Patriot Dawn: The Resistance Rises (20 page)

Shortly after, the
Regime leviathan uncoiled itself from where it lay on the I-81, resolving itself into three armored columns as the Regime commander revealed his hand. Leaving a headquarters and security element back on the interstate, he was sending ‘thunder runs’ down each of the three routes that Jake had identified, in order to rapidly carve up the town, before conducting a detailed house to house clearance. The objective was the town center.

The U
.S. Military had forgotten many lessons of general warfare while engaging in the ‘global war on terror’ since 9/11. They had learned many lessons pertinent to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Some of these lessons would do them no service. As the three columns started to extend and sniff down the routes they would take into town, it was apparent that they were moving mounted. This meant that the infantry remained loaded into their AFVs. A general principle is that if armor is to operate in an urban environment, it must be protected by dismounted infantry.

As
the Regime columns advanced, the OPs in front of the platoons picked up the routes they were taking. They relayed this in a quick series of code words and started to fall back to rejoin their elements. With this information, the platoons deployed from their separate squad areas, moving to the various pre-established hasty ambush positions astride the enemy approach routes.

Caleb’s
1
st
Platoon was deployed in the central sector, responsible for the main route in on the 33, East Market Street, and ancillary side roads from the east. They were deployed forward in the largely residential area just west of the I-81. 2
nd
Platoon was deployed to the sector north and 3
rd
Platoon to the sector south of 1
st
Platoon.

2
nd
Platoon was commanded by a former Marine Gunnery Sergeant, Owen Westbrook. He was a craggy veteran, built of granite as far as Jack could make out. He made Jack think of old school Wild West gunfighters or Texas Rangers whenever he saw him. 3
rd
Platoon was led by a friend that Caleb had brought in, a young Ranger Captain called Alex Lambert that Jack had not met. He was a laconic character, but a human dynamo when required on operations.

Caleb
’s 1
st
Platoon had established a series of consecutive ambush positions, into which they were now deployed, with the intention of having the squads leapfrogging back past each other after hitting the enemy. Caleb had intentionally asked his squad leaders to mix up the type and mechanism of their ambushes, in order to confuse the enemy and make countermeasures harder to adopt.

Olson’s squad was on point. They had deployed just to the west of the 33, not far from where it intersected the clover leaf at the I-81. They were concealed in a residential area using the side of a house to provide a defilade position,
concealed from view from the armored column moving towards them from the right. Caleb was crouched there in cover with Phillips and Gibbs, both of them holding AT-4 anti-armor rockets, ready to fire. They were the kill team.

About two hundred yards to his west, again along the route of the 33, was his other team with both SAWs. They were in a position to act as the cover group. Olson coul
d hear the whine of the turbine engines of the Abrams, the roar of the Bradley engines, and the clatter of tracks on asphalt as the column approached from the right. The acrid black smoke was drifting over the town; he could taste it in the back of his throat, where it kept good company with the taste of fear.

He heard someone running behind him and turned to see Mc
Carthy approaching. He had been on lookout. He was a young lad, only nineteen, enthusiastic but still a little wet behind the ears.

“Hey Rob,” McCarthy said, breathing hard, “Yea, they’re coming.”

“No shit Sherlock,” said Olson, dryly. He spat a stream of tobacco juice onto the sidewalk. “Get over there and pull security.” He pointed with his chin back the way McCarthy had run from.

Turning to the two men, Olson said, “Ok, get ready.”

Both men moved away from the wall and shouldered the AT-4s. They knelt next to each other, with Olson between them, facing the road but still with the corner of the building concealing them from the approaching column, providing that all important defilade position.

The roar of the engines and the c
lattering of the tracks grew louder as the first Abrams MBT came into view around the side of the house, its turret with its 120mm main armament swinging slowly from side to side as it scanned ahead.

There were a few scrubby bushes providing a bit of concealment between them and the road,
then an embankment sloping down to the road itself, about forty meters away. Olson put his hands up on each man’s shoulder.

As the MBT came level with him, he firmly squeezed each man’s shoulder. They fired and the rockets streaked down together, impacting in a double explosion against the side of the tank
’s armor. The tank was dead in its tracks, but they did not even pause to look. They dropped the empty launchers and the team sprinted away along the sides of the houses.

As soon as the rockets were fired, the cover group opened up on the column with a stream of fire. They were in a good covered position and the idea was not so much to inflict damage on the armored column as to distract from the kill team as they ran. The lead tank was now burning,
munitions starting to cook off inside. The vehicles behind started to push past and engage surrounding likely targets to gain fire superiority, hammering machine-gun fire out to their front and flanks.

As Olson reached the
cover of retail store just beyond, running through the smashed doorway, he shouted into his radio to the cover team, “Move, move, move!” as he ran with his team through the aisles.

Th
e cover team peeled out of their position just as the second MBT acquired them in its thermal sight and let loose a 120mm HESH round, impacting into their position moments after they had left it. Both teams were now sprinting back and they converged together before disappearing into a building and running back along a prepared route.

The
Regime column pushed on until three hundred yards later they hit another ambush from Caleb’s second squad. A hastily emplaced array of EFP devices were initiated by command wire. This time an MBT had a track ripped off to become a mobility, or ‘M’, kill and an AFV was destroyed, the squad inside torn apart by the spray of armor defeating molten metal from the EFP.

A similar effect was happening along all three of the enemy approach routes.
As the columns pushed further into the town, the buildings became denser and better suited to urban defense. The troops were still sitting in the AFVs, the columns effectively blind to the hit and run ambush tactics used by the Resistance fighters.

As they were hit by the consecutively ambushing and falling back squads of the three platoons, the armored columns ground to a halt, the commanders confused by such organized resistance.
They had not expected this, and certainly not to lose multiple armored vehicles when they were simply pushing into a town to extract reprisals on the civilian population.

The
Regime battle group’s operations order for this mission had included an ‘enemy forces’ paragraph laying the responsibility for the IED attacks in the valley on a Resistance group based out of Harrisonburg. The group was operating up and down the valley; evidence in the form of drone surveillance of militia activity and roadblocks in the town was used to back up the assertion that the center of resistance was located there.

The
Regime commander called an ‘operational pause’ in order to adjust. They had to deal with the casualties and recover the damaged vehicles. In a change of tack, the infantry were ordered out of the vehicles to clear surrounding buildings and provide security for the armored vehicles. This was reported back to Jack, who called for mortar fire missions onto the enemy in the open.

The dump trucks moved out of the warehouse into prepared fire positions, where the
coordinates were known, thus aiding quicker adjustment of fire. One truck with its two mortar barrels was allocated to each Regime advance route. The fire controllers coordinated the fire; once they had it on target they called for ‘fire for effect’.

The mortar fire was devastating, whistling in to detonate high explosives in and around where the columns were stalled, smashing into the flimsy houses that the troops were trying to secure.

The Regime forces were quick to react with their mortar locating radar, and were able to bring in fast fire missions from their own mortars onto the vicinity of the dump trucks. As soon as rounds started to land, the dump trucks took off, protected by their armor from the worst of the shrapnel.

The mortar trucks
moved to alternate locations and the game began again, before Jack called for a pause in fire to conserve ammunition; the desired result had been achieved, and the Regime columns were reeling from the blows.

As the
Resistance mortar barrage ended, the dismounted Resistance platoons moved in closer again. They took up fire positions to cover multiple angles. They started to snipe at the dismounted troops and any vehicle commanders who were up in their hatches.

Chapter Ten

T
he Regime columns paused some five hundred meters after their start points. They were reeling from the initial ambushes and the mortar barrage and they continued with the operational pause in order to regroup. They were evolving to the situation, learning lessons long forgotten in the military education of the officers in charge. They prepared to advance the armored columns with dismounted infantry in support.

             
There was no question of the Regime pulling back. This was political. The battle group was accompanied by several combat camera teams and the Battle Group Commander had some pet Regime supporting journalists with him. They must push forward at any cost and seize the town from the rebels.

             
The Battle Group Commander was Lieutenant Colonel Vick Chester, a West Point graduate and career officer. He was a political man and careerist, not without intelligence and military acumen. It was essential for him to succeed here, if he was to make his way in the new Regime and find the advancement that he desired. He was adamant that he would conduct the operation with his own integral assets, and not call for outside support unless he absolutely had to.

             
The Battle Group had integral mortar and artillery fire support assets. As he gave the orders to prepare to continue the advance, Lt-Col Chester ordered indirect fire ahead of his maneuver elements. The problem for his fire controllers was the lack of an identifiable enemy location.

The
Resistance fighters were highly mobile and tended to remain in the cover of buildings as much as they could. The Regime force’s assumption was that any strongholds would be in the town center so they settled for a rolling barrage, starting in front of the columns and creeping up to the town center.

             
Jack watched the mortar and artillery barrages as they switched from target to target, moving steadily onwards towards his position of observation in the upper windows of an old apartment building. He knew that down on the ground the fighters would be hugging cover and hiding in basements as the high explosives rolled over them.

When cont
emplating his strategy, Jack had gone for the delaying withdrawal, but had foregone the idea of moving back to strongholds. Partly, they had not had time to effectively construct them, and also he did not want to be fixed in place. His intent was not to hold the town.

             
Caleb’s platoon was sheltering in their various squads in the basements of several houses. The barrage rolled over them. It was noisy, violent and frightening, but it proved ineffective. Some of the modern houses in the outlying parts of town were so flimsily built that they were literally blown to pieces by the high explosive rounds. It just added to the cover and confusion.

As the barrage passed over top, they redeployed from the basements into fire positions to await the advance of the
Regime columns. The Regime infantry started to move, patrolling in formation up the roads, including the side roads. With a roar of engines and belching exhaust smoke, the armored columns rolled forward again.

The
Regime infantry was moving in the streets. Caleb’s squads kept light, identifying enemy routes and moving through buildings to place explosives. They set hasty ambushes and started to hit the enemy infantry with improvised claymore and small arms fire. Out to the flanks, Caleb deployed several of his sharpshooter pairs to bring accurate crossfire onto the enemy squads.

If the
Regime forces identified a firing point, they would move an Abrams or Bradley forward and use either the tanks main armament or the cannon on the Bradley to tear the building apart. All the while, they were facing incoming cross fire from multiple firing points. The Regime advance started to bog down again.