The pirates had practiced the takedown so many times that they knew how many steps it was between each turn, every blind spot, and every area that presented a risk of fratricide.

They reached the port and starboard exterior staircases and climbed five flights. The next level up on the T-shaped superstructure held two metal catwalks. Known as bridge wings, they were outdoor extensions of the bridge that allowed the ship’s officers to walk the full width of the ship from eighty feet above the deck.

The teams crouched along the catwalks until they reached the doors to the bridge. One of the pirates from the port-side team peeked inside. It was a massive room—seventy feet wide and eighteen feet deep. Except for the dim red lighting, it looked more like a high-rise office building than a ship. There were leather chairs, a dozen computer monitors, and six men standing watch.

The DoubleDown’s chief mate was discussing the ship’s malfunctioning electronics with the chief engineer. The two men speculated that only a generator malfunction, or maybe a massive solar flare, could have caused everything to crash simultaneously.

“Could be an electromagnetic pulse,” suggested one of the other officers.

Each was hesitant to voice what he really thought.

The chief mate had spent sixteen years as a merchant marine officer, mostly on tankers plying the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. He was no stranger to the threat of piracy. He’d been at sea during its heyday in the Gulf of Aden, and it was not something one forgot—stories of ships’ crews being held at gunpoint off the Horn of Africa for months or even years, living in fear and filth until distant insurance companies and faceless shipowners could agree on ransom payments for the safe return of the ship, crew, and cargo.

The chief mate had also heard stories about a recent spate of disappearances. Bermuda Triangle–type theories had emerged about an area of the Indian Ocean with rogue waves that were uniquely dangerous to tankers, but the mate had as much faith in those theories as the ones he’d heard as a child about mermaids and sea monsters.

He raised the crew radio. “Vessel protection detachment, check in.”

He repeated the instruction, but the handheld radios were full of static too.

All eyes in the bridge were upon him as he lowered the handset.

“Everyone into the citadel. Now.”

Like a good leader, he said it with a calmness he did not feel.

Like a safe room in a home, a citadel aboard ship was an armored room from which the crew could radio for help, control the ship, and wait in safety for naval forces to dispatch the pirates. Most citadels were in the superstructure. It was close to the bridge, fresh air, and radio and satellite antennas.