After a couple of minutes, Quentin could hear the voices of individual Indo soldiers. It wasn’t long before the voices became quite distinct. He heard the crunch of approaching footsteps. Quentin’s breathing grew more rapid, and he could hear the blood pounding in his ears. His hands began to shake, but the Indonesians passed by his undetected spider hole. The voices faded into the distance. There were still a few occasional rifle shots, but none came close to his hiding position. Sitting in the darkness, Quentin grinned in relief. He whispered to himself, “What galahs.”
Other than cracking the lid roughly once an hour for fresh air, Quentin stayed hunkered down in the spider hole. He took sips of water and nibbled on a packet of prawn crackers, but he didn’t feel very hungry. He waited until his wristwatch showed three thirty to fully open the lid and investigate his surroundings. The Indo vehicles had long since departed. A sliver of moon was setting in the west. He waited, watching and listening intently for ten minutes. After the moon had set, he hopped up out of his hole and carefully replaced its lid. He moved very slowly and quietly in case the Indos had left an ambush patrol.
Quentin sprinkled a bit of earth around the edges of the spider hole’s inset lid. If it weren’t for the distinctive Y formed by the limbs atop the lid, it would be very hard for him to locate, even in full daylight. Forty minutes later he was resting in his daytime hide. He had trouble getting to sleep. Just before falling asleep at sunrise, he thought to himself, One down, three hundred thousand to go.
The next morning the sky became overcast early and it began to rain. Quentin spent some time deepening the draining trench at the uphill side of his sleeping platform. He crawled back into his bivy bag, zipped the mosquito netting closed and shifted the thin tropical-weight sleeping bag beneath him for extra padding. He fell asleep. After a half hour the rain transitioned to a torrent. He zipped the bivy bag’s end flap shut. He chuckled and said to himself, “Try using your tracking dogs now.”
45
HEAD SHOT
“All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable, when using our forces we must seem inactive, when we are near, we must make the enemy believe that we are away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.
“If he is secure at all points, be prepared for him. If he is superior in strength, evade him. If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant.
“If he is inactive, give him no rest. If his forces are united, separate them. Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected. These military devices, leading to victory, must not be divulged beforehand.”
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War, Translation by Lionel Giles, 1910
Near Robertson Barracks, Northern Territory, Australia—February, the Third Year
After two nights in his bivouac hide, the rains lessened. Quentin Whittle repacked his rucksack and hiked a mile north to the quarry lakes east of Robertson Barracks. Passing by the lakes, he approached the recently active sand quarry on Thorngate Road. Slowing to an almost creeping pace, he skirted the south edge of the quarry. When he was 110 yards from the road, he transitioned to a high crawl. He moved forward slowly through the brush and took up a hide position 70 yards west of the gate on Robertson Road. Avoiding any sudden movements, he spread out an oblong camouflage net with the green side up. (It could be reversed to tan for use on sandy ground.) This eight-foot-long and six-foot-wide plastic net took up half the volume of his pack. Draping the net over himself, Quentin looked like just another bush.
His vantage point was fair, though he wished there was higher ground available with a more commanding field of view. Aside from the obstruction of the guardhouse, he still had a very good view down Robertson Road, across the parade field, and beyond the reviewing stand to the 1st Brigade Headquarters terrace and its covered parking circle.
He could hear the whine of large generators running somewhere at the post but outside of his line of sight. He cranked his scope up to 9-power and flipped down the rifle’s bipod legs, moving them very slowly to avoid having the leg springs make the annoying twang that they made if this was done in haste. The floodlights at the entry gate were dazzlingly bright. He could just make out the outline of the headquarters building in the distance. He decided to stay in this temporary hide for at least eighteen hours to observe the daily rhythm of activities. Four guards lolled at the gate. At 190 yards, they would be an easy shot. The terrace at the headquarters building was 500 yards away, which would be a much more difficult shot. His mission, however, was to observe, not to snipe.
As dawn broke, his view of the headquarters building improved when the floodlights were extinguished. He could see Indonesian officers smoking on the upper terrace deck. One of them had his hand on the rail. He was facing directly toward Whittle, who could see the man take repeated puffs on his cigarette. As the soldier dropped his cigarette butt, stamped it out, and turned to go back indoors, Quentin mouthed, You don’t know how lucky you are, mate.
After it was full daylight, Quentin pulled out the iPhone he’d been given by Samantha Kyle. Removing it from the Ziploc bag, he powered it up. It showed 94 percent of battery capacity. There was no telephone service, but the Wi-Fi indicator popped up, showing three signals—two of them weak, and one fairly strong. The latter was labeled HOLSWORTHY-02. Quentin tapped the screen twice and a password entry box popped up. He pulled out his notebook and opened it to the page of passwords that Samantha had provided him. The first four passwords were rejected, but the fifth one worked.
“Ace!” Quentin whispered.
Next, Quentin brought up a browser window. Buried among more than 500 web page bookmarks was the Palmerston Beach House page. Opening it and then selecting the pull-down menu for HOUSE CONTROLS, he clicked on AIRCON. At the top of the next screen was a pair of toggle buttons marked A/C ON and A/C OFF. Below them was a temperature control slider with Celsius numbers in a blue-to-red gradation. He hovered the pointer over the A/C ON button and grinned. He whispered, “You found your true calling, Miss Samantha.” He gazed up at the brigade headquarters. Then looking back down at the iPhone, he closed the browser, checked the battery once more—now down to ninety-two percent—and powered down the phone. After rebagging the phone and notebook, he took a sip of water from his Camelbak. It was going to be a long day of watching.
—
That evening, Quentin decided to visit his other spider hole sites over the next several nights. He started by visiting his swamp hole, in Charles Darwin Nature Park. Walking stealthily, he covered the distance to the park in six hours. Most of the city was blacked out. There were just a few islands of light, mainly near the docks where the Indonesians and Malaysians had generators running. They were still landing, troops, vehicles, and innumerable pallet loads of artillery shells. Their incessant activity reminded Quentin of ants.
Quentin skirted around several buildings that were occupied by Indonesians. He was amazed to see that they took few, if any, light and noise discipline measures and their sentries did not look particularly alert. Using his GPS, he took note of the date and unit locations in his notepad.
Arriving at Charles Darwin Nature Park, he was disgusted to find that the spider hole was nearly full of water. He grumbled, “So I’ve dug myself a well. I’m such a boofhead. Scratch that.”
He retrieved the ammo can from under the water. He was surprised to find that despite some newly formed exterior rust, the can’s contents were dry. The can’s rubber gasket had done its job. He stowed the can in his pack and trudged back to his bivouac site, arriving just before dawn.
The next night he “tabbed” to the Holmes Jungle Nature Park, which was a shorter walk. He was surprised to find a noisy Malaysian Army unit set up there. Their sprawling encampment actually straddled the hillside where he had constructed his spider
hole. Seeing this, Quentin muttered to himself, “Well, forget that one.”
Resting prone a hundred yards away, Quentin studied the encampment through his binoculars. The Malaysians were talking, joking, and even occasionally shouting. They seemed to be quite unconcerned. In three hours of watching, Quentin saw only one roving sentry. The Malaysians had two large AC generators running and their light discipline was pitiful, with no attempt to conceal their generator-powered light strings. His observations that night were bemusing. Based on the configuration of their truck-mounted shelters and the many antennas, he determined that it was a communications unit of some sort.
He decided that this was too good a target to pass up. It would be the perfect place to use his Claymores.
Quentin could see that one of the open-sided Malaysian tents had a map board. There were lots of folding chairs in the tents, so he presumed the space was used for briefings during daylight hours. The area appeared to be the Malaysian equivalent of a Tactical Operations Center (TOC). There was just one officer there. He was drinking coffee and holding a nightlong vigil next to a radio and a field telephone that were set up on a table.
Quentin noticed that the four tents nearest to the TOC tent were different from all of the other bivouac tents, which were smaller two-man pup tents. These were more spacious, looking like they could each hold three or perhaps four cots. He could occasionally see the flare of cigarettes being lit in these darkened tents, so they were obviously occupied.
As he watched the activity in the camp, Quentin repeated to himself, “Too good to pass up.”
46
CLAYMORES
“. . . When you’re a pessimist, the worst that ever happens is that things go exactly the way you were prepared for them to go, and half the time you’re pleasantly surprised.”
—Massad Ayoob, Backwoods Home Magazine, January 1, 2009
Near Robertson Barracks, Northern Territory, Australia—February, the Third Year
Quentin returned to the Holmes Jungle Nature Park the next evening, but first he walked quietly through a blacked-out suburban neighborhood to the west, checking door locks. About half of the houses were unlocked. After five houses, he found what he was looking for—a moldy-smelling house on Spathe Court that was so messy he could barely walk from room to room. This house had belonged to a hoarder. The rooms were so heaped up with boxes and piles of newspapers that it would be almost impossible to search them effectively.
He unpacked everything from his rucksack except the six Claymore mines and left them in a box in one of the bedrooms. There, he spent an hour organizing as he developed a sort of nest behind the headboard of a king-size bed. In the nest area, he prepositioned a small foam mattress, a child’s Spider-Man sleeping bag, three cases of bottled water, a variety of tinned foods, a couple of empty milk jugs with caps, and the box of miscellany from his rucksack. Making note of the address, he shouldered his pack and tabbed his way back to the nature park.
Just after nine P.M. the following evening, Quentin settled into the observation point he had used two days previously and watched and waited for two hours to ensure the guard schedule was the same. Setting up the five Claymore mines took a nerve-racking forty minutes. He used just one electric blasting cap. The other four mines were tied together in a daisy chain of PETN blasting cord that went from cap well to cap well.
He aimed each mine by laying a pencil across the inadequate plastic sights that were molded into the top of each mine. The pencil provided a longer sighting plane, making this part of the job easier, even in the dim light. He combined four sets of the brown firing wires to give himself more standoff distance.
His goal was to be as far away as possible when the mines went off, giving him a head start on anyone who might pursue him. He hoped the miniature “clacker” detonator would have enough of an impulse through the extra-long firing wire. He wasn’t disappointed. The five targeted tents were shredded by the blasts. The camp was chaotically roused to attention. Malaysians fired erratically all around their perimeter with no particular targets. Tracers arced out randomly in all directions. Whittle laughed quietly at their confusion and thought to himself, What a beautiful sight!
Quentin was already over the park’s north fence by the time the first patrol was initiated in reaction to the blast. He spent the next three days in the Spathe Court house in his dusty nest. He eventually found a package of AA batteries, so he was able to read a few paperback books that he’d picked out from among the hundreds that were stacked in the house. It proved to be a quiet way to spend the next three days as he waited for the local patrols to die down. They never searched the Spathe Court house, but he did hear squealing tires several times, and searchlights washed the front end of the house two nights in a row.
—
Five days later, Quentin was back at his temporary hide site opposite the Robertson Barracks gate. He lingered there until after dark. There was a steady stream of vehicles to and from the headquarters building, but no sign of any big meetings. He wondered when the right opportunity to strike would present itself.
Continuing his vigil on Tuesday, he was excited to see an unusually large number of vehicles arriving in front of the headquarters and dropping off passengers. It was obvious that there was a high-level meeting about to start. After 12:50 P.M., there were no more arriving vehicles. At 1:04 P.M., Quentin hit the A/C ON button. Although they didn’t look dramatic from his vantage point, the results were devastating.
The simultaneous explosions roared and a cloud of dust rose from the roof of the headquarters building. He saw the windows shatter and paper floated down like confetti. But the sprinklers worked as designed, and immediately prevented any fires from spreading and burning down the building. Quentin stayed and watched the whole show. By the number of stretchers carried out to military ambulances, he presumed that there were at least sixty casualties. It wasn’t until two months later that he learned there were eighty-two WIAs and sixty-two KIAs, including six field-grade officers. The commanding general was missed only because he was late arriving at the staff meeting. Quentin Whittle’s decapitation of the Indonesian invasion command structure resulted in confusion, hesitation, and what turned into indefinite delays in their forces advancing south to the 24th parallel. The decisive hit, however, was not enough to completely stop the invasion from advancing.
—
The Big Push began. The Indo-Malaysian army had already been stopped twelve miles north of Port Hedland in the west, forty-five miles north of Alice Springs in the center of the country, and eighteen miles north of Townsville in the east.
Holding fast to their front lines on the coasts, the Australian Army shifted and advanced into the Northern Territory on three main axes of advance: west from the town of Mount Isa, north from Alice Springs, and east from Port Hedland.
Assuming that the Aussie Army would avoid the major highways and attempt to cross the Tanami Desert via the Tanami Road, the Indos had positioned a large portion of their ground forces south of Halls Creek, expecting an epic ground battle. Instead, they were outmaneuvered before they could even react.
In the end, the combined Indonesian and Malaysian armies proved to be too poorly trained to stand up to the Australians, despite their larger numbers. It was the Australian Army’s artillery that proved to be the decisive blow. Light spotter planes, flown by both RAAF pilots and CAAAF Reserve pilots radioed in the locations of Indonesian and Malaysian vehicles and troop concentrations. If artillery wasn’t already within range for an immediate barrage, it often could be relocated within a few hours to inflict devastating strikes. Then, per their modern doctrine, the artillery units would quickly displace, leaving the Indonesians wondering from whence the fire had originated. The Indonesians lacked counterbattery radars.
Indonesian aircraft dispatched to spot the Aussie forces quickly fell prey to the Australian’s ground-based air defenses. Left blind, the Indos maneuv
ered ineffectively, and most units were cut off and were then handled piecemeal. Their large force at the edge of the Tanami Desert was isolated and attrited by both artillery fire and by CAAAF pilots flying private planes packed with explosives in suicide attacks.
The only major battle of the war took place at the edge of the Barkly Tableland, between the towns of Katherine and Tennant Creek. This three-day conflict resulted in a horrific loss of life. The final tally was 22,800 Indonesian KIAs, 1,850 Malaysian KIAs, and 15,812 Australian KIAs. And 307 of the invaders’ vehicles were also destroyed. Most of the Australian casualties were Australian Army Reserve unit members. More than 20,000 Indonesian and Malaysians were taken prisoner and 151 vehicles were captured intact. The Battle of Tennant Creek (as it was later known) broke the will of the Indonesians in the ground war. The Australian press described this as “the only real knock-down, drag-out fight” between the two armies. The Indos started their peace overtures the following week via HF radio.
In the end, Caleb’s two remaining FLBs became just a minor footnote in the history of the conflict. They did, however, provide some badly needed fuel and replenishment of ammunition as the army advanced. With the FLBs in place, a portion of the army was able to press on to attack the Indonesians without having to wait for their logistics “tail” to catch up with them as they normally would.
—
The cease-fire and withdrawal of the invasion forces was facilitated by the holding of 536 Australian civilians hostage in Papua New Guinea and forty-six in East Timor. Some of these hostages were from the Australian mainland and forced to board ships as the Indos started their withdrawal. The Indonesians made a show of calling them “guests of the peace-loving Indonesian government,” but they made it clear that they would not be released until every Indonesian and Malaysian POW was released and repatriated. Video footage of the Australian hostages was shown endlessly on ABC television. In the end, the Indos got their way. But the Australian prime minister made it clear that because hostages were used, normalization of relations between the two nations would be delayed for a decade or more, even if the agreed reparations were paid in full, in gold bullion.
Expatriates Page 26
