Guarding the ‘Floating Bomb’ on Halloween, While Somali Pirates Prowled the Seas

by Martin Kufus

Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from “P is for Pirates,” a chapter in Plow the Dirt but Watch the Sky, by Martin Kufus, a former editor at Soldier of Fortune. 

Somali piracy already was waning in 2012 when I arrived on the Indian Ocean as a member of a four-man rifle team guarding a client’s cargo ship against hijack. It was my first time aboard an ocean-going vessel. This one was an Asian-flagged liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) carrier hauling, at full load...