Patriot Dawn: The Resistance Rises (30 page)

             
Utilizing the psychological shock of capture, the convoy troops were disarmed and corralled on one side of the compound. Cobb and Val spoke to them, explaining what was going on. They were then given the option: join the Resistance or remain prisoners.

They all came over.

The next day, the enlarged convoy including SFC Cobb’s platoon made
its way to the west, into the hills. They wound up the roads into the forested ridges. Val was with them and she had ensured that SFC Cobb had disabled all the transponders in the vehicles.

             
They arrived at the RV location that Val had given. It was a clearing off the road. Stuck into the field just off the road was a wooden post with a piece of white cloth hanging from it. Val walked over and saw there was a note attached to the pole in a plastic cover. She opened it. Inside, was a new set of grid coordinates. She smiled. She had given the coordinates fairly arbitrarily, and Jack was building in some additional security in case she was compromised.

             
They drove for thirty minutes to the next set of coordinates. It was a clearing off the road, overlooked on three sides by wooded higher ground. Again, there was a post with a note. Val read it and passed on the message.

             
The defecting troops were very nervous. They were in a perfect ambush killing area deep in Resistance territory, a place where the Regime had not dared so far to send ground troops for fear of the obvious ease of ambush on the heavily wooded roads.

The instructions were to strip off
body armor and weapons and move away from the vehicles. The covers on the backs of the trucks had to be opened. The soldiers had to wait in formation in the center of the clearing. There was a lot of muttering about this, but they had little choice.

They stripped down to their basic uniforms and formed up. Val was with them.

They waited.

Jack was up slope in the tree line with Jim. He had the ambush site covered by his fire support platoon. He also had air sentries keeping an eye and ear out for any supporting aviation. They kept the formed up soldiers under observation for an hour.

             
“What do you think Jim?”

             
“Well boss, it looks legit. What about you?”

             
“Yea, looks good, let’s go down and see them.”

             
They both emerged from the tree line and walked down the slope towards the formed up soldiers. Val came towards them. They met out of earshot of the troops.

             
“Hey Val,” said Jack, “if this is what it appears, you have done very well.”

             
“It was just luck. If it was a different unit, we would be dead or captured by now.”

             
“What do you think?”

             
“I think it’s for real, but a few of them, mainly the ones from the convoy we captured, had a stark choice to make so I am not sure how much their heart is in it. But I don’t think there are any actual infiltrators amongst them, it was all too spur of the moment.”

“Ok, let’s go talk to them,” Jack said.

They met with SFC Cobb and walked amongst the troops, questioning them about the Regime, what they thought, and their motivations. After another meeting, they agreed that it seemed legitimate and they would take the troops into the organization. It was a trust moment, a certain level of faith and intuition was at work.

As soon as the decision was made, Jack called down a platoon and they had the troops grab their personal gear. They allowed them to keep their personal weapons.
Some of the Resistance platoon jumped in the vehicles, checked the transponders were destroyed, and drove them away as per Jim’s instructions. They would be moved to one of the hide sites, hidden, and the rations moved into the Resistance stores.

There was one other thing. RFID chips. When Jack told Val and Cobb what had to be done, there was a look of shock on both their faces. Cobb had genuinely forgotten.

“Yea, they chipped us all. Just like a regular formation for shots or whatever. We had no choice. It was either that or UCMJ action,” said Cobb.

“Ok,” said Jack, “they have to come out now. I would have preferred it if they had come out before you moved here, but
now is better than never.”

Jack introduced Dr. Davis and Megan, and along with their medical team they ran an impromptu surgical clinic. Dr. Davis and an assistant administered
lidocaine to numb the skin, then he whipped out the chip with a  quick incision to the forearm, before passing the soldiers on to have the wound sutured. It was quick and efficient, and afterwards the chips were piled up and burned.

There were forty eight soldiers, the platoon and convoy combined. Under the escort of another platoon, they marched for several hours on trails through the woods to the training compound. They
did not go anywhere near Zulu or Victor Foxtrot, but to the farm complex that the Company had used as their urban training site. This was to be the quarantine area, to ensure all was as it seemed.

Jack and Jim together interviewed them all, with Val and Cobb there to assist with their background knowledge on them. Eight of them did not appear to be trustworthy, having just gone along to save their skins. Either that or they were not prepared to fight in the Resistance. They were segregated and confined.

A week later, they
prepared to move the forty they trusted to Victor Foxtrot and integrate them into the organization according to their skill sets. This would have the effect of splitting them up.

             
Jack and Jim discussed what to do with the eight. It was a hard call. As far as the defecting units command knew, the unit had just disappeared with no sign. If they released the eight, not only would their command know what had happened but they would be able to glean significant intelligence from debriefing them. Maybe even getting geographically close to where the Resistance bases were.

             
It was a hard call to decide what to do with them. Killing them was mooted, and it was agreed that if it became necessary it would be an option. But these soldiers were not active Regime members, nor were they an active threat for betrayal. Their hearts were just not in fighting for the Resistance. In the end, it was decided to keep them prisoner at Victor Foxtrot, using them as a labor force for menial tasks, and see how the situation developed.

Chapter Fourteen

Jack had come to the conclusion that it was time to move the families out of Zulu. He felt that it was only a matter of time before one of the bases was discovered, and given the success of Resistance operations in the valley he felt that the Regime would only concentrate more force as time went on.

             
Things were different than he and Bill had originally conceived. They had planned on Zulu being a remote safe base up in the wooded ridges. Resistance operations were supposed to have spread out from initial beginnings in the Shenandoah Valley, further to the east, towards Manassas and as far as the I-95.

             
The opposite had happened. The valley had become a crucible of combat, with the Regime reacting to Resistance successes by reinforcing defeat in order to try and bring more combat power to bear on the Company.

             
This had the effect of containing much of the combat inside the valley, but it also meant that Zulu was vulnerable to any concerted push into the hills. Victor Foxtrot had originally been conceived as just a training base, but it had morphed into their forward operating base.

Jack considered
that it was only the concealment measures and the discipline enforced in these bases that had prevented them from being picked up by Regime aerial surveillance up until now.

             
Following recent operations Jack managed to get a few days leave down at Zulu with his family. It was so wonderful to see them and to have a bit of time to spend with them. The summer months were pretty tough for them down in the gulch in which Zulu sat. However, they were doing well and the environment was a wonderland for the kids, even given the lack of television.

             
Food had got pretty tight at one point, as it had for all of them, but that had been alleviated by the resupply from the supply convoy. Caitlin was now working alongside Paul Granger running the administrative side of Zulu. Jack suspected that she was really running it. Jack was able to sit down with them and discuss the logistics of moving the base, putting the preparations in place.

Once back at Victor Foxtrot, Jack got things in motion. They had to move the forty miles to the new location over a mix of trails and roads. All the while operational security had to be paramount. The first thing Jack did was segregate a force of originals from the newly arrived soldiers. He selected the fire support platoon mainly because they had the vehicles. This would leave him his three maneuver platoons in place as well as the Company headquarters and ancillary elements.  He still had one of the platoons down to the north of Zulu in the patrol base Zulu Delta.

             
When it came time to move the large group of families set out on foot in a strung out column. They moved on the trail to the south of Zulu with the full complement of gators and ATVs, loaded with supplies, equipment and some of the younger or infirm family members.

The able bodied carried their rucks and self-defense weapons. They were escorted by the defense contingent from Zulu
; the platoon from the patrol base also conducted satellite security patrols ahead and to the flanks as they moved.

             
They had to move over five miles of trail before making it to an RV. This had been selected where a ravine provided cover close to a fire road that the fire support platoon could access with their vehicles. Here, they were split into groups and driven in the dump trucks and pickups to the new base. They were dropped at another concealed ravine site which had been secured in advance.

             
Once the civilian group had reassembled at the far RV, they walked the three miles in to the new site. A work party made several trips back to Zulu to strip out as much of the moveable and reusable equipment, including the camouflage netting. They then transferred it by road, including the gators and ATVs, to the new site.

Rudimentary construction had already happened when Jack originally sent the plant forward, and now they went into a
further work phase to get the place inhabitable and concealed. The defense force again provided security at the new location, supplemented in security and work details by the fire support platoon.

             
Jack felt that because he was not currently conducting any concentration of force type deliberate operations, he could spare the fire support platoon. For the time being, the only assets he had back at the original locations were the platoon at the Zulu Delta patrol base, two platoons up at Victor Foxtrot, and the supplements from the defecting soldiers. He kept the new location secret from the new draft, at least for now, to keep a firewall up between any potential treachery and the families.

             
Equipment and supply transfer operations went on for a week, moving vehicles from the various laager locations and the excess food and fuel supplies. Jack intended that once it was complete, and the fire support platoon was freed up to return to Victor Foxtrot, he would be left with a light force freed up from logistical stores and family members. Thus, Zulu would no longer be a factor and Victor Foxtrot could easily be abandoned if compromised. The bulk of stores would be at the new location, which they had named Yankee.

For the duration of the move operation, Jack had pulled all patrols from the valley, so he had all his forces either at Yankee, at Victor Foxtrot, or at the Zulu
Delta patrol base. He had also sent a coded message on the network to Bill, letting him know that operation ‘Cold Hearth’ was underway.

2
nd
Platoon was currently occupying the patrol base Zulu Delta down by the now abandoned Zulu. They had remained in place to provide protection and a patrol screen to the recently completed take down operations that had been going on, with Zulu now finally stripped of all they could take. Jack was going to pull them out over the next couple of days and consolidate at Victor Foxtrot.

             
Jack and Jim were up at Victor Foxtrot with the tactical headquarters and 1
st
and 3
rd
Platoons. They were doing some maintenance training that was also designed to integrate the new draft of soldiers into their ranks.

The guys from Cobb’s 82
nd
Airborne platoon fitted in well, they were trained and experienced light infantry soldiers. In contrast, the convoy troops left a lot to be desired, and it was a steep learning curve for them. Some of them were moved out to supply roles and similar, to which their level of fitness and motivation suited them better. Only a few proved suitable for the teams, and they were integrated as battle casualty replacements where possible.