You can see the fishing boat veering out into your path. It seems to be acting pretty weird, changing direction for no obvious reason. Your RIB’s skipper moves her hand smoothly over the aft console and you take a corrective path, turning gently to port. She signals to you to keep the fishing boat covered with the 50 cal.

The waterway is quite choppy. The low morning sunlight glints off its churning surface and the smart polaroid lenses in your glasses adjust to reduce the glare. You grab the side of the 50 cal’s gunner protection shield to steady yourself as the boat sways up and down. It’s difficult to aim the weapon. You use the touchscreen display on the inside of the shield to select the deck of the fishing vessel as your target. You can now feel the 50 cal’s hand grips providing resistance, compensating for your movement and helping you keep the gun trained where you want.

“Let’s give them a buzz,” your skipper tells. “You’d better all put your ear defenders on.”

You and the rest of the crew put on your ear defenders. You are immediately cocooned in the vacuum of their adaptive noise cancellation.

Your skipper leans towards her console and speaks into it. You can’t make out what she says, but a moment later you feel the reverberation of sound through your chest and also hear the muted, but still definitely audible projection of a familiar phrase being broadcast in the local language. You’re not sure how many of the phrases you have picked up on this tour will stick, but you’re pretty sure you’ll remember how to say “keep your distance” if ever you return.

A second after the broadcast, an intense light show erupts all across the fishing boat. Half a dozen blazing red X shapes appear on different surfaces of their vessel courtesy of your small onboard laser projection unit.

The fishing boat still doesn’t appear to be changing course and you see one of the fishermen waving over the side, seemingly flagging you down. You become aware your skipper is shouting at you, so you pull your ear defenders off and rest them round your neck.

“What the hell does he want?” she says. “Use the binns on that guy will you.” She tosses a pair of binoculars in your direction.

You raise your glasses, perching them on the top of your head, and bring the binoculars to your eyes. You guide the viewer towards the fishing boat, and then zero in on the waving figure.

“Binoculars, enlarge the man please.” Your instruction is followed by whirring as the image automatically magnifies, the waving fisherman is now in the centre of the picture. He is highlighted by a green circle presented in the viewer. Your RIB suddenly bobs up, causing you to view the sky and momentarily lose sight of your target. The right and bottom sides of the binoculars vibrate slowly, guiding you in the right direction to relocate the fisherman. The vibrations intensify as you move towards him, and as soon as he flashes into your view again, three sharp buzzes indicate that you’ve found what you were looking for.

You take in the fisherman, and can now see that he has his hat in one hand and is beckoning you closer with the other.

“He wants us to get closer,” you tell your skipper.

“Well that sounds like a bad idea,” she replies. “What else can you see? Does he look dodgy?”

You concentrate on the fisherman, his stained white shirt is rolled up at the sleeves. His face looks serious, you can just make out the creases of his skin.

“Binoculars, can you overlay risk, please?”

On this command, text boxes pop up around various objects in the binocular view. The box adjacent to the fisherman indicates that he is unarmed (87% confident) and that he doesn’t match any known individuals of concern (60% confident). You scan across the deck, focusing on the rest of the boat’s crew. The same story. No one appears to be armed or matches with anyone from the ‘people of interest’ database. You instruct the binoculars to zoom out and take in the whole vessel. A text box appears informing you that the boat is registered as a fishing vessel called the Chimera.

“It looks legit,” you tell your skipper.

“Yeah, well so did the ship that captured those Dutch marines last year,” she says. “So unless you want your false confession of spying to be live streamed to everyone back home, I’m going to suggest we proceed with caution. Let’s get a bit closer.”

She gestures over her console and steers the RIB to run in parallel with the fishing boat. The fisherman, who you are starting to think is the boat’s captain, is waving more frantically now. You’re close enough to hear him.

“Up, up,” he calls in heavily accented English, and beckons you to come aboard.

“Well, he seems to want to show you something,” says your skipper. “We’ll pull alongside and you can check out what he wants.”

“Me? Why me?”

“You’re the one who said he looks legit.” A wry smile crosses her face.

As you get closer, the fishing vessel slows down to a standstill. You pull up alongside. One of your crew mates takes your position at the 50 cal, keeping it trained upwards at the deck. You loop your binoculars over your neck, making sure they don’t get tangled round your rifle strap. The captain of the boat throws down a rope ladder, which unfurls down to sea level . You glance up to the deck about four metres above you and swear under your breath. You put one of your boots on the bottom rung. Just as you shift your weight across to stand on the ladder, a wave shifts you up and you slip, falling up to your waist in the water, barely managing to maintain a grip on the ladder. The flat lifevest around your neck instantly inflates, constricting your chest.

You regain your footing and verbally instruct the lifevest to deflate, before starting to climb slowly. You look up again and the face of the captain peers down at you. He looks nervous, cagey. You are only a few feet from the top now. You notice he has one hand behind his back and wonder what he’s holding. Suddenly, he pulls out his hand and thrusts it towards you. You flinch before you realise he’s offering you a hand. You grab his forearm and clamber over onto the deck.

As soon as you get to your feet, he leads you hurriedly over to the other side of the boat.

“There, there, look,” he says, pointing to something dark and ominous bobbing in the water in the distance, it seems to be moving slowly. You grab your binoculars and locate the floating object in the viewer.

“What is it? What can you see?” shouts your skipper.

You instruct the binoculars to zoom in on the object and overlay the risk view. Your mouth hangs agape as you take in the text information. Automated naval mine (confidence 99%). Model unknown. Length approximately 2.8 metres.

“Bloody hell,” you call down to your skipper. “You’re going to need a bigger boat.”