Tommy Webb woke to the taste of rust and salt. His wrists were sticky with something he did not want to identify. The space beneath him was maybe six feet long, sloped toward the stern, and smelled of fish and diesel and bodies that had not been washed in days.

He pushed himself up and saw the man sitting across from him. The man was Malaysian, maybe fifty, with a cigarette dangling from his lip and a knife on his belt that looked like it had cut more than coconuts.

"You awake, eh?" the man said. His accent was thick, each word shaped by a language Tommy could not name. "Good. You work now."

He handed Tommy a knife. It was rusted, the blade chipped and stained. Tommy looked at it the way you look at an insult.

"What is this?" Tommy asked.

"Your job," the man said. "I am Abu. You are crew. We go out today. We find ship. We take what we need. You work, you eat. You no work, you swim."

Tommy tried to remember how he had gotten here. He remembered the gambling debts in Sheffield. He remembered the man who had offered him a job in Malaysia—loading cargo at the port, easy money, three months and enough pounds to clear everything. He remembered the bottle of whiskey, the handshake, and waking up here.

He was not a pirate. He was a steelworker. He had spent twelve years in a factory that had closed down, and then six months on unemployment, and then three weeks in a casino losing everything he had left.

Now he was on a boat in the Strait of Malacca with six other people who looked like they had been discarded by the world.

The boat was old. Tommy could feel it beneath his feet—a vibration, a groan, the sound of water finding its way through cracks in the hull. It was maybe forty feet long, painted a faded blue that had turned grey with salt and sun. The engine coughed when Abu started it, and smoke filled the cabin like fog.

They spent the morning patching holes. Tommy learned to mix tar and sawdust and jam it into gaps with his bare hands. The water was warm and oily, and it got into places Tommy did not want to think about.

By afternoon, they were moving.

Abu stood at the helm, steering with one hand and smoking with the other. The others were scattered around the deck—some sleeping, some staring at the horizon, all of them silent.

Tommy sat against the hull and watched the water pass. It was the same grey-blue water he had seen on the BBC news, on documentaries about piracy off the coast of Somalia. He had never thought it would be real. He had never thought it would be him.

The first real action happened three days later.

They spotted a cargo ship on the horizon—large, slow, flying a Liberian flag. Abu raised a pair of binoculars and watched it for a long time. Then he lowered them and looked at the crew.

"Prepare," he said. Two words. That was all.

Tommy's hands shook as he held the rusted knife. The man next to him was Filipino, early twenties, with a face that was almost boyish and eyes that were not. His name was Rico. He was smiling, but it was the smile of someone who had smiled his last smile a long time ago.

"Do not aim for the body," Rico said quietly. "Aim for the legs. They run faster than you think."

The approach was quiet. Abu killed the engine and let the current carry them. The cargo ship loomed larger—steel and noise and the hum of engines that could go thirty knots. The Vagabond could maybe go twelve, and that was if the engine held together.

They got alongside. Tommy climbed the rope ladder with hands that would not stop trembling. He reached the deck of the cargo ship and looked around.

Six crew members. They were sleeping. Or pretending to.

Abu's men moved fast. Three of them rushed the bridge. Two went below deck to the cargo hold. Tommy stood on the deck with his rusted knife, feeling utterly ridiculous.

Then the alarms started.

Someone on the cargo ship had raised the alarm. Boots pounded on metal stairs. Men appeared on deck—not six, but twelve, and they were not sleeping. They had weapons. Real weapons. Not rusted knives.

Abu shouted an order in Malay. His men ran. Tommy ran with them.

A gun fired. Then another. The sound was louder than Tommy had expected, and sharper, and it made his ears ring for minutes afterward.

Rico fell. He just dropped, like a puppet with its strings cut, and hit the deck with a sound that Tommy would hear in his dreams for the rest of his life.

The Vagabond was pulling away. Abu was screaming for them to jump.

Tommy jumped. He hit the water hard and swallowed salt and pain. He surfaced and saw the Vagabond fifty yards away, its engine roaring. He saw Abu reaching down and pulling the Nigerian aboard. He saw the Somali. He saw Rico's body floating face-up in the water, eyes open, looking at Tommy with the same expression he had worn when he said aim for the legs.

Tommy swam. He swam until his arms gave out. He grabbed a floating container and clung to it while the Vagabond pulled away.

Four hours later, a merchant ship picked him up. The captain was Greek, the crew was Indian, and nobody asked questions. They gave him water and a blanket and dropped him off at a port in Singapore three days later.

Tommy stood on the quay in Singapore with thirty dollars in his pocket, a shirt that smelled of seawater, and a hole in his shoe that let in the rain.

He was sent back to the UK on a passenger ship. The journey took two weeks. He spent most of it sitting on a bench on the lower deck, watching the sea, thinking about Rico's face.

When he got home to Sheffield, his sister was waiting at Heathrow with a car and a look on her face that was part relief and part fear.

"Are you alright?" she asked.

Tommy thought about it. He thought about the boat, and the knife, and Rico falling. He thought about Abu's two words: work or swim.

"I'm alive," he said.

It was not an answer. But it was the only one he had.

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