you're looking down this very narrow— like, the single-shot target part is bad enough, but the diopter sights were the worst feature you could ask for on a combat rifle. So yeah, and the other blanket was a shotgun, a sporting 12-gauge autoloader, and the last weapon that we got out was a Sig— sorry, no, a Glock pistol. It was one of those subcompacts that fired, uh, .357, uh, sorry, .357 Sig, I think is the caliber. I, I've not come across it before or since. I know it's a thing, but not a user or adherent of it. Are you still seeing this? Because I'm just seeing a frozen screen. Yep. Okay, cool. So yeah, seeing that my heart absolutely sank like a stone and we were already out to sea. I can't exactly go, whoa, whoa, time out, take me back to shore. I had to suck it up. And yeah, it's like, welcome to the wonderful world of startup PMCs because it was, you know, at that stage, still a startup PMC.

It would go on to be one of the more respected, more established companies in the industry. Later on, but at this stage it was a startup and it wasn't about, you know, there was a few factors at play here as to why it was a rush job and why they were going with what hardware they had available, legally available at short notice in East Africa without drawing too much attention to yourself. And you cannot rely on the law enforcement there if they got wind of an event like that taking place. You know, they might arrest you on a pretext and then the ransom that was taken in as evidence would suddenly disappear and they'd say, what ransom? And you, you know, wouldn't matter to you because you'd be in jail for several months while lawyers wrangled over it. And yeah, it had to be done with what was legally available at short notice without drawing too much attention.

But in this case, you guys got the money while you were out at sea.

Um, it arrived, uh, before we left port.

Okay.

Um, and I have my suspicions as to exactly where it came from, but yeah, I'll keep those to myself for now. And yeah, after that initial shock and the sort of realization and adjustment to it, you know, I started, started figuring, let's work the problem, let's try and come up with you know, a plan and a, you know, run through drills and what have you with the team. The Colonel took a step back and let me just, you know, talk to the rest of the team and work with them. There was guys who had operational experience, there's guys who had had Special Forces training from, you know, different units in East Africa, and there was guys with no operational experience who had just been working in anti-poaching or stuff like that. And so I sort of said, right, this is how we're going to run the sentry, this is how we're going to run the watch routine, this will be the SOPs. And the Colonel just sort of stood back, stepped back, and let me run with kind of figuring out these procedures. And at one point we test-fired the weapons. We had an empty oil can, plastic oil can, over the side on a rope, and we tried to hit it.

And I was pleased to see that I was the only fellow who could hit the oil can with the rifle. We all tried with the pistol and the shotgun. Shotgun we couldn't get working properly, would not auto-load. You could single-load it, but we took it apart, we cleaned everything, we tried to oil the action with whatever oil we scrounged off the engine room on the tugboat. In the event when a contact happened, it did work. I think it was because of the type of ammo we were using. We had several different random types. I knew nothing about shotguns at that stage from having never been issued one or used one. Anyway, we kind of, like I say, after the initial shock, I worked the problem. I started coming up with plans and trying to figure things out and come up with the best solution we could to the problem we had. And that's my sort of— that's how I deal with anxiety, is by planning and attention to detail and figuring stuff out and being as prepared as I can. So that was how I approached that as the voyage went on day by day.

The weather got better, it got worse. I got used to the seasickness. I got used to the food. It was pretty awful food. Like one of the, one of the European guys, I'll call him Steve, he joked that it was goat cooked with dynamite and rice. And what's that? There's a, there's a sort of maize meal that is a staple diet in East Africa. I forget the name of it, but you can mash it up with gravy and meat and turn it into a semi-palatable meal. I want to say cassava, or anyway, it's kind of white, like corn maze meal mush. Yeah, the diet was an eye-opener. The diarrhea was a bit unpleasant. The toilet was disgusting. Riding— that's what Steve said, trying to use the toilet in a storm was like trying to ride one of those mechanical bulls and stay on. While you're being thrown around inside this little head on the, on the boat. Doing laundry was a challenge. Staying clean was a challenge. Just sleeping was a challenge until you got used to it. And, you know, we'd started going on watches once we get into Somali water, you know, keeping up a presence on the bridge all night, being armed.

We had a night vision device like one of those monocles. but it was like a Gen 1 thing, so it was like almost worse than useless, but in certain light conditions it gave you a slight advantage, so we still used it. There was a radar working on this, this old dilapidated tugboat. I found the, the boiler, the sort of, the boilerplate, whatever you call it, the maker's plate that gave its particulars, and it was manufactured in 1984 in, I think Glasgow or Clydesdale, someplace in Scotland. And its manuf— its design speed was 14 knots, but it was so old and shot that it can only do a maximum of 9.8. Um, and the other tugboat was a bit faster, so they're always pushing to get ahead and we're always having to tell them to slow down. We had radio comms with them, the radar worked but it was a bit iffy, it wasn't that great. You know, you try and track off the other tugboat to make sure you could tune it, to make sure you had the right settings for the conditions. Sometimes— one time I remember we had a radar contact coming the other way in the night.

We all stood to, we all got ready, and it passed right between the two tugboats and went back, you know, back the way we came, and it didn't even see us. We saw no lights on board. We got to understand how, how radar works, a system called AIS, which allows a blip to sort of come up on your radar screen with information about the, the target. And on more advanced radars I find later, give you course, speed, TCPA, CPA, all that information about where it came from, where it was heading, and its cargo. On this radar, it was just really basic. It might just give you a name of the vessel. And a lot of vessels running in those waters running with their AIS turned off. They're running dark, no lights. So yeah, we had a few, you know, stand-to's when we were concerned about vessels that we saw in the day or in the night. Obviously it's a lot worse at night. I remember some of those long watches at night, you know, out to sea there, there's no light, it's completely dark. It's the darkest, blackest night you'll ever see. Miles from shore, and the blanket of stars overhead was just amazing.

The Milky Way in all its glory, and you could see the, the tug's mast just by where it was obscuring the stars as it swung between them. And seeing the odd shooting star where you sat out there smoking a cigarette on watch, coming inside, checking the radar, going for a walk around the back deck again. On the back deck of the tug, the, the low deck, We'd strung ropes across it to try and be a trip hazard to anyone that came and boarded and tried to, you know, make their way towards the superstructure in the dark. That was our biggest fear, being boarded in the dark by someone we didn't see or, or, or, or hear them coming. But yeah, and as each day went on, you know, the tensions arose a little bit like a ratchet as we were getting closer and closer to the target area. And occasionally we, we encounter a coalition warship, and I'd been designated by the colonel as the sort of communicator. I don't know, maybe I had a clear, precise RP voice or whatever you want to call it. But sometimes when a coalition warship would hail us, they would— they didn't know what we were doing there, and they'd be like, hey, you know, you should get out of this area, it's really dangerous.

You should make your way to, you know, safe waters as soon as possible. There's a threat in the area. And I'd be like, okay, 'Yeah, sorry, thanks for the heads up. We are low on fuel, we've got engine problems. That's why we're heading for the closest safe port. Thanks for the advice, we'll definitely heed that, but we are making best speed for wherever,' I said, lied. And then sometimes another coalition warship would go straight past us and not say a thing. And it's like they were going like— So that was kind of funny. And then, yeah. And you still with me?

Yeah. So how many days did it take you to get to the destination?

Well, the whole thing there and back was 21, so divide that by 2.

Yeah, 10 days.

I guess it was 9 to 10 days. And then for the fucking around that we had to do once we were there, I'd say at least 48, maybe. Yeah, 48, 48 hours.

So what happened once you arrived?

Well, when we got to the first one, the first ship was a, like a pretty small one. It was like a 10,000 or 20,000-ton product tanker. I believe it had a Western captain, but an Asian crew. And The other tugboat stayed back over the horizon and we went in, made contact over the radio. I can't remember if it was the first or the second one, but I remember the voice of the negotiator coming over and making the hairs on the back of my neck rise up because you could tell he'd been Western educated. He might be a Somali, but he had spent at least some time being educated or working in the West because of how good his English was. It just made you think, you know, this guy has been— seen our society, been a part of it, and chosen the path he's chosen. It shouldn't be surprising at all, but, you know, there's a certain fear of the unknown and the cultures and the things you don't understand about Africa. And, you know, I'd never lived there at this point, so just hearing that kind of gave me, gave me the shudders, I suppose you could say.

And like I say, I can't remember if this is the first one or the second one, I'm probably confusing them. But we got close enough, we got in visual range. And then, you know, I, like the day before, the Colonel had told myself and Steve to go and count the money. And if you've never been in the room with $2 million, it's It's like being in the room with a beautiful living thing. You know that movie, um, Pulp Fiction, where he opens the suitcase and there's that like yellow glow coming out of it? Um, and so I've been told to count this and box it up because he didn't even want to give him a suitcase, he wanted to give him a cardboard box. Um, so Steve and I took a brick each and counted the brick, and it came to 50,000. And then we couldn't be bothered to count each individual note. So we just counted the bricks after that. And it came to the figure we had been given. So it was, you know, it was complete. It was legit. No one had screwed us over along the way. I wasn't an expert in money at the time.

I sort of am now. But yeah, it looked legit. So I packed it in this box, taped the hell out of it with gaffer tape, sorry, duct tape, and put a rope on it and lashed it so that it wasn't going to come free and had that ready and waiting under guard. And yeah, once we got close enough, the skiff came out from the hijacked ship, the— what I'm going to call the pirate ship. And the Colonel got in it and went back. And man, I remember looking down and thinking he looked incredibly small as he went. Hot damn, man. I'm a bad narrator. I skipped past some of the coolest stuff. You still with me?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, so I can't believe I skipped past that bit. Uh, like when we were coming in after we'd made contact on radio, when we were moving into the final RV Um, the colonel asked me to strap his ankle holster on with a Sig pistol in it, the subcompact I'd mentioned earlier. I know, bad back or whatever. So he was sitting on a couch on the bridge, and I was, you know, kneeling down in front of him, uh, to strap the ankle holster on and seat it in there, and, you know, make sure it's tight enough. You okay? Is that good, boss? Is that right? Okay, good, fine. And I started whistling a tune, and it was Bob Marley. I want to know you and treat you right. I want to love you every day and every night. I was just whistling the tune, and the Colonel heard it, and he started singing the lyrics. And like, we'd been other people have been doing stuff in other corners of the bridge, you know, making ready this or checking that, and then everyone just stopped and we just sort of vibing to this tune together. We started singing along together.

"We'll be together," come on, help me out, how does it go here? "We'll share the same room of my single bed," and yeah, we sang it through to the end and just like shared that weird little moment of sort of camaraderie or togetherness bonding over this, this cool Bob Marley tune. And it just broke the tension. And I don't know what that says about us or guys who are going into a tense situation, but we just kind of like had that little moment of shared togetherness. And it was, it was kind of cool. And yeah, I didn't want to tell the story without relating that, that one, that one moment that That was kind of good. But yeah, he was going across with a pistol in an ankle holster. And I remember, you know, talking to him about what he was doing. And he happened to mention casually, you know, if things go wrong, you know, I'll have an AK pretty soon. So, you know, and he just mentioned it so casually. I couldn't believe that he was doing this, going into this situation. With these heavily armed guys, and he was going to be the only one going across.

And now you sort of understand why when I looked down and saw him on the boat going across, he looked awfully small to me. At least that's the feeling I remember. Yeah, he got across. He had a walkie-talkie, he talked back to me. He verified the hostages were there, the crew was safe, they were unharmed, you know, and then he asked for Steve to come across, which I thought was a bit strange, but Steve came across. I guess, you know, as one of his lieutenants, he wanted Steve to sort of get some experience in and around them because he might have to be doing it the next time. Um, and then he asked for the doc to come across. We had a, a Kenyan Army guy— you got to edit that part out— we had a, we had a, a medic from a, from an, um, from an East African country who'd been in the military, um, and, uh, he went across next. So this, this little skiff was going back and forth taking people across. He wanted the medic to check out the crew to make sure they're okay, you know, to, to make sure they're all right.

And so I started feeling uneasy at this point because there was only myself and one other guy who'd been in the East African, uh, Special Forces there was only 2 shooters left on the tugboat. We only had 2 guns, so it was actually probably for the best. But yeah, I was, um, I was starting to feel that we were putting ourselves in a, you know, tactically vulnerable position, having so many of our guys over there, you know, under their control and potentially in harm's way rather than back on the tugboat. And I had other tasks that I was busy with. I was communicating with the ship owners and the, you know, people who were holding their hands through the final negotiation. And then the signal came across, right, pass the ransom over. And the tugboat came in. I told the captain, you bring us alongside. And I went up with the box and came underneath the vessel, underneath its railings. And I was in the sort of the area around the tug bridge. It's a bit higher than the deck. And I looked up and saw these two pirates looking down at me. Obviously, all of our weapons were out of sight.

We weren't wearing any kind of military clothing, fatigues or whatever, just a t-shirt, a pair of slacks. And, uh, I had the rope, the box, threw the rope up, they caught the rope, and then they started pulling on it, and I lifted it up, and that was the ransom on its way. And then we pulled back and then just hung out while they counted it all. And it took them several hours to count it all. And part of the things that we'd sent across with each skiff, with each guy that went over, was cigarettes and liquor. I'm not sure about the, the wisdom of sending liquor across, but while the pirates were all gathered in the conference room on the ship, they were counting the money, they were sharing the liquor, smoking the cigarettes and divvying it up between all of them. And I'll go into the economics of the trade, who got what and how the ransom was split up. But they waited until dusk before they got off that ship. And at the time, I was waiting and waiting and waiting. And I had other jobs to do the communication bit and what have you.

And it was really fraying on the nerves, not knowing what they were waiting for. And then realizing that after dusk, they were waiting for dusk so that that would cover their them going back to shore because other gangs would be watching this from the shore and they would love to, um, you know, meet them at the shore and ask if they'd like to share their spoils, I guess. So that was, that was the reason for waiting for dusk, and that's what they always did. I learned that with the pattern— wait for dusk, pirates get off after dusk, and then the ship could get underway after they've been cleared. And so we got underway, you know, they went they left. They had to restart the engines, and I went through this process subsequently a couple times. And so it's not easy restarting a ship's engines after so many months dormant, uh, and it takes time. And the whole time you're worried, is there going to be another gang coming out from the shore? Is there going to be more skiffs? You're staring at a radar screen like your life depends on it. You're looking out into the darkness, you're covering it with a nod Eventually they got ship's engines started.

They got out to sea. The other tugboat came and joined us to escort us right out as we were heading out. And, and at this point, my memory gets a little bit hazy. The sequence of events. Am I mixing it up with the first and the second one?

Okay.

At a certain point, you know, we said, all right, we've got them so far out. That's what was in the contract. Wave goodbye, and they're on their way. Everyone came back across to the tug, and then we set about the next task the next day. And I think the, the other tug had split off and gone over to meet the, the new gang while we were still escorting them further out, because the next morning when we came to rejoin them, by the time we did rejoin them, they the ransom had already been exchanged. They'd already been through that whole rigmarole and that whole tense situation when we caught up. One of the guys, an incredibly brave younger guy, like my same sort of age as me, but an expat living in East Africa who'd grown up there, you know, well, actually, an East African, someone who was born in East Africa, but was of European origin, put it that way, not an expat. Um, incredibly bravely went across on his own without the colonel, just did the, did the did, and, you know, sent the ransom across. And when we arrived, it was already on board.

But when we got there— I'm going to finish this and open a new one— when we got there, you could tell there was a different atmosphere. The previous group of pirates we dealt with, while, well, being, you know, pretty— well, being pirates and horrible and mean, and, uh, you know, having all the AKs and the PKMs and the RPGs and whatnot and looking like you'd expect, they hadn't been overly aggressive. But the atmosphere coming off this new gang was different. I think the first ship, the Irene, they had maybe a dozen pirates there. Part of them was a security detail that beefed up for the exchange, and part of them was the guards that had been there to watch the ship and the crew while it was, you know, uh, being— while the ransom was negotiated. The other ship, it was called the Stella Marie, and you can look, look this up. I mean, uh, from my recollection, the date of the release was a bit off from what you can find online. But Stella Marie was a 65,000-ton bulk ore carrier. Big ship, beautiful, pretty, pretty new, had an all-Filipino crew. And there were 40 pirates on board.

They had brought on reinforcements because they were especially afraid of us, because a few months before there had been a French yacht and special forces, you know, they'd gone in with normally the ransom to exchange it and, you know, do what we were doing. But French commandos had actually been there and raided it and killed the pirates and got them out without paying the ransom. So that had raised the stakes, and this particular gang didn't want that to happen to them. There were 40 heavily armed pirates on board, and they were really aggressive, and they wanted to fight. Like you could just feel in the communications a different, a different vibe coming off them and see it watching them that they were, you know, that they were, they were fingers on triggers. They were, they wanted an excuse to kill us almost. So after we caught up with the second tugboat and the Colonel went across, I could hear his voice was different that time. And the Doc went across as well and Steve went across again and I was you know, having my misgivings once again about putting us at this tactical disadvantage with so many of our guys there.

And Steve told me at one point, one of the negotiators said to the colonel, you know, I have the ransom, I have the ship, and I have you. What's your leverage here? You know, he, he was basically threatening. And when things got tense, the doc told me at one point a pirate was detailed to mark the Colonel and stand behind him, and he was basically about to plug him. And what, what you're about to hear, what happened, that raised the stakes even further. And the whole time I was doing the other parts of my job and the communication bit back to, I think it was somewhere in Japan where the handholder had gone to go to the company offices of the ship owner to be there for the final stage of the negotiation. And I think that's when the, the ship owners realized why this part of the operation was so expensive, when they, they were getting the updates I was sending them and hearing how things were unfolding and how tense it was. And at one stage, right in the middle of this, another gang of pirates came out from the shore in their skiffs, and they came out, and I was on this tugboat with the guy that the ex-East African Special Forces guy, were the only two left apart from the tugboat crew.

And I knew if the gang that was coming out on the skiffs, if they came alongside or if they tried to board us and we fired in self-defense, not at the pirates on the ship, but at the pirates from the other gang that were coming out to try and, you know, interdict the ransom or, you know, try and snatch it if they thought it was still in play. They would instantly execute our guys on the ship. So I told the captain and the chief engineer, get the engine going, get this thing moving as fast as you can, use the ship to shield us from the pirates coming out from the shore. So it's kind of like Tom and Jerry when they're trying to chase each other around the table and get, get the ship as— and get the tug moving as fast as possible to get it around the other side of the ship so that we wouldn't be in harm's way when these guys reached us. And that's when things were definitely at their tensest. And once those skiffs came out from shore, they actually started a gun battle between the pirates on the ship and the, the other gang that had come out to try and see what was going on.

They were shooting at each other with PKMs. Um, I don't know if they were hitting anything, and I, I've got a theory, and I don't know if I've never heard this from anyone else, but it's like, I'm not sure if I believe it, but the theory goes this: for Somalis, gunfire isn't necessarily an attempt on your life. It's a form of dialogue.

East African proverb.

Yeah. So you could take it as that, or you could take it, you you know, us in the Western world, you know, when someone shoots at you, like, okay, it's on, you mean to kill me, and I am, you know, emboldened to use the same measures against you. But for them, maybe it's not quite the same as that. Maybe it's just an escalation in the dialogue or a way of saying, hey, I see you, fuck off. I don't know, that's just a, that's just a thought that occurred to me, and I've never sort of really expressed it out loud. Maybe some anthropologist, cultural specialist, whatever, can comment in the comments about the validity of that theory. Anyway, they were having a go at each other with belt feds, and I was very glad to be around the other side of the bulk of the ship so that that shielded us from that little gun battle going on. And then after they pissed off back to shore, there was a gunshot came out from the ship, and when I eventually got on the radio and raised one of my buddies there, it was the doc, and he was like, yeah, one of the pirates just shot another one.

So they're fighting over the money. Yeah, yeah.

Whether it was deliberate or not, and see, I'm just, just telling the story almost 20 years later, I'm starting to feel that, that, that tension, and you know, oh God, I need this, need a swig of this beer now. Yeah, um, it's been a long time since I relived this, uh, and telling it, it's like going through it again almost. But yeah, one of the pirates shot another one while they were getting ready to disembark. Eventually they did, they pissed off back to shore, and then we had to, we had to pump fuel onto the Stella Marie because they'd run out of fuel I think they call it bunker fuel, and we had to pump other things. I think we had to pump fresh water on, they'd run out of that. We had to use the crane to load stores on. We tried to do it while— after they got the engines moving, we tried to pump fuel while we were attached to them and being towed by them, and it was too dangerous because the tug was kind of meandering. Yeah, that was a lot of crazy, stupid seafaring stuff that we did that you probably shouldn't.

And I can't remember if that was the day after the night, but yeah, as soon as we got it going, we headed out to sea, you know, ship, tugboat either side, trying to provide some sort of, you know, protection to it in case someone else came out. And then the next morning, Colonel's like, yeah, Harry, I want you to come on the ship. Oh, Harry, my— the Colonel said to each of us in this, in the briefing, you've all got to have a non- you've all got to have a pseudonym or a nom de guerre, and I chose the name Harry Maskers because that had been the— I don't know, have you ever heard of Harry Maskers?

No.

Harry Black is the British military term for black duct tape. Oh, okay. Masking tape, you know, the universal panacea without which military units would grind to a halt in 24 hours. It's used to fix and make just about everything. Um, in the British military, Harry Baskers is the, yeah, the nickname for black duct tape. I think you call it like 1,000-mile-an-hour tape or something.

Yeah, yeah, 100-mile-an-hour tape.

Okay, yeah, 100-mile-an-hour. So yeah, everyone knew me as Harry. And so on the radio, especially when we were talking to each other, we were using pseudonyms, and I was Harry. And he was like, Harry, I want you to come aboard, I want you to see the, the what, what the ship's like and meet the crew. And you know, I was like, "Oh, wow, the Cubs!" Yeah, I was still fangirling hard at this point. You have to understand, in spite of everything and because of everything that had happened. So yeah, jumping across from the tugboat to the ship, that was really dicey. I had to talk to the captain of the tugboat and say, you know, "How do you do this? What's the procedure?" and he was like, okay, we'll come alongside, and then at a certain point, because we're still moving, we're heading out to sea, we're trying to get out away from the, you know, the coast as fast as possible, and the ship can only make a fraction of its design speed because of all the, the marine growth that's been encrusting it for months has caused an imbalance on the propeller, so it's shaking too hard if it tries to make maximum speed.

So yeah, it's, it's reduced speed, and but we're still heading out as fast as we can in, in this formation. And the tugboat captain explained, as soon as we get close enough, the draft of the ship will suck us in, and when it does, we'll hit, and you have to time your jump just right, because if you jump after the, the hit, then the momentum will be lost and you'll just like hit the side and be smeared along the side. And if you jump too soon and then the opposite will happen and you'll be screwed. And if you go in the water, I will steer the tugboat nose in so the stern will go out, so you won't be chopped up by my propellers. Then all you have to worry about is to get away from the propellers of the ship as they come alongside and not get sucked under by the draft. So swim, you know, that way as fast as you can and hope for the best. So I was making this jump with the the rifle on my back in a backpack with some ammunition and some other stuff and the camera.

Oh yeah, I've been asked to bring a camera across to photograph the crew and the state of the ship and whatnot. And yeah, the sort of standing on top of that railing and waiting for that collision and timing my jump just right. There was a couple of crewmen, the Filipino crewmen, who had come down and was, you know, standing in the railing just opposite me. And as I jumped and sort of— I wish I'd had it in slow motion or something, but, uh, yeah, as I jumped, they grabbed me and I banged my shins on the railing and kind of made it over, and they dragged me over the top of it. But that was terrifying as hell. I mean, with everything that happened before, I still remember that as one of the most tense moments, that jump. Yeah, but then I got to meet the crewmen and that was another thing in itself. These guys have been held for months. I mean, I remember exactly the last ship I did, they were 5 months. This ship, I can't remember how many months they've been held. They told me, I'm sure. In my head, I want to say it was 3 months, but it, you know, memory plays you false after so many years.

But meeting them, telling them my name, they're like, oh, Harry, Harry, Harry. 'Like, like the Prince Harry, right?' I was like, 'Yeah, like Prince Harry, sure.' Um, and they were so friendly and so enthusiastic and so delighted to meet us. And we all, all of us on the security team, we, we went to the, the conference room and we had like a debrief while we were still heading out to see about what worked, what didn't work, and what happened. So we all understood the how things unfolded and the lessons that we could learn from this. And while that was happening, these Filipino crewmen, they cooked us dinner. They cooked us— no, it was lunch, it was midday. And they had hidden in the freezer while they were captives to try and, you know, feel that they had a secret and they weren't giving up everything. They had hidden some steaks inside this freezer, and they— the first meal they cooked, it wasn't for themselves, it was for us. And this steak, it wasn't anything special, you know, been frozen for months, but it was steak, and it was better than anything I'd eaten in a couple weeks.

And it felt so meaningful that the first meal that they cooked after they cleaned up themselves in the galley and got everything running again was for us. That was like such a powerful gesture and made me feel completely— what's the word I'm searching for? Inadequate. You know, I just— they thought we were something special and I just showed up for money. And yeah, I was being treated like this. Yeah, it meant something to them. And to have someone say thank you and really mean it. That is something I've seldom experienced, a couple times like this, but it leaves its mark on you. And it was, it was, it was something special and something really powerful, and I felt it at the time. I still feel it now recounting it. That steak dinner with a couple of leaves of salad. I don't know where the salad came from or how they got it, but yeah, the steak I do remember. And the warmth that they showed us and the thanks. And I remember at one point the Colonel got them all together on one of the decks at the side of the bridge for a group photo and was like, "Give us a 'We are alive!'" And they just weren't feeling it.

They were happy in their own way. They weren't going to be inspired by someone giving them a speech. I remember taking that picture I don't have it. I had to, you know, that was Colonel's camera. I gave that up. But yeah, it was, that was a picture. And that was, it was something special to see them, even though they didn't quite respond to the attempts to sort of enliven them. They were going through, they were going through something in their own headspace that only they'd been through. And you could see that they were unwinding and processing it in their own way. And anyway, long and the short of it was the Colonel said, I, I don't think the Captain is able to command his ship, and I need one of us to go with him to the port that they're gonna head for and dock at after we peel off and head back. And Dave, would you do it? And I was like, no, I want to stay with the team. I want to see this through to the end. 'You know, we've been working together, and for me to just be split off now is kind of feels like— I mean, this is an unexpected honor and what have you, but I want to stick with the team that has been through all this together and see the job through as originally, you know, as originally sold to me.' And he said, 'All right, fine, I'll go.' And he said, 'Actually, it's a good thing you don't go because because I got two passports and you don't, which is a very good thing because then it might have involved— it worked out well.

It's a good thing that I didn't go, put it that way. Are you still with me? I still can't see anything. Okay. So yeah.

So what was, what was sort of the next job, the next counter-piracy job after that one?

It's not over. This job isn't over yet. Um, so yeah, we split off, you know, the, the release ship went on, went on its way. I think it headed north, two tugboats, and the rest of the team, we split off and headed back down south. And, you know, aside from the seasickness and the crap food and the, you know, re-watching the same stuff on the DVD over and over again and rereading the same crap books that I'd read the week before over and over again, It was pretty uneventful until, that is, we were almost across the border or almost out of Somali waters. And then we got bumped by another gang. And I remember being up on the bridge because I was still there, you know, Boy Scout, still being on watch when everyone else was starting to relax. I'm talking to the captain. And he was like, nah, we're almost safe now. I don't think there'll be any, any more danger. I was like, okay. And they went back to the wheel and then turned around a moment later and his eyes were as wide as saucers. I'll never forget it. And he just says one word, ski.

And yeah, grab the binoculars, look at the radar. Lo and behold, on the horizon there is a mothership. And it's just in the process of detaching a couple of skiffs and they start coming in towards us. And so we stand to, get on the radio, alert the other vessel. It's behind us, you know, a couple hundred yards behind. Everyone goes to their positions, everyone gets ready. Steve's in command. He says, you go there, Shaw, you go there. And the drill had been we let them come in and we show them we have weapons. We don't want to start a fight because we might have to do business with these guys a couple of months down the line. And Somalis are— definitely remember a vendetta and never pass up an opportunity to return the favor if they lose one of their own. So, yeah, we were very cognizant of that. And to use force only after, you know, polite dissuasion had failed. But I was thinking, man, if they get on board or if they get— our advantage is keeping them at arm's length. Our advantage is my rifle and my accuracy, which I can keep at arm's length.

Their advantage is volume of fire. Once they're getting close, my advantage is nullified and their advantage is maximized. Maximized. I told you, I go through things in my head. That's my way of, uh, you know, working through anxiety or whatever. So yeah, I was most concerned about them getting inside my envelope, getting inside my ability to keep them away. And, uh, and they came in, and we never got time to go through the pre— you know, the, the escalation levels of warnings and whatnot, because the other tugboat opened fire. I guess a little bit less disciplined than us. And after they opened fire, the pirates opened fire. And, you know, you've heard incoming fire. And when you start hearing the thoom, you know they're getting close. And, you know, that was something. And Steve says to me, right, give me one warning shot, Dave. Give me a warning shot like 30 degrees off axis. So they know we're not going to take this lying down. So I gave them one warning shot. And, you know, the chain of command had been established. I had to respect it. I did. And then I was— the dynamic in my head was I've got this K&R policy, quarter of a million to get me back.

No, no, no. This— before we opened fire, that was what went through my head. Before they opened fire, that was what went through my head. And I was thinking, you know what, if they take us prisoner, if we get taken hostage, you know, barring accidents, I will get to go home. I will live because I got this kidnap and ransom policy. So, but if we fight and are captured, we'll probably be dead. We'll probably be executed or if we're not killed in the capture itself. So I was thinking, what are we going to do? You know, if I don't fight, if I put my hands up, I will almost certainly live, but I'll have a very unpleasant 3 months and a story to tell my grandchildren about. But if I do fight, there's a decent chance I'll die, a more than decent chance considering the, you know, uh, the disparity in firepower. Uh, so that was the dynamic going through my head, and that's when the other boat opened fire, and it's like, okay, the, the, um, the mechanics and the whys and the whats and the ifs and the wherefores are taken out of it.

Now the firefight started, and that's when Steve said, right, give me a warning shot, 30 degrees. Did it. And then I was like, oh, fuck this, fuck these warning shots, I'm going to shoot to kill. So chambered one, put it home, took aim, took the shot, and And within, within a few moments, I don't remember how many because time sort of dilates and stretches out and compresses in a firefight in those high-stress situations. But it was almost like, I remember pretty soon after that shot, they turned around and they stopped shooting, or they were just firing potshots over the stern as they were retreating. But I don't think I hit anyone that day. I'm, in fact, I'm almost certain I didn't. I just, I just didn't feel the vibe. And as you know, if I get onto that part of the story, I know what that vibe feels like. So I don't think that's what happened. But maybe I just got close enough to make them change their mind. And I think that's what probably happened. But yeah, they turned around, they went back. I went and looked at the superstructure of the tugboat afterwards.

I couldn't see any hits. But when someone's been firing fully automatic in your direction, you've been hearing that— thwip! Thwip! You've been seeing the splashes, it was coming close enough to make you sit up and pay attention. And when it's over then you feel a certain satisfaction at having sort of got through that and a certain... I don't know, certain... Well, I think Winston Churchill said it best when he said, "To be shot at without incident is one of the most exhilarating experiences," and I can certainly second that. And straight afterwards, we took a picture, myself and Shaw, and I'm going to try and share that if I can. Oh, my screen's back. All right, start sharing.

Share.

Uh, only the host can share in this meeting. Oh, sorry. Can we, can we fix that? Yeah, or I can send it to you after this and you can just splice it in. Show—

okay, yeah, yeah, email it to us afterwards.

I sent that picture at one point, I think, to try and hook your interest, but yeah, I'm in flip-flops, um, posing alongside Shaw with my bolt-action rifle and his sporting shotgun, and that was taken right after the pirate attack, and right off we saw it off. And, you know, I don't think anyone was hurt on either side, so best possible outcome, really. Just gonna—

so, yeah, let's move it along to the next piracy job you had.

Okay, well, there's a sort of a postscript. When we got back into port, you know, a few days later, because we were quite close at that stage, Steve had been scheduled to go to a wedding and he said, do you want to come along? You know, I can't get you in the wedding, but you know, the pre-party and what have you, we booked a hotel, my family's coming down, we're going to stay in it. And so I said, sure. You know, not exactly wedding crashed, but crashed one of the parties, and we— within hours of getting off the boat and leaving the port, I was at a beach party, this beach nightclub, you know, with this music pumping out. I mean, I tried to socialize and I tried to have a beer or two, but I was just exhausted, emotionally exhausted after this whole thing. And I just remember sitting down in the sand with Steve, with a couple beers between us, a little bit away from the action, just saying like, dude, did that just fucking happen? I still, yeah, and I still can't believe it, like almost 20 years later. Did that really happen?

The whole thing was like like a movie from start to finish. And sometimes I ask myself, am I— did I hallucinate it? Am I like Walter Mitty, like, you know, just imagining things that happened to me? But I've got the pictures. I hope the audience is going to see the pictures to, you know, get something concrete to say, yeah, it actually happened. But it's still wild looking back at it. And that That beach party, that time sitting down in the sand and just talking about it and reliving it and talking about it with Steve, it was wild. So that was the interesting postscript and the sort of the final epilogue to that particular adventure. How are we doing for time?

I feel— Oh, I mean, we're— we probably can do like another half hour or so.

Oh boy. I used up, yeah, uh, yeah, half hour, 45 minutes or something like that. Um, so after that I, um, I made some good contacts, you know. I— there was a, there was a brief sort of after-party. I got given a bonus above and beyond what would, what had been, you know, agreed. I was sent back with a, you know, pile of cash, paid off my student loan. I can't remember if I did another job straight after that. Yeah, I did. I did the cruise ship. And that was when they were starting convoys through the, through the Red Sea, through the Bab-el-Mandeb, you know, escorted by coalition warships. And on, on that particular cruise ship job with another team, some of whom I had worked with before and some of whom I hadn't, I witnessed another ship just ahead of us being hijacked. And listening to that was pretty wild over the radio. They were calling for help. They were screaming, there were pirates attacking, they're coming in for us, they're shooting, they're shooting. And then after a moment's pause, you know, after they'd been calling out what had been happening, another voice came on the radio and said, there are no pirates here.

And then the ship changed course towards the Somali coast. And it was like, oh boy. And through a friend I made later on another transit, he knew that the guy who'd been on that ship and he actually jumped overboard, it had been another— it'd been a Marine, a guy who's actually, you know, sold a couple books off of the experience of failing to stop a pirate attack and jumping overboard. Like I said, I wouldn't say anything mean, but yeah, uh, I, I failed to secure any publishing rights or any agent for my story when I tried to write it, and I thought that was a little bit of a disparity in the breadth, sort of depth of your experience versus the ability to sell it. Anyway, so I went on to do several transits. I think I got 19 transits to the high-risk area on various cargo ships, bulk carriers, car carriers, container ships going up and down, left, right across the, across the Indian Ocean to Sri Lanka or up into Oman or up into Fujairah or up over into the Gulf of, uh, or through the Straits of Hormuz to the, uh, UAE side.

Uh, a little bit topical now. And, uh, once docked in Aden, but I never got off the boat. I wish I had. That was before the sort of whole Houthi thing happened. Um, and yeah. I interspersed a season of diving with an expedition and then some more anti-piracy work, top up the bank accounts. I was just living the life up until, up until I turned 30. Well, anyway, there was one other voyage which deserves a bit of, a bit of exposure because it was the second time I was attacked and I was the team leader this time. I went, switched horses, went to work for another company. A company which would later on go on to implode and go bankrupt, but at the time I didn't know that. Um, and, uh, I went across as a team leader straight away without even an interview, purely on the basis of my association with the Colonel's Company because of the reputation they had gained. Uh, and, uh, yeah, my first job was the Dignity, uh, and I met a guy who was my 2IC for many jobs together, um, really good friend and, uh, a guy whose instincts I came to trust.

Uh, initially when we went— when I went on board this ship, you know, the 3 of us who went on, who had met at the airport, you you know, shared a few stories and talked about our experiences in this deployment, that deployment, what have you. And when we got there, there was this guy who was like, oh, my name's Eddie, I'm former SAS, I'm the team leader here. And I was like, well, the boss has said I'm the team leader, so, you know, we better get them on the phone and try and figure this out. And I was like, what's your experience? Have you done anti-piracy stuff before? He's like, well, yeah, well, it was SAS, so, you know, you were just a, just a Marine, so, you know, you you're gonna have to learn off me for a bit. I'll take you under my wing, school you a bit. And I was like, I know you've done this and that, and that's cool, but if you've never been on board ship, you don't have to work the radar systems, you don't know the lingo or how to communicate with the officers or the helmsman or work or fight the ship or talk the captain's language, you're not going to be that much use as a team leader.

So we had a little bit of a you know, a clash of personalities there until I eventually got one of the bosses on the phone, on the sat phone, was like, come on, who's going to be the boss here? And they said, okay, you are, Eddie's going to be the 2IC. And Eddie didn't like this, so he packed his bags and left the next day. And later found out that he might not have been everything that he claimed to be. And that happens a lot in the private security industry. I'm afraid to say I've experienced it a lot since leaving. And yeah, that's— it's, it's a thing that you have to keep your eyes out for. And I never expected that to be a thing, but it is. Anyway, that left me and Andy, the 2IC, and one other guy that showed up, and that was our team. We went from this port to that port. We got to know the crew, the great crew, Indian officers, Filipino sailors, one of the best combinations you can hope for. Really friendly guys. They all bring something to the table. All the cultures work well together. It was a great experience.

We got to know each other. We drilled, we trained, we ran through simulations. And at one point there was a whole side quest. I know time is at premium, but we had to get some extra ammunition, so we Bought it under what might have been questionable legality, uh, circumstances. That was kind of like the, uh, you ever seen that movie Ronin where they go and do the deal under the bridge for the— yeah, yeah, the money for the— oh God, it was, it was tense. And then, then it turned out that one of the guys that met me at the meet was one of the guys I worked with before, but it wasn't until halfway through the exchange that I was like, don't I know you? I know you from somewhere. It was like, I know who you are, you are so-and-so from there. It was like, oh yeah, brother, I remember you, we did this. But for a moment it was like so tense where I was thinking, oh my God, these are undercover policemen, I'm gonna get killed and I don't mean— But yeah, it came out okay. And it turned out to be the same ammunition we had offloaded from those two tugboats on the first job.

Because I remember wrapping it with, with Shaw, the other, the other East African Special Forces guy, and we'd wrapped it with extra tape. We joked about how whoever unwrapped it after us was going to have a hard time getting it open. It was the same boxes, it was the same guy who was cropped up elsewhere in the industry, and that ammunition getting used a second time. Anyway, so we carried on with the voyage with some more ammunition, some 7.62 and some 12-gauge, and then we got bumped at, um, I used to have the coordinates in my head and I used to have the date in my head. I want to say 11 degrees north, 58 degrees east, or one variation of that, you know. And it was Andy who's— well, first we picked it up on the radar, and on a good radar, a a good ship's radar, you have the X-band and the S-band, and they are either side of the bridge, and they, they're good for slightly different conditions and different things. I've forgotten now, but if that's a good setup, you can get a thing called a CPA, which is the closest point of approach from any particular contact.

It gives it a vector and it calculates stuff in there. Then you get a TCPA, time to closest point of approach. So we saw this contact, you know, the latest of many contacts that we had tracked. And then Andy saw them on binoculars. He had great eyes. He had been recce, he'd been a color sergeant in the cavalry. He, he, I trusted him implicitly. And you know how sometimes professionally you can have two guys who just fit together and work together great? He was like, he was like my Spock. He was, he was a great guy. And he, his eyes were better than anyone else's on the bridge. And he was like, yeah, That's a dhow. It's lowering a skiff. I couldn't see this detail. He could. It's peeling off and it's coming for us. And I was like, okay, this is, this is the strongest indication on any voyage since the last attack that I've had that we're going to get attacked. And I must admit, I was, I was kind of like, think what this will do for my career. It's an uncharitable, uh, thing to feel going into what you know is going to be a firefight.

But I knew this was going to boost my career with the next company as well, and I knew that I could probably handle this. Um, and one, looking at the radar and the TCPA, it was like 25 minutes at the current speed it was going to be on us. So I said to the captain, all right, change course to this. I'm going to my cabin. And my cabin was just behind the bridge. I had the pilot's cabin. And you might think this a little tactically naive or maybe reckless, but I thought, I'm about to get in a firefight and I really need to poo. So I don't want to shit myself in the firefight. So, so, yeah, some I don't know what it is, but my bladder and my bowels sometimes are like the best indicator that a firefight's about to happen, because whenever it's kind of like going to kick off, or maybe there's no indicators yet that it's going to kick off, I need to go. So that happened. I went to my cabin quickly. Well, if you've been in the military, been in the Marines, you know how to use the bathroom real quick.

So I did quick wipe, wipe, done. Then I was like, do you know what? 'If I'm gonna be a firefight, I'm gonna die. I'm gonna die with a clean asshole, so I'm gonna have a shower.' So on the shower, off clothes, in water, rinse, rinse off, dry off, back clothes on, put on the lucky trousers and the lucky t-shirt and back out. And okay, I probably did that in like 2 minutes, 3 minutes tops, because if you've been in the military, you know how to get ready and wash yourself and admin yourself fast, you can do it a lot quicker than you realize. Came back out onto the bridge. Oh, the last thing I did before I left my cabin was put on sunglasses because I didn't want anyone to see the fear in my eyes because I was scared that if my eyes were like big and scared and like saucers like that, like the tug captain's had been, then people wouldn't be listening to me. So So, you know, I wanted to be like cool, calm, and collected. This is my first time as a team leader, as, you know, leading the bridge team, fighting the ship.

And I was very aware, you know, I didn't want to poop myself, didn't want to show my fear, wanted to be calm and collected. So I gave myself a quick grin in the mirror, came back out onto the bridge. And when I stepped foot on that bridge, I could feel the panic rising. People were calling across each other. The captain was, you know, saying, what are we going to do? What's the next course of action? Members of my team were like, we need to do this or we need to do that. You know, you could hear the panic rising and different people shouting across each other and the sort of conflagration and no clear plan, no one taking the lead. I was like, okay, maybe, maybe the shitshow routine wasn't such a great idea. But I thought, I've got to get— I've got a moment to get control of this situation. I've got a moment to start, you know, reestablishing calm and reestablishing my authority and, you know, starting to lead this team and fight the ship. So what I did is I went over to the telephone that you can dial up any particular department of the ship, and I dialed down to the galley, to the mess man.

And everyone saw me doing this and picking up the telephone, and I was like, hello, mess man, how you doing? Yeah, it's Dave up on the bridge. Yeah, I'm kind of thirsty, would you mind sending me up a Coke? Yeah, feel like a Coke. Captain, would you like a Coke as well? And by this stage, everyone has stopped what they're doing and saying, and they're paying attention to me. I'm wondering what the fuck I was doing. And I was like, okay, yeah, the captain wants a Coke as well. Helmsman, first officer, do you want Cokes?

Yeah.

Stig, you want a Coke as well? All right, bring— why don't you just bring up a whole slab of Cokes for us, chilled if possible. And he was like, yeah, we don't have Coke, we only have Fanta. I was like, okay, no, Fanta's good, bring up a slab of Fanta. Okay, all right, thanks a lot, soon as you can. Cheers, bye. Put the phone down. Bridge had gone completely quiet and everyone was just looking at me. And I felt that crackle, that thrill of, oh my God, I'm in the moment and I'm the man. And what I say and do next is going to determine how this unfolds. And I felt that thrill of, I'm Captain fucking Kirk. I can fucking do this. All right, so I started off by saying, I, I, once again, memory plays you false, and the, the details of what I said next I don't remember, but the, the gist of it was, all right, what's our course and speed? All right, very good. Let's call down to the engine room, make sure they've got max revolutions. I remember from that, that movie Hunt for the Red October when, when Ramius, you know, uh, played by Sean Connery, says, "Increase to flank." I don't know what that means.

I have no idea, but I think I just said, "Increase speed to flank," because he's trying to avoid the torpedoes and stuff. Yeah, anyway, whatever it was I said, they increased speed to max. I'll send you the pictures because we had planned out the response. We started off I was like, right, start the fire hydrants, start all the hoses, start the pumps. I want all the fire hoses pumping over the side. I want to flood the deck so that anyone gets on there, they'll be slipping around. We'd already put razor wire around it. We'd already put dummies at key places on the stern of the ship, dummies wearing, you know, helmets and with like dummy rifles so it looked like there's people there. I was like, yeah, 'Right, you inform UKMTO that we have got a possible probable pirate inbound, you know, TCPA is this, so we're going to get hit around this time. You start unwrapping bandages, start prepping the aid station, get everything ready there. You, I want, I want you—' This was to the bosun, and I said, 'I want you to go down and pull the circuit breakers from every floor, make sure all the outside hatches are secured.' all the windows secured, all the curtains are drawn, because if you pull the circuit breakers to every non-essential floor, if anyone gets in, it's going to be dark.

They can't turn on the lights. They're going to be disorientated. We'd already hardened the ship. We'd already welded bars on windows and doors and locks that you could pull down so that every door would be secured tight. I was like, right, activate the muster alarm. All the non-essential crew muster in the muster point and then head over to the Citadel. The citadel is a part of the ship that you'd hardened and put, you know, plating around so that as a last resort you'd get in there, lock yourselves in, and then call UKMTO and basically ask for a helicopter with ninjas to come and, you know, rescue you. That wasn't necessary as it happened. So yeah, all the non-essential crew mustered, including the captain's wife and his 3.5-year-old daughter who were along for the voyage, and then they went over to the citadel So all the non-essentials were out of the way. We just had the bridge team, we just had the security team, and I had gone through firing off those orders. I wish I could remember the sequence of it, but I was killing it, man. I was just saying, you do this, you do this, you do this.

Has that been done? Has that been done? And I had that moment of feeling like, damn, I'm killing it, man. I don't know how this is going to turn out, but it sounds good. Um, and then they were coming in. They were inside 300 yards. And, you know, I went out onto one of the bridge wings. I gave my camera to the captain and said, take some pictures. I wish I'd said take video. Some of those pictures you've seen, some I guess we can splice in. I don't have time to try and pull them up like we agreed, but, um, yeah. And then It was comical what happened next. So I detailed one guy, a really good South African soldier. I said, you go prone on that corner, Andy and I will be on the wing. Last man was a little bit unsure of himself with weapons. He had been a police officer in an African country. I actually took his weapon off him because I was concerned, more concerned that he would be a danger to the team than the pirates. So I had the shotgun on my back while I was having the 7.62 self-loading rifle in my hands, and you'll see that in the picture.

It was a bit better than the bolt-action from the first one. I was like, right, first thing we'll do is fire flares. Fired a flare high up. Second flare I aimed a bit closer, and the skiff actually had to veer out the way to avoid the flare. We were going as fast as we could. Everything, all the hoses were activated, all the All the procedures and the drills we put in place had been activated. Everyone was as ready as we could, so this was, you know, coming down to the final moments. I was like, right, let's fire. You and me, Andy, let's fire like 3 shots in the air so they know we've got multiple self-loading weapons to give them an idea of the firepower they're about to face. So we fired 3 shots each. But when I said, get ready to fire 3 shots, he didn't say here to get ready, but he just fired them, and I wasn't ready for it. So I was like, ah, damn, my ears! And it was like the, you're only supposed to blow the bloody doors off moment, you know. It was, it was kind of a comical moment of levity in the middle of the tense situation that was, that was unfolding.

I was like, right, you and me, Andy, let's fire. 3 rounds in the water, off-axis, so they know we're not aiming at them. So they know that this is not meant for them, this is a demonstration. So yeah, 6 rounds went in the water, nice big plumes of spray come up, and that's when they opened fire. And I was like, okay, you've, you know, you're firing directly on us now. Our warnings have gone unheeded. That's when we can, you know, flip the switch and go over to use of lethal force to defend ourselves. As we're legally allowed to do. So yeah, I just remember for the next, um, the next few moments just pumping rounds into that skiff as it was coming. And I remember as clear as day the first one setting up a plume of water off to the, off to the side, and the second one sending splinters off the, the gunnel of the skiff. And then after that, there's like a gray blob over the occupants to that, that skiff. And I have no recollection or memory of anything that was there or anything that was hit. And I've had that gray blob before, once when I was in a fight when I was in college, when someone was strangling me.

And when you're close to blacking out, you get these gray fingers coming in from the edges, obscuring your vision until it comes down to a sort of like a tunnel. And it was the exact same kind of gray that I remember, like, over the top of those guys in the skiff that we were shooting at. So truthfully, I really don't know if I hit anything that day. But the only explanation I can come up with is that my, my mind was somehow trying to erase or edit those memories to shield from me, shield me from whatever I saw or did. And the one of the, one of the, I think it was the helmsman, who had actually been through a previous Iranian missile crisis and been missiled in another ship. He was watching through the binoculars and he said he saw two of those guys go down. So the South African guy never heard the word of command when I, when I, when I gave the word of command to fire. I said, I shouted, let them have it. I should have mentioned that before, but yeah, and he never heard it, so he never opened fire.

It was just me and Andy that loose stuff, you know, mag each into them. So it could have been him, could have been me. But I, you know, I wouldn't have— my mind wouldn't have edited that unless there was something that it was trying to protect me from. So that's a strange little idiosyncrasy. I don't know if any of the other veterans who've described contacts they've been in have ever expressed anything similar about that, that gray blob.

Not quite like that, but I think what you're describing isn't necessarily uncommon that there's like a certain level of stress and your mind kind of blanks some things out.

Yeah, it was very, it was very weird how I just could not access those memories afterwards. And yeah, the skiff turned around, so there was evidently someone still alive at the helm. They went back to the mothership, we sailed on, we updated UKMTO, nearest warship with our sitrep. And yeah, checked everyone, no casualties, no damage. Stayed on watch, stayed up, you know, everyone on stations for a good while. And yeah, eventually sort of calmed down. And I remember afterwards I went up to the top of the ship, to what's known as the Monkey Island, and held on to the the rigging and stood on top of the railings and just like, uh, it was, it was weird. It was like a release of emotion. I just started laughing into the wind. Um, yeah, I've never, never really had anything like that before or since. And I guess I was just like super glad to, to have gotten through it. When you think about it, it's really not that hard of a contact to, to to be in because you're up high, they're down low, they're in a skiff, you're on a stable firing platform. But, but for me, I was really satisfied with the fact that I had actually, you know, led a team in, in a contact, and I knew I'd, I'd done my job and done it well.

And, uh, you know, held everyone together through my— I guess you call it leadership, but it wasn't that challenging of a situation, but it was, it was definitely a first for me. And, uh, yeah, yeah, it was, it was It was something, it was something to be there.

Yeah, yeah, they needed somebody to man up. And after that you went and were you doing some freelance work in West Africa?

Well, it was all technically freelance. So final, final chapter, I guess we're getting on to that now. I went back to the UK, I tried to, as I put it, go straight. For a few years. After I turned 30, I started panicking. Like, you know, I've had all this, this hedonistic sort of existence for the last few years. I've had a great time, some cool experiences, a lot of laughs, but I have no savings. I've got no career. I've got no plan. I've got no mortgage. And I started panicking and thinking, you know, what woman is going to be interested in, in a long-term relationship with me unless I get like a real job, a stable job? So I tried to go straight. I tried to get away from the security industry. I tried a few different things. I tried adventure travel, tourism. I tried starting my own app for 6 months. Didn't work out. It made some money, but it wasn't enough to get it over the line to make it, you know, super profitable. I tried being a recruitment consultant for 6 months. And I spectacularly failed to hire a single person in that time.

And one of the things they said to me is, you lack the killer instinct, I'm afraid. You don't have what it takes in this industry.

Oh, by the way, recruitment consultants—

I said I wouldn't say anything mean about anyone, but watch out for them. They will get you in for interviews and then they will ask you who you've been interviewing with. And, you know, because you don't want to seem like you're a nobody and you haven't been doing nothing. You don't seem like you're sitting on your hands. So I say, oh, I had this interview with this company and this interview with this company. They'll be like, oh, so did you interview with so-and-so that I know from them? And you'll be like, no, no, the hiring manager was this guy. 5 minutes after you're out the door, they'll be on the phone to them looking them up on LinkedIn saying, I hear you're hiring. I've got a few candidates you might want. Yeah, they will screw you. And I just couldn't— I'm not saying I'm an especially moral or upright or whatever person, but I wasn't cut out for that industry. Didn't make it, didn't last 6 months. And then, you know, I was applying for this, I was applying for that, and I put the Colonel down as a reference and I said, can I use you as a reference?

And he was like, yeah, sure. And I didn't get that job. And I was like, damn, did he screw me on that? Because I really thought I was going to get this thing. I called him up and I said, did you, you know, did you give me the reference? Did you screw me? And he was like, no, I gave you one. I'm sorry you didn't get it. So you're looking for work, are you? Do you want to move out to Africa and live here full-time and be on my, you know, management team? You know, you know that, that Ronin movie, they talk about labor or management. The John Reno character says, are you labor or management? I've been labor up until that point, and then I sort of moved on to the management side of the thing for, for a good while, you know. I was with that management team for 6 months and putting in bids and planning contracts and doing, doing all the operational sort of fixing for executive protection tasks for VIPs visiting East Africa, going on safari, oil contracts, security for drilling sites, security for crew changes for seismic survey ships, all kinds of stuff.

And it was fascinating and it was high stakes and it was— well, I wouldn't say especially high. It was high stress. That's what I wanted to say. And it was during that time living in East Africa that I met my wife, my only wife so far. And yeah, she was working for the United Nations, a girl from Philly, which I was always to find out means that they have, you know, like all the bad language and all the attitude, know how to talk to people that cross them in ways they don't like. And yeah, shout out to all the Philly girls and Philly people. You, you're something else. And yeah, so after the oil price fell through the floor a few months later, I had to go freelance again. I ended up working for— oh, I worked for a guy who started a legitimate mercenary firm, Keeny Meeny Services. Have you ever heard of them? Yeah, yep. He went on to found another company who were semi— you know, no, they were legitimate by that stage, but his origins was definitely, um, definitely on the other side of the fence. I actually had lunch with him at a nice sort of suburban cafe in East Africa before a job that we went on in Somalia to do almost the opposite of what I'd done before, but on the side of the good guys.

It was, it was a weird situation. I ended up getting dysentery and mogadishu for about a week and but still paid reasonably well without the job actually happening. And then I did, you know, surveys in France. I did one really nice job in Marseille that was just, you know, paperwork and presentations. Oh, and I forgot to tell you, one of the last piracy jobs I did while I was still working for the Colonel was the Fairchem Bogue. And yeah, that was my last ransom run. I never found out what the ransom was because after the tense situation that happened with the Stella Marie and the almost went wrong handover, they switched to no more face-to-face handovers. It was dropped by parachute. Hmm. So the ransom would be dropped by parachute with like a GPS thing that would basically steer onto the coordinates and it would be picked up. So no more face-to-face. And then the security team would come alongside and only get on when the pirates got off. And they did a lot of these without me. And then I joined for my last job on the Fair Ken Bogie. And the, the wages have gone down by that stage.

So you didn't get the same bonuses that you got. Because as every security industry sort of happens, explodes, matures, and then tails off, they're always seeking to—

they started hiring a lot of third country nationals. And, you know, when you were making $1,000 a day, suddenly you're making $250.

Yeah, yeah, it was like that. But the, the company was still paying good money, still, you know, at the, at the, at the good end of the industry. And yeah, I did that last job, the ransom was dropped. I'll, I'll send you some of the photos. You can see the condition of the ship after the pirates got off was diabolical. And oh man, meeting that crew that had been held for 5 months was— it was incredible. The captain— like, they were hijacked almost inside a safe port after their security team had got off to go ashore via tender. The pirates had been waiting. I don't know if they'd specifically clocked them and worked out the security team got off, or if it was just luck, but they were almost inside a port in Oman I want to say Salalah, but I might be mixing that up. Now hijacked and then sailed back to Somalia. The crew had gone into lockdown, but one of the ensigns had been in the, in the bow of the ship. And so they had him and they forced the rest of the crew to open up the Citadel because they had that one ensign to use as leverage.

All the defenses they'd put up, the pirates had managed to overwhelm and get past. They had endured torture and privation, starvation, beating up, bullying. The pirates had tried to convince some of them to go on to other ships, to use them as motherships to, to go out and on pirate missions to try and take other to hijack other ships. It would— and anyway, this was all to come, uh, when I, when I met the crew. But yeah, the, the ransom handover went okay, you know. We, we waited until the dusk. We came on alongside. We got on board. The, the sea state was incredible. It was so rough that going across via some nets or ladders would have been impossible. They actually had to use the ship's crane to, to send over a basket that we then got on and hung on to whilst we were swung across. So I can legitimately say that I swung on the end of a rope and landed on a pirate ship, just like an Errol Flynn movie. But yeah, that's stretching a point slightly, but I did it. Um, and then as soon as we got there, we just saw the state, the dilapidation, the trash everywhere.

The cat leaves, because the pirates, they chew this leaf called cat that is like a stimulant. I never tried it. I don't know what to compare it to. I thought I wouldn't know. So yeah, those leaves were everywhere. And the crew, all they had left was their overalls or a few rags, clothes that they'd managed to maintain. They'd all been kept on the bridge. They'd all been sleeping on mattresses up there while the pirates slept in their cabin. and they'd had a terrible, terrible time. But yeah, we, we pumped across fuel, stores, supplies, food, whatever we loaded across, got the ship started. Oh, myself and, myself and my buddy from the East African Special Forces had to go through every compartment and clear the whole space. And that was like a— I, I'd never done VBSS. That takes like all day on one of those ships for for two guys. Yeah, I'd never done the official VBSS training course. I was just figuring it out. And yeah, taping, taping flashlights to the end of your rifle to have some, some means of checking the corners and everything, that was, that was pretty nightmarish. And by the time we finished clearing everything and verifying no pirates were left on board, you know, that they managed to clean it up a bit, get the engine started, start getting it out to sea, I hope I'm not missing anything.

I'm not going to come back and say, oh, sorry, I forgot. But yeah, and we sailed north to Salalah, and then I shared watches with the— I think he was the third officer— and he just poured out everything. There was, there was a time when, when myself and the Kent the East African Special Forces guy had been clearing one of the corridors down in the engine room when we come across these bloodstains on the wall. And the torchlight illuminated it, and it was someone had written in blood, "We are only 21." And I found out one of the crewmen told me this was the captain. When the pirates had broken into the superstructure and got all the crew out of the citadel, they were hitting the captain around the head with rifle butts, and he was bleeding from it and trying to explain to them, "We're only 21, we're only 21, this is everyone, there's no one left." So he took the blood coming from his scalp and just wrote on the wall, "We are only 21." And that's what I saw. I mean, a few hours later, the crew had cleaned it off, but I saw it.

Wow. And that was like some sort of intro to a horror movie or something, you know, going down through the, the decks of the ship with flashlights and one other guy and finding this and not knowing what the backstory was. And it was, you know, obviously filled in later, but damn, that was, that was pretty real. Uh, so the captain still had the scars from when they tortured him by putting ropes, you know, like bailer twine around his wrists and pulling them apart. The common tactic they would use would be to get the ship owners and the negotiators on the satellite phone and torture one of the crew in the background while they're trying to negotiate, to try and use that as, you know, listen to the screams of your man. This is what your delays are causing. And yeah, that was, that was pretty wild. And you know, you'll see the picture. I, I thought about, you know, covering the faces, but if you put it up, if you use it at your discretion, I know if you want to, you'll see the looks on those faces and the, the story they tell. And just in the corner peeking out behind the bridge wing, bridge door, you can see me, you know, me in my, you know, 20s, I guess.

Bit of mileage since then, a bit of middle age spread. But, you know, it's— I was there. And, man, the story that that third officer told me of the 5 months he had been due to get married, he had been engaged. And in India, you know, postponing a wedding is a big deal. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's between the families. It's a match. It's not like huge. So he was worried. He was thinking that their family might have called it off. And he told me about torture. He told me about the starvation, the captivity, the beatings, and how the captors had said to some of them, look, are you Christian or are you Muslim? And they'd be like, no, no, we're Hindi, we're Hindus. So are you Christian or Muslim? There was no in-between, you're either one or the other. And, and yeah, the, the privation and suffering they had endured and the doubt and wondering if his family was going to be dishonored, if he was going to get to marry this woman that he had only met a couple times, you know, had been eating up on him. And he said to me, you know, the day you came, 21 men were born again.

Up until then, for 5 months, we were in a space of in-between, alive and death. Not knowing what, what we would come out as. So yeah, that was— it was really, really intense listening to him unburdening his soul over that, that voyage north to Salalah. And when we got into the port, dolphins came out to meet us. That's pretty cool. And all sailors believe, you know, dolphins are a lucky sign, and, and it was just beautiful to see those. And docking, that was like a— that was an emotional moment. There were minibuses there take the crew off. You know, we made our way, the security team, back to whatever. Agents came along, took the weapons, bonded them and whatever, sent them back to whatever armory. That was my last time on a ship. That was my last trip. So I went back to London.

Yeah, tell us about, you know, kind of where you are today, what you're doing now.

Well, there's an epilogue to this that the story wouldn't be complete without. You know, I went back to London, I went through that whole period of trying to go straight because I thought that was my last job before I eventually went back to East Africa to work for the Colonel. And a few months into the thing, whatever endeavor I was trying to make work in adventure travel or luxury travel, I hear from Hank, I hear from the third officer, I'm getting married, the wedding is on. That's awesome. And I want you to come. And, and I was like, oh man, can I do this? Yeah, I can do this. And there'd been a, there'd been a girl, an American as it happens, that I'd met like 10 years ago on a dockside in Tangier, that I'd had a like a fling with in, in southern Spain and whatever. And I'd stayed in touch with her long distance, and she got married and got divorced, and I was like man, I wonder if she'd come to this wedding with me. So I asked her and she's like, yeah, I'll come. Crazy girl. So we went as guests of honor to this wedding in Delhi, and their family treated me like a god.

I was, I was put up with them. I didn't stay in any hotels. I didn't eat in any restaurants. They put me up for like 10 days. An Indian wedding has like so many levels and layers to it. There's like 3 different ceremonies spaced out by a week. And yeah, we were there for all of it. They bought me like, I forget what it's called, like a tunic with these golden buttons. You'll see it in the picture. I don't want to try and fuck around with the pictures right now, but if you splice it in, there's a wedding photo with a third officer in the middle. Myself on one side, the American girl who came along with me on the other. And, uh, yeah, man, that wedding, I danced until dawn. And it was like a, like an emotional sort of epilogue to the whole— yeah, it's a happy end. Yeah, yeah, big time. Yeah. And, and I, I have to say, if I hadn't had that positive experience through journey I went on through private security. If I just finished Afghanistan and that was it, and I hadn't, you know, Afghanistan was a kind of an unresolved, unfinished— no one really got the ending they wanted to out of it.

But I, I kind of, I kind of got something back through this whole piracy experience and the thank you that the crew said to me on that first ship, the Stella Maris, and that the experience of meeting that third officer's family and the, the thanks I got from them and the seeing that marriage and being there for that. And if it was like a— it was, it was a very much a healing experience from the, the unpleasantness that, that Afghanistan was. And I feel like a lot of the you know, my, my brother soldiers and comrades who went through that, they never got that, that ending. It's like, it's like a sense of closure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I was saying to my, you know, I've been thinking for the last couple months, what am I going to say in this, this interview, this thing we're doing? And I was having a walk with my wife and I said, I, I don't know what kind of person I'd be today if I didn't get that that happy ending. That sounds so corny, I have difficulty saying it out loud.

But well, as you point out, you don't always get one in this, uh, profession.

So she said to me, I don't know if you'd even be alive today, right? Yeah. Well, I thought you had a little bit more faith in me than that, but fine, I'll take that, I guess. So, so yeah, it was the epilogue, the wedding, It was a big deal. And yeah, uh, sorry, I, I, I did.

Yeah, yeah, just to start wrapping up, um, tell us, you know, about what you're up to nowadays.

Oh man, so yeah, freelance Africa, worked for an embassy. I kind of got to go straight after all. Um, did the embassy work for a year, and then I was wife and I, we, we pulled stumps and we, we quit our jobs and moved back to the States. And, um, I've been living here now for almost 10 years. I'm a U.S. citizen. I've had two sons born here. They now have triple nationality. Um, and, uh, yeah, uh, moving to the States a trip, you know. It's been an adventure in itself. It deserves a whole chapter in itself. Uh, I love being here. I love the country. I love the people. And, uh, I've been working in corporate security ever since. It's not high octane, you know. It's not, it's not seat-of-the-pants stuff, but it's been steady. It's been flexible. I get to do fun stuff every now and again. I, every now and again, I do a bit of executive protection as part of the job. And, um, yeah, it's been cool. I, I, I, I've been luckier than I have any right to deserve or expect, and I'm truly grateful for the people who have given me the opportunities that I've had.

I'm truly grateful for, you know, the people in this country, the friends, the neighbors that I've made, and, uh, you know, being being felt, being feeling like I'm a part of it. And it's awesome.

Is, is there a place where people can go to find you, Dave? Like, are you on LinkedIn? Or if people wanted to reach out and procure your services, so to speak?

No, I'm corporate now, and I have to get someone's permission to do anything outside of that. But gosh, I used to have a No, I mean, you can just find me on LinkedIn, I guess. Okay. If you really want to. Yeah, these days, you know, I'm definitely in middle age, late 40s. And I guess, you know, I still find time to try and blow my hair back occasionally, although having responsibility, you can't be quite as reckless as I used to be. So I found a way to, you know, blow my hair back every now and again by doing shooting competitions and a couple marathons. I've got one coming up in November and yeah, looking forward to that. I tried, I dabbled in night vision shooting competitions and had a little bit of success. I came last year, I came second in the largest one in the US. The year before that I think I came second as well. So, you know, I've found a little niche there and enjoy doing the odd daytime competitions or whatever comes my way. And yeah, just really glad to be here and sort of really grateful for the opportunity to come and share this story because it's been a while, man.

Yeah, no, thank you for thinking of us. And these are some like really unique experiences. It's an insight into, you know, for a couple of different reasons, partly because it's private security and another that it's out in the middle of the ocean. So people don't really have visibility on it. So we really appreciate these sorts of like unique experiences and you sharing them with us.

Well, I know I haven't been the best guest. I've chopped and changed and I've— No, no, it's great. Muddled the order, but hopefully you can edit into to something, uh, something halfway legible and, uh, something that will, you know, be of interest and hopefully entertainment to your audience. And, uh, it's been fun, man. It's been a lot of fun just recounting it. How, how many minutes did we actually clock up in the end?

Um, I don't know, 220. Yeah. Oh, okay. Um, so yeah, I'll do a quick— I'll do a quick outro here and, um, and we can get going. Um, so thank you, Dave, for joining us on the show today. We'll have some links down in the description if you want to find him on LinkedIn. And I hope all you guys enjoyed this, uh, sort of unique insight into private security on the high seas. And we will see you next week. So until then, take care. Thanks, man.

And thanks to the audience for sticking it out this long. It's been emotional. Thank you, Dave.

Hello everyone.

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