Petting the Pirates -- Eh? Update and Resolution

Just a few minutes ago -- it is 2 PM here -- the news came in that the Maersk Alabama hostage situation has suddenly been resolved, much in the U.S.'s favor.  There has been a short firefight that left three of the four Somali pirates deceased, and the Maersk captain has been freed and is now safely on the destroyer Bainbridge.

And that's all we are being told, so far.

As with so much else in this matter, the authorities are being notably tight with the information here.

And I am amazed.

I had thought that it would always be easy for the pirates to carry out their threat and do bodily harm to the captain, should a rescue attempt be tried.  So I had dismissed that as being too risky.

So what happened?   Did  the pirate quartet turn out to be another case of the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight?   Or did the Navy Seals use one of probably many techniques that they have perfected that enables them to pop up out of the water and immediately start shooting before anyone knows they are anywhere around?   If so, that would be a military secret that they would never want revealed, so as to keep miscreants in the next such situation guessing. 

Meanwhile, is it possible that all along the pirates have been following some kind of code that keeps them from getting really lethal, because it would be bad for business, which is solely connected with collecting large sums of ransom money?   If I am not mistaken this is five deaths that I know of that have occurred during this piracy binge -- the captain of the Ukrainian freighter with all the battle tanks, who had a seizure, a heart attack or something, supposedly from a pre-existing condition, and died in the first days of that takeover, and then the Frenchman who was accidentally shot during the French rescue a few days ago, and now these three.   Yet none of these can be laid directly at the pirates' feet, because the jury is still out on whose bullets got the Frenchman.

While saddened that it took so much dying to do it, I am overjoyed that the captain is free.

And now to see what this means for the piracy in general.

Some of that may depend on how this sudden and unexpected resolution came about, which maybe we will get soon, when those who know have enjoyed sitting on it realize that they have had it all to themselves  long enough.

Update, 7:50 PM:

I am puzzled.

It is now almost six hours since I saw the news item about the Maersk captain, Richard Philips, having been rescued unhurt, at the cost of three of his four captors being killed.   In that interval, with my wife I have answered an invitation to have Easter dinner at the home of  two of our neighbors and close friends, G. and C., pitched a hard-fought game of horseshoes, which I lost, walked a mile back home, checked the Internet, and transplanted another forsythia offshoot.    Yet on the Google News, there is no mention of the resolution of the hostage crisis, though I had expected it to be splashed all over that page by then.  But there is the gripping story about the Obama family's acquiring a dog.for the White House.

Something must be wrong, unless it's just a case of me not understanding how things work, with the Google News and other things as well.