Expatriates: A Novel of the Coming Global Collapse

37 LUAU

Even after nearly one hundred truckloads of supplies had been stockpiled at the FLBs, the tents had been erected, and the camouflage nets strung in position, Caleb Burroughs still didn’t feel quite “ready.” Each night became progressively more tension-filled along the coast in the Top End, with wild rumors circulating of Indonesian and Malaysian Army landings. The only sleep they got came from the utter exhaustion of working sixteen hours a day.

The same night that there was the first confirmed report of a landing at the Bay of Carpenteria, there was a false alarm on the perimeter of Site G, caused by two feral pigs. A nervous guard felt convinced that Indonesian Kopassus troops were probing their lines. He “dialed Triple Zero” to let loose two full 30-round magazines from his Austeyr, pulling the trigger all the way back to the full auto position in long bursts. The next morning, following a reprimand of the guard, the debate centered on how to roast the 70- and 100-kilo pigs without generating smoke that could be seen from the air. They ended up eating boiled pork, cooked over gas burners, which didn’t provide quite the same festive atmosphere of the boar roast that most had expected.

Before the Indonesians arrived and forced the FLBs to hunker down in stealth mode, Caleb’s unit was able to distribute gear to some of the local Stay Behinds. The gear included camouflage nets, hand grenades, satchel demolition charges, Claymore command-detonated mines, and dozens of cases of CR1Ms. There were also a few L1A1 rifles available for veterans who lacked combat-capable rifles of their own.

More than ninety-five percent of the population had already fled from the Darwin area. Evacuation was recommended, but not required. Those who remained were mostly scrappy bogans and a few assorted eccentrics. Some of them claimed they were too set in their ways to leave their homes. There were also some naïve internationalist idealists who hoped they could carry on their lives under Indonesian rule. Caleb was worried that some of the latter might talk too much to the Indos. Therefore, everyone involved with the FLBs was warned to keep the FLB locations on a strict “need to know” basis. Similarly, the Stay Behind fighters were warned to avoid all contact with the starry-eyed idealists.

Randall Burroughs and Bruce Drake both accepted job offers with the same commercial explosives company near Brisbane that had recently turned to making military demolitions. With Chuck’s urging, Ava Palmer and her parents evacuated to Adelaide and lived with relatives. Rhiannon Jeffords and her daughter, Sarah, accompanied them, with Rhiannon driving the rusty Datsun ute. The truck made it to Adelaide despite a leaking radiator that had to be refilled seven times en route.

Thomas Drake packed up his guns and relocated to his hunting property, which bordered Garig Gunak Barlu National Park. He fully expected to die fighting the first time an Indonesian patrol entered his property, but that never happened.

Wyndham was occupied six days after Darwin. The town had been completely abandoned. Driving the Tanami Road in their Range Rover towing a trailer loaded with gas cans, Alvis and Vivian Edwards relocated from the Kimberley region to Geraldton, but soon after moved on to Perth, where they both worked at a small factory that made camouflage nets for the war effort.

Other than the troops at the FLBs, the only regular Australian Army troops still in or near Darwin were seven widely scattered two-man Stinger missile teams. These teams were directed to lie low, hiding in abandoned houses or bivouacking in small camouflaged tents, waiting for opportunities to shoot down Indonesian aircraft. The teams each had eight Stinger RMP missiles with passive infrared seekers. These missiles were man portable—about the size of a bazooka. After firing, a new missile tube could quickly be mounted to the gripstock, allowing another missile to be launched in less than a minute. The shoulder-fired Stinger was added to the Australian Army inventory shortly before the Crunch to supplement the heavier and more bulky Swedish RBS-70, which was launched from a pedestal mount. This procurement was dubbed Project LAND 19—Interim MANPADS. Because of their compact size, the more portable Stingers were particularly suitable for guerilla warfare. Meanwhile, the larger RBS-70s were all used in the defense of the large cities on the southeastern coast.

The main goal of the Indo-Malaysian invasion was to seize intact all of the oil and natural gas fields in the northern half of Australia, along with their associated ocean shipping terminals at Darwin, Weipa, Townsville, Broome, and Dampier. The largest population center in the Top End was Darwin. It needed to be secured first before the petroleum facilities.

The Stay Behinds were a thorn in the Indonesians’ side from the beginning. Snipers like Quentin Whittle would fire just one or two shots from long range and then disappear into the jungle. Indonesian infantry platoons dispatched to find them were nearly always frustrated. Through the use of foxholes with well-camouflaged covers, the pursuing soldiers would walk right past the snipers and spend an entire day fruitlessly searching the jungle, returning exhausted. The next day there would be another shot, another dead Indo soldier—usually an officer or NCO—and the process would be repeated. On the few occasions when a fleeing sniper would engage his pursuers, the Indos often found themselves out-ranged. At distances between four hundred and seven hundred yards, their 5.56 rifles lacked the requisite accuracy when they were up against a man armed with a .243 or .308 bolt action with a 9-power scope.

Meanwhile, the Stinger teams took a deadly toll on any low-flying aircraft. The rate of attrition grew so high that the Indonesians’ few remaining aircraft were effectively grounded. The few planes that found shelter from the sappers in the six-pointed star revetments on the south side of the Darwin airfield were eventually picked off by the Stinger teams whenever they would take off or approach for landings. Only ship-based helicopters were safe, and then only if they stayed well offshore. The combined efforts of the Stay Behinds and the Stinger teams turned the campaign in northern Australia into a ground war for both sides.