Patriot Dawn: The Resistance Rises

by Velocity, Max

  Olson pulled his knife and launched himself onto Gameros, stabbing and cutting, thrusting the knife through the rapist’s neck into his jugular, a spray of blood pumping out as Olson continued to saw at his neck. Gameros’s final screams were no different in sound from those of a butchered pig as the blood pumped out of his severed carotid.

  Olson stood, blood dripping off him, calling to one of his men to get a blanket and wrap the sobbing Jenny in it. They stopped to collect the gear and weapons from the slain enemy, any equipment of value, in particular night vision goggles, before withdrawing. Gibbs carried Jenny in his arms.

  They moved back into their positions ready to reengage the advancing Regime forces, while Gibbs and McCarthy carried Jenny back to the casualty collection point.

  Jack was coordinating the battle from multiple vantage points in the town center. He would routinely move his tactical headquarters; firstly to get better views of the various sectors of the battle, secondly to make it harder for Regime electronic warfare assets to fix his position.

  Ned was working the communications and part of his role during lulls in activity on the net was to put out disinformation. He found it amusing, using veiled speech in a way that Afghan fighters had done: phrases like “move the big thing up to destroy them” and “the time for the firestorm is here” etc.

  Let the EW guys try and figure that stuff out.

  The shelling was worse in the town center, the Regime forces assuming that was where the command nodes and main defenses were. Jack kept his guys off the roofs and several floors below the rooftops to be better protected while still able to see over the nearby rooftops to the battleground in the lower elevation residential areas.

  There was an urgent call on the air defense net, a warning about fast movers from the north. Two fast jets came streaking down the valley at low level and buzzed the town, the sonic boom of their passage deafening. They were too fast for the technicals, which were just emerging from their concealed positions. Some tracer fire followed the jets as they streaked off to the south.

  The two jets turned several kilometers to the south and came back on a bombing run. Jack screamed into his radio, “Take cover, all units cover now!” as they came in. This time the gunners on the technicals were ready and a stream of tracer fire was reaching out from the town to the two jets as they came in from the south. It was a valiant effort, but the jets were too fast.

  The target was the town center and the main administrative buildings. The jets passed in sequence, both dropping five hundred pound bombs onto multi-level historical buildings in the town center.

  The blast of the first bomb was huge. Jack and his tactical headquarters were lying on the floor taking cover. As the second bomb went off sending a massive concussive wave through the area, Jack looked over at Ned, to see him looking back at him wide-eyed, and noted that bizarrely Ned was not in contact with the floor, but appeared to be hovering in the air just above it.

  Crazy.

  As the jets passed on, Jack was up and looking out the window. The streets of the town center were choked in dust, a massive dirt and debris cloud reaching several hundred feet into the air and filling the chasm like streets with drifting dust.

  The jets wheeled and came in for another pass, dropping two more bombs with similar effects. The massive amounts of dust they had created, adding to the general pall of smoke over the town, made visibility very hard and most of the technicals were unable to engage the fast jets. After their bomb drop, they came in for a couple of strafing gun runs, cannon rounds tearing into the town center, before roaring off back to the north.

  Jack grabbed the radio and called for accountability. As the reports came in, he started to laugh. It was all a big dog and pony show, the jets were massively impressive, but without having accurate targeting information, they had done very little damage to the Resistance forces.

  Jack got back on the radio and ordered the maneuver units to pull back to the second phase line. The platoons started to break contact and withdraw closer to the town center. This had the effect of moving them away from the Regime forces and it shrunk the perimeter around the town center.

  Director Woods had given the executive order approving the mission in Harrisonburg, based on the Intel at hand and the advice from the military liaison staff at the Fusion Center RTOC. Woods himself had little understanding of military operations. What he did know was that he intended to ruthlessly wipe out any resistance in the Shenandoah Valley.

  This was personal now, the Resistance struggle in the valley a direct challenge to his authority.

  Woods had been sitting in his chair in the RTOC since dawn, watching the drone feeds on the monitors. He was frustrated. Most of the view had been obscured throughout the day by clouds of black smoke drifting across the monitors.

  It was clear that the assaulting battle group was not making progress. It should have been a simple operation; drive into town, round up some militia, and execute them.

  Woods had been on the radio with Lt-Col Chester a couple of times already during the day, urging him to push on and take the town. Lt-Col Chester was obstinate, assuring him that he could take the town, but so far failing to produce on that promise.

  What Woods did not know, and failed to appreciate, was that he was not helping. He was interfering with the operation, harassing the commander, while using a ‘long screwdriver’ to interfere with the ground commander’s train set.

  It was now getting to evening time and the platoons moved into new positions for the coming night. Jack did not intend to hang around forever in the town and let the Regime forces fix him in place, so he planned to exfiltrate during the early hours of the morning.

  The Regime forces felt the pressure of constant ambush, IED and small arms attack lift. As they started to relax and feel their way forward again, Jack ordered the mortar fire controllers to engage. The dump trucks pulled out to their positions again and brought down a rain of 81mm high explosives onto the Regime positions.

  It had little effect on the armor, but a massive psychological impact on the dismounted infantry. The Regime mortar locating radar picked up the mortar trucks again and the counter battery fire began, so the trucks immediately moved and Jack called a ceasefire.

  As night fell, the town was burning. The thick smoke cloud still covered the area and it had effectively put the drones out of the action as they circled in the sky above. The skyline was lit by the red glow of the fires dotted around. The Regime commander ordered another indirect fire barrage of the town center and the areas in front of his three armored columns. The Resistance fighters waited it out in positions of cover.

  In the glowing darkness, as the armored columns felt their way forward, they moved into the net of the waiting fighters. The Regime forces had the advantage of greater amounts of night vision equipment, but it also made them clumsy, and the advantage was somewhat negated by the level of ambient light from the fires. The Resistance fighters moved within buildings and avoided the open, and they were able to creep close to the advancing columns and attack them with IEDs and anti-armor rockets.

  The Regime advance ground to a halt again.

  Lt-Col Chester was frustrated, trying to drive his men forward to the victory, but it was not working. The fighters were ghosts and with the obscuring smoke he did not have the advantage of drones to get ‘eyes on’ and survey the Regime forces locations. The artillery and close air support strikes had made no dent in the ferocious resistance they were encountering.

  The Regime commander finally gave in to the need for additional assets in support. He prepared to call for support. He needed some way to flank the opposition and break the will of the Resistance. He had not been allocated any Apache support for this mission, simply the A-10s and fast jets in a close air support role.

  Lt-Col Chester called over his XO and told him to make the call and request the regional airborne reaction force. This was the same hunter-killer force that had taken on Caleb’s patrol, and came with
Apache support. The XO got on the radio, turning to look at the map board.

  Just then, the assigned Battle Group political officer appeared in the Lt-Col Chester’s TOC, set up in a series of connected tents between APCs on the I-81. He was carrying a satellite phone and accompanied by the Battle Group second-in-command.

  “Sir, you are needed on the phone,” said the political officer.

  “Not now, I’m busy,” said Lt-Col Chester.

  “Now sir, its Director Woods,” insisted the political officer, holding out the phone.

  Lt-Col Chester took the phone, “Colonel Chester.”

  “Yes, this is Director Woods. You are relieved of command effective immediately. You will surrender yourself into the custody of the political officer. Your second-in command will take over.”

  Before the Colonel could answer, the phone line went dead. Looking up in shock, Lt-Col Chester saw the political officer facing him, pistol drawn, with two Military Police coming into the TOC behind him.

  “Come with me now sir.”

  The XO finished on the radio and turned back towards the commander. The answer had come back, the request was approved and the Ranger hunter-killer ARF was available. It came with two Apaches in support, the troops mounted in CH-47 Chinook helicopters.

  The XO saw the commander being led from the TOC, wrists cuffed. The Battle Group second-in-command stepped up to him.

  “I’m in command now, what’s the update XO?”

  “We have the ARF approved.”

  “Roger that. Have it logged that I ordered the request.” The second-in-command stepped up to the map board and pointed. “Put them down here, in these fields.”

  Around midnight Jack put out the call to withdraw to phase line three, bringing in the noose a bit tighter round the town center and allowing his fighters some temporary breathing room. He was ready to call for the exfiltration as soon as the maneuver elements reported they were back at the phase line just outside the town center.

  Shortly after, one of the OPs called in that they heard Chinooks approaching from the north. It was an unmistakable noise, the beat of the twin rotor choppers as they flew ‘nap of the earth’, contouring the ground. Jack put the word out for the mortars to move to fire positions and for the technicals to standby. He also called for the fires to be stoked with more tires, to keep the smoke pall thick.

  The Chinooks skirted the north of the town and flew round to the west, landing in a field about one kilometer to the west of the town center, out beyond the huge grain warehouses. As they came in to land, they span round to show their rear to the town, touching down into the field in formation. The ramps were lowered and the hunter-killer force came running off the back, one platoon per Chinook, spreading out into dismounted formation.

  As the Chinooks flared and touched down into the field, Jack called for mortar illumination and one of the barrels fired. The illum round popped and began to descend under its parachute, wobbling towards the ground. The OPs picked up the Chinooks and Jack called for fire, the MFC adjusting fire from all five barrels onto the landing zone, illuminated by the sixth barrel constantly firing illum rounds.

  The rounds started to impact around the Chinooks and dismounting troops, a violent series of ‘crumps’ of impacting high explosives. The Chinooks disgorged their human cargo and started to lift off.

  A mortar round burst in front of the center helicopter just as it was lifting off, shrapnel tearing into the crew in the cockpit, killing the pilot and causing the Chinook to crash nose first into the ground. The front rotor smashed into the ground, disintegrating, and the rear rotor continue to spin, pulling the helicopter over forwards until it crashed down on its back.

  The dismounted troops started running towards the town, seeking to get out of the barrage in the open field and into cover. Five kilometers to the west, the two supporting Apaches were observing, hovering in the night sky. Their thermal imagers were degraded by the pall of hot smoke over the town, but one of them picked up the mortar truck firing the illum rounds. Two hellfire missiles streaked towards the truck, impacting and destroying it. Jack ordered the remaining two trucks to seek cover,

  Jack ordered the force of technicals to move to the west, to fire support positions, in order to put up a suppressive screen of machine-gun fire to keep this new threat at arm’s length.

  Meanwhile, the Apaches were hunting, handicapped by the smoke over the town. They managed to pick up a few targets and engage them with a mix of 2.75 inch rockets and 30mm cannon. The effect was an area suppression barrage of explosive rounds, homing in around any targets they identified and engaged. Two technicals were spotted and taken out in this way. Another was destroyed by a hellfire missile.

  The presence of the hunter-killer force of Rangers to his rear and the Apaches in the sky was a game changer for Jack. That was its intent, he realized. Jack sent out the code word to prepare to withdraw.

  He figured that with the Apaches having a notional endurance on station time of around two and a half hours, he should wait for three hours, till around 0400hrs, before moving anyone. Hopefully by then the Apache’s would have to go off station to refuel and rearm.

  Jack had one of the technical crews go and grab a 60mm knee mortar from Jim at the warehouse, along with a supply of ammunition. They had not used these mortars much yet, but he figured that he needed to keep eyes on the advancing hunter-killer force to allow the guns to suppress them and prevent them closing with him from the west.

  He had the light mortar team go mobile on foot, lobbing mortar illum up into the air routinely to light up the fields to the west and allow the technicals to keep the Rangers suppressed.

  The Hunter-Killer Ranger force was trying to aggressively close with him from the west, and trying to maneuver, but they were out gunned by the 240 and .50cal guns mounted on the trucks. They were calling down artillery fire from the battle group to the east to try and suppress the technicals, but dispersed as the trucks were in a long ragged line they were not easily targeted.

  What Jack didn’t know was that that the company commander of the Ranger hunter-killer company was Captain Aaron Brookings. They had been friends back in Jacks active duty days. They had both served as company commanders on Jacks last combat tour to Afghanistan.

  Aaron Brookings was an enlightened man, as were many others who served in the Special Operations community. There were many like him, who had the intelligence to question.

  But Captain Brookings had little choice as did most of his men. There were many motivations for why these men continued to serve the Regime. Some of it was ignorance. Some of them just served as they always had, taking to these new domestic operations without complaint.

  Others just did if for the money and security after the collapse, and still others such as Brookings did it because they had taken advantage of the Regimes security measures, moving their families onto military bases to protect them. Only later had it become apparent that this also gave the Regime security forces control over the fates of their families.

  Captain Brookings knew of at least one officer who had dissented and questioned unlawful orders. He was held to account by the political officer and his family moved to a FEMA camp. The officer himself was unrepentant and he disappeared into a reeducation facility.

  As a result, despite his inner feelings, Captain Brookings worked ceaselessly to the best of his ability to ensure the wishes of his Regime masters were carried out.

  At 0330hrs, Jack moved the two remaining dump trucks out to the west. They were undisturbed by hellfire missiles, so the assumption was that the Apaches had gone off station. Once in position, he moved half of the technicals up to positions where they could engage the armored Battle Group, still stalled to the east.

  Jack did not need these technicals to get too close, he just needed them to be able to fire into the vicinity of the Regime forces to give the impression that his maneuver groups were still in place and simply trying a new tactic.

  Jack now had
the mortars in position to the north west, a screen of technicals to the west suppressing the hunter-killer force, and another screen presenting to the Regime armored forces to the east. At 0400hrs he gave the order for the dismounted maneuver platoons to withdraw.

  The platoons disengaged and moved back through a series of checkpoints to the warehouse, where they mounted up in vehicle packets. The aid station and ancillary support elements packed up also and headed out, moving to the north west and the security of the forested hills.

  Jack gave the order to fire and the mortars engaged, before the three dump trucks moved in bounding over-watch back through a series of positions to avoid the counter battery fire. The technical screen to the east fired in the direction of the armored Regime forces, allowing the now mounted maneuver platoons to start moving out from the warehouse in a series of small packets on multiple different routes.

  Once the warehouse was clear, the screening technicals started to move back by bounding over-watch and then peel out and move in small teams out to the north west. The dump trucks ceased fire and moved off.

  As dawn broke, Jack was stood with Jim in the pass up to the hills, out to the north west. He looked back at the burning town, at the pall of smoke that still hung over it.

  “Well,” Jim said, “we certainly dropped the property values in that neighborhood.”

  Jack smiled grimly, “Ok, let’s get back to the RV and get the butchers bill.”

  The plan had been for the elements to move back through a series of unique RVs, as they got further away from the town and safer into the hills they would begin to consolidate and join up with the other elements, before finally all coming together at a secure RV deep in the forested hills. They were avoiding moving back to Victor Foxtrot for the time being, in case they were being tracked.