Speaker 1: I've got a theory, and I don't know if I've
Speaker 1: never heard this from anyone else, but it's like, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure if I believe it, But the theory goes
Speaker 1: for Somali's gunfire isn't necessarily an attempt on your life.
Speaker 1: It's a form of dialogue.
Speaker 2: East African proverb.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you could take it as that where you
Speaker 3: could take it. You know, us in the Western world,
Speaker 3: you know when someone shoots at you, like, okay, it's on.
Speaker 3: You mean to kill me, and I am emboldened to
Speaker 3: use the same measures against you. But for them, maybe
Speaker 3: it's not quite the same as that. Maybe it's just
Speaker 3: an escalation in.
Speaker 1: The dialogue or a way of saying, hey, I see
Speaker 1: you everyone.
Speaker 2: I'm Jack Murphy. This is the Team House and tonight's
Speaker 2: guest is Dave Leaning. Dave served as a Royal Marine
Speaker 2: and then he worked for a number of different private
Speaker 2: military companies doing counter piracy work in Africa. So this
Speaker 2: is sort of a UNIEK episode, and I think Dave
Speaker 2: has some pretty unique insights working the piracy issue, doing
Speaker 2: things like ransom deliveries, hostage recoveries, and all sorts of
Speaker 2: interesting anecdotes. As we go on. But Dave, welcome to
Speaker 2: the show. I'm happy to have you here.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much Jack for the introduction, and thank
Speaker 1: you for having me.
Speaker 3: It's a huge honor, and I definitely feel a little
Speaker 3: bit of imposter syndrome being here, given that you've had
Speaker 3: some very eminent guests and speakers on before me.
Speaker 1: But I'll try and do my best and sort of
Speaker 1: recount some of the experiences I had and hopefully have
Speaker 1: something to share with your audience and shed light on
Speaker 1: a subject which I don't think many people have covered before.
Speaker 1: So yeah, let's let's get into it.
Speaker 2: So start at the beginning. Tell us a little bit
Speaker 2: about what your pathway was into the Royal Marines.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I've been to university college call it here,
Speaker 3: and I hadn't actually thought of joining until I found.
Speaker 1: Myself in a sort of a loss as to what
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 3: And my old man had been in the military, he
Speaker 3: had been an army commando, and yeah, I figured, why
Speaker 3: not give it a go.
Speaker 1: I don't do four years. See if I was as
Speaker 1: tough as my old man was, get green beret and
Speaker 1: see if I can, you know, get a war under
Speaker 1: my belt, because you know, there's a young man. All
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff seemed exciting and was definitely very appealing. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I showed up at a recruiting center, got
Speaker 1: fed all the lies about what great stuff I would
Speaker 1: get to do, and you know, showed up at Limpston
Speaker 1: Commando one day at that train station, that platform that
Speaker 1: you go through, and began the process for becoming a
Speaker 1: warm warning Commando. I you know, got through the commander course,
Speaker 1: I broke both my feet, had to spend twelve sixteen
Speaker 1: weeks in rehabilitation, and then rejoined a true and then yeah,
Speaker 1: went on did my service, did the minimum contract that
Speaker 1: four years, one month and one day, not that anyone
Speaker 1: was counting by that stage, And yeah, I got a
Speaker 1: tour of Afghanistan. It was an adventure.
Speaker 3: You know, we can we can circle back to commando
Speaker 3: training and that that experience and my time in Afghanistan,
Speaker 3: which interestingly enough, actually sort of intersects with one of
Speaker 3: your recent guests, Jay Jane Morton. Yeah, twenty second sas
Speaker 3: he was talking about the exact same places that I was.
Speaker 3: We relieved his company I think he was three Power
Speaker 3: and I was LEAMA Company four to Commando and it
Speaker 3: was Op Sarah the relief in place of three power,
Speaker 3: and so I know the exact position he was talking about,
Speaker 3: and he mentioned an orchard at that position in sangin
Speaker 3: me just cover up my opera there.
Speaker 1: That is that orchard? Wow? And the river that he
Speaker 1: mentioned that is that river?
Speaker 2: You would swim it in it? You guys are crazy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you could bathe and you could wash your clothes,
Speaker 3: have a swim. The Afghan National Army would sit out
Speaker 3: there watching you.
Speaker 1: So we christened them cop watches after a while because
Speaker 1: they seem to drive enormous pleasure from watching.
Speaker 3: Marines stroking, stroking the whatever does it for them?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Really random to to watch that on your show a
Speaker 3: couple of weeks ago and see that and be.
Speaker 2: Like I was there, So tell us about Afghanistan with
Speaker 2: the Royal Marines.
Speaker 3: Uh, well, I figured I would skip past that and
Speaker 3: go to the unique selling point of my experience because
Speaker 3: you've had tons of guys with way more operational experience
Speaker 3: than me.
Speaker 1: And really, I mean, I got to see some cool stuff,
Speaker 1: but I can't really add anything to that.
Speaker 3: But what I can do is talk about the Parson thing,
Speaker 3: which is a bit more unique.
Speaker 1: Don't clicks on this because they wanted to know about.
Speaker 2: Right, we don't have to spend so much time dwelling
Speaker 2: on it. But if you want to share a couple
Speaker 2: like formative experiences in Afghanistan and we can move on.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, all right, first I'm going to have to
Speaker 1: do myself a little bit cerebral do vacation, and wouldn't
Speaker 1: you know it's an opportunity to show you a little
Speaker 1: relic from that time. Do you recognize one of these?
Speaker 2: Is that a mortar round or no, that's an RPG,
Speaker 2: that's an RPG rocket.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and that was I collected that from It
Speaker 1: was the morning after a contact, pretty decent one. And
Speaker 1: yeah I found that near opposition when a seven day
Speaker 1: freed us. And it's got a neat trick as well. Okay,
Speaker 1: so yeah, that was the shiftest business trip I ever
Speaker 1: went on. But I got a free free bottle opener
Speaker 1: from it.
Speaker 2: A good deal.
Speaker 1: You survived, Yeah, so yeah, I I didn't do an
Speaker 1: awful lot.
Speaker 3: You know, I got out on the ground, I saw
Speaker 3: sang In. I was there for a couple of months.
Speaker 3: I got like and like a the battle when we
Speaker 3: sort of relieved three power. You know, some of my
Speaker 3: friends were on the ground convoy coming in the ground
Speaker 3: convoy never quite made it in.
Speaker 1: We flew in on chinooks. Just flying in was pretty.
Speaker 3: It was pretty raw, Like they tore the seats out
Speaker 3: of the chinooks so they could pack in as many
Speaker 3: guys as possible. We were sitting like three, three side
Speaker 3: by side and as many deep as we could with
Speaker 3: each marine had his legs wrapped around the marine in
Speaker 3: front to squeeze the sit as tight as they could.
Speaker 1: So it was all very very intimate.
Speaker 3: And I remember a certain point the door gun has
Speaker 3: tested their guns as we were flying along, and the
Speaker 3: marine and left of me turned and smiled and we
Speaker 3: were punching each other thing. It's like, it's just like
Speaker 3: that movie. What's it called a full metal Jacket where
Speaker 3: the door go shooting it? Yeah, uh, it was. It
Speaker 3: was kind of like a movie. I'm probably going to
Speaker 3: say this a lot of times, but when when you
Speaker 3: grow up watching movies and TV and something happens and
Speaker 3: that's your only point of reference, you're like, wow, this
Speaker 3: is just like a movie. And so yeah, at a
Speaker 3: certain point, the load master told us to get up,
Speaker 3: stand up, and once again it was like that band
Speaker 3: of brothers where each man is lifting up the man
Speaker 3: behind them, and you have that moment where your eyes
Speaker 3: meet and you're like, Okay, for most of us, this
Speaker 3: is our first time going in.
Speaker 1: We know Sanging has been the hottest.
Speaker 3: The hottest patrol base in the whole of Helmet, and
Speaker 3: it's likely it's going to get hop on the way in,
Speaker 3: and you know, for most of our time there, and then,
Speaker 3: you know, maybe my mind is playing false with me,
Speaker 3: but I do distinctly remember one of the load masters
Speaker 3: calling out, or maybe it was just being dramatic, but
Speaker 3: hot ls hot els, and then starting to hear the
Speaker 3: sort of clack claque of of you know, rounds going
Speaker 3: off and grounds being fired in coming and out going,
Speaker 3: and feeling that helicopter start to sway and lurch and
Speaker 3: everyone sort of you know, trying.
Speaker 1: To grab one to the man next to them, and then.
Speaker 3: It coming in for that landing, the door going being
Speaker 3: I think the door was already down.
Speaker 1: The door was already down, of course it was.
Speaker 3: And then just seeing that orange haze and just being
Speaker 3: told go and running into it, and yeah, I didn't
Speaker 3: I didn't expect to be leading off with this. I
Speaker 3: thought I'd start with the paras and just thinking about
Speaker 3: it as giving.
Speaker 1: Me a little bit of a horrible bit of a flutter.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I had like a almost like I was
Speaker 1: on top of the fire support tower for a lot
Speaker 1: of the battle, and I saw I saw some pretty
Speaker 1: cool stuff. I remember seeing there was this one woodline
Speaker 1: call one back wood.
Speaker 3: The Powers had christened it, or the unit before christened
Speaker 3: it because they used to use these recallless rifles and
Speaker 3: known as wombats from that particular place. And I swear
Speaker 3: I saw a one of those French Mirage jets, the
Speaker 3: thing that has like a delta dagger type wing shape,
Speaker 3: dropping like I'm not even sure they were in Afghanistan
Speaker 3: at the time, but that's what I remember, and it
Speaker 3: flew over that tree line and dropped cluster bombs and
Speaker 3: seeing the crackle and burst like fire crackers like fireworks.
Speaker 1: That was pretty cool.
Speaker 3: And then one guy taking potshots at us from around
Speaker 3: the wall and just seeing water and anyone water dropped
Speaker 3: right on him and just seeing that.
Speaker 1: Disappear where he was disappear in a cloud.
Speaker 3: Of smoke, and you know, you know, hearing RPGs coming
Speaker 3: overhead Chinese one oh seven's being fired, running for cover
Speaker 3: falling down a staircase and landing at the bottom in
Speaker 3: a pilot, you know, in a disgusting pile of snot
Speaker 3: with a with a reporter I think who was actually
Speaker 3: from the Sun at the time. And and then there
Speaker 3: was even like some guy who was doing a camera
Speaker 3: piece on the rooftop to a news channel with a
Speaker 3: cameraman behind, almost like full metal jacket again.
Speaker 1: And I just happened to be in the background, and
Speaker 1: I thought, I'm gonna turn and look at the camera.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna turn and look at the camera and give
Speaker 1: it a thousand yards there. So I did.
Speaker 3: And that must have been broadcast because although I'd been
Speaker 3: lying to my dad saying no, I'm all right, I'm safe,
Speaker 3: I'm on Camp Bastard, my aunt saw it and said.
Speaker 1: I've seen him there. He's on Count Bastion anymore. He's
Speaker 1: been sent to the front line. Oh my god.
Speaker 3: But yeah, there was that, and yeah, the seeing the
Speaker 3: powers man. They've been there for almost their whole tour,
Speaker 3: and their uniforms were worn and faded. They all had beards,
Speaker 3: they were tanned, and we were just you know, all
Speaker 3: idea was fresh out of the issue of the stores
Speaker 3: not a spected dirt or dust on it.
Speaker 1: Every man was shaven.
Speaker 3: And then no, I guess you know, two months later
Speaker 3: we must have looked kind of like they did because
Speaker 3: well you can see in the in.
Speaker 1: The picture I had it had a good old operational
Speaker 1: beer going there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, your starter set.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but yeah it was. It was some pretty wild
Speaker 1: experiences and but yeah it was.
Speaker 3: I'm not being funny, but within the first seventy two
Speaker 3: hours of getting on the ground and talking to the interpreters,
Speaker 3: I almost called them terps.
Speaker 1: Again.
Speaker 3: I know it's kind of pseudo derogatory term for them,
Speaker 3: but yeah, talking to them and you know, having a
Speaker 3: surer with the locals, which of course I wasn't invited
Speaker 3: because you know, Lordly Marine.
Speaker 1: Was the you know, the officers who who would do that.
Speaker 1: But you could see the different types of people coming
Speaker 1: to the surer. You can see Afghans who were clearly
Speaker 1: talent ban marking your positions, calculating your fire power and numbers,
Speaker 1: and the hate was just rising off them almost like
Speaker 1: a like a like a shimmer, like a heat haze
Speaker 1: you see on a on a road on a hot day.
Speaker 1: And then you could see locals or low elders and
Speaker 1: you know, local leaders who were just in the middle
Speaker 1: trying to.
Speaker 3: Trying to figure out the way for everything to get
Speaker 3: done with as least housele as possible. And so it's
Speaker 3: like the three types that I came across, those who
Speaker 3: were just telling you what you what they thought you
Speaker 3: wanted to hear, those who hated you with the passion
Speaker 3: and wanted to see you dead, and those who would
Speaker 3: just go along to get along. And yeah, I'd been
Speaker 3: on the ground seventy two hours and I thought, I
Speaker 3: don't think this is gonna work.
Speaker 1: And twenty twenty one was rough. Man, I believe you did.
Speaker 1: You did a tour of gowns as.
Speaker 2: Well, much earlier, like four oh five.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it was it was a foregone conclusion, I believe.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm not just being smart about it. I
Speaker 3: do remember thinking that at the time, and like watching
Speaker 3: a train wreck in slow motion, final conclusion being it
Speaker 3: was twenty twenty on right it fell?
Speaker 2: That was twenty one or twenty two, Yeah, twenty one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was.
Speaker 3: Rough to see it happen. And yeah, I tried to
Speaker 3: make a rule for myself. If you can't say anything nice,
Speaker 3: don't say anything at all, so you know, we all know,
Speaker 3: we all know the school that we're there, so let's
Speaker 3: just draw a line under it and move on.
Speaker 2: And when you got back from Afghanistan, I were you
Speaker 2: pretty much dead, said on getting out of the Royal
Speaker 2: Marines at that point.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, the Royal Marines.
Speaker 3: Made a huge mistake and losing me when they sent
Speaker 3: me on a scuba course in Egypt. And I've been
Speaker 3: trying to figure out what do I want to do
Speaker 3: when I get out of the court.
Speaker 1: You know, am I going to stay for four years,
Speaker 1: five years? Whatever?
Speaker 3: And then they sent me on this scuba course and
Speaker 3: I had like one of the best times of my
Speaker 3: life in this resort called Hugarda while We're doing a
Speaker 3: couple of paddy courses and I was like, well, that's it.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be a scuba instructor when I get out.
Speaker 3: That is all I aspired to, living by the sea,
Speaker 3: in the sunshine and teaching scuba diving to pretty girls
Speaker 3: in bikinis. I figured there was no higher calling in life.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I made plans.
Speaker 1: And positions, had an internship lined up in Gibraltar, so
Speaker 1: as soon as I got out, I used my post
Speaker 1: operational tour leave to get on that and yeah, I
Speaker 1: get going.
Speaker 3: So yeah, when I got out, I spent the summer
Speaker 3: there a first training as an instructor and then working
Speaker 3: and taking people out diving and working as a bouncer
Speaker 3: at a couple of bars and clubs. In Gibraltar itself,
Speaker 3: I was living on a dilapidated yacht that legend had
Speaker 3: It was owned by a former London gangster.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he really was or not. He
Speaker 1: would come out every night and again. The rest of
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 3: It was myself and a bunch of young people, backpackers
Speaker 3: from Australia Europe living on this yacht in the marina.
Speaker 3: They called it the party boat. We had a great time,
Speaker 3: loved diving, loved yeah, loved everything about it. It was
Speaker 3: the best post operational decompression you go through, and yeah,
Speaker 3: one of the best summers of my life did that,
Speaker 3: and at the end of it, I was like, you know,
Speaker 3: I really miss having that three sixty challenge. That's a
Speaker 3: challenge to mind, body and soul that to a certain
Speaker 3: extent you get from uniform service. And so I came
Speaker 3: up with this plan to try and ski the length
Speaker 3: of Norway. It's an accepted set of Norwegian challenge they
Speaker 3: call it Norge par Lands, where you start at the
Speaker 3: southern tip of Norway and then you ski. I thought
Speaker 3: it was eighteen hundred miles, but I read I was
Speaker 3: researching it before doing this, and I saw someone say
Speaker 3: it's actually sixteen hundred, so not as much as I thought.
Speaker 3: But it took me one hundred and twenty two days
Speaker 3: in the snow, and yeah, I got there.
Speaker 1: I didn't think I would.
Speaker 3: There was a few things along the way that you know,
Speaker 3: almost prevented me from doing it, And yeah, I had
Speaker 3: a huge sense of accomplishment from that, and I thought,
Speaker 3: right now it's time for another season of stuba diving.
Speaker 3: Went to a place called Antiparos, which is in the
Speaker 3: Ciplades Islands in Greece. Had a great summer, you know,
Speaker 3: another one of the best of my life. Beautiful island
Speaker 3: and if anyone is considering going on a diving holiday,
Speaker 3: anti Paros in Greece is a great destination.
Speaker 1: It's a really small island. It's only got like.
Speaker 3: A summer popular winter population of five hundred, so it's
Speaker 3: much smaller and intimate than some of your bigger places.
Speaker 1: Like Naxos or what's the one where you never mind?
Speaker 3: And yeah, great diving, great little town, nice tavernas, nice bars,
Speaker 3: nice square. Had a great time relaxed, and then got
Speaker 3: back home to my dad's house and said to myself, right,
Speaker 3: I'm in the mood for another challenge. And so I
Speaker 3: had this sort of embryonic idea to try and do
Speaker 3: something with the skills that the Corps had given me,
Speaker 3: to do something positive that was beyond politics, because of
Speaker 3: course Afghan left it a little bit of a bitter
Speaker 3: taste in the mouth.
Speaker 1: You could say.
Speaker 3: And I'd seen a few years before about how there
Speaker 3: was a sort of poaching wars going on in East
Speaker 3: Africa with you know, some former military guys trying to
Speaker 3: fight the poachers who were trying to kill the rhinos
Speaker 3: and the elephants for their the ivory and the horn.
Speaker 3: And I thought that would be a cool thing to do.
Speaker 3: And then I heard through the grapevine that a figure
Speaker 3: from my service who is going to crop off a
Speaker 3: few times in the story. I was involved in that,
Speaker 3: and this figure was the guy who was the colonel
Speaker 3: in charge of the Commander Training Center. When I passed
Speaker 3: through a very charismatic and inspiring man, a huge man
Speaker 3: as well, and he gives you your speech roup he
Speaker 3: gave to my intake the speech on your first day
Speaker 3: after you signed the form and you know, pledge your
Speaker 3: whatever to whatever. And then he was there at the
Speaker 3: end of the thirty miler and gave me the green
Speaker 3: beret when I completed that, and again when I passed out.
Speaker 3: And you know, he was a kind of a legendary
Speaker 3: figure in the British Commandos and he had also been
Speaker 3: in the SPS, and I believe he went on to
Speaker 3: command the SPS.
Speaker 1: And yes, yes, but.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure at least one of them, maybe both,
Speaker 3: but who's counting at that stage. He was a very
Speaker 3: accomplished soldier and kind of a legend in the British
Speaker 3: Commandos and British Special Forces. And anyone from my sort
Speaker 3: of generation who's been through will instantly know who I'm
Speaker 3: talking about.
Speaker 1: But I'm not going to mention him by name here.
Speaker 1: Please edit it out if I do so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I heard he was involved in anti poaching work.
Speaker 3: I'd heard he'd been involved in East Africa and in
Speaker 3: the Congo, and I was able to dig up his
Speaker 3: number from somewhere and gave.
Speaker 1: Him a call out the blue, as you do to
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 3: The former commandant of Limbstone who you probably haven't seen
Speaker 3: him however many years and has no reason to remember you.
Speaker 3: But he said, no, I do remember you, which I
Speaker 3: thought was a lie at the time, But if we
Speaker 3: get the time later, I'll circle back to why.
Speaker 2: That probably was because you got in trouble and you
Speaker 2: had to go to his life.
Speaker 3: Oh I was in trouble enough, but not for that,
Speaker 3: not that type. And I said, hey, I'm I'm, I'm,
Speaker 3: I'm you know Marine Sons. You gave me a green
Speaker 3: ray one time, and you know, done this and that,
Speaker 3: And I heard you were involved in anti poaching and
Speaker 3: I'd really like to get involved.
Speaker 1: What are the what are the options, what are the opportunities?
Speaker 1: And he was like, yeah, i'd probably hook you up
Speaker 1: with that.
Speaker 3: You know, the sort of thing you'd be doing is
Speaker 3: managing a team of fifty rangers privately employed, and you
Speaker 3: know a half dozen land cruisers covering a conservancy the
Speaker 3: size of however many thousand miles up in this district,
Speaker 3: all this country, and yeah, yeah, send me a CV
Speaker 3: and I'll see what I can do I'll be in touch,
Speaker 3: and I was like, wow, I can't believe it, just
Speaker 3: talking to you know, Papa Green Moray here, and he
Speaker 3: actually was, you know, didn't just put down the phone
Speaker 3: on me or laugh at my face. So I sent
Speaker 3: off the CV and you know, took a moment and
Speaker 3: my heart was fluttering a bit. And he called me
Speaker 3: back fifteen minutes later and he said, I know you've
Speaker 3: never done anything.
Speaker 1: Like this, but would you be open to doing a
Speaker 1: job on the private security side. Now, when I'd left
Speaker 1: the military, I'd known about.
Speaker 3: Guys going to PSD details or our Afghanistan, the money.
Speaker 1: To be made.
Speaker 3: I had heard the stories and they even send they
Speaker 3: even sent one of them back to lecture us on
Speaker 3: why not to do it, obviously so that they could
Speaker 3: keep up their attention. Yeah, not that I put much
Speaker 3: faith in that. And I had said to myself, I'm
Speaker 3: never going to do that. I'm never going to go
Speaker 3: to private security.
Speaker 1: And it sounds dramatic, but I said, I'm never working
Speaker 1: with a gun in my hand again. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: know I'd become a hypocrite, and who doesn't, but wanting
Speaker 1: to work in anti poaching would obviously be breaking that rule,
Speaker 1: but mean I'll have to I'll have to sort of
Speaker 1: stretch my head and conscience around that somehow.
Speaker 3: So, yeah, I didn't think I would ever get involved
Speaker 3: in private security, promised myself I wouldn't, and here it
Speaker 3: was the opportunity.
Speaker 1: So Colonel said to me, can you can you be
Speaker 1: on a plane tonight? And you know, if you if
Speaker 1: you go to Heathrow right now and present yourself off
Speaker 1: of the you know, the check in desk for this airline,
Speaker 1: say you name, there will be a ticket for you.
Speaker 1: And you know, obviously I'll say what's the job? And
Speaker 1: he said, well, I can't tell you until you get here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, should I pack a coat? Or what are we doing?
Speaker 1: Yeah? He said it is. It is going to be
Speaker 1: taking a package from one location to another, exchanging that
Speaker 1: package for another package, and bringing it back out to
Speaker 1: another location. And if we if you get here and
Speaker 1: you don't want the job, I'll give you five thousand
Speaker 1: and a plane ticket back. That will be the end
Speaker 1: of it. As in, you know, once I tell you
Speaker 1: the details of what you'll really be doing and you're like, no,
Speaker 1: no time out, I don't want this, You'll get five
Speaker 1: thousand a plane ticket back. Fine. If for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: we get to the launch point and it's canceled, that
Speaker 1: will be ten thousand. If we get to the exchange
Speaker 1: and it's unsuccessful, that will be fifteen. And if the
Speaker 1: exchange is successful, you'll get twenty and it's going to
Speaker 1: be approximately.
Speaker 3: You know, pre week's work. And I was just blown
Speaker 3: away by this. He's got me on the phone on
Speaker 3: the spot. Decision go no go.
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, okay, put the phone down and went
Speaker 1: and packed to bag.
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Speaker 1: And like my inner twelve year old was sort of
Speaker 1: saying to me, like, I knew this was going to
Speaker 1: happen one day. I knew it. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: I was like, this is real. This isn't a movie.
Speaker 1: You know. Why what do they want with you? What
Speaker 1: skills do you have that no one else could fulfill?
Speaker 1: Because this guy has got to have a dozen former regiment,
Speaker 1: former Pool or former Heraford guys he could call on
Speaker 1: why do they want you? Like, what do you bring
Speaker 1: to the table?
Speaker 3: Sure you got one tour in a dream rate, but
Speaker 3: that is not what Anyway, I had a lot of misgivings.
Speaker 1: I was concerned. I thought maybe I was going to
Speaker 1: be roped in to be a patsy or a fall
Speaker 1: guy for something. I told my dad and you know,
Speaker 1: shared my misgivings with him, and he was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, I've got the same misgivings.
Speaker 3: But if I was a young man like you, I'd
Speaker 3: probably go as well. So But the main thing that
Speaker 3: decided it for me was I thought the colonel would
Speaker 3: not betray one of his marines because one of the
Speaker 3: one of the main things that one of the main
Speaker 3: takeaways you would get if you met the man was
Speaker 3: his integrity and that kind of shone through in everything
Speaker 3: he said and did, And I thought, there's no way
Speaker 3: he would knowingly or willingly betray one of his marines.
Speaker 3: He's not setting me up to be the fall guy.
Speaker 3: This is genuine and I don't understand.
Speaker 1: Why or what for yet. So yeah, I got on
Speaker 1: the plane.
Speaker 3: I got on the train, got to Ethrow, and a
Speaker 3: part of me had been saying, no, this is a
Speaker 3: bite someone's having on it.
Speaker 1: Someone's putting your leg here.
Speaker 3: Like a few minutes after you sent your CV, he
Speaker 3: called up, you know, Paul.
Speaker 1: And asked, do you remember this guy? Do you remember
Speaker 1: this guy? Yeah? I know it's Dave, pull his leg,
Speaker 1: get on a bite. So I was genuinely surprised when
Speaker 1: I got to the check in desk and said my
Speaker 1: name and there was actually a ticket there, And yeah,
Speaker 1: I got on the plane. Obviously I didn't sleep on
Speaker 1: the flight. I remember looking down it was a night
Speaker 1: flight as it flew over Africa and seeing some of
Speaker 1: those little lights below and thinking, you know, this is
Speaker 1: like the deepest, darkest Africa, Like like, what's that book
Speaker 1: where the guy's going down the river to meet with.
Speaker 2: Now sorry, Apaly now.
Speaker 1: Pop Clyps now. But it was based on a book
Speaker 1: called Heart of Darkness. Yeah, I'd read Hard at Darkness
Speaker 1: and you know, the Darkest Africa and all the sort
Speaker 1: of mystery and fear that's.
Speaker 3: Associated with that. Now with the Marines, I had been
Speaker 3: on jungle training in West.
Speaker 1: Africa when I was Wrecky Troupe, and so I'd spent
Speaker 1: you know, six weeks there. But when you're sort of
Speaker 1: infolded in the bosom of the military, you're protected, you
Speaker 1: are you know that if you're a casualty, they'll get
Speaker 1: you out, they'll get you back one way or another.
Speaker 1: You have all the logistical sport, the commands, support and communications,
Speaker 1: the QRF.
Speaker 3: Yeah, everything is there. Well, there's a huge apparatus there
Speaker 3: to protect you and help you achieve your mission. And
Speaker 3: now I was going private, something I'd never contemplated doing before,
Speaker 3: and I'd just done it at the drop of a hat,
Speaker 3: and you.
Speaker 1: Know, sold my principles as well for a considerable summer
Speaker 1: money in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 3: That was quite a lot. That was enough to pay
Speaker 3: off my student loan and buy a motorcycle.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So well, anyway, this is what was going through
Speaker 1: my ahead, and the Colonel has said to me, when
Speaker 1: you get to the airport, there'll be a guy at
Speaker 1: the the you know, when you come out of the terminal,
Speaker 1: there'll be a guy with two numbers on a piece
Speaker 1: of paper, four and two. Just go with him, right.
Speaker 1: I was like, this is like some sort of spy stuff.
Speaker 1: It's like I've been dropped in the middle of Jason
Speaker 1: Born here and I'm just the comedy sidekick. But that's
Speaker 1: kind of how I felt at the time. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was kind of terrifying. And the guy
Speaker 1: was there at the airport. I got in his car,
Speaker 1: I said where we're going. He said, we're going to
Speaker 1: the Colonel's house. So that's where we went.
Speaker 3: And being in you know a West African sorry, in
Speaker 3: East African capital, it was you know, the sites and smells.
Speaker 1: If you have you ever been to.
Speaker 2: To Africa, West Africa, not East.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you know, burning trash has the same smell
Speaker 3: wherever you Yeah, and the call to prayer that's, you know,
Speaker 3: a a distinctive part of it. It's it's very different
Speaker 3: when you're in the Asia in the Middle East to
Speaker 3: when you're in Africa. They have a different cadence, if
Speaker 3: you could call it that, And yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was kind of overwhelming seeing you raff right outside
Speaker 1: the airport as well.
Speaker 3: On the drive and got to the colonel's compound I
Speaker 3: should say house, and met him, and yeah, he was
Speaker 3: just as imposing as I remembered, except he now had
Speaker 3: a beard. And he put me up in his his
Speaker 3: guest house on his on his property, and he took
Speaker 3: you know, took me to his office and he explained
Speaker 3: what the job was. It was taking ransom to Somalia
Speaker 3: and coming back out with not one, but.
Speaker 1: Two ships that have been held hostage by the pirates
Speaker 1: for the last couple of months.
Speaker 3: And you know, he confirmed the terms. I think I
Speaker 3: had a an NDA to sign. I think I had
Speaker 3: an insurance politic policy to sign, a which had a
Speaker 3: kidnapper ratsom claws to it, which said that there would
Speaker 3: be two hundred and fifty thousand in ransom if I
Speaker 3: was taking you know, hostage, that would be you know,
Speaker 3: a paid in order to get me out.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it was shown to this guest house. It
Speaker 1: was a pretty nice place, beautiful setting, which I became
Speaker 1: very familiar with in later years. The area rather than
Speaker 1: the house itself. And yeah, at a certain point he
Speaker 1: came out from the house with a couple of beers
Speaker 1: and we sat in his garden having beers, me and
Speaker 1: the former head of UKSF, which was well, you know,
Speaker 1: meeting your heroes. It was pretty heavy stuff.
Speaker 3: You know, just meeting him or speaking to him, but
Speaker 3: now being taken into his circle of trust, and you know,
Speaker 3: him telling me about the job, and he did confess,
Speaker 3: you know, we are a bit under gunned.
Speaker 1: There are some risks involved, but you know, we've done
Speaker 1: this once before and.
Speaker 3: It went okay, and we're hoping to do it again
Speaker 3: with the same formula. And you know, and later that night,
Speaker 3: I actually was invited to dinner with his family. His
Speaker 3: kids were there, his wife was there, and you know,
Speaker 3: after that, the kids went to bed, and the three
Speaker 3: of us, you know, a colonel, his wife, we set
Speaker 3: out on the on the grass, saw sunset.
Speaker 1: They were drinking wine. I think I had a beer, and.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he really you can say, took me into his
Speaker 3: family and made me feel.
Speaker 1: Made me feel very privileged to sort of experience that hospitality.
Speaker 1: And yeah, we talked about a lot of stuff. Tell you.
Speaker 1: At one point, and this is an insight into the
Speaker 1: man himself.
Speaker 3: At one point he went back to the house to
Speaker 3: get another bottle of wine, and his wife was a very.
Speaker 1: Very beautiful, graceful lady.
Speaker 3: It was just the two of us for five minutes,
Speaker 3: and she said to me, I don't suppose you can
Speaker 3: tell us where you're going, can you? Because I guess
Speaker 3: she knew something was coming, you know, she must have
Speaker 3: known that the colonel was going to be away for
Speaker 3: a few days. And then she said, I probably don't
Speaker 3: want to know, do I? And that one thing kind of.
Speaker 1: Illustrated to me how the colonel, with him his large
Speaker 1: and life personality, is sort of insane level of confidence
Speaker 1: and self assurance, which she might have come across some
Speaker 1: characters in the military who have this.
Speaker 3: It wasn't just an act with him. A man genuinely
Speaker 3: had ice in his veins because he hadn't even confided in.
Speaker 1: His wife where he was going with what he was doing. Now,
Speaker 1: for me, my wife, that's my best friend, that's my confident.
Speaker 1: I could not keep us something like that from her.
Speaker 1: I would have to share that kind of thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't have.
Speaker 3: That level of crazy self confidence that I could just
Speaker 3: keep it to myself.
Speaker 1: I'd have to share it. He hadn't, I guess.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, a guy who's done as many
Speaker 3: things as he has has probably found that formula by
Speaker 3: trial and error, and that it's probably safest to protect
Speaker 3: them by not telling your loved ones what you're doing
Speaker 3: or what you're going into.
Speaker 1: So they don't worry about it. But I just I
Speaker 1: had not made the same stuff.
Speaker 3: I would have to share that fear and my fears
Speaker 3: and doubts with my best friend.
Speaker 1: I could not do that. So yeah, to me, that's
Speaker 1: like that was the most the most amazing thing about it.
Speaker 3: Is he he It wasn't just an act that he
Speaker 3: dropped when he was with family.
Speaker 1: He was like that all the time.
Speaker 3: And yeah, it was kind of a kind of a
Speaker 3: chilling thing for me a little bit, but yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: he came back.
Speaker 1: Then the next day there was briefing. I met the
Speaker 1: rest of the team. It was very diverse, a mix
Speaker 1: of expats, Europeans and Africans, and the briefing was extensive
Speaker 1: and you know, and in it actions on what do we.
Speaker 3: Do if we are approached, what do we do if
Speaker 3: we're contacted? We were sailing in two tugboats from a
Speaker 3: port in East Africa up the coast. We had two
Speaker 3: ransoms we did which we didn't have on us at
Speaker 3: the time.
Speaker 1: It would meet us somewhere in transit. So yeah, then
Speaker 1: the team split. Half of us went by a ground, well,
Speaker 1: the bulk of us went by a ground to that port,
Speaker 1: embarked on the tugboats and all the stores on board.
Speaker 1: You know, we had to learn quite a few stores
Speaker 1: for both for ourselves for the voyage and for the crew.
Speaker 1: When we got there.
Speaker 3: We had to have food to supply them because they
Speaker 3: had been you know, starvation.
Speaker 2: I was going I was going to ask Dave, when
Speaker 2: you say you go there, you're going there to collect
Speaker 2: these two ships. I mean the crews are being held
Speaker 2: hostage as well, aren't they.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well, if we have time to go back
Speaker 1: and get into the of the economics of maritime ransom
Speaker 1: and can are we will. But it is a complex
Speaker 1: and labyrinth labyriantine, labyrinthine. It's it's messed up.
Speaker 3: The people who write the check are not really writing
Speaker 3: it for the people, sorry for the cruise.
Speaker 1: They're writing it for the asset, the hardware or its cargo.
Speaker 1: And yeah, that's that's just the business of private security.
Speaker 1: I'm afraid it's it's and I don't want to use the word.
Speaker 1: It's kind of mercenary.
Speaker 2: Is the way it worked that the shipping company hired
Speaker 2: the kernel security company to make this transaction.
Speaker 1: It was subcontracted. Okay, So in the as soon as
Speaker 1: the ship gets hijacked, everyone tries to put the blaye
Speaker 1: or the responsibility on everyone else. You have the trifecta
Speaker 1: of the shipowner who owns the hole, the ship management company.
Speaker 1: Uh oh, I got to try frozen, Okay.
Speaker 3: The shipowner owns the holes, the ship management company that
Speaker 3: runs the day to day and employs the crew legally,
Speaker 3: and the charter charterer sends the ship to whichever port
Speaker 3: to pick up whichever cargo based on the relative value
Speaker 3: of that particular cargo of that particular time on the
Speaker 3: stock market or the international exchange.
Speaker 1: So they're kind of gambling with is this going to
Speaker 1: go up or down?
Speaker 3: Let's move this to there, And when the ship gets hijacked,
Speaker 3: all three of them are like, no, not my problem,
Speaker 3: it's yours. And the only person you can really guarantee
Speaker 3: to step forward is the shipowner.
Speaker 1: They want to get their ship back. So the legal.
Speaker 3: Wrangling between all three of them lawyers is what takes
Speaker 3: up a lot of the time and effort before an
Speaker 3: agreement can be made.
Speaker 1: I'm still frozen. You still see me?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I got you just find.
Speaker 3: Ok and money actually ponied up, and then you've got
Speaker 3: to figure about the amount.
Speaker 1: But you know, in that whole time, the whoever the
Speaker 1: lawyers have agreed is actually going to lead this has
Speaker 1: got to a point a ken R negotiator and they
Speaker 1: might have an attached can art policy already on, it
Speaker 1: might not, probably not, and then that negotiator has got
Speaker 1: to make contact and start the process. And once again
Speaker 1: going back to the film analogy, the movie with Russell
Speaker 1: Crow and Meg Ryan.
Speaker 2: Proof of Life.
Speaker 1: That'sally a cool movie. But actually from although I was
Speaker 1: on the delivery side, I wasn't one of the brains.
Speaker 1: I was just one of the folk, sorry, one of
Speaker 1: the private security contractors who was part of the finals
Speaker 1: security around the delivery. But I gleaned little bits here
Speaker 1: and there over my course my career in.
Speaker 3: The industry that let me piece together a picture which actually,
Speaker 3: you know, says that the negotiation process that you saw
Speaker 3: in that movie is pretty much spot on, and I
Speaker 3: believe that movie was made with consultants from another company
Speaker 3: that I'm not going to name, who are the main
Speaker 3: worldwide renowned experts in the field.
Speaker 1: And you probably already know who I'm talking about. I
Speaker 1: like to say no names, and I believe they are
Speaker 1: also the appointee in this case, or the first one
Speaker 1: I did. And they then subcontracted the firm that the
Speaker 1: colonel was one of the heads off there were two heads,
Speaker 1: he was one, and that's where I got brought in. Now,
Speaker 1: so sort of clear up the mystery of why I
Speaker 1: was involved. It was because someone dropped out at the
Speaker 1: last minute. Yeah, still receiving seeing my frozen Someone dropped
Speaker 1: out at the last minute, and then I happened to
Speaker 1: call the colonel in the same you know a few
Speaker 1: moments that they handed in their spurs or whatever.
Speaker 3: And and then actually they they quit because they were
Speaker 3: concerned about the lack of firepower, which I alluded to
Speaker 3: before in my discussion with the colonel about it, and
Speaker 3: I will come back to later on. That's what I
Speaker 3: found out, but I wasn't told it at the time.
Speaker 3: So anyway, back to the timeline, we diverted a bit.
Speaker 3: We were loading the tongue boats in this port, and yeah,
Speaker 3: it was pretty atmospheric with the smells of rotting mangrove
Speaker 3: and the you know, the the dockyard smells, the rubbish,
Speaker 3: the sounds of the port city and and you know,
Speaker 3: all the all the all the all that's wonderful about
Speaker 3: being in East Africa. And eventually set Cell in the dark,
Speaker 3: and you know, the Colonel enjoined us just before we
Speaker 3: set Cell with a couple of suitcases, one of which
Speaker 3: we stowed.
Speaker 1: And yeah, we were we selled in the sort of
Speaker 1: loose convoy. I suppose these two tug boats, pretty dilapidated,
Speaker 1: with a mixed crew of East Africa, which represented most
Speaker 1: of the countries in East Africa from the crew side,
Speaker 1: and then the security team ourselves were about oh, I know,
Speaker 1: eight strong, I guess divided between the two boats about
Speaker 1: fifteen to fifteen. And yeah, it was rough. As soon
Speaker 1: as we got out to see I was seasick. One
Speaker 1: of the other European guys gave me a sea sickness
Speaker 1: tablet that pretty much knocked me out and fell asleep
Speaker 1: while this thing was bucketing around on the waves, and
Speaker 1: woke up the next morning and the sea sickness had passed,
Speaker 1: but you know, and it was a beautiful sort of
Speaker 1: sunrise out out at sea off the coast of East Africa.
Speaker 1: And came up to the bridge to find the colonel
Speaker 1: vomiting over the side. So I was a bit sort
Speaker 1: of I was kind of reassured that, you know, I
Speaker 1: wasn't the green horns showing myself up for being seasick.
Speaker 3: At least he was as well. But yeah, and then
Speaker 3: the next sort of these are the events that happened
Speaker 3: almost twenty years ago. So it's kind of like a
Speaker 3: string with knots in it at various intervals, and I
Speaker 3: might get the order wrong, and I might get details wrong,
Speaker 3: because a memory that.
Speaker 1: Old is more like a photocopy of a photocopy after
Speaker 1: so long.
Speaker 3: But there's certain things where you sort of mark them
Speaker 3: with a not because it you remember it because it
Speaker 3: evidence an emotional response. And the next one I remember
Speaker 3: is when we unwrapped the weapons and got those out.
Speaker 3: And I've been told in the briefing the corl said,
Speaker 3: are you a good shot?
Speaker 1: Dave?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm pretty good shot. Okay, good, you'll be getting
Speaker 3: a cigarette. I was like, oh, cool, sig rifle, maybe
Speaker 3: like a SIG five fifty.
Speaker 1: That's awesome, all right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So it was wrapped in a blanket like a
Speaker 3: woolen military blanket, tied at both ends with a string.
Speaker 3: I still remember that detail, and tied it flung back
Speaker 3: the blanket and there was this bolt action single shot
Speaker 3: target rifle.
Speaker 1: And I hadn't been lied to so much.
Speaker 3: He had come straight out and said, yeah, I'm a
Speaker 3: bit concerned that we're on the gun.
Speaker 1: But you know I was. I was fangirling so hard
Speaker 1: over the colonel, over being you know, taken into his
Speaker 1: trust and you know, treated like family and asked to
Speaker 1: come on this cool international mysterious conspiracy piracy type I was.
Speaker 1: I was fangling so hard. I wasn't really listening to
Speaker 1: what I was being told. And besides, I don't know
Speaker 1: what I'd have done if I had realized what it meant.
Speaker 3: Yeah, single show bolt action seven six to two target rifle. A.
Speaker 3: It was called an SZIG STR two hundred and I
Speaker 3: think the STR stood for Scandinavian target rifle, no magazine,
Speaker 3: So you have to drop each round in the breach, push.
Speaker 1: It forward and down.
Speaker 3: And the sites were diopter sites and if you don't
Speaker 3: know what those are. It's a very narrow peep at
Speaker 3: the back and at the front is a hooded post
Speaker 3: and in the middle is like a London underground symbol
Speaker 3: of a circle with two arms either side. And if
Speaker 3: you're doing biathlon, which funny enough, I did do, then
Speaker 3: that will be very familiar to you. And they're great
Speaker 3: for shooting at round black targets twenty five to fifty
Speaker 3: yards away.
Speaker 1: They are not very good for your peripheral awareness because
Speaker 1: you're looking down this very narrow like the single shot
Speaker 1: target part is bad enough, but the darkter sites with
Speaker 1: the worst speech that you could ask for on a
Speaker 1: combat rifle. So yeah.
Speaker 3: In the other blanket was a shotgun, a Sporting twelve
Speaker 3: gage autoloader, and the last weapon that we got out
Speaker 3: was a sig sorry no, a glock pistol. It was
Speaker 3: one of those subcompacts that fired three five seven sorry,
Speaker 3: three fifty seven sig I think is the caliber.
Speaker 1: I've not come across it before since I know it's
Speaker 1: a thing, but not a user or a hero. And
Speaker 1: tolet are you still seeing this because I'm just seeing
Speaker 1: a frozen screen. Yep, okay, cool, So yeah, seeing that
Speaker 1: my heart absolutely sank like a stone and we're already
Speaker 1: out to see I can't exactly go whoaa time out,
Speaker 1: take me back to shore.
Speaker 3: I had to suck it up and yeah, it's like,
Speaker 3: welcome to the wonderful world of startup pmc's because it was,
Speaker 3: you know, it's at that stage still a startup PMC.
Speaker 1: It would go on to be one of the more
Speaker 1: respects more established companies in the industry later on, but
Speaker 1: at this stage it was a startup and it wasn't
Speaker 1: about you know, there was a few factors at play
Speaker 1: here as to why it was a rush job and
Speaker 1: why they were going with what hardware they had available
Speaker 1: legally available at short notice in East Africa without drawing
Speaker 1: too much attention to yourself, and you cannot rely on
Speaker 1: the law enforcement there. If they got wind of an
Speaker 1: event like that taking place, you know, they might arrest
Speaker 1: you on the pretext and then the ransom that was
Speaker 1: taken in as evidence would suddenly disappear in it and
Speaker 1: saying what ransom and you you know, it wouldn't matter
Speaker 1: to you because you'd be in jail for several months
Speaker 1: while lawyers wrangled over it. And yeah, it had to
Speaker 1: be done. With what was legally available at short notice
Speaker 1: without drawing too much attention.
Speaker 2: In this case, you guys got the money while you
Speaker 2: were out at sea.
Speaker 1: It arrived before we left board Oka.
Speaker 3: And I have my suspicions as to exactly where it
Speaker 3: came from, but yeah, I'll keep those to myself for now.
Speaker 3: And yeah, after that initial shock and the sort of
Speaker 3: realization and adjustment to it, you know, I started started figuring,
Speaker 3: let's work the problem. Let's try and come up with,
Speaker 3: you know, a plan and you know, run through through
Speaker 3: drills and what have you.
Speaker 1: With the team.
Speaker 3: The colonel took a step back and let me just
Speaker 3: you know, talk to the rest of the team and
Speaker 3: work with them.
Speaker 1: There was there was guys who had operational experience. There's
Speaker 1: guys who had had.
Speaker 3: Special Forces training from you know, different units in East Africa.
Speaker 3: And there was guys with no operational experience who had
Speaker 3: just been working in anti poaching or stuff like that.
Speaker 3: And so I sort of said, right, this is how
Speaker 3: we're going to run the century, this is how we're
Speaker 3: going to around the watch routine. This will be the SOPs.
Speaker 3: And they kind of just sort of stoop back to
Speaker 3: step back and let me run with kind of figuring
Speaker 3: out these procedures. And at one point we tested by
Speaker 3: the weapons.
Speaker 1: We had an empty oil cat plastic all count over
Speaker 1: the side on a rope and we tried to hit it,
Speaker 1: and I was pleased to see that I was the
Speaker 1: only fellow who could hit the ore can with the rifle.
Speaker 1: We all tried with the pistol and the shotgun. Shotgun
Speaker 1: we couldn't get working properly. It would not also look
Speaker 1: you could single load it. But we took it apart.
Speaker 1: We cleaned everything. We tried to oil the action with
Speaker 1: whatever oil we scrounged off the engine room and the tugboat.
Speaker 3: In the event when a contact happened, it did work.
Speaker 3: And I think it was because of the type of
Speaker 3: AMU amma we were using. We had several, several different
Speaker 3: random types. I knew nothing about shotguns on that stage,
Speaker 3: from having never been issued one.
Speaker 1: I used one. Anyway, we kind of, like say, after
Speaker 1: the initial shot, I worked the problem. I started coming
Speaker 1: up with plans.
Speaker 3: And trying to figure things out and come up with
Speaker 3: the best solution we could to the problem we had.
Speaker 3: And that's that's my that's my sort of that's how
Speaker 3: I deal with anxiety is by planning and attention to
Speaker 3: detail and figuring stuff out and being as prepared as
Speaker 3: I can. So that was how I approached that. As
Speaker 3: the voyage went on, day by day, the weather got better,
Speaker 3: it got worse. I got used to the seasickness. I
Speaker 3: got used to the food.
Speaker 1: It was pretty awful food like one of the one
Speaker 1: of the European guys call porn of Steve. He joked
Speaker 1: that it was goat cooked with dynamite and rice and
Speaker 1: what's that. There's a there's a sort of maze meal
Speaker 1: that is a staple diet in East Africa. I forget
Speaker 1: the name of it, but you can mash it up
Speaker 1: with gravy and meat and turn it into a semi
Speaker 1: palatable meal.
Speaker 3: I want to say cassava or anyway, it's kind of
Speaker 3: white like corn maize meal, mush. Yeah, the diet was
Speaker 3: an eye opener.
Speaker 1: This the the the diarrhea was a bit unpleasant. The
Speaker 1: toilet was disgusting riding, that's what Steve said. Trying to
Speaker 1: use the toilet when in a storm was like trying
Speaker 1: to ride one of.
Speaker 3: Those mechanical bills and stay on while you're being thrown
Speaker 3: around inside this little head.
Speaker 1: On the on the boat. Doing laundry was a challenge.
Speaker 1: Staying clean was a challenge. Just sleeping was a challenge
Speaker 1: until you got used to it. And you know, we'd
Speaker 1: started going on watches. What we once we get into
Speaker 1: Somali water, you know, keeping up a presence on the
Speaker 1: bridge all night, being armed. We had a we had
Speaker 1: night vision device like one of those monocles, but it
Speaker 1: was like a Gen one thing, so it was like
Speaker 1: almost worse than useless, but in certain like conditions it
Speaker 1: gave you a slight advantage, so we still used it.
Speaker 1: There was a radar working on this, this old dilapidated tugboat.
Speaker 1: I found the boiler the sort of the boiler player,
Speaker 1: whatever you call it. The maker's plate that gave its particulars,
Speaker 1: and it was manufactured in nineteen eighty four in I
Speaker 1: think Glasgow or Clydesdale or someplace in Scotland, and its
Speaker 1: design speed was fourteen knots, but it was so old
Speaker 1: and shot that it can only do a maximum of
Speaker 1: nine point eight. And the other tugboat was a bit faster,
Speaker 1: so they were always pushing to get ahead and we
Speaker 1: were always having to tell them to slow down. We
Speaker 1: had radio coms with them. The radar worked, but it
Speaker 1: was a bit iffy. It wasn't that great. You know,
Speaker 1: you try and track off the other tugboat to make
Speaker 1: sure you could tune it, to make sure you had
Speaker 1: the right settings for the conditions. Sometimes. One time, I
Speaker 1: remember we had a radar contact coming the other way
Speaker 1: in the night. We all stood two, we all got ready.
Speaker 3: And it passed right between the two tugboats and went back,
Speaker 3: you know, back the way we came, and it didn't
Speaker 3: even see us. We saw no lights on board. We
Speaker 3: got to understand how radar works. A system called AIS
Speaker 3: which allows a blip to sort of come up on
Speaker 3: your radar screen with information about the target and on
Speaker 3: more advanced radars that I find later.
Speaker 1: Give you coarse speed, TCPA, CPA, all that information about
Speaker 1: where it came from, where it was heading in its cargo.
Speaker 1: On this radar was just really basic. It might just
Speaker 1: give you a name of the vessel. And a lot
Speaker 1: of vessels running in those waters, running with their ai
Speaker 1: is turned off, they're running dark, no lights.
Speaker 3: So yeah, we had a few, you know, stand tunes
Speaker 3: when we were concerned about vessels that we saw in
Speaker 3: the day or.
Speaker 1: In the night. Obviously it's a lot worse at night.
Speaker 1: I remember some of those long watches at night, you know,
Speaker 1: out to see there. There's no light, it's completely dark.
Speaker 1: It's the darkest, blackest night you'll ever see. Males from
Speaker 1: shore and the blanket of stars overhead was just amazing.
Speaker 3: The milky way in all it's gool and you could
Speaker 3: see the tug's mass just by where it was obscuring
Speaker 3: the stars as it swung between them, and seeing the
Speaker 3: odd shooting star where you sat out there smoking a
Speaker 3: cigarette on watch, coming inside, checking the radar, going for
Speaker 3: a walk around the back deck again. On the back
Speaker 3: deck of the tug, the low deck, we'd strung ropes
Speaker 3: across it to try and be a trip hazard to
Speaker 3: anyone that came and boarded and tried to you know,
Speaker 3: make their way towards the superstructure in the dark. That
Speaker 3: was our biggest fear of being boarded in the dark
Speaker 3: by someone. We didn't see herup or hear them coming.
Speaker 3: But yeah, and as each day went on, you know,
Speaker 3: the tensions arose a little bit like a ratchet as
Speaker 3: we were getting closer and closer to the target area,
Speaker 3: and occasionally we'd encounter a curlish and worship and I'd
Speaker 3: been designated by the colonel as the sort of communicator.
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe I had a clear, precise RP
Speaker 1: voice or whatever you want to call it. But sometimes
Speaker 1: when a curlition warship would.
Speaker 3: Hail us, they would they didn't know what we were
Speaker 3: doing there, and they'd be like, hey, you know, you
Speaker 3: should get out of this area.
Speaker 1: It's really dangerous. You should make your way to you know,
Speaker 1: safe waters as soon as possible. There's a threat in
Speaker 1: the area. And I be like, okay, yeah, sorry, thanks
Speaker 1: for the heads up. We are we're lot of fuel,
Speaker 1: we've got injured problems. That's why we're heading for the
Speaker 1: place of safeboart. Thanks for the advice, will definitely heed that.
Speaker 1: But we are making best speed for wherever I said. Lied.
Speaker 1: And then sometimes another coalition warship we'd go great past
Speaker 1: us and.
Speaker 3: Not say a thing, and it's like they were going,
Speaker 3: like so that was that was kind of funny. And
Speaker 3: then yeah, and are you.
Speaker 1: Still with me? Yeah?
Speaker 2: So how many days did it take you to get
Speaker 2: to the destination.
Speaker 3: Well, the whole thing there and back was twenty one,
Speaker 3: So provide that by two yeah, I guess it was
Speaker 3: nine to ten days, and then for the fucking round
Speaker 3: that we had to do once we were there, I'd
Speaker 3: say at least forty eight maybe, yeah, forty eight, forty
Speaker 3: eight hours.
Speaker 2: So what happened once you arrived.
Speaker 3: Well, when we got to the first one, the first
Speaker 3: ship was a like a pretty small one. It was
Speaker 3: like a ten or twenty thousand tons product tanker. I
Speaker 3: believe it had a Western captain but an Asian crew.
Speaker 1: And the other tugboats stayed back over the horizon and
Speaker 1: we went in made contact over the radio. I can't
Speaker 1: remember if there was the first or the second one
Speaker 1: that I remember, the voice of the negotiated coming over
Speaker 1: and making the hairs on the back of my neck
Speaker 1: rise up because you could tell he'd been Western educated.
Speaker 3: He might be a Somali, but he had spent at
Speaker 3: least some time being educated or working in the West
Speaker 3: because of how good his English was, and just made
Speaker 3: you think, you know, this guy has been seen our society,
Speaker 3: been a part.
Speaker 1: Of it, and chosen the path he's chosen. I shouldn't
Speaker 1: be surprising at all, but you know, there's a certain
Speaker 1: fear of the unknown and the cultures and the things
Speaker 1: you don't understand about Africa, and you know, I'd never
Speaker 1: lived there at this point, so just hearing that kind
Speaker 1: of gave me gave me the shutters, I suppose you
Speaker 1: could say, and like say, I can't remember if this
Speaker 1: is the first one or the second one. I'm probably
Speaker 1: confusing them. But we got close enough, we got in visual.
Speaker 3: Range, and then you know, I like the day before,
Speaker 3: the colonel had told myself and Steve to go and
Speaker 3: count the money.
Speaker 1: And if you've never been in the room with two
Speaker 1: million dollars, it's it's like being in the room with
Speaker 1: a beautiful living thing.
Speaker 3: You know that movie Pulp Fiction where he opens the
Speaker 3: suitcase and there's that yellow glow coming out of it.
Speaker 3: And so I've been told to count this and box
Speaker 3: it up because he didn't even want to give him
Speaker 3: a suitcase, you wanted to give him a cardboard box.
Speaker 3: So Steve and I took a brick each and counted
Speaker 3: the brick and it came to fifty dout and then
Speaker 3: we couldn't be bothered to count each individual notes, so
Speaker 3: we just counted the bricks after that, and it came
Speaker 3: to the figure we had been given.
Speaker 1: So it was you know, it was complete. It was legit,
Speaker 1: and no one had screwed us over along the way.
Speaker 1: I wasn't an expert in money at the time. I
Speaker 1: sort of am now, but yeah, it looked legit. So
Speaker 1: I packed it in this box, taped the hell out
Speaker 1: of it with gaffer tape, sorry, duct tape, and put
Speaker 1: a rope on it and lashed it so that it
Speaker 1: wasn't gonna come free. And I had that ready and
Speaker 1: waiting underguard. And yeah, once we got close enough, the
Speaker 1: a skiff came out from the hijacked ship that what
Speaker 1: I'm going to called art ship, and the Colonel got
Speaker 1: in it and went back and man, I remember looking
Speaker 1: down and thinking he looked incredibly small as he went,
Speaker 1: Oh damn, I'm a bad narrator. I skipped past some
Speaker 1: of the coolest stuff. Are you still with me? Okay?
Speaker 1: So I can't believe I skipped past that bit. Like
Speaker 1: when we were coming in after we'd made contact on radio.
Speaker 3: And we were moving into the final RV, the colonel
Speaker 3: asked me to strap his ankle holster on with a
Speaker 3: sink pistol in it with subcompact I mentioned earlier, I know,
Speaker 3: bad back or whatever, so he was sat there on
Speaker 3: a couch on the bridge, and I was, you know,
Speaker 3: kneeling down in front of him to strap the ankle
Speaker 3: holster on and seat it in there, and you know,
Speaker 3: make sure it's tight enough for your cares.
Speaker 1: That good boss is a right, okay, good fine. And
Speaker 1: I started whistling a tune and it was it was
Speaker 1: Bob Marley, I want to know you and treat you right.
Speaker 1: I want to love you every day and every night.
Speaker 3: I was just whistling the tune and the colonel heard
Speaker 3: it and he started singing the lyrics and and like
Speaker 3: we've been other people have been doing stuff another corner
Speaker 3: of the bridge, you know, making ready this or checking that,
Speaker 3: and then everyone just stopped and and we're just sort
Speaker 3: of vibing to this tune together, and we started singing
Speaker 3: along together.
Speaker 1: We'll be together, don't help me out. How does it
Speaker 1: go here? We'll share the same room of my single bed.
Speaker 3: And yeah, we sang it through to the end and
Speaker 3: just like shared that weird little moment of sort of
Speaker 3: camaraderie or togetherness bonding over this this cool board Marley tune,
Speaker 3: and it just broke the tension.
Speaker 1: And I don't know what that says about us or
Speaker 1: guys who were going into a tense situation. But he
Speaker 1: just kind of like had that little moment of shared
Speaker 1: togetherness and it was it was kind of cool. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to tell the story without relating that
Speaker 1: one that one moment that that was kind of good.
Speaker 1: But yeah, he was going across with a pistol in
Speaker 1: an ankle holster.
Speaker 3: And I remember, you know, talking to him about what
Speaker 3: he was doing, and and he happened to mention casually,
Speaker 3: you know, if things go wrong, you know, I'll have
Speaker 3: an AKA pretty soon, so you know, and he just
Speaker 3: mentioned it so casually. I couldn't believe that he was
Speaker 3: doing this, going into this situation with these heavily armed guys,
Speaker 3: and he was going to be the only one going across.
Speaker 3: And now you sort of understand why when I look
Speaker 3: down and saw him on the boat going across, he
Speaker 3: looked awfully small to me, at least that's the feeling.
Speaker 1: I remember. Yeah, he got across, he had a walkie talk,
Speaker 1: he talked back to me, He verified the hostages were there,
Speaker 1: the crew was safe, they were unharmed, you know, and
Speaker 1: then he asked for Steve to come across, which I
Speaker 1: thought was a bit strained, but Steve came across. I
Speaker 1: guess you know, it was one of his lieutenants. He
Speaker 1: wanted Steve to sort of get some experience in and
Speaker 1: around them because he might have to be doing it
Speaker 1: the next time. And then he asked for the doctor
Speaker 1: come across.
Speaker 3: We had a we had a medic from a from
Speaker 3: a from an East African country who'd been in the military,
Speaker 3: and he went across next. So this this little skiff
Speaker 3: was going back and forth taking people across. He wanted
Speaker 3: the medic to check out the crew, to make sure
Speaker 3: they're okay, you know, to make sure they were right.
Speaker 3: And so I started feeling uneasy at this point because
Speaker 3: there was only myself and one other guy who'd been
Speaker 3: in the East African Special Forces. There was only two
Speaker 3: shooters left on the tugboat.
Speaker 1: We only had two guns, so it's actually approached for
Speaker 1: the best, but yeah, I was I was starting to
Speaker 1: feel that we were putting ourselves in a tactically vulnerable position,
Speaker 1: having so many of our guys over there, you know, under.
Speaker 3: Their control and potentially in harm's way, rather than back
Speaker 3: on the togboat. And I had other tasks that I
Speaker 3: was busy with. I was communicating with the ship owners
Speaker 3: and the you know people who were holding their hands
Speaker 3: through the final neotiation. And then the signal came across
Speaker 3: right passed the ransom over, and the tugboat came in.
Speaker 3: I told the captain, you bring us alongside, and I
Speaker 3: went up with the box and came underneath the vessel,
Speaker 3: underneath its railings, and I was in the sort of that's.
Speaker 1: The area around the tug bridge. It's a bit higher
Speaker 1: than the deck. And I looked up and saw these
Speaker 1: two pirates looking down at me. Obviously all of our
Speaker 1: weapons were out of sight. We weren't arrowing any kind
Speaker 1: of military clothing, fatigues or whatever, just a T shirt,
Speaker 1: a pair of slacks, and I had the rope the box,
Speaker 1: threw the rope up.
Speaker 3: They caught the rope and then they started putting on it,
Speaker 3: and I lifted it up, and that was the ransom
Speaker 3: on its way, and then we pulled back and then
Speaker 3: just hung out while they counted it all.
Speaker 1: And it took them several hours to count it all.
Speaker 1: And part of the things that we'd set across with
Speaker 1: each skiff, with the guy that went over was cigarettes
Speaker 1: and liquor.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure about the wisdom of sending liquor across.
Speaker 3: But while the pirates were all gathered in the conference
Speaker 3: room on the ship, they were counting the money. They
Speaker 3: were sharing the liquor there, smoking the cigarettes and divvying
Speaker 3: it up between all of them. And I'll go into
Speaker 3: the economics of the trade and who got what and
Speaker 3: held them the ransom was split up. But they waited
Speaker 3: until dusk before they got off that ship. And at
Speaker 3: the time, waiting and waiting and waiting, and I had
Speaker 3: other jobs to do, the communication bit and what have you.
Speaker 3: And it was really fraying on the nerves, not knowing
Speaker 3: what they were waiting for, and then realizing that after dusk.
Speaker 3: They were waiting for dusk so that that would cover
Speaker 3: their them going back to shore, because other gangs would
Speaker 3: be watching this from the shore and they would love to,
Speaker 3: you know, meet them at the shore and ask if they'd.
Speaker 1: Like to share their spores. I guess so that that
Speaker 1: was the reason for waiting for dusk, and that's what
Speaker 1: they always did. I learned that would the pack wait
Speaker 1: for dusk, parts get up after dusk, and then the
Speaker 1: ship could get underway. After they were being cleared, and
Speaker 1: so we got underway, you know, they went, they left.
Speaker 1: They had to restart the engines, and I went through
Speaker 1: this process subsequently a couple of times, and so it's
Speaker 1: not easy restarting a ship's engines after so many months dormant,
Speaker 1: and it takes time. And the whole time you're worried,
Speaker 1: is there going to be another gang coming out from
Speaker 1: the shore, is there going to be more skiffs. You're
Speaker 1: staring at a radar screen like your life depends on it.
Speaker 1: You're looking out into the darkness. You're covering it with
Speaker 1: a nod. Eventually they got ship chends and engines started.
Speaker 1: They got out to see the other tug. Bert came
Speaker 1: and joined us to es scored us right out as
Speaker 1: we're heading out, and at this point my memory gets
Speaker 1: a little bit hazy, the sequence of events and my
Speaker 1: mixing it up with the first and the second one.
Speaker 3: At a certain point, you know, we said, all right,
Speaker 3: we've got them so far out, that's what was in
Speaker 3: the contract way, goodbye.
Speaker 1: And they're on their way. Everyone came back across to
Speaker 1: the tug and then we said about the next task
Speaker 1: the next day, and I think the other tug had
Speaker 1: split off and gone over to meet the new gang
Speaker 1: while we were still escorting them further out. Because the
Speaker 1: next morning when we came to rejoin them, by the
Speaker 1: time we did rejoin them, they the Ratsom had already
Speaker 1: been exchanged. They had already been through that whole rigmarole,
Speaker 1: that whole tense situation. When we caught up one of
Speaker 1: the guys, incredibly brave, younger guy like my, same same
Speaker 1: sort of age as me, but an expat living in
Speaker 1: East Africa who had grown up there, you know, well
Speaker 1: actually a and an East Africa and someone who was
Speaker 1: born in East Africa but was of European origin. Put
Speaker 1: it that way, not an extpat incredibly bravely went across
Speaker 1: on on his on his own without the colonel just
Speaker 1: did the did the did and you know, sent radsm
Speaker 1: across and when we arrived it was already on board.
Speaker 1: But when we got there, I'm going to finish this
Speaker 1: note and a new one mm. When we got there,
Speaker 1: you could tell there was a different atmosphere. The previous
Speaker 1: group of pirates we've dealt with, while well being you know, pretty.
Speaker 3: Well being pirates and horrible and mean, and you know,
Speaker 3: having all the aks and the pkms and the RPGs
Speaker 3: and whatnot, and looking like you'd expect. They hadn't been
Speaker 3: overly aggressive, but the atmosphere coming off this new gang
Speaker 3: was different. I think the first ship, the Irene then
Speaker 3: had maybe a dozen pirates there. Part of them as
Speaker 3: a security datail that's beefed up for the exchange, and
Speaker 3: part of them is the guards that had been there
Speaker 3: to watch the ship and the crew while it was
Speaker 3: you know, being while the.
Speaker 1: Ransom was negotiated. The other ship it was called the
Speaker 1: Stellar Marie, and you can look this up.
Speaker 3: I mean from my recollection. The date of the release
Speaker 3: was a bit off from what you can find.
Speaker 1: Online, but Stellar Marie was sixty five thousand ton bulk
Speaker 1: or carrier, big ship, beautiful, pretty new, had an all
Speaker 1: Filipino crew, and there were forty parts on board. They
Speaker 1: had brought on reinforcements because they were especially afraid of
Speaker 1: us because a few months before there'd been a French
Speaker 1: yacht and special for you know, they'd gone in with
Speaker 1: nominally the ransom to exchange it and you know, do
Speaker 1: what we were doing, but French commandos had actually been
Speaker 1: there and raided it and killed the pirates and blot
Speaker 1: them out without paying their ransom. So that had raised
Speaker 1: the stakes, and this particular gang didn't want that to
Speaker 1: happen to them. There were forty heavily armed parrots on board,
Speaker 1: and they were really aggressive and they wanted to fight.
Speaker 1: Like you could just feel in the communications a different,
Speaker 1: a different vibe coming off them, and see it watching
Speaker 1: them that they were, you know, there were fingers on triggers.
Speaker 3: They were. They wanted an excuse to kill us. Almost
Speaker 3: So after we caught up with the second tugueboat and
Speaker 3: the Colonel went across, I could hear his voice was
Speaker 3: different and at time, and the Doc went across as well,
Speaker 3: and Steve went across again, and I was having my
Speaker 3: misgivings once again about putting us at this tactical disadvantage,
Speaker 3: and so many of our guys there, and Steve told
Speaker 3: me at one point one of the negotiators said to
Speaker 3: the colonel, you know, I have the ransom, I have
Speaker 3: the ship, and I have you.
Speaker 1: What's your leverage ship? You know, he was basically threatening.
Speaker 3: And when things got tense, the Doc told me and
Speaker 3: at one point a part was detailed to mark the
Speaker 3: colonel and stand behind him and he was basically about
Speaker 3: to plug him. And what you're about to hear what
Speaker 3: happened that he raised the stakes even further, and the
Speaker 3: whole time I was doing the other parts of my job,
Speaker 3: and the communication bit back to I think it was
Speaker 3: somewhere in Japan where the handholder had gone to go
Speaker 3: at the company offices as the ship owner to be
Speaker 3: there for the final stage of the negotiation, and I
Speaker 3: think that's when the ship owners realized why this part
Speaker 3: of the operation was so expensive. When they were getting
Speaker 3: the updates, I was sending them and hearing how things
Speaker 3: were unfolding and how tense it was. And at one stage,
Speaker 3: right in the middle of this, another gang of pirates
Speaker 3: came out from the shore in their skiffs and they
Speaker 3: came out and I was on this tugboat with the
Speaker 3: guy that the ex the East African Special Forces guy
Speaker 3: were the only two left apart from the tugboat crew,
Speaker 3: and I knew if the gang that was coming out
Speaker 3: on the skiffs, if they came alongside, or if they
Speaker 3: tried to board us, and we fired in self defense,
Speaker 3: not at the pirates on the ship, but at the
Speaker 3: parts from the other gang that were coming out to
Speaker 3: try and you know, into the ransom or you know,
Speaker 3: try and snatch it. If they thought it was still
Speaker 3: in play, they would instantly execute our guys on the ship.
Speaker 3: So I told the captain and the chief engineer, get
Speaker 3: the engine going, get this thing moving as fast as
Speaker 3: you can, use the ship to shield us.
Speaker 1: From the pirates coming out from the shore.
Speaker 3: So it's kind of like Tom and Jerry where they're
Speaker 3: trying to chase each other around the table and get
Speaker 3: the ships and get the tug moving as fast as
Speaker 3: possible to get it around the other side of the
Speaker 3: ship so that we wouldn't be in the in harm's
Speaker 3: way when these guys reached us.
Speaker 1: And that's when things were definitely their tensest.
Speaker 3: And once those skiffs came out from shore, they actually
Speaker 3: started a gun battle between the pirates on the ship
Speaker 3: and the other gang that had come out to try
Speaker 3: and see what was going on.
Speaker 1: They were shooting at each other with pkm's. I don't
Speaker 1: know if they were hitting anything. And I've got a theory,
Speaker 1: and i don't know if I've never heard this from
Speaker 1: anyone else, but it's like, I'm not sure if I
Speaker 1: believe it, but the theory goes this, for Somali's gunfire
Speaker 1: isn't necessarily an attempt on your life. It's a form
Speaker 1: of diegue.
Speaker 2: East African proverb.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you could take it as that, or you
Speaker 3: could take it. You know, us in the Western world,
Speaker 3: you know, when someone shoots at you like okay, it's on.
Speaker 3: You mean to kill me, and I am you know,
Speaker 3: emboldened to use the same measures against you. But for them,
Speaker 3: maybe it's not quite the same as that. Maybe it's
Speaker 3: just an escalation in the dialogue or a way of saying, hey.
Speaker 1: I see you off. I don't know, that's just a
Speaker 1: that's just a thought that occurred to me, and I've
Speaker 1: never sort of really expressed it out now and maybe
Speaker 1: some anthropologist, cultural specialist so whatever can can comment and
Speaker 1: the comments about the validity of that that theory.
Speaker 3: Anyway, they were they were having a gird each other
Speaker 3: with belt feds, and I was very glad to be
Speaker 3: around the other side of the bulk of the ship.
Speaker 1: So that that shielded us from that little gun battle
Speaker 1: going on.
Speaker 3: And then after they pissed off back to shore, there
Speaker 3: was a gunshot came out from the ship and when
Speaker 3: I eventually got in the radio and raised one of
Speaker 3: my buddies there it was the dock, and he was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: one of the pirates just shot another one.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, whether it was deliberate or not.
Speaker 4: And see, just just telling the story almost twenty years later,
Speaker 4: I was starting to feel that that that tension and
Speaker 4: you know, oh god, I need a twigg at this
Speaker 4: speer out. Yeah, it's been a long time since I
Speaker 4: relived this, and telling it it's like going through it again almost.
Speaker 4: But yeah, one of the pirates shot another one while
Speaker 4: they were getting ready to disembark.
Speaker 1: Eventually they did. They pissed off back to shore, and
Speaker 1: then we had to we had to pump fuel onto
Speaker 1: the Stellar Marie because they'd run out of fuel.
Speaker 3: I think they called it bunker fuel, and and we
Speaker 3: had to pump other things. I think we had to
Speaker 3: pump fresh water on they'd run over that. We had
Speaker 3: to use the cranes to loads stores on. We tried
Speaker 3: to do it well.
Speaker 1: After they got the engines moving, we tried to pump
Speaker 1: fuel while we were like attached to them and being
Speaker 1: towed by them, and it was too dangerous because the
Speaker 1: tug was kind of like meandering. Yeah, that was there
Speaker 1: was a lot of crazy, stupid seafaring stuff that we
Speaker 1: did but you probably shouldn't. And I can't remember if
Speaker 1: that was the day after the night, but yeah, as
Speaker 1: soon as we.
Speaker 3: Got it going, we headed out to see you know,
Speaker 3: ship tugboat either side, trying to provide some sort of
Speaker 3: you know, protection to it in case someone.
Speaker 1: Else came out. And then the next morning colonel was like, yeah, Harry,
Speaker 1: I want you to come on the ship. Oh Harry, my,
Speaker 1: the colonel said to each of us in this in
Speaker 1: the briefing, you've all got to have a non You've
Speaker 1: already got to have a pseudonym or a non de guere.
Speaker 1: And I chose the name Harry Maskers because that had
Speaker 1: been the I.
Speaker 3: Know, have you ever heard of Harry Maskers, Harry Black.
Speaker 3: It is the British military term for black duct tape. Oh,
Speaker 3: black masking tape. You know, the the universal panacea without
Speaker 3: which military units would grind to a halt in twenty
Speaker 3: four hours. It's used to fix and make just about
Speaker 3: everything in the British military. Harry Maskers is the yeah,
Speaker 3: the nickname for black duct tape.
Speaker 1: I think you call it like one thousand mile an
Speaker 1: hour tape.
Speaker 2: What's yeah, one hundred mile an hour tape.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, one hundred mile an hour. So yeah, everyone
Speaker 1: knew me as Harry and so on the radio, especially
Speaker 1: when we're talking to each other, we were using pseudonyms,
Speaker 1: and I was Harry and he was like, Harry, I
Speaker 1: want you to come on board. I want you to
Speaker 1: see what the ship's like and meet the crew. And
Speaker 1: you know, it's like, oh yeah, I was still fan
Speaker 1: going hard at this point. You have to understand, in
Speaker 1: spite of everything and because of everything that had happened,
Speaker 1: So yeah, jumping across from the tugboat to the ship,
Speaker 1: that was really dicey. I had to talk to the
Speaker 1: captain of the tugboat and saying, you know, how do
Speaker 1: you do this? What's the procedure? And he was like, okay,
Speaker 1: we'll come alongside. And then at a certain point, because
Speaker 1: we're still moving, we're heading out to seat, we're trying
Speaker 1: to get away from the you know, the coast as
Speaker 1: fast as possible, and the ship can only make a
Speaker 1: fraction of its design speed because of all the marine
Speaker 1: growth that's been encrusting it for months has caused an
Speaker 1: imbalance on the propeller. So it's shaking too hard if
Speaker 1: it tries to make maximum speed.
Speaker 3: So yeah, it's reduced speed, but we're still heading out
Speaker 3: as fast as we can in this formation. And the
Speaker 3: tugboat captain explained, as soon as we get close enough,
Speaker 3: the draft of the ship will suck us in and
Speaker 3: when it does, will hit and you have to time
Speaker 3: your jump just right because if you jump after the hit,
Speaker 3: then the momentum will be lost and you'll.
Speaker 1: Just like hit the and be smeared along the side.
Speaker 3: And if you jump too soon, and then the opposite
Speaker 3: will happen and you'll be screwed. And if you go
Speaker 3: in the water, I will steer the tougueboat nose in
Speaker 3: so the stern will go out so you won't be.
Speaker 1: Chopped up by my propellers. Then all you have to
Speaker 1: worry about is to get away from the propellers of
Speaker 1: the ship as they come alongside and not get sucked
Speaker 1: under by the draft. So swim, you know, that way,
Speaker 1: as fast as you can and hope for the best.
Speaker 1: So I was making this jump with the rifle on
Speaker 1: my back and a backpack with some ammunition and some
Speaker 1: other stuff and the camera. Oh yeah, I've been asked
Speaker 1: to bring a camera across to photograph the crew and
Speaker 1: the state of the ship and whatnot. And yeah, the
Speaker 1: sort of standing on top of that railing and waiting
Speaker 1: for that collision and timing my jump just right. There
Speaker 1: was a couple of crewmen, the Filipino crewman and would
Speaker 1: come down and was standing in the railing just opposite me.
Speaker 1: And as I jumped, and sort of.
Speaker 3: I wish I'd had it in slow motion or something,
Speaker 3: but yeah, as I jumped, they grabbed me and I
Speaker 3: banged my shins on the on the railing and kind
Speaker 3: of made it over and they dragged me over the
Speaker 3: top of it. But I was terrifying as hell. I mean,
Speaker 3: with everything that happened before, I still remember that. It
Speaker 3: was one of the most tense moments that that that jump. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but then I got to meet the crewmen, and that
Speaker 3: was another thing in itself. These guys have been held
Speaker 3: for months.
Speaker 1: I mean I remember exactly the last ship I did,
Speaker 1: they were five months.
Speaker 3: This ship, I can't remember how many months they had
Speaker 3: been held, they told me. I'm sure in my head
Speaker 3: I want to say it was three months, but it
Speaker 3: you know, memory plays you false after so many years.
Speaker 3: But meeting them, telling my name, They're like, oh, Harry, Harry, Harry,
Speaker 3: like like the Prince Harry.
Speaker 1: Right. I was like, yeah, like Prince Harry. Sure, And
Speaker 1: they were so friendly and so enthusiastic and so delighted
Speaker 1: to meet us, and all of us on the security team.
Speaker 1: We went to the conference room and we had like
Speaker 1: a debrief while we were still heading out to see
Speaker 1: about what worked, what didn't work, and what happened, so
Speaker 1: we all understood the how things that unfolded and the
Speaker 1: lessons that we could learn from this. And while that
Speaker 1: was happening, these Filipino crewmen they cooked us dinner. They
Speaker 1: cooked us no, it was lunch at midday, and they
Speaker 1: had hidden in the freezer while they were captives to
Speaker 1: try and you know, feel that they had a secret
Speaker 1: and they weren't giving up everything. They had hidden some
Speaker 1: steaks inside this freezer and they the first meal they cooked.
Speaker 1: It wasn't for themselves, it was for us. And this
Speaker 1: steak it wasn't anything special, you know, it'd been frozen
Speaker 1: for months.
Speaker 3: But it was steak and it was better than anything
Speaker 3: I'd eaten in weeks, and felt so meaningful that the
Speaker 3: first meal that they cooked after they cleaned up themselves
Speaker 3: and the galley and got everything running again.
Speaker 1: Was for us that was like such a powerful gesture
Speaker 1: and made me feel completely what's the word I'm searching for, inadequate,
Speaker 1: you know. I just they thought we we were something
Speaker 1: special and I'd just shown up for money, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I was intrigued like this, Yeah, it meant something to them.
Speaker 1: And and to have someone say thank you and really
Speaker 1: mean it, that is something I've seldom experienced a couple
Speaker 1: of times like this, but it leaves its mark on you.
Speaker 1: And it was it was it was something special and
Speaker 1: something really powerful and I felt it at the time
Speaker 1: and I still feel it now recounting it. That steak
Speaker 1: dinner with a couple of leaves of salad. I don't
Speaker 1: know where the salad came from or how they got it,
Speaker 1: but yeah, the steak Carrod do Rember, and the warmth
Speaker 1: that they showed us, and the thanks and I remember
Speaker 1: at one point the colonel got more together on the
Speaker 1: one of the the decks at the side of the
Speaker 1: bridge and for a group photo and was like, give
Speaker 1: us a we are alive. And they just weren't feeling it.
Speaker 1: They were they had they were happy in their own way.
Speaker 1: They weren't going to be inspired by someone giving them
Speaker 1: a speech. I remember taking that picture. I don't have it.
Speaker 1: I had to, you know. That was Colonel's Cameron gave
Speaker 1: that up. But yeah, it was. That was a picture
Speaker 1: and that was It was something special to see them,
Speaker 1: even though they didn't quite respond to the attempts to
Speaker 1: sort of enliven them. They were going through. They were
Speaker 1: going through something in their own headspace that only they'd
Speaker 1: been through, and you could see that they were unwinding
Speaker 1: and processing it in their own way and anyway long
Speaker 1: and the short of it was the Colonel said, I,
Speaker 1: I don't think the captain is able to command his
Speaker 1: ship and I need one of us to go with
Speaker 1: him to the port that they're going to head forward
Speaker 1: and talk at after we peel off and head back,
Speaker 1: and Dave, would you do it? And I was like, no,
Speaker 1: I want to stay with the team. I want to
Speaker 1: see this through to the end.
Speaker 3: You know, we've we've been working together and for me
Speaker 3: to be split off now is it kind of feels like,
Speaker 3: I mean, this is an unexpected honor and what have you.
Speaker 3: But oh, I want to stick with the team that
Speaker 3: has been through all this together and see the job through.
Speaker 1: As originally you know, as originally sold to me.
Speaker 3: And he said, all right, fine, I'll go. And he said, actually,
Speaker 3: it's a good thing you don't go, because because I've
Speaker 3: got two passports and you don't, which is a very
Speaker 3: good thing because then it might have involved as it
Speaker 3: worked out. Well, it's a good thing that I didn't
Speaker 3: go and put it that way you used to with me.
Speaker 3: I still can't see anything, okay, So.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what was what was sort of the next job,
Speaker 2: the next counter piracy job after that one.
Speaker 1: It's not over. This job isn't over yet. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we split off. You know, the release ship went went
Speaker 1: on its way, I think it headed north.
Speaker 3: Two tug boats and the rest of the team we
Speaker 3: split off and headed back down south. And you know,
Speaker 3: aside from the seasickness and the crap food and the
Speaker 3: you know, rewatching the same stuff on the DVD over
Speaker 3: and over again and rereading the same crap books that
Speaker 3: I'd read the week before over and over again, it
Speaker 3: was pretty uneventful.
Speaker 1: Until that is, we were almost across the border or
Speaker 1: almost out of Somali waters, and then we got bumped
Speaker 1: by another gang.
Speaker 3: And I remember being up on the bridge because I
Speaker 3: was still there, you know, boy scout, still being on
Speaker 3: watch when everyone else was start into relax.
Speaker 1: I'm talking to the captain and he was like, nah,
Speaker 1: we're almost safe now. I don't think there'll be any
Speaker 1: any more danger.
Speaker 3: I was like, okay, And they went back to the
Speaker 3: wheel and then turned around a moment later and his
Speaker 3: eyes were as wide as saucers.
Speaker 1: I'll never forget it.
Speaker 3: And he just says one word, and yeah, grab the binoculars,
Speaker 3: look at the radar low and behold. On the horizon,
Speaker 3: there is a mother ship and it's just in the
Speaker 3: process of detaching a couple of skiffs and they start
Speaker 3: coming in towards us, and so we stand to get
Speaker 3: on the radio.
Speaker 1: Alert the other vessel.
Speaker 3: It's behind us, you know, a couple of hundred yards behind.
Speaker 3: Everyone goes to their positions, Everyone gets ready. Steve's in command.
Speaker 3: He says, you go there, Sure, you go there, and
Speaker 3: the drill had bin. We let them come in and
Speaker 3: we show them we have weapons. We don't want to
Speaker 3: start a fight because we might have to do business
Speaker 3: with these guys a couple months down the line, and
Speaker 3: Somalis are definitely remember a vendetta and never pass up
Speaker 3: an opportunity to return the favor if they lose one
Speaker 3: of their own.
Speaker 1: So yeah, we were very cognizant of that, and to
Speaker 1: use force only after you know, polite dissuasion had failed.
Speaker 3: But I was thinking, man, if they get on board,
Speaker 3: or if they get our advantage is keeping them at
Speaker 3: arm's length. Our advantage is my rifle and my accuracy,
Speaker 3: which I can keep at arm's length.
Speaker 1: Their advantage is volume of fire.
Speaker 3: Once they're getting close, my advantage is nullified and their
Speaker 3: advantage is maximized.
Speaker 1: I told you, I go through things in my head.
Speaker 1: That's my way of you know, working through anxiety or whatever.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I was most concerned about them getting inside
Speaker 3: my envelope, getting inside my ability to keep them away.
Speaker 3: And and they came in and we never got time
Speaker 3: to go through there.
Speaker 1: You know that the escalation.
Speaker 3: Levels of warnings and whatnot, because the other tongue opened fire,
Speaker 3: I guess a little bit less discipline than us. And
Speaker 3: after they opened fire, the Pirates open fire, and you
Speaker 3: know you've you've heard the incoming incoming fire. And when
Speaker 3: you start hearing the the you know they're getting close
Speaker 3: and you know, that was that was something. And Steve
Speaker 3: says to me, right, give me one warning shot. Day,
Speaker 3: give me a warning shot.
Speaker 1: Like thirty degrees off axis, so they know we're not
Speaker 1: going to take this line down.
Speaker 3: So I gave him one warning shot, and you know,
Speaker 3: the chain of command had been established. I had to
Speaker 3: respect it. I did, and then.
Speaker 1: I was the dynamic in my head was I've got this,
Speaker 1: can our policy quarter of a million to get me back? No? No, no,
Speaker 1: this before we open fire. That was what went through
Speaker 1: my head before they open fire. That was what went
Speaker 1: through my head.
Speaker 3: And I was thinking, you know what if if they
Speaker 3: take us prisoner, if we get taken hostage, you know,
Speaker 3: barring accidents.
Speaker 1: I will get to go home.
Speaker 3: I will live because I've got this kid kidnap aroundom policy.
Speaker 3: So but if we fight and are captured, we'll probably
Speaker 3: be dark. We'll probably be executed, or if we're not killed,
Speaker 3: in the in the in the capture itself.
Speaker 1: So I was thinking, what are we going to do?
Speaker 1: You know, if I don't fight, if I put my
Speaker 1: hands up, I will almost certainly live, but I'll have
Speaker 1: a very unpleasant three months and a story to tell
Speaker 1: my grandchildren about but if I do fight, there's a
Speaker 1: decent chance I will die, a more than decent chance
Speaker 1: considering the you know, the disparity in fire about.
Speaker 3: So that was the dynamic going for my head. And
Speaker 3: that's when the other boat opened fire.
Speaker 1: And it's like, okay, the the the mechanics and the
Speaker 1: whys and the watts and the ifs and where wars
Speaker 1: are taken out of it.
Speaker 3: Now the firefights started. And that's when Steve said, right,
Speaker 3: give me a warning shot. Thirty degrees did it. And
Speaker 3: then I was like, oh, fuck this, Fuck these warning shots.
Speaker 3: I'm going to shoot to kill. So chambered one, put
Speaker 3: it home, took aim, took the shot, and within within
Speaker 3: a few moments, I don't remember how many, because time
Speaker 3: sort of dilates and stretches out and compresses in a
Speaker 3: firefight and those high stressed situations.
Speaker 1: But it was almost like I remember us. Pretty soon
Speaker 1: after that shot, they turned around and they stopped shooting,
Speaker 1: or they were just firing hot shots over the stern
Speaker 1: as they were retreating. But I don't think I hit
Speaker 1: any one that day. In fact, I'm almost I didn't.
Speaker 1: I just I just didn't feel the vibe.
Speaker 3: And as you know, if I get onto that part
Speaker 3: of the story, I know what that vie feels like.
Speaker 1: So I don't think that's what happened.
Speaker 3: But maybe I just got close enough to make them
Speaker 3: change their mind, and I think that's what probably happened.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they turned around, they went back. I went
Speaker 1: and looked at the superstructure of the towboat afterwards. I
Speaker 1: couldn't see any hits.
Speaker 3: But when someone's been firing, you know, fully automatic in
Speaker 3: your direction, You've been hearing that, you've been in seeing
Speaker 3: the splashes, you know it was. It was coming close
Speaker 3: enough to to make you sit up and pay attention.
Speaker 3: And and when it's over, then you you feel a
Speaker 3: certain certain satisfaction that having sort of got through that,
Speaker 3: and there's certain ah, you know certain.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 3: I think Winston Churchill said it first when he said
Speaker 3: to be to be shot at without incident is one
Speaker 3: of the most exhilarating experiences.
Speaker 1: And I can certainly second that. And straight afterwards we
Speaker 1: took a picture myself and sure, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: try and share that if I can. Oh, my screen's back,
Speaker 1: all right, start share? Only the host can share in
Speaker 1: this meeting up? Sorry, can we fix that? Yeah? Or
Speaker 1: I can send it to you after this and you
Speaker 1: can just splice it in show.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, yeah, email it to us afterwards.
Speaker 1: I sent that picture at one point, I think to
Speaker 1: try and hook your interest. But yeah, I'm in flip
Speaker 1: flops posing alongside Share with my bolt action rifle and
Speaker 1: his sporting shotgun. And that was taken right after the
Speaker 1: pirate attack, and right off we saw it off and yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone will hurt to either side, so
Speaker 1: the best possible outcome really just gonna.
Speaker 2: So yeah, let's let's move it along to the next
Speaker 2: piracy job you had.
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, there's a sort of a PostScript. When we
Speaker 1: got back into Port, you know, a few days later,
Speaker 1: because we were quite close at that stage, Steve had
Speaker 1: been scheduled to go to a wedding, and he said,
Speaker 1: do you want to come along? You know, I can't
Speaker 1: get you in the wedding, but you know, the part,
Speaker 1: the pre party and what have you. We booked a hotel.
Speaker 1: My my family's coming down. We're going to stay in it,
Speaker 1: and so I said, sure, you know, crack, not exactly
Speaker 1: wedding crashed, but crashed one of the parties, and we
Speaker 1: within hours of getting off the boat and leaving the port.
Speaker 1: I was at a beach party, this beach nightclub, you know,
Speaker 1: with this music pumping out. I mean I tried to socialized,
Speaker 1: and I tried to have a beer or two, but
Speaker 1: I was just exhausted, emotionally exhausted after this whole thing.
Speaker 1: And I just remember sitting down in the sand with Steve,
Speaker 1: with a couple with a couple of beers between us,
Speaker 1: a little bit away from from the action, just saying, like, dude,
Speaker 1: did that just fucking happen? I still and I still
Speaker 1: can't believe it, Like almost twenty years later, did that
Speaker 1: really happen? The whole thing was like like a movie
Speaker 1: and start to finish, And sometimes I sometimes I ask myself,
Speaker 1: am I did I hallucinate it? Am? I? Like, like Walter, Missy, like,
Speaker 1: you know, just imagining things that happened to me. But
Speaker 1: I've got the pictures. I hope the audience is going
Speaker 1: to see the pictures to to you know, get some
Speaker 1: some something concrete to say, yeah, it actually happened. But
Speaker 1: it's it's still wild looking back at it, and that
Speaker 1: that beach party, that that time sitting down in the
Speaker 1: sand and just talking about it. And reliving it and
Speaker 1: talking about it with Steve was that was wild. So
Speaker 1: that was the the interesting PostScript and the sort of
Speaker 1: the the final epilogue to that that particular adventure. How
Speaker 1: are we doing for time?
Speaker 2: I feel, Oh, I mean we're we probably can do
Speaker 2: like another half hour or so.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, I used up?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, half hour of five minutes or something like that.
Speaker 1: So after that I made some good contacts, you know,
Speaker 1: I there was a there was a brief sort of
Speaker 1: after party.
Speaker 3: I got given a bonus above and beyond what would
Speaker 3: what had been, you know, agreed.
Speaker 1: I was sent back with a you know, pil of
Speaker 1: cash paid off my student loan. I can't remember if
Speaker 1: I did another job straight after that. Yeah I did.
Speaker 1: I did the cruise ship and that was well. When
Speaker 1: they were starting convoys through the through the Red Sea,
Speaker 1: through the Battle Mendeb you know, escorted by coalition warships,
Speaker 1: and on that particular cruise ship job with another team,
Speaker 1: some of whom I had worked with before, on some
Speaker 1: of them I hadn't. I witnessed another ship just ahead
Speaker 1: of us being hijacked, and listening to that was pretty wild.
Speaker 1: Over the radio, they were calling for help. They were
Speaker 1: screaming there were pirates attacking, their coming in for us.
Speaker 1: They're shooting, their shooting. And then after a moment's pause,
Speaker 1: you know, after.
Speaker 3: They'd been calling out that what had been happening, another
Speaker 3: voice came on the radio and said, there are no
Speaker 3: pirates here. And then the ship changed course towards the
Speaker 3: Somali coast and it was like, oh boy. And through
Speaker 3: a friend I made later on another transit, he knew
Speaker 3: that the guy who had been on that ship and
Speaker 3: he actually jumped overboard.
Speaker 1: It had been another It had been a marine who
Speaker 1: was actually you know, sold a couple of books off
Speaker 1: of the experience of failing to stop a pirate attack
Speaker 1: and jumping over board. Like I said, I wouldn't say
Speaker 1: anything mean, but yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Failed to secure any publishing rights or any agent for
Speaker 3: my story when I tried to write it, and I
Speaker 3: thought that was a little bit of a disparity in
Speaker 3: the breadth sort of depth of your experience versus the
Speaker 3: ability to.
Speaker 1: Sell it anyway. So I went on to do several transits.
Speaker 1: I think I got nineteen transits of the high Risk
Speaker 1: garry on various cargo ships, bulk or carriers, car carriers,
Speaker 1: container ships going up and down left right, across the
Speaker 1: across the Indian Ocean to Sri Lanka, or up into Amman,
Speaker 1: or up into Fujero, or into the Gulf of or
Speaker 1: Proud the Straits of muz to the UAE side bit
Speaker 1: top them now and once doct in Aiden. But I
Speaker 1: never got off the boat. I wish I had was
Speaker 1: before the sort of whole moofy thing happened.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I interspersed a season of diving with an expedition,
Speaker 3: and then some more anti piracy worked top up the
Speaker 3: bank accounts. I was just living a life up until
Speaker 3: up until I turned thirty. Well, anyway, there was one
Speaker 3: other voyage which deserves a bit of a bit of
Speaker 3: exposure because it was the second time I was attacked
Speaker 3: and I was a team leader.
Speaker 1: This time I went switched horses, went to work for
Speaker 1: another company, a company which would later on go on
Speaker 1: to implode. I can't go bankrupt, but at the time
Speaker 1: I didn't know that, and I went across as a
Speaker 1: team leader straight away without even an interview, purely on
Speaker 1: the basis of my association with the colonel's company because
Speaker 1: of the reputation they had gained. And yeah, my first
Speaker 1: job was the Vogue Dignity, and I met a guy
Speaker 1: who was my two ic for.
Speaker 3: Many jobs together, really good friend and a guy whose
Speaker 3: instincts I came to.
Speaker 1: Trust initially when we went When I went on board
Speaker 1: this ship, you know, the three of us who went
Speaker 1: on who had met the airport and you know, shared
Speaker 1: a few stories and talked about our experiences and this deployment,
Speaker 1: that deployment, what have you. And when we got there,
Speaker 1: there was this guy who was like, oh my ms
Speaker 1: Nie on former says, I'm the team leader here. And
Speaker 1: I was like, well, boss, he said, I'm the team leader,
Speaker 1: so you know, we better get them on the phone
Speaker 1: to try and figure this out. And I was like,
Speaker 1: what's your experience and you've done antipirasy stuff before. He
Speaker 1: was like, well no, yeah, well I was SAS, so
Speaker 1: you know, you were just just a marine. So you
Speaker 1: know you're gonna have to learn off me for a bit.
Speaker 1: I'll take them on my way school you a bit.
Speaker 1: And I was like, I know you've done this and that,
Speaker 1: and that's cool, but if you've never been on board ship,
Speaker 1: you don't have to work the radar systems.
Speaker 3: You don't know the lingo or how to communicate with
Speaker 3: the officers or the helmsman, or or or work or
Speaker 3: fight the ship, or talk the captain's language.
Speaker 1: You're not going to be that much used as a
Speaker 1: team leader. And so we were. We had a little
Speaker 1: bit of a you know, a clash of personalities there
Speaker 1: until I eventually got the one of the bosses on
Speaker 1: the phone on the SAT phone and was like, come on,
Speaker 1: who's going to be the boss here? And they said, okay,
Speaker 1: you are. Eddie's going to be the two ic And
Speaker 1: Eddie didn't like this, so he packed his bags and
Speaker 1: left the next day.
Speaker 3: They have found out that he might not have been
Speaker 3: everything that he claimed to be, and that happens a
Speaker 3: lot in the private security industry, and I'm afraid to
Speaker 3: say I've experienced it a lot since leaving. And yeah,
Speaker 3: that's it's it's a thing that you have to keep
Speaker 3: your eyes out for.
Speaker 1: And I never expected that to be a thing, but
Speaker 1: it is. Anyway, that left me and and either too,
Speaker 1: I see, and one other guy that showed up, and
Speaker 1: that was our team. We went from this port to
Speaker 1: that port. We got to know the crew, the great crew,
Speaker 1: Indian officers, Filipino sailors, one of the best combinations you
Speaker 1: can hope for.
Speaker 3: Really friendly guys. They all bring something to the table.
Speaker 3: All the cultures work well together. It was a great experience.
Speaker 3: We got to know each other. We drilled, we trained,
Speaker 3: we ran through simulations, and at one point there was
Speaker 3: a sort of whole side person at times. At the premium,
Speaker 3: we had to get some extra ammunitions, so we bought
Speaker 3: it under what might have been questionable legality circumstances.
Speaker 1: That was kind of like the you haven't seen that
Speaker 1: movie Ronn where they go and do the deal under
Speaker 1: the bridge for the money for the Oh god, it was.
Speaker 3: It was tense and then there and it turned out
Speaker 3: that one of the guys that met me at the
Speaker 3: meet was one of the guys I worked with before.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't until halfway through the exchange that was
Speaker 1: like don't I know you? I know you from somewhere.
Speaker 1: That was like I know who you are, you are
Speaker 1: so and so. From there it was like, oh, yeah, brother,
Speaker 1: I remember you. We did this. But for a moment
Speaker 1: it was like so tense. Well I was thinking, oh
Speaker 1: my god, these are under a policeman. I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: the other I know.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it came out okay, and it turned out
Speaker 3: to be the same ammunition we had offloaded from those
Speaker 3: two tongue boats on the first job. Because I remember
Speaker 3: wrapping it with share the other the other Eastaff and
Speaker 3: Special Forces guy, and we'd wrapped it with extra tape.
Speaker 1: We joked about how whoever I wrapped it after us
Speaker 1: was going to have a hard time getting it open.
Speaker 1: It was the same boxes. It was the same guy
Speaker 1: who was cropped up elsewhere in the industry, and that
Speaker 1: ammunition getting getting used a second time anyway. So we
Speaker 1: carried on with the voyage with some more ammunition, some
Speaker 1: seven six to us, some twelve gauge, and then we
Speaker 1: got bumped. Ut. I used to have the coordinates in
Speaker 1: my head, and I used to have the date in
Speaker 1: my head. I want to say, eleven degrees north, fifty
Speaker 1: eight grades east or one variation of that, you know,
Speaker 1: And it was Andy, who's well first we picked it
Speaker 1: up on the radar, and on a good radar, good
Speaker 1: ship's radar, you have the X band in the S
Speaker 1: band and they are either side of the bridge, and
Speaker 1: they they're good for slightly different conditions and different things.
Speaker 1: I've forgotten now, but if that's a good setup. You
Speaker 1: can get I think called the CPA, which is the
Speaker 1: closest point of approach from any particular contact.
Speaker 3: It gives it a vector and it calculates stuff in there.
Speaker 3: Then you get a TCPA time to closest point of approach.
Speaker 1: So we saw this contact, you know, the latest of
Speaker 1: many contacts that we had tracked, and then Andy saw
Speaker 1: them on the binoculars. He had great eyes, he had
Speaker 1: been wrecky, he had been a color sergeant in the cavalry.
Speaker 1: I trusted him implicitly, and you know how sometimes professionally
Speaker 1: you can have two guys who just fit together and
Speaker 1: work together great. He was like, he was like my spock.
Speaker 1: He was. He was a great guy, and he his
Speaker 1: eyes were better than anyone else's on the bridge, and
Speaker 1: he was like, yeah, that's a dow. It's lowering a skiff.
Speaker 1: I couldn't see this detail. He could. It's peeling off
Speaker 1: and it's coming for us.
Speaker 3: And I was like, okay, this is this is the
Speaker 3: strongest indication on any boys since the last attack that
Speaker 3: I've had that we're going to get attacked.
Speaker 1: And I must admit I was I was kind of like,
Speaker 1: I think what this will do for my career. It's
Speaker 1: an uncharitable thing to feel going into what you know
Speaker 1: is going to be a firefight. But I knew this
Speaker 1: was going to boost my career with the next company
Speaker 1: as well, and I knew that I could probably handle this.
Speaker 3: And one looking at the radar and the TCPA, it
Speaker 3: was like twenty five minutes at the current speed, it
Speaker 3: was going to be on us. So I said to
Speaker 3: the captain, all right, changed course to this. I'm going
Speaker 3: to my cabin. And my cabin was just behind the bridge.
Speaker 3: I had the pilot's cabin.
Speaker 1: And you might think that's a little tactically naive or
Speaker 1: maybe reckless, but I thought, I'm about to get in
Speaker 1: a firefight and I really need a poop, so I
Speaker 1: don't want to ship myself in the firefight.
Speaker 5: So so yeah, I don't know what it is, but
Speaker 5: my bladder and my bows sometimes are like the best
Speaker 5: indicator that the firefight's about to happen, because whenever it's
Speaker 5: kind of like going to kick off, or maybe there's
Speaker 5: no indicators yet there's going to kick.
Speaker 1: Off, I need to go. So that that happened. I
Speaker 1: went to my cabin quickly. Well, if you've been in
Speaker 1: the middle tree bit of the Marines.
Speaker 3: You know how to use the bathroom real quick, so
Speaker 3: I did quick white wipe done. Then I was like,
Speaker 3: do you know what, if I'm going to be a firefight,
Speaker 3: I'm going to die.
Speaker 1: I'm going to die with a clean asshole. So I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have a shower. So on the shower, off, clothes
Speaker 1: in water, rintse rits off, dry off, back clothes on,
Speaker 1: put on the Lucky trousers and the Lucky t shirt
Speaker 1: and back out. And Okay, I probably did that in
Speaker 1: like two minutes, three minutes tops, because if you've been
Speaker 1: in the military and you know how to get ready
Speaker 1: and wash yourself and ADDM in yourself fast, you can
Speaker 1: do it a lot quicker than you realize. Came back
Speaker 1: out onto the bridge. Oh.
Speaker 3: The last thing I did before I left my cabin
Speaker 3: was put on sunglasses because I didn't want anyone to
Speaker 3: see the fear in my eyes.
Speaker 1: And I was scared that if my eyes were like
Speaker 1: big and scared and like sources like that, like the
Speaker 1: Todd captains had been, then people wouldn't be listening to me.
Speaker 1: So so you know, I wanted to be like cool,
Speaker 1: calm and collected this is my first time as a
Speaker 1: team leader, as you know, leading the bridge team fighting
Speaker 1: the ship, and I was I was very aware, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to poot myself, didn't want to show
Speaker 1: my fear. I wanted to be calm collected. So I
Speaker 1: gave myself quick grin in the mirror, came back out
Speaker 1: onto the bridge, and when I stepped foot on that bridge,
Speaker 1: I could feel the panic rising. People were calling a
Speaker 1: crowd see each other. The captain was, you know, saying
Speaker 1: what are we going to do? What's the next course
Speaker 1: of action? Members of my team were like, we need
Speaker 1: to do this, or we need to do that. You know,
Speaker 1: you could hear the panic rising and different people shouting
Speaker 1: across each other, and the sort of conflagration and no
Speaker 1: clear plan, no one taking the lead. I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe the ship show routine wasn't such a great idea.
Speaker 3: But I thought, I've got to get I've got a
Speaker 3: moment to get control of this situation.
Speaker 1: I've got a moment and to start.
Speaker 3: You know, re establishing calm and re establishing my authority
Speaker 3: and you know, starting to lead this team and fight
Speaker 3: the ship. So what I did is I went over
Speaker 3: to the telephone that you can dial up any particular
Speaker 3: department of the ship, and I dialed down to the
Speaker 3: galley to the mess man and everyone saw me doing.
Speaker 1: This and picking up the telephone, and I was like, hello,
Speaker 1: mess man, how you doing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, stay up on the bridge. Yeah, I'm kind of thirsty.
Speaker 3: Would you mind sending me.
Speaker 1: Up a coke? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I feel like a coke, Captain, would you like a
Speaker 3: coke as well? And by this stage everyone to stop
Speaker 3: what they're doing and saying, and they're paying attention to
Speaker 3: me and wondering what the fuck I was doing. And
Speaker 3: I was like, okay, yeah, the captain wants a coke
Speaker 3: as well. Helmsman. First off, so you want coke, Steve.
Speaker 1: You want to coke as well? A right? Bring what?
Speaker 3: Just bring up a whole Slaber cokes for us, chilled
Speaker 3: if possible. And he was like, yeah, we don't have coke,
Speaker 3: We only have fanta. I was like, okay, no fans
Speaker 3: is good, bring up Slaber fanta. Okay, all right, thanks
Speaker 3: a lot as soon as you can. Jeers By put
Speaker 3: the phone down. Bridge had gone completely quiet and everyone's
Speaker 3: just looking at me, and I felt that crackle, that
Speaker 3: thrill of.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I'm in the moment and I'm the man,
Speaker 1: and what I say and do is gonna next is
Speaker 1: going to determine the how this unfolds. And I felt that,
Speaker 1: like that thrill of I'm Captain fucking Cook, I can
Speaker 1: fucking do this, all right.
Speaker 3: So I started off by saying, I once again, memory
Speaker 3: plays you false. And the details of what I said
Speaker 3: next I don't remember, but the gist.
Speaker 1: Of it was, all right, what's on course and speed?
Speaker 1: All right, very good, let's cool down to the engine
Speaker 1: and make sure they've got max revolutions. I remember from
Speaker 1: that that movie Hunt for the Red October when Red Raimius,
Speaker 1: you know, played by Sean Connery, says, increase the flank.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that means. I have no idea,
Speaker 1: but I think I just said, increased speed to flank
Speaker 1: because he's trying to avoid the torpedoes and stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, anyway, whatever it was, I said, they increased speed
Speaker 3: to max.
Speaker 1: I'll I'll send you the pictures. Because we we had
Speaker 1: planned out the response. We started off. I was like, like,
Speaker 1: start the fire hydrants, start all the hoses, start the pumps.
Speaker 1: I want all the fire hoses pumping over the side.
Speaker 3: I want to flood the deck so that anyone gets
Speaker 3: on there, they'll be slipping around.
Speaker 1: We'd already put raise the while around it. We'd already
Speaker 1: put dummies at key places on the stern of the ship,
Speaker 1: dummies wearing you know, helmets and with like dummy rifles,
Speaker 1: so it looked like there's people there. I was like, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: you inform ukmt O that we have a possible probable
Speaker 1: pirate inbound, you know, tcpas this, so we're gonna get
Speaker 1: hit around this time. You start unwrapping bandages, start prepping
Speaker 1: the aid station, get everything ready there you I want
Speaker 1: I want you. This was to the Boston and I said,
Speaker 1: I want you to go down and pull the circuit
Speaker 1: breakers from every floor. Make sure all the outside hatches
Speaker 1: are secured, all the windows secured, all the curtains are drawn.
Speaker 1: Because if you pull the circuit breakers to every non
Speaker 1: essential floor, if anyone gets in, it's gonna be dark.
Speaker 1: They can't turn on the lights, they're gonna be disorientated.
Speaker 1: We'd already harden the ship. We'd already welded bars on
Speaker 1: windows and doors and locks that you could pull down
Speaker 1: so that every door would be secured. Site.
Speaker 3: I was like, all right, activate the mustard alarm, all
Speaker 3: the non essential crew, muster in the muster point, and
Speaker 3: then head over to the citadel. The citadel is a
Speaker 3: partner the ship that you'd hardened and put, you know,
Speaker 3: placing around so that as a last resort you'd get
Speaker 3: in there, lock yourselves in, and then call u q
Speaker 3: mto and basically asked for a helicopter with ninjas to
Speaker 3: come and you know, rescue.
Speaker 1: That wasn't necessary as it happened. So yeah, all the
Speaker 1: non essential crew mustard, including the captain's wife and this
Speaker 1: three and a half year old daughter who were along
Speaker 1: for the voyage, and then they went over to the citadel.
Speaker 1: So all the non essentials were out of the way.
Speaker 1: We just had the bridge team. We just had the
Speaker 1: security team. And I had gone through firing off those.
Speaker 1: I wish I could remember the sequence of it, but
Speaker 1: I was killing it, man. I was just saying, you
Speaker 1: do this, you do this, Has that been done? Has
Speaker 1: that been done? And I had that that moment of
Speaker 1: feeling like, damn, I am killing it, man, I don't
Speaker 1: know how this is going to turn out, but it
Speaker 1: sounds good. And then they were coming in. They were
Speaker 1: inside three hundred yards, and you know, I went out
Speaker 1: onto one of the bridge rings. I gave my camera
Speaker 1: to the captain and said, take some pictures. I wish
Speaker 1: i'd said, take video some of those pictures you've seen,
Speaker 1: and so I guess we can splice in. I don't
Speaker 1: have time to try and pull them up like we agreed.
Speaker 1: But yeah, and then it was comical what happened next.
Speaker 1: So I detailed one guy, a really good South African soldier.
Speaker 1: I said, you go prone on that corner, and you know,
Speaker 1: I'll be on the wing. Last man was a little
Speaker 1: bit unsure of himself with weapons. He had been a
Speaker 1: police officer in an eastaff in an African country. I
Speaker 1: actually took his weapon off him because I was concerned,
Speaker 1: more concerned that he would be a danger to the
Speaker 1: team than the pirates. So I had the shotgun on
Speaker 1: my back while I was having the seventy six to
Speaker 1: two self loading rifle in my hands.
Speaker 3: And you'll see that in the picture. It was a
Speaker 3: bit better than the bolt action from the first one.
Speaker 3: I was like, right, first thing we'll do is five flares.
Speaker 3: Fire a flare, high up, second flare.
Speaker 1: I am a bit closer and the skiff actually had
Speaker 1: to veer out the way to avoid the flare. We
Speaker 1: were going as fasts we could everything. All the hoses
Speaker 1: were activated, all the all the procedures and the drills
Speaker 1: were put in place, has been activated and one was
Speaker 1: as ready as we could. So this was, you know,
Speaker 1: coming down to the final moments. I was right, right,
Speaker 1: let's fire you and me Andy. That's fire like three
Speaker 1: shots in the air so they know we've got multiple
Speaker 1: self loading weapons to give them an idea of the
Speaker 1: firepower they're about to face. So we fired three shots each.
Speaker 1: But when I said get ready to fire three shots,
Speaker 1: he didn't say here to get ready by. He just
Speaker 1: fired them and I wasn't ready for it. So I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, damn, man in my ears, and it
Speaker 1: was like the you're only supposed to blow the bloody
Speaker 1: doors off moment, you know. It was. It was kind
Speaker 1: of a comical moment of levariety in the middle of
Speaker 1: the tense situation that was that was unfolding, and I
Speaker 1: was like, right, you and me, Andy, let's fire three
Speaker 1: rounds in the water off axis so they know we're
Speaker 1: not aiming at them, so they know that this not
Speaker 1: meant for them. This is a demonstration.
Speaker 3: So yeah, six rounds went in the water, nice big
Speaker 3: plumes of spray come up, and that's when they opened
Speaker 3: fire and I was like, okay, you've you know, you're
Speaker 3: firing directly on us.
Speaker 1: Now our warnings have gone unheated.
Speaker 3: That's when we can, you know, flip the switch and
Speaker 3: go over to use of lethal force to defend ourselves
Speaker 3: as we're legally allowed to do.
Speaker 1: So Yeah, I just remember for the next.
Speaker 3: For the next few moments, just pumping rounds into that
Speaker 3: skiff as it was coming. And I remember as clear
Speaker 3: as day, the first one.
Speaker 1: Setting up plume of water, the after the side, and
Speaker 1: the second one sending splinters off the gunnal of the skiff.
Speaker 3: And then after that there's like a gray blob over
Speaker 3: the occupants of that that skiff, and I have no
Speaker 3: recollection or memory of anything that was there or anything
Speaker 3: that was hit. And I've had that gray blob before
Speaker 3: once when I was in a fight when I was
Speaker 3: in college, when someone was strangling me. And when you're
Speaker 3: close to blacking out, you get these gray fingers coming
Speaker 3: in from the edges, obscuring your vision until it comes
Speaker 3: down to a like a tunnel and it was the
Speaker 3: exact same kind of gray that I remember, like over
Speaker 3: the top of those guys and the skiff that we
Speaker 3: were shooting at. So truthfully, I really don't know if
Speaker 3: I hit anything that day, But the only explanation I
Speaker 3: can come up with is that my mind was somehow
Speaker 3: trying to erase or edit those memories to shield from me,
Speaker 3: shield me from whatever.
Speaker 1: I saw or did. And the one of the one
Speaker 1: of the I think it was the helmsman who had
Speaker 1: actually been through a previous Iranian missile crisis and been
Speaker 1: missile in another ship. He was watching through the monoculars
Speaker 1: and he said he saw two of those guys go down.
Speaker 1: So the South African guy never heard the word of
Speaker 1: command when I when I when I gave the word
Speaker 1: of command, I said, I shouldn't let him have it.
Speaker 1: I should have mentioned that, but yeah, and he never
Speaker 1: heard it, so he never opened fire. It was just
Speaker 1: me and Andy that loosed off, you know, mag each
Speaker 1: into them. So it could have been him, could have
Speaker 1: been me, but I, you know, I wouldn't have my
Speaker 1: mind wouldn't have edited that unless there was something that
Speaker 1: it was trying to protect me from. That's a strange
Speaker 1: little idiosyncrasy.
Speaker 3: I'dn't know if any of the other veterans who've been
Speaker 3: described contacts they've been in have ever expressed anything similar
Speaker 3: about that that Grave blog not quite like that.
Speaker 2: But I think what you're describing is it necessarily uncommon
Speaker 2: that there's like a certain level of stress in your
Speaker 2: mind kind of blanks some things out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was very It was very weird. How I
Speaker 1: just could not access those memories afterwards. And yeah, the
Speaker 1: skiff turned around, so there was evidently someone still alive
Speaker 1: at the helm. They went back to the mothership, we
Speaker 1: sailed on. We updated ukmto nearest ship with ours sit
Speaker 1: rep and yeah, checked everyone, no casualties, no damage, stayed
Speaker 1: on watch, stayed up, you know, everyone on stations for
Speaker 1: a good while. And Yeah, eventually sort of calmed down.
Speaker 1: And I remember afterwards, I went up to the top
Speaker 1: of the ship to the what's can known as the
Speaker 1: Monkey Island and held onto the the rigging and stood
Speaker 1: on top of the railings, and just like it was.
Speaker 1: It was weird. It was like a release of emotion.
Speaker 1: I just started laughing into the wind. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Never never really had anything like that since before or since,
Speaker 3: And I guess I was just like super glad to
Speaker 3: have gotten through it. When you think about it, it's
Speaker 3: really not that hard in contact to be in because
Speaker 3: you're up high, they're down there, they're on a skiff.
Speaker 1: You're on a stable firing platform. But but for me,
Speaker 1: I was really satisfied with the fact that I had actually,
Speaker 1: you know, led a team in a contact and I
Speaker 1: knew I'd done my job and done it well and
Speaker 1: you know, held everyone together through my I guess you
Speaker 1: call it leadership. But it wasn't that challenging of a situation,
Speaker 1: but it was. It was definitely a first for me.
Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, it was. It was. It was something.
Speaker 2: It was something to be that, oh yeah, they needed
Speaker 2: somebody to man up. After that, you went and were
Speaker 2: you doing some freelance work in West Africa.
Speaker 1: Well, it was all technically freelance. So final, final chapter.
Speaker 1: I guess we're getting onto that now. I went back
Speaker 1: to the UK. I tried to, as I put it,
Speaker 1: go straight for a few years after I turned thirty,
Speaker 1: I started panicking, like, you know, I've had all this
Speaker 1: this head and listed sort of existence for the last
Speaker 1: few years. I've had a great time, some cool experiences,
Speaker 1: a little last, but I have no savings, I've got
Speaker 1: no career, I've got no plan, I've got no mortgage.
Speaker 1: And I started panicking and thinking, you know what, woman
Speaker 1: is going to be interested in a long term relationship
Speaker 1: with me unless I get like a real job, a
Speaker 1: stable job. So I tried to go straight. I tried
Speaker 1: to get away from the security industry. I tried a
Speaker 1: few different things. I tried adventure, travel, tourism. I tried
Speaker 1: starting my own app for six months. Didn't work out.
Speaker 1: It makes money, but it wasn't enough to get it
Speaker 1: over the line to make it, you know, super profitable.
Speaker 1: I tried being a recruitment consultant for six months, and
Speaker 1: I spectacularly failed to hire a single person in that time.
Speaker 1: And one of the things they said to me is
Speaker 1: you lack the killer instinct. I'm afraid you don't have
Speaker 1: what it takes in this history. Oh, by the way,
Speaker 1: recruitment consultants, I said, I wouldn't say anything mean about anyone,
Speaker 1: but watch out for them. They will get you in
Speaker 1: for interviews and then they will ask you who you've
Speaker 1: been interviewing with.
Speaker 3: And you know, because you don't want to seem like
Speaker 3: you're nobody and you haven't been doing nothing. You don't
Speaker 3: want to seem like you're sitting on your hand.
Speaker 1: So, so I had this interview with this company, and
Speaker 1: this interview with this company, and they'll be like, oh, so,
Speaker 1: did you interview with so and so that I know
Speaker 1: from them? And you'll be like, no, No, the hiring
Speaker 1: manager was this guy. Five minutes after you're out the door,
Speaker 1: they'll be on the phone to them, looking them up
Speaker 1: on LinkedIn, saying I hear you're hiring. I've got a
Speaker 1: few candidates you might want. Yeah, they will screw you.
Speaker 1: And I just couldn't. I'm not saying I'm an especially
Speaker 1: moral or upright or whatever person, but I wasn't cut
Speaker 1: out for that industry didn't make it did in the
Speaker 1: last six months. And then you know, I was applying
Speaker 1: for this.
Speaker 3: I was applying for that, and I put the colonel
Speaker 3: down as a reference, and I said, can I use
Speaker 3: you as a reference? And I was like yeah, sure.
Speaker 3: And I didn't get that job. And I was like, damn,
Speaker 3: did he screw me on that? Because I really thought
Speaker 3: I was going to get this thing. I called him
Speaker 3: up and I said, did you you know did you
Speaker 3: give me the reference?
Speaker 1: Did you screw me? And he was like, no, I
Speaker 1: gave you one. I'm sorry you didn't get it. So
Speaker 1: you're looking for work, aren't you?
Speaker 3: Do you want to move out to Africa and live
Speaker 3: here full time and be on my you know, management team.
Speaker 3: You know, you know that that Ron in movie they
Speaker 3: talk about laboral management. The Jo Reno character says, were
Speaker 3: you laboral management? I'd been labor up until that point,
Speaker 3: and then I sort of moved onto the management side
Speaker 3: of the thing for a for a good while.
Speaker 1: You know. I was with that management team for six
Speaker 1: months and putting in bids and planning contracts and doing
Speaker 1: doing all the operational sort of fixing for executive protection
Speaker 1: tasks from VIPs visiting East Africa, going on Safari oil contracts,
Speaker 1: security for drilling site, security for crew change is, for
Speaker 1: seismic survey ships, all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 3: And it was fascinating and it was high stakes and
Speaker 3: it was well, I wouldn't say especially, it was high stress,
Speaker 3: That's what I wanted to say.
Speaker 1: And it was during that time living in East Africa
Speaker 1: that I met my wife, my only wife so far,
Speaker 1: And yeah, she was working for the United Nations from
Speaker 1: a girl from Philly, which I was always to find out,
Speaker 1: is it means that they have, you know, like all
Speaker 1: the bad language and all the attitude, know how to
Speaker 1: talk to people that cross them in whees they don't
Speaker 1: like and yeah, shout out to all the Philly girls
Speaker 1: and the Philly people, You're something else. And yeah. So
Speaker 1: after the oil price fell through the floor a few
Speaker 1: months later, I had to go freelance again. I ended
Speaker 1: up working for I worked for a guy who started
Speaker 1: a legitimate mers keeney Meeni services. Have you ever heard
Speaker 1: of them? He went on to found another company who
Speaker 1: were semi you know, no, they were legitimate by that stage,
Speaker 1: but his origins was definitely definitely on the other side
Speaker 1: of the de fence. I actually had lunch with him
Speaker 1: at a nice sort of suburban cafe in East Africa
Speaker 1: before a job that we went on in Somalia to
Speaker 1: do almost the opposite of what I'd done before, but
Speaker 1: on the side of the good guys it was.
Speaker 3: It was a weird situation. I ended up getting dysentery
Speaker 3: in morged issue for about a week, but still paid
Speaker 3: reasonably well without the job actually happening.
Speaker 1: And then I did surveys in France. I did one
Speaker 1: really nice job in Marseille that was just you know,
Speaker 1: paperwork and presentations. Oh and I forgot to tell you
Speaker 1: one of the one of the last part of jobs
Speaker 1: I did while I was still working for the Colonel
Speaker 1: was the.
Speaker 3: Fair Cam Bogie, And yeah, that was my last ransom run.
Speaker 3: I never found out what the ransom was because after
Speaker 3: the tense situation that happened with the Cela Marie and
Speaker 3: they almost went wrong handover, they switched to no more
Speaker 3: face to face handovers. It was dropped by parachute, So
Speaker 3: the ransom would be dropped by parachute with like a
Speaker 3: GPS thing that would basically steer it onto the coordinates
Speaker 3: and it would be picked up, so no more face
Speaker 3: to face, and then the security team would come alongside
Speaker 3: and only get on when the parks got off.
Speaker 1: And they did a lot of these without me, and
Speaker 1: then I joined for my last.
Speaker 3: Job on the fair Cam Bogie, and the wages gone
Speaker 3: down by that stage, so you didn't get the same
Speaker 3: bonuses that you got because as every security industry sort
Speaker 3: of happens, explodes matures.
Speaker 1: And then tails off.
Speaker 2: They started hiring a lot of third country nationals and
Speaker 2: you know, when you were making one thousand dollars a day,
Speaker 2: suddenly you're making two fifty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it was like that. But the company was
Speaker 1: still paying good money still, you know, at the at
Speaker 1: the at the good end of the industry. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I did that last job. The r ansom was dropped.
Speaker 1: I'll send you some of the photos. You can see.
Speaker 3: The condition of the ship after the pirates got off
Speaker 3: was diabolical.
Speaker 1: Oh man. Meeting that crew that had been held for
Speaker 1: five months was it was incredible. The captain like they
Speaker 1: were hijacked almost inside a safe port after their security
Speaker 1: team had got off to go ashore via a tender.
Speaker 3: The parks have been waiting. I don't know if they'd
Speaker 3: specifically clocked them and worked out the security team got
Speaker 3: off or if it was just luck. But they were
Speaker 3: almost inside a port in a man I want to
Speaker 3: say Solana, but I might be mixing that up. Now,
Speaker 3: hijacked and then sail back to Somalia. The crew had
Speaker 3: gone into lockdown that but one of the ensigns had
Speaker 3: been in the in the battle of the ship, and
Speaker 3: so they they had him and they forced the rest
Speaker 3: of the crew to open up the citadel because they
Speaker 3: had that one ensign to use his leverage. All the
Speaker 3: defenses they'd put up, the pirates had managed to overwhelm
Speaker 3: and get past.
Speaker 1: They'd endured torture.
Speaker 3: And privation, starvation, beating up, bullying. The pirates had tried
Speaker 3: to convince some of them to go onto other ships,
Speaker 3: to use them as mother ships, to go out on
Speaker 3: pirate missions, to try and take other to hijack other ships.
Speaker 3: It would and anyway, this was all to come when
Speaker 3: I when I met the crew. But yeah, the ransom
Speaker 3: hand over went okay, you know, we went until the
Speaker 3: dusk we came on alongside we got on board.
Speaker 1: The sea state was incredible.
Speaker 3: It was so rough that going across by some nets
Speaker 3: or ladders would have been impossible.
Speaker 1: They actually had to use the ship's crane to send
Speaker 1: over a basket that we then got on and hung
Speaker 1: on too whilst we were swung across. So I can
Speaker 1: legitimately say that I swung on the end of a
Speaker 1: road a landing on a pirate ship, just like an
Speaker 1: Aeroflynn movie. But yeah, that's stretching a point slightly, but
Speaker 1: I did it. And then as soon as we got there,
Speaker 1: we just saw.
Speaker 3: The state the dilapidation, the trash everywhere, the cat leaves
Speaker 3: because the pirates they chew this leaf called cat that
Speaker 3: is like a stimulant.
Speaker 1: I never tried it. I didn't know what to compare
Speaker 1: it to. Thought I wouldn't know. So, yeah, those leaves
Speaker 1: were everywhere, and the crew they all they had left
Speaker 1: was their overalls or a few rags clothes that they'd
Speaker 1: managed to maintain. They'd all been kept on the bridge.
Speaker 3: They'd all been sleeping on mattresses up there while the
Speaker 3: parts slept in their cabin and then had a terrible,
Speaker 3: terrible time. But yeah, we pumped across fuel stores, supplies, food,
Speaker 3: whatever we loaded across, got the ships started.
Speaker 1: Oh, myself and myself and my buddy from the East
Speaker 1: African Special Forces had to go through every compartment and
Speaker 1: clear the whole space. And that was like a I'd
Speaker 1: never done VBSS.
Speaker 2: That one of those ships for two games.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd never done the official VBSS training course.
Speaker 3: I was just figuring it out, and yeah, taping taping
Speaker 3: flashlights to the end of your rifle to have some
Speaker 3: some means of checking the corners and everything that was.
Speaker 1: That was pretty nightmarish and by the time we were
Speaker 1: finished clearing everything and verifying no parts were left on board.
Speaker 3: You know, they'd managed to clean it up a bit,
Speaker 3: get the engines started and start getting it out to see.
Speaker 1: I hope I'm not missing anything, and I'm not going
Speaker 1: to come back and say, oh sorry, I forgot but yeah.
Speaker 1: And we sailed north to Salala, and then I shared
Speaker 1: watches with the I think he was the third officer,
Speaker 1: and he just poured out everything. There was a time
Speaker 1: when when myself and the Kent, the East African Special
Speaker 1: Forces guy, had been clearing one of the corridors down
Speaker 1: in the Indian engine room when we'd come across these
Speaker 1: bloodstains on the wall, and the torchlight illuminated it and
Speaker 1: it was someone who had.
Speaker 3: Written in blood, we are only twenty one. And I
Speaker 3: found out one of the crewmen told me this was
Speaker 3: the captain. When the pirates broken into the superstructure and
Speaker 3: got all the crew out of the citadel, they were
Speaker 3: hitting the captain around their head with rifle butts and
Speaker 3: he was bleeding from it and trying to explain to
Speaker 3: them we're only twenty one.
Speaker 1: We're only twenty one. This is everyone. There's no one left.
Speaker 1: So he took the blood coming from his scalp and
Speaker 1: just wrote on the wall we are only twenty one.
Speaker 1: And that's what I saw. I mean, a few hours
Speaker 1: later the crew had cleaned it off, but I saw it.
Speaker 2: Wow, And.
Speaker 1: That was like some sort of intro to a horror.
Speaker 3: Movie or something, you know, going down through the decks
Speaker 3: of the ship with flashlights and one other guy and
Speaker 3: finding this and not knowing what the backstory was.
Speaker 1: And it was you know, obviously filled in later, but damn,
Speaker 1: that was that was pretty real.
Speaker 3: So the captain still had the scars from when they'd
Speaker 3: tortured him by putting ropes, you know, like Baylor twine
Speaker 3: around his wrists and pulling them apart.
Speaker 1: It's a common tactic they would use, be to to
Speaker 1: get the ship owners and the negotiators on the satellite
Speaker 1: phone and torture one of the crew in the background
Speaker 1: while they're trying to negotiate, to try and use that
Speaker 1: as you.
Speaker 3: Know, listen to the screams of your man. This is
Speaker 3: what your delays are causing. And yeah, that was that
Speaker 3: was pretty wild. And you know, you'll see the picture
Speaker 3: I thought about, you know, covering the faces. But if
Speaker 3: you put it off if you use it at your discretion.
Speaker 3: I know, if you want to, you'll see the looks
Speaker 3: on those faces and the story they tell. And just
Speaker 3: in the corner, peeking out behind the bridge winging bridge door,
Speaker 3: you can see me, you know, me in my yeah, twenties.
Speaker 3: I guess, bit of mileage since then, bit of middle
Speaker 3: aged spread, but you know it's I was there. And man,
Speaker 3: the story that that third officer told me of the
Speaker 3: five months he had been due to get married, he
Speaker 3: had been engaged. And in India, you know, postponing a
Speaker 3: wedding is a big deal. Yeah, because it's between the families.
Speaker 1: It's a match. It's not like a huge So he
Speaker 1: was worried.
Speaker 3: He was thinking that their family might have called it off.
Speaker 3: And he told me about torture. He told me about
Speaker 3: the starvation, the captivity, the beatings, and how the captors
Speaker 3: had said to some.
Speaker 1: Of them, look are you Christian or are you Muslim?
Speaker 1: And they'd been like, no, no, we're Hindi, We're Hindus.
Speaker 1: So are you Christian or Muslim? There was no in between,
Speaker 1: either one or the other.
Speaker 3: And yeah, the privation and suffering they had endured, and
Speaker 3: the doubt and wondering if his family was going to
Speaker 3: be decided, if he was going to get to marry
Speaker 3: this woman that he had only met a couple of times.
Speaker 3: You know, I'd been eating up on him and he
Speaker 3: said to me, you know, the day you came twenty one,
Speaker 3: men were born again. Up until then, from five months,
Speaker 3: we were in a space of in between alive and death,
Speaker 3: not knowing what what we would come out as.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, that was it was really really intense listening
Speaker 1: to him and burdening his soul over that that voyage
Speaker 1: north to Salala, and when we got into the port,
Speaker 1: dolphins came out to meet us, and all sailors believe,
Speaker 1: you know, dolphins are a lucky sign and it was
Speaker 1: just beautiful to see those and docking that was like
Speaker 1: a that was an emotional moment. There were minibuses there
Speaker 1: take the crew off. You know, we made our way
Speaker 1: the security team back to whatever agents came along, took
Speaker 1: the weapons or bonded them and whatever, sent them back
Speaker 1: to whatever armory. But that was my last time on
Speaker 1: a ship. That was my last trip. So I went
Speaker 1: back to London.
Speaker 2: Yeah, tell us about you know, kind of where you
Speaker 2: are today, what you're doing now.
Speaker 1: Well, there's a there's an epilogue to this that the
Speaker 1: story wouldn't be complete without, you know. I went back
Speaker 1: to London.
Speaker 3: I went through that whole period of trying to go
Speaker 3: straight because I thought that was my last job before
Speaker 3: I eventually went back to East Africa to work for
Speaker 3: the colonel. And a few months into the thing whatever
Speaker 3: in Devor, I was trying to make work in eventure
Speaker 3: travel or luxury travel.
Speaker 1: I hear from an I hear from the third officer,
Speaker 1: I'm getting married. The married. The wedding is on. That's awesome,
Speaker 1: and I want you to come. And I was like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: can I do this? Yeah, I can do this. And
Speaker 1: they'd been a they'd been a girl, an American as
Speaker 1: it happens, that i'd met like ten years ago on
Speaker 1: a dockside in Tangier that I had like a fling
Speaker 1: with in southern Spain and whatever, and I'd stayed in
Speaker 1: touch with her long distance, and she got married and
Speaker 1: got divorced, and I was like, man, I wonder if
Speaker 1: she'd come to this wedding with me. So I asked
Speaker 1: her and she's like, yeah, I'll come, crazy girl. So
Speaker 1: we went as guests of honor to this wedding in Deli,
Speaker 1: and their family treated me like a god. I was
Speaker 1: put up with them. I didn't stand in any hotels,
Speaker 1: I didn't eat any restaurants. They put me up for
Speaker 1: like ten days. An Indian wedding has like so many
Speaker 1: levels and layers to it. There's like three different ceremonies
Speaker 1: spaced out by a week, and yeah, we were there
Speaker 1: for all of it. They bought me, like I forget
Speaker 1: what it's called, like a like a tunic with these
Speaker 1: golden buttons. You'll see it in the picture. I don't
Speaker 1: want to try and fuck around with the pictures right now,
Speaker 1: but if you splice it in, there's a wedding photo
Speaker 1: with the third officer in the middle, myself on one side,
Speaker 1: the American girl who came along with me on the other.
Speaker 1: And yeah, man, at that wedding, I danced until dawn
Speaker 1: and it was like a like an emotional sort of
Speaker 1: epilogue to the whole.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, big time.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And and I I have to say, if I hadn't
Speaker 3: had that positive experience through that journey I went on
Speaker 3: through private security, if I had just finished Afghanistan and
Speaker 3: that was it, and I hadn't you know.
Speaker 1: Afghanistan was a kind of an unresolved, unfinished No one
Speaker 1: really got the ending they wanted to out of it.
Speaker 1: But I I kind of I kind of got something
Speaker 1: back through this whole party experience, and that I thank
Speaker 1: you that the crew said to me, and that first
Speaker 1: ship of suba marine, and that the experience of meeting
Speaker 1: that third officers family, and that the thanks I got
Speaker 1: from them, and the seeing that marriage and being there
Speaker 1: for that, and if it was like a it was
Speaker 1: it was a very much a healing experience from the
Speaker 1: the unpleasantness that that Afghanistan was. And I feel like
Speaker 1: a lot of the you know, my brother soldiers and
Speaker 1: comrades who went through that, they never got that that ending.
Speaker 2: It's like a sense of closure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And I was saying to my you know, I've been
Speaker 1: thinking for the last couple of months, what am I
Speaker 1: going to say in this this interview, this thing we're doing.
Speaker 1: And I was having a walk with my wife and
Speaker 1: I said, I don't know what kind of person I'd
Speaker 1: be today if I didn't get that that happy ending.
Speaker 1: That sounds so corny. I have difficulty saying it.
Speaker 2: Out loud, but well, if you point out, you don't
Speaker 2: always get one in this profession.
Speaker 1: So she said to me, I don't know if you'd
Speaker 1: even be alive today, right, Yeah, well I thought you
Speaker 1: had a little bit more faith in me than that.
Speaker 1: But final take that, I guess. So, so, yeah, it
Speaker 1: was the epilogue, the wedding. It was a big deal
Speaker 1: and yeah, sorry, I I I didn't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just to just to start wrapping up, tell us
Speaker 2: you know about what you're up to nowadays?
Speaker 1: Oh man, So yeah, freelance Africa. Worked for an embassy.
Speaker 1: I kind of got to go straight after all. Did
Speaker 1: the embassy work for a year, and then I was
Speaker 1: the wife and I we pulled stumps and we quit
Speaker 1: our jobs and moved back to the States. And I've
Speaker 1: been living here now for almost ten years. I'm a
Speaker 1: US citizen. I've had two sons born here. They now
Speaker 1: have triple nationality. And yeah, moving to the States has
Speaker 1: been a trip. You know, it's been an adventure in itself.
Speaker 1: It deserves a whole chapter in itself. I love being here,
Speaker 1: I love the country, I love the people, and I've
Speaker 1: been working in corporate security ever since. It's not high arctane,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not it's not.
Speaker 3: See to the pants stuff. But it's been steady, it's
Speaker 3: been flexible. I get to do fun stuff.
Speaker 1: Every now and again we can and again I do
Speaker 1: a bit of executive protection as part of the job.
Speaker 1: And Yeah, it's been cool. I've been luckier than I
Speaker 1: have any right to deserve or expect. And I'm truly
Speaker 1: grateful for the people who've given me the opportunities that
Speaker 1: I've had. I'm truly grateful for, you know, the people
Speaker 1: in this country, the friends, the neighbors that I've made,
Speaker 1: and the you know, being being felt, being feeling like
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a part of it, and it's awesome.
Speaker 2: Is there a place where people can go to find you, Dave, Like,
Speaker 2: are you on LinkedIn? Or if people wanted to reach
Speaker 2: out and procure your services so to speak.
Speaker 3: No, I'm I'm corporate now and I have to get
Speaker 3: someone's permission to do anything outside of that.
Speaker 1: But gosh, I used to have a No. I mean,
Speaker 1: you can just find me on LinkedIn. I guess if
Speaker 1: you really want to.
Speaker 3: Yeah, these days, you know, I'm definitely in middle age,
Speaker 3: late forties, and I guess, you know, I still find
Speaker 3: time to try and blow my hair back occasionally, although
Speaker 3: having responsibility, you can't be quite as reckless as I
Speaker 3: used to be. So I found I found a way
Speaker 3: to you know, blow my hair back every now and
Speaker 3: again by doing shooting competitions and a couple of marathons.
Speaker 1: I've got one coming up in November, and yeah, looking
Speaker 1: forward to that. I tried the I dabbled in night
Speaker 1: vision shooting competitions and I had a little bit of success.
Speaker 1: I came last year, I came second in the largest
Speaker 1: one in the US, the EVE. For that, I think
Speaker 1: I came second as well. So yeah, I've I've found
Speaker 1: a little niche there and enjoy doing the odd the
Speaker 1: daytime competitions or or whatever comes my way. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm just really glad to be here and sort of
Speaker 1: really grateful for the opportunity to come and share this
Speaker 1: story because it's been a while. Man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, thank you for thinking of us. And these
Speaker 2: are some like really unique experiences. It's an insight into
Speaker 2: you for a couple of different reasons. Partly because it's
Speaker 2: private security and another that it's out in the middle
Speaker 2: of the ocean, so people don't really have visibility on it,
Speaker 2: so we really appreciate these sorts of like unique experiences
Speaker 2: and you sharing them with us.
Speaker 1: Well, I know I haven't been the best guest and
Speaker 1: I've chopped in chains. No, no, it's buddled the order.
Speaker 1: But hopefully you can edit into something something halfway legible
Speaker 1: and something that will be interest and hopefully entertainment to
Speaker 1: your audience. And it's been fun. Man, it's been a
Speaker 1: lot of fun just recounting it. How many minutes did
Speaker 1: we actually clock up in the end.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Yeah, oh okay, so yeah, I'll do
Speaker 2: a quick I'll do a quick outro here and we
Speaker 2: can get going. So thank you Dave for joining us
Speaker 2: on the show today. We'll have some links down the
Speaker 2: description if you want to find him on LinkedIn. And
Speaker 2: I hope all you guys enjoyed this sort of unique
Speaker 2: insight into private security on the high seas and we
Speaker 2: will see you next week. So until then, take care.
Speaker 1: Thanks man. Thanks to the audience for sticking it out
Speaker 1: this long. It's been emotional.
Speaker 2: Thank you Dave.
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