All options were on the table, and all were bad.
With the boys found, Suttisak’s drill team had packed up their rig, and the helicopter had lifted the pieces back down the mountain.
On Monday evening, they had drilled about fifty feet through the limestone, piercing the cheek of the princess-shaped mountain, when an urgent call came in: stop immediately. Suttisak didn’t ask any more. From the caller’s tone of voice, he knew there must be a good reason for the abrupt halt.
They silenced the drill machine and air pump. Some of them started walking back down the mountain, flashlights lighting the way in the dark. Halfway down, Suttisak’s phone rang again. This time, there was a chance for an explanation.
“This must be bad news for you guys, but good news for everybody,” said the caller. They had found the boys and their coach.
Suttisak couldn’t care less that all their efforts had been in vain. “We were very happy,” he said.
It was late, but he managed to book a flight back to Bangkok that night. Despite the sudden end to his operation, he felt satisfied. The drill team had overcome serious technical and logistical challenges to get that hole started. He was a tiny bit relieved too. He had felt the pressure keenly, and every night, his few hours of sleep were made restless with doubts and fresh plans.
“Job done,” he thought, as he headed for the airport.
Suttisak had been back in Bangkok just a day when he received another important call. It was from a senior figure involved in coordinating the rescue.
“This is secret,” the caller warned. “They [the divers] said the oxygen level in the cave is less than 15 percent; the kids can stay for only two days.”
If the oxygen level dropped to 12 percent, it would start to become life-threatening. “Please come back to Tham Luang,” the caller asked.
All of a sudden, the long-shot idea of piercing a hole through the side of the mountain to pump air into the cave complex wasn’t sounding so crazy after all. Suttisak immediately booked a flight back to Chiang Rai. Then he called some friends in the oil and gas industry.
A new idea was brewing.
On Wednesday, July 4, the bird’s-nest collectors were also summoned back to Tham Luang.
They were at Chiang Rai Airport, ready for their second-ever trip in an airplane—this time, back home to Libong Island. Despite their valiant efforts, they hadn’t been able to locate any shafts that reached down to the cave complex below. They thought they were close once, having climbed sixteen hundred feet down a shaft, but that, too, came to a dead end. With the soccer team found, they were headed home.
They’d checked in already and were due to fly in twenty minutes when the island chief, Chaiyapruk Werawong, received a phone call. It was from the cave site.
“The soldier told us not to go back yet,” said Chaiyapruk. “What we learned is that the army said taking the boys out is much harder than just finding them.”
The wiry climbers grabbed their bags and ropes, and drove back to the cave. It seemed their work was not over yet, either.
Now that the Wild Boars had been found, there was a buzz around the staging area. Rescue workers moved around with a heightened sense of purpose. Reporters and crews worked all hours, repeating the little that we knew to the growing audiences. This incredible tale of survival against the odds, and now the question of how to get them out of the cave, was gripping Australia and the rest of the world. The ABC decided to send reinforcements so that we could cover the story around the clock. Reporter Anne Barker and cameraman Billy Cooper flew in that Wednesday, and were joined by freelance producer Boontin “Tin” Posayanukul. Anne would later work with cameraman Brant Cumming and Thai producer Angel (Achimawan Puranasamriddhi.)
With this team taking over morning reporting duties, David, Jum, and I went on a resupply mission. The bosses wanted to be ready to go live twenty-four hours a day, if necessary. We needed independent power, protection from the rain, and a space to work in the mud. We bought a generator, fuel, two fold-up tables, eight plastic chairs, a beach umbrella, a big waterproof tub, and a shovel. We were given a spot in the tent that we could work from. And later, when the morning team returned with wooden pallets—to create a simple floor above the mud—and a second beach umbrella, we set up a nice live spot, on an elevated muddy slope, with a view of the path leading to the cave and the air-tank storage area. The generator was out of sight at the end of a long extension cord.
We were quite proud of our work. Now we could broadcast no matter what happened. Plus, it was far more convenient to leave the tripod in place and simply step in, connect our LiveU to Sydney, and go live as the requests for updates increased. The level of intense interest, combined with the SIM-based technology offering a cheap connection, led to a workload that would have been unthinkable a decade ago, when a fifteen-minute satellite booking cost upward of $1,000. The flip side was that it left little chance to go out and find stories, with twenty or more TV live remotes booked some days, not to mention radio, online, and social media. Back in Sydney, Jonathan Flynn and other producers compiled footage and drafted scripts for our nightly TV news packages.
It rained on and off, and a rivulet soon formed. Our live spot was right in its path. As we stood around, waiting for the next live remote, David noticed something in the mud. Small green half spheres. On closer inspection, he realized they were the cut limes that were being used as a natural deodorizer in the urinals up the hill. The water was flowing down from the toilet block and running directly between the legs of our tripod.
During a trip to that stone-walled toilet block, I was surprised to see not one but two cameramen filming inside the men’s room. There was an old Thai man sweeping the muddy floors with a long straw broom, and I guess they were filming a story about volunteers. It was a sign of just how desperate the media was for new angles, after days of coverage.
The media weren’t the only ones trying to exhaust every possible option. While most of Suttisak’s focus had been on the Sleeping Lady’s cheek, there was another, little-known plan under way to drill down around where her feet might be imagined on the mountain, hoping to connect with the southern part of the Tham Luang system, the end of the six-mile-long cave. The geologists had scanned the earth below and located a large cavern of water that they thought they could drain and explore for a connecting passageway. The plan was to enlarge the hole enough for some of the American Special Operations team to venture down and try to reach the Wild Boars from the opposite direction, at the end of the cave. It was a long shot, but they had nothing to lose by trying.
Like Suttisak’s other drill project, the southern plan had its challenges.
The drill spot was located in a narrow V-shaped valley, too tight for a big helicopter to get into. That meant that the drilling machine would have to be carried in by people. But the air pump was far too heavy to be manhandled through the forest. The closest they could get to it by road was one mile from the drill site. So that’s where it sat.
The solution? Lengths of sixteen-foot-long gray piping were connected up all the way from the drill site to the air pump.
That Wednesday, when the pipes were connected and the percussive drill started its pulsing probe, rock particles were blown the one mile back to the air pump. Along the way, the high speed at which the particles made contact with the insides of the pipe generated so much friction and heat that the dust blasted out the end in a dangerous shower. The drillers had to regularly stop to avoid the system overheating.
When they finally reached the cavern, about sixty-five feet down, they were surprised. What had shown up on the scans as a dark-blue pocket was not in fact a cavern filled with water, but one full of sand. They’d been hoodwinked by the mysterious mountain once again.
16
Politics
In an operation of this magnitude, it was inevitable that politics would play a role. But whereas these power plays and negotiations typically remained behind closed doors, they abruptly came into
the public eye with a shock announcement on Tuesday, July 3.
After delivering the good news of the team’s discovery the previous night, Governor Narongsak was being feted as a hero. He had very much become the public face of this rescue operation, having been present at the site when the search began and leading the press conferences that were being broadcast around the world.
Governor Narongsak had shown up that first night in the clothes of a politician, a white shirt tucked into trousers. But in the days and weeks to come, his added yellow volunteers’ neckerchief gave the slightly pudgy, bespectacled Governor Narongsak the look of a kindly scoutmaster. For more formal moments, he wore the military-style beige uniform of a Thai government official.
When briefing the media, he didn’t waste words; he was clear about what he wouldn’t discuss and often explained why. He took questions patiently, even if they were the same questions he had heard each of the days prior. He didn’t snap or lose his temper, like Thailand’s prime minister so often did when he addressed reporters. With degrees in geology and engineering, he was well qualified to command the various aspects of the operation, which he did so calmly and firmly. There was a sense among the public that Governor Narongsak Osottanakorn was the right man for this unprecedented job.
But suddenly, that Tuesday, the press was told to stop referring to him as the governor of Chiang Rai; he was being transferred to the smaller province of Phayao.
Transferred? In the middle of the rescue? What happened?
The story behind this transfer said much about Thailand. In fact, it had nothing to do with his performance during the search-and-rescue mission, and everything to do with power and money under the military junta.
Narongsak Osottanakorn had been governor of Chiang Rai Province for only a year. He had been promoted from his role at the Lands Department, where his reputation for integrity was impressive. As governor, he had ordered investigations into public projects that he suspected involved corruption, including a 300-million-baht ($9 million) water-processing facility and a 13-million-baht ($400,000) aquarium.
He knocked back lucrative projects that he believed served little purpose for the community and risked being used to siphon off taxpayer money into the usual pockets. This included a 50-million-baht ($1.5 million) tourism landmark and a 32-million-baht ($970,000) plan to build a statue of an ancient king in the middle of the Kok River in Chiang Rai.
The statue scheme in particular resonated with Thais. They knew of the problems surrounding a similar project in the royal resort town of Hua Hin, in an area known as Rajabhakti Park. There, forty-six-foot-tall bronze statues of past kings were built on army-owned land, overseen by the deputy prime minister. The total budget of around $26 million came from both public funds and donations.
But there were allegations of skimming. One palm tree cost nearly $8,000. For months, the government was adamant: no corruption here. A later inquiry into the Rajabhakti Park scandal found “irregularities,” but nothing was done about it. There was no point in arguing: criticism of anything even remotely related to royal affairs came with the risk of fifteen years’ jail time.
Governor Narongsak wanted nothing to do with that sort of bloated project. He wanted infrastructure the people of Chiang Rai actually needed.
“I’m willing to go anywhere, but I will not sign wrongful projects,” Narongsak told the media in March 2018. “I’m willing to move to anywhere—as long as I won’t have to deal with a mess like this.”
The following month, that’s exactly what happened.
His transfer order was signed on April 24. It was widely seen as a demotion. But the order wouldn’t come into effect until July 7, right in the middle of the rescue.
It was awkward timing for the junta. The coup makers—led by the current prime minister, Prayut Chan-o-cha—had kicked out the elected government in 2014, promising to be tough on corruption. Instead, they had found themselves mired in scandals. Now, one of the heroes of the rescue was being booted for standing up against projects tainted with fraud.
The decision was explained only in the most superficial way. Minister of Interior General Anupong hinted at a juicy backstory, saying that Narongsak had problems working with other governmental units, but he didn’t elaborate. There was no backing down from the junta. The order had been signed and published in the Royal Gazette, meaning it had been endorsed by the king. The transfer was happening.
Narongsak didn’t address the controversy directly, keeping his focus on the rescue mission. Even though he wouldn’t be the governor of Chiang Rai, he would continue with his role in the rescue.
“Let me confirm that the command structure here is still the same,” he said at a press briefing outside the cave that Tuesday. “I’m still the top supervisor, as usual.”
In the hours immediately after the Wild Boars were found, tensions between Ben and the British divers reached a boiling point.
Inside a neat blue canopy, with a string of LED bulbs overhead and mud below, the divers were briefing some senior Thai figures in the rescue. SEALs boss Rear Admiral Arpakorn was there.
John was tired after a long and physically demanding day of diving in the cave and had limited patience for what he called “gabbling” coming from the Belgian diver.
“Ben, either sit down and talk slower, or leave” is what John remembers saying.
Ben’s version is that he was suggesting to the group that they start an immediate rescue attempt with a collapsible stretcher he had brought. He remembers John saying, “You don’t make any sense at all. Can you shut up and leave?”
Others who witnessed the exchange have been reluctant to discuss the tension between the two camps. Vern blamed Ben’s attitude for creating the antagonism, noting that other divers didn’t have any problems with John and Rick.
There was another issue, though, and that involved the media. Among the divers, attitudes to reporters differed. John and Rick gave no interviews during the operation. The SEALs were officially prohibited from speaking. Many of the volunteer divers were friendly but guarded, preferring not to say too much about the Thai-led rescue. But Ben was quoted and interviewed several times.
On Monday evening, he gave an interview to Belgium’s biggest newspaper, Het Laatste Nieuws (HLN), which included this quote, translated by The Guardian:
It’s a race against time, because on Sunday heavy rain showers are expected. But we remain positive. We expect that the first two football players will reach the exit today, in the best-case scenario. It remains a difficult course through a labyrinth of corridors, with lots of diving and climbing. But the process is along with the current, and the visibility underwater is already a lot better. Moreover, they do not have to swim a lot. They have an oxygen mask on them, and they will almost always be kept on hand by one of the divers. In the third corridor there is air for breathing, where they will also be checked by a doctor. Then there is another 1.5 kilometers [0.9 miles] of climbing.
There were two problems with this. First, he had just given away the top-secret and still-in-development rescue blueprint. Second—and this is not his fault—some news organizations reduced the quote in a way that twisted its meaning: “We expect that the first two football players will reach the exit today.”
The next day, a memo went out banning Ben from the mountain. A piece of paper was posted at the entrance to the site, saying, “This person is prohibited from entering,” accompanied by three photos of Ben.
It was a bruising end to a well-intentioned trip. Vsevolod, Maksym, and Pae decided to leave with Ben. There was a fresh lot of Thai-based diving instructors heading up to relieve them, and there was no point letting personal differences get in the way of the rescue.
Thais love uniforms. A security guard will take great pride in his tassels and epaulettes. Students wear uniforms right through university, keeping careful track of who is senior and who is junior to them. Low-level civil servants dress in military-style garb that shows their tenuous link to the kin
gdom’s center of power, that amorphous nexus of the palace, the military, and the government. Even modern Thai society is based on hierarchy, and it’s important to be able to see who sits where in the pecking order.
There were many uniforms on the mountain: military, police, military police, local volunteer rescuers, and the yellow-shirted Thai volunteers. But there was a handful of people who wielded great power and wore no uniforms at all—just a yellow name tag with a red stripe. They were so powerful, most Thais were reluctant to even mention their existence. They were the handpicked representatives of Thailand’s new monarch, King Maha Vajiralongkorn.
There had been a gentle sense of the king’s contribution at Tham Luang. The palace had donated LED bulbs and other equipment to aid the search. His representatives at the scene preferred a background role, asking, “What do you need?” and promptly making it happen. But on Wednesday, July 4, something shifted. King Vajiralongkorn made it clear he was very interested in the rescue.
“Instructions were given by the king that [the rescuers] must bring out the children as quickly as possible,” said Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan.
This proclamation might not seem like much, but many would later mark this as another important turning point in the rescue effort. Like the arrival of General Anupong, this reflected a shift in the power dynamics going on behind the scenes. Now that the king had thrown his weight behind the rescue, there was no limit to the resources that could be devoted to it. The pressure to deliver increased manyfold.
But to understand the role of this king in the rescue, one must go back to his father, the revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej.
The people of Thailand loved King Bhumibol in a way that outsiders often found hard to understand. Many thought of him as their own father. He wrote jazz songs that remain popular today. He was credited with various inventions and sent royal cloud-seeding planes into the sky to bring the rains. He was considered a demigod.
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