As I approached Pulau Sangiang, the island that sits in the middle of the Sunda Strait, I had a decision to make. If I went left, that would mean heading south, perhaps down the west coast of Java. That would be sensible if I were heading back to Oz. Or, if I went to the right of the island, I could keep heading due west out into the Indian Ocean where the next landfall would be the Maldives, thousands of kilometres away. Alternatively I could turn north up the coast of Sumatra. Either of the latter two options would take me further from home.
I chose north. The Maldives was a stretch and, although I was feeling a bit Garbo-esque at that point, it was a helluva long way to go on your own. But I didn’t want to go home either. Looking at the charts, I saw that Sumatra had plenty of islands dotted along its west coast. They would provide shelter, perhaps a refuge where I could ride out the nightmare of cold turkey.
12
THE SAIL from Singapore had been a million miles from the relaxing, carefree pleasure cruise Annie had been promised by Martin.
Her dismay was due in equal measure to both Martin’s bad behaviour and the boisterous sea. The Lady Vesper had exited Sentosa Cove and headed west across the narrow neck of the southern tip of the Malaccan Strait to the coast of Sumatra. Gary said there were more islands on the west side of the channel to provide shelter if the going got rough.
And it did get rough. For a start, the weather had been poor: dull, overcast with occasional high winds. The sea was very choppy – caused by a mix of wind and the heavy volume of traffic churning through the brown, murky water. They were sailing just north of the equator and the heavy, stagnant air seemed to hang over them like a wet tweed wool coat.
‘Like wading through pea soup,’ Annie said. She felt queasy, more so because Dani was already throwing up. The stench of vomit made her gag. ‘It’s ridiculous,’ she continued as they passed a container ship. ‘There’s so much traffic on the water. I thought they were supposed to stick to shipping lanes.’
‘It’s the world’s most important trade route,’ Martin said, as if he were addressing a group of banking execs. ‘Five hundred ships use this channel daily and small vessels like ours have no right of way, so we just have to take our chances.’
Gary did exactly that, trying to find gaps between the ceaseless procession of ships heading north or south, before shooting through a hole like a scalded cat as another big container ship threatened to turn their boat into matchwood.
‘It’s just like Piccadilly Circus,’ Annie smiled, hoping to lessen her companions’ rising stress levels. The sea was churning like the inside of a washing machine; a strong headwind was blowing while a shoal of local fishing boats made the Lady Vesper’s way ahead seem like an obstacle course. Martin continued to drink and Dani continued to puke. Only Gary remained outwardly upbeat. ‘This is a millpond compared to the Gulf of Maine,’ he said, but Annie could tell he was lying. His normally tan face looked increasingly pale and drawn, his white lips tight as he concentrated at the helm. And as the Lady Vesper continued north up the east coast of Sumatra, he got increasingly stressed out, snapping commands at the other three and blowing up when they didn’t respond fast or well enough. Annie simply bit her lip but Martin reacted badly.
‘Look, matey, I’m bloody well paying for all this and you fucking well better not speak to me like that,’ he warned Gary one afternoon. The row continued later that evening, after they had gratefully slunk into safe harbour at Dumai to refuel and stock up on provisions. Gary accused Martin of being a useless, lazy sailor. ‘You suck, buddy. I’m doing all the heavy lifting here. If it wasn’t for me, you’d all be fish bait.’
Martin, who was already completely pissed, shouted something unintelligible and swung a fist; he missed and fell over. The two women helped him to bed.
When Annie went back up to the flybridge, Gary was alone. ‘I don’t know how you stay with that asshole,’ he said. His eyes suddenly glinted: ‘Me, I’d treat you better, ma’am. A whole lot better, if you take my meaning.’ He flashed his white teeth.
Flattered despite herself, Annie replied with a smile: ‘Thank you, but I’ll just have to put up with “the asshole”, as you put it, for now.’
‘Okay, lady, but I’m here if you ever feel like a change, you know what I’m saying?’
Annie knew exactly what he was saying. She retreated to bed.
The next morning Martin complained of an almighty hangover. He gulped down a whole jug of Bloody Mary by himself while a tight-lipped Gary steered the Lady Vesper out of the marina and back onto the strait. They had originally intended to stop off at Belawan, a major port about four hundred kilometres to the north-east, but the plans changed after Annie got talking to a Kiwi couple berthed next to them at Dumai. The Kiwis invited them on board their big cruiser for drinks, where both husband and wife regaled them with stories about piracy in the Malaccan Strait. They warned that Belawan was a hub for the modern-day Bluebeards.
At the mention of pirates, Martin, by now several sheets to the wind, started hopping about on one leg, put his hand over one eye and said in a comic pirate voice: ‘Aargh, Jim lad, shiver me timbers, we be going to Treasure Island!’
‘You can laugh,’ the husband said, ‘but just a few weeks ago, six armed pirates boarded a chemical tanker at the port’s outer anchorage and stole a load of stuff. Apparently they simply climbed up the ship’s anchor chain. No one saw them. They took a crew member hostage before escaping. No one was hurt but there have been plenty of other casualties in the area.’
Why not sail a bit further north to an island called Pulau Sembilan, Nine Island, the Kiwis suggested. There was plenty of shelter there and clean, calm water for good anchorage. They could then refuel at Banda Aceh and from there it was a straight shot north and east to Langkawi.
‘Sounds good to me. This trip’s been pretty hairy so far, it would be nice to, like, have a bit of a break,’ said Dani.
The next few days followed the same pattern as before: they sailed north, buffeted by a medley of rain, gusty trade winds and faster, more aggressive vessels. Throughout, Annie kept a sharp lookout for potential danger. The talk of pirates had spooked her. And she knew that the others felt the same.
She was tidying up the saloon when, halfway to Nine Island, they were hit by a sudden, violent squall. Up to then the sky had been overcast with light winds on the nose and relatively calm seas. But now, out of nowhere it seemed, a swirling, snarling gust of wind came roaring up behind them and enveloped them in a maelstrom of warm, stinging rain, rolling waves and boiling air. She sat down and braced herself against the saloon table as everything turned monochromatic: the smudgy sky turned black and grey and the angry, lace-topped waves broke grey and white over the Vesper’s twin hulls.
Dani moaned. ‘Bloody hell, not again! I can’t take much more of this shit.’ She promptly lurched down to the galley and puked in the sink. Up top, Gary, drenched to the skin, battled to keep the rolling and pitching catamaran stable. The shrieking wind rattled and rocked the flybridge’s hardtop bimini as the bows dipped and the stern came up. Beside him, Martin held on grimly to the sides of his seat, knuckles as white as his face.
13
BANGBANG WAS angrier than a rodeo bull. The plan had been simple, business as usual, but his crew had fucked it up.
He gulped down the smoke from a Gudang Garam clove cigarette and sucked on his gold tooth. He was furious but also, if he were honest with himself, a little bit afraid. The feeling was strange, alien to him; he wasn’t normally afraid of anyone or anything. But he knew his syndicate bosses would be mightily pissed off; chances are they could make me a sacrificial lamb to ‘encourage’ other crew bosses to do better, he thought. The Chinese man who headed the syndicate – BangBang had never met him but he had heard whispers of a ‘Mr Fong’ – was rumoured to be a Triad ‘boss of bosses’. At worst, BangBang knew he could expect little mercy. At best, it could jeopardise his ambitions of moving into the big league.
He had also lost face w
ith his crew. They expected him to plan and organise attacks with precision and perfection. Failures like this could lead to their arrest or even death. In the pirate business, there were no HR protocols. A disgruntled crew could simply throw their captain overboard on a dark night if he didn’t deliver suitable spoils.
BangBang spat out the bitter aftertaste from the clove kretek and thumped his tattooed knuckles on a gunwale. The target vessel was a mid-sized Malaysian cargo ship carrying palm oil from refineries in Port Klang, just south of Kuala Lumpur, to Mumbai. The syndicate had provided all the relevant details: times, route, cargo, crew. BangBang’s job was straightforward: intercept the ship, hit hard and ‘lighten its load’.
His ship, the Crimson Tide, was a twenty-eight metre wooden Thai fishing trawler they had hijacked the previous year and renamed after one of BangBang’s favourite films. It looked like a floating disaster: the hull a dirty, rust-stained orange–brown colour with the bulwark topped in white and festooned in black rubber tyres acting as fenders. A filthy canvas shade speckled by bird shit stretched across amidships. The large, two-storey wooden wheelhouse slouched forward as if it was going to fall over. A medium-sized crane squatted on the foredeck. But the old, ramshackle appearance was deceptive. A wolf in sheep’s clothing, BangBang always thought. He had created more storage space for stolen cargo and he’d installed sophisticated technical equipment, including radar, sonar and GPS. A new Scania turbocharged diesel engine, still shiny, provided solid power. He was particularly proud of the ship’s arsenal of automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades. Two wooden skiffs trailed behind, tied firmly to steel cleats on the transom. On longer voyages, they were stowed away on top of the wheelhouse. Down below there was a dark, dank storage space that smelled of old fish and diesel. Some of the crew slept there, others on the main deck.
BangBang and his crew of twelve had anchored close to the island of Pulau Nasi, slightly north-west of Banda Aceh on the northern tip of Sumatra. An hour before dusk, they ventured out across the top of the Malacca Strait, ready to intercept the cargo ship as it entered the channel from the Andaman Sea. As planned, they reconnoitred the freighter four or five miles away, steaming south.
BangBang ordered eight of his men into the two motor skiffs to circle round behind the vessel and hit it astern to take advantage of a radar blind spot. Standard operating procedure. But the attack went awry for one simple, stupid reason: the cargo boat’s freeboard was higher than expected and the pirates’ makeshift rope ladders and grapples were not long enough to reach the top of it.
The syndicate had failed to provide BangBang with the necessary info, but he knew they would still blame him. His men attempted to board several times but eventually gave up and veered off, frustrated and furious. When the two skiffs returned empty-handed to the Crimson Tide, BangBang went berserk.
‘Keparat bajingan bangsat!’ he screamed. ‘Bloody bastard assholes!
‘Do I have to do everything my fucking self?’
Deep down, he knew it probably wasn’t their fault but he lashed out at one of the nearer pirates with his machete anyway. There was a wet, meaty thwack sound and the man went down on his knees, screaming and clutching the wound, bright red blood spraying everywhere as his severed arm flopped on the deck.
The rest of his crew, some covered in a fine red mist, moved away from him. They were exchanging dark looks and muttering to each other, clearly pissed off with their leader’s unjust barbarity. The atmosphere was charged with a heavy, metallic mix of blood and malice.
Just then, the Crimson Tide slowed and the helmsman, Mamat, shouted from the wheelhouse, ‘Boss, you come quick!’
14
THE SCOOP had cleared the south-west tip of Sumatra and we were well advanced into the Indian Ocean when the shitstorm hit like a sledgehammer. Before then the boat had been creaming through gentle waves as we headed aimlessly on a general north-westerly course. My vague intention had been to tack first north and then east before dropping anchor before dusk in the lee of one of the hundreds of islands dotted along the Sumatran coast.
In my moribund state, I had failed to notice the darkening skies and the freshening wind even when it started whipping the sails and flapping the hatches. A second later the boat started pitching and rolling madly in a broiling sea. Wagga suddenly shot off from below my feet and I heard a massive roar coming from the port side. Hunched over the helm, I wearily turned my head to the left. And there, about 500 metres astern, was a vertical wall of grey water bearing down on me. To my dull eyes, it looked as high as the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
At the same time, gale force winds hit the mast like a ten-ton truck hitting a telephone pole. The mainsail soon lay ripping and rattling at a dangerous forty-five degree angle to the steep, white-tipped waves. The tall black mast threatened to dip in the boiling water as the port side hull rolled over dangerously to starboard and my world seemed to turn upside down.
The only reason I wasn’t jolted overboard was simply because, when the cyclone hit, I was hugging the wheel desperately like a long-lost love, my hands clasped tightly around it to stop them shaking. I had had no time to shorten the sails, close the hatches or secure the loose items that can clutter up the decks. For Christ’s sake, I wasn’t even wearing my safety harness or life jacket. It’s a bloody miracle I wasn’t immediately killed.
Almost as quickly as The Scoop had gone into its seeming death roll, the boat suddenly shuddered and righted itself. The brush with death must have galvanised my survival instincts because I frantically stabbed on the winch button to shorten the mainsail and, after a few moments of violent rocking and rolling, The Scoop began running north-easterly on a broad reach. I pressed another button with a shaking finger and the electric diesel engine powered up. The boat seemed to leap forward, the wave of water still following behind us, ready to pounce.
I had neither the inclination nor the energy to point The Scoop into the wind and establish some sort of control. It would have taken superhuman effort for a sustained amount of time. So I hoped merely to use the boat’s sail and engine power to keep ahead of the weather. I was vaguely aware that we were being pushed and prodded in a north-easterly direction. Dimly, I thought, that’s where the land was. Weren’t there some islands in the way? Reefs probably. Could be dangerous. But I was happy to go with the flow now that the boat was relatively stable and I was no longer being used as a punching bag by the elements. The state-of-the-art autopilot would keep us on reasonable track, I hoped.
My ordeal was far from over, however. I could now see the sky, a dirty grey and ivory smear, low-slung cirrus clouds scudding across it. The Scoop’s bucking bow crashed through giant Toblerone-shaped waves. White-slashed gouts of sea boiled over the decks; the wind whipped the rigging, cracking and fizzing like Chinese fireworks. The cockpit had a self-draining deck but the sea still foamed around my feet.
The Scoop negotiated the high peaks and troughs of the manic sea, as surefooted as a mountain goat. Not for the first time, I was grateful for my choice of boat. I don’t know how long I hunched there, wet through, welded to the sleek metal wheel, shit scared and exhausted. Then suddenly the engine and all the electrics fizzled out.
Fuck, no power! That meant the autopilot, the SatNav and other vital instruments were gone; I wouldn’t even be able to furl the sails automatically. God knows where we’ll end up now, I thought. The stalking storm caught up to us and the wind and rain quickly resumed their onslaught. The noise was incredible. It was like being next to a 747 taxiing for take-off. Six-metre waves crashed and cascaded over us. My eyes were red and stinging from the salt water. It was hard to breathe. All around, there was commotion – shrieking, banging, clanging and crashing. It was as if someone had thrown a stun grenade into the cockpit. Meanwhile The Scoop was being swept helplessly along the churning ocean like a paper cup on a windswept lake and the sixty-knot wind was like a giant hand splayed on my back.
Later, probably several hours later – because it was now as
dark as a dungeon – I stopped functioning altogether. My body, battered by the elements and aching from wrestling the wheel in the violent seas, was shutting down; my brain, overloaded by the need to make instant decisions and anxiety about the perilous circumstances, was about to blow a fuse. I simply could not take any more.
In the wet, howling darkness, I lashed the wheel with aching fingers, winched down the remaining sail and dragged my sorry arse down through the two timber-framed doors that connected the cockpit to the saloon and resignedly closed them behind me against the tumult outside. Let the elements fight it out, I thought.
It was a shock to suddenly find myself no longer assailed by the banshee wind and shrapnel rain. The terrible cacophony dulled to a low roar. I had to brace myself as I walked down a step to the galley, picking my way gingerly in the darkness through broken plates and scattered cutlery lying in about three centimetres of scummy water; the pitching and tossing movement was just as pronounced in the comfortable confines of the plush saloon. My face was scratchy, my stubble crusted in salt. I was thirsty from inhaling salt water but too tired to do anything about it. I wearily took off my soaked clothes, grabbed some leather cushions and wedged them into the narrow space on the galley floor. If a higher power wanted me to die, then so be it. I was done. Finished. I lay down on my makeshift bed and was instantly asleep.
I dreamt I was back in Sans Souci. Cody, me and a few of the lads were out in Kogarah Bay on Hobies. It was a lovely day. We were scooting around like dragonflies on a garden pond. It was idyllic, the hot, hard sun glinting off the calm water. But, suddenly I saw a massive wave, as big as a mountain, looming menacingly over us. It was eerie, there was no sound and everything seemed to be in slow motion. I saw someone on the beach waving and shouting a warning through a cupped hand but I couldn’t hear the words. It looked like Percy in red Speedos.
The Scoop Page 5