Patriot Dawn: The Resistance Rises

by Velocity, Max

  Bill hustled them into the kitchen where they found Cindy. She broke off the coffee she was making on the wood stove to launch herself into a hug fest with Caitlin and the kids. Jack and Bill sat down at the kitchen table and Jack suddenly felt relieved yet extremely tired all at the same time.

  They all sat around the kitchen table, drank coffee, ate, and talked for a long time. Jack was determined to make it clear to Bill that he did not want to impose on him. He explained what had happened at their house, to Cindy’s huge shock, and how they had decided to head to the farm simply as a first stop and somewhere to aim for as they bugged out. Bill and Cindy would not hear of it, and told them they were welcome at the farm for as long as they needed.

  It soon became apparent from the comings and goings in and out of the kitchen, and from what they could see outside of the kitchen windows, that there were quite a few more people at the farm, most of them moving about in some form of camouflage clothing.

  After a while, the kids started to drop off to sleep, including Andrew, and Cindy helped Caitlin put them to bed in a spare room. Then they sat around and talked.

  As it got dark outside Cindy lit some lamps. Bill began to explain that he was part of a Resistance movement, fighting against the excesses of the Regime, the destruction of liberty and the loss of the Constitution. The time for political solutions was long gone, and the only option left for them was to fight to restore the Republic.

  One of the key things that had concerned Bill in his operational planning was the potential for reprisals against the families of Resistance fighters. It was plain that the Regime respected no law or morality and there was no separation of fighters from their families or the public at large. It was a form of total war, against the American people.

  Regime forces would simply wipe out a man’s family if they discovered he was a Resistance fighter. It was brutal and nihilistic and entirely in line with national socialist tyrannies throughout the ages. It was a game of kill lists, lethal raids and reprisals by the Regime. Truly, the Regime had the monopoly of terror and was exploiting it to reinforce their agenda of fear.

  Bill explained that since before the collapse he had been working covertly with his Resistance cell on a couple of secret hidden locations in the hills and forests to the west of the Shenandoah Valley. They had found several locations that were well hidden in small valleys, ravines or draws in the forested hills. Each location could only be accessed by hiking trail at a distance from a single forest road or track.

  They had selected the best location and taken small excavators up there and over time had dug reinforced bunkers into the sides of the draw, creating underground living spaces in the hollows.

  They had named it Camp Zulu.

  The idea was that this hidden place would be a refuge for the families and loved ones of those engaging in the Resistance fight. Bill hoped to expand the number of bases as time went on. The fighters could live there from time to time, and visit, but operations would not be conducted from those bases.

  Instead, each base would be for the families of a certain Resistance company and that company would rotate through providing security and defensive forces for that base, while operating elsewhere. Each location, in addition to the underground living spaces, would have a well sited network of fighting positions dug in around it.

  Not everyone in the network would move there. Bill and Cindy would stay on their farm, as would many others, because they needed to maintain the network outside of the forests for intelligence gathering and passage of information. Bill had a ham radio and other communications equipment in his barn for this purpose.

  One of the reasons for the underground bunkers was concealment primarily not from naked eye observation, but from aerial TI surveillance. If there were small signs of the bases, this would not be the end of the world, although best avoided if possible; the reason was that the woods and forests were by no means empty; they were filled with the camps and campfires of those that had fled the cities, each group trying to grub an existence out there in the trees. So a small amount of visible sign was acceptable, just not the presence of an organized camp and large numbers.

  “Jack, I want you to join us at Camp Zulu,” said Bill.

  Jack glanced over at Caitlin and replied. “My absolute priority is my family. I get what you are doing and I admire it. We’ve seen the way it is first hand over the last couple of days, so I understand the need. But I’m not ready to leave my family; I have to be there to protect them.”

  Bill grinned, “I thought you would say that. What I want to do is offer you all a place at Zulu. I’d do that anyway Jack, for the kids’ sake. But I want you to train my guys.”

  Jack looked at him quizzically, “You mean, just a training role, based out of Camp Zulu?”

  “Right, Zulu is also planned as the only training location; it’s a dual location, families plus those rotating through training. It’s very well hidden with some good backwoods real estate. I could use your expertise.”

  Jack looked over at Caitlin, “What do you think Hon, do you want some time to talk about it?”

  She looked him in the eye, “Actually, no, it sounds like a plan. We need a safe place, and there isn’t a better offer out there. If you agree to just a training role, then I’m happy. I’ve been worried enough about you over the last couple of days.”

  “Ok, it’s a deal,” he smiled at Caitlin and reached out to shake Bills hand, “we’ll do it.”

  “Ok guys,” said Bill, “that’s great, we have a convoy heading up there the day after tomorrow, so rest up here and we can prepare to get you up there.”

  Jack spent some time in discussion with Bill before their departure and they went over the scope of the Resistance plan.

  One of the primary concerns was operational security, OPSEC, and the fear of betrayal by infiltrators. Bill had been working on that and he explained in broad terms that he had set up his networks separated by cut-outs. He had been working on an intelligence gathering and collating network based amongst the population.

  One of the key strengths was that this was a local Resistance movement, spread across communities in the region, based in the surrounding area. As such it was based in, amongst and from, the population. This meant that it was easier to vet participants.

  It also meant that the fighters were often local, with the addition of some vetted outsiders, so the community was broadly supportive of them. One of the priorities was to retain the support of the population and avoid reprisals against families and communities. This was the main reason for moving the loved ones of the active fighters out of the communities and into safe hidden locations.

  However, those safe locations were primarily designed for the families of active fighters and there was a whole support network based around those who remained in place in their farms, villages and small communities.

  Those going to the hidden camps would be taking as much in the way of supplies that they could, but they would be supplemented by the community from the producers that continued to operate on the small farms in the region. There would be no forced tithe or tax, which is why the goodwill of the population was paramount.

  Those remaining in place in their homes would not be active in any Resistance fighting. They would produce food, and act as the eyes and ears, the sensors, for the intelligence gathering operation.

  Not everyone was involved, and OPSEC was paramount, but there were enough Patriots spread around through the communities, in the contested zones where Regime control was weaker, to allow the network to function. Clearly, the plan was well thought and already in place, but it was in the early stages of implementation and needed development.

  There would no doubt be glitches.

  One of the great weaknesses of the Regime was corruption, based in part on how the progressives had infiltrated the fabric of the country before the collapse, and the moral bankruptcy of the Regime that continued into this civil war.

  It also came out of the tediou
s and crippling bureaucratic system that had pervaded the country before the collapse; the stifling bureaucracy of rules and regulations that had acted as a layer of control because it was so tedious to navigate and so easy to fall foul of.

  The corruption allowed a black market and barter economy to thrive. There was an interaction across the lines in the gray areas of the corruption and greed of the Regime bureaucrats. It was in those gray areas and gaps that the Resistance movement saw its chances and was also able to procure items, information and supplies that were scarce.

  Fuel was an example. It was scarce and closely guarded; a coupon system used to allocate supplies to those the Regime considered needed it, mainly the security apparatus. Corruption circumvented this, allowing bureaucrats at many levels to procure fuel as they required. Occasionally, a tanker truck would go missing in the chaos of the contested sectors, a bureaucrat compensated in some way for the favor.

  As part of the discussion, Bill told Jack where he believed the enemy forces situation currently stood. His farm was located in the country south west of Warrenton, which made it about thirty five miles south west of Manassas and roughly central to the area of operations.

  The two primary Regime zones were DC to the north east and Richmond to the south. DC was clearly the center of the Regimes power base and operations were ongoing to subsume the surrounding urban areas into the pacified zone; as such, Manassas was currently being ‘pacified’ by Regime forces.

  The Regime was also conducting ongoing route clearance and convoy supply operations along the main supply routes (MSRs) in the region; the I-95 joining DC and Richmond, with the I-66 heading out west from DC and the I-64 similarly from Richmond. The I-66 and I-64 joined up with the I-81 that ran north-south through the Shenandoah Valley and was also an MSR.

  The Regime was operating patrols on this route, the I-81, which bisected the forested terrain of the Shenandoah ridge to the east and the George Washington National Forest to the west. It was in these forests that the hidden camp and the training base were located.

  In the areas to the west of Manassas and Richmond, and particularly in the Shenandoah Valley and the surrounding rural areas, the regime presence was currently not strong enough to effectively lock down the area.

  It was the intent to begin to train and develop an effective armed Resistance, initially operating to disrupt regime operations in the Shenandoah Valley. The intent would be to start slowly, conducting harassment operations to deny use of the I-81 and the valley, before expanding the scope and area of operations.

  Bill was determined to keep his Resistance organization safe from electronic warfare, tracking and interception. He, and several others in the region, did have ham radios that were primarily used for listening in to events and news as they were passed on the network; there were multiple Resistance movements across the country and they were not centrally coordinated, but rather fragmented organizations of individuals, communities, militias and ad hoc groups in all shapes in sizes.

  The primary means of communication within Bills organization was a mixture of dead drops, ‘runners’ and caches. It would make the tempo of operations slower, but keeping it low tech would limit surveillance and tracking by Regime assets.

  Both Bill and Jack had served in Afghanistan and they well remembered how the electronic warfare assets would listen in to ICOM chatter on enemy networks in real time as attacks were taking place. The Resistance did possess VHF ‘walkie-talkie’ type radios and there was a place for them, but mainly the focus would be on being ‘old school’ and low tech.

  Bill also had a satellite system that he could use while the internet was locked down to transmit messages to the internet that remained outside of Regime control.

  Supply would largely be conducted by a ‘quartermaster’ system using cut-outs, dead drops and caches. Caches would be identified with a marker system to allow the location to be passed on and found by subsequent users.

  In simple terms, directions would be given to go to a certain location and identify the primary marker. This could be something such as an identifiable tree or fence corner, for example. From the primary marker the searcher would look for the described secondary and tertiary markers, leading to the location of the cache, hidden or buried in waterproof containers.

  For other situations, a policy of hiding in plain sight could be adopted. For example, discreet farmers markets had grown up since the collapse, bartering in goods. It was a simple thing for a covert Resistance team to show up at a market and ‘barter’ for supplies, that would then be driven away in plain sight.

  One of Jack’s concerns was the co-location of a training camp in the same place as where the families were to be in hiding at Camp Zulu. They developed the concept further in discussion together. It was agreed that Zulu remain as a well hidden ‘family only’ camp.

  They would establish another training camp separated from Zulu. Bill had some ideas based on an abandoned farm he had come across while conducting his initial reconnaissance. It was in the same forested area as Zulu, up on the high ground, and it had a farm house, some outbuildings and a large barn type building that would be good for a training location. It was about five miles away from Zulu, the only route between the two being a small trail.

  Although many of those that would be trained at this new camp would be the fighters whose families were at Zulu, this plan to separate the locations worked better because it kept the activity away from Zulu. This would also create a firewall between any new recruits, potential spies however well vetted, and the families.

  They agreed that Jack would take over the establishment and running of this training camp once he had settled his family at Zulu. They agreed to call the camp, ‘Victor Foxtrot’, which stood for Valley Forge, a name which they considered appropriate.

  Bill had recruited a group of volunteer fighters that was about three platoons strong at this point and which he hoped to continue to recruit to get it up to strong Company strength. The concept was to hide this force out at the training camp in the wooded hills and train over the winter, beginning operations in the spring once training was complete.

  Bill and Jack both realized that they were fighting an irregular Resistance campaign and the Regime had the upper hand in terms of surveillance assets and firepower, and they would have to organize and operate accordingly.

  The broad concept was to train up a force based on a basic cell structure that could come together to coalesce into larger formations in order to allow the Company to concentrate force as appropriate. A system of dispersal and cell level small team IED operations, infiltration, and also concentration of force into larger groupings when necessary

  The Company would begin to conduct operations as soon as they were ready, but in a most careful way. Strategically, they would aim to harass, disrupt and dislocate Regime operations with the initial aim of preventing the pacification of the sector.

  If they could establish that, they would increase the pressure on the Regime safe zones to demonstrate the weakness of the Regimes legitimacy as the provider of ‘safety and security’. This would be accompanied by an information operations campaign in order to attempt to wake up the people and generate support for the Patriot cause.

  The focus of the Company training would be on small unit insurgency operations, attacking the Regime where it was weak. Force on force pitched battles were to be avoided. The Company would be trained to operate as small teams but with the ability to mass up to Company level in order to concentrate overwhelming force against key targets as necessary.

  The big focus was on counter-surveillance, avoiding detection.

  This would mean surprise attacks from ambush positions in order to temporarily overwhelm damage and destroy the enemy, before exfiltration to fight again another day. This would mean that both team members and leaders in the unit would have to develop an aggressive and independent way of thinking that would allow them to conduct operations as a small group, or come together and mass as a
larger team.

  Bill told Jack that the group he had so far was a somewhat eclectic bunch, a mixed bag of loyal Patriots, some of whom were better prepared than others. Many were veterans, others were not. They had all volunteered and were willing to put the required effort in. He had a core platoon sized group, of just less than thirty fighters, that he had been working with for some time, and they would be the baseline for the new unit.

  Jacks role was to be as a lead trainer. Jim was also going with them along with the latest bunch of recruits and family members who were with them at the farm.

  Jim Fisher had been a Special Forces NCO, an ‘18C’ special operations engineer, an expert at explosives and demolitions. Jim had deserted before joining up with Bill. He would be Jack’s second in command of training, effectively his ‘First Sergeant’, and would also be responsible for running the training for the IED specialists.

  Jim came across as very competent and professional, an imposing figure with a relaxed manner, backed by just the suspicion of a potential for violence.

  Bill also told Jack about Major John Cassidy, who was the company commander. He was currently up at Camp Zulu overseeing the final build and preparations. He was an active duty engineer officer who had deserted and still insisted on using his rank. He liked to stand on ceremony, Bill told him, but he was a good man. Jack would be working with him getting the Company ready, and supporting him with continuing training, in particular of any new recruits coming through.

  Because of the cut-out system and the lack of communications, Bill would be sending Jack up with a letter of introduction for Major Cassidy, explaining the plans and arrangements.

  Chapter Five

  They left the next morning as part of a convoy taking personnel and supplies up to Camp Zulu. They had about sixty miles to travel as the crow flies, along country roads, and this meant that they needed to break the journey. It would not do to be in a hurry and run into trouble.