Patriot Dawn: The Resistance Rises (29 page)

             
SFC Cobb was disillusioned. He did not support the Regime and he was not happy to be fighting for it. Most of his men felt the same, and there was much mutinous talk. The current situation in the United States was a tragedy, and they sympathized with the Resistance. However, they felt trapped, they were part of the machine, and there was nowhere to go. Desertion was punished by death by firing squad.

             
The general feeling in the platoon was that they did not want to be fighting for the Regime. But they felt their alternatives were limited. They also had a political officer to contend with, allocated to their COP. If he felt you were disloyal to the Regime, you would find yourself extracted for ‘reeducation’.

             
How to get out of it and where to go?

             
Two days ago, there had been an IED attack on  the I-81 and SFC Cobb  had taken out a half platoon patrol in armored Humvees into the surrounding area to try and pick up any sign of the insurgents.

Since the successful attack on the convoy, Val had been moving on foot with her team through the valley. They were moving away from the site of the ambush on foot before they would head back to where they had hidden their vehicles and then back to base.

Val knew that food supplies were getting low. For the current patrol, they had one MRE package per team member per day. The MREs had come ‘off the back of a truck’ a
nd found their way through the Resistance quartermaster network to Victor Foxtrot. They preferred to use the MREs for patrols because they were packaged, did not go bad, and had the chemical heaters.

Val had led the patrol in single file along the drainage ditch to a known food drop. The food drop was a couple hundred meters out the back of a private home, near to a dilapidated shed. Checking inside the concealed five gallon bucket, they had found a stale loaf of
homemade bread. It was better than nothing. They had moved into the shed, posted security, and eaten.

It was mid-afternoon.

They had a set of NVGs that they used when it got dark, one sentry handing them off to the next.

Late afternoon, SFC Cobb took his Humvee patrol along an old track to a copse of trees. He parked up the vehicles in a defensive formation in the trees and posted security. They were overlooking a private house and out back was a large yard with a dilapidated shed at back of it.

             
A farm dog down at the house started barking up at them and the door opened. Out came the widower who lived there. She was a proud American and that is why she supported the Resistance, leaving what she could when she could in the food cache. She had little, but she had been into food storage and homesteading, she baked her own bread, and would leave a loaf in the cache whenever she could. It was often taken.

             
As SFC Cobb looked down at the house, the old woman looked up and saw the vehicles parked there. She went over to her car and started to honk the horn. It was a common thing that had been adopted in the valley; residents would honk their horns whenever they saw a Regime patrol, in order to warn any Resistance in the area.

SFC Cobb admired her for her courage, because many Regime troops had taken to simply lighting up any vehicles that did it,
often with .50cal fire, on the excuse that they were supporting terrorism. It made him sick. It was just simply wrong. It was murder of American citizens.

Val’s team was alerted to the presence of the Regime patrol by the car horn. There was little they could do. In the cold light of the proximate threat from the patrol, it was evident that the shed they were occupying was badly positioned.

It was on the edge of an open field and the only covered route in or out was the ditch they had approached in. That ditch led in the direction of the small hill and copse that the Regime patrol sat on. They were trapped for the time being, so they hunkered down, going to fifty percent security, two on duty at any one time.

SFC Cobb had decided to stay in position for a few hours. He had one of his security positions scanning with a portable thermal imager. He had a feeling about this. Late that evening, he was called over to the sentry position.

The soldier on the imager thought he could see something in the shed. SFC Cobb had a look. It was indistinct, but there seemed to be a heat source coming from the dilapidated building, heat leaking out from the inside
through the broken down door. He decided to investigate.

             
He got his squad ready to move on foot, donning their NVGs, while detailing the rest of his group to provide over-watch and potential fire support from their Humvee mounted guns. He gave them express orders to only open fire on his order.

Using the concealment of the copse, SFC Cobb took his squad down the backside of the hill and then around to the ditch. In single file with this squad behind him, he crept up
towards the shed.

             
When the squad was twenty meters away from the shed, the fighters inside opened fire; the rounds went cracking over the top of SFC Cobb and his patrol. It had gone noisy now, so there was no more need for stealth.

             
“Stay low, get on line!” shouted SFC Cobb to his squad. “Hold your fire,” he said on the radio to the fire base back in the copse.

             
By now, all of Val’s four man team was firing, the rounds whipping over the top of the squad in the ditch.

             
“Hold your fire, hold your fire!” shouted SFC Cobb to his squad. Then, sticking his head up he called to the shed, “Cease fire, cease fire!”

             
The lack of incoming fire confused Val and her team and she told them to cease fire. There was nowhere to go except back over the open field or forwards into the ditch to assault the enemy. None of those looked like good options. Silence descended over the fields again after the furious outbreak of fire.

             
“What do you want!” called Val.

             
“Surrender!” called back SFC Cobb.

             
“We’re not taking prisoners today!” called Val.

             
Cobb chuckled, “No genius: you surrender!’

             
There was a pause.

             
The silence drew out.

             
“Hold your fire, I’m coming out!” called Cobb. “Don’t try anything; you are covered by my gunners on the hill.”

             
SFC Cobb handed his weapon off and climbed out of the ditch. He stopped just short of the shed. Val appeared in the doorway, looking perplexed.

             
“Hey,” said Cobb.

             
“Hey,” said Val, “what’s this?”

             
“You from the Resistance mob in the hills, the mountain men?”

             
Cobb took her silence as confirmation.

             
“Look,” Cobb continued, “we want to come over. My whole platoon.”

             
Val considered this for a while. “How are you going to prove to me this is no trick?”

             
The balance of power had shifted to Val. She was now holding the cards, despite being outgunned and in a bad position. Val thought some more.

             
“Ok, here’s the deal,” she said, “If you want to come over, you have to prove to us this is no trick. You have to do something for me. Meanwhile, we need to send two of mine back to let my boss know of the arrangement.”

             
“Ok, let’s hammer this out,” said Cobb.

             
They sat and discussed it, coming up with a plan. Val knew that they were short of supplies and she also needed these Regime troops to show her they meant business. It was too easy for it to be a trick. Once they had chatted for a while at the shed, Val being very careful with OPSEC, both groups moved back up to the Humvees to discuss this further. Val’s team kept their weapons.

             
SFC Cobb had to make sure that his men were fully onside, and both he and they had concerns for their safety at the hands of the Resistance. Val wanted to make sure that this was genuine, so she had demands too. It was a surreal time, both sides forcing themselves to trust each other a little, while trying to ensure their own safety and searching for signs of treachery in the other.

             
Val and Cobb were culturally the same, and came from similar army backgrounds, so they could empathize with each other and that made the trusting easier. But Val also had to make it clear to both Cobb and his men that she was from the Resistance and what that would mean to them. She spoke to the group, and outlined what they would have to do. There was no going back from this.

             
Val wanted to know why these soldiers wanted to come over. SFC Cobb and the others were able to articulate this well, it was something they had believed and talked about amongst themselves for a long time. However, they had not had the means or opportunity to do something about it until now.

             
The platoon was generally onside, but Cobb told her that the platoon leader, Lieutenant Rider, was pro Regime. There were a couple of others that could not be relied on.  The plan involved going back to the COP, taking it over, and then ambushing a supply convoy that Cobb knew was due.

Meanwhile, two of Val’s team would go back and let Jack know about an agreed RV point up in the hills. Val, her remaining team member, the defecting platoon and the looted supplies would move to that grid. Val also informed him that they would have to disable the blue force tracker and tracking transponders in all their vehicles before they headed into the hills.

With Val and her team keeping hold of their weapons, they climbed into the backs of the Humvees while SFC Cobb got his guys back together for a brief. They were all with him, but they knew a group back at the COP was not. SFC Cobb briefed them on the plan agreed with Val.

The patrol rolled back into the COP at dawn. It was a small group of farm buildings surrounded by a HESCO wall, the usual guard bunkers on the perimeter. They parked up the vehicles and as per the pre-arranged plan they rapidly rounded up those they knew were loyal to the Regime. They held them outside the TOC in the yard.

             
SFC Cobb alerted Val and her team and they joined the group. There were six prisoners, including the platoon leader and the Regime political officer assigned to the COP. Their wrists were zip tied and they were forced down onto their knees.

             
SFC Cobb spoke to them, “We are going over to the Resistance. You are the only ones in the platoon who are not with us. This is your chance. Join us, or you will be executed. But be advised, you will be called upon to fight with the Resistance, so if you are just saying it to save your hide, think again.”

             
All of them came over, with the exception of the lieutenant and the political officer.

             
“Ok Cobb,” said Val, “this is your moment, show me whose side you are on.”

             
“Last chance LT, don’t be an idiot,” said Cobb. The lieutenant tried to get up and charge, but Cobb kicked him down to the ground. Cobb pulled his handgun, walked over, and executed Lieutenant Rider with a shot to the head. Val drew her handgun, walked behind the political officer, and executed him with a round to the back of the skull.

It was a defining, sickening moment. The platoon stood around in shock. Cobb turned around, handgun raised. “Anyone got a problem with that?” he shouted, his voice shaking.

No answer.

“Ok, the convoy is coming through t
omorrow afternoon. Squad leaders to the TOC for a planning meeting. Val, with me. All radios turned in to the TOC now! Specialist Evans: take care of accountability on that. If anyone has second thoughts and tries to get word out, they will be killed. Everyone else, get back to your duties.”

Val dispatched her two team members with the coordinates of the RV. It turned out that the platoon all had their original reverse US flags in their upper arm ACU pockets, under the Regime flags. They pulled them out, threw the Regime flags into the dirt, and stuck the US Flags onto the Velcro. They buried Lieutenant Rider and the political officer round the back in a shallow grave.

             
Taking the convoy was easy. It was a relatively small supply convoy, a few MRAPs guarding five LMTVs, the version with the armored cabs. The trucks were full of rations. SFC Cobb quickly planned a fake IED on the I-81 just south of the COP. They had the area cordoned off and diverted the convoy to the COP. There was a large enough parking area inside the HESCO perimeter for this purpose.

             
As the convoy drivers and escorts were relaxing and getting out of their vehicles, the COP turned their weapons on them, SFC Cobb demanding their surrender. There was an awkward moment of confusion before the unprepared convoy escort troops made the collective decision not to do anything. There were twenty two of them.