in their own mess. That was normal routine at least, and hopefully there was nothing unusual happening aboard this night.
The verticle edge of the bows sliced easily through the water between the two small wooden boats and the deep hum of the enormous engine began to filter through the noise of the wind and the engine of Abed’s boat. The snag was seconds away. There was no danger of the line slipping under the tanker because of the depth of the snub-nosed bow breaker beneath the water that extended several metres ahead of the furthest visible point of the bows above water. The coxswains kept the nose of the boats pointing towards the front of the tanker so that when the line was snagged they would move forwards and not jerk to the side.
Everyone crouched and held on, waiting for the sudden acceleration. Abed kept a firm hold of the console, all the time searching the deck of the tanker and bridge wings for any sign of life. He could make out a figure moving on the bridge but nothing on deck or on the external stairways of the superstructure. All seemed well.
The line suddenly snapped taut as a violin string as it whipped out of the water and the ring in the bows creaked under the strain, but the boat did not immediately move. During one such training exercise, the line snapped and whipped back with such force it took one of the men’s ears clean off. This line was stronger, but there would always be doubt until they were under way.The bolt suddenly clunked as it moved into another position in the ring, almost giving the man directly behind it heart failure, then as the line reached its full stretch the boat lurched forward as if it had harpooned a thunderous whale. They matched the speed of the tanker within seconds, moving at an angle to it and drawing closer to the side.
A hundred metres of line brought them alongside the tanker just less than a third of the way down from the bows. The boat thumped against the side of the vast steel wall that went up to the heavens and the men quickly unfastened four fibreglass poles secured in the bottom of the deck. Using a technique they had practised endlessly, the ends of two poles were connected with bayonet fittings and then fed back so that the next one could be attached to the end. As the pole got longer, it became a more difficult task to perform. Abed’s boat was four metres long but since the pole had to be eleven metres in length it meant that most of it was allowed to extend over the stern and into the water while the last sections were attached. The final piece of equipment was a hook slotted into the end of the pole which had a large coil of lightweight caving ladder fixed to it. The idea for the device was taken from Indonesian pirates. Once the pole was constructed, the end with the hook was raised into the vertical position against the boat as the ladder unfolded and pushed up, the aim being to place the hook on to the edge of the deck or rails. The combination of gusting wind, rain and swell made it difficult to control the flexible pole and stop it from swinging about. This was where the endless training paid off. When the teams first practised the technique on dry land in perfect conditions they had many failures such as losing control of the pole completely or the hook and ladder falling off the end. When they progressed to doing it at sea in a rocking boat many thought they would never ever be able to manage it first attempt, as Abed had demanded. But in time they became proficient and confidence soared. They only brought one set of ladder and poles per boat for this mission and therefore failure to hook on meant the failure of the entire operation.After several minutes of extreme effort, and one very close call where they almost lost control of the pole completely, a supreme push to keep it vertical saw the hook snag on to the edge of the deck and the pole was pulled down and allowed to fall into the sea.
‘Abed,’ Ibrahim called out, waiting for the order.
‘Go,’Abed said, and Ibrahim was first up the ladder, his scimitar dangling from his back. When he was halfway up the next man