Yesterda's War 8 - Untimely Warriors, page 30
“I will call the RAAF Headquarters to see if they can send us some additional pilots. If they can’t provide the aircraft, they should still be able to dig up some pilots from somewhere. In any event, the RAAF is planning on staging some of their FB-80s at our airfield here at Derby because the Militia and Derby Aerospace have constructed several hardened aircraft shelters there at the airfield.” Corrine replied.
“We will need to position some additional antiaircraft defenses here to cover the airfield since it will obviously become a higher priority target.” Colonel Andersen noted.
“We can arrange for that as long as you can provide the trained personnel to operate those weapons. This is the reason why we have provided you with the funding for training, Paul.” James replied.
“Yes, Sir. We will make it happen. I am making arrangements with the Army to set up additional air defense units as well. I know that you have already pushed a lot of the militia’s air defense kit towards the coast and certain critical sites like the shipyards and the space launch center.” Major Wells insisted.
“Yes, the protection of those facilities is a standing priority for the Militia in the event of any armed conflict. If something major were to happen to them, it would not only seriously damage Cavill Industries but also the entire Australian economy as well.
I don’t think that anyone here would dare risk that. Do you?” James asked.
“No, I’m sure that none of us here would want that to happen either. Hopefully, the navy can get their collective asses out of port and start pushing back on the damned Indonesians so that the chances of anything getting out this far will hopefully drop down to exactly zero.” Colonel Andersen replied.
Chapter Thirty-Seven:
Cavill Shipping Lines Motorship Cormorant
West of Indonesia
March 3, 1999
It was early morning that day a few hours before dawn for Cormorant and her crew as they sailed east towards a certain battle with the Indonesian military. Cormorant’s First Officer Marianne Nichols was standing on the ship’s darkened bridge when Captain Willis walked in.
“G’Morning, Sir. I hope that you were able to get a few winks in last night.” Marianne warmly said in greeting.”
“A couple. Fortunately, the galley had a fresh pot of coffee made when I stopped by on the way up here. I was able to pick up a couple of cups before I came up here.” Arthur said before reaching out a hand with a steaming cup of coffee in it towards Marianne. She had not seen what the captain had in his hands in the darkness earlier.
“Bless you, Sir. I have been dying for a fresh cup of coffee.” Marianne replied as she took the offered cup and sipped from it.
“It’s going to be a busy day, I’m afraid.” Arthur said as he looked out over the Cormorant’s deck while drinking from his own cup of coffee.
“Yes, you’re probably right. But that is what we signed up for. Isn’t it, Sir?”
“Fair Dinkum, Marianne. But if we wanted to live a boring life, we’d have taken an office job.” Arthur replied with a broad smile and a chuckle.
“I know. But the problem is that the second anyone actually sees us, they are going to know that we are not a regular container ship, Sir. This is especially true if they see us from the air or if they see our ski-jump ramp on our bow.”
“Remember that we’ve placed a couple of shipping containers on either side of the ramp so that it’s not quite so obvious to anyone looking at the ship from another ship.”
“We’ve still got this offset superstructure that looks to all of the world like something associated with an aircraft carrier though.”
“Perhaps so. But there are over twenty ships of this class that we have built. While quite a few of them have gone into military service in several navies, no one can risk taking a shot at an anonymous Cormorant-class ship simply on appearance alone. The odds are that they will either hit a purely civilian ship or a ship belonging to another nation’s navy.
Even the Indonesians cannot afford to provoke another country to get involved in this fight against them.” Arthur reminded.
“So what do our bosses in Derby want us to do to make life a bit spicy for our Indonesian ‘friends’? I’m sure that we have additional orders by now, Sir.”
“Yes. As a matter of fact, we do. Before I came up here, I had a little chat with our ground contingent. In a few minutes, we are about to send off a couple of our Hummingbirds to land commando teams to scout the enemy airfields and anything else that they think might be a high-value target.”
“How are they going to get around once we land them, Sir?”
“They are going on horseback. So the people in our onboard stable are already getting their mounts and equipment ready. Besides, people might suspect people driving by in a vehicle or even a motorbike. But riding horseback is so archaic to many people that they wouldn’t suspect it being employed in modern warfare. It’s also a hell of a lot quieter than a motor vehicle as well.”
Two Hummingbird transport tilt-wing transports were brought up on Cormorant’s flight deck in preparation. Inside each aircraft, a team of five personnel and six horses was inside, with the extra horse being a pack animal with additional supplies, weapons, and ammunition.
Shortly afterward, the two tilt-wing transports quickly lifted off from Cormorant’s flight deck and sped just above the wave tops eastward towards a point just south of the port of Surabaya.
The flight was near the extreme range of the Hummingbirds. However, the crews were confident that they would be able to penetrate Indonesian airspace without any difficulties. After all, the Indonesians were going to be looking for opposition to be coming in from the east, not from the west. Escorting the two tilt-wing transports were a pair of swift, deadly Archer compound attack helicopters. Armed with missiles, rockets, and a rapid-firing 30mm cannon, the Archers could neutralize virtually anything that they encountered while being swift enough to stay with the Hummingbirds.
Cormorant’s tilt-wings reached the lightly inhabited beach and quickly landed. The rear ramps on the two tilt-wings were already down when the landing gear touched the sand. The commando teams immediately led their horses off of the aircraft and into the nearby tree line.
The entire time between landing and taking off again to return to Cormorant only took the two Hummingbirds less than a minute to accomplish. The Archers immediately followed.
Cormorant’s sister ship, Heron left King Sound at about the same time that Cormorant launched her mission. However, Heron had a much more difficult time as she made her way north through the Timor Sea towards Papua. But it was hoped that a last-minute addition to Heron’s weapons loadout would help with that.
Heron had a much different mission though as she made her way towards the combat zone, as evidenced by what her disguised missile launchers carried inside of them. But Heron also had far more air support available to her as Derby Militia and RAAF pilots flew combat air patrols over the Timor Sea. There were also several unmanned aircraft that flew overhead as well to provide surveillance and defensive support.
But the most unusual part would be the three large trucks that had been loaded into Heron’s vehicle bay minutes before she departed from Cavill Shipyards. Those trucks each had a very unusual large box whose purpose was not clear to anyone casually observing them.
The ISS ship deployed her towed sonar array and her unmanned rotary-wing drones at the first opportunity because of the known presence of Indonesian submarines in the area.
Chapter Thirty-Eight:
Hwy 1, Near Atat,
Papua, New Guinea
March 3, 1999
Elements of the Derby Militia were among the first troops to land at Port Moresby and begin the move to the west to confront the Indonesian invaders. They were ordered to get there as quickly as possible to relieve the besieged handful of Australian soldiers that were already there when the invasion began.
The first elements came in aboard several Goliath heavy cargo transport aircraft. As it was important to get as many people and vehicles as possible quickly. The first flights carried mostly infantry and light armored vehicles. The heavier vehicles were following behind in the slower, but much larger Wing in Ground Effect craft.
One of the most important things that Cavill Industries had done to New Guinea was to vastly improve its network of roads. While they were still basically two-lane roads, they made it possible for vehicles to move relatively quickly from Port Moresby through Mendi and westward across the island to Loemida, south of the Bismarck Range of mountains.
A small tracked vehicle sat by the side of the road. It massed only about ten tons, though it was armed with a long-barreled cannon in the turret that sat on the rear of its hull. This new vehicle was designed to be fast, yet very quiet with a rubber band track system and a hybrid diesel-electric powertrain that could move the lightly-armored vehicle short distances on battery power alone. The commander and gunner both had sophisticated optical and thermal sensors available to them to search for enemy units.
Captain Archibald Conway stood out of the top of his armored recon vehicle and watched as a quartet of big eight-wheeled tank destroyers roared up towards his position. He had seen them before when the Derby Militia had received the first production models of the armored vehicles. The 120mm smoothbore tank guns that the tank destroyers mounted in their turrets were most impressive, Archie had to admit. He had seen them before in the Militia motor pool while their crew was loading the big 120mm rounds into the bustle-mounted autoloader in the rear of the turret.
The lead tank destroyer skidded to a stop, with the following three vehicles pulling off of the road in a herringbone pattern with their guns facing outward. The remote weapons station located on top of each turret traversed around to scan the entire area before pointing its light automatic cannon and coaxial machine gun forward.
The armored door in the large vehicle’s rear hull opened up. Then a short, but stocky Aborigine soldier wearing a camouflage uniform, body armor vest, and a combat crewman’s helmet climbed out and walked towards Archie.
“G’Day, Captain. Are you our escort to the front lines?” Captain Johnny Taylor asked.
“I reckon so. I’ve got three more tracked recon vehicles and four-wheeled scout cars with me that are up a little further ahead right now. Are these the only vehicles with you?” Archie asked.
“That’s all that’s here so far. The rest of my company will be coming on a later flight. The WiGEs are currently bringing in a mixed bag of vehicles and supply containers. Colonel Andersen is trying to make sure that we have all of the ammo, fuel, and other supplies that we will need. I’ve got supply and fuel trucks coming up behind me in a little while plus some other armored vehicles. But we have enough kit with us to keep us supplied for a couple of days.”
“What else have you seen come in with you, Captain?” Archie asked.
“You should be seeing them for yourself in a couple of minutes. There should be a company of mechanized infantry along with a battery of self-propelled artillery coming along momentarily.” Captain Taylor replied as he looked down the road where he came.
Sure enough, the rumble of armored vehicles could be heard in the distance coming up behind the tank destroyers. The first to arrive were more than a dozen eight-wheeled armored vehicles with the same remote weapons station on top of each vehicle’s hull that the tank destroyers had on their turrets. The armored infantry vehicles had roughly the same chassis as the tank destroyers but with a slightly taller hull and no turret.
Half of the armored infantry vehicles pulled up past Captain Conway’s recon vehicle while the rest interspaced themselves amidst the tank destroyers.
Finally, four massive ten-wheeled vehicles pulled up behind the rest of the group. Their large wedge-shaped armored cabs were the same as for the standard Militia and Australian Army’s heavy lift cargo truck and semi-tractor chassis. But instead of a conventional cargo bed or a crane to lift a standard forty-foot cargo container, the rear of the truck had a large armored turret with a 155mm, 60 caliber howitzer pointing forward from it. The turret had an automatic loader that was able to fire two dozen shells before needing to be replenished.
Like the other vehicles, it also had a remote weapons station. But in this case, it was located on top of the cab.
”I guess that this is our fire support.” Captain Conway quipped.
“Well, they do give us a pretty big stick in case we need it. I understand that with the right ammunition, they can hit a target at over sixty kilometers away.”
“That will certainly come in handy. But will they be enough?” Archie asked.
“I know that there will be a lot more coming.”
“Don’t you have any air defense vehicles with you?”
“They’ve been keeping them all around Port Moresby to defend the port there. Hopefully, they will be able to push some vehicles forward soon. But I know that our infantry are carrying some MANPADS with them just in case we get attacked. Also, those automatic cannons on top of our vehicles are pretty damned good at killing low-flying helicopters too.”
“From what our recon aircraft have reported, the Indonesians have already managed to land a few tanks. Who knows how many more tanks and other vehicles have also been landed as well.”
“I seriously doubt that we will run into anything that my vehicles can’t outgun, Captain. So if you run into anything, just slide on out of the way and point us in the right direction. We will take care of it. Besides, you only have that popgun on your vehicles.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call this six-centimeter automatic cannon, a ‘popgun’. It can punch through pretty much anything out there except for the front of a main battle tank. We work very hard not to be sitting in front of one of those things too.”
As the two officers spoke, additional vehicles pulled up including fuel and supply trucks.
Well, now that everyone is here, we better get moving, Mates. Be sure not to get too bunched up. We don’t want to be too easy of a target for any enemy aircraft that just happens to be flying around here. You can be sure that they will be watching the road here.” Archie told the others that had gathered there before he got back inside his armored recon tank. A few minutes later, the entire convoy was moving westward at over forty kilometers an hour.
Chapter Thirty-Nine:
Cavill Commando Team #1
Near Highway 3
Lumajang, Indonesia
March 3, 1999
First Lieutenant Corbin Towers and his team of commandoes had ridden nearly a hundred kilometers through the Indonesian jungles. Their primary task at this point was to report military movements back to Derby through the satellite radio that they brought with them. But their orders soon changed.
“Well, mates. It looks like we have been ordered to raise a bit of hell in the Indonesia rear. The lads in New Guinea are having some problems since the Australian Navy has had some problems getting into the fight because some wanker had laid mines outside their bases.” Lieutenant Towers explained to the rear of his team.
“So we are actually going to get to shoot at someone finally?” Staff Sergeant Robert Riley asked with a sly smile. The tall, slender soldier with short-cropped blonde hair had joined the Derby Militia a couple of years earlier after serving with the Australian SAS for nearly a decade.
“Yes, I’m afraid so. But, let’s also remember that there are just the five of us here. The other team has the same orders, but they are working in a different area. Our job is to continue to gather intelligence, but also to harass their convoys, destroy equipment, and disrupt the movement of their units towards New Guinea.
That means that we will have to hit hard, run fast, and then hide well.”
“I think that we can manage that, Sir.” Sergeant Milton Parsons added.
The other two members of the team, Corporals Earl Orinson and Patrick Fitzsimmons readily agreed as well.
The team’s original mission may have been long-range reconnaissance, but they were still very heavily armed. Each ISS commando carried an Australian Army standard-issue assault rifle chambered in 6.5mm that was fitted for a sound suppressor and had sophisticated optical sights. They also carried a 6.5mm high-velocity semi-automatic pistol as a sidearm.
All of the commandos also carried a variety of hand and rifle grenades, including large numbers of the Dutch-designed V40 4cm miniature hand grenade. The V40 was only about the size of a golf ball and could easily be thrown the entire length of a soccer field.
The team had a shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenade launcher with over a dozen grenades for the launcher. The grenades were designed to penetrate the armor of a heavily armored tank but also had a fragmentation sleeve around their warhead to enhance their anti-personnel effects at the same time.
To supplement the RPG launcher, the team also had a heavy anti-materiel rifle that was chambered in the same fifty-caliber round that the American M2 heavy machine gun employed.
Sergeant Parsons and Corporal Orinson each also carried a lightweight repeating crossbow for virtually silent engagement of personnel targets.
Finally, each commando had a lightweight body armor vest and a personal protective mask if chemical or biological agents were used against them in the latter case.
Each commando was highly skilled with every weapon that they had at their disposal. Had this team brought a mortar or a man-portable antiaircraft missile, they could have skillfully employed them as well.
“Let’s mount up then and move out to find some trouble to get into.” Lieutenant Towers told the rest of the team.
A minute later, the team rode towards the nearby Highway 3. The commandos already knew from previous observation that Indonesian military convoys frequently traveled east towards the ports that the invasion ships sailed from.
The team also intended to visit some level of destruction and disruption towards the nearby Indonesian Air Force bases of Pangkalan Udara Soewondo, Mako TNI at Lanud Nguarh Rai, and Au Adi Soenarmo if the opportunity availed itself.
“We will need to position some additional antiaircraft defenses here to cover the airfield since it will obviously become a higher priority target.” Colonel Andersen noted.
“We can arrange for that as long as you can provide the trained personnel to operate those weapons. This is the reason why we have provided you with the funding for training, Paul.” James replied.
“Yes, Sir. We will make it happen. I am making arrangements with the Army to set up additional air defense units as well. I know that you have already pushed a lot of the militia’s air defense kit towards the coast and certain critical sites like the shipyards and the space launch center.” Major Wells insisted.
“Yes, the protection of those facilities is a standing priority for the Militia in the event of any armed conflict. If something major were to happen to them, it would not only seriously damage Cavill Industries but also the entire Australian economy as well.
I don’t think that anyone here would dare risk that. Do you?” James asked.
“No, I’m sure that none of us here would want that to happen either. Hopefully, the navy can get their collective asses out of port and start pushing back on the damned Indonesians so that the chances of anything getting out this far will hopefully drop down to exactly zero.” Colonel Andersen replied.
Chapter Thirty-Seven:
Cavill Shipping Lines Motorship Cormorant
West of Indonesia
March 3, 1999
It was early morning that day a few hours before dawn for Cormorant and her crew as they sailed east towards a certain battle with the Indonesian military. Cormorant’s First Officer Marianne Nichols was standing on the ship’s darkened bridge when Captain Willis walked in.
“G’Morning, Sir. I hope that you were able to get a few winks in last night.” Marianne warmly said in greeting.”
“A couple. Fortunately, the galley had a fresh pot of coffee made when I stopped by on the way up here. I was able to pick up a couple of cups before I came up here.” Arthur said before reaching out a hand with a steaming cup of coffee in it towards Marianne. She had not seen what the captain had in his hands in the darkness earlier.
“Bless you, Sir. I have been dying for a fresh cup of coffee.” Marianne replied as she took the offered cup and sipped from it.
“It’s going to be a busy day, I’m afraid.” Arthur said as he looked out over the Cormorant’s deck while drinking from his own cup of coffee.
“Yes, you’re probably right. But that is what we signed up for. Isn’t it, Sir?”
“Fair Dinkum, Marianne. But if we wanted to live a boring life, we’d have taken an office job.” Arthur replied with a broad smile and a chuckle.
“I know. But the problem is that the second anyone actually sees us, they are going to know that we are not a regular container ship, Sir. This is especially true if they see us from the air or if they see our ski-jump ramp on our bow.”
“Remember that we’ve placed a couple of shipping containers on either side of the ramp so that it’s not quite so obvious to anyone looking at the ship from another ship.”
“We’ve still got this offset superstructure that looks to all of the world like something associated with an aircraft carrier though.”
“Perhaps so. But there are over twenty ships of this class that we have built. While quite a few of them have gone into military service in several navies, no one can risk taking a shot at an anonymous Cormorant-class ship simply on appearance alone. The odds are that they will either hit a purely civilian ship or a ship belonging to another nation’s navy.
Even the Indonesians cannot afford to provoke another country to get involved in this fight against them.” Arthur reminded.
“So what do our bosses in Derby want us to do to make life a bit spicy for our Indonesian ‘friends’? I’m sure that we have additional orders by now, Sir.”
“Yes. As a matter of fact, we do. Before I came up here, I had a little chat with our ground contingent. In a few minutes, we are about to send off a couple of our Hummingbirds to land commando teams to scout the enemy airfields and anything else that they think might be a high-value target.”
“How are they going to get around once we land them, Sir?”
“They are going on horseback. So the people in our onboard stable are already getting their mounts and equipment ready. Besides, people might suspect people driving by in a vehicle or even a motorbike. But riding horseback is so archaic to many people that they wouldn’t suspect it being employed in modern warfare. It’s also a hell of a lot quieter than a motor vehicle as well.”
Two Hummingbird transport tilt-wing transports were brought up on Cormorant’s flight deck in preparation. Inside each aircraft, a team of five personnel and six horses was inside, with the extra horse being a pack animal with additional supplies, weapons, and ammunition.
Shortly afterward, the two tilt-wing transports quickly lifted off from Cormorant’s flight deck and sped just above the wave tops eastward towards a point just south of the port of Surabaya.
The flight was near the extreme range of the Hummingbirds. However, the crews were confident that they would be able to penetrate Indonesian airspace without any difficulties. After all, the Indonesians were going to be looking for opposition to be coming in from the east, not from the west. Escorting the two tilt-wing transports were a pair of swift, deadly Archer compound attack helicopters. Armed with missiles, rockets, and a rapid-firing 30mm cannon, the Archers could neutralize virtually anything that they encountered while being swift enough to stay with the Hummingbirds.
Cormorant’s tilt-wings reached the lightly inhabited beach and quickly landed. The rear ramps on the two tilt-wings were already down when the landing gear touched the sand. The commando teams immediately led their horses off of the aircraft and into the nearby tree line.
The entire time between landing and taking off again to return to Cormorant only took the two Hummingbirds less than a minute to accomplish. The Archers immediately followed.
Cormorant’s sister ship, Heron left King Sound at about the same time that Cormorant launched her mission. However, Heron had a much more difficult time as she made her way north through the Timor Sea towards Papua. But it was hoped that a last-minute addition to Heron’s weapons loadout would help with that.
Heron had a much different mission though as she made her way towards the combat zone, as evidenced by what her disguised missile launchers carried inside of them. But Heron also had far more air support available to her as Derby Militia and RAAF pilots flew combat air patrols over the Timor Sea. There were also several unmanned aircraft that flew overhead as well to provide surveillance and defensive support.
But the most unusual part would be the three large trucks that had been loaded into Heron’s vehicle bay minutes before she departed from Cavill Shipyards. Those trucks each had a very unusual large box whose purpose was not clear to anyone casually observing them.
The ISS ship deployed her towed sonar array and her unmanned rotary-wing drones at the first opportunity because of the known presence of Indonesian submarines in the area.
Chapter Thirty-Eight:
Hwy 1, Near Atat,
Papua, New Guinea
March 3, 1999
Elements of the Derby Militia were among the first troops to land at Port Moresby and begin the move to the west to confront the Indonesian invaders. They were ordered to get there as quickly as possible to relieve the besieged handful of Australian soldiers that were already there when the invasion began.
The first elements came in aboard several Goliath heavy cargo transport aircraft. As it was important to get as many people and vehicles as possible quickly. The first flights carried mostly infantry and light armored vehicles. The heavier vehicles were following behind in the slower, but much larger Wing in Ground Effect craft.
One of the most important things that Cavill Industries had done to New Guinea was to vastly improve its network of roads. While they were still basically two-lane roads, they made it possible for vehicles to move relatively quickly from Port Moresby through Mendi and westward across the island to Loemida, south of the Bismarck Range of mountains.
A small tracked vehicle sat by the side of the road. It massed only about ten tons, though it was armed with a long-barreled cannon in the turret that sat on the rear of its hull. This new vehicle was designed to be fast, yet very quiet with a rubber band track system and a hybrid diesel-electric powertrain that could move the lightly-armored vehicle short distances on battery power alone. The commander and gunner both had sophisticated optical and thermal sensors available to them to search for enemy units.
Captain Archibald Conway stood out of the top of his armored recon vehicle and watched as a quartet of big eight-wheeled tank destroyers roared up towards his position. He had seen them before when the Derby Militia had received the first production models of the armored vehicles. The 120mm smoothbore tank guns that the tank destroyers mounted in their turrets were most impressive, Archie had to admit. He had seen them before in the Militia motor pool while their crew was loading the big 120mm rounds into the bustle-mounted autoloader in the rear of the turret.
The lead tank destroyer skidded to a stop, with the following three vehicles pulling off of the road in a herringbone pattern with their guns facing outward. The remote weapons station located on top of each turret traversed around to scan the entire area before pointing its light automatic cannon and coaxial machine gun forward.
The armored door in the large vehicle’s rear hull opened up. Then a short, but stocky Aborigine soldier wearing a camouflage uniform, body armor vest, and a combat crewman’s helmet climbed out and walked towards Archie.
“G’Day, Captain. Are you our escort to the front lines?” Captain Johnny Taylor asked.
“I reckon so. I’ve got three more tracked recon vehicles and four-wheeled scout cars with me that are up a little further ahead right now. Are these the only vehicles with you?” Archie asked.
“That’s all that’s here so far. The rest of my company will be coming on a later flight. The WiGEs are currently bringing in a mixed bag of vehicles and supply containers. Colonel Andersen is trying to make sure that we have all of the ammo, fuel, and other supplies that we will need. I’ve got supply and fuel trucks coming up behind me in a little while plus some other armored vehicles. But we have enough kit with us to keep us supplied for a couple of days.”
“What else have you seen come in with you, Captain?” Archie asked.
“You should be seeing them for yourself in a couple of minutes. There should be a company of mechanized infantry along with a battery of self-propelled artillery coming along momentarily.” Captain Taylor replied as he looked down the road where he came.
Sure enough, the rumble of armored vehicles could be heard in the distance coming up behind the tank destroyers. The first to arrive were more than a dozen eight-wheeled armored vehicles with the same remote weapons station on top of each vehicle’s hull that the tank destroyers had on their turrets. The armored infantry vehicles had roughly the same chassis as the tank destroyers but with a slightly taller hull and no turret.
Half of the armored infantry vehicles pulled up past Captain Conway’s recon vehicle while the rest interspaced themselves amidst the tank destroyers.
Finally, four massive ten-wheeled vehicles pulled up behind the rest of the group. Their large wedge-shaped armored cabs were the same as for the standard Militia and Australian Army’s heavy lift cargo truck and semi-tractor chassis. But instead of a conventional cargo bed or a crane to lift a standard forty-foot cargo container, the rear of the truck had a large armored turret with a 155mm, 60 caliber howitzer pointing forward from it. The turret had an automatic loader that was able to fire two dozen shells before needing to be replenished.
Like the other vehicles, it also had a remote weapons station. But in this case, it was located on top of the cab.
”I guess that this is our fire support.” Captain Conway quipped.
“Well, they do give us a pretty big stick in case we need it. I understand that with the right ammunition, they can hit a target at over sixty kilometers away.”
“That will certainly come in handy. But will they be enough?” Archie asked.
“I know that there will be a lot more coming.”
“Don’t you have any air defense vehicles with you?”
“They’ve been keeping them all around Port Moresby to defend the port there. Hopefully, they will be able to push some vehicles forward soon. But I know that our infantry are carrying some MANPADS with them just in case we get attacked. Also, those automatic cannons on top of our vehicles are pretty damned good at killing low-flying helicopters too.”
“From what our recon aircraft have reported, the Indonesians have already managed to land a few tanks. Who knows how many more tanks and other vehicles have also been landed as well.”
“I seriously doubt that we will run into anything that my vehicles can’t outgun, Captain. So if you run into anything, just slide on out of the way and point us in the right direction. We will take care of it. Besides, you only have that popgun on your vehicles.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call this six-centimeter automatic cannon, a ‘popgun’. It can punch through pretty much anything out there except for the front of a main battle tank. We work very hard not to be sitting in front of one of those things too.”
As the two officers spoke, additional vehicles pulled up including fuel and supply trucks.
Well, now that everyone is here, we better get moving, Mates. Be sure not to get too bunched up. We don’t want to be too easy of a target for any enemy aircraft that just happens to be flying around here. You can be sure that they will be watching the road here.” Archie told the others that had gathered there before he got back inside his armored recon tank. A few minutes later, the entire convoy was moving westward at over forty kilometers an hour.
Chapter Thirty-Nine:
Cavill Commando Team #1
Near Highway 3
Lumajang, Indonesia
March 3, 1999
First Lieutenant Corbin Towers and his team of commandoes had ridden nearly a hundred kilometers through the Indonesian jungles. Their primary task at this point was to report military movements back to Derby through the satellite radio that they brought with them. But their orders soon changed.
“Well, mates. It looks like we have been ordered to raise a bit of hell in the Indonesia rear. The lads in New Guinea are having some problems since the Australian Navy has had some problems getting into the fight because some wanker had laid mines outside their bases.” Lieutenant Towers explained to the rear of his team.
“So we are actually going to get to shoot at someone finally?” Staff Sergeant Robert Riley asked with a sly smile. The tall, slender soldier with short-cropped blonde hair had joined the Derby Militia a couple of years earlier after serving with the Australian SAS for nearly a decade.
“Yes, I’m afraid so. But, let’s also remember that there are just the five of us here. The other team has the same orders, but they are working in a different area. Our job is to continue to gather intelligence, but also to harass their convoys, destroy equipment, and disrupt the movement of their units towards New Guinea.
That means that we will have to hit hard, run fast, and then hide well.”
“I think that we can manage that, Sir.” Sergeant Milton Parsons added.
The other two members of the team, Corporals Earl Orinson and Patrick Fitzsimmons readily agreed as well.
The team’s original mission may have been long-range reconnaissance, but they were still very heavily armed. Each ISS commando carried an Australian Army standard-issue assault rifle chambered in 6.5mm that was fitted for a sound suppressor and had sophisticated optical sights. They also carried a 6.5mm high-velocity semi-automatic pistol as a sidearm.
All of the commandos also carried a variety of hand and rifle grenades, including large numbers of the Dutch-designed V40 4cm miniature hand grenade. The V40 was only about the size of a golf ball and could easily be thrown the entire length of a soccer field.
The team had a shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenade launcher with over a dozen grenades for the launcher. The grenades were designed to penetrate the armor of a heavily armored tank but also had a fragmentation sleeve around their warhead to enhance their anti-personnel effects at the same time.
To supplement the RPG launcher, the team also had a heavy anti-materiel rifle that was chambered in the same fifty-caliber round that the American M2 heavy machine gun employed.
Sergeant Parsons and Corporal Orinson each also carried a lightweight repeating crossbow for virtually silent engagement of personnel targets.
Finally, each commando had a lightweight body armor vest and a personal protective mask if chemical or biological agents were used against them in the latter case.
Each commando was highly skilled with every weapon that they had at their disposal. Had this team brought a mortar or a man-portable antiaircraft missile, they could have skillfully employed them as well.
“Let’s mount up then and move out to find some trouble to get into.” Lieutenant Towers told the rest of the team.
A minute later, the team rode towards the nearby Highway 3. The commandos already knew from previous observation that Indonesian military convoys frequently traveled east towards the ports that the invasion ships sailed from.
The team also intended to visit some level of destruction and disruption towards the nearby Indonesian Air Force bases of Pangkalan Udara Soewondo, Mako TNI at Lanud Nguarh Rai, and Au Adi Soenarmo if the opportunity availed itself.
