Patriot Dawn: The Resistance Rises (17 page)

They lost a team early on, caught withdrawing from the contact point after successfully destroying an MRAP.
The MRAP was the successor to the armored Humvee, bigger and heavier. The team was moving back though a wood line when an Apache was called on station. It effortlessly picked them up on thermal and tracked them, first destroying the IED pair and then sniffing out and snuffing out the cover team.

It was increasingly apparent that the possession by the
Regime of the Apache was a huge force multiplier and the Resistance would have to do something about it. They had developed the thermal ponchos, which had been proven to work well when static. Good use of ground and cover, as well as alert air sentries, was another factor that helped them.

They had discussed the use of smoke for any set piece attacks they were to plan. The idea was that the presence of hot smoke particles in the atmosphere interfered with the thermal imagers employed by the helicopters. If they could
get set up upwind of an objective, it would be possible to light fires and allow the hot smoke to drift over the objective area. They had planned for this and prepared some half oil drums that they could burn diesel fuel in. A collection of old tires, thrown on top, would really get some nasty hot acrid smoke going.

They really felt strongly that although the IED plan was working well to harass the enemy while the training reached its conclusion, they wanted to hit back at the Apaches. They had noticed that they seemed to fly mostly in pairs, sometimes alone if there was a resource issue.

Now that the fire support platoon was equipped with the machine-guns and Barrett sniper rifles, Jack felt it was time to plan something, and he enlisted Caleb as his key volunteer. Caleb had strong reason to want to get back at the Apaches.

Jim had established a couple of vehicle laager points under camouflage netting spread around the area of Victor Foxtrot. He had trained a couple of welders to help with his metal shop and the IED production, and also used them to modify vehicles. Now that they had the fire support platoon up and running, under training right now, they had been working on some ideas that Jim had come up with.

             
They had acquired three large dump trucks, the multi-axle type with the large metal high box rear. These were big heavy trucks with a huge weight capacity. Jim had his guys weld additional plate steel around the inside of the truck bed, and sandbag the floor. They also welded steel plate to the cab doors, removing the windshield and welding a steel plate across, with a rectangular viewing port to see through. This resulted in a cab and truck bed resistant to high velocity rounds.

             
They set the trucks up to receive two mortar barrels each, baseplates buried under sandbags in the bed of the truck, along with gear and ammunition to operate them. If utilized in this way, it would give the six-barrel mortar squad the potential to be mobile and dispersed.

While they were about it, they also rigg
ed the trucks to run as machine-gun carriers. They did this by mounting receivers at various points along the front and sides of the truck bed, in place of pintle mounts, which allowed the machine-guns to be slotted in rapidly and mounted on the sides of the dump trucks.

             
They also worked on acquiring and setting up some heavy pick-up trucks as ‘technicals’; these were gun trucks. Rather than using the tripods which came with the 240 and .50cal machine-guns, for deployment in the ground role, they welded in pintle mounts that were set up to receive either the 240 or .50cal machine-guns. This would allow the pickups to be deployed against ground targets, but having a pintle mount also allowed use in an air defense role.

             
They used heavy pick-up trucks for this purpose; they had ten of them for the machine-gun sections. They had acquired some dual rear axle trucks for use with the .50cals. Jim knew from experience that firing these machine-guns in the back of a truck could cause some heavy rocking on the suspension. Thus the .50cal trucks were designed to be heavy duty with solid dual rear axles and a reinforced pintle mount built off a strong frame.

             
As well as the technicals, they also had a few ATVs and gators. Using either the trucks or the gators would allow them to utilize options for deployment of the fire support platoon. They could go entirely mobile in the dump trucks and technicals. Or they could go lighter and move into position using either the technicals or the Gators, but stopping short in the vehicles and moving forward to set up the guns in either the light role or tripod mounted sustained fire (SF) role.

The technicals, unlike the dump trucks, were not armored. This reduced survivability from enemy fire and thus their deployment had to be considered.
It was best to deploy the technicals from cover, even a ‘hull down’ position, or at long range out of the reach of enemy small arms. Either that, or use the technicals as simply transport vehicles, dismounting the guns onto their tripods in cover to engage the enemy.

             
It was certainly true that all their weapon systems, including the .50cals and the 81mm mortars, could be man-packed in. They practiced as such with heavy carries through the woods on field training exercises. The key thing was ammunition quantities and resupply. Using even a single ATV to accompany a mortar or machine-gun section allowed an exponentially larger supply of ammunition.

If absolute stealth was not required
while moving into position, ATVs could be brought up to just short of the fire support position, and then when the attack went ‘noisy’ they could bring ammo resupply up to the firing positions.

Come early February, they had been observing the Regime tactics of often flying surveillance or Apache attack helicopter top cover over many of the convoy moves along the highways. Jack and Caleb had been looking for some suitable ground to mount an ambush and they thought they had found it.

             
At the town of Lexington at the southern end of the valley was the junction between the I-81 and the I-64. The I-64 ran out to the west and went through the lower part of the George Washington National Forest, cross graining the ridges of the hills which made up the western boundary of the Shenandoah Valley. Victor Foxtrot was further north in those hills, shrouded deep in the wooded ridges.

             
Jack was going to be personally in charge of this mission. He planned a multi-weapon shoot using 240 and .50cal machine-guns, as well as a couple of Barrett .50s. The idea was to try and bag one or a couple of Apaches. He took with him an IED team, a kill group from the machine-gun sections with four 240s and four .50cals, as well as two Barrett sharpshooters.

He also took Caleb and one other fighter
from his platoon, Sam, in a technical with a mounted 240. Sam had been the one hit in the plate by the 7.62mm round while breaking contact from the hunter-killer force. As well as this group, he also took a man with a video camera.

             
They drove cautiously south through the web of rural roads, firebreaks and forest trails until they came to a position north of the I-64. Jack had identified where a small side valley opened up north of the road, with spurs of wooded high ground to the east and west of it. Running north up the valley along the banks of a winding creek was an asphalt road, partially obscured in places by the tree cover.

             
Jack had the machine-gun kill group set up in a defilade position on the spur to the west of the valley, looking to the north east. They dug shallow ‘shell scrapes’ to increase their protection and covered the position and the tripod mounted machine-guns with thermal ponchos. The way they were oriented put them out of view of the I-64 south of them in the main east-west valley.

In a position on the small road
in the side valley a few hundred meters north of the I-64 waited Caleb and Sam in the technical. They waited under a thermal poncho beside the vehicle, which was hidden amongst some trees.

Down by the I-64 itself the IED team set up an ambush utilizing an array of EFP devices in a daisy chain. Their positions overlooking the highway were camouflaged by the thermal ponchos.
They had also dug shallow ‘shell scrapes’ for cover.

             
Once the ambush was set, they all went into routine, waiting. They ate rations cold and drank water, moving covertly back to the rear of the positions to defecate in cat holes that they dug.

             
Two days later, they heard the beat of helicopters approaching from the east, from the Shenandoah Valley. They were moving slowly, providing top cover for a convoy down on the road. There were two Apache attack helicopters, sniffing and searching along the route. The ambush team hunkered down under the thermal ponchos.

             
The supply convoy passed under the position of the IED team and they initiated the ambush; the daisy chain was largely effective due to predictable spacing between vehicles and several convoy vehicles were left immobilized in the road. The convoy stopped and started to return fire from turret guns, attempting to gain fire superiority into likely positions of cover. The IED team did not move; they just hunkered down in place.

             
As soon as the IEDs went off, Caleb was in the vehicle, Sam manning the 240 on the back. The two Apaches had swung around in response to the contact. As they came into view around the shoulder of the spur, Sam opened fire with the 240. The Apache pilot picked up the stream of tracer headed his way, notified the gunner, and started towards the technical.

             
Sam screamed for Caleb to go and he took off north up the road like a rally driver, Sam still firing the 240. The Apache followed them, trying to acquire the target as the pickup flew round the bends and disappeared under the tree cover, emerging intermittently. The gunner was engaging with 30mm explosive cannon rounds but could not quite get them on target, the explosions of the rounds chasing the pickup along the road.

             
Caleb’s mad drive drew the Apache north into the valley. The second Apache was flying a circuit at higher altitude, passing over the top of the ambush position each time round. The engaged Apache was flying slowly in pursuit of Caleb, sniffing and worrying its prey, trying to get the kill shot.

             
A burst of 30mm cannon fire from the Apache chased the pickup up the road, finding the back of the truck and creeping into the truck bed. A round detonated in front of Sam, killing him instantly, and sending shrapnel through into the cab, narrowly missing Caleb. He went round a bend and brought the truck to a slewing stop, in the same motion opening the door and sprinting out into the creek, taking cover in the water under the bank.

             
The Apache went into a hover, preparing to finish off the truck and then sniff out Caleb under the bank. At that moment, Jack gave the order and the kill group opened fire at the hovering Apache below them in the valley. It was a range of five hundred meters. Jack had the kill group split into two, with two 240s, two .50cals and one Barrett .50 designated for each chopper.

             
The ammunition in the machine-gun belts was loaded as standard with one in five rounds being tracer. The idea in an air defense role was to create a cone of fire that the aircraft would fly into, using the tracers to see where your fire was going. In this case, the Apache was stationary and the gunners were able to walk their long bursts of fire onto it. They opened up with a massive weight of fire, 7.62 and .50cal rounds smashing into the hovering Apache.

             
The Apache is a very well protected attack helicopter designed to withstand small arms fire, with critical areas protected up to either 12.7mm or 23mm rounds depending. It is also over engineered to have redundancy, for example the twin engines and larger parts than are necessary, such as the drive trains. However, nothing is invulnerable, and the machine is only as strong as the human component.

             
As the Apache hovered there, the gunner in the front seat was engaging the pickup while the pilot in the rear seat flew the aircraft. He had never come under effective ground fire before. Suddenly, the airframe was rocked to the right by the impact of the striking rounds, many of them finding their way into the airframe. The Barrett gunner was hitting the cockpit canopy to the pilots left by his head with .50cal rounds, impacting the canopy but not penetrating.

The pilot panicked
, lost altitude and tried to bank away to the right, but the controls felt sluggish – some vulnerability had obviously been hit by the incoming rounds. He tried to bank away but lost control as the aircraft was driven towards the ground by the impacting machine-gun fire. The aircraft accelerated around in a wide turn towards the spur on the far side of the valley, engine screaming with the pilot’s effort to pull it up. Before the pilot could exert control and pull it out of the low turn, the helicopter smashed into the trees, crashing through them into the side of the spur.

Reacting to the initial contact, the second Apache was above the kill group when they opened fire. It flew out over the valley and spun to acquire the target. Just then, the second part of the kill group opened fire, forcing the Apa
che to fly in a cone of machine-gun fire and tracer rounds.