Miracle in the Cave

by Liam Cochrane

  NOTE: “I am safe, please don’t worry. I love you, Mom, Dad, and everyone.”

  BIW: “Please don’t worry, Mom and Dad. I have been gone for two weeks. I will come back and help you with the shop when I can. I will try to come soon.”

  TEE: “Mom, Dad, Brother, and Sister and family, please don’t worry, I am very happy.”

  COACH EK: “Dear Aunty and Grandmother, I am fine, please don’t worry about me too much. Please take care of your health. Please tell Grandmother to make crispy pork skin with dipping sauce for me. I will come and eat it when I get out. Love you all.”

  COACH EK: “Dear parents, we are all fine. The team is taking care of us very well. I promise that I will take the best care of the boys. Thanks for all your support and I apologize to all the parents.”

  The parents didn’t blame Coach Ek. They were grateful for all he had done to keep their boys alive.

  By Saturday, the Wild Boars team had been inside the cave for two weeks. The energy gels, food, and company had restored their strength, but the wait was dragging on. When the British divers had first popped up and told them the SEALs were on their way, the boys thought that meant they’d be getting out immediately. Five days later, they were well and truly ready to leave.

  That day, some of the foreign divers went into the cave to give the Wild Boars the news that the rescue would be getting under way, and to give them a rundown of the plan. The divers told the boys that the plan was to sedate them and let the British cave rescue experts carry them out. The sedating procedure was explained to the children in a letter that Dr. Harry brought with him.

  The letter, from one of the Thai doctors, explained to the children what the process would entail. “They were going to get a tablet which would make them feel funny. They would come down to the water, sit up on my lap. I was going to give them an injection in one leg, an injection in the other leg. They were going to go to sleep. They would wake up in bed,” said Dr. Harry later. “When the Thai Navy SEAL read this out to the kids, I was watching their faces, and, honestly, they were just like, ‘Yep, sounds like a plan.’”

  Jason was also surprised by how well they accepted the news that they would be diving out—a prospect that would likely terrify most adults. “We told them about the plan, the vague details of a plan . . . how we’d have to dive them out, and none of them were whimpering or crying or anything. They just accepted what we were going to do. Really strong, you know, composure. Real mental strength from them, which was really surprising, considering their ages,” Jason told the ABC’s Four Corners.

  That’s exactly how Biw remembered the moment, too. Whatever it took to get out of that cave was fine by him.

  “I’m coming out, I’m not afraid,” Biw thought to himself.

  21

  D-Day

  Early on the morning of Sunday, July 8, an announcement was made over a loudspeaker: “For those in the media and anyone not involved in the operation, we politely ask that you leave this area.”

  All of the reporters and crews were asked to pack up and be off the mountain by 9 a.m. There were grumbles, for sure. Many of the larger networks had sunk considerable resources into setting up their “live spots” in the mud. It was obvious that the next designated media spot was not going to be as attractive as this one, with its view of the path leading to the cave.

  The ABC’s morning team packed up our (still unused) generator, umbrella, tables, and chairs and loaded it all into trucks to be taken down to the foot of the mountain and across the highway to the new press center—another cluster of canopies, this time outside a local government hall. There was a view of the misty mountains less than two miles away. It would have to do.

  But the order to move away from the cave also signaled that something was happening. The rescue was surely about to start, speculated the journalists.

  They were right.

  “Today is D-Day,” said the former governor of Chiang Rai, Narongsak Osottanakorn, at a press conference later that morning. “We are ready. The boys are ready and are strong enough to come out.”

  At around 8:20 a.m.—hours before the official announcement—the divers gathered for a briefing. There was little idle chatter. Nobody knew if they would finish the day as heroes or be dealing with dead children.

  Together, they ran through the specifics of the plan once more. First, Dr. Harry would administer the sedation. Then, one of the four recovery divers—Rick, John, Chris, or Jason—would take an unconscious boy and transport him through the flooded parts of the cave.

  The support divers would be stationed between sumps along the way to perform medical and equipment checks, and help carry the boy over dry sections and swim him through the floodwater. As well as the Euro team—Craig, Erik, Ivan, Mikko, and Claus—there would be two later additions to the rescue effort: an Englishman, Connor Roe; and Jim Warny, who was Belgian but lived in Ireland. Both were experienced cave rescue divers, but this would be Connor’s first major rescue. They were deployed late and only just made it in time for the rescue, coming straight off a long flight and arriving just minutes before the first divers entered the cave.

  The support divers would be divided into stations throughout the cave. Craig, Claus, and Mikko would be at Chamber 8; Ivan and Erik would be at Chamber 6; and Connor and Jim would be at Chamber 5.

  If things went according to plan, the recovery diver would hand over the boy to the US military team at Chamber 3, who would perform another medical check. Then he would be placed onto a rescue stretcher made from hardened plastic that could flex and glide over rocks. Among the rescuers it was known by its brand name, Sked (or Skedco)—a portmanteau of the words “skid” and “sled.” Once the boy was strapped into the Sked, dozens of rescue workers from the United States, Australia, China, and Thailand would carefully maneuver the stretcher to the cave entrance. To get through the difficult rocky section between Chamber 3 and Chamber 2, the team from Chiang Mai Rock Climbing Adventures and the Americans had rigged up a zip-line system. The boy would be carefully hoisted up the steep incline and then lowered down the other side, all while strapped securely into the Sked.

  Once at the cave entrance, the boy would receive more medical checks and a short ambulance ride to a field hospital just a few hundred yards away—two gray tents with waiting medical teams inside. If the medic gave the all clear, the boy would be loaded back into the ambulance and driven to the helipad at Ban Chong soccer field, for a chopper ride to Chiang Rai, where another ambulance would take him to a special quarantine ward that had been set up for the Wild Boars.

  The briefing ended. There were more than one hundred people involved in the operation, and they all began their final preparations.

  Around 10 a.m., the four recovery divers entered the cave. They were followed by Dr. Harry and the support divers.

  The rescue operation had begun.

  After about an hour, the divers reached Chamber 3—the base camp of the rescue.

  At 11:50 a.m., the divers made their final gear checks and started leaving Chamber 3 for their respective posts, led by John, Rick, Jason, and Rob. They each had three cylinders, backup flashlights, their battered helmets, and preloaded ketamine syringes, needles not yet attached.

  From this point on, there would be no communications back to Chamber 3: the divers would have to solve any crises on their own.

  The US and Thai support teams watched the glow of the divers’ lights fade away underwater. It would be five long hours before those left behind in Chamber 3 had any idea if the operation had been a success.

  While they waited, the US military ran one last rehearsal, one that few people ever knew about.

  Airman First Class Haley Moulton was tasked with carrying drinking water into the cave. Young and blond, she was petite in the real world, but next to some of her gym-buffed colleagues, she was positively tiny. It was only her second trip into the cave, and when she arrived in Chamber 3, she was given a new job.

  “I got there and they’
re like, ‘We need someone who’s small,’ so they can simulate the weight of who they’re carrying out of the cave. And they were like, ‘Oh, Moulton, you’re doing it.’”

  She was strapped into a Sked and told to try not to move while the rescuers hauled her through the dimly lighted passageways. It was going fine until they reached a steep section.

  “I think it was the Australians who were managing that part. They pulled me up and my feet slipped through the bottom of the Skedco. So we had to stop and reset, and they found out they had to make the Skedco pretty tight, so that no one slips through.”

  It was a minor thing, but it could have been disastrous. The prospect of getting the boys out through the dangerous sumps only to drop them off a cliff onto the rocks was a scenario nobody wanted to imagine. It showed the thoroughness of the military-drilled organizers of the rescue. If it could be practiced, they’d test it. If it could be improved, they’d fix it.

  But Airman First Class Haley Moulton faced something the boys—in their full-face masks—wouldn’t have to worry about.

  “I was just trying to keep my eyes closed, because their hands were going all over me, their muddy water was dripping on my face, and it was scary because my hands were strapped to my chest, so I couldn’t move at all.”

  That part would be the same for the members of the Wild Boars. They’d be strapped in tight, completely dependent on those that passed them down the cave.

  For the divers, the usual mode of communication using hand signals was out of the question in the soupy sumps. So Erik and Ivan—the two friends from Koh Tao—had come up with a simplified system: any time they reached an air pocket, the lead diver would wait for their buddy, have a quick chat to confirm everything was okay, and then continue on.

  Ivan placed his borrowed helmet on his head and took the lead, submerging into the pool beyond Chamber 3, with Erik following. Almost immediately, things started to go wrong.

  “Literally thirty seconds into the dive, my helmet—because it’s so super buoyant—gets stuck in the cave on top of me and I don’t feel it and I continue diving and . . .”

  At this point during the retelling, Ivan tipped his head back slightly and made a choking sound.

  “The one I borrowed was not a diving helmet, it was a climbing helmet, which has a lot of protective foam inside, which is incredibly buoyant, so it’s not suitable for scuba diving.”

  With the helmet locked in place above and Ivan’s momentum going forward, he was suddenly being choked by his chin strap.

  “I’m like, shit, shit, shit. I can’t move anywhere and I can feel that it’s blocking my breathing . . . and I start to get sparks [in my eyes] because I don’t get enough oxygen.”

  With one hand on the guide rope, his other hand fumbled with the latch.

  “I can’t get the f*cking thing open.”

  The methodical mind of the experienced technical diver went through the logic of breaking the first, most important rule of cave diving: never let go of the line. But the alternative was to die right then and there, choked by a floaty helmet with a tricky clasp.

  “So, I let go of the line, get both my hands to the helmet, get the helmet off, get it free, put it back on again, and by this time the line is gone.”

  Adrift and blind, Ivan began a well-drilled emergency procedure. He stayed as still as possible and waved one extended arm up and down, circling deliberately, until he found the line again. He was lucky: it took only about forty-five seconds.

  But in that brief time, Erik had swum by along the line, completely oblivious to the near-disaster. Both divers hauled themselves through the long, flooded tunnel, unaware that they’d switched positions.

  When Erik popped up at the next air pocket, Ivan was nowhere to be seen. Erik was baffled. They had only just started, and Ivan had been right there in front of him when the sump’s murkiness cloaked them. Erik wondered if Ivan had somehow missed the big rock-climbing carabiner that indicated the place the line branched off from the loop. It was the only navigation point in the whole cave; it seemed impossible that Ivan could have missed it and continued around the big loop to reemerge in Chamber 3. Or maybe he had just skipped protocol and carried on without stopping for their appointed check-in. What should Erik do?

  It was a quandary. Erik knew Ivan was a top diver who could get himself out of most trouble. Going backward on the line would risk bumping into other divers. It would also take time, and they were already a bit behind schedule. He had a job to do in Chamber 6. The boys and the rescue divers were depending on him to be there. So he swam on to the next chamber.

  Seconds later, Ivan emerged in the same air pocket. He shone his light around the cave.

  “I’m like, ‘F*ck, where’s Erik?’” he recalled. “‘I know he thinks I’m in front of him, but he should have waited.’”

  Presented with the same situation, Ivan then came up with a different conclusion.

  “So I go back. It takes me about an hour to come all the way back to Chamber 3 and ask, ‘Hey, is Erik here?’”

  “No, he’s with you,” came the reply from the Americans.

  “Ah, goddamnit,” cursed Ivan.

  Ivan changed his tanks and set off—again—from Chamber 3, through Chamber 4, past the laminated number 5 sign, and on into Chamber 6. There he found Erik. There was a long tense silence, Erik recalled. At least ten seconds went by as the two men just stared at each other.

  It was a narrow miss, a mix-up that cost them time and dented their confidence. And the rescue hadn’t even begun.

  There was no time to waste talking about the mishap—they had a job to do. They began setting up their chamber, placing space blankets on the mud to create a working area and cable-tying LED lamps to the rocky ceiling. The dive instructors set out their fail-safes: backup regulators, spare tanks, food, rubber seals known as O-rings, and cable ties to repair broken hoses. (O-rings and cable ties are to divers what gaffer’s tape is to landlubbers: they fix just about anything.)

  Then Ivan and Erik sat on the muddy bank of their designated chamber and began the long wait for the first boy.

  Outside the cave, there was much speculation about who would be brought out first.

  There were two main schools of thought. Some believed the strongest boy would go first, as a test, to give the rescue workers the best chance of success. They could always adjust the plan after that. Others said it would be the weakest boy, because he’d need medical attention the most urgently.

  In fact, the choice had nothing to do with the strength of the teammates.

  “I talked with Dr. Harris,” said Dr. Pak, who was caring for the boys inside the cave with the SEALs. “All of them are healthy, no complications whatsoever. Every one is more or less the same strength. We talked about how we are taking them out, the small one out first, or the bigger one, or other criteria. Dr. Harris told me, ‘It doesn’t matter who is out first.’”

  So the question was put to the boys: whoever wants to go first, raise your hand. Many hands went up. Dr. Pak decided to delegate the decision to Coach Ek, the one who knew the boys best.

  “The SEALs asked me to make that decision,” explained Coach Ek. “So, [I decided] the first set would be those who come from Ban Wiang Hom, for the reason that they live farther away. What we planned was, once they were out, they would ride their bicycles home and let the other families know that the rest of the boys will be out tomorrow. And they would ask them to please cook some food for us.”

  The coach’s reasoning showed how little the Wild Boars understood what was happening outside. They had no idea that their rescue had become the biggest news event in years and the whole world was transfixed by the dramatic operation.

  The first four—Note, Tern, Nick, and Night—were chosen.

  “I think it was their bravest guys that came out first,” said Craig later.

  Coach Ek said those who were not chosen weren’t too disappointed. His words suggest that perhaps the boys remaining were just a l
ittle relieved not to be the guinea pigs in the high-stakes experiment.

  “Those who are slower, when they see the post is filled, they just take their hand down. Actually, they all wanted to spend more time with the SEALs. At that time, we didn’t really want to go out; we were very attached to them.”

  The Wild Boars had now been trapped for sixteen days. While they sat on that muddy ledge in the darkness lessened only by their flashlights, their plight had become the center of the world’s attention. The media camped at the bottom of the mountain fed an insatiable demand from audiences and readers. Millions of people around the world were gripped by the story. Thousands of people had searched for them and for ways to get them out—soldiers, police, divers, climbers, construction workers, engineers, academics, mystics, and passionate volunteers. Now the world’s best cave divers were going to attempt a rescue that had never been tried before.

  Would they get out alive?

  It all came down to this moment.

  Note was the first Wild Boar to go. The fourteen-year-old was already wearing a wet suit, a welcome layer of warmth in the cool cave. But the wet suits were ill-fitting, and hypothermia remained a real risk during the several hours they would spend in and out of the water. Note swallowed the antianxiety tablet and started to feel relaxed.

  “We got the Navy SEALs up the top of this hill just to sort of put [the boys] around the corner and get them sitting down, so they weren’t watching what was happening to their mate,” Dr. Harry later explained.

  Note walked down the slope to Dr. Harry and sat in his lap. The Australian anesthetist was known for his calm, reassuring bedside manner. He prepared two syringes and eased them into each of Note’s legs. Note was quickly unconscious.

  He was then put into the rest of his diving gear—a buoyancy vest, the modified harness with a handle on the back, and an air tank strapped to his front. They chose not to use helmets for the boys because it interfered with the fit of the masks, but they placed packing foam inside their wet-suit hoods to give their heads some protection. The air was turned on and the all-important full-face mask was fitted. The divers carefully checked and rechecked the silicone seal to make sure it was tight against Note’s face. It took about thirty seconds for Note to start breathing normally through the face mask.