Expatriates (11 page)

Janelle Altmiller was at home with her son, Lance. While she was in the master bathroom folding laundry, she heard Lance shouting in the kitchen. “Hey, stop! My dad says strangers can't be in the house!”

When an unfamiliar gruff voice told her son to shut up, Janelle's blood ran cold.

She drew the XD pistol from her holster, then dashed into the bedroom and reached across the bed to flip the silent alarm switch that was mounted under the bottom center of the bed's headboard. It was one of four switches that had been installed in the house after the Crunch. She rolled back up just in time to see a stranger standing in the doorway, holding a revolver in one hand and a bundle of large plastic cable ties in the other. She brought the pistol up, got a “flash” sight picture, and fired three times, hitting the man twice in the chest and once in the jaw. He staggered backward, and she shot him once more, hitting him at the top of his right eye socket. He landed on his back in the hallway, dropping the revolver as he fell. She heard someone screaming. It took her a moment to realize that
she
was the one screaming. Janelle didn't know what to do next. After just a moment to consider, she maneuvered back to the bathroom, looking for cover. She knelt down beside the door frame and lined up her sights on the open bedroom door. Her ears were ringing.

She heard another man's voice asking, “Javi?”

A few seconds later, she heard the man shout, “No way! No freakin' way!”

It was quiet for nearly a full minute. Obviously, the surviving intruder did not want to step forward and make himself a target. Janelle wondered if he had fled. Or perhaps he had gone outside to approach the master bathroom window from behind her. A wave of anxiety and panic went through her. She was afraid to take her eyes off the doorway to look over her shoulder.

Still in the house, the man shouted, “Listen: I've got your kid here. Throw out your gun and . . .”

To Lance, it sounded like the world had exploded. In a deafening roar, Jake and Tomas fired almost simultaneously through the living room's sliding glass door, striking the home invader with a hail of #4 buckshot from the Saiga shotgun and .223 bullets from the M4gery.

The man never got a shot off in response.

Lance thought there were only two men who had invaded their home, but Jake, Janelle, and Tomas methodically cleared all of the rooms in the house and then both the front yard and the backyard, just to be certain.

When they stepped back inside, they found Lance lifting the head of the dead man in the living room, holding his hair. “These guys are really, really dead.”

“Not like on TV, is it?” Tomas asked.

Lance stood up and said, “No. It's louder. And it's
messier
.”

They found that the two men had broken in by simply slashing one of the window screens and stepping into the living room. After that, the Altmillers never left the sliding windows open unless they were directly guarded by an adult with a long gun.

Janelle had many sleepless nights after that incident. Eventually, she came to the realization that her home was defended far better than most, and that she had to trust in those defenses. But she never felt quite the same about the security of their home. And every time she locked their bedroom door, the events of that day would flash into her mind.

“You know what's wrong with karate, Jerry? It's based on the ridiculous assumption that the other guy will fight fair.”

—James Garner, as television private detective Jim Rockford,
The Rockford Files
episode “Backlash of the Hunter,” 1974; screenplay by Stephen J. Cannell and Roy Huggins

A
fter just six days at sea, the boat's reverse osmosis water maker broke. It was a crucial piece of equipment, providing them fresh drinking water. Just a small tear in its membrane made it useless.

After the water maker broke, they prayed for rain so they would be able to harvest rainwater from the awning canvases. They also started scanning the charts, looking for small, uninhabited islands where they'd be able to go ashore to gather coconuts. Tatang said that coconut water had saved many a sailor from dehydration.

They found a suitable island eighteen days after the water maker broke. It was scarcely a quarter mile long, it looked uninhabited, and most importantly, there were no other islands within line of sight. They spent several hours circumnavigating the island reef. There was a large gap on the west side that looked deep enough to accommodate
Tiburon
, even at low tide. This would be important in case they had to make a quick getaway.

They pulled into shore at just before nine
A.M
. and did a quick, armed reconnaissance. The island was indeed uninhabited, and the few rusty cans they found strewn on the ground looked as if they'd been there at least five years. They soon set to work. Joseph did most of the climbing. He would shimmy up a palm tree and call, “Look out below!” Their foraged green coconuts quickly grew into a large pile.

At the end of the first day on the island, they pushed
Tiburon
back offshore, and dropped anchor a quarter mile out to sea. This, they reasoned, was a safer place to spend the night. If nothing else, they didn't want any rats on the island stowing away.

They took advantage of being anchored and fished for squid that night, using a flashlight. The squid, attracted to the light, could simply be scooped up with a hand net. They caught two buckets full. They had to keep the bucket lids snapped on to keep the slippery squid from escaping. Black ink squid adobo was one of Tatang's specialties.

At the end of the second day, they had gathered all the green coconuts they could possibly carry. For the sake of expediency they decided to load them onto
Tiburon
unhusked. The coconuts filled up all of the available space and their weight put
Tiburon
just as deep in the water as she had been when they first left Samar. This made everyone nervous. They pushed off just before sunset as the tide was coming back in to lift the boat from the beach.

They husked the coconuts as they traveled southward. First they would cut off both ends of the green coconuts with Tatang's
itak
machete, and then they would husk them on a large chisel that Tatang attached upright to the transom with a pair of eight-inch C-clamps. It took three days just to work the pile down to the point where three of the passengers had places to sleep. And it took a full week to husk three quarters of the coconuts. They discarded the husks off the stern as they worked. Gradually,
Tiburon
lightened, bringing the waterline back to a comfortable level. Originally, Peter Jeffords had wanted to husk all of the coconuts, but Tatang insisted that the remainder of the coconut hoard would keep better if the husks were left on.

The coconut water became their water substitute. They even used it for cooking the rice, along with a bit of seawater, for savor. It gave the rice a delicious flavor that was both sweet and salty. It tasted a bit like
suman
, a traditional Filipino rice sweet cake that was made with coconut milk, usually wrapped in banana leaves.

After a week of eating fresh coconut meat and drinking mostly coconut water, however, Rhiannon and Joseph both developed diarrhea. By eating three large spoonfuls of peanut butter per day, they regained regularity.

Instead of sinking the empty coconut oil and palm oil containers, as they had in the past, they began to save them, refilling the bottles with any sources of fresh water they might find.

Their diet consisted of rice and fresh fish for at least two meals per day. If they had a poor day of trolling, which rarely happened, then they resorted to using some of their supply of dried fish. Jeffords marveled at the amazing variety of fish and sharks they caught. He only recognized a few of them by name, but he was usually happy to eat the daily catch. They did most of their cooking in a greasy fry pan on a propane stove that was cleverly gimbal-mounted, attached to the bulkhead just forward of the pilothouse. They could cook on that in all but the roughest seas.

To conserve their small supply of propane, they cooked their rice each day using a large rectangular pot with flange hooks that pressed against the engine's exhaust manifold. The engine's constant heat kept the water in the pot at just below a boil, making it a simple task to cook rice. Tatang had seen this on other fishing boats, so he had a tinker custom-make the pot for him soon after
Tiburon
was built.

While they ate some of the rice seasoned with only salt or seawater, for the sake of variety some batches contained adobo, ginger,
bagoong, patis
, or teriyaki sauce. The array of fish species and the various rice seasonings broke up the monotony of their diet. The seasonings, they discovered, were part of what made the discomfort of the cramped quarters of
Tiburon
bearable. Once every three or four days, Joseph would prepare an extra batch of rice at dawn and stir-fry it with different seasonings, tossing in a few bits of fish, a can of peas, and a can of water chestnuts. This special meal always lifted everyone's spirits.

They tried to keep a good sense of humor, often joking, singing songs and hymns, and telling stories. They also looked forward to sunset each night. Not only were the tropical sunsets beautiful, but the darkness meant greater protection from observation.

The three men and little Sarah did well adjusting to being at sea and to the change in diet. But Rhiannon suffered regularly from seasickness, and the change in diet caused her to alternate between diarrhea and constipation. She began to lose weight rapidly, though, thankfully, her extra weight gave her some reserves from which she could draw.

Sarah adjusted remarkably well to the sea voyage. Always curious about all the workings of Tatang's boat, she was constantly asking questions about everything from its engine to the weather to what fish she ate. She spent many early evening hours at the edge of the coaming near the wheel—the boat had few proper grab rails—asking endless questions. Tatang smiled and answered as many questions as he could with the enduring patience that grandpas are famous for having with children. Sarah was still at the “sponge” age of brain development, so she began to pick up some Tagalog phrases. Rhiannon and Peter had both spent months in language classes, but did not pick it up nearly so quickly.

The weather varied, but was generally fair. Most afternoons would cloud up, as was the norm for the tropics, but there wasn't much rain. Each rain shower was cause for celebration. The canvas awnings were carefully held in a V shape to capture as much of the rainwater as possible, in every available container. Then, once the containers had all been filled, everyone on board took turns washing their hair and showering half-clothed in the runoff from the canvas.

There was an hour or two of quiet time in the early evening of most days after their “breakfast” but before it got dark enough to safely start the engine and get under way. Tatang took advantage of this time to teach everyone the Filipino Martial Art called Pekiti-Tirsia Kali. This art emphasized fighting with sticks, knives, or any object that could be pressed into service from baseball bats to hand tools.

There was just enough room on the aft deck for Tatang and one student at a time to spar. The others sat farther forward to watch and learn. They did most of their knife-fighting practice using a pair of ten-inch-long tubes of tightly rolled scrap cardboard. These proved to be effective training tools. The bruises they left were reminders that this training was in deadly earnest. Even little Sarah got some training, particularly about pressure points and bone joint anatomy.

The engine stopped running unexpectedly, twice. Both times, it turned out to be a clogged fuel filter. Until these repairs were completed, everyone was quite anxious. Unlike many other small boats in the region, they had no way to revert to sailing, and being in hostile waters, they couldn't radio for help. And because of the outriggers,
Tiburon
could not easily be adapted to rowing. Without a functional engine, the boat would be nothing more than a piece of driftwood at the mercy of the currents, winds, and tides.

The only other problem with the boat on the journey was that the propeller drive shaft seals began to loosen, emitting a trickle of water whenever the drive shaft was spinning. This was more of an annoyance than cause for alarm, however, since the automatic bilge pump easily kept up with the leak.

When they first discovered the leak, Tatang told Peter and Rhiannon: “You know, back in the nineties I had a friend on Samar who had a twenty-five-footer. He had a drive shaft seal totally blow out because the bearing seized and the shaft started to spin, all wobbly. They were looking forward so they didn't notice the flooding, at first. They tried stuffing rags around the shaft, but by then, the boat she was half flooded, and they only had a puny bilge pump. She sunk only five miles off of Samar. They barely made it back to the island. Good thing they were strong swimmers.”

In the days that followed, Rhiannon seemed obsessed with the seals. She would get up from her sleeping mat several times each night to inspect them, using a flashlight. After a few nights of this, she became convinced that the leak was not worsening further and started to get more sleep. But for the rest of their voyage she still inspected the seals more frequently than was probably needed.

“When it all comes down, the last man standing is going to be standing there in shorts and sneakers [armed] with a '98 Mauser, and all the ninja-looking guys belly up at his feet—with all their cool gear.”

—Louis Awerbuck

T
he seas were calm and the night was almost pitch-dark. It was overcast, the quarter moon had not yet risen, and the Jeffords could barely distinguish the horizon. They motored on, regularly checking the compass and the GPS.

Tatang sat dozing in the side chair while Peter held the wheel. As he gazed ahead, Peter saw the flare of a cigarette lighter about four hundred or five hundred yards ahead—someone lighting a cigarette in the deck of a boat of some sort. Jeffords hesitated for a moment, and then cut the throttle to bring
Tiburon
to slow maneuvering speed. He swung the wheel sharply. The motion roused Tatang. Peter ducked his head toward the old man's ear and whispered, “Quiet.” He could hear excited voices in the distance.

A pair of big diesel engines rumbled to life. Just as Peter completed their turn about and the
Tiburon
's stern was pointed toward the strange boat, a searchlight snapped on and began scanning. Peter slammed the throttle forward and he said, “Take the wheel!”

Peter stepped away from the helm and snatched up Navarro's M1 rifle. Tatang took the wheel and shoved hard on the throttle, but he found that it was already wide open. The searchlight found them, blindingly bright. Peter's eyes had been accustomed to the darkness and this change overwhelmed his senses. There were more shouts from the other boat. It was now five hundred yards away and had started to turn toward them. Peter judged that it was a fifty-footer, and it had the profile of some sort of pilothouse patrol boat, with pedestal-mounted machine guns, fore and aft. Before it completed its turn, he could make out the boat's hull number: 855. Tatang muttered, “We're in a tight spot, aren't we, Mister J?”

—

A
cross the dark sea, Kapten Assegaf switched on
Sadarin
's hailer, emitting a high warble. Then he keyed his microphone and issued a warning to stop, in Indonesian. He repeated the command in Dutch, and then English: “
Hou vast!
You are ordered to stop, or we will be shooting.” The young, impetuous captain was grinning. He knew the outrigger boat was no match for his boat, with its pair of MTU diesels. Despite a few patches to its hull that gave her more drag than in her early days,
Sadarin
was still a very fast patrol boat.

The patrol boat was quickly gaining on
Tiburon
. Peter crouched behind the stern rail, put the rifle to his right shoulder and clicked its safety bar forward with the front of his trigger finger. He said aloud, “Help me get out of this, Lord.” Then he took aim at the searchlight. The glare was intense.

He fired three times in rapid succession. The third shot hit the searchlight, extinguishing it. Tatang then immediately jerked the wheel, turning
Tiburon
sharply to starboard. The .50 caliber M2 Browning on the forward deck of the patrol boat sputtered to life, firing blindly in reply, in a deep staccato.

To Peter's dismay, moments later a second searchlight snapped on and began to scan. Tatang muttered something which Jeffords recognized as a Tagalog reference to excrement.

Peter fired two shots at the searchlight
.
The second one hit the mark, again casting them into darkness. Immediately after, Tatang wisely swung the wheel again, this time hard to port. The .50 caliber fired again blindly. The muzzle flashes were all they could see. The first few rounds passed over their heads. Every fifth round was a tracer. The arc of the tracers increased farther and farther to starboard. Tatang changed course once more, quartering away from
Sadarin.
Between bursts from the machine gun, they could hear excited shouts from the Indonesian crewmen. Two Indo sailors with Pindad SS2 5.56 mm assault rifles joined in, blindly firing in long, fully automatic bursts. But like the big Browning, all of their bursts were fired high and wide—nearly all toward their previous heading.

After a minute, they were about a thousand yards away from the patrol boat. Peter realized that his rifle was more than half empty, so he fumbled for a minute to unload it and reload it with a full 8-round clip from his pocket. The Garand, he knew, had the limitation of an “all or nothing” ejecting cartridge clip—there was no way to top off the rifle without changing the clip completely. He wanted to be ready with a full 8-round clip in case he had to fire again.

Captain Assegaf used his bullhorn again, this time ordering his own crew, “
Diam, diam!
” The shooting stopped. Realizing what was happening, Peter whispered urgently, “Stop, stop!
Preno!
”

Tatang chopped the throttle and then turned off the engine completely. Moments later, the Indonesian captain shut his engines down, too. It was eerily quiet and still quite dark. Below deck, two of the Indonesian Air Force radar technicians were wailing and crying, convinced that they were about to die for failing to do their jobs.

Hoping to hear the engine of
Tiburon
, the Indonesians were listening intently. It was so quiet that Jeffords could hear the sound of squeaking footsteps on the deck of the patrol boat. There was an anxious, questioning voice from below deck and then another shout of “
Diam!
” from Captain Assegaf, this time without the benefit of the bullhorn.

Peter crept toward the helm chair. The storm door slowly slid open. Rhiannon's head popped out. Peter reached across the door and clamped his hand across her mouth. He leaned forward and whispered into her ear: “An Indo patrol boat. I shot out their lights, so now it's cat and mouse. Keep Sarah and Joseph super quiet.”

Rhiannon gave an exaggerated nod and quietly descended back into the cabin, sliding shut the storm door as gently as possible.

The unnerving quiet continued for two minutes.
Sadarin
's signals officer approached Captain Assegaf to report that there was no radar contact. Worse yet, the ship's sonar could be used only as a depth finder. It was not designed to locate other vessels. Assegaf began cursing loudly. He ordered hand flashlights and a flare gun be brought up from below, but there was some difficulty in finding the waterproof box that held the flare gun and flares. Instead of its usual location, it was inadvertently hidden under a pile of life vests. This led to even more consternation and shouting.

By the time they started scanning with the hand flashlights, the two boats had drifted apart and were separated by 1,250 yards. Because the Indonesians' flashlights lacked sufficient range, the sailors had no luck spotting
Tiburon
. Captain Assegaf let loose a long string of profanity and slapped his signals officer on the side of his head. Frustrated, he impetuously fired up the boat's diesels. He hesitated for a moment, and then took a guess at
Tiburon
's last heading, but he guessed wrong. He turned
Sadarin
thirty degrees to starboard as he advanced his throttles to three-quarters, pushing the boat up to twenty knots.

Peter inched up to Tatang and asked in a half whisper, “Now that they're started their engines, won't that mask the sound if we start ours?”

The old man thought for a moment and then answered, “Yeah, but they could stop any time and listen again, and then they'd hear where we are. We'd really be in the
kamalasan
. Right now, they don't know if we are pirates, smugglers, or refugees. And even refugees are probably all ‘shoot on sight.' We are safer just drifting for now, Mr. J. It is still six hours to the daylight, and the clouds will stop most of the moonlight. The moonrise won't be for about two hours. Just pray hard that they get far enough away that they can't hear our engine.”

Jeffords did pray, fervently.

The Indonesian patrol boat was more than a mile away when they began launching parachute flares. But at that distance, they didn't throw enough light to reveal
Tiburon
's position.

Even worse than the misplaced flare gun kit was the fact that up until fifteen days before,
Sadarin
had been equipped with a pair of Fulinon Gen 3 light amplification night vision goggles (NVGs). But the Indonesian Navy had requisitioned the NVGs from every ship less than 25 meters in length for an unspecified “priority tasking.” Assegaf assumed this meant the Philippines campaign. He was furious. If he had the NVGs or at least if he had the flare gun close at hand, then the intruder would not have been able to slip away.

Rhiannon and Joseph came up on deck. “Sarah is asleep,” Rhiannon reported in a whisper.

Peter had the binoculars out, trying to gauge the distance between
Tiburon
and
Sadarin
. He started to chuckle and said, “I told you that you have a stealthy boat, Tatang.”

Tatang put on a huge grin that Peter could see even in the very dim light. “Yes, she's a stealthy old shark, and she just put those Indo bastards on a what-ya-call wild geese chase.”

The two men shared a laugh.

After another half hour, when the Indonesian flares could barely be seen six miles away, Tatang restarted
Tiburon
's engine. He turned the bow to the southeast, quartering away from the Indonesian boat. Speaking at a normal level for the first time since the incident began, Tatang said, “Now, we gotta put a lot a miles between them and us before the daylight. They'll try to get a patrol plane up to look for us, sure as anything.” He pushed the throttle forward all the way to its stop and added, “Go, baby, go.”

Joseph said, “Do you know how lucky we are?”

Rhiannon shook her head and said, “Poor choice of words, Joey. The word isn't lucky, it is
blessed
.”

As dawn broke, after a fruitless night of searching, Assegaf had a long talk with his first mate, an old NCO who had seventeen years of service with the navy. They discussed how they would write their report of the incident with the “unidentified fishing boat.” They agreed that it would be counterproductive to complain about the lack of NVGs and that the misplaced flare gun kit should be blamed on a junior-grade sailor and a reprimand issued before they returned to port.

Assegaf's next conversation was with the senior radar technician to determine why the radar couldn't detect the fishing boat. After a brief lecture on radar fundamentals, the NCO explained that the ship's radar had a feature called “near field clutter rejection.” Thus, the radar
did not display
any target less than two kilometers away if it was moving at less than twenty kilometers per hour and if it had a radar cross section smaller than that of a small boat or passenger car.

Kapten Assegaf fumed about the fishing boat getting away. More than just the disappointment, it was writing the After Action Report that troubled him. Given the recent political shifts within the TNI-AL, his report would have to be
very
carefully worded.