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 28? 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.
From the sketchy and unsubstantiated attack plans that had been outlined by the captured weapons dealer, Wolff, and the conclusions drawn by Trojan in their analysis of impending disaster, Queensland, Australia, fourteen hours ahead of Washington D.C., was the first to learn about the validity of the threat.
As Easter Sunday rolled around the world, the fear of further terrorist attacks took on new meaning as Muslim extremists unleashed a new order of terror against predominately Christian populations in the Commonwealth nations and the United States of America. Innocent Australian citizens were the first to shed blood in the latest round of terrorism. Great Britain would follow some ten hours later. And America was to be next, but on a far broader scale.
Chapter 16