The pirate infested waters off of Somalia are now patrolled by 34 warships from 15 nations, a coalition determined to stop the brigands. But the grisly murders of four Americans aboard a captured yacht shows that the anti-pirate coalition can't protect every seafarer, even when it takes early action to free hostages.

Those, at least, are the early conclusions that the U.S. Navy is drawing. The pirates that captured the S/V Quest on Friday were about 100 miles from the Somali northern coast, midway to an Indian Ocean island called Socotra that Yemen controls. But that's practically their backyard. Despite the efforts of the anti-piracy coalition, the pirates' reach has actually expanded – "all the way up into the North Arabian Sea, off of the coast of India, down to Madagascar," Vice Adm. Mark Fox, commander of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, told reporters yesterday.

Fox, who commands U.S. naval forces in the Middle East, attributed that expanded reach to a reduced monsoon season this year and increased pirate reliance on "mother ships," larger vessels that serve as launch points for smaller ships in deeper water. But while the weather is hard to predict, using mother ships isn't a new tactic for the Somali pirate fleet. The Indian navy sunk one in the Gulf of Aden back in 2008. Mideast-based U.S. Navy forces even captured one the following year.

And that exposes a basic weakness, as National Journal noted. Fox confessed, "with the vast distances that are involved here, you know, there's a lot – there's a lot of places where we are not."

That's a general concern. The more immediate lesson emerging from the Quest is that even when the U.S. Navy responds assertively to a hostage situation – getting into position quickly; using massive force but not being provocative; being diplomatic before getting violent – things can still turn ugly.

To be clear: there's a lot that remains murky about what happened aboard the Quest. But according to Fox's briefing yesterday, the response to the Quest was initially promising, reflecting years of recent experience in counterpiracy operations. Within a few days (the timeline is unclear) of learning the Quest was hijacked, four U.S. Navy ships, including an aircraft carrier (!), pursued and made contact with the yacht and began negotiations with the pirates for the safety of the four Americans aboard. On Monday, the day before the killings, two pirates boarded the U.S. missile destroyer Sterett and began face-to-face talks. As far as the rescue team knew, the hostages were still alive.

Early on Tuesday, a rocket propelled grenade hurtled from the Quest to the Sterett, followed by the sounds of gunfire – what Fox believes was the execution of the hostages. A raiding team of Special Operations Forces had yet to fire its guns or come aboard the Quest, leading Fox to tell reporters that the U.S. couldn't have killed the hostages by mistake during the ensuing battle. That raiding team shot one pirate dead, killed another with a knife, and took the remaining 13 prisoner. Even before it boarded, Fox said, "several pirates appeared on deck and moved up to the bow with their hands in the air in surrender."

So at least some of the pirates were negotiating – and even surrendering. The Navy brought overwhelming force: an aircraft carrier, two destroyers and a guided missile cruiser. But despite the seemingly-rational hijackers and the U.S. Navy's big-time advantage, the pirates still killed their hostages. American sailors were unable to pull off a repeat of the successful 2009 rescue of the Maersk Alabama.

Statistics released by the Pentagon yesterday show that the pirates are increasingly lethal, not just willing to barter away their ill-gotten cargo for cash. Before the Quest, two people have died in pirate killings in the first two months of the year; eight died in 2010; and that's twice as many as killed in 2009.

Fox warned seafarers to stay within "an internationally recommended transit corridor for merchant ships that we patrol very carefully routinely" near the Horn of Africa. But as Time's Mark Thompson reminds, the admiral sounded the alarms about the increased pirate danger for weeks before the Quest incident. No wonder private security firms and Gulf governments are standing up anti-pirate militias.

Photo: Flickr/DVIDS

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