I Have a Little Black Hole

After Powell arranged their respective jobs, all the employees began to work in full swing, and even the people from the security company were preparing. It seems that this salvage mission will require several stops here. Days of time, but also the action of salvaging treasures, it is very easy to attract the attention of pirates.

Modern pirates are mainly distributed in two places, one is the Gulf of Aden from northeastern Africa to southwestern Asia and the northwestern corner of the Indian Ocean. The other is the east and west sides of the Malacca Strait in Southeast Asia. In addition, it is also said to exist on the coast of East Africa in the western Indian Ocean and north of Madagascar.

The sea area where they are now is between the activities of Somali pirates and Malacca pirates, and they have been exposed in the last salvage activity, so it is difficult not to be targeted by these pirates.

From November 7 to 16, 2008, Somali pirates hijacked more than 10 merchant ships in ten days. On the 15th, three merchant ships were hijacked in one day, including the world's second largest supertanker, the Sirius. There are reports that in 2008 Somali pirates made up to $100 million in illegal earnings.

Although a large number of hijacked fishing boats or cargo ships were hijacked because they encountered pirates at sea, many were actually targeted by pirates in advance. Because the pirate business is making money every day, and the sea transportation is quite busy.

For pirates, robbing an old-fashioned cargo ship full of potatoes is no different than hijacking a search for a supertanker. So which ship is the most profitable to hijack is naturally the most concerned issue for pirates.

Therefore, the Somali pirate organization has begun to send investigators to the Suez Canal and other places. Use long-distance phone calls and the Internet to report shipping to find the fattest game.

In addition to investigators, Internet search is also a powerful tool for pirates. Using the search server to search for the name of the ship, you can easily obtain the ship's sailing schedule and related information, so that you can find a high-value target to start, in order to win more ransom. In fact, the Sirius was hijacked by pirates whose whereabouts were detected in advance.

In the process of hijacking ships, pirates mainly use speedboats as boarding tools. However, such small ships can only operate near shore. In order to achieve further travel, Somali pirates often take the mode of mother ship battle groups.

Take several speedboats to sea with a converted tugboat or freighter. In this way, its activity radius can be extended to hundreds of nautical miles from the shore, and the way of sailing away from the Somali coast in the past has been unable to avoid the attack of pirates.

Pirates' mother ships are often equipped with radar and satellite positioning systems. Once they enter the sea area where the target may appear, they will turn on the radar to search. Although the accuracy of civilian radar is not enough to lock the speed and approximate volume of the ship, it is still possible to judge whether it is the ship it is preparing to hijack by the movement direction of the object on the screen.

After finding the target ship,

The mother ship first judges its sailing direction and then pursues it. When approaching the target distance of 6-10 nautical miles, the speedboat can be launched for boarding operations. There are generally two ways to launch the speedboat. The most common method is to hoist the speedboat on the deck directly into the sea through the crane, and then start the motor to drive away.

In recent years, some pirate ships have also modified the mother ship to manufacture movable hydraulic steel plates on the rear deck, so that once the speedboat needs to be launched, the inclined plate can be unfolded, and the speedboat can slide into the sea like a slide.

Generally speaking, Somali pirates will dispatch 3-4 speedboats to approach the target ship from both sides during a hijacking. And a shot was fired to warn the targeted ship not to resist. During the boarding operation, two speedboats threw hooks or rope ladders to the deck at different positions on both sides of the ship, and another one or two speedboats were armed with guns 100 meters away from the target ship. If necessary, the crew on deck who dare to resist can be fired at any time.

After boarding the ship, the pirates will control the cockpit for the first time, and lock all the crew into the bottom warehouse or concentrate on the deck, and then drive the hostages and the ship to the shore of the port they control for custody.

Since the relevant investigation has been carried out in advance, and the shipowner can also be directly contacted through the captain. At this time, the pirate group will have personnel responsible for negotiating to go out and ask the shipowner to provide a certain amount of ransom before returning the hostages and the hijacked ship.

During the negotiation process, the general pirate group will present evidence of the safety of the hostages and the ship. The main contents of the negotiation are the amount of ransom, the time and place of payment, and the place and time of delivery of the hostages of the ship.

Somali pirates generally seldom harm hijacked crew members, as they always seek ransom, and harming crew members would imply reputational damage, in which case the owner of the hijacked ship might not pay the ransom in the future.

And salvage boats like them can be considered high-value targets, especially when they know that the salvage boat has something to gain, the attraction to pirates is even stronger.

Now they have to stay here for several days or even a dozen days, which is enough time for the pirates to make various preparations. Whether it is coming from the waters of Somalia or the waters of Malacca, such a long time is enough.

So John asked Lei Tiantang to discuss the security of the salvage ship after the meeting. Seeing that John came to ask Lei Tiantang for something, Kayla greeted Lei Tiantang and went out to watch the crew work.

What's wrong? Looking for me now? Is there something wrong with the security work? Lei Tiantang greeted John with a smile and asked after sitting down.

It's such a boss. The sea area where our salvage ship is located this time is exactly the same as the Somali pirates and the Malacca pirates. What's more, we were exposed during our last salvage mission, so there is a high possibility of being targeted by pirates!

Also, we need to stay for a long time this time, so the pirates have plenty of time to prepare, and we may even face multiple pirates at that time!

Although boss, the weapons you brought this time are not too few, but these weapons are gone after they are used up, and the continuity is not good. If there are multiple pirates who continue to harass us, our current number of rockets And the number of bullets is definitely not enough!

This situation will cause loopholes in our security work, so boss, do you need to replenish some ammunition for our security department when there are no pirates coming?

From my experience, the possibility of us being attacked by pirates this time is almost 90%, so it is absolutely impossible to not replenish weapons and ammunition! John explained why he came.