Winter Kill 2 - China Invades Australia

by Gene Skellig

  With over 230,000 active duty soldiers across the twelve military command areas, and an additional 180,000 Chinese soldiers operating in Indonesia, there would have been zero chance of a successful infiltration of even such a remote area as the Manoekanga delta. However, with careful selection of on-duty Indonesian soldiers who could be trusted to turn a blind eye in a particular direction when instructed to do so by their most trusted superiors, O’Conner and his Indonesian contgacts had engineered a gap in coverage of the approaches to one of the larger of the 18,000 islands in the Indonesian archipelago.

  That left just the Chinese-operated post, established on the headlands that looked over the delta, as much to keep watch over the coastline as to serve as a constant reminder to the Indonesians that the Chinese now called the shots throughout the archipelago.

  After a very rough ride in the Royal Australian Navy’s fast-boat the team was relieved to be have a gentle mist and relatively calm seas just off of the island of Sumba for the final sea leg of their voyage. They were confident that nobody holding watch on such a dreary night would be able to see more than a few hundred yards out to sea, let alone the two kilometers farther west along the shoreline form the observation post where the team came ashore with their RHIB.

  After a quick huddle under a poncho to confer with each other regarding timings and map recce, they all understood that they were exactly where they were supposed to be, and essentially on time.

  They secured the RHIB to some rocks just inland from the shore, and covered them with bush and logs on the uninhabited stretch of beach.

  Then, without a word, the men set off in three different directions. With the coast of Sumba Island free of snow, with Indonesia that much closer to the equator, the team would have no need of the snowshoes and other winter kit they had been using in the much colder climate that now gripped Australia.

  Colonel Weir and Sergeant Rideout headed due north, up the steep terrain for a five kilometer trek through the sparsely treed terrain to the small hill where they would link up with “Pebbles”. His actual name was “Major Bambang”, one of the growing number of Indonesian soldiers who were part of the nationalist movement, who wanted to get rid of the Chinese who had taken over their country at the outset of the war.

  When the war broke out, Indonesia’s political elites had been given a harsh choice: peacefully embrace Chinese military control – even contribute forces to the Chinese effort in Australia – or face the utter destruction of their major cities, the annihilation of their people, and still face Chinese occupation. With so much to lose, and after recent years of steadily increasing influence from Chinese infrastructure projects, mutually beneficial trade and military cooperation, the Indonesian elites had chosen to take sides with China.

  But no sooner had the Chinese moved their 16th and 23rd Group Armies, all the way from Shenyang Military Region, as the occupying force, but the true nature of Chinese military cooperation became evident.

  The Chinese were terrible. From the lowliest civil servant all the way up to the President of the Republic of Indonesia, the Chinese officials treated the host nation officials as trash. Within a week, complaints of brutality, even rape and murder, began to circulate.

  At first the elites put it down to the tensions that were natural when two great powers blend their forces. But when the President’s own daughter was raped by a particularly brutal PLA officer from the joint Indonesian – Chinese military headquarters, even the pro-China elites recognized that they had chosen poorly.

  However, with the Chinese now firmly in control of the organs of power, key military installations and having their own soldiers guarding the armories and depots, the Indonesians had played it cool. To throw off upwards of 200,000 Chinese soldiers was a massive undertaking, and one which required secrecy, discipline, and most importantly, timing.

  And the opportune timing had been presented to the Indonesian nationalists. After the Chinese had run into some problems in Australia, and their commander, General Bing, had ordered the 16th Group Army to prepare for embarkation to Australia, the Indonesians saw an opportunity.

  Their initial plans to stir up a rebellion after as much as one half of the occupation force were redeployed out of Indonesia had run into some snags, as the Chinese had ordered the Indonesians to provide two Indonesians divisions of mechanized infantry along with three engineering support regiments and other customized water-borne capabilities which the Indonesian Navy possessed, to roll up with the 16th Group Army for deployment to Australia.

  With a large portion of their army now required to mobilize under the careful watch of the Chinese, and with the Tentara Nasional Indones, TNI, the Indonesian National Armed Forces so full of Chinese spies, the conspiring leaders had chosen to quell any talk of rebellion and to foster a mild increase in cooperative spirit between their men and the Chinese.

  The Chinese had taken it as a sign that the Indonesian elites wanted to ingratiate themselves with the Chinese, for personal gain or in a misguided attempt to serve the interests of the Indonesian people. Whichever, it pleased the Chinese to no end.

  Pulling this off had been a delicate task, as so many Indonesian soldiers, sailors, and airmen had come to despise taking orders from the crude and pushy Chinese. They resented being forced by their leaders to go along. Those who stirred up trouble with the Chinese had been taken out, one way or another, by the Indonesians themselves. In some cases, this was achieved by applying pressure to the man’s family, by re-assigning him to some godforsaken outpost where he could be kept quiet, or in a rare few cases, assassinated by their own leaders. Keeping face with the Chinese, even if just for the few months needed to get through the mobilization phase, was that crucial for the plan.

  And the plan was known to the Americans, who had their own agents within the TNI. Very few knew the full extent of cooperation between the TNI and the Americans, understandably, because if the Chinese ever caught on to the deception they would have slaughtered the Indonesian elites without compunction.

  All that was needed was final coordinating information and to conclude the negotiations with the Americans. Obviously the Australians could not be part of this final phase, given that the price that the Indonesians wanted to extract from the Allies was partition of much of Northern Territory and Queensland, to become Indonesian territory after the war.

  The Indonesians knew that any such barter with the Americans would be of almost zero value, other than to provide them with a pretext for their own invasion of Australia once the Chinese were defeated.

  And defeated the Chinese would be, the Indonesian elites were confident, as their rebellion would be timed to inflict the greatest harm to the PLA forces. To snatch defeat out of the hands of victory, as the saying goes. But for the plan to work, it had to be carried out in such a way as to be a well-coordinated double-shock to the Chinese, with the allied offensives in the northern and southern fronts in Australia. That required the allies to provide the Indonesians with details of the Allied offensives in Australia, and for them to time these with the Indonesian operations.

  The actual timing was dictated by the planned departure of the Chinese convoy of ships being loaded with the men and equipment of the 16th Group Army and the Indonesian divisions that General Sheung was expecting to receive as reinforcements for his Group Army South. With the complex task of coordination, scheduling and pre-positioning now in its final stages, the Indonesian spies had sent the coded message out on HF radio, the signal for the Americans to send their official representative, Colonel Weir, for a final rendezvous where operational details, ship’s names, coordinates, manifests and most important, timetables would be handed over.

  Colonel Weir’s meeting with the TNI spy was a quick in-and-out, requiring no more than five hours to complete, from ‘feet dry’ upon insertion on the beaches north-east of the Manoekanga delta to ‘feet wet’ again when the team dragged their RHIB back into the water, and headed out to sea to rendezvous with the RAN vessel.
>
  While Colonel Weir and Sergeant Rideout were moving swiftly through the light brush towards their rendezvous, Jake’s task was to watch the path that led from the Chinese garrison farther up river to the sentry post on the headlands overlooking Manoekanga. From 500 meters away, hidden in an improvised OP, Jake was to observe and transmit the time and size of the expected Chinese patrol when it passed.

  Using his training as a member of the Australian SOCOMD, Jake had no difficulty locating the trail, and selected a suitable location for his OP. After laying silent for a good ten minutes to ensure that there was no movement in the area, he quietly shifted a few bits of wood to improve his line of sight over the trail, and to make his own presence even more invisible than his brown-on grey ghost ghillie suit provided. Meanwhile, farther to the east, Captain Thorne moved up on his objective, the Chinese OP itself. His task was to watch the patrol arrive there, after having passed by Jake’s OP. The plan was to then spend one hour in their OP before moving on to the east, and down into Manoekanga, before turning to the north and following the Manoekanga river inland.

  Captain Thorne’s task was to visually confirm that the Chinese patrol had left their OP overlooking the coast, at which time he would inform the three other team members that there would be no eyes on them as they made their departure. But to get into position near the Chinese OP, Captain Thorne had to cross the exposed terrain between the forest and the OP at the headland. Jake’s task was to watch the trail and to warn Captain Thorne when the Chinese patrol was approaching, so that Thorne would not be caught out in the open.

  The entire plan was designed for the team to complete their mission without firing a shot, so that their arrival and departure would go unnoticed, always the best way to operate.

  When Thorne transmitted his guttural throat-clearing noise over the tactical UHF frequency with the microphone strapped to his throat, Jake recognized it immediately and gave the ‘all-clear’ whistle sound. Hearing this, Thorne understood that Jake had still not seen the Chinese patrol passing his OP, and that it was safe to leave the tree-line and make his way across the open terrain towards the Chinese OP at the end of the headland.

  What Thorne did not know was that Jake had fallen into a bad habit in the two hours he had been sitting in his OP. Rather than to keep his eyes constantly on the path, Jake had taken out his field note-pad and composed a short letter to Melody, his girlfriend. He wanted to capture the excitement and thrills he was experiencing on his first real SOCOMD mission, and felt that looking at the path every few seconds, and listening constantly for the sound of the patrol, was adequate. Besides, this won’t take long, Jake he thought.

  What Jake did not realize, but what a true Special Forces operator would know instinctively, was that the enemy was well trained, and moved swiftly and silently as they made their way along their patrol route. The highly disciplined soldiers from the 13th Group Army made no more sound than a gentle breeze as they walked along the hard-packed ground of the trail. They did not see Jake, who had his head down in his hiding place, and Jake did not see them either. So when Jake responded with the ‘all clear’ to Thorne’s signal, his reply was based on incomplete coverage of the last half-hour. Jake’s short note to Melody had grown into several pages of deep thoughts, Jake reflecting on how short and precious life was and that they should get married as soon as possible.

  He had put far more attention into his letter to Melody than he had into his overwatch task. And now Captain Thorne was going to suffer the consequences.

  Taking the Chinese patrol’s trail from the north-west, that Jake had given the all-clear about, Colonel Weir and Top Sergeant Rideout arrived at Jake’s OP after a successful exchange of secret documents.

  “Has the patrol passed?” asked Colonel Weir, already confident that it had passed two hours before, based on his son Jake’s signal.

  “Yes, at about 3:20,” Jake lied. He had never seen the patrol at all, and suspected deep in his heart that they must have passed when he had been writing to Melody. He had been worrying about it for the past two hours, ever since he had heard something, possibly gunshots, from the direction of the headland OP and Thorne, but he said nothing out of fear of being held accountable. He had not felt this badly since being caught lying to his father when he had stolen money from his dad during his high-school days.

  “Well, we have not heard from Thorne yet, so he’s late. The Pandas must be staying in their OP longer than expected,” Rideout said, looking strangely at Jake.

  “Let’s get moving,” ordered Weir, helping his son extract himself from his improvised OP. “We’ll have to move carefully as we get near the clearing and the headland OP, unless Thorne comes back on-net with the ‘all-clear’,” said Colonel Weir.

  After moving with care and haste the two kilometers to the clearing, they arrive to an unexpected scene. The corpses of two Chinese soldiers lay on the ground at the far end of the open field. They should not have been there, thought Weir, rapidly going through the possible explanations in his mind.

  He looked at Jake and saw the shameful way that Jake was avoiding his eyes. Shit. Weir realized, he screwed up.

  Without a word, Colonel Weir and Sergeant Rideout advanced as a pair, their suppressor-fitted EF88 assault rifles raised, their aim-points swivelling left and right as they moved in on the small structure.

  Inside they found Thorne, alive, sitting in a plastic lawn chair by the window that overlooked the coast. The grey light of dawn made the coastline dimly visible in the distance, where their RHIB lay waiting.

  By the thick red blood that made a stark contrast to the white plastic, it was clear that Thorne had lost a lot of blood. “What happened, Thorney?” Rideout asked, as he examined the three dead pandas that littered the floor of the small, concrete shack.

  “They must have really been moving fast after they passed Jake’s position,” Thorne began, “cause they came up on me just minutes after I set out across the open ground.”

  Everybody knew that it was impossible for the patrol to have covered so much ground in such a short time. Jake avoided their accusing eyes as Thorne continued.

  “I got two of them before they even started firing at me, and I almost made it to cover, but they got me in the leg. They dragged me in here, the three of them, and went to work on me. But I got a hand lose and got hold of one of them and got him to the floor. His mates thought it was good fun to watch him and I fight. So I made it look like he was kicking my arse, and over-acted a bit,” Thorne said with great humour, pausing only to cough up some dark red blood.

  “Take it easy, Thorney, let me look at you,” said Colonel Weir.

  “No point, Mate. I’m done for. I got my hands on another of them, used him as a blunt object on the third, and got his weapon. Got more rounds into them then they got into me. But I’m goners. I know it. My liver is perforated, I’ve got several rounds in my chest and guts…” Thorne trailed off, looking distant. His life was leaving him. Then suddenly he came alert again, just as Colonel Weir eased him to the floor and began opening his clothing to examine his wounds. He whispered in Weir’s ear: “Don’t’ blame the boy,” Thorney’s last words.

  While the team made their way to the RHIB, Jake refused any help as he carried Thorney’s body over his shoulder for the final kilometer down to the beach. Nobody said a word. It was clear to all three that Jake’s terrible mistake, diverting his attention from the task, had led to Captain Thorne’s death. It could have other knock-on effects as well, with the Chinese now being alerted to the fact that forces unknown had taken out one of their patrols in Indonesia.

  As Colonel Weir thought about it, he concluded that the mishap was not fatal for the operation at large, but his son’s incompetence disturbed him deeply. I’ll have get Jake out of SOCOMD, and into something much less critical. Perhaps the Military Police, some place far removed from any danger, somewhere he can’t screw things up too badly. Poor Jake, he’ll have to live with this for the rest of his life, though
t Weir.

  Meanwhile, several thousand kilometers away and deep in the frozen interior of Queensland, another mission was going horribly wrong.

  Master Sergeant Gannon and the rest of his recon Platoon were in a world of hurt. They had been sucked into a trap, and cut off from the rest of the force. The platoon of Marines from the MAGTF had been scouting the Chinese defenses at Barcaldine, a tiny hamlet that was considered to be a tactical center of gravity for its cross-roads and airfield. It had been defended by 1st Brigade, 372nd Division, 42nd Group Army. The same Group Army that the Allies had decimated over two years before at the Battle of Cloncurry, where two entire divisions of the 42nd Group Army had been wiped out.

  But this time it was the Marines who had over-extended themselves. Finding the town unoccupied, with the 1st of the 372nd having withdrawn to the east, the recon platoon and the supporting company of Marines had moved into the town to clear the buildings ahead of the Australians, who were a bit late to arrive with two companies of their own who were supposed to link up with the company of Marine led by Lieutenant Jarvis and Master Sergeant Gannon’s recon platoon.

  The trouble was, Recon Platoon was supposed to scout out the enemy positions in the town, and hold until the Australian force arrived before all three companies were to clear the town. With the Panda’s unexpected withdrawal towards Emerald, some three hundred kilometers to the east, Lieutenant Jarvis had to make a judgment call. With the concurrence of MGySgt Gannon, he chose to send a three-man team one kilometer east on the A4 highway to cover the enemy’s likely axis of approach, and use his remaining force of eighty men to sweep the town.

  No sooner had he informed Colonel Ferebee in the CJOC in Katherine that the town was secure and the sweep nearly completed when the situation had been turned upside down.

  It was a trap.

  Colonel Yip, commander of the 372nd, had pulled his 1st Brigade out of Barcaldine, with a highly visible line of vehicles snaking out of town to the east, for the Marines to observe. But he had left three companies of his best men inside a half-dozen houses, waiting for the Marines to take the bait.