Nearing 1 a.m., Sunday, Sept. 3., just beyond the French navy's 12-mile exclusion zone at Mururoa, the South Pacific atoll where France plans to test nuclear bombs. Light wind. Half-moon. Waves from a far-off storm swell under La Rebaude, a broken-engined, radio-dead ketch owned by Greenpeace. The crew hands two black-painted sea kayaks over the rail. They are then tethered to a Zodiac inflatable boat already pitching in the water.
Al Baker, 31, a veteran Greenpeace activist, starts the Zodiac's 15-h.p. motor, and Matthew Whiting climbs aboard from the ketch. Whiting, 36, is lately of the French Foreign Legion; for that...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
