Expatriates: A Novel of the Coming Global Collapse

35 TO YOUR GUNS

With war imminent, AOGC had minimized all of their oil and gas exploration in the north to concentrate on production and distribution in the southern half of the country. So Chuck’s boss was willing to release him on an unpaid leave of absence. Chuck Nolan cleaned out his desk, and his ADF contract started the same day. He was asked to “find some trustworthy fellas who can think outside the box, to come on board, to help man the FLBs.” He immediately thought of Peter Jeffords and Joseph Navarro and called both of them.

Joseph agreed to work as a contractor without any hesitation. Peter asked for a night to think about it. He called back the next morning. “Rhiannon and I talked and prayed a lot about it. We decided that she ought to take Sarah down south where it’s safe. But we agreed that it would be a good idea for me to stay here and help out for two reasons: First, I’m done with running. We were run out of the Philippines because we had no choice. Here, I have the opportunity to help stop the Indos, at least in some small way. Second, I got to thinking about what it will be like living at those logistics base camps that you have planned. It’ll be a lot of foul-mouthed soldiers from the Big City together with an assortment of rough-around-the edges Top Enders. A bunch of bogans, mostly. In other words, it’ll provide a great opportunity for Christian witness! Sign me up.”

Chuck began work the next morning. He enthusiastically plunged into his job, and soaked up the military logistics jargon. His years of field work in harsh conditions in the oil fields and in oil field wildcatting prepared him well for life at an austere logistics base in the jungle.

Chuck soon learned that a CSSB normally included a headquarters element, a transport squadron, a health company (with medical and dental assets), a field supply company, and a field workshop. Normally a CSSB is responsible for maintaining three to fourteen days of supply depending on the commodity. But for the Northern Territory FLBs, the guidance was for twenty-one to twenty-eight days until any resupply.

Caleb was specifically tasked with scouting locations for three forward logistics bases (FLBs). He was tentatively given direction to locate them on Crown land, but private property could be also used with compensation, at his discretion. The stated goal was to set up the bases on well-drained level ground in forested areas. By cutting just a minimum number of trees and through skillful use of camouflage netting, it was hoped that these bases would be difficult to spot from the air. Each of the FLBs would be provisioned with stocks of fuel in 2,500-gallon flexible rubber “pillow tank” blivets, ammunition field rations, batteries, and water trailers. To conserve precious military manpower, the FLBs would be staffed with eighty percent civilian contractors and just a few army officers and enlisted personnel.

The first site Caleb selected was a forested tract near the town of Batchelor that was owned by a private plantation company. They were gradually cutting mixed stands of native timber and replanting to create African mahogany plantations. He eventually picked a particularly dense tract of mixed mature second-growth timber that had originally been logged in the 1950s. The tract, in a broad north-south valley, was thirty-four miles out of Darwin. The trees were tall and dense, and inside the grove he could barely see the sky. Old logging roads that could easily be upgraded to accommodate large trucks crisscrossed the grove.

Hiking the property, he found that it was so deeply shaded, it felt almost claustrophobic. But he could see that all that would be needed was limbing some trees for truck clearance and felling a few trees to make room for storage tents and hardstand parking places. The access was perfect: a number of lanes that turned out directly onto Litchfield Park Road—a paved secondary road. He was surprised to see that the lanes had been kept free of deadfall. He later learned that it was feral pig hunters who had kept the lanes cleared. The hunters liked to retain the ability to haul out the heavy pig carcasses (up to 115 kilos for boars) in their utilities.

The FLB site would be almost undetectable, even to someone driving by on the paved road. To the casual observer, the lanes would be indistinguishable from dozens of other existing logging roads. With some gravel, these lanes would be drivable even in the wet season. This FLB site was dubbed Site G and informally nicknamed the Grove by everyone involved.

When Caleb approached the plantation company about leasing two hundred hectares, the plantation manager told him, “My price is firm at one dollar for the duration of the hostilities. Just do your best not to burn it down.”

Once the lease was signed, a flurry of activity began at Site G. More than forty camouflage nets arrived on contract commercial contract trucks, driven by “red right arm” civilian truckers who seemed confused why they had been directed to GPS coordinates rather than to a street address.

Next came a pair of 2.5-ton capacity rough terrain forklifts—made by YTO in China—painted bright yellow, but that was soon remedied with two coats of flat olive drab spray paint. Caleb had thought ahead and had directed his NCOs to bring forty-eight cans of military specification black and olive drab spray paint.

Chuck Nolan helped set up the site. It was laid out in what the Australian NCOs called a defensive donut. The only access road ended in a lollipop-shaped road loop with hardstand position under the thickest clumps of trees. The donut was about three hundred yards across, so Chuck soon found that it was easiest to use his mountain bike to make his rounds.

Nolan’s work clothes were usually a pair of Aussie Army MultiCam trousers, one of his forest green AOGC button-down long-sleeve shirts (still with an AOGC logo above the left pocket, embroidered in dark blue), a pair of Bates American-made lightweight hiking boots, and the MultiCam boonie hat that his sister had given him just before he moved to Australia. That hat originally had its left brim tacked up with a few stitches of thread to make it look like an Australian bush hat. Thinking it looked too trite, Chuck cut out those threads before his flight to Australia. Another gift from his going-away party became something he carried every day. It was a Leatherman Wave multi-pliers tool with a special blasting cap crimper built into the pliers’ jaws. This Leatherman had been given to him by his parents and was one of his favorite and most useful possessions.

The FLBs were thrown together in a hurry. They were short on men, short on supplies, and they were desperately short of knowledge about what would happen next. But they were diggers, and diggers always found a way to muddle through.