Alex Harris retreats to her cabin, sits at a laptop and writes an email to her family back home in Devon. She’s a 27-year-old British climate change activist who’s lived in Australia for four years. Her parents knew she was sailing to the Arctic, but no more than that.
Just wanted to let you know that I’m well and safe. I’m not sure if you’ve seen the news but our activists attempted to climb an oil platform from RHIBs. The Russian coastguard got pretty violent, and started shooting guns in the air and water so we turned back. They are now holding two of our activists on their ship. I am perfectly safe, I have been away from the action, on the ship three miles away from the platform. We will stay beside the ship until they release our activists.
When morning breaks the engineers start work on repairing the battered RHIBs. The others spend the day in the ship’s hold, painting a huge banner demanding the release of Kruso and Sini. Tomorrow they plan to fly it from the back of a boat and circle the oil platform and the coastguard vessel. By the time dinner is served by Ruslan Yakushev, the ship’s Ukrainian cook, the banner is drying and the plans for the next day have been agreed. The activists file into the mess and queue in front of a serving counter before taking their food to one of the long tables. It’s just gone six o’clock in the evening.
Frank sits down and glances out of the porthole. The sea is turning orange as the sun sits low over the water. A full moon is hanging in a clear blue sky above the Prirazlomnaya. He pokes at his meal with a fork then looks through the porthole again before deciding dinner can wait. The colours outside are too beautiful to miss. He drops the fork, pulls on his sweater and walks out onto the helideck.
Frank breathes in the air, pushes his hands into his pockets and feels the cold bite of the Arctic on his face. The coastguard ship is three miles away across the blazing water, the muzzle of its cannon now covered.
Today the sea is flat calm. He wishes it had been like this yesterday morning, these conditions are ideal for a boarding. He kicks a chip of paint on the deck and squints his eyes. Then from behind the Ladoga he notices a black dot moving slowly to the left.
It’s tiny at first, a little speck that’s hard to pick out, but it’s getting bigger, changing direction, like a wasp buzzing in front of his face, and from somewhere distant he can hear the low hum of a motor. It’s getting bigger, that dot, and staying low to the water, its outline clear against the light blue sky. And it’s heading straight for the Sunrise. Frank is standing motionless on the deck, his eyes fixed on the dot as he pulls his hands from his pockets and brings them slowly up to his face. Then he cups them around his mouth, turns to the rear window of the bridge and screams a single word.
‘Helicopter!’
In the mess room Phil is watching the same speck crossing the porthole glass. He doesn’t say anything to Camila and Kieron – who are eating with him – instead he watches it with a curious detachment as it gets bigger and bigger. Then suddenly the sound of conversation and scraping cutlery is interrupted.
‘Helicopter!’
And again, this time from a different direction.
‘Helicopter!’
The word is echoing around the ship, resonating through walls, shouted in different accents as boots start stamping on stairways and people push their plates away.
‘Helicopter!’
Frank is standing on the H of the helideck, watching the chopper swinging around the Sunrise, the sound now deafening. His hat flies off his head, his boots slide and he has to lean into the force of the draught to stay on his feet. The side of the chopper is open, a helmet appears and Frank can see a man’s face looking down at him. The man drops a long rope that fizzes and zips as it piles up on the deck. A leg swings out of the helicopter, then another. Two big boots hang motionless for a second then an armed commando slides down the rope and lands right in front of Frank. The soldier unclips from the rope, Frank dances in front of him with his arms in the air. More people are with Frank now, maybe five activists, all with their arms raised. Phil is on the helideck, pointing his video camera at the chopper.
Kieron’s running down a corridor in his flip-flops and a moment later he’s on the deck. And it’s just there, a few metres above him. He’s stood underneath it. It has a big red star on the bottom, his ears are splitting with the noise and all he can think is, wow, this is amazing, this is the best thing I’ve ever filmed; I just have to keep hold of the camera long enough to capture it.
On the bridge Pete Willcox is trying to manoeuvre his ship out from underneath the chopper, but the icebreaker is clumsy and slow compared to a helicopter. Throughout the ship the activists are locking doors, screwing portholes closed, blocking every entrance.
Dima is out on deck now, running into the rotor draught, shielding his face with an arm. He can see masks looking down through the open side door, uniforms, big guns, professionals. And they’re yelling, gesturing, but he can’t understand them. And then zzzzzzzip! Another trooper comes down. Dima thinks it’s a young kid, maybe nineteen or twenty, but his face is masked. The commando drops to his knees, unclips the rope then raises the barrel of his rifle. He’s yelling in Russian, Dima thinks he’s saying, ‘Get down! Get down!’ but the engine smothers everything, the force of the rotors makes it hard even to stay standing. The kid stabs the air with his rifle; another trooper lands on the deck, and another, and another.
Heavily armed commandos are flooding the ship now. Frank and Dima make a run for the bridge. They know they need to defend it if they’re to stop the soldiers taking control of the Sunrise. Two of the troopers break away and chase them. Frank reaches the stairs first; the soldiers barge past Dima and throw Frank to the ground outside the bridge door. Dima hears more boots thumping behind him – boom boom boom – then he feels a hand on his shoulder pulling him back. He stumbles and falls on top of Frank. A boot kicks him in the side and another boot stamps into his back, squeezing the breath from his lungs. Beneath him Frank is yelling in pain as more boots go in. Dima twists his neck and looks back. On the helicopter deck his friends are lying down, commandos are standing over them pointing their rifles at their backs. And all over the ship, from bow to stern, the Arctic Sunrise is swarming with soldiers.
‘Frank, are you all right? Are you all right, Frank?’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’
‘Nothing broken?’
‘No, no.’
‘I think they’re FSB. Special forces.’
Below deck Faiza Oulahsen – a 26-year-old Dutch climate change campaigner – is bashing numbers into a satellite phone. She makes a connection with London, hears the voice of Greenpeace oil campaign chief Ben Ayliffe and shouts, ‘We’re being boarded!’, before slamming down the phone and grabbing the two laptops on the table in front of her. She opens one and presses hard on the ‘off’ button, but the screen stays lit. She loses patience so starts pressing other buttons, trying to force it to shut down before the Russian security services can gain access to the entire encrypted email history of the campaign and the planning of the protest. She slams the computer closed, scoops up both laptops, runs down to her cabin and slides them under a duvet. As she rushes back into the corridor she bumps into Alex, who’s heading for the radio room.