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the Zaafir anchored near the rusty pirate trawler, a motorboat loaded with half a dozen men raced out to the Zaafir from the shore.  When Dawoud sent fifteen armed men to the upper decks, and Haatim himself manned the 20mm cannon, the motorboat slowed as if an anchor had dropped overboard.  Haatim waved the motorboat closer.  Obviously recognizing he and his men could have been wiped from the ocean in seconds, the pirate leader resumed headway and came alongside the Zaafir.  Haatim welcomed him aboard and offered tea.
    Over tea Haatim asked the pirates to stay clear of the island to the north by a 50 kilometer radius and in return offered them access to weapons and information they would find valuable.  Haatim could have killed the pirates and sunk their ship but he actually preferred them there because their presence kept others over whom he might not have control from the area.  Before departing, Haatim told the pirate captain that they were soon going to mine the waters around the northern island, not at a shallow depth that might destroy a far wandering fisherman but deeper to damage naval vessels and others of a draft similar to the 60 meter trawler of the pirates.
    Haatim wished to lay mines around the entire island but they had neither the resources to acquire that many mines, to transport that many in a reasonable time nor to lay that many.  After exploring the island and discussing this conundrum with Fadi they concluded it was unnecessary to mine the entire circumference of the island.  Deep marsh made up the shoreline of all but the northwest corner of the island .  That corner was the only practical access to the island.  Very shallow reefs that extended many kilometers out from the island further reduced the area requiring mining but still left a five kilometer arc across the approach to the shallow bay on the northwest corner that was critical.
    Haatim also wished to mine the southern approach from the pirates’ island.  At one point reefs narrowed the channel between the two islands to about seven kilometers.  Haatim was sure a ship’s captain would stay well away from the reefs so it was not necessary to mine in close to them.  Still Haatim believed the number of mines to form an impassable screen was out of their reach.  Fadi said he could do it with 80 mines if they used cables and a clever device which the Iranians planned to use if mining the Strait of Hormuz became necessary.  The device was inserted between the mines and their anchors and cables running between the mines.  Fadi explained that the bow of a large vessel striking the cable will cause the device beneath the mine to release the anchors of the two mines on either side of the ship along with the cables connecting them to other mines.  As the ship continues on, the two mines are dragged to the ship’s hull by the cable and explode upon contact.  Rather than requiring mines so close together that a ship cannot by chance slip between them, the mines can be placed a hundred meters apart if expecting large vessels.
    The same sympathetic supplier from whom Haatim was obtaining explosives to load onto the aircraft, also promised to supply the anti-shipping mines and the cable releases Fadi required.  While an underground bunker was cleaned out for storage and repairs were underway on the runway, Haatim sailed the Zaafir to the Iranian port of Chabahar accompanied by a small crew and Fadi Mahmoud.  There, Fadi approved the anti-shipping mines and explosives for which Haatim had made arrangements.  When the Zaafir weighed anchor for the return, the yacht rode very low in the water and its speed was cut by a third but still completed the round trip in 15 days.  Haatim made one more trip to Chabahar and returned with a similar load to the island which they had taken to calling pulau harapan, or island of hope.
    The repairs to the runway were completed and the mines, explosives and thirty five thousand kilograms of jet-A fuel were