Original Nine Airdate: 31/05/2011
When one of the Hammersley crew accidentally outs an undercover operative, putting the man’s life in peril, he is determined to make amends.
As part of the boarding party checking a possible FFV (foreign fishing vessel) Dutchy (Conrad Coleby) doesn’t hide his surprise at seeing one of the crew is SAS Captain Jim Roth (Ditch Davey).
His flash of recognition is noticed by the ship’s master, and the question now is, has Jim’s cover been blown?
ASIO “spook” Madelaine Cruise (Renai Caruso) is furious. She confirms that Jim was on a mission and insists CO Mike Flynn (Ian Stenlake) shadow the vessel in case Jim needs assistance.
And so he does, after Dutchy sees two men fighting on the deck, and the subsequent boarding party finds an area awash with blood and Jim under a tarpaulin with a serious head wound.
Back on Hammersley, Jim accuses Dutchy of almost getting him killed, revealing he was posing as an arms dealer and had been close to sealing a deal with a man called Meers (Jimmy Christiansen) when a fight broke out and Meers was knocked overboard.
He needs Mike to search for the man so they can all establish if Jim’s cover is still intact, but when that search results in the finding of a body, it is one of the illegal fishermen. Meers has escaped.
With Hammersley in the foreign port of Kalewan, Dutchy tries to track Meers down, but his search is aborted by the arrival of Madelaine Cruise, who upbraids him, again, for interfering.
Dutchy persists: and when a murderous intruder attacks Madelaine in her room, it is Dutchy who saves her life after an ugly encounter that sees the end of Meers.
It becomes clear the man was after Madelaine’s sat-phone, in an internet hungry town. When a message comes in (at a steamy moment between sailor and “spook”) it is from the leader of a small terrorist cell, Tarak (Kamran Ozturk), trying to arrange a meeting with the arms dealer.
This is Dutchy’s chance to redeem himself. With Jim Roth too unwell to make the meeting, Dutchy offers to take his place, and on a privately owned boat, with some of Hammersley’s crew members dressed in civvies, he heads for the rendezvous.
But Tarak insists on meeting Dutchy alone, and it is only then that new technology plays its part, with RO (Kristian Schmid) hacking into a terrorist website and finding Dutchy listed as a known counter terrorist agent.
And on Tarak’s boat a crew member makes the same discovery. A pitched battle ensues, and although the terrorists are overcome, one question remains.
Surely Madelaine would have known about Dutchy’s classification as a counter terrorist agent. Did she let him walk into a trap?
