Patriot Dawn: The Resistance Rises

by Velocity, Max

  As well as the FOB, the Regime forces had established a fortified ‘government center’ in what remained of the battered town center. They had civil affairs and psychological operations teams working the area, trying to get people to return. They had brought in some civilian development staff, Army Corps of Engineers, political officers, as well as civilian security teams to move them around to and from the government center and between the various reconstruction projects they had going on.

  As a result of the activity of a covert close recon team that Jack sent down into the town, the information came back that the Regime was running development and reconstruction operations out of the government center, as well as a registration and RFID chip office. They were offering food and reconstructed housing to those who were willing to return to the town.

  Regime patrol activity in the town had overmatched the local militia and driven them underground. Arrest operations were ongoing, raids often resulting from information supplied by turned townsfolk who decided to take the RFID chip and the food. Many of the militia simply disappeared after nighttime raids. It appeared that the Regime had picked up the incumbent Mayor, who had turned, taken the chip, and become a puppet for the Regime.

  The Regime was making a big effort in Harrisonburg, paying willing contractors in electronic money and food handouts to work on reconstructing the town. They had started on the town center and persuaded several shops to reopen. They also sponsored a bar/restaurant/night spot only a block from the HESCO fortified government center.

  The restaurant became a regular spot for the Regime civilian and military staff as well as some of the battle group officers to socialize, along with numerous collaborators. It was a night spot for the local Regime elite, both civilian and military, to hang out with various cronies and collaborators.

  It was around 2100hrs on a spring evening in Harrisonburg town center. The Regime squad patrolled tactically through the streets on a security patrol. There were two teams, a slight distance or ‘tactical bound’ between the two. They were armed with the usual M4 rifles with a SAW gunner in each team.

  They rounded the corner into the street where the new Regime restaurant was located. It was down a ways on the left and as the squad moved down the street they could see a small convoy of vehicles pulled up at the curb. There were two military Humvees and two civilian SUVs. A couple of soldiers stood around the Humvees and a little way down were a small group of civilian security personnel.

  The squad was led by Olson. He looked exactly the part, because he had once been the part. They had all shaved and cut their hair. As Olson moved down the sidewalk his squad was split in a file formation on both sides of the street. He could see a lone guard on duty at the top of the three steps that led up to the door of the restaurant. Light and music was spilling out from the windows into the street.

  Olson walked up the steps towards the door. The guard looked surprised, he was expecting the patrol to keep moving down the street. Suddenly, Olson kicked him backwards through the door, at the same time raising his rifle and following through into the restaurant, followed by Gibbs with the SAW. As they burst through the doorway in pursuit of the falling guard, they pushed left and right, clearing the fatal funnel of the doorway, shot the guard, and opened fire into the restaurant.

  Phillips and McCarthy stood at the bottom of the steps and engaged the surprised soldiers and security guards, while the second team also supported, rapidly gunning down the loitering guards. The second team pushed forwards, double-tapping the prostrate guards, and took up security positions by the vehicles. Phillips and McCarthy then pushed through the door and joined Olson.

  Inside, it was carnage. It had been a lively evening; drunken Regime elite were sitting about and propping up the bar, waitresses wending their way between the crowded tables. In a couple of places, escort girls sat on officers laps, scantily dressed.

  Gibbs had gone cyclic with the box of two hundred rounds on his SAW, arcing the weapon back and forth across the crowd. Olson was supporting him with short bursts, paying particular attention to anyone with a weapon, as they were joined by the other two as they came through the door.

  The team was not aiming for the waitresses and escort girls, but they didn’t make a special effort to spare them. They were collaborators. The storm of bullets ripped across the room, tearing into flesh, sometimes passing through multiple bodies before coming to a stop.

  The covert reconnaissance had suggested that there was a private room upstairs, and as soon as the restaurant area appeared pacified, bodies heaped, Olson and McCarthy took off up the stairs. They left the other two to work over the crowd, making sure none were moving.

  The pair raced up the stairs, pausing at the door to the upstairs room. Olson kicked it open, McCarthy tossed in a flashbang, and as soon as it detonated they were through, going left and right and covering the room.

  As Olson scanned across the scene, he took in a young girl curled up naked on the bed and then his weapon lighted on a civilian in the corner of the room. He was sat knees to chest, naked, his hands over his ears, a pistol held in one of them. He was terrified, and any thought of resistance had passed with the fury of the assault on the room. Olson shot him several times. He was the newly assigned senior political Commissioner.

  Olson scanned back to the girl on the bed. She looked around twelve years old, half-starved and barely pubescent, her face bruised, tears running down her cheeks as she sobbed. Olson grabbed her arm and dragged her off the bed, throwing a blanket around her as they exited from the room.

  As Olson returned downstairs, he scanned the room. He saw a bartender and waitress hiding down behind the bar. Another waitress was sobbing over by the restrooms. There were windrows of bodies in the room, a pile over by the bar and several in the center of the room around the tables. Entangled among the Regime civilians and military, a couple of the escort girls lay dead.

  Olson addressed them all, “Don’t collaborate! Pass the message! Get out now!”

  He pushed the waitress by the restroom towards the door, his men doing the same with the others behind the bar. As the squad left, taking the girl, one of his men tossed two thermite grenades into the corners, setting the place on fire.

  Outside, they jumped into two of the Humvees and drove away from the scene. The assault had taken three minutes. A block away, the QRF from the Government Center had not yet got into their vehicles.

  Later, patrols found the two Humvees several miles from town, burning. There was no sign of Olson’s squad.

  Two days later, the girl was handed over to Megan at Victor Foxtrot for medical care. She had been victimized by the Commissioner. From the story, it appeared he liked young girls, the younger the better, and she was one of the latest that had been supplied to him. She had been repeatedly raped and beaten.

  Her name was Juliet. Her parents had been militia Patriots, ‘disappeared’ by the Regime, and she had been taken. Once the physical wounds had been treated, she was moved down to Zulu for some love and mental healing from the women.

  As part of the defensive plans for Zulu, Jack needed a bug-out plan, an alternate location for the families if the base were ever to be compromised. He sent a reconnaissance team out to the west, with orders to look for a secure location deep in the forests as the trees and ridges marched westwards into West Virginia. He thought somewhere between thirty to fifty miles away from the current location would work well.

  It took them a couple of weeks, but they came back with a good location, very similar in terrain to the current one. It was forty miles to the west, deeply forested and well hidden. But it also had access both by hiking trail and close enough access by a combination of country roads and fire roads. This meant that they could move their vehicles and heavier equipment there.

  Jack sent the plant equipment away from Zulu to be loaded up and sent to the new location, along with a work party. His orders were simple: they were to dig in a basic version of the current base, so that if they had
to evacuate to it they could get the families underground and out of the way of thermal surveillance. They were also to dig defensive foxholes around it. But other than that, there was not to be much else, nothing to attract the attention of any passing hunters, just some well hidden bunker entrances and foxholes.

  Bill came on a visit and they sat and discussed the new defensive and evacuation plans for Zulu. Bill mentioned that he had sent a loyal man down to Texas to set up a liaison and they now had a secure coded communication link. Bill had a lot more updates on what was going on in the outside world.

  Texas has seceded from the Union along with a block of southern States. They had taken with them their National Guard for those States as well as a large chunk of the active duty military that had either been based down in the southern States, where there was a large military presence, or had since defected from the Regime.

  It appeared that the southern secession block consisted of a linear block of States based around: Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. It was known as the Southern Federation.

  There were currently no open hostilities between the Regime and the southern block; after the initial fighting around the separation, it had become a hostile stand-off with demarcation lines drawn, the two sides facing each other, an uneasy truce punctuated by occasional limited hostilities. The Regime was not only busy with the Patriot Resistance in general, but also with the Resistance attempts to create another secession block in the ‘American Redoubt’ based around Idaho, Montana and Wyoming.

  However, to Jack all that was almost to be expected, and was nothing compared to the big news. China had attacked the United States. The U.S. Pacific Fleet had been defeated and Hawaii annexed. There were rumors that the Chinese were planning an invasion of the Pacific coast, and perhaps even an allied Russian invasion of Alaska.

  Part of the reason for the uneasy truce between the Regime and the Federation was the concern over this potential course of action. The Regime was moving assets west, and the Federation was massing forces in Arizona in order to defend against an invasion. However, there may have been a mutual enemy, but this certainly did not mean that the two sides were interested in working together.

  The Regime still held the balance of military power by a considerable advantage in combat power. The Regime had created several new strategic commands: a Pacific coast command (USPACOM) that operated west of the Rockies and was the primary defense against Chinese invasion; Atlantic Command (USATCOM) which included the eastern seaboard; and a central command (USCENTCOM) which included the Great Plains and northern central States.

  Where a southern command would have been, was the southern block of secession States, so elements of USCENTCOM and USATCOM were tasked with operations in the south of their areas to contain the Southern Federation. They also had to contend with the suppression of Patriot Resistance operations across their areas of responsibility.

  There was a demarcation line that roughly followed the straight lines on the northern state borders, across the top of Arizona and New Mexico, cutting down across the northern Texas border, then splitting Arkansas and then following the northern borders of Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia before splitting South Carolina to the Atlantic coast.

  The demarcation line consisted of a demilitarized no-man’s land, along the north and south side of which the Regime and the Federation conducted defensive patrolling operations, with the main defensive positions covering Interstate access routes across the demilitarized zone and major centers of population. It was a strategic game, but neither side could defend everywhere and with the Chinese and Russian menace added to the mix an uneasy stand-off continued.

  The situation, with this threat to the United States now from enemies both foreign and domestic, was certainly a dislocation to Jack’s thought process. It was odd to consider American soldiers being shipped west, from both the Regime and the Federation, in order to fight a foreign invader, while the Resistance fought the Regime, and it was only a matter of time before the Regime and Federation forces had to go at it.

  However, the Regime was a domestic enemy of the American people and the Constitutional tradition of liberty. The Resistance would not attempt to get into bed with the Regime, even if the Regime would tolerate it. Better to allow the Chinese and Russian threat to bleed the Regime and draw heavy combat assets west of the Rockies. Once the Regime was dealt with, the Resistance and the Federation would then have to deal with any continuing foreign threat.

  Chapter Twelve

  Following Bill’s visit, Jack threw himself into planning for an attack on the Apache FOB at Bridgewater Airpark. It was evident that degrading the Regime attack helicopter capability in the valley would greatly benefit the freedom of movement of Resistance operations. Jack gathered his command team and started them planning their various pieces of the operation.

  The FOB was situated in a rural area, farmland, south west of Harrisonburg. The I-81 ran north-south some three kilometers east of the FOB, as the crow flies.

  The Regime forces had HESCO walled off a four hundred meter square area of the airpark. The access road, State Route 727, ran past the front of the FOB in a north west to south easterly direction. The FOB itself and the airstrip were between this road and a river to the north east, which ran roughly parallel to the road. There was a distance of about eight hundred meters between the road and the river behind the FOB.

  From the north and east there were only two access points to get on to route 727 that ran past the front of the FOB. One was to the south east, where the river bent into a southerly direction. Here, three and a half kilometers from the FOB, the road dog-legged hard left to run north easterly along the edge of the river for four hundred meters before turning rapidly east and crossing a bridge before joining Route 11.

  The other access point was also a bridge, three kilometers to the north west, where the 727 joined the 42 at a T-Junction. Three hundred meters north east of that junction the road crossed a bridge into Bridgewater.

  The enemy had walled off the main area of the airpark where the buildings were. There was an entry control point (ECP) directly off the 727 on the south west side. The access road from the ECP ran north easterly into the compound and bisected the buildings inside the FOB, leading to some taxi and aircraft parking areas at the back.

  There was also a grassed area inside the FOB on this north east side. The actual airstrip was behind the buildings and ran north west to south east, but it had been cut off by the HESCO wall on the north west side of the FOB.

  There was also a secondary road that paralleled the one inside the base, running along the outside of the south east HESCO wall from the 727. Halfway along this south east perimeter there was a secondary ECP, directly off the road. The area surrounding the FOB was open fields with very free access for vehicles and fields of fire.

  The south east half of the inside of the FOB consisted of some open parking areas, the open pan area to the north east out the back for aircraft parking, and a couple of large buildings. The closest building to the secondary ECP was a large L-shaped two story building that was being used as accommodation for the guard force. The long part of the ‘L’ ran parallel to the south east perimeter wall and the bottom part of the ‘L’ was on the south west end, pointing towards the secondary ECP.

  The north west half of the base was dominated by a large aircraft hangar, roughly seventy five meters square. On the main ECP side of this hanger, facing the gate and close to the internal bisecting road, was a two story building that was being used as the squadron headquarters and pilot accommodation.

  Jack and his team were studying the OP reports in detail, as well as the photos that had been taken. There were guard bunkers on each corner of the FOB. The ECPs were on two sides, the south west and south east, and as such there were guard bunkers there also. There were also bunkers built halfway along the walls on the other two sides of the FOB.

  The enemy guard bunkers were a cross between a r
aised bunker and a watch tower, built on the HESCO wall out of additional HESCO bastions, sandbags and wooden beams. The area where the guards sat manning their machine-guns was quite open, a sandbagged timber roof held up by four corner pillars, thus allowing observation but also reducing the protection from incoming fire.

  The two platoons of Regime infantry were guarding the FOB and they were equipped with MRAPs, which they were not using in their static role. The vehicles were parked up in a motor pool close to their accommodation building. Two of them were being used as the ‘gates’ to the ECPs. They were parked across the road in the gap between the HESCOs, and driven out of the way if access was needed. The support machine-guns from the turrets on the MRAPs were mounted in the guard bunkers.

  The Apaches were kept parked up on the pan to the north east side of the FOB, sometimes taken into the large hanger for repair and maintenance work.

  The Resistance OP over-watching this Regime FOB was located eight hundred meters to the south west. Here, there was ridge covered in scraggly trees running in a north west to south easterly direction. The ridge overlooked the FOB and due to its elevated position could see beyond the HESCO wall. There was a draw between the ridge and the FOB, and behind the ridge to the west was an area concealed from view of the FOB. The ridge was accessible from vehicle navigable roads and trails from the west.

  The OP position, or in the vicinity of it along the ridge, was an ideal location for a fire support base. Given that it was ideal to assault at a ninety degree angle to your fire support base; this would mean approaching and assaulting the base either from the north west or south east flanks, along the 727.