Uncivil Liberties (21 page)

Without signs of distress or a change in engine sounds, the aircraft banked slightly and dove directly into a cluster of fuel tanks located along the river shoreline. A huge oil tank exploded on impact. Orange and yellow flames burst forth into the bright morning sky, thick black smoke curling upwards. Several surrounding tanks immediately exploded, flying debris having penetrated their structure. Lieutenant Commander Cartwright was instantly off her chair, moving to the starboard side of the bridge.

“I have the con, navigator has the ship,” Cartwright commanded, thereby relieving Midshipman Barker from his training duties. “Slow ahead both engines,” Cartwright immediately added.

“Captain has the con, slow ahead both engines,” the helmsman repeated while transferring the order to the engine room.

Over the next several moments, all eyes were on the blazing inferno to starboard, which was growing exponentially as surrounding fuel tanks succumbed to the heat and exploding debris. Lieutenant Christensen, the Executive Officer, appeared on the bridge, and Cartwright gave him a terse nod. Cartwright quickly ascertained that
Defiance
had also slowed her progress. As the full complement on the bridge of both vessels practiced an involuntary ‘eyes right,’ neither ship noticed the second Beechcraft approaching from the port side along the same path as the earlier aircraft until it was only about 500 meters from
Defiance.

Five seconds later, the twin engine aircraft slammed into the bridge structure of
Defiance
, causing the entire ship to shudder. A tremendous explosion followed, ripping through the center of the ship and scattering crew and shards of flying metal in all directions. Flames and thick black smoke rose from the
Defiance
.
After a moment of disbelief, complete bedlam ensued.

Aboard the
North Lakes
, Cartwright commanded, “Slow astern both engines.” The helmsman repeated the order to the engine room. The captain then picked up the main broadcast microphone
.
“
Hands to emergency stations.
Hands to emergency stations
!” she directed,
her voice excited, yet steady and tempered. She exchanged an apprehensive look with her XO.

“Dick . . .” she began.

“I’ll take care of it,” he replied, unspoken understanding passing between them as he left the bridge to assume command of the damage control party.

For some inexplicable reason, in the growing emergency her mind flashed to an incident some months earlier when she had first assumed command and had been on a quiet inspection through the ship. Outside the junior sailor’s recreation space, she overheard several of the sailors talking.

“She’ll run us aground one day, she will. How’d we come up with a bloody Sheila for a cap’n? She don’t belong here.”

“Don’t be flapping yer gums with me, mate. She’ll be right, just wait and see. She’ll come ’round.”

Cartwright had been tempted to exercise her command authority and reprimand the offender, but had refrained, allowing the remark to go unaddressed. Still, it had remained in her thoughts over the next few months. Now, without warning, in an unforeseen emergency, it was time for her to ‘come ’round’.”

Ship’s sirens were going off on the
Defiance
,
reverberating across the gap between both vessels.
Defiance
was dead in the water, flames leaping from the foredeck and superstructure. Sailors were in the water directly in front of
North Lakes,
having either been blown off the deck or jumping in to avoid the spreading flames.

Lieutenant Commander Cartwright knew the men and women in the water, if not badly injured, could make it to shore, just over a hundred meters on the starboard side of the ship. Many were swimming toward the
North
Lakes
or the opposite shore, over two hundred meters distant, determined to avoid the inferno in the fuel storage facility on the north bank. She could see the sailors remaining on
Defiance
trying to organize to fight the fire, appearing on deck in protective clothing and rushing to the forward section of the ship.

“Nav, take the con,” she commanded. “Bring us close alongside, slowly now.”

“Ma’am, she’s fully ablaze. We can’t get any closer,” Lieutenant Canidy, the navigator who had assumed control from Midshipman Barker, responded.

“I said bring us alongside, Mr. Canidy,” she confirmed, her voice remaining controlled, but directive. Barker stood rooted to his spot on the far side of the bridge, unsure of his responsibilities or how to respond to the growing crisis.

“Aye, ma’am, coming alongside,” Canidy responded, taking  a measure of courage from his commander’s confident tone and demeanor.

The heat became intense as
North Lakes
slowly crept up on the port beam of
Defiance
,
her once-proud superstructure now a mangled inferno of twisted steel.  Lieutenant Commander Cartwright surveyed the chaotic scene. White uniformed sailors, both men and women, were strewn across the deck, some motionless, others struggling to escape the conflagration, many already having gone over the side into the water. At both ends of the
Defiance
,
damage control teams were feverishly attempting to slow the fire’s advance.

Her own damage control team, directed by Lieutenant Christensen, the XO, were standing by their railings, hoses in hand, the spouting water already beginning to arch across the gap as the two newly commissioned warships, their military designation now more than simple definition, drew closer together. Other
North Lakes
crew were on their port side, lowering the Jacob’s ladder, single ropes, and tossing life preservers into the water, beginning to assist with retrieving
Defiance
sailors from the river. Several of the
North
Lakes
crew had already jumped overboard in full dress uniform to save injured and burned
sailors from going under.

Ashore, the activity increased dramatically over the next several minutes with the sounds of the Brisbane fire brigade racing to the scene of the fire. What had started to be a dress white ceremonial day, an easy day of public relations and naval pride in support of the Queensland celebrations, had quickly turned into an inferno of immense proportions. Cartwright knew that sailors had died, that more might yet die under her orders. It was the classic lesson in command that had been reviewed at the Naval College at HMAS
Creswell.
Her instructor’s words rang clear in her mind. ‘
Command isn’t a question of whether or not you’re prepared to die for your crew, but whether you’re prepared to order some of your crew to die for everyone else.
’

In only moments, on a clear Easter Sunday morning, in the tight confines of the Brisbane River, Lieutenant Commander Kate Cartwright, commanding officer of
HMAS North Lakes,
had joined with the proud heritage of Australian naval officers who had taken their place in a long line of naval engagements, stretching back through Guadalcanal, Coral Sea, and the Battle of Matapan, and even further back to Gallipoli in WWI, almost one hundred years earlier.

Today’s astonishing actions were not so public, not so openly declared, not so clearly defined, and came from a far more cowardly enemy, but from this morning’s opening attack, Australia had unceremoniously been put on notice: they were about to reap the rewards of defying the terrorists of the world.

While not a classic naval battle in the traditional sense, Lieutenant Commander Kate Cartwright had exercised her command authority during the initial encounter of what would prove to be a long and costly domestic terrorist conflict. As later honors commending her bravery and that of her crew—two of whom, including Lieutenant Christensen, her executive officer, had died fighting the inferno—would demonstrate, the young commanding officer, as her equally young junior sailor had predicted that day months earlier, had indeed “come ‘round.”

In 2001, the Royal Australian Navy had stopped and boarded the MV
Tampa
in the Indian Ocean, some 140 kilometers north of Christmas Island. The ship had been bound for Australia and was loaded with refugees, mostly from Afghanistan. After a period of detention on Nauru, with some immigrants being admitted to New Zealand, Australian immigrant visas were granted to many of the former refugees, including two brothers who were eight and eleven years old at the time of their admission to Australia. The family had settled in northern Queensland.

 Twelve years later, on a warm fall day, the temperature hovering just below 28º Celsius, both brothers, now in their twenties, strolled along the beach front in Surfer’s Paradise. They were about to reward their adopted country with the full measure of their devotion to Al Qaida, Islam, and the World Jihad movement.

Situated seventy-five miles south of the Brisbane River, Surfer’s Paradise is one of the most populated recreational destinations on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia. On a beautiful Easter Sunday, the Strand was jammed with enthusiastic people. Nearly every nationality could usually be found in the cosmopolitan crowd at this popular Gold Coast tourist spot, and today was no exception. Close to eight thousand people jammed Cavill Avenue, the distinctly commercial tourist area at Surfer’s.

Millions of tourists and locals frequented the area annually, plying its outstanding beaches, trendy shops, and multiple restaurants with food from many cultures available within two or three blocks. Increasingly over the recent ten years, high-rise hotels and resort facilities had dotted the horizon, making the Gold Coast an international, yet affordable, playground.

The Easter weekend provided yet another opportunity—for many, the last before winter—to yet again enjoy the fruits of living in one of the most beautiful places on earth. The two clean-shaven, young, and highly fit Afghani brothers jostled their way through the boisterous crowd, rounding the corner near O'Malley’s Irish Pub and heading west down Cavill Mall. Within moments, they were immersed in the throng, elbow to elbow with people from all walks of life. Carrying a beach towel wrapped around his arm, the younger of the brothers concealed a silenced weapon and found it easy to place several shots in quick succession as they pushed their way through the milling people. Both men were several meters away before the victims even had time to realize they had been shot. Only when the victims had fallen to the pathway did the multitude react. For most of the tourists, the reaction was to simply step over or around the prostrate bodies.

Within moments, dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people had pushed and shoved their way past the three people who were lying on the footpath directly across the street from McDonald’s. Their jumbled bodies seemed to be the result of a collective trip and fall accident. With passersby unable to even see the confusion until they were right on top of it, medical help was not summoned until someone finally stopped to render assistance and saw the blood pooling beneath the first person they tried to help to their feet. The cry for police and ambulance then traveled swiftly through the crowd until one of the shop owners placed a call for help. Even the emergency medical personnel had difficulty pressing their way through the crowd, and by the time they reached the injured people, all three were dead from small-caliber gunshot wounds, inflicted at close range. Two had died from damaged internal organs—one had simply bled out while waiting for help.

Long before medical help arrived, the two gunmen, unseen and, in the din of the crowd, unheard by anyone, had made their way further west to where Cavill Mall turns into Cavill Avenue, and vehicular traffic began to compound the crowd control issue. The brothers passed throngs of people, various restaurants, shops, and entertainment buskers who had gathered even more people to watch their show.

In front of the statue of Matey, a mixed-breed dog who became a fixture on Cavill Avenue in the fifties with his wandering and friendly nature, a large assembly had gathered to watch a swagger man as he, and his trained dog Molly, entertained the crowd. By the time Molly completed her act, jumping up and standing on the soles of the busker’s boots while he lay on his back on the ground, his feet propped up in the air, four additional people had suffered bullet wounds, one of them dying immediately, dropping toward the ground to hang over the single-strand cable that separated the people from the grass-enclosed park area in front of the RSL Club and the Veteran’s Memorial.

Further up the avenue, near the Tiki Village resort, the two men entered their rental car, made the ten-minute drive inland, and pulled in to the parking facility at Pacific Fair Shopping Centre, the largest indoor/outdoor mall in the area, packed with thousands of tourists and sightseers. In the next hour, nine more people would die from gunshot wounds in the mall or parking area, one of whom was not discovered until the following morning, slumped in the back of her van.

Although the three attacks—at Cavill Mall, Pacific Fair Shopping Centre, and the morning’s air assault on the Royal Australian Navy vessels in the Brisbane River—were coordinated within an hour of each other, they escaped the immediate recognition by authorities, at least as far as public announcements were concerned, that they were possibly related. It was not until later that evening, when the news stations received a recorded message from an organization calling itself World Jihad, that the Office of the Prime Minister publicly acknowledged the relationship of the attacks.