Patriot Dawn: The Resistance Rises (8 page)

Jack
called the family forward in the car as Jim unlocked the gate, explaining that they had an observation post (OP) in the copse covering the entry gate, keeping it low profile. They had a field telephone run up to the farm, which was how they were able to alert Bill, who had recognized Jack through the binoculars and given the all clear.

They walked up to the OP position,
Caitlin following in the car, and when they got on top of it they saw that it was a concealed foxhole with overhead protection, camouflaged in the trees. There was another man still in the OP, covering his sectors, who nodded to Jack as he approached.

There was an ATV concealed at the
rear of the copse; Jim told Jack to follow in the car as he led the way up to the farm on the ATV. He drove round the back to one of the barns and gestured for Caitlin to drive in and park.

There were several other vehicle
s in the barn. Jim took them round to the back door of the farm building where they bumped into Bill, who had a huge grin on his face. He grabbed Jack in a bear hug, only letting him go to grab hold of Caitlin and the kids.

“Damn it
Jack, it’s good to see you. I was worried about you and the family.”

Bill was older than
Jack by about ten years. Jack had served under him as a young lieutenant when Bill was a Major in the Ranger Battalion. Bill had mentored Jack and they had kept in touch after Bill left the service.

Bill hustled them into the kitchen where they found Cindy. She broke off the coffee she was making on the wood stove to launch herself into a hug fest with
Caitlin and the kids. Jack and Bill sat down at the kitchen table and Jack suddenly felt relieved yet extremely tired all at the same time.

They all sat around the kitchen table, drank coffee, ate, and talked for a long time.
Jack was determined to make it clear to Bill that he did not want to impose on him. He explained what had happened at their house, to Cindy’s huge shock, and how they had decided to head to the farm simply as a first stop and somewhere to aim for as they bugged out. Bill and Cindy would not hear of it, and told them they were welcome at the farm for as long as they needed.

It soon became apparent from the comings and goings in and out of the kitchen
, and from what they could see outside of the kitchen windows, that there were quite a few more people at the farm, most of them moving about in some form of camouflage clothing.

After a while, the kids started to drop off to sleep, including Andrew, and Cindy helped
Caitlin put them to bed in a spare room. Then they sat around and talked.

As it got dark outside Cindy lit some lamps. Bill began to explain that he was part of a Resistance movement, fighting against the excesses of the Regime, the destruction of liberty and the loss of the Constitution. The time for political solutions was long gone, and the only option left for them was to fight to restore the Republic.

One of the key things that
had concerned Bill in his operational planning was the potential for reprisals against the families of Resistance fighters. It was plain that the Regime respected no law or morality and there was no separation of fighters from their families or the public at large. It was a form of total war, against the American people.

Regime forces would simply wipe out a man’s family if they discovered he was a
Resistance fighter. It was brutal and nihilistic and entirely in line with national socialist tyrannies throughout the ages. It was a game of kill lists, lethal raids and reprisals by the Regime. Truly, the Regime had the monopoly of terror and was exploiting it to reinforce their agenda of fear.

Bill explained that since before the collaps
e he had been working covertly with his Resistance cell on a couple of secret hidden locations in the hills and forests to the west of the Shenandoah Valley. They had found several locations that were well hidden in small valleys, ravines or draws in the forested hills. Each location could only be accessed by hiking trail at a distance from a single forest road or track.

They had
selected the best location and taken small excavators up there and over time had dug reinforced bunkers into the sides of the draw, creating underground living spaces in the hollows.

They had named it Camp Zulu.

The idea was that this hidden place would be a refuge for the families and loved ones of those engaging in the Resistance fight. Bill hoped to expand the number of bases as time went on. The fighters could live there from time to time, and visit, but operations would not be conducted from those bases.

Instead, each base would be for the fa
milies of a certain Resistance company and that company would rotate through providing security and defensive forces for that base, while operating elsewhere. Each location, in addition to the underground living spaces, would have a well sited network of fighting positions dug in around it.

Not everyone
in the network would move there. Bill and Cindy would stay on their farm, as would many others, because they needed to maintain the network outside of the forests for intelligence gathering and passage of information. Bill had a ham radio and other communications equipment in his barn for this purpose.

One of the reasons for the underground bunkers was concealment primarily not from naked eye observation,
but from aerial TI surveillance. If there were small signs of the bases, this would not be the end of the world, although best avoided if possible; the reason was that the woods and forests were by no means empty; they were filled with the camps and campfires of those that had fled the cities, each group trying to grub an existence out there in the trees. So a small amount of visible sign was acceptable, just not the presence of an organized camp and large numbers.

“
Jack, I want you to join us at Camp Zulu,” said Bill.

Jack
glanced over at Caitlin and replied. “My absolute priority is my family. I get what you are doing and I admire it. We’ve seen the way it is first hand over the last couple of days, so I understand the need. But I’m not ready to leave my family; I have to be there to protect them.”

Bill grinned, “I thought you would say that. What I want to do is offer you all a place at Zulu. I’d do that anyway
Jack, for the kids’ sake. But I want you to train my guys.”

Jack
looked at him quizzically, “You mean, just a training role, based out of Camp Zulu?”

“
Right, Zulu is also planned as the only training location; it’s a dual location, families plus those rotating through training. It’s very well hidden with some good backwoods real estate. I could use your expertise.”

Jack
looked over at Caitlin, “What do you think Hon, do you want some time to talk about it?”

She looked him in the eye, “Actually, no, it sounds like a plan. We ne
ed a safe place, and there isn’t a better offer out there. If you agree to just a training role, then I’m happy. I’ve been worried enough about you over the last couple of days.”

“Ok, it’s a deal,” he smiled at
Caitlin and reached out to shake Bills hand, “we’ll do it.”

“Ok guys,” said Bill, “that’s great, we have a convoy heading up there the day after tomorrow, so rest up here and we can prepare to get you up there.”

Jack
spent some time in discussion with Bill before their departure and they went over the scope of the Resistance plan.

One of the primary concerns was operational security, OPSEC, and the fear of betrayal by infiltrators. Bill had been working on that and he explained in broad terms
that he had set up his networks separated by cut-outs. He had been working on an intelligence gathering and collating network based amongst the population.

One of the key strengths was that this was a local
Resistance movement, spread across communities in the region, based in the surrounding area. As such it was based in, amongst and from, the population. This meant that it was easier to vet participants.

It also meant that the fighters were often local, with the addition of some vetted outsiders, so the community was
broadly supportive of them. One of the priorities was to retain the support of the population and avoid reprisals against families and communities. This was the main reason for moving the loved ones of the active fighters out of the communities and into safe hidden locations.

However, those safe locations were primarily designed for the families of active fighters and there was a whole support network based around those who remained in place in their farms,
villages and small communities.

Those going to the hidden camps would be taking as much in the way of supplies that they could, but they would be supplemented by the community from the producers that continued to operate on the small farms in the region. There would be no forced tithe or tax, which is why the goodwill of the population was paramount.

Those remaining in place in their homes would not be active in any Resistance fighting. They would produce food, and act as the eyes and ears, the sensors, for the intelligence gathering operation.

Not everyone was involved, and OPSEC was paramount, but there were enough Patriots spread around through the communities, in the contested zones where Regime control was weaker, to allow the network to function.
Clearly, the plan was well thought and already in place, but it was in the early stages of implementation and needed development.

There would no doubt be glitches.

One of the great weaknesses of the Regime was corruption, based in part on how the progressives had infiltrated the fabric of the country before the collapse, and the moral bankruptcy of the Regime that continued into this civil war.

It also came out of the tedious and crippling bureaucratic system that had pervaded the country before the collapse; the
stifling bureaucracy of rules and regulations that had acted as a layer of control because it was so tedious to navigate and so easy to fall foul of.

The corruption allowed a black market
and barter economy to thrive. There was an interaction across the lines in the gray areas of the corruption and greed of the Regime bureaucrats. It was in those gray areas and gaps that the Resistance movement saw its chances and was also able to procure items, information and supplies that were scarce.

Fuel was an example. It was scarce and closely guarded; a coupon system used to allocate supplies to those the Regime considered needed it, mainly the security apparatus. Corruption circumvented this, allowing bureaucrats at many levels to procure fuel as they required.
Occasionally, a tanker truck would go missing in the chaos of the contested sectors, a bureaucrat compensated in some way for the favor.

             
As part of the discussion, Bill told Jack where he believed the enemy forces situation currently stood. His farm was located in the country south west of Warrenton, which made it about thirty five miles south west of Manassas and roughly central to the area of operations.

The two primary Regime zones were DC to the north east and Richmond to the south. DC was clearly the center of the Regimes power base
and operations were ongoing to subsume the surrounding urban areas into the pacified zone; as such, Manassas was currently being ‘pacified’ by Regime forces.

The
Regime was also conducting ongoing route clearance and convoy supply operations along the main supply routes (MSRs) in the region; the I-95 joining DC and Richmond, with the I-66 heading out west from DC and the I-64 similarly from Richmond. The I-66 and I-64 joined up with the I-81 that ran north-south through the Shenandoah Valley and was also an MSR.

The Regime was operating patrols on this route,
the I-81, which bisected the forested terrain of the Shenandoah ridge to the east and the George Washington National Forest to the west. It was in these forests that the hidden camp and the training base were located.

In the areas to the west of Manassas and Richmond, and
particularly in the Shenandoah Valley and the surrounding rural areas, the regime presence was currently not strong enough to effectively lock down the area.

It was the intent to begin to train and develop an effective armed
Resistance, initially operating to disrupt regime operations in the Shenandoah Valley. The intent would be to start slowly, conducting harassment operations to deny use of the I-81 and the valley, before expanding the scope and area of operations.

Bill was determined to keep his
Resistance organization safe from electronic warfare, tracking and interception. He, and several others in the region, did have ham radios that were primarily used for listening in to events and news as they were passed on the network; there were multiple Resistance movements across the country and they were not centrally coordinated, but rather fragmented organizations of individuals, communities, militias and ad hoc groups in all shapes in sizes. 

The
primary means of communication within Bills organization was a mixture of dead drops, ‘runners’ and caches. It would make the tempo of operations slower, but keeping it low tech would limit surveillance and tracking by Regime assets.