Patriot Dawn: The Resistance Rises

by Velocity, Max

  Andrew grabbed his rifle and sprinted out to the right. There was an embankment on the right of the road, on the inside of the bend, overgrown by trees and covered in leaf litter. He scrambled up the slope, using one hand to steady himself, until he found a good tree to use as cover. He got down behind it; his rifle pushed out round the right side of the tree, and got a sight picture on the roadblock, opening rapid fire to support Jack down on the road.

  Meanwhile, Caitlin had exited out of the passenger side of the vehicle, opened the rear door, grabbed the kids and scrambled with them into the ditch on the right of the road. Jasper darted out of the vehicle and joined the kids in the ditch. She had forgotten her shotgun, so she ran back to the vehicle with high velocity rounds cracking past her, grabbed it, and ran back to the kids. She told them to crawl and they were able to move back in the ditch out of line of sight of the roadblock.

  Jack emptied a magazine, crouched into cover behind the wheel, removed the mag and put it into his dump pouch before grabbing another and reloading his M4. He glanced back, heard Andrew firing and saw that the kids had got out safe.

  “Cover me, moving!” he screamed as he sprinted for the embankment, rounds slamming into the hood of the car and cracking overhead around him.

  What they really needed to do was get away. But the problem was that both their vehicles were now immobilized in the kill zone and under enemy fire. All their stores and equipment were on board and if they tried to head out on foot they would not get far.

  Jack got up behind Andrew, who was still firing, and shouted down to Caitlin “Cat, I’m gonna assault! Get the kids back into the woods and hide!” She looked back up at him with wide desperate eyes, her head shaking slowly from side to side.

  He turned back to Andrew. “I’m going right flanking, moving round to the right on the embankment. I’ll try and get into position above the Hummers to shoot down on them. Ok?”

  Andrew nodded, took a bead on the turret of the nearest Humvee, and kept up his deliberate rate of suppressive fire.

  Jack pulled back into dead ground away from the roadblock and moved around to the right, just out of sight on the other side of the slope. He pushed back up till he emerged on the summit behind a tree, looking down at the roadblock.

  Both gun turrets were facing down the road towards his vehicles and there were also a couple of guys in fire positions behind each Hummer. They were firing at his minivan and also into the surrounding woods, where they had not yet identified Andrews’s position. Andrew was well in cover using the slope and the tree, with just the muzzle of his rifle exposed. Jack was happy with that.

  Jack pulled back and moved down to the furthest Hummer; he pushed back up into a position where he could see the two guys behind it and also down into the turret. His position was elevated enough that he had an angle into the armored turret where the gunner was standing.

  He brought his weapon up and opened rapid fire into the turret, striking the gunner in the back of the head and upper back; he then switched fire to the two at the back of the vehicle and shot them down, before switching fire again to the two at the back of the other Hummer.

  As his buddy sprawled on the ground, one of the enemies realized what was going on, trying to spin and engage Jack. A last shout burst from the dying man as Jack unloaded the remaining rounds from his magazine into him.

  The remaining turret gunner was alerted and tried to disengage the lever to spin the turret but was not fast enough to track onto Jack as he launched himself headlong down the slope, dropping his magazine and putting on a fresh one as he ran.

  Jack ran to the rear of the hummer and the turret gunner could not track him, so he reached down and grabbed his M4 from inside the Humvee before standing up and trying to get an angle on Jack. Andrews’s bullet took the gunner in the base of his skull as he leaned up over the armored turret side, leaving him draped over the rim.

  Jack quickly checked the vehicles were clear and went to check the enemy bodies. He saw one of them crawling away from the rear Hummer, a blood trail on the road surface.

  Jack walked up to him, “Hey asshole!” he called and the guy rolled over onto his back, a handgun in his hand. Jack put his foot on the man’s wrist, trapping the pistol to the road, and pointed his M4 down at him.

  He could see the man was not dressed in army uniform, but in the blue tactical uniform of the FEMA Homeland Corps. The man’s ID badge was laying on his body armor where he had it hung around his neck. He was maybe mid-thirties, fat with his belly protruding from under his tactical vest, a goatee grown over his double chins.

  “Who are you?” Jack said to him.

  “Go to hell.” whispered the thug with false bravado.

  “Really?” said Jack, as he raised the rifle to point at the guy’s head. He saw the bravado evaporate, to be replaced by fear filling the man’s eyes.

  “No, no, please.” whispered the Regime thug who had just tried to murder Jack’s family, just before the 5.56mm round hit him in the face. His head was raised as he pleaded and the bullet went in through his eye, exiting out the back of his skull in a mess of brains as it smacked into the asphalt.

  Jack went to check the rest of the enemy before calling Andrew down.

  They stripped the bodies and vehicles of useful weapons and ammunition. They had a collection by now. It appeared to be a National Guard roadblock run by the DHS agent. The National Guard guys were all basically kids, none of them wearing combat patches on their right arms. It was a tragedy that they had been used in this way.

  Jack had sent Andrew back to call for Caitlin and the kids and they extricated the Suburban. It had not been badly hit, but the minivan had been shot up badly, the engine block riddled with bullets and both front tires flattened. Jack considered taking a Hummer but decided that it would not only be too high profile, but also probably had a tracker on it.

  They loaded what they could into the Suburban and continued on their way, threading through the roadblock and on down the road. Jack was again concerned that a call could have gone out and he worried about a quick reaction force (QRF) or airborne reaction force (ARF). Rather than try and outrun any aerial surveillance he headed down the road for a few miles until they spotted what looked like a vacant run-down farm back through the trees.

  Jack approached it cautiously in case anyone was in residence, but there was no one around and they pulled the Suburban and trailer into an old barn round the back. It looked like the farm had been looted and then abandoned. Jack had a good look round as a clearance patrol while Andrew stood guard, before they relaxed. They took it in turns to stand watch while they prepared to stay the night.

  Shortly after they had taken cover in the barn, they heard the sounds of a helicopter flying down the road towards the roadblock. Andrew went to look out but Jack stopped him. A few minutes later, the helicopter returned, did a circuit over the farm, and continued down the road. Later, they heard the engines of Humvees down on the road as a recovery party drove down to the roadblock.

  The derelict farm escaped their notice.

  Late that night, Jack was on watch. He was doing a circuit out the back of the barn, getting a bit of fresh air, when it all came crashing in on him. The violence of the last couple of days coupled with the danger to his family, his responsibility to keep them safe and his fear for them.

  Images of his combat deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq flashed up, superimposed over the dead of the last days. He tried to fight it, but the tears welled up and he could not fight back the sobs.

  He heard a soft noise from the barn as Caitlin quietly slid from her sleeping bag. She came up behind him and put her arms around him; he turned and lowered his head to her neck as he cried it out.

  So much for being a tough guy.

  But it was not the first time since he had been home that the tears had come unwarranted, triggered by some unknown thing.

  They set out early the next morning for the final twenty miles of their journey, Caitlin driving so
that Jack could maximize his tactical options and use of his weapon. They did not come across any Regime patrols. It was clear from the response times the day before that the Regime forces in this sector were spread thin. They had to patrol and cover large distances.

  Although the Regime had at its disposal what was left of Americas impressive military, with all the technology and equipment that entailed, in Jack’s estimation it would be a mistake to think them all-seeing. True, if the ‘Eye of Mordor’ was turned on to you then you were in trouble, but it was in the cracks, gaps, frictions and inefficiencies that people like the Berengers survived.

  Jack thought that they probably concentrated operations in certain key sectors, probably the more urban ones, only occasionally venturing out into the sticks. It was probably a patrol like that which they had encountered yesterday. The urban areas were where most of the violence and gang activity was concentrated anyway, and they had seen evidence of it decreasing as they got further out into the rural areas.

  Jack did worry about aerial surveillance the most, from UAV drones, helicopters and even satellites. In particular he worried about thermal imaging (TI) from those assets.

  He had seen the damage that attack helicopters could do in Afghanistan and he did not want to be on the receiving end. There were possible counter measures, and he was going to have to seriously think about how to approach the problem.

  Chapter Four

  As they were rolling along the winding rural back roads that morning, they didn’t see too many refugee camps beside the road. However, at one point they passed a man sat straddling a motorbike, back off the road on a dirt trail.

  The man was sitting casually astride the bike and seemed to pay a little too much attention to the Suburban with the trailer as they passed him. Jack turned around in his seat and as the guy was dwindling behind them he saw him take out what looked like a walkie-talkie and speak into it.

  “OK, stand-to everyone, I think we’re gonna have some trouble.” said Jack.

  Caitlin looked across at him, worried. “What is it?” she asked.

  “Guy on the bike that we passed, he paid us too much attention, and I think he radioed ahead.”

  As they came around a bend about a mile later, they saw a green pickup pull out behind them from the cover of a side trail and some trees. They had not seen it as they passed, but it was now several hundred meters behind them. Caitlin instinctively sped up but Jack told her to hold it steady, to just keep going at a safe speed.

  Andrew was looking back and passed the information that there were at least four armed men in the vehicle, two in the cab and the other two in the back. The pickup started to accelerate towards them. Jack knew that trying to outrun them could well end up in disaster, and maybe there was another vehicle up ahead acting as a cut-off group.

  “Ok, round this next bend, slow it down enough so I can get out,” he said. “Andrew, protect the car in case of more trouble ahead, and in case these guys roll through me. Stop round the corner and I will rejoin you there.”

  Caitlin nodded and as they curved round the bend, temporarily out of sight of the chasing vehicle, she slowed the car down. Jack opened the door and rolled out onto the verge. As soon as he was gone, she sped up again and continued round the corner, stopping so Andrew could get out and pull security.

  Jack rolled into the ditch and came up on one knee with his weapon pointed back down the road. He was barely in a fire position when the pickup accelerated around the corner towards him. He could see the two men in the back holding rifles at the high port, and the passenger had a rifle up and pointed forwards through the windshield.

  Jack acquired a sight picture and opened fire rapidly into the windshield of the approaching car, his main target the driver.

  The impacts of his rounds left starburst shapes across the windshield as they smashed through it on their way through the pickup, exiting out the back.

  The passenger brought his weapon to bear and returned fire towards Jack through the glass. The vehicle was now about seventy five meters away. There was a spray of blood as the driver was hit and the vehicle veered across the road, suddenly without power, coming to a bumping halt in the ditch.

  Jack switched fire onto the passenger; they both traded fire before Jack’s rounds hit home, thus killing the two occupants in the front seats.

  As the pickup sat half in the ditch, the two guys leapt out of the back of the truck bed: one to Jacks right, taking up a fire position on the vehicle behind the angle of the hood, the other bursting out to the left, sprinting across the road into the opposite ditch.

  As the rounds from the guy behind the hood starting to crack past Jack, he dropped from his knee into a prone position, using the ditch for maximum cover. Taking aim through his ACOG, Jack shot the man through the head, watching it snap back as he dropped behind the hood, one arm flailing limply off the hood as he went down.

  Jack rapidly switched fire to the other man in the ditch, killing him with several shots to the torso. He wasn’t wearing any armor. Jack scanned back over the scene of the killing, as his weapon sight passed over the downed assailants he fired a couple of extra rounds into each, to make sure they were not coming after him. Then scanning the scene for a moment more, he saw no other threats and sprinted back around the bend to rejoin his family.

  “Let’s roll!” he called out as he came round the corner to see the parked vehicle with Andrew standing guard, “let’s move!” He really did not want to continue forward, in case the bandits had any more buddies ahead, but he also did not want to drive back past the scene.

  However, it was not prudent to carry on ahead into a potential ambush that the pickup may have been driving them towards, so they turned around and headed back down the road a ways, to where they could take an alternative side road.

  As they passed the ambush site, Jack and Andrew vigilantly scanned the bodies for movement, weapons trained through the open windows of the Suburban. Caitlin had put a DVD in the roof mounted player to distract Sarah and Connor, so they never even noticed.

  Once they were past, they brought their weapons back inside to resume a low profile posture.

  Luckily they did not encounter any more hostile vehicles as they exited the area.

  They drove down the road towards Bill and Cindy’s farm. It was situated off a rural road out in the countryside. They arrived at the turning, which was a small lay-by with the gate to the farm driveway set back from the road; there was a small gravel area where they could park.

  They could see the farm building set back several hundred meters away on a rise, behind a screen of trees and nestled in a cluster of barns and outbuildings. The gate was of metal construction and it was locked shut with a chain and padlock. There was no sign of anyone.

  Jack decided not to park in the obvious place and had Caitlin drive on a little way to a place where they could get the car off the road onto the verge and in the cover of some trees. He told Andrew to pull security, everyone else to stay in the car and he climbed out, slinging his rifle on his back.

  He walked cautiously along the road for the fifty meters back to the gate and stood, staring up to the farm. Beside the driveway, which curled up to the farm buildings, was a ditch with a hedgerow on the outside of it. Fifty meters back the hedgerow merged with a copse of trees before exiting on the far side and continuing alongside the driveway up to the farm.

  Nothing.

  He waited.

  How to get their attention in the farm?

  He was getting nervous, his family sitting there in the car just down the road. He was about to turn back to the car when he caught the glint of an optic from up near the farm buildings.

  Crap!

  He instinctively crouched and half turned to shout to Andrew when a soldier stood up from the edge of the small copse. Jack threw himself into cover, reaching back for his rifle, and was just pulling it forward when he saw that the soldier’s weapon was held down by his side.

  “Whoa there, Ja
ck, steady there!” called the unknown soldier as he started to walk forwards, grinning. Jack paused, and stood up slowly. No shots rang out. The soldier approached, and Jack still did not know him.

  “How do you know my name?” asked Jack, feeling a little dumb, as the man approached. He was a big guy, fully geared up in the old style woodland BDUs, with a tactical vest and AR15 style rifle. Jack realized that although he looked like a soldier, he did not look like an active duty army soldier. He also looked well trained and switched on.

  “Bill told me, on the landline. You must have seen him watching you through his binoculars. I’m Jim,” said the soldier as he extended his hand, which Jack took, “welcome to the farm.”

  Jack called the family forward in the car as Jim unlocked the gate, explaining that they had an observation post (OP) in the copse covering the entry gate, keeping it low profile. They had a field telephone run up to the farm, which was how they were able to alert Bill, who had recognized Jack through the binoculars and given the all clear.

  They walked up to the OP position, Caitlin following in the car, and when they got on top of it they saw that it was a concealed foxhole with overhead protection, camouflaged in the trees. There was another man still in the OP, covering his sectors, who nodded to Jack as he approached.

  There was an ATV concealed at the rear of the copse; Jim told Jack to follow in the car as he led the way up to the farm on the ATV. He drove round the back to one of the barns and gestured for Caitlin to drive in and park.

  There were several other vehicles in the barn. Jim took them round to the back door of the farm building where they bumped into Bill, who had a huge grin on his face. He grabbed Jack in a bear hug, only letting him go to grab hold of Caitlin and the kids.

  “Damn it Jack, it’s good to see you. I was worried about you and the family.”

  Bill was older than Jack by about ten years. Jack had served under him as a young lieutenant when Bill was a Major in the Ranger Battalion. Bill had mentored Jack and they had kept in touch after Bill left the service.