Expatriates: A Novel of the Coming Global Collapse

31 MONITORS

Piecing together the details of the coordinated attacks, ASIO and the Australian news media slowly gathered more information about the naval time bombs. The bombing plot was so devious, so dastardly, that it seemed almost unimaginable. The simultaneous death of so many Australian sailors was hard for most Australians to accept. For Ava, who had a cousin in the RAN who was on the Missing List, the emotional impact was much greater than losing her grandfather, who had insulin-dependent Type I diabetes.

The time bombs were shaped charges in 252 magnetically attached gray plastic boxes 9 inches square and 2.5 inches thick. Each bomb contained three pounds of pure crystalline RDX explosive in a shallow cone-shaped charge, with a coating of paraffin phlegmatizer around their edges. This made the charges less fragile in rough handling. The charges each had two electric blasting caps for redundancy.

The labels on the plastic cases were marked ENVIRONMENT PROTECTION AUTHORITY (EPA) AIR QUALITY MONITOR and had detailed instruction labels. They looked very convincing. Their labels described them as carcinogen air sampling monitors. If their Quick Check codes were scanned with a cell phone or PDA scanner laser, the correct URL for the Australian EPA, “Australia’s Air Quality Monitoring Program” website would be brought up. This legitimate website even had a mission statement: “Implementing the requirements of the Ambient Air Quality National Environment Protection Measure (Air NEPM), and building data for State of the Environment (SoE) reporting.”

The monitors’ labels also included a phone number that during business hours connected callers directly to a smooth-talking Indonesian-born agent in Canberra with a perfect Australian accent. He had a variety of carefully worded scripts close at hand, to assuage any doubts or concerns about the monitors. These scripts quoted actual NEPM rules and URLs for real Australian EPA web pages. He also had detailed lists of the monitor serial numbers, so that if asked, he could say, for example, “Our records indicate that the monitor in question is on board HMAS Bathurst, is that correct?”

What looked like angled air vents in the face of the cases were actually dummy slots. The plastic outer cases were actually hermetically sealed. Both the devices themselves and the website had stern “antitampering” warnings, threatening a $10,000 fine for any individual who might “remove, destroy, or tamper” with a monitor. A single green LED status light showed that each mine was operational.

The Collection Date markings for retrieval of the monitors were all three to eleven months after they were timed to explode.

The clamshell plastic bomb boxes were epoxied shut, making them truly tamperproof. They had been assembled at a factory in Malang, on Java, using crystalline RDX explosives. The RDX had been made by PT Dahana in the city of Bogor, twelve miles south of Jakarta. The powerful alnico-type magnets were unwittingly supplied by an industrial magnet maker in New Taipei City, Taiwan. The five-year-life lithium manganese dioxide batteries for the bombs were sourced from mainland China.

In Malang, the employees who installed the RDX explosives were told that bombs were being built under contract for the Russian FSB for use against “radical Christian separatists.” Strict “need to know” compartmentalization kept almost everyone involved in the dark about the real destination of the mines. The exterior adhesive labels were printed by a separate company in Banjarmasin, in Kalimantan on the island of Borneo. These labels were not attached to the faces of the boxes until after the bombs had arrived in Australia. An all-Indonesian cell within the Australian EPA handled all of the paperwork and distribution to Australia’s east and west naval bases.

Always sticklers for working “by the book,” Royal Navy maintenance duty rosters were updated to include checking the status lights on the monitors, once every thirty days.

The monitor boxes were attached by powerful alnico permanent magnets, built in to the bottoms of the boxes around the perimeter. These magnets were so strong that the stacks of monitors had to be separated with sheets of Teflon so each box could be slid off of a stack. Even with the Teflon, it took considerable effort to slide the boxes apart.

The instructions printed on the labels dictated “… because many airborne contaminants are heavier than air, this monitor should be mounted directly on the inside of the ship hull, as low as possible but above the bilge line. Monitors should be spaced approximately twenty meters apart on both sides of each vessel.”

The beauty of the plan was that modern electronics allowed the detonator timers to be set months or even years in advance. Every mine and thermite device was timed to be activated at precisely the same time: 1:15 A.M. Western Indonesia Time (Waktu Indonesia Barat or WIB) on February 5th. This day was the Birth of the Prophet, a national holiday in Indonesia. It was also known as Rabi’ al-awwal 12 in the Islamic calendar. WIB was one hour behind Western Australia time and three hours behind eastern Australia time. The planners also had to take into account the three-hour difference between eastern and western Australian time zones.

It was a RAN maintenance officer who immediately thought of the EPA monitors when he saw the pattern of explosions in press photographs following the ship bombings. His theory was later proved to be true.

The explosions took place at 2:15 A.M. in Western Australia, and 5:15 A.M. in eastern Australia just as dawn was breaking.