Expatriates: A Novel of the Coming Global Collapse

36 EXIGENCIES

Peter Jeffords and Tatang Navarro came to work at the Site G base while it was still under construction. Tatang brought his M1 Garand and Jeffords had his Pindad SS2 .223. Because it was standard issue with both the Indonesian Army and Marines, Caleb asked Peter to give training classes on it at all three FLBs. “I want every man—whether army or civilian—to be able to pick up a Pindad and know how to load it, shoot it, and clear stoppages. And if you have the time, even teach them how to field-strip it.”

After introducing himself, Peter always started his lectures and demonstrations by holding up the SS2 rifle and saying, “I inherited this Pindad rifle from an Indonesian soldier who passed away rather suddenly.”

After the minimum age restriction for army contractors was dropped to age eighteen, Joseph Navarro also came to work at Site G. He was quickly and informally issued a greasy L1A1—a UK Commonwealth inch pattern FN FAL—that the Australians preferred to call SLR or Slur—Self-Loading Rifle. This obsolete 7.62 mm rifle, manufactured in the 1960s at the Australian Lithgow Arsenal, had been pulled from deep war reserves. It had a wooden stock and handguards which distinguished it from the other FAL variants he had seen when he was in the Philippines. Long after even the Australian Army Reserve had transitioned to the F88 Austeyr (the ADF’s version of the Steyr AUG), there were still thousands of L1A1 rifles held in reserve. This was one of them. Joseph immediately recognized the rifle’s design since it was the granddaddy of Peter’s Pindad.

Peter was issued a set of military web gear and a pair of 7x32 binoculars. He selected his particular binoculars from among the packing crate because of the small reference number painted in red enamel: 316. This number resonated with him because of John 3:16, the most-cited verse in the New Testament.

While the Indonesians lacked side-looking airborne radar (SLAR) to provide moving- and fixed-target indicators, they did have aerial reconnaissance drones with traditional cameras. This left the Australian ground forces at risk of detection. Even vehicles and encampments hidden in dense forests or beneath camouflage nets were still at risk of other habitation indicators through pattern analysis. Muddy tire tracks emerging onto paved roads was only one example.

On one of his scouting trips, Caleb heard about the McKenzie horse farm, four miles up the Adelaide River. It had several large hay barns and an enormous covered riding arena. The elderly owners of the farm had scaled down to just a few horses and were anxious to move to southeastern Australia. Caleb was able to negotiate a lease for the Army on the entire 1,800-hectare farm and unlimited use of the water bores for just two thousand dollars per month. The buildings provided excellent concealment for the FLB, so long as all of the vehicles were kept indoors. The farmhouse was used for officer billeting and administrative offices as well as relatively cool storage for field rations.

The McKenzie farm was dubbed Site M. The riding arena provided a concealed location for supplies that was large enough for trucks to drive in and drop off cargo. Only the fuel blivets were stored outdoors, well away from the other supplies, under redundant cover of both camouflage nets and eucalyptus trees. There were large ventilation fans mounted at both ends of the arena. Since the Mains grid power had been shut down, the fans no longer worked and the temperature quickly rose. But power from a trailer-mounted 12 KW multifuel generator set soon remedied the problem. The same genset also provided power for lights inside truck-mounted shelters. Given the blackout in the region, the shelter doors had to be kept closed to maintain light discipline. The last thing they wanted was to be a target.

The interior of the farmhouse became cramped after cases of CR1M, PR1M, and CR5M rations were stacked from floor to ceiling in every available space, making the hallways quite narrow.

The Combat Ration, 1 Man (CR1M, spoken “Crim”) was the army’s ubiquitous field ration. It was the equivalent of the American military Meal, Ready to Eat (MRE). Like the MRE, the CR1M was the butt of many jokes, both exaggerated and fabricated. For example, Army legend had it that CR1M rations had been invented by “a ninety-five-year-old German nutritionist named Herr Doktor Crimspeil who’s first job was planning menus at Dachau.”

One step up from the CR1M was the PR1M: Patrol Ration, One Man, or “Prim.” These were similar to a CR1M, but with some more palatable freeze-dried components. The PR1Ms were sought after by Aussie soldiers whenever they had the chance.

All three of Caleb’s FLB sites were designed to strike a balance between camouflage and ease of access. Roads were laid out in sweeping curves rather than straight lines. Road gravel was used sparingly and was carefully selected to about the same color of the soil at each site. It was hoped that the graveled areas would blend in, at least from aerial or satellite observation. They made the decision to minimize the amount of gravel spread and to immediately add some grass seed from the local native grasses both to the roads and to the adjoining soil to make the roads at the FLBs blend in. They wanted aerial observers to see only irregular green blotches—no sharp contrasts or straight lines.

The Crunch removed most of Australia’s access to satellite reconnaissance. Long accustomed to being granted access to this compartmented access intelligence, Australia’s spy agencies were suddenly left in the dark. The American National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) constellation of Keyhole series spy satellites were no longer being properly controlled from their ground-based satellite control facilities, so they reverted to default “dumb” orbits and their cameras went “off gimbal”—meaning that they ended up pointing almost randomly. Only one satellite was still producing any useful imagery, but its highly elliptical orbit brought it over successive swathes of Australia and Papua New Guinea only once every sixteen days.

Under the exigencies of the expected hostilities, Task Force Dingo tossed many regulations and procedures out the window. For example, there was extensive use of civilian housing for billeting. Civilian trucks, SUVs, and aircraft were rushed into military service, often without a new paint job—or with just a perfunctory slap of flat tan or olive drab paint with a hand brush. Some off-road vehicles like Volkswagen Amaroks were also used “off the shelf” in large numbers.

Another striking change was the rejection of the long-standing admonition that soldiers, sailors, and airmen should never take their issued weapons off post. Soldiers soon were seen carrying their AUG rifles at all times on and off post, even when they went home on leave. Likewise, civilian contractors were no longer restricted from having firearms, but in fact were encouraged to do so, especially in forward areas like northern Australia.

The government in Canberra also rescinded most of the civilian firearms restrictions and declared a general amnesty on the possession of any previously banned weapons or explosives. These moves offended many staunch anti-gunners. Newspaper editorials bewailed seeing Australia “turned into an armed camp” and warned of a “resurgence of the gun culture” that they had spent the past four decades systematically destroying.

Back in Wyndham, Alvis Edwards scoffed at these gun control proponents. He told his wife, “That band of fools would rather see us invaded and subjugated than let the general populace have guns. They won’t see the error of their ways until they’re behind Indonesian barbed wire.”

Having the general populace armed at all times was reminiscent of the darkest days of early World War II, when a Japanese invasion—or at least air raids—had seemed likely.

After the Indonesians made their evacuation decree, a large number of men opted to serve as Stay Behind resistance fighters. Most of these individuals formed into loosely organized groups of two to four men.

The Stay Behinds ranged from ages seventeen to seventy and came from all social strata. Among them were a sixty-seven-year-old retired male park ranger who carried a Mini-14 rifle he had kept tucked away in his attic during the ban; a twenty-three-year-old female grocery store employee who had a penchant for kung fu movies; and a nineteen-year-old male skateboarding champion who was armed with just a .22 bolt-action rifle. His hope was to use the rifle to get something better.

Another Stay Behind was an Aborigine named Sam Burnu. A thirty-five-year old ex-convict bachelor, Sam worked as a groundskeeper in Marrakai Heights. Like most aboriginals, he had two names: an English name and a “skin name,” representing the section of his kinship group. But because of his criminal record, he used a third, fictitious name when he signed the Stay Behind roster. From the items offered, he took only CR1M rations, a MultiCam bush hat, and a set of web gear with a canteen. He already owned an old Essex 12 bore single-shot shotgun, and he knew its shooting characteristics intimately. He did accept the offer of four boxes of Hexolit shotgun slug ammunition from a friend who was about to take his family to Brisbane. These slugs were specially segmented to splay out into bladelike structures that looked almost like a hunting arrow broadpoint when they hit their target. He subsequently used these slugs to great effect. He killed seven Indonesian soldiers over the course of three weeks, most of them sentries. Each time he took a life, he would go back to his solo camp and sing a death song. Then, before going to sleep, he would prepare his mind to direct his dreams. His father had always said, “Those who lose dreaming are lost.”