Warrior Brothers (3 page)

I was stoked to be heading out to sea for my first deployment. Training for the water troop had thrown up a whole range of challenges and skills for me to embrace, and the prospect of putting them to use was nothing short of thrilling. Assault diving is physically and mentally taxing – but according to many SAS divers, it's little short of underwater sex. It is that good!

Water-work also includes diving and boating on and off submarines. Naturally, there is a downside. Having your bum bounced red-raw on the side of a small inflatable boat for six hours, all the while being buffeted by an icy spray, is something most of us are never nostalgic for. There is also no love lost on a night cache exercise where the boats and equipment are dragged up the beach and buried. This can take the best part of an entire evening, leaving you frozen, salted and covered in sand. Just the start you want to a two-week patrol.

It wasn't unusual for an assault diver to perspire profusely inside his facemask, such was the exertion of a force swim. In retrospect, all the sweating is hardly surprising: divers are fitted with an assault rig, primary and secondary weapon, ammunition, body armour, caving ladders, assault poles, sledgehammers, shotguns and demolition charges. Just a bit of extra baggage. Coupled with this, a re-breather (O2) dive set is more difficult to operate than a conventional air set. An
operator must exhale hard into an O2 set, which in turn forces pure oxygen back into his lungs. It is almost the opposite of breathing. You breathe out hard and then air comes flowing back. If you try to do the reverse it is quite a struggle, and it's not unusual to feel a degree of claustrophobia from the restricted airflow. There are no bubbles and the exhaled breath is recycled, with the carbon dioxide being removed and absorbed into a granule-filled canister. A1.5 kilogram bottle can provide a dive-time of three hours.

Considering that we are usually working flat-out and not just floating around looking at fish, this is an incredible piece of equipment. The O2 sets are designed for shallow-water assault diving – beyond a depth of 10 metres the oxygen becomes toxic to the human body. Additional care has to be taken when approaching the surface. It is imperative to ‘breathe down' your set – to use up all the oxygen in the small bag without re-tripping the set. If this doesn't happen, bubbles will be expelled from what will have become full and bursting cheeks.

During a dive it is important to remain calm, especially for the compass operator, who must also concentrate on ‘heading' (direction), depth and trying to lower his heart rate back to a workable level. He waits for a squeeze on his left arm and then on his right, to ensure that the team members are ready to continue, and then gradually accelerates towards the target. During a rapid descent, the sensation is quite similar to stuffing a piece of rag into your mouth and trying to go for a run – your lungs are pulling with all their might but only a trickle of air finds its way in. Given the dangers and the potential for oxygen deprivation, diving is not for everyone.

On top of these challenges, there is the added surge of adrenaline you get from having to negotiate four- to five-metre seas, sharks or both.

Our dive training sites on the North West Shelf abounded with marine life, especially at night, when thousands of fish were attracted by the lights, and there was no shortage of ‘top of the food chain' predators to add a little additional excitement. Prior to the Heard Island mission, our troop had been tasked to trial a shark-deterring pod that gives off an electromagnetic pulse. No water troop had previously carried out a night dive on the Shelf, and there was a perfectly good reason for this – there were far too many oversized, hungry, razor-toothed fish to worry about.

I was curious about what would happen if someone fell into the water at night, so on the evening before the night dive I moved to the vicinity of the boom (the large flame) and threw in several two-litre cartons of milk that I had punctured with my knife. Within moments of the cartons hitting the water, the area was awash with white frothy fluid mixed by a swish of shark fins and tails breaking the surface, almost like spoons that were stirring a broth on the boil. Whichever direction I looked in, there were small schools of sharks patrolling what was, apparently, their domain. We hoped these shark pods were everything they were cracked up to be, so we could dive without becoming dinner.

Before we carried out the drill, two of us entered the dark water to assess the currents. How did I manage to land such an unenviable task? Floating around on the surface was just a little too exhilarating, and I tried not to consider what was lurking beneath.

‘Don't you dare do a piss,' I said to the team 2iC.

‘Too late,' was his reply.

We didn't waste any time assessing the current and were quickly back in the twin 200-horsepower robust inflatable boats (RIBs), which began to approach our target. ‘Prepare to
turn, turn now, one, two, three, go,' was the call as we fell over the side and into the abyss of darkness and shadow.

‘Mmm, the breathing sounds a little deeper than usual,' I thought.

As we entered the water, another diver's fin, which had the pulsing electromagnetic shark pod attached, glanced across the rear of my head. The jolt of electricity I received felt like being belted across the head with a rolled-up newspaper. Not a lean Tuesday paper but the Saturday version, heavy and busting with classifieds. The extra wordage gave me a headache.

With a squeeze of the compass operator's arm, the force began finning towards the dive platform. We were 600 metres away from our target but closed the gap in less than three minutes due to the strength of the current. The water was illuminated by several powerful lights, and dozens of shadows could be seen darting to and fro. Even worse, several much larger shadows could be seen in the depths below us. Heart rates were up.

With the task completed, we were all happy to scramble into the safety craft. I was one of the last men to board and had turned off my pod – until I noticed a shark circling only a few metres below me with its mouth wide open. This was all the encouragement I needed to turn it back on, and I also had no qualms about zapping one of my mates as I frantically swung my legs into the boat. As we were winched out of the water we saw a large dark shadow, a four- to five-metre hammerhead shark that was trailing one of the safety craft. Too late, buddy!

The next day, while we were conducting a day dive and were lined up on the tie-off line (eight metres from the surface), Buzz, in full team leader mode, gave the ‘chop' – an indication to the end men (Todd and me) to head to the surface and fire the grappling gun in order to establish a line to ascend. We immediately followed his command, but later
we learned that he was actually telling us to wait due to the presence of another large shark that was approaching. Some things are better left unknown.

Diving in Bass Strait was, in many respects, even more challenging than evading rogue sharks on the North West Shelf. On a training exercise there, we learned the hard way that the crushing swell of the seas could be danger enough on its own. We saw evidence of Bass Strait's enormous power in the twisted and damaged metal grating of the nine-metre sea deck of a dive platform. The walkways were non-existent in some places – the metal had been buffeted with such force that the grates had folded like paper plates before being swept into the sea.

Attempting to secure a caving ladder to a dive platform is physically taxing. One method is to use a pole to position the ladder. In a strong current it can be impossible for the two operators to stay in position, so it is essential to develop a simple method to remain static. Two men attach a large tape sling (six metres long) between them and swim off with the pole in tow. The operators then swim around the opposite sides of a pylon. Although they are flung together with enormous force, they have the stability to begin attaching the ladder.

I was part of one such team with Mick, a supremely fit guy and a great mate. Mick had an enormous appetite for hard work and I enjoyed his sense of humour immensely. He was even more hilarious with a few beers under his belt. He also possessed uncanny hand–eye coordination, which made him a natural at any sport. Well, any sport except surfing. I am no Kelly Slater, but Mick looked about as comfortable sitting on a surfboard as a cat does having a bath.

Thankfully, Mick was a calm operator underwater, a necessary skill given that our objective, besides not
drowning, was to extend the pole between us when we were at the surface. In calm water it would have been fairly straightforward, but with a four-metre swell washing over us it was hell. Rolling around underwater with aching ears was like being inside a giant washing machine as burning needles pierced our tympanic membranes. Tethered together, Mick and I were pushed from the surface to a depth of four or five metres in an instant. Our ears were close to bursting and breathing was impossible until we were able to hit the purge button on the front of our O2 sets and get a much-needed breath of oxygen. Remaining calm was a priority, because the swells continued to pound us over and over again.

At intervals during the battering we would pop up on the surface and push the pole, with ladder and hook attached, up the side of the pylon, which we were now becoming quite intimate with. The force with which we were slammed against it meant that our bodies would tangle together at times. If we had the chance we would stick out our fins and try to absorb the beating with our legs. If not, our bodies would be making love to the barnacles on the pylon. Despite the movement of the ocean, stillness was necessary, for to kick uncontrollably would only make things even more uncomfortable for your mate. Our heart rates were maxing at over 180 beats per minute as we struggled to push the pole, with a caving ladder attached, almost directly above our heads.

Our lungs were burning as much as our arms and legs, and we were breathing so powerfully that we constantly had to trip our re-breather sets and force excess air out of our swollen cheeks. After struggling for a good 20 minutes or so, we noticed another set of demoralising swells approaching. With one final lunge, we thrust the pole high above our heads. The effort pushed us both a metre or so underwater and another big swell swept over us. We had no idea if the
hook had found its mark so we just held on and tried to remain calm.

At last the swell passed and we broke the surface, almost hyperventilating into our dive sets. I gave a thumbs-up signal to the others. The hook was attached to the railing.
Thank fuck for that
, I thought, before returning to depth to get away from the murderous surface conditions and to summon the energy for the strenuous ladder climb ahead.

The remaining team members took off their fins, placed them over their arms and climbed out of the nightmare. Mick and I took off our dive sets, attempting to lower our heart rates and rest our arms, which were already feeling the effects of lactic acid build-up.

One man had to remain on the bottom of the ladder to keep it taut, which would make the climb a little less taxing for the others. He would have to be the strongest climber, as there would be nobody to secure the bottom of the ladder for him. When he made the climb out of the water, his legs would be almost parallel to the water in front of his body, increasing the load on his upper extremities.

Mick, as per usual, had been assigned this unenviable job. He was the strongest climber in the troop. He typically had little trouble doing several sets of 25 to 30 chin-ups and regularly took part in insane workouts where we'd attempt to do 300 chin-ups and 300 push-ups in 32 minutes. He didn't do a lot of climbing but had a natural ability that could see him scale almost anything without so much as a strained facial expression.

While the weight of Mick below me kept the ladder taut, I clambered over the railing and began taking off my equipment. Looking back down, I suddenly noticed that the strength in Mick's arms was gone, with him still eight rungs from the top. His eyes were wide open as he gasped for air. Two of us went to his aid while the remainder of the team provided security.