‘Alex! We’re being boarded!’
‘I know!’
‘Alex, armed commandos are storming the ship.’
‘I know!’
Faiza pushes past, Alex watches her disappear around a corner then she runs down the corridor, throws open a door and is nearly blown off her feet by a Russian military helicopter disgorging soldiers. For a moment Alex stands there with her mouth open, hands over her ears, then she slams the door shut, locks it from the inside and rushes to the radio room. That’s where they’ll upload footage of the boarding to a server in Amsterdam, but they need to do it before the security forces cut off their communications.
When she gets there, Colin Russell – the 59-year-old Australian radio operator – is waiting. Russian activist Roman Dolgov is sitting next to him, watching the scene on the helideck on a laptop screen through a webcam. Colin slams the door and starts activating a series of lock mechanisms and steel bars designed to give the communications team the few crucial extra minutes of freedom they need to upload the footage. Footage they don’t yet have. Alex falls into a chair. Through a porthole she can see masked men running past with guns, looking in.
Kieron and Phil have retreated from the helideck with their cameras. Phil is trying various doors, looking for a way into the ship. He needs to get to the radio room and hand over the memory card in his camera. Kieron is running for the stairs to the upper deck but he slips on the first step, loses a flip-flop, stumbles and falls. As he’s getting to his feet he sees the Russian photojournalist Denis Sinyakov being tackled and thrown to the ground by a commando, his camera sliding along the deck, his arms twisted behind his back.
Faiza is on the bridge now. Through the window she can see Dima on top of Frank. The soldier standing over them raises the butt of his rifle. He’s about to smash the window. Inside the bridge Pete glares at him, waves a finger and says, ‘No, no, no. I don’t want any windows broken, not on my ship.’ The commando’s rifle hovers over his shoulder. Pete walks towards him, flicks the lock and lets him in. Soldiers stream through the open door.
For a man with the life story of Pete Willcox, this is just another day at the office. He’s being boarded at sea by armed men. It’s not the first time and it won’t be the last.
Frank groans, Dima rolls off him, they help each other up and limp into the bridge. Inside there are five, maybe six troopers, and as many activists. On the deck below, Kieron is standing behind a crane, watching commandos running past, his camera held behind his back. He edges along the side of the ship towards the porthole of the radio room. Phil is already there, clasping his camera, banging on the glass. He nods at Kieron. ‘Did you get it?’
‘I got it, yeah. Unbelievable footage. You?’
‘Gold dust. It was nice of them to turn up at sunset and make it look like Apocalypse Now.’
Alex is undoing the screws on the porthole but she can’t get the damn thing open. She’s unscrewing and unscrewing but the window won’t budge. Soon Phil and Kieron are looking at her with eyes wide open, like, hurry up, what the hell are you doing? Roman’s helping her and he’s a big guy, they’re both trying to open the window but it’s not happening.
The sound of stomping boots can be heard all around them. Kieron wants to scream, ‘Jesus Christ, Alex. Just open the fucking window!’ But he can see her face, a picture of pure frustration as she strains at the screws. He takes a deep breath, pushes the camera into his underpants and walks away. Alex motions for Phil to go down the ship to the next porthole, where the campaign office is. Phil checks it’s clear and skips down the side. Alex unlocks the radio room door, checks for troopers then runs to the office. Phil is waiting for her on the other side of the porthole. Alex undoes the screws, flips them off and starts opening the window when suddenly out of nowhere a commando appears behind Phil.
Phil sees him and waves his hand, shouting, ‘No, no, no!’ Alex slams the window in his face and furiously screws it shut. Phil darts away, and because he doesn’t have a belt on he can ram the camera straight into his pants. He shoves it right down there and just walks away from the soldier. But the commando pursues him, saying, ‘Camera, camera, camera.’ Two other soldiers approach from the other direction. Phil stops. He’s surrounded.
One of them yanks Phil’s coat, spins him around and frisks him. But the soldier doesn’t go near his underpants and the large lump of digital equipment nestled between his upper thighs. Phil squeezes his legs together. He knows he won’t get to the radio room now, his footage won’t be on the TV news tonight, but he’s not about to give up his camera card.
On the bridge eight masked soldiers are disabling the communications systems of the Arctic Sunrise – VHF radios, GPS tracking, satellite telephones. When the soldiers can’t find a button to switch something off, they simply yank on cables and rip them out. A commando is standing guard at each of the outside doors, and there’s another one on the inside staircase that leads from the bridge to the ship’s lower decks. And all the time an officer is pacing back and forth across the length of the bridge, speaking into his own radio in Russian, taking and giving instructions. Dima speaks Russian, he can understand what they’re saying, but not what it means.
‘Fifteen to ninety-four, are we doing the seven nine yet?’
‘Fifteen, affirmative. Seven nine complete.’
Faiza pulls an iPhone from her pocket, flips on the camera and casually holds it out in front of her. One of the soldiers glances at her, and even through his mask she can see he’s smiling at her. It’s the one who kicked Frank. Faiza locks eyes with him, she takes a guess at his age – nineteen maybe – and holds his gaze. He’s definitely smiling behind the balaclava, those eyes are beaming, he’s staring at her. Then he lifts his chin, and in heavily accented English he says, ‘Hey, is that an iPhone 4 or an iPhone 5?’
Faiza looks around. The commandos are pulling clusters of wires from the control panels or standing in the doorways with their rifles raised. She looks back at the guy and gives him a look that says, ‘Are you serious?’ Then she coughs and says, ‘Umm, actually this is an iPhone 4.’ The trooper nods, and even in the extraordinary circumstances in which they find themselves, even with the mask and the gun, Faiza can read his body language, can feel his condescension. Then through the little hole in the mask she sees his lips purse, and he says, ‘Yeah, well, I have an iPhone 5.’
By now a RHIB from the coastguard vessel has delivered a team of senior officers to the Sunrise. They’re led by a tall man with a thin moustache and three big stars on his shoulder – a captain first rank, Dima thinks. He marches onto the bridge accompanied by a translator and trailing a tail of lesser-uniformed minions, but the commandos barely take note of his presence. He makes a declaration in Russian that appears to impress only himself. The translator says, ‘Your ship has been seized. You are accused of attempting to take over the Prirazlomnaya.’
The troopers are swarming through the inside of the ship now. In the radio room Alex, Colin and Roman are staring at the inside of a locked door, through which they can hear bangs and thumps that are increasing in volume, and the shouted demands of Russian commandos. ‘Open this now! Open this now!’
Alex doesn’t open the door, instead she opens a laptop and tweets from the account @gp_sunrise to thousands of people around the world.
Russian authorities onboard with guns. They are breaking into the comms room now. #savethearctic