Winter Kill 2 - China Invades Australia

by Gene Skellig

  Some of the Australian and Indian officers headed out to grab their cell-phones and try to check in with their commands, but most stayed in the theatre to listen as the senior officers had an urgent pow-wow.

  Colonel Ferebee looked around the room quickly, a man whose blood was up from making life-and-death decisions for the past half hour. He focused on a group of Indian men clustered together. “Group Captain Gahrwal, I don’t know where you and your team fit in to all of this, but you are welcome to consider yourselves a lodger unit within MAGTFA, and ask for anything you need. We’ll do what we can to help you once you know your own plans,” Ferebee said to the Indian Air Force officer serving as Military Attaché to Australia. He and his contingent of officers from the Indian Air Force and Indian Army had been in Darwin to observe the exercise with the Marines.

  “That’s all I needed to hear,” Gahrwal said. “There are nine of us and we’ve got our own gear and transportation. We should be able to take care of ourselves. We’ll check in with your MPs at the rendezvous. Thank you, Colonel.” He departed with the rest of his team on his heels jabbering away at each other in a language that sounded like English, but not exactly.

  General Davis stepped over to Captain Thorne, the platoon commander from 1st Commando Regiment of the Australian Special Ops Command. “What about you, Captain? You going to throw in with the Americans, or operate independently?”

  “If it’s all the same to you, General, until I hear from Sydney or Perth, I think we’ll make our own arrangements. We’ll touch base with you lot at your rendezvous once we know our mission.”

  “Good on ya, Captain, carry on,” said the General, who then seemed to have made up his mind and addressed the remaining personnel in the room, mostly from RAA’s 1st Division.

  “Until I get confirmation from 1st Division in Brisbane, or from 2nd Division in Sydney, I’m going to use my authority as Commander 1st Brigade, Darwin, to order the following: All 1st Brigade personnel scheduled to participate in EXERCISE ROPE-A-DOPE shall go along with the Marines, as per Colonel Ferebee’s comments. That’s mostly 1st Armored Regiment and elements of 5th Battalion. For everybody else, we’ll carry out some combat operational planning on the fly and activate our Base Defense Forces here at Robertson Barracks for Chemical-Biological-Radiological-Nuclear attack. We will NOT disperse the entire base, however we will deploy advance parties of 1 Combat Engineering Regiment, the 8/12 Artillery Regiment, the 5th Battalion and the 2nd Cavalry Regiment as per STANDING CONPLAN ALBATROSS,” he said, turning to Colonel Ferebee to add: “That’s the Force Protection and Dispersal Plan we talked about a while back, Colonel Ferebee. We’ll check with our G5 on this, but from my recollection, it’s essentially a no-notice field deployment to our range in the Fly Creek area, here,” he indicated on the map he had pulled from his well-worn, old-style leather map case.

  Ferebee looked at the point on the map. “I’ve visited that range. You’ve got some good facilities there, if a bit austere for a command element. But that looks like a good spot for now. But just so I understand, your advance parties will be there with a view to potentially making that your mobilization area, if you disperse additional forces out of Darwin? And in the mean-time you are ramping up Force Protection measures, CBRN, and base defense forces, other than the units detached along with the MAGTFA?”

  “Quite right, Colonel. We have to be here to defend Darwin and our critical infrastructure. And it will take a few days to mobilize our reserve units. I have to strike a balance. So that’s the part that will be left behind. You’ve got our Colonel Harper with our units that are now, effectively, part of this Combined Joint Task Force you are standing up. That’ll have to do for now, we’ve got to see to our units now. We’ll track you down on the radios, later this morning. Agreed?”

  “Sir!”

  “Ta,” General Adams said, as he zipped up his own notepad and headed out of the room, moving with a sense of purpose that was in sharp contrast to the sloth-like manner he had shown less than thirty minutes earlier.

  With that, the theatre emptied as the few remaining Marines and Australian Army personnel scattered.

  Had it not been for the fact that EXERCISE ROPE-A-DOPE had originally been scheduled for an 0600 H-hour, the vehicles and kit for the core elements of MAGTFA would not have been sitting around in assembly areas, ready to go. The carefully planned seating assignments, order of march, vehicle spacing and interval timing planned for ROPE-A-DOPE was now completely out the window. The highly flexible Marines understood that dispersion meant throw yourself up the road, impose order on chaos and don’t stand around waiting to be told what to do. The men and women of 3rd Marines were masters at choreographing the complex movements of a battalion on the fly.

  As he watched the vehicles pulling into line with speed and efficiency, Colonel Ferebee was confident that his Marines would arrive at the Mount Bundy training area in good order, ready for anything.

  After a few more words with Major Blakely, walking with him towards a line of Humvees outside the building loaned to the 3rd Marines to use as their Headquarters, he jumped into his command vehicle and sped off, leading a short convoy comprised of the headquarters element.

  They were not the first Marines to depart the grounds of Robertson Barracks. Lead elements and security details had begun darting out in the preceding five to ten minutes. The remaining Light Armored Vehicles, trucks, fuel bowsers, water trucks, supply trucks, support vehicles, Humvees and other vehicles of the MAGTFA followed in convoy groups that stretched out for over a kilometer, their tail lights snaking up the highway like a coiled snake in the pre-dawn darkness.

  As the Marines flowed smoothly out of Robertson Barracks in a precise, efficient manner, the Australian Army units beginning to disperse out of Robertson Barracks to their own dispersal site at Fly Creek were more of a disorderly exodus. The off-duty Australian personnel got their instructions by word of mouth or telephone, but it was the unexpected escalation of noise and rumbling activity of an army on the move that really woke everybody up, including the Australian civilians in Darwin.

  Unlike the main force of the MAGTFA, which was to go to Mount Bundy for the initial mobilization, Colonel Ferebee and his Headquarters element headed to Fly Creek, where the lead element of the Headquarters Battalion were already setting up a brigade HQ by the time General Adams own staff showed up.

  Some sixty six kilometers inland from Darwin, Fly Creek lay a dozen kilometers off the main highway, to the west, in a remote area. It would not have been Ferebee’s first choice, as he would have preferred to set up much farther inland. However Fly Creek would put Colonel Ferebee within easy reach of his forces while also giving him good access to the Australian chain of command. It was not ideal, but would allow him to focus on the strategic situation sooner, with his CP set up faster than if he went farther inland. In any case, we’ve got our USMC rotary wing resources dispersing from the airstrip in Darwin, so at least we have some air power to work with. But we need more, a heck of a lot more, Ferebee thought, hoping to hear good news about the Royal Australian Air Force’s fighter force.

  Donning the headset that had been handed to him as soon as he had sat down in his command HMVW, Colonel Ferebee listened to the communications feed that his radio operator had piped in to the headset. They had tuned into a variety of UHF, VHF and HF frequencies assigned to the Australian Defense Force, in order to build a picture of the battle space as it began to take shape. There were numerous confirmed reports of Chinese land forces deploying out of small port cities and aerodromes, immediately engaging in combat operations. Coming as a complete surprise, the attacks had the Australians reeling. They had nothing in place to stop the massive invasion and this terrible situation was in addition to the horrors faced by those affected by the nuclear attacks at Australia’s largest cities.

  What Ferebee heard shocked him, but also confirmed that dispersal had been the right decision. Sydney had been nuked, along with Brisbane, Canberra and a number of
military installations in New South Wales and Queensland. There were reports of ambushes, sabotage and small skirmishes throughout the east coast of Australia, and the complete decapitation of the national civilian and military authorities with the destruction of the Australian Capital Territory and the capital, Canberra.

  What was left of the two divisions of the Australian Army, perhaps a brigade or two, were scattered across the country and faced with what appeared to be an ever-growing enemy force, of at least Group Army size. Likely multiple Group Armies organized into smaller Task Forces, following a well-rehearsed set of plans, he estimated.

  With the overwhelming size of the enemy force added to the shock of the destruction of the Australian military bases and most important cities, it was no surprise to hear the desperation and panic coming across the radio nets. Australia was utterly devastated, facing complete destruction. Much of the radio chatter was incomprehensible due to overlapping transmissions. However there was a gradual trend towards panic being replaced with grim determination, with units popping onto the net to report that they had been activated and were dispersing, or reporting having been rendered combat ineffective due to disastrous interference, pre-emption by the enemy, and sabotage. It now appeared that China, with boots on the ground engaged in combat in Australia, must somehow be behind the nuclear attacks. It was the only rational explanation, but identifying the scale of the Chinese gambit helped Ferebee come to grips with his task, and it was daunting to say the least.

  But there was also some good news, beginning to form a picture in Colonel Ferebee’s mind. Adelaide, Perth, and Darwin had been saved by the Air Warfare destroyers that somehow happened to be on alert in or near those port cities, providing a 200 nautical mile anti-missile umbrella and preserving Royal Australian Army, Navy and Air Force units and saving countless civilian lives in the process. These surviving units comprised no more than one-third of the original fighting power, perhaps 30,000 personnel all tolled. With just under 2,500 Marines under his command with the Marine Air Ground Task Force Australia, Colonel Ferebee considered his mission to hurt the Chinese anywhere he could, more than the defense and liberation of Australia. It just so happened that Australia was where his piece of the global war was to be fought. However, he knew that the enemy had the upper hand and were pouring in their follow-on forces through the airfields and ports they had already seized. But Australia was an immense country, a continent really, and with the enemy largely confined to the east coast, from Cairns to Melbourne, the rest of the Australian continent was still free.

  The more damage we can inflict on the Chinese here in Australia, the better for the overall war effort, and for America, he thought, as he watched one of his planners annotate his map while their Humvee sped along the highway. Everybody listened to the chatter from the Australian Army radio nets, but the young Captain sitting next to Colonel Ferebee was marking his map with symbols to indicate friendly and enemy units, disposition and strength.

  The battle-space was beginning to take shape.

  Colonel Ferebee’s mind had begun to drift to another battlefield, nearly two centuries before, where a man faced similarly overwhelming odds, with only 1,500 men to stand up to an entire army of ruthless invaders.

  Thinking of the vastness of the Australian continent, the hostile terrain between the enemy and himself, and the extremely limited lines of communication in terms of rail and road, he saw himself in a similar context to the man who brought Texas into the United States. Colonel Ferebee imagined how it must have been for General Sam Houston back in 1836.

  In just that moment of reflection, Colonel Ferebee became inspired. That’s our Centre of Gravity: Time and Space, he realized, and then sprang into action with his staff, laying out how he intended that the Marines and Australians would use their one advantage to maximum effect.

  While Colonel Ferebee and the other Marines and military personnel were putting distance between themselves and Darwin, the Duty Watch staff and dispatchers of the Northern Territory Police, Fire and Emergency Services finally understood why the Navy and Army bases were suddenly on full alert. The emergency response agencies in Darwin began to call in all of their off-duty personnel to fully activate the Northern Territorial Government’s Emergency Operations Center, NTEOC.

  They had already been active, dispatching police and ambulance crews to a reported shooting at a vehicle storage yard just outside of the city limits. The first officers to arrive had been gunned down in a hail of gunfire, with only one officer making it out of the ambush alive. The Staff Sergeant on duty was still piecing the details together as he scrambled to put together something of a plan to contain the situation at the Toyota vehicle storage facility when he learned that their homeland had been attacked. He was not certain that the two events were related; however he knew that he needed all hands on deck, and a fully ramped-up EOC.

  While the police staff were busy force generating police and other emergency personnel, the other personnel of the NTEOC were busy ramping up, carrying out a snowball-style recall of key personnel. They were also firing up the computers, communications systems, and turning on as many different television channels as they could display on their ‘Wall of Knowledge’ to try to get some idea about what was going on.

  After giving up on Channels 7, 9, and 10 from Sydney, and Channel ABC Brisbane, they found a few channels out of Adelaide and Perth that were on the air, along with BBC World News out of Kuala Lumpur. There was a great deal of confusion, with bewildered newscasters struggling to handle the avalanche of reports of nuclear attacks in countries throughout the world.

  With images of mushroom clouds coming in from a variety of feeds, the morning news anchor from Adelaide had reached her wit’s end and had some sort of nervous breakdown. She was quickly replaced by her producer, who took over the broadcast. However, he was barely able to keep it together himself when the sheer scale of the crisis became clear; untold millions of people were dying the world over.

  At first there had been a few dozen channels on the air, coming from various satellite feeds. Every so often, one after another, major news channels suddenly went off the air. In the cases of BBC World News Asia in Kuala Lumpur going off the air it was soon evident from a report on another channel that the Malaysian capital had just been hit with an atomic weapon.

  As operations staff of the territorial EOC continued to call in and wake up any of the police, fire and ambulance first responders who had not been woken up by the rumbling military mobilization, and more and more information came in, it suddenly dawned on them.

  “Darwin could be next!” shouted a 911 dispatcher, who had left her desk in the communications cell and stuck her head into the EOC to see what was going on.

  “Maybe we should evacuate the city, just in case,” said one of the white-shirted officials from the Fire & Paramedic Service.

  “There’s not enough time for that. If we are going to be hit, it will be in the next few hours, I reckon,” said one of the cops from the Northern Territory Police Force.

  “So what should we do? We can’t just sit here.”

  “Maybe we should do what the military are doing, and disperse some of our key personnel and equipment. Maybe we should send some fire-trucks, ambulances and police out of the city. That way, they could be intact, and operational at a safe distance, and return after the city is attacked,” said the dispatcher.

  “Good on ya’, Sally! That’s the best idea I’ve heard all morning. What do you think, gang? Let’s do that. At least then we’ve got a plan,” said the Senior Watch Officer.

  “You’re in charge, Robbie. At least until the Mayor gets here. I’m sure she will agree, so why don’t you go ahead and give the order, and we’ll all get behind it!” said the senior police officer.

  “Bugger me!” the Staff Sergeant said, and then paused to collect himself. “Everybody, you hear that? We are going to order all emergency response resources, police, fire, ambulance – the crews and rigs out of the city. Sally
, pass it on to the other dispatchers, and get them started.”

  “Roger, Sir,” she said, happy to finally know what to do. She clicked the transmit button on the Wi-Fi transmitter clipped to her waist and spoke into her headset as she returned to her workstation in the adjacent room.

  “What else can we do?” asked the Senior Watch Officer.

  “What is the military term? For stuff like electrical power, water, engineering works and so on?” asked one of the paramedics.

  “Critical Infrastructure,” said the cop, surprised that she did not know even the most basic of terms. She’s probably never even read our Emergency Operations Plan, but she’s the one who showed up to man her station, so she’ll have to do, he thought.

  “Right, people! We’ve got this big brick of an EOP, and no time to read it. Why don’t we simply use the recall contacts for anything that sounds like critical infrastructure, and try to alert them to send their vehicles, mobile equipment and technical types out of harm’s way?”

  “So we are evacuating the entire city, only just starting with essential personnel and equipment? How will that look for the citizens at large?” asked someone who had just arrived, a step ahead of the Mayor.

  The Staff Sergeant recognized the Mayor as she strode through the door. “Oh, your honor, you’re here! Good on ya. We need you like you would not believe. Are you aware that we are at war?”

  She quickly looked around the NTEOC and then at the Staff Sergeant. “Yes, I heard it on the radio and saw some of it on the tellie downstairs. I heard you’ve begun sending units out of town. Dispersion? Great idea. Where are we after that? Have we started the full evacuation?”

  “No, not yet. We were discussing it, but right now we’re thinking about the critical infrastructure. Shouldn’t we try to send the engineers, line crews, and so on out first, before the public chokes up Highway One?”