Patriot Dawn: The Resistance Rises

by Velocity, Max

  There was a safe farm on the plateau just over the Shenandoah ridge and that was where they were aiming for, before resting overnight and making the final journey across the valley and into the forests to the west.

  Jack was pleased by the way the move was run. The convoy itself was six vehicles including their Suburban, mainly SUVs, pickups and a minibus. Running interference ahead of the convoy were two other vehicles. One was an old beat up Chevy pickup and the other an old Ford sedan.

  Both vehicles contained old married farming couples, volunteers, looking entirely natural in the environment. They were equipped with handheld VHF radios that they were only to use in an emergency, to warn the convoy. They rotated ahead of the convoy, taking it in turns to run point and check that the route ahead was clear of security force patrols and checkpoints. If they hit one, they would just pass through it and alert the convoy, who would take another direction with the remaining recce car.

  The journey itself was uneventful; they stayed the night and headed out the next morning for the wooded hills, crossing the I-81 in the center of the Shenandoah Valley after the route had been cleared by the recce cars.

  They wound up into the hills, the roads getting smaller, until they came to a parking area. Here, the recce cars left them and they waited, the new recruits pulling security around the convoy.

  After a while, they were approached by a pickup truck with forest ranger markings; recognition signals were passed prior to the link up. Jack was impressed by all this; it was an example of the cut-out process at work.

  The convoy moved further into the wooded hills and diverted from the asphalt road onto a fire trail which they followed for a couple of miles before coming to a concealed parking area in a natural bowl, cut back amongst the trees.

  Oddly, under a camouflaged net at the back of the bowl, was a fuel tanker truck. There were a couple of other rugged looking pickups parked under nets and everyone gathered round the guide for a brief.

  “Ok, welcome,” he said. “I’m Grant, your guide. We go on foot from here; it’s a couple of miles on a hiking trail. We have four ATVs with trailers and a couple of gators for the heavy gear and they will make a couple of trips as necessary. Leave your keys in the cars: once we have all the gear at the camp, we will move the extra vehicles out to satellite laagers to reduce our footprint.”

  It was about a three mile hike on a small trail through the woods. It was slow going with the various family members struggling under their packs. Some gear had been loaded on ATV trailers and had gone ahead, what remained was under a guard force by the vehicles, ready for the ATVs to shuttle back up to the camp.

  There were a lot of supplies to carry in; most of the families arriving here were preppers and had brought their salvaged food stocks with them, mainly in five gallon buckets, as well as equipment. What was useful was brought to the camp, and the rights of the families over their property were respected.

  Bill had been clear that although he expected people would fall into a teamwork mentality and begin to meld and rely on each other at the camp, it was not a commune and people’s property rights were to be respected.

  Jack noticed that they were mainly heading uphill until they were contouring along several hundred feet below the crest of a minor ridge, heading south down the eastern side of the valley, the ridge to their left.

  He had a chance to talk a little with Grant as they walked. It turned out that he was a forest Ranger who had been employed in the surrounding National Forest. As such, Grant had an intimate knowledge of the area and had been instrumental in helping Bill find the various locations. Such local knowledge had been essential in the scouting missions that Bill had led, in order to find the location for Zulu and the well hidden abandoned farm that would become the training base.

  They passed a well camouflaged bunker on the left of the trail, dug in with overhead protection.

  The faces of two sentries were visible in the shadowed interior, the muzzle of a machine-gun protruding out and facing down the track the way they had come. A little way further there was an identical bunker on the right of the track, well sited to provide depth and mutual support.

  They came to the edge of a draw, in fact it was more like a ravine, and the trail went off the edge and cut left diagonally down the face of the steep drop. They followed the trail down and found themselves at the bottom of the draw, in a place where it opened out to form a bowl.

  The sides of the draw were quite steep and high, but not rocky or cliff like. There was an area of flattish ground in the central area where the draw opened out in a bowl like fashion, with a creek gurgling through the center of the feature. As Jack looked around him, he could see the wood framed entrances to multiple bunkers dug cave-like into the banks of the draw.

  In the central area, which was dotted with trees, were several open sided roofed areas, created out of timber and boards and covered with a layer of dirt with tree litter strewn around on top of them. One appeared to be an open kitchen area, another maybe a meeting area or schoolhouse.

  Between the entrances to the bunkers, these various structures and the trees was a combination of similarly roofed covered walkways. Camouflage nets, held up on poles and wooden frames, covered other areas and the gaps in general.

  It struck Jack in an instant that this was a wonderfully planned and protected base. As they had been coming down the slope into the draw the effect of the roofs and camo nets had been to create a false floor, or canopy, above the ground of the open area. The effect of the camouflage netting was enhanced by the falling leaves, catching on top and adding another layer of obscuration of the ground below.

  He needed to look more at the defensive plan, but from what he had seen the camp itself had been planned with an eye for avoiding aerial surveillance, both visual and thermal. The living bunkers looked deep and expansive and the areas outside were covered either with the roofs or thermally resistant camouflage nets, all of which would cut down thermal and visual signature.

  What would make it succeed or fail was the discipline and patterns of life of those living within the base, and the defensive plan.

  The guide told them to dump their gear and led them to the meeting area, where there were a series of benches under the roofed area, facing a lectern. The meeting area looked like it was also used for schooling and maybe religious services. They each grabbed seats on the bench and waited, the families huddled in shoulder to shoulder.

  Jack noticed that under a camo net tucked up in the draw were parked a couple of the small tracked JCB type vehicles, the ones with a backhoe attachment, which must have been used to help the digging of the bunkers. They were small enough to get up the trail without doing too much damage and thus leaving too much sign.

  A few minutes later Major Cassidy appeared. He was slightly built, average height, balding with glasses. He had an efficient but somewhat pedantic manner about him. He was dressed in old style woodland BDUs, self-styled with his rank and name tags visible.

  After the introductions, Major Cassidy handed them off to Paul Granger, who was described as the camp administrator. They headed out for a tour of the base and to be allocated accommodation, prior to stowing their gear.

  Major Cassidy had arranged with Jack to meet up again to discuss tactics and training, once he was settled. In the kitchen area Caitlin met and struck an instant friendship with Gayle, who was a matronly type coordinating the activities of a group of ladies, working hard over a mixture of propane ranges and wood fueled rocket stoves, laid out on tables.

  Gayle was running the place with cheerful enthusiasm while driving them like a Sergeant Major.

  One of the dug-out bunkers was a storeroom for group supplies; it had the doorway section of a shipping container somehow fixed into the wooden entrance to the cavern, securing the supplies behind. Clearly, it would not have been possible to get a whole shipping container up the trail, but they had cut, transported and welded the doorway part. A lot of effort and thought had gone into
the building of the base.

  Downstream of the base, within the secure perimeter but away from the stream itself, was a series of porta-john latrines that had been strapped to the back of an ATV trailer and driven up the trail. They had been modified by painting the usual blue color green. The floor of the receptacle part which usually contained the blue liquid, which was usually pumped out, had been cut out.

  The latrines were placed over long drop latrine holes with lime liberally tossed in; the idea being that the holes would be filled in and the latrines moved to new sites as necessary. Alcohol gel dispensers were filled and fixed to the latrines – hygiene was imperative and it would not do to spread germs or disease.

  For washing, just upstream of the latrine areas were separate male and female areas, privacy provided by a mix of plywood panels and cloth partitions attached to pickets to form enclosures. Within the two enclosures were tables and a supply of plastic washbowls. Hot water was available from the kitchen area most of the time and it could be collected in a bowl and taken to the wash area.

  In each area was also a couple of camping shower tents with attachment hooks for hanging up the solar showers that were available. Failing summer, hot water could also be used to fill these solar shower bags. The latrine and washing areas were entirely covered by camo netting and there was a covered walkway down to the area from the kitchen site.

  The accommodation bunkers were shored up with timber, it was like being in a mine passage, and there were rough plywood partitions inside that divided up family areas with cot beds, a table and a few chairs. There were lockers and shelves for the stowing of personal gear.

  There was not a great deal of privacy; Jack could see where other families had done a bit of rough carpentry or hung blankets to help with this. It was obvious that there were some generators in the base and there were some electrical cables with lights strung throughout the dugouts, but they were not running now. Fuel was obviously a concern and would be rationed. There was a mix of candles and propane lamps dotted around to provide light.

  The Berengers were allocated an area and started to move their gear into it.

  Jack found Major Cassidy over in the operations center bunker at his desk. They shook hands and Major Cassidy gestured to Jack to take a seat across the desk from him.

  “So Captain Berenger, it’s good to have you on board,” he said. “We need to get the training operation going so we can hit back. I have a core of veterans organized into two squads that we should be able to put into action soon.”

  “Roger that Sir,” said Jack, alarm bells going off. “It’s been a while since I was called Captain,” he said with a smile.

  “Yes well, it’s important that we maintain standards and discipline,” retorted Major Cassidy.

  Jack agreed that this was so, but he could not help feeling that Major Cassidy was standing on ceremony a little too much. Cassidy went on to describe the defensive situation at the base, and let Jack know that he would take him and Jim around later on a tour of the positions. It was apparent that they had enough fighters to maintain a basic defense of the base, while training the Company to conduct insurgency operations.

  There were three defensive positions; the first was the two bunkers they had passed on the way in, there were two more bunkers where the trail continued on the other side of the draw, and also a listening/observation post above the camp up on the ridge above.

  There were enough fighters allocated to Zulu to rotate through these positions and keep them permanently manned, but no more, and as yet there were limited personnel available for clearance patrols. The burden of manning three defensive positions around the base was manpower intensive.

  They discussed the idea of operating an area defense, but it was manpower prohibitive at this point. An area defense would involve not simply manning the sentry positions surrounding the base, but conducting a reactive defense based on detecting the location, direction and size of approaching enemy threats. This would come down to establishing observation posts, OPs, pushed out to observe possible enemy routes in to the base.

  There were primarily three routes in – the trail running through the base on both the north and south sides, and also from the ridge above following the draw downwards to Zulu.

  To mount an area defense, each route would require a prepared defensive or ambush location that would be manned following triggering by the outlying OP positions. This would make it a combination of an area and a mobile defense. It was certainly true that in this situation ‘he who defended everywhere defended nowhere.’

  But such a plan would have to wait on manpower.

  Major Cassidy read the letter from Bill and seemed happy enough with establishing the training base over the ridge at the farm, about five miles away to the south east. He wasn’t going to interfere too much with Jack’s training plans.

  The fighters that would remain at Zulu manning the static defensive positions were mainly the older, injured, or less experienced ‘home guard’, while the younger, fitter, more experienced or recent veteran types would be moved out to the training base.

  The plan was that any further recruits, unless they were coming with families, would not be moved through Camp Zulu, but directly to the training base from the other side of the ridge, in order to maintain OPSEC. The fighters with families at Zulu could be relied upon to keep their mouths shut about the location, and would be briefed on the importance of this.

  They would establish a light trail through the trees to link the two bases, running it into the main trail where it met the sentry bunkers on the south side of the base.

  Major Cassidy was the operational commander for the Resistance region, or at least he was within the organization that Bill had created. It meant that he called the shots. He explained to Jack that in the light of Bill’s letter he planned to run operations initially from Victor Foxtrot. He was going to hand off the administration and running of Zulu to Paul Granger. He was keen to get operations running, though Jack got the feeling that he was perhaps not too keen to be directly involved himself.

  Jack was increasingly getting the feeling that although Cassidy was a professional and well educated former officer, he tended to stand on doctrine and ceremony and was perhaps a little too conventional in his outlook for Jacks liking. He did however make headway with him over training and the model for the Company. Jack wasn’t going out on operations anyway, so his job was to best prepare the fighters and hand them back to Major Cassidy ready to go.

  They did discuss the logistical requirements for the new training base. It was now October and they were heading into a winter in the mountains. Weapons and equipment had been procured and cached and would be moved to the new training site, as well as an administrator and staff to keep the place running around the training requirements.

  They had plenty of weapons, ammunition, equipment and items such as body armor available. It had either been brought in by the fighters themselves, many who were deserting veterans, captured or profiteered on the back of the looting, or ‘procured’ via bureaucratic corruption.

  Cassidy explained the he would make available a truckload of military body armor and various pouches and ancillaries that had been diverted from its destination. It was all in the UCP, or universal camouflage pattern, used in the army ACU uniforms, but they had also acquired plenty of camo spray paint in flat camouflage tones to spray it up and make it unrecognizable.

  They agreed that Jack and Jim would move up to Victor Foxtrot in a week once the stores had been moved into place, in order to get the training in motion.

  The next week for Jack was divided between his family and planning. He was helping to settle Caitlin and the kids into their new home in the bunker while also making logistical arrangements with Jim to get Victor Foxtrot up and running.

  Jim was an invaluable help with this, not only because of his experience as an NCO and thus the ability to take a lot of the burden away from Jack. He was also single, with no family to distract hi
m at Zulu.

  Jim apparently had a teenage son and an ex-wife living down in Texas, but Jim had not been able to do anything about it when the collapse happened and the relationship with his ex was a sore point anyway. Jack got a partial story, something about her being unfaithful while Jim had been away on yet another deployment, and Jack almost felt sorry for the other guy when he visualized having Jim coming after him.

  The population at Zulu was about a hundred and fifty souls, including the guard force, family members and the kids. The intent was to keep life going at the base in as normal and constructive a way as possible.

  The meeting area was used as a schoolhouse and for religious ceremonies on Sundays. The women had started to specialize in roles that they had skills at. Some of the mothers ran daycare for the younger kids, so that others could work. There was much to do, from cooking, food preparation, schooling, child care, nursing, equipment and clothing repair, carpentry, store management etc.

  It was not an all-female force at Zulu; some of the older and perhaps less fit males fell into roles there, and a few of them were carpenters, mechanics and handymen. Jack also discovered that some of the volunteers that he would be training were female. Having served in a Ranger Battalion, having females in an infantry role was new to him, so he was going to have to figure that one out.

  One of the key things amidst the hustle and bustle of Zulu was OPSEC. It would not do, for instance, to have wild teenagers ranging out through the woods, or kids running wild around the camp. The signature of the base to any overhead surveillance assets had to be managed. This meant keeping people under the cover of walkways and nets, and any parties that went out would have to be small and managed.

  Jack and Caitlin were having a spat over what to do with Andrew. She wanted him to stay at Zulu, but Jack wanted to take him up to Victor Foxtrot with him. His reasoning was that although Andrew, like himself, would not deploy on operations, he needed to learn. If he spent time at the training base he could assimilate the training and be trained for when he became an adult. He had already proved himself in the firefights he had been involved in.