GHEDI SAYID ROLLED THE trackball up to the menu, clicked, and opened a new screen on the LCD color monitor of the radar mounted in the bridge of the Asad, about a hundred miles east of the Somali coast. The computer designated about two dozen fishing boats all around him, tattered and worn dhows working their nets. Sayid had waited patiently as an inquisitive Italian navy frigate paused briefly to visually examine the fishing fleet. All they had seen was fishermen, fishing, as they had done in these waters for centuries, so the warship steamed away due south. The Asad, the Somali word for “lion,” was the mother ship that coordinated the boats and stowed the catch. The blip that represented the Italian frigate was no longer even on his screen, which meant that it was now beyond the one-hundred-mile range of the Kelvin Hughes radar. Too far to help.

Meanwhile, his target, the catch for the day, was cruising ever closer. There was too much haze to see it, but radar did not lie. A heavy sweat stained Sayid’s lightweight shirt, which stuck to him like a hot rag when he leaned back in the chair on the bridge. The sun was directly overhead, cooking the shimmering air off the coast of Somalia’s northeastern Puntland region. Members of the crew silently went about their jobs, waiting for their leader to make a decision.

The radar did not lie, but neither did the weather report. Ghedi Sayid recognized that the blistering heat was just too still and that the dark line hanging low on the horizon was the first skirmishing thundercloud of a major storm. The barometer was falling, and the satellites were showing the clouds gathering in a circular pattern. A monsoon was coming. The fishermen had been calling on the radio about heading in, but he had resisted, denying permission. That meant they would have to race for port in heavy seas if this operation was not carried out soon, and some of the smaller boats might be lost because their sides were so low to the water.