The Night the SBS Stormed a Hijacked Tanker Off the English Coast

A few miles off the Isle of Wight, on a cold October evening, an oil tanker the length of two football pitches sits dead in the water and will not come in. Twenty two crew are locked in a steel room deep inside the hull. Seven strangers are loose on the deck above them. And in the darkening sky, helicopters are coming. Black shapes, no lights, low and fast across the water. The men inside them are Britain's most secret soldiers. In nine minutes, it will be over. This is how it happened. And this is why, weeks later, almost none of it would turn out to be what it seemed.