Chapter 12

November 14. 00:06 SAST, Newlands, Cape Town.

Confusion! I was fast asleep with Angie snuggled against me. The vibration of the cell phone on the nightstand jerked me out of dreamland, and I groped for it, still sleepy. I was expecting the call, but the fogginess of deep sleep still limited my ability to respond.

“Yes?”

“Are you awake?”

“Sort of...”

“Awake enough to get some details?”

“Yeah, yeah ... Go!”

“Good. The SAPS Water-wing will take the narcotics guys out. The Taskforce was activated and will go in and secure the crew and the ship. The Narcotic Unit will go in and get the merchandise. Taskforce will secure the girl.”

“And then?”

“You go in and extract her from the deck. The Taskforce guys will secure her and get her hooked on to the winch. You hoist her up and take her for medical treatment. The doctor at Darling Clinic will be waiting for you. It’s not a five-star clinic, but good for the first medical examination. If it is required, and her condition is serious, the SA Navy doctor on board the SAS Amatola and his staff will help.”

“Blast! Did they scramble the Amatola?”

“She is tasked with drug traffic law enforcement and piracy suppression around the coast. She is now in the vicinity, so enter the SAS Amatola, and you are cleared to land on her helideck.”

“Can I land at the Darling Clinic? The Puma needs some space, you know.”

“Yes, you can. The Clinic is on Fabriek Street to the north of the town. Just where the tar road ends, and the gravel road continues, right there’s the clinic. There’s ample space to put the Puma down, just watch the eucalyptus trees to the west of the road. There are also some big trees next to the clinic’s gate, but enough space for the Puma outside on the road. In a town that goes to sleep when the chickens go to roost, there will be hardly any traffic. Besides, it’s a side road.”

“Okay, I know that town. At 19:00 they switch off the street lamps and roll up the white lines on the tar roads. I’ll Google Maps it and look at the street view to orientate myself.”

“Okay, now the force will hit them at 03:00, sharp. Be around the Island at 03:10 and wait on their call. They will contact you on a normal air band. So, monitor the Fisantekraal frequency. There’s a ship docked at the Dassen Island dock. Watch her superstructure, but the dock is wide enough for you to sit out there on it and wait.”

“Good. And, Charley, thanks for your part.”

“All for my sons and daughters. Now let me go take my beauty sleep. Call me in the morning at say, 06:00, okay?”

“I’ll call you. Just one more thing. Do I take TC and his squad along? They seem not to be wanted anymore?”

“Just to be on the safe side, take half of the squad.”

“Okay. We’ll do it. Night, Charley.”

“Go and get our girl back!” And Charley disconnected.

In the pale moonlight that filtered through the crack in the curtain, a pair of sleepy green eyes looked at me.

“Charley?”

“Yip, the good guys are hitting the ship at 03:00. We need to be there to extract Roxy at 03:10,” I said. “Go back to sleep, you have another hour.”

“And you?”

“I’ll go get TC up to speed with the happenings.”

“I’ll go make coffee...”

“Don’t worry, sweetie. You catch some more shut-eye. I’ll run the coffee while briefing TC.”

“Bring me some...” Angie softly said and turned over on her other side. I heard her breathing getting slow and rhythmic. Angie was sleeping. I silently crept out of the room so as not to disturb her.

I carefully knocked on the door to TC’s room, conscious that sticky-icky may be sharing a room with TC. I had no clue what they may be wearing to bed, so I proceeded with care. I don’t want to shock Lorie by arriving there while she is in her birthday suit. Even though we were youngsters twenty years ago, she at ten and me at eighteen, she hadn’t changed much since then. Maybe a little taller, a little wider across the chest, a little fuller in the hips, but she was still the slender wiry tomboy of our youth, when we sometimes surprised each other in the bathroom.

I heard a stir from within the room, and the door opened. Surprise! A fully clothed Lorie looked me in the eyes.

“Time to go?”

“No, not yet, but soon. Let me brief TC.”

“Then don’t just stand there and waste oxygen. Get in here,” TC grunted in the shadows of the room. Lorie switched on the light and TC got up from the bed.

“Right, spit it out,” TC grunted, and I briefed him on what Charley had said.

“Good, I’ll take six guys. More than enough. The rest can sleep.”

“I’ll go make coffee,” Lorie said.

“Nope. I’ll do it. You go and brief Mai-Loan.”

“Okay,” she said as she pressed past me to go and wake Mai-Loan.

“So, you’re going to fly the bird then?” TC asked.

“Yip. It’s still a toss-up who will be co-pilot for me, but I need Lorie on the hoist.”

“Oh, I can do the hoisting. I have done it a zillion times on UH-60s. They’re not much different from the Puma. You just keep her steady and Bob’s your uncle. Take Lorie as your backup, she looks good in the left seat!”

“And the rest of the Angels? Who do we take and who do we leave?”

“Leave the young ones: Darya and Nadia. They can make us a farmhouse breakfast. I think Roxy will be starving right now.”

“Okay you get your guys ready, and I’ll go make coffee. Half an hour to forty minutes, then we fly!” I said and turned to leave.

“Three sugars for everyone! They’ll need the extra energy,” TC called, and I chuckled, making a mental calculation of how many mugs of coffee to prepare.

November 14. 02:20 SAST, Newlands, Cape Town.

I wasn’t a cheerful man. The moon was full and close overhead, casting a silver glimmer across the landscape. The arctic-white Puma would be like a spotlight in the moonlight. It would also be highlighted by the moonlight reflecting off the water. She was supposed to be shiny, but tonight that would be a liability.

An answer to the problem would be for me to fly low, keeping barely two hundred to two hundred and fifty feet above the sea’s surface. Flying at night is dangerous. We could make use of the FLIR. Forward Looking Infra-red (FLIR) technology is unaffected by visible light. You could point the FLIR at the setting sun or fire a spotlight right into it and still get a flawless image.

Mai-Loan selected Olivia, Leah and herself to go along. Angie, with the memory of my little mishap in Namibia in mind, would not stay behind either. TC selected six of his boys, and after rummaging through his equipment boxes, issued us all with bulletproof vests.

Lorie had a look at them and commented that the only use for the vests was to put them on the floor of the Puma to: “Help protect from beneath...” Yeah, protect the crown jewels, for duck’s fake!

With all strapped in, the safety briefing done, and all doors secured, Lorie started reading the checklist, and I followed her every verbal command.

Batteries on. Park brake on. Electrics on. Fuel-valve one open. Fuel pump one on. Beacon light on. Nav lights on. Controls are free and moving. Throttle one to ground idle. Fuel cut-off levers to off. Rotor-brake off. Starter one button depressed for three seconds. A soft whine came from above us as engine one spooled up. With a whooshing sound and a puff of blue-grey smoke from the exhaust, engine one fired into life with the corresponding indications on the engine gauges.

With Lorie still going through the checklist, we got engine two up and running. The five rotor blades started to spin around the rotor head, slowly rising from their droopy profile to the 63.98-foot rotor disk profile. Although Grumpy Charley kept the AS332L2 designation of the Puma, she was upgraded to EC-225LP standard, therefore she had five main rotor blades and five tail-rotor blades.

With the gauges all in the green and temperatures within limits, Lorie reached up and moved the throttle levers both from ground idle to flight idle. The vibration in the airframe became softer but noticeable as the rotor blades spun around the rotor head at just over 265 RPM. The two driveshafts that drive the main and tail rotors were reduced in speed from 23000 RPM by the main reduction gearbox to spin the blades at 265 RPM.

The rest of the checklist followed. Cabin lights off, alternators one and two on. Pitot tubes (All three of them.) heating on. Landing light on. Co-pilot panel lights on. Checking to see that the automatic engine management system is doing its work and reporting the correct parameters. All done. The Puma wants to fly.

“Ready to lift off?” I asked Lorie.

“Let’s go!” she responded, and I pulled collective to raise us into a hover, countering the Puma’s tendency to turn right with rudder pedal input. As we lifted off, I thought of trying to limit our night flying out of that property. The Puma isn’t that quiet an aircraft, and we might get noise complaints from the neighbours, but this was an emergency.

I lifted the Puma above the trees high enough to compensate for the three-story mansions in this area, then dropped her nose three degrees. The Puma responded, and we were moving forward, climbing to 800 feet MSL.

At 40 knots indicated airspeed, Lorie retracted the wheels and armed the emergency floats for inflation in case we have an engine failure and end up in the water. Later, as we go feet-wet over Table Bay, I will douse all the lights and continue flying with the aid of the FLIR.

The Puma is not the stealthiest of helicopters. Her whining turboshaft engines singing their song just above the deep throaty slapping noise of the main rotors could be heard for miles.

Just east of Cape Town harbour we went feet-wet, and I dropped us to 200 feet MSL. The Puma was purring along at 148 KIAS. (274 Km/h or 170 mph) There was no conversation in the cabin. Leah, Olivia, Mai-Loan, and Angie sat staring out the cabin windows at the bright silver moonlit ocean. To our west, the flickering lights of the Cape Town city shone with multi-coloured splendour. An occasional bout of turbulence caused the rotors to sound a blade slap, reminding us all that we were in a helicopter.

The added outside mirror, slightly down on the nose but fully visible from the right-side cockpit seat, the hoist assembly, the FLIR camera and the night-sun searchlight, all whispered a wind song in the slipstream and added a bit of extra drag to the airframe. All of this equipment was essential to successfully hoist Roxy aboard. Although TC would man the hoist and the operation thereof, I must watch the proceedings in the mirror, and correct the hover as necessary, while Lorie monitored the flight instruments. With my concentration outside the cockpit, monitoring the flight instruments became her task. That’s why you need two pilots in a ten-ton helicopter. The auto-hover assist is also essential.

Hugging the coast from Bloubergstrand, we continued roughly north, and soon Melkbosstrand slipped past. The brightly lit Koeberg nuclear power station stood out against the otherwise dark countryside and overgrown sand dunes. Robben Island’s lighthouse, flashing its warning to ships in the bay, was to our left, receding slowly. Far out on the horizon, I saw the black outline of Dassen Island, still twenty minutes ahead.

We were going to be a bit early, so I elected to reduce speed and fly out towards Langebaan, staying well away from Dassen Island, and only at the last moment turn to come in and land on the jetty of the island’s small harbour to the north of the island. The jetty was visibly sheltered by a small hill to the west of the island. The wind was from the west as well, hopefully blowing the sound of the helicopter away from the Akenomyosei Maru.

Just past the fishing village of Yzerfontein, with the small harbour devoid of any shipping, I turned back the way we came. In the distance, I spotted Dassen Island’s north shore with the single jetty sticking out from the island.

With the bright moonlight and the help of the FLIR, it was not even necessary to use the landing light. I suspected that we were expected by the bird watcher and his wife, because the jetty was brightly lit up by spotlights from the deck of the supply ship moored on the west side of the jetty.

Now that we knew where to look, the radar painted a nice target of the container ship to the west of the island. It also painted targets to the northwest of the container ship. One target was a small launch and the other one more in the line of a Valour-class Frigate. Okay, the SAS Amatola was on station. The smaller one would be the SAPS launch.

“Can you see where to land?” Lorie asked.

“Yeah! Don’t even need the FLIR and the landing light,” I responded.

“Good! While you are still high, and I can see over that hill to the west, let me zoom in on the ship with the FLIR.”

“Go for it!” I said. “Maybe we could see the name on the stern of the ship.”

“Well, there it is! Akenomyosei Maru, Tokyo, and the Japanese flag! We did find her!” Lorie said, and I felt a surge of adrenaline. This is real; confirmation that action was about to happen.

“I did not doubt it for one moment,” I chuckled. “Now, let me get us down on the jetty.” The rest of the cabin occupants were showing signs of life. It was only a twenty-five-minute flight, but one tends to get drowsy with the drone of the Puma’s turbines, and no one had much sleep on top of that.

The landing did not offer much difficulty, and we were down and at ground idle without much to do.

“Can we go stretch our legs?” Angie asked.

“Yeah, just mind the tail rotor. Stay in front of the helicopter, where I can see you. Angie, I know you are small, but also mind the main rotors. They generate downward and outward winds exceeding forty kilometres per hour. It will blow you off the jetty, so be awake!”

“I don’t intend to go play extreme sports, and ride jet blasts!” Giggle. Angie said, Mai-Loan and the others chuckled.

“Yeah, if you want to ride jet blasts, I’ll take you to St Martin’s beach, and you can stand in the wake of a 747 taking off! I hear that it’s a good experience,” TC said, looking at Boomer.

“Done it! I got washed out into the surf,” Boomer commented. “You should try it, Angie. You’ll fly for quite a stretch! Maybe we should give you a life jacket and a parachute.”

NO! I don’t use parachutes!” Angie said.

“Why? Are you one of those that don’t jump out of a perfectly good flying aeroplane?”

“Yes!” Angie giggled. “While the aircraft is flying, I’ll be inside it.”

“Just wait until that spinney thing in front stops!” TC chuckled.

“Like I trust those spinney things. See the one above you!” Angie snorted.

“Okay, you guys. Go stretch your legs. They can call us any time now,” Mai-Loan said.

November 14. 03:01 SAST On the bridge of the Akenomyosei Maru.

There was nothing to do, but just to monitor the ship and the weather. The captain has left instructions that he has to be called if the weather changes. To the south of the ship, the charts show a few rocky underwater outcrops. These could be dangerous. With the full moon overhead and the tide rising, the water over those outcrops could be deep enough so that the ship might be able to clear them.

The officer of the watch had just received a mug of tea from one of the deckhands and was contemplating taking a stroll out on the wing of the bridge when something caught his eye. In the darkness, he saw a white wake reflecting off the sea. A ship was coming towards them. And not a small boat. No, it was something big.

Squinting his eyes, he could not make out any shape. He turned to the radar and froze on his feet. It was a large ship. Maybe half the size of the Akenomyosei Maru, but a ship on a heading that will intercept them.

Before he could react to the thread, something else popped up on the radar. A smaller vessel, low in the water but making high speed was converging from the south. Two vessels, heading for the Akenomyosei Maru. He has to notify the captain.

As the officer of the watch reached for the telephone to connect him with the captain, he heard a noise that made his blood go cold in his body. The sound of a helicopter!

He grabbed the telephone off the cradle and pressed the button on the phone to call the captain. He heard the ding sound of the phone ringing in his ear.

“Yes?” the captain answered.

“Captain, you better get here to the bridge. Two ships and a helicopter are coming towards us!”

“Shit!” was all the captain said, and the line went dead. Still standing with the phone receiver in his hand, the officer saw a Japanese Kawasaki BK-117 helicopter in the unmistakable colours of the South African Police Service fly over the bridge and come to a hover at the back of the bridge. Through the back windows of the bridge, he saw dark figures in battle fatigues lining the side of the helicopter. Ropes dropped from the helicopter, and the figures started to descend down the ropes.

The next moment a blinding floodlight bathed the bridge in bright white light, stinging his eyes.

Just then the door to the bridge opened and the captain, shielding his eyes against the dazzling glare of the spotlight, entered the bridge.

“Container ship, Akenomyosei Maru! You are being boarded. This is the South African Police. Do not. I repeat, do not hinder this inspection,” Came a loud and clear instruction over a public address system.

Both the captain and the officer of the watch stood motionless as a warship drew up three cable lengths from their bow, training its deck guns on them. The smaller launch came alongside, and the word “POLICE” stencilled in bold blue letters on the white superstructure, was visible in the backwash of the blinding spotlight.

With a warship training its guns in front of him, a police launch to the side, and a police helicopter above him, the captain knew he was cornered. Damn Daiki and his bright ideas!

“We’re in deep shit!” The captain said. “Don’t do anything. Just humour them. Maybe they will go away...”

The back hatch door of the bridge opened, and three Special Taskforce members entered, small submachine guns at the ready.