Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse

CHAPTER 24 Incursion

Some bad news came over the CB only two weeks after Ian and Blanca arrived. Todd immediately relayed what he had heard to Kevin’s house, via field telephone. A meeting of both companies was scheduled for 7 a.m. the next day, in Todd’s barn.

The members of the two nascent companies sat in a semicircle in the hay that was scattered on the floor of the barn. Most had their rifles or shotguns lying across their laps or propped up against the wall of the barn within arm’s reach. Everyone was there, except for Lon, who was on LP/OP duty just up the hill, and Lisa Nelson, who was handling the same duty back at the other retreat. Lisa had her baby girl, Rachel, with her at the LP/OP. Little Jacob, who was now three years old, sat in Mary’s lap during the meeting. The boy sat patiently and politely, saying nothing. Rose had her baby daughter in her arms. She quietly nursed her during the meeting.

Goats wandered in and milled around during the briefing. Chickens scratched the dirt at the open doorway. Gray began, “Thanks, Mike, for getting your folks up here so promptly. You’ve by now all heard bits and pieces of this, but just so there is no confusion, let me start at the beginning. Here is what we know, based on what we’ve heard from ham radio operators and Radio Free America on shortwave, from what has come over the CB relay net, and—taken with a grain of salt—what the Federals are putting out on the shortwave.

They’ve taken over WRNO and WWCR, and some of the fifty-thousand-watt eastern AM stations and turned them into their exclusive propaganda tools. We get the other side of the story from Radio Free America, in Maine and The Intelligence Report, in Michigan.

“The provisional Federal government now has partial or full control of nineteen states east of the Rockies. They’ve brought in a lot of foreign troops, Belgians and Germans mostly, under some bravo sierra ‘Presidential Decision Directive.’ Our national sovereignty went out the window when the UN troops came in. Since we are so far removed, we can’t tell exactly who is actually running the show back there at Fort Knox. But whether it’s President-for-life Maynard Hutchings and his crowd, or the Europeans, or some supra-national world government, it doesn’t make any difference. Martial law is martial law. A moose turd pie still tastes like a moose turd, no matter how much sugar you put on it.” There were titters of laughter.

“The bottom line, in my estimation, is that since the U.S. is bankrupt, and our creditors—the international bankers, that is—have sent their bully boys to collect on the debt. They consider every square inch of real estate, every capital asset, and even your labor and the future labor of your children to be surety for that debt. It’s sort of like when people buy cars on credit and then stop making the payments. The bank sends a repo man to tow the car away. If you can picture that on a global scale, what is going on is ‘kingdom towing.’ The Federals may think that they are still in control, but in reality they are just errand boys for the banksters—the Rothschilds and Bilderberg Group fat cats of the world.

“There are some folks—like Kevin Lendel—who have researched this more than I have. They go so far as to claim that we’ve actually been forestalling this situation since 1933, when Roosevelt first declared the nation bankrupt. Perhaps they’re right. Perhaps what we are seeing is just a delayed reaction from something that started way back then. Think about it. We took out the loan in 1933. We let the debt get totally out of hand in the 1980s and 1990s. We stopped making the payments all together after the stock market crash, and then the banksters sent the ‘tow truck’ two years into the Crunch. If that is indeed what happened, it would explain a lot of things. It would explain, for example, how our courts began mixing law and equity in the 1930s, and started treating us all as 14th Amendment “persons” rather than as full state Citizens. It could explain why the courts haven’t overturned laws like the National Firearms Act, and the 1994 Crime Bill, the 1996 Immigration Bill, and the USA PATRIOT Act, even though they are clearly unconstitutional. It could also explain where this make-believe animal called ‘statutory jurisdiction’ came from, effectively replacing the Common Law. Oh well, these are all issues that won’t get clarified for several years. For now though, we’ve got to worry about a more immediate problem. It’s coming at us like a Mack truck.”

Todd continued, “The Federals are on the march, expanding their territory. They are handing out favors to any Quislings that go along with them, and whomping on anybody that doesn’t play along. In at least five states, they’ve executed the governors on the spot and put their puppet governors in place. Instead of talking in terms of states, the UN likes to talk in terms of ‘regions’ as an overlay to the existing governmental structure. There are still state governors in the pacified states, but they are essentially subordinate to the regional administrators. And here’s the kicker: The regional administrators report to, and get their direction from, the UN headquarters in New York, not the so-called Federal government at Fort Knox.”

Todd waited for his words to sink in, and then went on. “The Feds have big detention camps set up in several states, at least one in each of the old FEMA regions. They are supposedly ‘refugee camps’ or ‘relocation camps,’ but everyone living around them knows the real story. The camps are to house any malcontents that they think they can ‘reform through labor,’ and for any high-profile types that they are afraid could be seen as martyrs if they wax them right on the spot. They just whisk folks away and shut them up behind concertina wire. The real hard cases are put in the old Federal prisons like El Reno. Lower security risks are put in the slave labor camps.

“Regardless of where they go, virtually all of the prisoners are poorly fed, beaten, and worked eleven hours a day. It is essentially a huge gulag system with a one-way door. The only way you come out is dead. In all, a lot like the laogai system in China.

“The Feds have made a few friends by getting the power grid restored in places. And, over a year ago, they conquered Texas and Oklahoma, where a few oil fields and refineries were already back in operation. So now they have plenty of fuel, oil, and lubricants for their campaign of conquest.

“Now, not everything is rosy for the Feds back east. They still haven’t taken Vermont, New Hampshire, or Maine. They tried that for three summers in a row, and decided to let those states wait for a while. Ditto for most of Michigan. Talk about a hornet’s nest for the Federales! Folks call it ‘Militiagan’ now. The Federals are also having serious problems in the southeast, primarily the coastal states from Virginia south to Florida. Parts of those states have been officially ‘pacified,’ but in actuality there are still large-scale guerrilla movements there, even in the so-called ‘pacified’ areas.

“Starting this summer, they’ve been pushing for control of the western states in a big way. They have apparently decided to leave California and Arizona alone—at least for the time being—until they deal with the inter-mountain states. If and when they do get into California, they will face some tough resistance, especially in the northern half of the state, from the Harry Wu militia. They rightly predicted that the inland northwest would be a real burr under their saddle blanket. From what we’ve heard from the ham operators, things are nip and tuck over in Wyoming and Montana right now. The UN and Federal troops arrived there just about a month ago.

“Meanwhile, Colorado is only partly under their control. The Federals have been there since early last summer. It is kind of stalemate there. The Federals control the big cities, while the militias control most of the small towns and the countryside. In the daytime the Federals control the highways too, but at night they belong to the militias. It’s not much different than the situation that the Russians had in Afghanistan back in the ’80s. Officially, the UN has declared Colorado ‘pacified,’ and they’ve declared ‘victory’ over the Colorado National Guard and the militias. But in reality, virtually all of the state, aside from the big cities and the open plains in the eastern part of the state, are still contested territory. I’m not sure how things will settle out in Wyoming and Montana, but my guess is that at least in the short term, it won’t be too different than in Colorado.

“Now we have word that the Federals have started a sweep up through Utah and the banana belt in southern Idaho. A bunch of Quislings down there cut a deal with the Federals and UN ‘peacekeepers’ in exchange for what they are calling ‘local autonomy.’ They turned out to be a bunch of cooperative little slaves down there, all ready to roll over and play dead. How did Samuel Adams put it? ‘I hope their chains rest lightly upon them when they bow down to lick the hand that feeds them.’” Todd paused for a moment and then went on. “On the advice of the Mormon church hierarchy in Salt Lake City, most of the LDS wards in Utah and southern Idaho have signed on with the Federales’ local autonomy scheme. Just a few are resisting. In essence, though, there isn’t a lot of organized resistance down there. Now by this please don’t think that I’m denigrating the LDS church. I’m not. It’s just their current leadership that has caved in.

“At last report, the Federals have two main forces in the west. They are calling them ‘Corps’ but they are actually more like divisional size. The First Corps is bogged down playing cat and mouse with the militias in Wyoming and Montana. Parenthetically, I should mention that we’ve heard that the Federals basically bypassed the Dakotas in their push west. They figured there wasn’t enough population or resources worth bothering with, at least for now. They probably plan to double back and scarf them up after they secure the west coast.

“The Second Corps is the one heading our way. They have a huge convoy that is pushing north through Idaho, up Highway 95. From what I’ve heard, they’ve been hitting more and more resistance as they get farther and farther north. They just crawled up the White Bird Hill onto the Camas Prairie yesterday morning. They hit some highly organized resistance at Grangeville, and as of last night they were doing a blitzkrieg on Grangeville and surrounding small towns and farms. Parts of Grangeville burned down, from the latest reports.” Those assembled murmured in dismay.

After waiting for the whispering to subside, Todd added, “What I was hearing on the CB relay net about their exact numbers and order of battle was garbled and even a bit contradictory, but that is the nature of raw intelligence information. As near as we can tell, the Second Corps has got something like seven thousand men and nearly one thousand vehicles heading north on Highway 95.”With that, Jeff Trasel let out a low “Wow!”

Gray continued, “Most of it is ground equipment, a mixture of U.S.-made, western European, and eastern European. Both Corps are composite, with a mixture of U.S. and UN units. Less than a year ago, the original Second Corps was divided into three parts. Two of those fractions went to form the nuclei of the Fourth and Fifth Corps, back east. Many of the Second Corps units have either been recently activated and filled with recruits, or are foreign units that are getting their first taste of fighting here in the states. The bottom line is that only about one-third of the Corps has much combat experience. We can probably use that to our advantage.

“The mix in the Second Corps is roughly 75 percent foreign, and 25 percent American. Oh yes, I should also mention, there are UN ‘advisers’ in each of the Federal units. The Second Corps only has a few helicopters, mainly for command and control. There are supposedly quite a few more helicopters presently with the First Corps over in Montana. They detached most of the Second Corps air wing to assist the First Corps. Yesterday I heard from a man who had binoculars on the convoy as it topped White Bird Hill, that for some reason they’ve got all their tracked vehicles loaded on some huge semi-truck Lo-Boy trailers….”

Doug Carlton, who was obviously getting agitated and itching to say something, raised his arm and said, “Sir, if you don’t mind me interrupting, I know why.” Todd turned his outstretched palm upward and toward Doug and replied, “By all means, go ahead, Doug. Please tell us anything you know that might help us—either strategically or tactically.”

Todd took a step backward, and Carlton stood up and leaned on the barrel of his HK91. He drew a breath and said, “I was at Fort Knox, Kentucky, for ROTC Basic Camp. We had lots of briefings from each of the Army branches there. We had a chance to do some hands-on with some of their equipment, too. As I’ve told many of you before, my favorite day was field artillery day. We got a chance to actually prepare and fire some eighty-one-millimeter mortars and pull the lanyard on a 105 howitzer. They also put on a ‘Mad Minute’ firepower demonstration. That was a rush, let me tell ya. I’m sorry, for digressing.

Anyway, the day we got our Armor branch briefing, they told us that operationally they put the tracked vehicles on either railroad flat cars or Lo-Boy trailers until they get close to the actual fighting. That reduces wear and tear on their tracks and suspension. By tracked vehicles, I’m referring to the M1A1 Abrams tanks, the track-mounted artillery, the M2 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles, or ‘IFVs,’ the M3 Cavalry Fighting Vehicles, and the older M113 APCs.”

“Eh-Pee-See?” Blanca Doyle asked quizzically.

Carlton turned to explain, “That stands for Armored Personnel Carrier. The M113 is on caterpillar tracks and carries a small squad of men. There is usually a Browning .50 machinegun on top, and optionally a couple of extra M60s. These older APCs have an inch and a half of aluminum armor. That’ll stop most small arms. The newer Bradley IFVs carry a twin TOW missile pod, a twenty-five-millimeter chain gun, and a 7.62 coaxial machinegun. They have thicker armor with extra reactive armor panels on the sides to stop RPGs. The older APCs were basically a battlefield taxi. It rolls the infantry up to the front lines, the back door swings open, and they pour out. The Bradley is much more sophisticated, faster, and better armed. It weighs something like fifty thousand pounds. The M113, by comparison, only weighs a little over half of that. That twenty-five-millimeter cannon is nothing to mess with. Also, since most of the six infantrymen inside should have an individual 5.56 millimeter firing port weapon, they can fight either mounted or dismounted.”

Doug hesitated for a moment and then said, “Well, strategically speaking, the Camas Prairie and Palouse Hills are mainly open and grassy, with just a few small stands of timber, mainly in the draws. Those are all real tanker country.

They can cruise around wherever they want without any regard to staying on roads, at least in the summer months, when the fields and pastures are fairly dry.

Up on those prairies, they’ve got line of sight to forever. It would be almost impossible to try to fight them there. It’s not until you start getting into the heavy timber here in the eastern Palouse—east of Moscow, or in the upper reaches of the Clearwater River valley, that the tanks would start having mobility problems. When you get into thick timber and/or really steep terrain, virtually all the vehicles are forced to staying on established roads. That tends to funnel them into a few restricted avenues of approach.”

Carlton stopped and scanned the semicircle of faces around him. “In fact, if we had known about their advance earlier, we could have organized and hit them down in the canyon lands, south of Riggins, before they came up onto the Camas. It’s really steep and narrow down there and we could have bottled them up and really kicked some butt. Too late for that now. Like I say, between us and where they are right now, they’re in tanker country. The only other place to conceivably stop them would be the Lewiston grade, before they come up out of the river confluence and onto the Palouse. But even if we had the time to gather a force—which we don’t—that probably wouldn’t work because there is no concealment on that grade for an ambush. They’d be able to spot us, stand off, and pound us with ‘arty.’

“In terms of the route they will take as they continue northward, I would bet that they keep right on going up Highway 95. The other option, of course, is for them to take an axis to drop down into the Clearwater River valley on Highway 13, and then go west on Highway 12 to Lewiston. From there, they could resume their original avenue of approach. A diversion into the eastern Clearwater River Valley could be very costly and time-consuming for them. It is restrictive terrain and therefore ready-made for ambushes and roadblocks. From what I’ve heard, Kamiah and Kooskia were big-time survivalist country before the Crunch. They have quite a large local militia structure developed down there these days.”

Carlton shifted his feet, and went on. “A few moments ago, Todd was telling you about some folks down in the southern part of the state that have sold out to the Federals. The covenant communities up here in northern Idaho are mainly Mormon too, but there is no way that they are going to go along with any ‘regional autonomy’ scheme. They are dedicated patriots and will fight to the last man for their freedom. The Feds could get bogged down for weeks in that country, even if they do have seven thousand men in that division. So again, in my estimation, if the Feds have even halfway decent intel, they will consciously skip going through the upper Clearwater area—at least until they have the rest of Idaho under their thumb.

“The other thing that I want to mention is the risk of radio interception and radio direction finding. From here on out, we’ve got to assume that our CB transmissions are going to be monitored. They might even have some PRD-12 portable direction finders with them. If they have two direction finding sites operational in the area, and they coordinate with each other to get lines of bearing on us, they could pinpoint our transmitters in a matter of minutes. They call this direction finding ‘DFing’ for short. I saw a demonstration that an Army Reserve military intelligence company put on. That was at my ROTC Advanced Camp. They were calling in simulated artillery strikes within a couple of minutes after somebody keyed a microphone. I strongly suggest that we use strict radio silence unless in actual engagement from here on out. Using couriers is slower, but it sure beats getting DFed and having an artillery or MLRS barrage land on you. It can ruin your whole day.

“Any questions, or anything else you’d like my perspective on?” Doug asked.

“Yeah.If they do come straight up 95,how long ’til they get here?” Mary asked.

Carlton shrugged his shoulders, and answered, “That’s not my bailiwick. Perhaps Todd or Mike could answer that.”

Todd stepped forward and answered, “That is hard to say, Mary. I’ve talked this over quite a bit with Jeff, Doug, and Mike. Let me first digress to mention that, unfortunately, I made the mistake of giving our family name and mentioning the Northwest Militia and the Templars by name when I gave my little rebuttal speech a couple of years ago at the Moscow airport. I’m sure that that bastard Clarke made notes, and that they’ll come looking for us. In retrospect, I don’t regret speaking up, but I shouldn’t have mentioned any names. Pretty stupid of me. I apologize. Oh well, hindsight is twenty-twenty. I suppose that I should have remembered the old Japanese proverb: ‘The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.’ It’s hard to get a low profile back, once you’ve given yourself a high one. Once again, folks, I’m very sorry for shooting my mouth off.”

Gray hesitated for a few moments, and kicked the hay at his feet. He blinked twice, looked up, and carried on. “Now getting back to your question… Mike and I concluded that the feces the Federals are presently in—down in Grangeville—will definitely slow their advance. Then they’ll face some fighting in Lewiston, and then maybe even more in Moscow. From what we’ve heard, they are nice and friendly when there is no resistance. They just drop off their Administrators, tax collectors, and some garrison troops. They give the old ‘We’re with the government, and we’re here to help’ line. What a crock of bravo sierra. But when there is resistance in a town, the UN boys feel they have the green light to rape, plunder, and burn.

“When they end up looting a town,” Gray added, “it can take a couple of days or more. Sometimes it’s even three or four days before they can get the soldiers sobered-up, their pants zipped, and back on the road. Now assuming that they don’t bypass us and keep going straight on up to Coeur d’Alene, I’d say that we have somewhere between four days and ten days before they get here. And, if by chance they do divert to make a sweep down the Clearwater, we could have three weeks or more to prepare. I agree with Doug, though. I don’t think that the Feds will do that, so we aren’t going to have the luxury of that extra time.

Gray then asked in a serious tone, “The next question, which I’d like to present to you all for a vote,is this: ‘Do we melt back into the hills, fight them guerrilla-style, or just completely beat feet and disappear?’ Let’s see a show of hands. How many of you vote for the latter—for opting out and disappearing?”

Only Margie Porter raised her hand.

Gray then asked, “So, do we fight?” Everyone but Margie raised either their hands or their rifles with a mighty shout. He turned to face Mrs. Porter. “I can appreciate your reluctance, Margie, but consider this. If we did take off, where would we go? Unless they are stopped, the Feds will eventually conquer the lower forty-eight states. Then it will just be a matter of time before they consolidate their gains. Canada? I don’t think so. Canada is part of the problem, not the solution. It was firmly in the socialist-slash-globalist camp even before the Crunch. We’ve heard that they’ve got UN ‘peacekeepers’ up there, too.

Sooner or later, even Alaska will be on their list. Once they consolidate power, they’d eventually just track us down and exterminate us, no matter where we went. To them, we represent the old America—free, sovereign, and independent. The UN can’t stomach having people like us around. What they don’t realize is that we represent the quiet majority of the citizenry.

“Eventually people in the conquered states will rise up and put an end to the Hutchings puppet government, and kick out the UN. It is just a matter of time. As for me, I’m not willing to live as a slave and wait for that to happen. I’d rather start to make it happen myself.” Doug Carlton shouted, “Oo-rah!” Gray continued. “The bottom line is that I’d rather die fighting on my own terms with a rifle in my hands, than to die whimpering and begging for mercy in some ditch with my hands tied behind my back.” The men and women around him clapped and cheered. “Even if I die trying, my little boy there will grow up knowing that I at least tried to regain his freedom. I owe him that much.” The metal walls of the barn reverberated with more applause, whistles, and shouts.

“Okay, then, here is my basic plan, at least off the top of my head, but as always, I’m open to suggestions. I propose that we evacuate both retreats and regroup temporarily at a place that Mike picked out a few miles from here, up in the National Forest. He found it when he was leading a security patrol last April. From what he’s told me it’s a good defensible location, well away from any roads, and it’s in heavy timber for concealment. There is a good-sized level opening where we should be able to land the Doyles’ Star Streaks.” Nelson gave a thumbs-up in agreement.

Todd nodded back to Nelson and continued, “We’ll use that valley as our initial base of operations. Within a few days, though, we will probably want to split back into two separate organizations and locate and operate independently. We wouldn’t want to put all of our eggs in one basket. There is the chance that the Feds will have aircraft with FLIR pods, so I want to keep our signature small. Ten-man squads at most. If we pick up any recruits, we should start breaking up into smaller independent cells to stay under that ten-man threshold. Luckily, the hills are crawling with deer and elk, so there will be lots of false thermal targets to confuse them. If and when the Federals do get here, they will no doubt want to absolutely level our house and barn, and probably Kevin’s too, just as ‘examples.’ I don’t want to be in their sights when that happens. These Federals have no compunctions about throwing their weight around.”

Ian Doyle chimed in. “I first heard about these goons when I was in Arizona. And I heard some more about them when we were in Utah, on our way up here. As far as I’m concerned, these Federals are no better than looters. They’re just better armed and organized. They wear the cloak of legitimacy, but there’s nothing legitimate about them. They’re just another band of thugs, flying that Tidy-Bowl blue UN flag.”

He continued, “Our two planes are available for recon, of course. And, I’ve also got some other goodies down in the basement.” He thrust up a forefinger and blurted out, “Wait! I’ll be right back.” He left the barn abruptly leaving most of those gathered wondering what could be so important that he had to miss part of the meeting. While he was gone, the militia members started chattering among themselves about contingency plans and G.O.O.D. kits.

Doyle returned to the briefing after just a few minutes. Laying a bulky olive drab nylon duffel bag on the floor of the barn, he proclaimed, “Well, here they are. There are five of them. Well, originally I had seven, but therein lies a long story all in itself. I’ll just make it simple and say that I’ve got five left. They are all, the later ‘A2’ model. I broke them down into halves so they’d fit here in the duffel.” Doyle started to unwrap the front assemblies and rear assemblies of what at first glance looked like later-model Colt Sporters, padded by his extra sets of ACUs and BDUs.

As he continued to talk, he laid out the halves in pairs on the floor of the barn, and then began assembling them, snapping their pivot pins into place. “I got these gems from the AP’s arms room, along with three Beretta M9 pistols.

They were the last guns still in there. Unfortunately, there was no small arms ammo left on base. They only kept a small quantity onhand for base security, and that had been cleaned out when the APs left. The nearest ammo supply point was way the heck down at Fort Huachuca. Luckily, I had a few hundred rounds of commercial .223 at home, plus three .50 caliber ammo cans full of nine-millimeter ball, tracer, and soft nose.” He added with a smile, “In case you are wondering, I did indeed sign Uncle Sugar a hand receipt for these guns. Heck, if I hadn’t put them in safekeeping, who knows whose hands they’d be in by now.”

Doyle went on, “The reason I ran to go get these was because I just had the idea of mounting these in a rack in the front of one of the Larons with some sort of remote firing mechanism. With five of them firing simultaneously, I could do some major Vandammage. Oh yeah! My Star Streak will be C-A-S capable.”

“What’s C-A-S?” Lon asked.

Doyle turned toward him and replied, “C-A-S stands for Close Air Support.”

Lon Porter eyed the M16s and stroked his chin and said forthrightly, “No sweat, I can probably fab that up for you in a day or two.”

Mike Nelson added, “What about our M60? Could we build a mounting bracket for it on the other Star Streak?”

“Why not?” Doyle laughed. “We can have two armed birds in the air at the same time that way. Mounting the M60 should be even easier than mounting these sixteens. It’ll be just like the old days, Todd. We’ll just cut to size, file to fit, and paint to match!”