Expatriates (25 page)

“All you need for happiness is a good gun, a good horse, and a good wife.”

—Daniel Boone

C
huck tapped on the brigade commander's door. After Colonel Reynolds shouted, “Enter!” Chuck stepped into the office and found the colonel tapping away at his laptop keyboard. Looking up, he smiled and said, “Good to see you, Nolan. Do shut the door.”

After Chuck had closed the door behind him, Reynolds flipped the laptop screen closed and said, “How are things getting along with your Inventory, Destruction, and Safe Storage project? We've been hearing the explosions from quite a distance.”

“It's all gone quite well. It was my pleasure to stay on for an extra couple of weeks to see it all wrapped up. The dugout space for the captured artillery rounds and other explosives was limited, so we had to be selective about what we destroyed, what we sold, and what we put into storage. Much of it had no commonality with our logistics and no civilian use, so that material was burned in place, or for any
contained
explosives—like artillery rounds and mortar bombs—blown in place.”

The colonel nodded, and Chuck continued, “There was a large quantity of the Indo's bulk explosive in twenty-kilogram bags, essentially a clone of commercial AMEX explosive. Along with that was about twenty thousand feet of detonating cord. That stuff is identical to commercial Cordtex or Primacord except for its outer casing color. Those explosives and det cord would have been a shame to burn up, so it was disposed of at auction via a six-way phone conference call. The high bidder was a big mining supply company in Malaga. They bought it with the understanding that they had just four days to haul it away. It was all gone by Wednesday. At this point, I'm just down to having someone proofread the report that you requested, and scheduling my last day.”

“I think Saturday should be your last paid day, assuming that you get your report in tomorrow. No need to come into the office on Saturday, mind you. Does that sound good?”

Chuck smiled. “Yes, sir. So what is the procedure for ending my contract?”

“Well, Chuck, it's pretty simple when we're talking about an open-ended ‘at will' contract. In essence: you stop showing up for work, and we stop paying you.”

Both men laughed.

Chuck asked, “Okay, now what about my SLR—how do I go about turning that rifle back in?”

The colonel cocked his head and smiled. “You know, in all the confusion and tumult of combat, there was a tremendous amount of materiel that was captured by the Indos, destroyed, or otherwise went missing. Why, even my own AUG went missing and had to be replaced with one that came from a wounded trooper who was sent off to hospital. In your case, your SLR will be logged as an ‘unavoidable combat loss, captured by the enemy with no possibility of recovery' or some such.”

Chuck grinned in response and said, “That has a nice ring to it: ‘unavoidable combat loss.' Thank you, sir.”

—

W
ithin three weeks of the cease-fire, most Darwinites had returned to their homes. Many parts of Darwin and its suburbs were just as the refugees had left them. But even in the untouched houses, the lengthy power outages had left refrigerators and freezers a stinking mess. Nearly all of these had to be discarded and replaced. Livestock that was left out to pasture generally fared well, although the Indos had helped themselves to some steak on the hoof. On two farms, dozens of cattle and sheep had been indiscriminately machine-gunned and left to rot.

One family in the Darwin suburb of Berrimah came home to find a sink full of dirty dishes and a garage stacked full of cases of Indonesian Composite Rations and more than a hundred cans of 5.56, 7.62 and .50 caliber ammunition. Their garden shed was stacked full of diesel fuel cans. They assumed that their house had been used as a TNI-AD supply cache of some sort.

Another family in the posh Darwin suburb of Cullen Bay returned to find that an Indonesian officer with a penchant for larceny had occupied their house. In just a few weeks he had accumulated thousands of pieces of loot, including dozens of oil paintings from several different galleries, sacks of gold and silver coins, dozens of pocket watches and wristwatches, several stamp collection albums, nearly a thousand audio CDs and Blu-ray DVDs, seventy-five laptop computers, 127 iPads, twenty-three Kindle readers, seventy-eight smartphones, and more than a dozen high-grade shotguns. It took months to track down the owners of these items.

Peter Jeffords reunited with Rhiannon and Sarah, and the three found that their rental house was just as they had left it, except for the musty smell that permeated all the rooms. It took three days to air out the house to Rhiannon's satisfaction.

Ava Palmer and her parents returned home to find that their house was also fine, except for a rank-smelling fish aquarium and a lawn that had grown so tall that their gas-powered lawn mower's grass catcher had to be emptied five times to complete the job. Their three vegetable gardens survived quite well despite the depredations of birds during their absence.

—

C
huck proposed to Ava Palmer two days after his army contract ended. She immediately accepted. Given the calamitous times they had just survived, neither wanted a long engagement. They decided to get married two weeks later at Casuarina Baptist Church. Ava's parents were delighted.

On the first weekend between his proposal and their wedding, there was an awards ceremony at Robertson Barracks. Caleb Burroughs was one of the organizers of the event. He arrived wearing his olive green Ceremonial Dress Uniform with Sam Browne belt and saber.

Chuck Nolan and Quentin Whittle were both to be awarded the Star of Courage. This silver star with a red and orange ribbon was awarded to civilians for “acts of conspicuous courage in circumstances of great peril.” They were among just fifteen civilians awarded the medal for their service in the recent conflict with Indonesia. Nine of those commendations were made posthumously, mostly to CAAAF volunteers.

Before the ceremony began, Samantha Kyle caught Caleb's eye, and he approached her. Smiling, he said, “Well, it's good to see you again. Miss Claymore, was it?”

She laughed and replied, “It's Samantha Kyle. I promise I'm not here to beg you for any more Claymore mines. They're going to give me a Commendation for Brave Conduct, for emplacing a few remote-control goodies. But honestly, I don't think the trifling things that I did deserve any recognition.”

Caleb shook his head. “Oh, quite the contrary! I'm told that it was the loss of their key leadership that made the Indos blink, and that it may have changed how everything got sorted out. You
do
deserve a commendation.”

After a pause he added, “Can I be so bold as to ask you to dinner, this evening?'

“Wouldn't that be considered fraternizing, since you're an officer?”

“Well, since you had
prior
service in Other Ranks and are now a civilian, technically no, it would
not
be considered fraternization. And I'd consider it an honor if you would accompany me.”

Samantha smiled and said, “Then yes. I'd be delighted.”

—

T
he church was well known locally as the Food for Life charity church because they operated a food bank. It was also a source of controversy after the church opened its doors to foreign asylum seekers who were held in detention. Most of them had been arrested immediately after arriving on Australian soil. Each Sunday, buses from three of the four detention centers around Darwin arrived and SERCO contract guards wearing their insipid pale blue uniforms escorted the detainee “clients” into the church building. The Christian detainees included Afghanis, Iranians, Nepalese, Sri Lankans, Turks, and Vietnamese.

The pastor, who had been a fireman earlier in his life, conducted the wedding ceremony. Caleb stood up as Chuck's best man. The church was quite crowded with the regular congregation, plus Ava's many local friends and several of Chuck's coworkers from AOGC, as well as several friends he had recently made while working at Site G. The Jeffords family was there, along with Paul Navarro, his grandson, Joseph, and Joseph's girlfriend.

Ava wore a white wedding dress that she had been preparing for six months. (She had seen the proposal coming.) Chuck wore his black “weddings and funerals” suit with a crimson red tie. It was a wool suit but made with lightweight fabric, in deference to the Texas climate, so it served him well in Australia. Ava insisted that Chuck wear his Star of Courage on his suit pocket.

Since the wedding was to be held immediately after the church service, the asylum seeker “clients” asked to stay late to attend. Many of the wedding pictures included both asylum-seeking detainees as well as their detention center guards in uniform. The pastor asked Chuck whether the extra guests bothered him, but he didn't mind. “The more the merrier,” Chuck said. “It was already an international wedding, so this just adds some more international color.”

One of the guests at the wedding was Samantha Kyle. Caleb had been courting her in earnest since they saw each other at the awards ceremony. Even though she had worked with Chuck only for one day—wiring the explosives at Robertson Barracks—she came to the wedding as Caleb's guest. Caleb was clearly smitten with Samantha. He took Chuck aside and confessed that he was already thinking about asking Samantha to marry him. Not wanting to discourage his friend, Chuck still considered it his duty to advise Caleb to be just a little more patient.

The ceremony was brief, but it included a gospel message for those attending in the Baptist tradition. They sang just one hymn, which dated back to eighth-century Ireland, “Be Thou My Vision”:

Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart;
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art.
Thou my best Thought, by day or by night,
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.

Be Thou my Wisdom, and Thou my true Word;
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord;
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son;
Thou in me dwelling, and I with Thee one.

Be Thou my battle Shield, Sword for the fight;
Be Thou my Dignity, Thou my Delight;
Thou my soul's Shelter, Thou my high Tower:
Raise Thou me heavenward, O Power of my power.

Riches I heed not, nor man's empty praise,
Thou mine Inheritance, now and always:
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,
High King of Heaven, my Treasure Thou art.

High King of Heaven, my victory won,
May I reach Heaven's joys, O bright Heaven's Sun!
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall,
Still be my Vision, O Ruler of all.

Ava had long been considered the most eligible and attractive young lady in the congregation. After the ceremony, as Chuck and Ava shook hands with everyone in a receiving line, one of the detention guards summed up how many of the young men in the church felt when he commented, “You don't know how many hearts you've broken today, Ava, but we all wish you half your luck.” This confused Chuck, who had never heard the expression. He just smiled and gave Ava a quizzical glance. Later, Ava explained to him that “half your luck” had been derived by shortening the phrase “I'd be happy if I had half your luck.”

“'Tis mine to seek for life in death,

Health in disease seek I,

I seek in prison freedom's breath,

In traitors loyalty.

So Fate that ever scorns to grant

Or grace or boon to me,

Since what can never be I want,

Denies me what might be.”

—Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra,
Don Quixote

S
till stinging from their defeat and hasty withdrawal from northern Australia, the Indonesian high command issued orders for a series of punishing raids. Not expecting to do any substantive damage, these raids were designed to boost morale and to demonstrate that Indonesia was still in the fight. If nothing else, they distracted the media's attention away from the unending parade of photos and interviews with bedraggled Republic of Indonesia (RI) soldiers and sailors who had made it out of Australia in the “miracle evacuation.” The Indonesian press was playing it up as a latter-day Dunkirk.

At the same time, Indonesia and Malaysia were dragging their feet on making their war reparations, which under the terms of the cease-fire agreement were primarily to be paid in the form of natural rubber. Once all of their soldiers, sailors, and aviators had been released and allowed to return home, their conciliatory tone changed to something more brash, Islam-centric, and nationalistic.

—

C
aptain Soekirnan Assegaf watched most of the invasion of Australia on television. Other than ferrying some communications security equipment to an invasion ship that had already left port, Assegaf and his patrol boat did not play a major part in the invasion effort. They were, however, involved in the aftermath. In mid-May, the
Sadarin
was tasked with ferrying a fourteen-man PKK commando team to infiltrate northern Australia for a sabotage mission. The orders were hand-carried by the commando team leader and included the seals of both the TNI-AL and BIN headquarters. To assure deniability, they included the proviso that the orders themselves were to be burned once
Sadarin
was within 125 miles of Australian waters.

To fit so many soldiers and all of their gear on board, Assegaf opted to crew his boat with just himself and three sailors. All three of them were in Assegaf's cell. Like Assegaf, they were Muslim in name only and therefore deemed expendable by their superiors. Suspecting they might be used as scapegoats, the sailors confided to him that they wanted to defect to Australia.

In the first leg of their mission the seas were rough, and some of the commandos were seasick. Assegaf watched the commandos do their daily prayers with quiet amusement. There was much debate each time about the direction of Mecca so they would be sure to bow down in the correct direction.

Instead of dropping them off on the coast north of Tiwi as he had been ordered, Assegaf deposited them on uninhabited North Vernon Island. In the dark of night, the commandos didn't know the difference. Watching his depth finder carefully, he crept up to the shore. Then he heard the familiar grind of beach sand at the ship's bow. The men jumped off in just two feet of water in very light surf. The beach ahead could just barely be seen in the moonlight. As soon as the last man had slipped over the bow, Assegaf gave a wave and reversed his engines.

A few minutes later, after sprinting off the beach and into some rolling dunes, the commandos unpacked one of their GPS receivers from one of their Chinese-made waterproof bags. It was then that they learned they had been deceived.

Wishing to look inoffensive when they surrendered, Assegaf and his crew dismounted the Browning .50s from the ship. Working in pairs, they carried them below to stow in their canvas cases. They hoisted a white flag that was fashioned from a bedsheet.

As they pulled
Sadarin
up to the newly installed floating dock at Fannie Bay, they were greeted by the muzzles of more than twenty guns held by Australian civilians. Captain Assegaf shouted to the gathered crowd, “We are here to surrender this ship and to seek asylum. I also need to tell you about fourteen Special Forces soldiers I stranded last night on North Vernon Island. They are heavily armed and I'm sure that by now they're as mad as Tasmanian Devils.”