Ebbtide Crossing

By charles back

Dan Coltrane, Asio field agent for the Australian government and Interpol crime investigative officer meets his nemesis from a previous encounter while in London working on a code break-in case involving confidential government information. He discovers that the United Displaced Persons organisation working out of Eastern Europe is intent on forming an invasion fleet of homeless immigrants ready to embark on a journey across the Indian Ocean to Western Australia. Coltrane alerts the defence forces in Canberra but they are too late to intercept the initial UDP attack plan, hydrogen bomb weaponry to be used in five Australian capital cities. Two of the bombs are successfully dropped on Perth and Canberra before the defence of the nation is alerted and a plan is implimented by the Australian defence minister and his departmental heads. The state of Western Australia has to be evacuated quickly and the population as a whole embarks on a thousand mile journey to South Australia. They temporarily leave their home state ensuring it is devoid of water, food, fuel and shelter in order to deter the invading force. The temporary evacuation is the primary defence strategy and although it is inhumane in one sense, the harsh desert environment becomes a shield against the invaders without the need for military intervention. The story's conclusion will bring home the ever-present threat of nearby countries that eye our island nation with envy and desire.

• Language: English
• Publisher: charles back
• Release date: Nov 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9798356341588

charles back

Charles was born in Liverpool England in 1945 and emigrated to Australia with his parents in 1950 aboard the steamship Asturius. He lived in Sydney for the next eleven years and then his father signed him up for twelve years in the Royal Australian Navy. Charles served three tours of duty as a code breaker during the Vietnam war and left the service in 1973. He attended university and graduated as a secondary Art and English teacher in 1978 and served in the Education Department of Western Australia for thirty one years. After his teaching career Charles went back to university and graduated as a Naturopath in 2007, and after continued studies graduated as a psychotherapist in 2010. Charles is now retired and lives by the sea in Perth Western Australia, close to his two daughters.

Book preview

More thriller novels by Charles Back

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The Diamond Sunrise

Outlander Run

Red Storm Horizon

Game Change

Breakwater Bay

The Miscreant Focus

The Genoa Crisis

Ebbtide Crossing

By

Charles Back

Dedicated to Margaret Back (1926-2017)

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it....

George Santayana 1863.

ONE 

The wintry November evening rained bleak and cold over central London and continuous thunderstorms howled in across the English Channel. Dan Coltrane hadn’t seen the sun for six days, but the ASIO security investigation he’d been conducting in Britain had finally concluded and mercifully it was time for him to go home. Tonight, Coltrane was boarding the British Airways 9.07pm flight to Perth via Singapore from Heathrow International Airport unaccompanied, terminal two, gate fourteen.      

He bid his last farewell to London without regret and boarded the giant airbus at the business class gate fifteen minutes before take-off. His departure arrangements had all gone to schedule but unbeknown to Coltrane, in a few short months he would return to this part of the world in pursuit of a formidable UDP agent, an agent who was intent on his demise.   

Coltrane had spent the final day in London clearing his desk and attending to the inevitable paperwork generated by an investigation conducted at the Australian Embassy. It involved unexplained classified information leaks to the United Displaced Persons organisation in Eastern Europe during the previous twelve months. UDP agents working for Vladen Zarakov, Commissar of the Bulgarian High Command had made inroads into a high-level communication system in the embassy.  

The cryptographic keys had been compromised at all levels and the system had since been shut down. The purpose of their incursion was unclear, but security had been alerted and the appropriate counterintelligence procedures were activated. Coltrane was also saying goodbye to the team of security officers he’d worked with at the Embassy’s plush Strand address in the heart of the bustling London metropolis.  

He’d found that crime was much the same the world over, invariably motivated by the insatiable quest for easy money and power over one’s fellow man. Britain generally and London particularly, in Coltrane’s experience was no different.          

‘Jesus Keith is it always as cold as this in London?’ Coltrane enquired as he entered his temporary office, ‘It’s bloody freezing out there.’    

‘When in Rome Dan,’ the British detective replied in his broad Bolton accent. ‘Ha, this is just the start of the cold weather so rug up or make a run for it boyo.’ 

‘Yeah well, I’m out of here tonight, mate. Thanks for your help with the investigation during the last couple of weeks Keith. It was a tough one, but it looks as though we’ve wrapped up most of the loose ends. Keep your eye on that Bethnal Green link though, I think that they’re ongoing and still have some potential. Harry Craven would be one to keep your eye on.’   

‘Yes, he’ll be on the radar for a while yet, MI5 has shown some interest in the Bulgarian’s as well. They became active in England about a year ago as you know, and before we knew it the UDP organisation were a major force right across Europe. Vladen Zarakov is one to watch too, it’s all wrapped up here for you now though and your patch looks clean. I’ll pick you up in a couple of hours at your hotel and take you out to the airport, see you around six.’    

By eight forty-five Coltrane was seated in preparation for the early evening departure. In hindsight it was impossible to anticipate the events that unfolded when the aircraft landed at Singapore’s Changi airport halfway across the world. His flight departed London on Tuesday evening in blinding rain and lightning flashes further to the north. Coltrane felt satisfied with the work he’d done in London but relieved to be finally leaving this sunless land for the warmer climes of Asia.   

Coltrane had a forty-eight-hour stopover in Singapore before the final leg homeward, and he looked forward to being back on Australian soil in about three days. He intended to leave Singapore late on Thursday and arrive home on Friday, sometime in the early morning if all went to plan. The weather forecast in Perth was warm and sunny this time of year and it would be a pleasant contrast to the bone numbing cold of the Northern hemisphere.    

Everything appeared to be normal during the passage across the Middle East and Flight BA217 approached Singapore in the early hours of Wednesday morning high above the Straits of Malacca. It was around five o’clock and a light breakfast was about to be served so Coltrane put his papers to one side. The flight was uneventful and relatively smooth which allowed him time during the crossing to catch up on the backlog of reports that needed his attention. 

Coltrane recalled the chance eye contact he’d made with a porter at Gatwick just before his departure from London.   The Asian looking male was thirty feet away in the departure lounge standing in a café doorway and talking on a mobile phone. The man had suddenly turned away like a guilty schoolboy when their eyes met, and Coltrane knew instinctively that the incident held significance that went far beyond a momentary glance.       Prestan Hendle was a contract window cleaner working undercover for the United Displaced Persons Organisation. He’d worked at both of London’s airports as an observer for the Bulgarian U D P since its inception nearly five years previously. There were always photos of ‘persons of interest’ coming onto his phone App and he’d been alerted to a high-level agent of interest. Tonight, a significant personality Dan Coltrane, a known ASIO officer had entered the airport concourse in his sector and immediately the warning lights had alerted him.     

‘Armantra its Hendle, I have an important contact. It’s a male, priority one, image twenty-four in file three. His name is Coltrane, Dan Coltrane. His destination is Singapore and he’s departing Gatwick on the eight o’clock flight.’ Prestan Hendle had executed his duty perfectly, well almost. There was no need at this point to waste time with encoded mobile messages because the security computers would not find a trigger word subject and the call would go unnoticed.  

Hendle had immediately informed his handler who resided in central London, but contact names were still kept to a minimum. Based on his information a Southeast Asian bulletin alert was initiated in anticipation of the target’s move into that sector. Hendle had seen Coltrane looking at the flight information screen and deduced that the man was on a flight back to Australia via Singapore.  

Coltrane had suddenly turned around and scanned the concourse like the professional he was. The move had caught Hendle off guard and when eye contact was made he knew that Coltrane had been alerted. A mistake on his part probably but what was done was done. It was an unfortunate occurrence and had undoubtedly breached the UDP’s security protocol somewhere along the line, but field work involved risks. Prestan Hendle decided not to report the incident, there was no sense in blemishing his record with something that would probably go unnoticed in the wider implications of the operation but deep down he knew better.    .    

Coltrane wondered if he was becoming neurotic after serving in this specialised line of work for so long. He shouldn’t rate everyone as suspect, but the alarm bells in his brain had warned him of impending danger on numerous occasions before. It was an acquired sense of survival honed over many years of clandestine field work, and more than once his instincts had saved his life. He knew that something wasn’t right about the chance eye contact encounter, but at that moment it was difficult to fathom what had spiked the alert.  

The huge jetliner yawed slightly in the strengthening winds, and intermittent lightning flashes from a tropical thunderstorm lit the sky over Singapore. Coltrane could see the vast illuminated aviation complex still shrouded in semi darkness far below him. It was visible through his rain-streaked window as they descended to make the final approach into a warm monsoonal breeze blowing from the west. A short time later the Boeing airbus touched down with a slight jolt on her port side and then another, before flattening out along the half mile runway.     

Coltrane was habitually conscious of his surroundings while on duty, especially in foreign countries. Operational ASIO field agents had to be on their game because on occasion it was a matter of survival. Sometimes, like today, events were far beyond his control and there was nothing he could do to intervene. Despite his vigilance, there was no prior indication that an attempt would be made on his life in the Singapore Airport Immigration section. It all started to develop inside the main complex twenty-six minutes after his flight touched down.  

Changi International Airport had never experienced a major terrorist attack or confrontation with the airport police because their security arrangements were second to none. It was an enormous aviation city with the most modern state of the art security devices available. Violence on a large scale wasn’t considered to be a serious threat but somehow during the last twenty-four hours the computer-controlled security system had been breached and the bustling complex’s travel routines had all gone haywire.  

Coltrane was standing in a line of tired, impatient passengers passing through the immigration barriers at five thirty on Tuesday morning. Hours earlier he was relaxing in business class when the confirmation of his Singapore stopover arrived on his departmental laptop mid-flight. He’d decided that the new assignment was a blessing because he could make the stopover and reduce his home journey’s energy sapping jet lag. 

Once outside of the Immigration and Customs checks he would find his way to the Qantas Airways desk and confirm his connecting flight to Perth when he’d finished his business in the city.

Coltrane had been requested to attend a security conference at police headquarters in Singapore Central the following day. He’d been directed by ASIO to take part in the meeting of senior security officers addressing terrorist activity in Southeast Asia with East European connections. Security in the Singaporean Cyber Traffic Surveillance headquarters indicated something unusual was brewing in the area and suddenly Singapore was front and centre.  

Coltrane would book his connecting flight to accommodate the meeting, and a day later he could continue on his journey homeward. Nine hours in the air from Gatwick had rendered him jet lagged and travel weary and for now he just needed some rest. It was much the same for the other three hundred passengers who landed with him on British Airways flight BA217 almost half an hour earlier.   

What he wanted most was to take a hot shower and spend four or five hours sleep in a comfortable bed. He was booked into the Cathay Hotel in Orchard Road, an old-world establishment at the quieter end of town, but one that offered excellent service.    

The sudden blinding light from an explosion in the baggage area barely fifty metres from where Coltrane was standing caught everyone by surprise. The flash was followed by a glass shattering shock wave that hit Coltrane like a freight train knocking him off his feet. A few seconds later he was lying amongst the explosion’s debris surrounded by a crowd of screaming onlookers. 

Coltrane was covered with rubble and dust from the demolished baggage conveyor and the luggage it had been moving. The immigration desks where a few minutes earlier young Immigration Officers were checking passports had completely disappeared. Coltrane had been hit by flying glass and the contents of luggage on the carousel, but the ringing in his ears was the most difficult to deal with. He shook his head from side to side and tried vainly to clear the silent nightmare developing around him, but his efforts were all to no avail.  

Coltrane could hear nothing but a metallic sound like a tin whistle on maximum volume screaming inside his brain. Wordless victims, seemingly in slow motion strode past in purposeless chase amid the confusion, and all around him was chaotic and unreal. Coltrane was totally disoriented as he lay on his back, stunned and motionless in the arrival’s foyer. He watched the ash from burning orchids high on the airport walls above him float gracefully to the floor like black feathers in the breeze.  

The ‘Welcome to Singapore’ banner held aloft by supporting guy ropes was still on fire. Its ashes rose and fell in the air, blown by the rhythm of the enclosure’s automatic doors as they opened and closed far below it to admit the airport’s rescue teams already on the scene. Coltrane felt the fine film of red fluid particles settle on his face before he lapsed into unconsciousness, vaguely aware that the reddish dew had once been the flesh and blood of his fellow travellers.      

Coltrane would get his bed and his sleep that he craved but it would be drug induced in the burns ward of Singapore General Hospital. He would be there for considerably longer than five or six hours, although most of his burns were superficial. Twenty-four hours minimum Coltrane was informed by the attending doctor who looked about the same age as his twenty-year-old nephew back in Sydney. It was important that a modicum of observation time was provided to ensure that he wasn’t suffering from shock or any other aftereffects of the blast.

Nineteen passengers and five Immigration Officers had died that morning and Coltrane was lucky not to be included as deceased on the casualty list.

TWO

Changi airport was one of the most modern and beautiful airports in the world. It had been eclipsed momentarily by the recent opening of Dubai International, and for the second time in the last century a new style of war had suddenly interrupted Singapore’s prosperity. It wasn’t a declared war, as had been the case with the last major conflict. That war had come to these shores seventy years previously with the Japanese invasion forces.  

This was a terrorist war without official declaration in the twenty first century and the rules of engagement were different. The new enemy wore no uniform which made identification difficult for the defence forces, but the enemy was real, and they were here.  

The emerging threat to Singapore’s sovereignty was initiated by a group of displaced persons that originated in Eastern Europe. It was the beginning of a new era and in many respects, Singapore was being drawn into a war of attrition.  

The airport’s indoor gardens were in full bloom with exotic plants, which reflected the trappings of a contemporary bustling city located in the equatorial monsoon latitudes. Prosperity had heralded Singapore’s emergence as an Asian financial power almost half a century earlier. A new government order took control under the leadership of Lee Kuan Yew and the National People’s Party.   

At the behest of a new and imaginative government, Singaporeans surrendered their control to a leader who intended to bring this island nation into the world of computers and information technology. The previous fifty years of rule by England after Stamford Raffles had claimed the island for the foreign power had left Singapore almost destitute and without a plan for the future. That all had changed because of the political influence of one man.    

Lee Kuan Yew was a visionary who stepped onto the world’s political stage with a long-term view towards Singapore’s social and economic reform. He demanded that the predominantly Chinese population follow his lead into prosperity and engage with the new life that awaited them. In less than four years his dream had stimulated the imagination of the people and they supported his new approach to the island nation en masse.  

For the minorities that agitated, the rule of a police state and its dictatorial government soon changed their minds. Lee Kuan Yew saw himself as a benevolent dictator, a man of destiny, and modern-day Singapore was his brainchild.  

During the next forty years it had grown to be one of the leading financial hubs in the region, and its reputation for sanitised modernity sat well with most, if not all, of the highly motivated community. It had been a costly social exercise but the standard of living now enjoyed by this small island nation was light years ahead of its contemporary Asian counterparts across the Malaysian Causeway.      

Two days before Coltrane touched down in the island state, Lee Kuan Yew, the Father of Singapore’s political emancipation died, it was 2015. He’d been recuperating in his hospital sick bed for more than a week, and then one day without warning he suddenly passed away from natural causes. He was ninety-four years old. Less than seventy-two hours after his passing, the first non-government directed explosion took place in Singapore, something that had not happened since the end of the Second World War.   

Singaporeans from all walks of life including the business leaders in plush offices that looked out across the bay fifty stories above the city knew that the world had finally caught up with them. Their life of financial and economic prosperity was once again under threat, but as yet the perpetrators of the crime, still punishable by death in Singapore, was unknown. 

In the northern states of Malacca where Communist insurgents were a major cause of grief to the British led government during the nineteen fifties, peace had reigned for fifty years. The Brits had departed from East Asia theatre to attend their problems at home with the Irish Republican Army in 1966, and Singapore thrived by their own ingenuity. The Malays to the north were a nation of businessmen, primarily from Indian, Malaysian, or Chinese background and their politics worked largely in conference with Singapore.  

To the southeast, a population of three hundred and fifty million Indonesians had their financial problems and social reforms to deal with. They were a nation busily rebuilding, and although they had always maintained a significant military capability, there was no indication of hostilities towards Singapore.  

The motives and identity of the new enemy remained a mystery until three days after the airport attack. A similar incident brought the air taxi carriageway moving high across the city to Sentosa Island to a shuddering halt. An explosion severed two of the giant cables that held twelve cars aloft and four of them, full of tourists plunged one hundred and seventy metres into the sea.  

The latest outrage was different, it had been deliberate, and Singapore was in a state of siege. The attacks brought the island’s metro rail system to a standstill and the complex road grid was thrown into turmoil. Fear of further incidents had paralysed the nations transport systems and the people were fearful and confused.  

Never in the modern history of Singapore had there been anything comparable to these violent catastrophes, but government investigative agencies were unable to explain the attacks or the motive behind them. No-one had come forward to claim responsibility for either of the atrocities, and all the authorities could do was wait, and see what developed. 

Five months earlier a ranking member of the United Displaced Persons reform group was residing in Jakarta. He decided that the Bank of Singapore’s deputy manager, Grandin Cheong would be pressured to comply with his financial plan and its complex requirements.  The UDP’s senior officer Anton Gorbel had established his headquarters as a forward reconnaissance base for their organisation in Jakarta nearly twelve months previously.  

During that period, he’d been able to build a credible cover story and an identification profile that would conceal him from political attention and police or security organisations anywhere in the Indonesian Archipelago. Gorbel was residing in the Jakarta area to ensure that the acquisition of foreign aid for the UDP cause flowed continually from the banks of Australia and New Zealand uninterrupted.      

Large amounts of foreign aid money passed between the financial institutions in Australia and New Zealand to numerous Foreign Aid accounts through the Bank of Singapore. A large percentage of the money was being siphoned off to accounts held by bogus UDP beneficiaries based in Eastern Europe.  

The world had changed significantly with the advent of computer banking, and offshore accounting was an international growth industry. The illegal transactions were discovered by one very astute junior manager from the Bank of Singapore. The prescribed course of action was promulgated to all employees but in this instance, threats of violence were made, and initially the manager hesitated.   

It appeared that his discovery could cause disruption to the current UDP foreign aid system and Gorbel needed to ensure that the financial status quo was maintained.

THREE.

The bureaucratic incompetence of Canberra’s Government financial auditors had been astounding. Their investigative team had been systematically outwitted by the expertise of a small group of manipulative East European computer hackers. Millions of dollars that had been provided by Australian taxpayers for the welfare and relief of Asian victims of flood and tempest had been redirected to the fighting funds of Australia’s new and expanding threat, the UDP.  

As unlikely as it seemed a total of six hundred and ten million dollars had been paid into fabricated UDP accounts during the last three consecutive years. It was then withdrawn and delivered to the mounting war fund of Australia’s new enemy, a growing surge of displaced refugees from countries at war with Europe.  

The huge influx was becoming a destabilising factor in almost every nation. It was rumoured that Russia was fuelling the problem to keep the European nations under economic pressure while they strengthened their own economy and rebuilt their armed forces capability.  

The operation was financially funded in part by an unsuspecting Australian taxpayer because of inept accounting procedures in government expenditure. The conflicts in the Eastern European bloc between Russia and the Ukraine had resulted in numerous civilian aircraft disasters at the hands of local warlords. These men were attempting to bring international recognition to their cause and the death of innocent civilians always hit the headlines.  

The Russian government had consistently denied any form of involvement, but the world was not convinced and the search for new evidence continued. Newspapers and television bulletins across the globe had reported the inhuman act of bringing a jetliner crashing to earth with a missile designed for use against military targets. These were troubling times and civilian aircraft could not pass safely over international airspace without the threat of attack.  

The international response was one of outrage, but their actions were hopelessly insignificant. The reaction of the free world was exactly what the UDP intended. Their aim was to destabilise nations that subscribed to the West’s domination of global financial markets and infiltrate their networks. The UDP’s specific objectives included a baseline erosion of Western values through the manipulation of the banking heavyweights by systematic computer hacking. Once enough money had been pilfered to acquire high end armaments a surge of immigrants would invade the least protected Western bastions of civilisation.    

Australia was the first nation to emerge as ripe for infiltration and invasion by European and Asian hordes that had never enjoyed the fruits of democracy. They intended to take the country by sheer numbers and build their own version of freedom for the rights of their humanity. No more would they suffer the hardships of existence at the hands of people who treated them with contempt and watched as their numbers drowned in the filth and devastation of systemic poverty.  

The UDP’s method of financial account redirection was complex but effective and it involved a number of banks in the Southeast Asia region. Most of the banks and their employees were similarly unaware of the new benefactors but the Bank of Singapore was the exception. When an individual manager found the duplicity in the fund redirection, he was pressured to keep his secret to himself by UDP agents. He knew he should take appropriate steps to rectify the anomaly but threats against his family terrified him. His life had come to a crossroad but courageously he honoured his commitment to the bank and duty prevailed.      

When the cash flow dried up and the money was re-directed to its rightful recipients, the young manager responsible was contacted by the UDP. Prior to the call a series of mishaps brought his life to a standstill. A fire in his fourth storey apartment in Central Singapore was followed by a car accident in which he was temporarily hospitalised.  

He was a career employee with a promising future with the bank but the two attempts on his life had driven Grandin Cheong’s stress levels off the scale.     

A few days after his recuperation Cheong was contacted and warned that his business attentiveness was admirable but the flow of finance he’d recently interrupted needed to be restored. If he refused to rectify his error or attempted to contact the authorities he would experience more serious consequences which would also extend to the Singaporean community generally. The training of bank personnel above level four junior managers was extensive. It included a comprehensive list of steps to be taken in the event of graft, corruption, and threats made against their managers. The instructions to be followed by all bank employees were clear and concise.      

There was to be no deviation in any situation to what had been promulgated by the senior board members and their security advisors. Grandin Cheong was a courageous young man and despite continued threats of violence from UDP agents he was duty bound. The attack on the bank and its affairs was reported to Cheong’s superiors. Two hundred and seventy million dollars annually was a considerable sum even by international standards, but the shortfall had gone unnoticed by bona fide recipients for years.  

The threat of UDP retaliatory violence against Singapore was discussed by the banks senior board members and a plan of action was quickly devised. After many hours of conference, where all possible alternatives were analysed in detail, the board decided to inform the authorities. Twenty-four hours later the government’s security division was brought into the picture and as a senior ASIO field officer visiting Singapore, Commander Dan Coltrane was included.    

The detonation of an explosive device in the airport after he had landed wasn’t the coincidence that Dan Coltrane initially thought it was. An enterprising UDP informant in London who had watched Coltrane board his plane at Gatwick two days earlier noted the stopover in Singapore.

The information concerning Coltrane’s activities and his current involvement with the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation was detailed and discreet. Prestan Hendle’s prior observations aroused his suspicions about Coltrane’s involvement in the Singapore project and it prompted him to pass the information to his superiors.    

‘You have done well Hendle, and it goes without saying that your astute observation contributes a significant amount of intelligence information to our cause,’ his superior said to him during their short phone conversation. ‘Soon we will have more influence in Singapore, and the government will be forced to surrender their economic power. That will assist us to achieve our ultimate goals and put the Australian mainland within our grasp.’   

Phone security was not a priority for the UDP organisation at this time because their conversations were not yet monitored by security forces, but all that was about to change. It had taken three years to make their objective a viable one, and very soon they would need to delete all reference to their activities abroad when using electronic devices. Once the travel documentation concerning Coltrane’s flight was received by the UDP intelligence section, arrangements for his elimination were put into place.   

Like many before him Anton Gorbel was impatient to have the Australian project up and running, its success would be a significant achievement for him. The plan details had been construed by the UDP hierarchy in Europe nearly four years previously. It was a multi-faceted set of complex actions designed to replace the current democratic system of government in Australia.  

The first phase of the attack involved an airborne bombing strike on five of Australia’s major cities. The airborne operation was about to employ hydrogen weapon detonation. After the atmosphere had cleared enough for human habitation an influx of homeless immigrants from Eastern Europe and Asia would find their way to the Australian mainland in boat flotillas. They were setting out from East Africa and proceed to Indonesia then southwards to the Australian mainland.   

Waves of immigrants would also apply through normal channels, fronting as refugees fleeing from Communist persecution. Still larger numbers would board fleets of boats from the Indonesian Archipelago with their intended goal being the coast of Western Australia. Hundreds of thousands of homeless immigrants would arrive in overwhelming numbers, many as undercover soldiers and agents of the UDP organisation to destabilise the Australian mainland.  

Before they could attempt the physical invasion of the large southern continent, numerous Australian cities needed to be cleansed of their concentrated white Anglo-Saxon populations and that was the primary task of Anton Gorbel.   The UDP was fast emerging in Europe as the most significant international immigrant terrorist force since the Italian left wing Rosse Brigate regime burst onto the world scene during the nineteen seventies.

FOUR.

With a vast and largely uninhabited coastline to patrol, the Australian security authorities were totally inadequate to repel a significant and determined invasion force. Australia did not have the trained manpower required to contain even a poorly planned assault on the mainland. This was not an aspersion caste glibly at the men and women of the border patrol force, it was a fact that was an embarrassment to the country as a whole.    

The Liberal government had been able to turn back boatloads of illegal immigrants five years previously, but those groups were disorganised and controlled by pirates new to the fledgling immigration trade. The UDP represented a high-tech organisation with the ability to wage a finely tuned mass invasion of Australia, initially on the West Coast and because of the number of people involved they were impervious to physical resistance.      

There was no intelligence information available to the Australian authorities involving large numbers of Eastern Europeans who intended to mount a mass movement of immigrants to Australia. The UDP’s counterintelligence organisation had been able to stifle any significant information about the planned attack. As a consequence, the Australian government security forces were not aware that the UDP was readying its logistics to establish their presence in Australia, but unobtrusively the threat was steadily growing.   

The first wave of infiltrators would be a Tsunami of displaced people approaching from Eastern Europe, first to Somalia and then across the Indian Ocean. A second wave would approach from Asia. They intended to arrive in much larger numbers than the boatloads of people that had attempted a similar invasion years before. Once mainland Australia was cleansed of its predominantly white upwardly mobile middle classes the United Displaced Persons movement planned to continue with immigrant arrivals