Grit and dare: How rescuers braved a black maze to save Thai cave boys

Two days after 12 boys and their soccer coach disappeared inside a cave complex in Thailand's mountainous north, a team of Thai Royal Navy SEALs headed before sunrise into the pitch-black maze of muddy passages to find them. "We worked until we forgot the time," said Captain Anan Surawan, chief of the 1st Special Forces Regiment. But their day-long mission failed because, as monsoon rains lashed the limestone hills outside, Anan's men found themselves wading through rapidly rising waters and, fearing for their lives, they turned back. A week later, when British divers found the 13, hungry and huddled in darkness on a bank in a partly flooded chamber about four km (2.5 miles) inside the Tham Luang cave, Anan realised that his team had come just 500-700 meters short of the boys that day. He realised, too, that if reaching the boys had been so complicated and perilous, extracting them would be even harder.