The Cave

by Liam Cochrane

  ‘I liked the MREs,’ said Biw later. His favourite was macaroni with chicken.

  * * *

  John and Rick realised they might have to take on the rescue themselves.

  They called in back-up. The British Cave Rescue Organisation began to mobilise two more ace divers – Jason Mallinson and Chris Jewell – as well as Mike Clayton and Gary Mitchell, who would help support the UK team. Martin Ellis, who produced the most up-to-date map of Tham Luang for his 2018 book also joined them.

  Jason and Chris arrived at the cave on Thursday evening, and on Friday dived all the way to Chamber 9 to deliver supplies and familiarise themselves with the route.

  * * *

  One of those searching the mountain for undiscovered shafts into the main cave was an American named Josh Morris. The 42-year-old had lived in Thailand for many years and ran a rock-climbing and corporate team-building business in Chiang Mai. He was also a caver and a friend of author Martin Ellis. Initially, Josh had resisted joining the rescue effort, instead sending two of his staff to help, thinking they’d be better suited. But then Martin Ellis forwarded on an email from Robert Harper, who was looking for some climbing equipment. ‘Hang on,’ thought Josh, ‘my guys are there with gear. Why aren’t the cavers talking to each other?’ He wondered if his fluent Thai and understanding of the often-subtle cultural nuances might be of some use.

  It was a tough decision. He was supposed to be going on a family holiday to the United States the next day, with his wife – a champion Thai rock climber Kat (Khaetthaleeya Uppakham) – and their five-year-old daughter. But the holiday could wait, the rescue couldn’t. Josh sat his daughter down and talked to her about how much the boys in the cave must want to see their mummies and daddies. The five-yearold eventually agreed that her dad should go and that she would wait a bit longer to see her best friend in the States.

  Josh’s wife had seen a familiar face on the television news, one of the senior military men leading the rescue. General Buncha Duriyaphan was a family friend and Kat had taken Josh to meet him when they had first started dating eighteen years earlier. She had wanted to see if the general thought this skinny American kid was a stand-up guy. Josh obviously passed the test.

  On 2 July, Josh Morris drove to Tham Luang. He registered with the Department of Disaster Prevention and Mitigation, but when his name was simply written down on a muddy scrap of paper he realised he would have to find his own place in the rescue effort. He hung around the restricted zone where the divers and rescue teams were based, until he met Pae on the Euro team, who introduced him around. He went to see the US military nearby and by luck the first person he spoke to was Major Charles Hodges, the commander of the American deployment. Major Hodges said Josh could join a mission that night to explore a sinkhole on the mountainside. They were just about to rappel down into a crevice when a text came through saying the Wild Boars had been found.

  Josh knew that getting anything done in Thailand required a network, knowing the right people. He kept reaching out to different groups – the Australian Federal Police, Robert Harper and Vern Unsworth. Vern told Josh he thought it was a waste of time searching for sinkholes in the mountain that could reach the main cave. But he said diverting the creeks was important. The less water getting into Tham Luang the better.

  So, on 5 July, Josh met up with Thanet, the groundwater expert. They spent the day on dirt bikes, hiking and rappelling to see if the water diversions above Monk’s Series were working. On any given day there were around 150 people working hard at replumbing the mountain – mostly soldiers but also volunteer rescue workers and local villagers. By then many of the creeks had been diverted but each day more were being discovered. One creek was located almost above the T-junction, a critical spot. The problem was, much of the available plastic pipe had already been used up. Thanet asked the locals if they had any ideas and they did. Not far away was a bamboo forest. Off they marched, returning with giant lengths of ten-centimetrethick bamboo, which were rigged up with sandbags to drain the creek off in another direction. Diverting the water was making a difference, some thought just as much as the pumping going on below.

  The following day, 6 July, Thanet and Josh planned to check out a huge cave. Thanet said he could probably get access to a helicopter to make it easier to get close. While they were discussing the details of the helicopter trip, Josh felt a hand on his shoulder and heard a vaguely familiar voice. It was General Buncha Duriyaphan, the one who’d vetted him eighteen years ago. General Buncha was a bear-like man, with a silver crew cut and a beaming smile, which had been on show a few nights before when he spoke to the media about finding the boys. Josh swapped contacts with the general and they made plans to catch up when all of this was over.

  It was about then that Vern and John walked by.

  ‘They looked kinda long in the face,’ remembered Josh later. ‘I said, “Hey what’s going on?”’

  John asked Thanet to turn off his GoPro camera and explained the situation in detail. The takeaway message was stark.

  ‘If we don’t dive, everybody dies. If we do dive, some of them might have a chance to live,’ said John.

  ‘What does “some” mean?’ asked Josh.

  ‘I can’t tell you,’ replied John – but he does remember deliberately using the term ‘multiple child casualties’ again and again in various conversations, to make sure people had a realistic idea of the risk involved in the dive option.

  The British divers and cavers realised that a perfect storm was brewing, as the literal storm loomed in the weather forecasts. If it did indeed rain heavily in a few days, the cave would flood again.

  ‘Once the water comes up, nobody’s getting in the cave, it’ll be too hard to dive,’ said John.

  That was new information to Josh. He had figured – as most of us had – that if the divers could reach the boys now then they could continue to resupply them. But, in fact, if the cave flooded again, they might be cut off once again. The boys, Coach Ek and the four SEALs had 100 MREs – so even if they rationed their food to one meal a day, that was only enough for another six days.

  Then there was the oxygen level. As the Wild Boars and their minders breathed, they used up the oxygen and exhaled carbon dioxide. Eventually the balance would become dangerous. Inhaling too much carbon dioxide causes fatigue and confusion; soon the boys, their coach and their would-be saviours would drift off to sleep and die.

  Either way, the approaching rains were probably a death sentence.

  Josh had just been in a meeting with two senior military figures and they weren’t talking with the same urgency as John and Vern. Josh wanted to at least make sure the decision-makers were fully aware of the British divers’ opinion, that they grasped the gravity of the situation.

  Fortunately, he had the Thai language skills to get the message across and he had an ‘in’ – his wife’s connection with General Buncha. The general met with Josh.

  ‘We have to dive, sir,’ Josh told General Buncha, and relayed John’s dive ultimatum. ‘If we don’t, everybody will die. If we do dive, some might die. But if you don’t dive, you’re just going to collect seventeen bodies.’

  * * *

  Even as they spoke, death was stalking Tham Luang. While the divers and soldiers tried to weigh up the risk–reward ratio of a rescue attempt, tragedy struck.

  Saman Gunan was known to his friends as ‘Ja Sam’, or Sergeant Sam. The 37-year-old had once been a member of the elite Thai Navy SEALs, but later took on a security role at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok.

  There were some fit men helping with the search, but few could have competed with Saman. He’d won triathlons in Thailand, but it was when he made the switch to adventure sports that Saman really hit his stride. Fellow extreme athlete Ryan Blair remembered seeing the Thai for the first time, as they competed in the River Kwai Trophy, a gruelling run-swim-kayak-bike-run-bike-run-swim festival of pain that is Thailand’s biggest adventure race.

  ‘My teammate Piers a
nd I were in the lead a couple of hours into the race and thought we had a comfortable cushion until this strong-looking biker comes up from behind with his teammate and was smiling. We were melting and suffering under the Thai summer sun – how could this guy be smiling?!’

  Ryan Blair was so impressed with Saman that he signed him up as a member of The North Face Adventure Team, a group of elite multi-sports athletes from across Asia. Saman had podium finishes in Malaysia and China, sometimes individually or as part of a team. When he trained shirtless under the hot Thai sun, scars were visible across his chest, the result of a mysterious blood disease in his younger days.

  ‘He raced like there was no tomorrow and often past his limit. His enthusiasm was boundless and his heart was stronger than his powerful legs,’ said Ryan. ‘He was the only person I knew who after running fifty kilometres or four plus hours of adventure racing would then do push-ups at the finish line, just to show us his power and, most important, make us smile.’

  One anecdote from his friend Ryan said a lot about Saman’s character. He had travelled to Hong Kong to help friends in an ultra-endurance event. His job was to run with them for a forty-kilometre stretch, carrying their water bottles and food. But Saman got so caught up in the moment that he refused to stop at the crew car and kept on running until his legs gave out.

  ‘By then it was dark and he was in the middle of Tai Mo Shan region . . . with no headlight, jacket or map and he had just arrived in Hong Kong for the first time and only spoke Thai! He went missing for hours and our support crew wondered where he was, and then he suddenly appeared smiling and told the story [of] how he found and followed a few different other teams . . . and ate from some checkpoints. It was such classic Saman,’ remembered Ryan.

  The day Saman was deployed to Tham Luang – Sunday, 1 July – he decided to make a quick selfie video while standing underneath the wing of the plane.

  ‘We are ready to fly to Chiang Rai,’ he said, the sky a deep blue behind him and a reflected horizon line bisecting his wrap-around sunglasses.

  ‘For me, I came with the Suvarnabhumi Airport team under Airports of Thailand Public Company, the sponsor for this event. In addition, an underwater medical team from the navy is joining us. Also, a team from Sea World Diving is with us and has sponsored a lot of equipment for us to use in this operation.’

  He looked relaxed, maybe even a bit excited to be joining his buddies for some commando-style work once again.

  ‘Will be seeing you this evening at Tham Luang, Chiang Rai. May luck be with us in bringing those children home.’

  Since arriving at the cave site, Saman Gunan had leaped wholeheartedly into his role as a support diver. At around 10.30 am on Thursday, 5 July, he and his dive buddy were given an important mission – to each take three spare scuba tanks and leave them in one of the inner chambers, ready for any rescue effort.

  It was hard work inside the flooded tunnels. The men had three tanks for themselves, plus the three spare tanks strapped together that they dragged between their legs. The water was cold, the passage often tangled with wires and pipes and obstructed by sudden outcrops of rock. It was an underwater obstacle course, with just a few centimetres visibility. But Saman Gunan was in top shape.

  He and his buddy had delivered their tanks – they completed their mission – and paused for a rest before the arduous trip back. They ate power bars and energy gels. Then they each strapped their three remaining tanks on and began their journey out.

  What happened next is shrouded in mystery. Even SEAL commander Rear Admiral Arpakorn Yuukongkaew has only a vague idea of what happened to Sergeant Sam.

  The buddy was right behind him, but it was dark. There was one part when Sam was diving and he just stopped still. We don’t know why. The diving buddy followed him and saw that he was motionless, so the buddy touched him and still there was no reaction. So he touched his face and found out the mouthpiece had slipped from Sam’s mouth. He then put the mouthpiece back for Sam and dived him out to where he could do first aid, CPR. He was unconscious and couldn’t be revived.

  Saman’s dive buddy returned to Chamber 3 at 1.30 am Friday morning, fifteen hours after he set off. What hell that man must have gone through as he fumbled back through the dark cold water alone can only be imagined. Other Thai divers headed in to retrieve Saman’s body.

  Later that day, Governor Narongsak announced the awful news. The optimism buzzing around the mountain was shattered. Activity slowed and there was an audible quietening at the operations area.

  The SEALs were determined to honour their colleague by getting the Wild Boars out.

  ‘We will not stop our mission, we will not let the sacrifice of our friend go to waste,’ Rear Admiral Arpakorn told reporters at the scene.

  So what happened? What caused this supremely fit man to suddenly die?

  The first reports from officials were confusing.

  ‘His job was to deliver oxygen. He did not have enough on his way back,’ Passakorn Boonyalak, Chiang Rai’s deputy governor, told the media later.

  But that was wrong, according to the SEAL commander.

  ‘He had three tanks with him. Each tank had its own regulator and none of the tanks was empty,’ said Rear Admiral Arpakorn. ‘It’s not like in the news reports, that he only had one tank, no reserve. We had a lot of reserves.’

  One of the least likely scenarios is that he simply ran out of air, said Ivan, the expert technical diver from Koh Tao, echoing the SEAL commander’s analysis. Not for an experienced diver, with three tanks strapped to his body and fresh tanks stationed throughout the cave. ‘Exactly what happened, I don’t think anybody knows,’ said Ivan. ‘The list of things that could have happened is almost endless.’

  Ben Reymenants wondered if Saman had picked up a ‘foul tank’, contaminated with fumes or perhaps too much carbon monoxide or carbon dioxide.

  ‘Over-exertion is much more likely; over-exertion creating a massive amount of carbon dioxide that eventually will put your brain to sleep,’ speculated Ivan. ‘The conditions don’t allow us to get the full picture.’

  This ambiguity is typical for diving deaths. Most doctors will list suffocation or water in the lungs as the cause of death on the death certificate, because that’s what eventually kills the diver. But the question of what created the emergency often goes unanswered. In near-zero visibility, the mystery only deepens. Even Saman’s dive buddy just metres away was oblivious as to why his friend suddenly stopped moving.

  ‘Diving in the cave is always dangerous,’ said Rear Admiral Arpakorn. ‘The cave itself is complex, so if we aren’t careful, there are lots of ways to die.’

  The same thought spread across the mountain, and then across the world. If a fit, former SEAL could die, what chances did the Wild Boars have of getting out of the cave alive?

  * * *

  The death of Saman Gunan cast a pall over the rescue operation. But there was no time to mourn. There was still a job to be done.

  Since Josh Morris had spoken with General Buncha Duriyaphan, things had moved at lightning speed. Josh fell into a coordinating role, helping to communicate the views of the experts to the decision-makers, in a series of meetings that involved some of the most powerful people in the kingdom. Three separate sessions led to an emergency meeting being called in the war room that evening.

  By dark, the pitched-roof building that housed the war room was surrounded by a restless throng of media. Expectations were growing. The boys and Coach Ek had now been in the cave for two weeks.

  There were five items on the agenda that evening. The first was a briefing about the diving option. The last item was Suttisak, who was keen to share his new plan – the slow but precise directional drilling.

  The war room had now been moved out from the side room to the main space inside the parks office, where it could accommodate more people. General Anupong Paochinda was there, along with top brass from the navy and army, police chief Commissioner-General Chakthip Chaijinda, senio
r government officials, the US military leaders, Gary Mitchell from the British Cave Rescue Council, Suttisak, Josh and others. Everyone knew the stakes were high. The international team began to make their pitch, led by US mission commander Major Charles Hodges.

  ‘I told him that, “Sir, the eyes of the world are watching us,”’ Major Hodges recounted for ABC’s Four Corners. ‘“We’ve got twelve kids and a soccer coach that are trapped here. We’ve got emotions at a, uh, a significant level here . . . and unfortunately, in these types of situations, emotions are not your friend. Emotions are not helping us to make sound decisions.”

  ‘And I told the minister of the interior, “Sir, we are looking at this only from a logical standpoint. We are trying to remove all emotion.” But now we’re getting to the point where we only had one option, and if we didn’t make the choice to dive, then the circumstances surrounding the situation would make the decision for us.’

  General Anupong listened carefully. He asked questions about their plan.

  After about an hour, General Anupong rose from his seat, walked to the front of the room and spoke quietly to those giving the briefing. Suttisak was sitting nearby, but he couldn’t make out their conversation.

  ‘After that the minister of interior kind of walked back to his chair, [but] before that he touched the shoulder of this guy, this guy, this guy . . . [and said] “Let’s go into the small room,”’ he recalled.

  The anointed ones included Police General Chakthip Chaijinda, Major Charles Hodges, Master Sargeant Derek Anderson, Gary Mitchell, Josh and Thanet. They got up and followed the general into the small room.

  With that, the meeting was over. Suttisak never got to speak a word. There was no formal announcement, but those in the room knew the decision had been made.

  The international team would be diving the Wild Boars out.

  The rescue was imminent.

  OUT OF THE CAVE