Expatriates: A Novel of the Coming Global Collapse

15 UNFETTERED

Because they were able to haul Tiburon out onto a beach at high tide, painting it went quickly. The entire boat, the carags, the awning canvas, and nearly all of the fittings were painted in the two blue camouflage colors.

Not content with the glossiness of the completed paint on some of the exposed exterior of the boat, Peter used six full spray cans of Boysen brand matte lacquer paint, which made it look essentially flat, even in full sunlight. Although he knew it was necessary, Tatang was sad to see his boat lose its once bright appearance.

During the painting and packing phase, either Peter or Tatang would sleep in Tiburon each night to guard it, with the flare pistol close at hand. The paint fumes were horrendous, but they couldn’t risk having the boat or any of its contents stolen.

Peter and Tatang scrounged nautical charts from all over the island. They mainly needed charts of the Molucca Sea, Banda Sea, and the Timor Sea. They even managed to find a coastal waters chart for Australia’s Northern Territory and Western Australia.

With the help of twenty villagers, they were able to get Tiburon back into the water during high tide. Only then did they begin to load fuel, food, water, and baggage. Half of the water was in plastic containers that were lashed down on the center deck and foredeck, bundled in old fishing nets. Used returnable glass soda pop bottles predominated. Some of the water was carried in blue five-gallon jugs. A few of the bottles, jugs, and plastic buckets seemed questionable to Rhiannon, like the used bleach bottles which imparted some chlorine taste to the stored water. Nonetheless, they stowed just over 400 liters—enough water for one liter per person per day, for eighty days.

The Navarros’ food stores were mostly sacks of smoked fish and plastic buckets of rice, pancit (rice noodles), and beans. They also carried smaller quantities of mami (ramen) noodles, Ma Ling canned pork, casava, pan de sal, Kraft Eden cheese, Magnolia drink mix, and instant Calamansi iced tea. Their soap came in the form of big solid Surf brand bars.

They packed three jars of peanut butter, but only because Tatang had it on hand. He liked making a Filipino peanut butter stew called kare kare. He never used it for making sandwiches. Rhiannon wished they had a dozen jars of the peanut butter. Not only was it a very compact form of protein, but it was also a natural cure for loose bowels.

The Jeffords brought two cardboard boxes of food packed in jars, retort pouches, and cans from their nipa hut. These were mostly canned fruits and vegetables, SPAM, fish crackers, RAM brand tomato sauce in retort pouches, Swift corned beef in retort pouches, Century brand tuna, and peanut butter. After the refugees began to pour in from Mindanao, they couldn’t find any more canned goods at any price. The few people who had any were hoarding them for their own evacuation contingency plans. The Jeffords pledged that all of these canned foods would be used sparingly.

The stories that the Mindanao refugees told were frightening. The ILF soldiers repeatedly forced professions of faith in Allah. Those who refused, or who seemed insincere, were immediately shot or beheaded, often with a bolo machete or a longer kampilan machete. Some of the most bloodthirsty Indonesian killers were actually in the Kopassus—the Indonesian Special Forces.

One of the refugees, a Catholic priest, recounted to Peter what he had heard from a colonel in the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP.) The ISAFP colonel told him that three ILF officers captured in separate engagements broke under pressure of intense interrogations and gave nearly identical details on the ILF’s plans. First, they would take the rest of the central islands. Then they would take Luzon, bolstered by the Indo-Malaysian Army and Navy. This would put the entire Philippine archipelago under their control. Once their grasp of the Philippines was consolidated, they planned to invade Australia within two years.

Peter was incredulous, but the priest was insistent. “They want it all.” The priest described how they had brutalized the residents of Cebu, Bohol, Negros, Panay, and Leyte islands. There, he said, they were absolutely merciless, killing nearly all of the adult non-Islamic men and systematically raping the women. “They are moving faster than they did on Mindanao. Back during the long guerilla war there, they moved slowly and made political gestures in exchange for ‘autonomous regions’ because the world was watching. Now they are moving like dervishes, with amazing speed and utter ruthlessness. The world is no longer watching, and it is a real bloodbath.”

The priest also described how the Indonesians had transitioned to overtly arming the ILF guerillas, providing them with vehicles, landing craft, night vision gear, and communications equipment. The islands of Mindaro, Masbate, and Samar were generally considered next on their list of targets. For that reason, the priest planned to continue on northward as soon as he could.

When rumors of invasion began, local mayors and clans were seen arming themselves with homemade shotguns. Danao guns came out from hiding. Despite the official statistics, the Filipinos were fairly well armed.

Hundreds of other refugees came from Mindanao, and the other central islands began coming to Samar, mainly in small boats. They heard of one clever young man from Dinagat Island who made a solo crossing just after the ILF landed there and all the available boats had already left. Wearing a water skiing life vest, he lashed himself to a Little Mermaid novelty children’s swimming kickboard and propelled himself with a pair of snorkeling swim fins. All that he carried with him was a plastic bag full of candy bars, a pocketknife, a pair of sunglasses, and a tube of SPF 45 Water Babies sunscreen. Trailing behind him on separate pieces of twine were seven soda pop bottles. These 1.5-liter bottles were each half full of fresh drinking water when he started out. His harrowing crossing to Samar took thirty-eight hours.

Hearing these traumatic stories made the Jeffords pick up the pace of their provisioning. A week before they departed, Rhiannon made sure they all started taking daily multivitamin tablets. Her father, a veteran deer and elk hunter, had often told her that good nutrition was crucial for maintaining peak night vision.

Typhoon season in Southeast Asia could be expected from May to November, though the peak months were September and October. Tatang mentioned that FV Tiburon had survived Typhoon Bopha in 2012 only because he wisely hauled the boat out two days before the storm made landfall. Many other boat owners on Samar who didn’t do likewise witnessed their boat hulls being shattered and sunk by the pounding surf.

Earlier in the month, they had heard that the invasion of Samar could come as soon as November. Moving quickly, they rushed to finish provisioning Tiburon so they could put out to sea before the island was blockaded. The Navarros and Jeffords set October 25th as their departure date. It put them at risk of foul weather at the tail end of the typhoon season, but they agreed that waiting any later would put them at far greater risk of running into ILF or Indo picket ships.

Once loaded, the combination of fuel, food, water and baggage, and passengers put Tiburon down perilously low in the water. Jeffords estimated that in all, the boat was carrying about 2,700 kilograms, which was dangerously near its maximum safe cargo capacity in calm seas. But Tatang said he was expecting good weather for at least the first week. He promised that as long as the weather held and they consistently kept the bilge pumped, they would be fine. After the first week, the boat would be considerably lighter and would sit much higher in the water. “I know this boat. I know what she can take. Magkabati. It will be all right.”

Rudolfo Saguisag came to visit them just as they were finishing stowing their supplies. The old man came limping up to the pier, leaning heavily on his cane. “I’m here for my final inspection tour,” he said.

Tatang laughed and said, “Welcome aboard!”

Dolpo eased himself down to Tiburon’s aft deck. He looked admiringly at the fresh blue paint. “These are good colors for the open ocean. And not too lustroso. How you say—glossy? Flat is good. You don’t want no reflections.”

Echoing Tatang’s earlier observation, Dolpo said, “Your boat is sitting pretty deep in the water, but she’ll lighten as you expend your fuel and provisions.”

Dolpo looked at the boat again before adding, “You should get a sextant if you take any other trips later. I’m not sure how long those GPS satellite things are still going to be working. I hope that when you punch up your house, the lat/long numbers are still the same as your place mark. Once they start to drift, it means that the GPS can no longer be trusted.”

They showed him their two GPS receivers. He agreed that it was wise to have two, including one that was wired into the boat’s 12-volt power, and one that ran on small AA batteries. Dolpo nodded. “Redundancy is always good.”

Next, they showed him their binoculars. There was a compact pair that Rhiannon had used for many years as an amateur bird watcher, and a much larger pair that belonged to Paul Navarro. Dolpo picked them up and said, “Let me teach you an old trick, what I learned in my brown water days.”

He turned to Joseph, and asked, “You got some electrical tape, galán?”

Joseph answered with a quick nod.

Dolpo gestured toward the open hatch. “Joey, you go below and get me a roll of tape, an old cardboard box, and some scissors or a real sharp knife.”

The boy did as he was asked. He emerged less than a minute later with a large roll of black Duck tape and a Stanley box cutter knife in a one-foot-square box that had originally held a rice steamer.

The old man said, “Mabuti, mabuti.” Working quickly and deftly, Dolpo cut six-inch-wide strips of cardboard. In less than two minutes, he had attached cardboard tubes that were a tight friction fit on the outer barrels of the binoculars. Rhiannon looked puzzled, but Peter grinned as he realized what Dolpo had done.

“When you are standing watch, you don’t want the sun to reflect off the lenses and give away that you are there,” Dolpo explained. “These hoods will keep any reflections from happening. You make sure you use these anytime there is daylight, okay na?”