Текст книги "Liberators"

Автор книги: James Wesley Rawles

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 29 страниц)

It was not until after they had made eye contact, and after Megan had spoken the magic words former Marine, that she was invited inside. They talked for another twenty minutes before Tracy said, “Your husband, sister, and sons must be freezing their tails off. Go fetch them.”

The deer carts were soon dripping dry in the garage, and Joshua’s party was warming themselves near the Sommerses’ big Hearthstone Equinox woodstove.

The Sommerses were in their late fifties. They had one adopted grandson who was living at home. His name was Chad, and he was nine years old. (Their estranged daughter, who was a drug addict living in Dallas, Texas, had dropped off the roly-poly grandson with them six years earlier, and they had not heard from her since. Chad formally became their ward just before the Crunch.) Ron Sommers tearfully described how one of his two sons had died of a burst appendix at age twenty-six, six months after the Crunch. His other son had never returned from college at Norwich University, Vermont, where he was in his junior year. With no word from him, he was presumed dead.

As they continued talking, Chad brought out a plastic tote bin and was quietly building Legos with Leo and Jean. Tracy apologized for not having any coffee or sugar, but she did have some tea bags. She brought out mugs to fill with hot water from the teapot that was constantly on the woodstove.

Oddly, there was no formal interview or job offer for Joshua’s party. Their three-hour conversation with the Sommerses just gradually shifted toward their new responsibilities at the ranch and what bedrooms they would be sleeping in. They were hired.

The ranch was a 320-acre rectangular half section. They raised registered Black Angus. They had no bull of their own (they had used artificial insemination for breeding before the Crunch), but they now had the use of a loaner Angus bull from the other side of Driggs to cover their twenty-five cows, in exchange for one weaned calf per year—with steer calves and heifers in alternating years. Although it would have been better to have their own unrelated bull to ensure that every cow was bred, they lacked a bullpen. Building a bullpen was on Ron’s lengthy to-do list.

Ron was a former Marine Corps 3002 ground supply officer, who after leaving the service worked agricultural credit and later in investment banking. Their move to the ranch in 2011 was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.

The Sommerses’ ranch house sat on a bench that had been cut on a shallow slope. The main barn sat on another terrace slightly above and beyond it, and the open-sided hay barn, beyond that. The elevation of the ranch was 6,420 feet at the west end, and nearly 7,000 feet at the heavily timbered east end. They had sixty acres of cultivated hay ground, and the rest was in pasture and timber.

West of the house was a six-hundred-square-foot hand-built greenhouse that had been constructed over a framework that was originally designed for a small pole barn. Ron called their greenhouse the Monstrosity. Ron had built it just after the Crunch began, using dozens of used windows that had come from condemned buildings—mostly old trailer houses. The roof was covered in corrugated translucent roofing plastic. The west, east, and south walls of the building were covered in an odd assortment of old window units with various-color frames. Very few of the window panes matched and they were pieced together like a quilt work, with four-by-fours and scraps of corrugated translucent roofing plastic in between. Only the north wall of the greenhouse was solid and insulated. The greenhouse was drafty and leaked badly whenever the snow and ice melted, but it had kept them well fed since the Crunch. Tracy kept the greenhouse garden going year-round. A rusty old woodstove in the center of the greenhouse was kept burning continuously from November to April of each year.

The water for the house and barn was gravity fed. The only electricity was provided by a pair of fifty-five-watt PV panels, which charged a bank of eight golf-cart batteries, cabled together series-parallel in a system that Ron had crafted after the Crunch. Because it had no proper charge controller, the system had to be watched closely in the summer months to prevent overcharging the batteries and boiling off their distilled water. This battery bank was used primarily for charging smaller batteries, powering the intercom, and charging Ron’s assortment of DeWalt power tools. It also provided power for intermittent use of their CB radio, which was their only link to the outside world.

The Sommers ranch would be Joshua, Megan, Malorie, and the boys’ home for the next one and a half years. With the ProvGov stretching its tentacles westward, they started to feel as if they were living the lives of NOC clandestine agents. Their false IDs were flimsy, since they had no other documentation. Once UNPROFOR troops passed through Driggs for the first time, Megan explained their situation to Ron Sommers, and he was sympathetic. It was decided that henceforth, only Ron or Tracy would make trips into Alta or Driggs.

Their two summers at the ranch were frenetically busy with moving cattle, hay cutting, wood cutting, constructing a henhouse, building a bullpen (with stout cedar posts buried at three-foot intervals), and gardening. Joshua’s party more than earned their keep all through the year. Their main security problems at the ranch were four-legged, rather than two-legged. Their war with the mountain lions, bears, coyotes, and wolves was endless. With the help of Joshua, Megan, and Malorie, only two calves were lost to predators, and none were lost to rustlers.

36

HOOFING IT

We have the illusion of freedom only because so few ever try to exercise it. Try it sometime. Try to save your home from the highway crowd, or to work a trade without the approval of the goons, or to open a little business without a permit, or to grow a crop without a quota, or educate your child the way you want to, or to not have a child. We all have the freedom of a balloon floating in a pin factory.

–Karl Hess

Alta, Wyoming—April, the Fourth Year

In early April, Tracy had heard that UNPROFOR Homeland Security investigators were asking questions around Driggs, making lists of “anyone suspicious.” According to Rumor Control, this included anyone with a military service record, anyone who refused to accept ProvGov currency for payments, anyone who had made disparaging comments about the ProvGov, and anyone who was not originally local to the area. Though Megan matched all these criteria, the last category concerned her most.

Megan, Joshua, and Malorie decided that it was time to leave the Sommers ranch, and with the snow off, the timing was good. They had been able to help Ron with some of the most intense work for two summers, so they felt that they had contributed enough labor to justify their upkeep.

On the day of their departure, they had their deer carts packed much more efficiently than when they had arrived. Over the past seventeen months, they had systematically acquired an assortment of gear that was better suited to cross-country travel than what they had arrived with. They also had three carts now—one for each adult. All three carts had been spray-painted in flat green and brown blotches. The heavy canvas tents that they’d inherited from the chaplain had been replaced with a pair of forest-green Fjällräven Singi lightweight nylon three-season backpacking tents. These Swedish-made tents were well used but of very good quality. Ostensibly two-man tents, they had just enough room for the five of them to sleep comfortably. The same retired backpacker in Driggs sold them several small waterproof dry bags to protect their gear from the elements.

Joshua’s party had also upgraded to better-quality sleeping bags for the boys, lighter-weight cooking gear, and four army surplus green foam sleeping pads that Joshua trimmed to match the interior profile of the tents. Their food was mostly beef jerky and freeze-dried Mountain House backpacking foods that they had bought at great expense with some of their pre-1965 silver coins. Anticipating a diet that was heavy on meat, they laid in a supply of Metamucil powder and an acidophilus-blend probiotic powder to maintain digestive regularity.

The boys had new broken-in boots instead of tennis shoes, and everyone had olive-green or woodland-camouflage ponchos.

After making their good-byes to the Sommerses, they headed out on the morning of April 10. The boys were crying. They were going to miss Chad. Their life at the Sommers ranch had hardened them in some ways but softened them in others. They were physically much stronger, given the exertions of wood felling, bucking, hauling, splitting, and stacking as well as hauling hay. (Nearly everyone in the region had switched back to small bales, since they didn’t require the use of tractors.) But they had become accustomed to regular meals and sleeping in warm beds. Roughing it out on the road would be much different and their mental stress level would be much higher.

Their progress through Idaho was slow. They made it to Driggs the first day, but then transitioned to night travel for the sake of stealth. (They were traveling armed, and not only were most of their guns in the ProvGov’s banned categories, none of them were registered.) Their intended route through the Banana Belt and up Highway 95 was 685 miles. After reaching the outskirts of Rexburg and averaging only 4.5 miles a night for the first week, Megan “did the math” and realized that their trip would probably take them five months if it was all done on foot.

Their modus operandi was to sleep during the day in brushy or wooded areas, cook their “breakfast” at dusk, and then be on the road by full dark. From Rexburg all the way to Payette, they were in open, arid country. Since the power grid had gone down, much of this erstwhile farming country had reverted to desert and had become largely depopulated. They looked forward to seeing windmills as their associated stock-watering tanks were often their only source of water after being filtered.

They became experts at dodging off the highway whenever they saw approaching headlights. This happened infrequently, since southern Idaho had just recently been occupied by UNPROFOR troops and fuel was still scarce. Whenever they saw headlights, they just assumed that it would be a UN vehicle. During the day, while the others slept, Joshua would often hunt rabbits and birds with a folding slingshot. He even became adept at stunning or killing trout with large pebbles from the slingshot, once he learned how to aim low, to compensate for the refraction of the water. Starting in Rexburg, they were also able to buy food to resupply their party, paying in silver dimes and quarters.

By May 7, they reached the strange town of Arco. The cliffs behind the town were painted with huge, gaudy, two-digit numbers representing high school class years. It was now nearly a ghost town. The most difficult stretch of their trip was the forty-three miles between Arco and Carey, since it took them through the dusty Craters of the Moon National Monument. They averaged seven miles per night, and found water only once, at Lava Lake. They rested, fished, and filtered water there for two days.

On May 14 they passed by Carey, and were able to refill their canteens again at Carey Lake and at the Little Wood River. From there on, water was less of a concern since they passed by water sources nearly every night. Often, however, the water had an alkaline taste even after being filtered. On June 10 they reached the outskirts of Mountain Home, Idaho. Because of an obvious UN troop concentration in both the city and the adjoining Air Force base, they took a circuitous route, via Mountain Home Reservoir. They slept in abandoned houses each day and averaged only two miles of travel each night. The daytime heat was becoming oppressive and they longed to get into the mountains.

They cut between Nampa and Meridian, Idaho, on small farm roads. Here, the population density was higher, but the people were friendly and generous, even though they had obviously been suffering since the Crunch. Most of the families here were Mormon. Rather than staying on Highway 95, they took Highway 55 north from the town of Eagle. It was here that they heard their first resistance firefights in Idaho. One of these was within a mile of them, and a few stray tracer rounds from UNPROFOR machine guns passed over their heads. Jean and Leo seemed more excited than frightened. The adults, in contrast, felt exposed and outgunned.

They quickly climbed into cooler, more timbered country, which was how they had always imagined Idaho would be. It was 155 miles from Mountain Home to the former ski resort town of McCall. On the way, they passed through the derelict sawmill town of Cascade, which still had mountains of sawn logs.

On July 12, they made it to McCall and camped just one hundred yards from Payette Lake. There, they were surprised to witness a drunken contingent of Belgian troops partying by the lake, teaching themselves how to water ski. They were using a pair of stolen ski boats that they had brought back to life with UN-supplied 94-octane gasoline.

The next ninety miles, which brought them back onto Highway 95, en route to Grangeville, took them through some scenic mountainous ranching country and forest lands. On July 20, Joshua shot a young cow elk with his .270 rifle. They rested for the next four days, gorging themselves on elk steak and making as much jerky as they could carry.

Then they dropped down into arid country alongside the Little Salmon River. Except for the town of Riggins—which was the farthest northern point of UNPROFOR occupation—the population density was very light, and there was no sign of UN troops except for a couple of daytime convoys.

A local, who was a former whitewater rafting guide, warned them to avoid a UN roadblock that was at the north end of Riggins. He advised them of the route they should take, and drew them a tracing of a Forest Service map. They would have to turn off on Big Salmon Road and take a long detour. This squiggly route, which took them through abandoned Salmon Hot Springs and then up the mountainous gravel Salmon-Grangeville Road (on NF-263 and NF-2630), had not been maintained since before the Crunch. Because of landslides and downed timber, the road was just barely passable in spots with their game carts, and would have been impassable for anything else except perhaps dirt bikes. The detour took them two grueling nights and fifteen hundred feet of elevation change, but ironically it deposited them back on Highway 95, less than a mile north of Riggins.

They now could make better speed, but they still traveled only at night, for fear of bandits or being strafed by UNPROFOR helicopters, which had been seen as far north as White Bird.

On August 20 they passed through White Bird and started up a long, steep grade to the Camas Prairie, skirting around the town of Grangeville.

There were several buildings near Grangeville that were blackened ruins. They didn’t stay to ask if the buildings had been burned by looters or by a long-ranging UNPROFOR gunship. They just avoided getting close to the town and moved through the area as quickly as possible.

After transiting the Nez Perce Indian Reservation, they dropped down to the city of Lewiston. They ended up taking the dozens of switchbacks on the Old Lewiston Grade to avoid any vehicles on Highway 95. Once at the top of the grade, they entered into the rolling Palouse Hills country. Although mostly cleared and cultivated, the region offered lots of shady forested canyons, where they could lay up each day. Once up on the prairie, there was a maze of small farm roads that they could take toward Bovill.

By September 5 they were in the hamlet of Blaine. Finally, on September 9, they reached Bovill. There, a man with the local CB network contacted Todd Gray’s ranch. Ken Layton came to pick them up in Jeff Trasel’s pickup truck, towing a box trailer.

There were lots of hugs. The carts and backpacks were quickly loaded on the trailer. Riding with Ken in the cab of the pickup, Joshua and Megan sat with their rifles between their legs. Malorie sat in the bed of the pickup holding on to the boys. She was joyously singing them an old French Canadian sea shanty.

When they approached the lane from the county road that led to Todd Gray’s house, Ken said, “I love you like a brother, but I’ve got to warn you that things are crowded here. So crowded, in fact, that there’s already talk of splitting the group and putting half of us down at Kevin Lendel’s ranch, which is just a few miles down the road. Until that happens, things will be very cramped.

“Since UNPROFOR is already in southern Idaho and central Montana, we expect them to move in to northern Idaho next year, and things may get dicey. In fact, Todd made the mistake of speaking up and identifying himself publicly, when a UN spokesman came to give a speech at the Moscow-Pullman airport a few months ago. So when the Blue Helmets do arrive—and that could be as soon as this autumn—we may be at the top of their hit list. Todd and Mary are thinking that we may have to bug out. Now, don’t get me wrong, from a self-sufficiency standpoint, this is a great region to live in. I just don’t think that it’ll remain safe for you here at Todd’s ranch for very long.”

Joshua asked, “So what do you recommend, Ken?”

“I’ll make some inquiries, but I think that one of the big cattle ranches around St. Maries might be looking for a team like yours. You will, of course, have my strong recommendation, plus the letter of recommendation you’re carrying from that rancher you worked for near Driggs.”

Joshua sighed, and then said, “We’re going to have to pray about this and talk it over. We all have skills, and we want to help fight the ProvGov, but we have the safety of little Leo and Jean to consider.”

Ken said, “I’ll leave it up to you. Working at a ranch is probably the best option since you have your kids with you. But if you have enough precious metals to support yourself for a while, then maybe you’ll want to go and get involved with one of the militias that are forming. They’re popping up all over the region. I’m sure that they could use the help of folks with a background in intel gathering and analysis.”

They slept in the living room of Todd and Mary’s house just one night. They stayed up late, sharing stories of their adventures and testifying of God’s providence and protection. They caught up on events in different parts of the United States as they had played out during the Crunch and its aftermath.

The next morning, they awoke early. Joshua, Megan, and Malorie prayed together. Over breakfast, Joshua talked with Ken. Joshua said, “We reached a conclusion. We’ve decided that God has protected us thus far, so we need to continue to trust in him. So we think that we should get involved with one of the new resistance groups in the region. For the sake of the boys, we need to keep a fairly low profile. We’d like you to make the introductions, but please do so under our assumed names from the very beginning.”

Ken nodded, and said, “You got it, brother.”

37

BLENDING IN

Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. Selah.

–Psalm 32:7 (KJV)

Moscow, Idaho—September, the Fourth Year

Joshua rented a house on Harden Road, on the northwest side of Moscow, just north of the University of Idaho campus. As a college town, Moscow had been depopulated following the Crunch, and only now was it getting back to its earlier population level. There were plenty of rental houses and apartments available. They also started attending Christ Church, which met nearby on Baker Street.

The Moscow Maquis already had eighteen members. With Ken Layton and Todd Gray vouching for their bona fides, Joshua, Megan, and Malorie were recruited to form a new cell within the organization—one that specialized in intelligence analysis. Their new cell and its location would be known only to the two key leaders of the Maquis, and they would be identified only by their first names during their interactions. For the sake of OPSEC, the Moscow Maquis leaders habitually referred to Joshua’s small cell as “the intelligence guys in Spokane.”

The local economy was starting to recover and there were even hopes of reopening the university, but the threat of invasion by UNPROFOR loomed on the horizon. To have enough silver to live on, Joshua, Megan, and Malorie shared a twenty-four-hour-a-day job as “receptionist/concealed-carry security guard” at the front desk of Christ Church. They each took an eight-hour shift. The job paid $1.20 a day, which was just enough for them to live on. Though they had to deal with many issues as receptionists (mainly referring refugees to sources of aid), there were also lots of quiet hours at the desk, time Joshua devoted to gathering intelligence about ProvGov activities and UN troop movements. Malorie took the day shift so Megan could homeschool the boys, Megan took swing shift, and Joshua took the graveyard shift.

Their new living arrangement worked well through the winter. They settled into a steady work routine. Thanks to Malorie’s skills as a mechanic, they even set aside a little more silver.

Moscow, Idaho—October, the Fourth Year

The Moscow-Pullman region was immediately thrown into turmoil when the UNPROFOR armored column appeared. As usual, UNPROFOR began with flowery promises, but eventually delivered tyranny.

In response, Joshua’s cell went completely underground. They quit their receptionist jobs and began full-time intel analysis. With the Maquis now paying their rent and delivering them groceries once a week, Megan and Joshua decided to set up their own higher-level Tactical Operations Center, or TOC.

Instead of just setting up another collection or analysis cell attached to an individual militia, Megan and Joshua decided on the brigade-level TOC concept for several reasons. First was Megan’s recent military expertise, both in uniform and as an NSA contractor. She had spent a lot of time working in a tactical TOC and knew that she could set one up herself if she ever had to. There were not many other intelligence analysts in the region with her expertise. Second, the other intelligence cells attached to the Maquis and other militias were usually busy collecting raw intelligence and had few analytical skills or resources. Third, and most important, since the Moscow Maquis was currently the largest and most active militia in the area, these other intelligence cells needed someone to provide intelligence synchronization. “The intel people in Spokane” could battle-track the big picture for the entire region and then create intelligence reports, situational map templates, and so on, to brief the two Maquis leaders. And they wanted to fulfill the intelligence requirements (IRs) that these militia leaders had for their region as close to real time as possible.

Joshua was chosen as the contact to sell this arrangement to the other militias’ intelligence cells (some of which consisted of only one person, a collector). Joshua’s intention was to get the other cells to routinely report events and incidents as they occurred. In return, the other cells were encouraged to make their own Requests for Intel (RFIs) to Megan, Joshua, and Malorie. The other cells could also rely on them for “reachback” support, meaning research and analysis of particular weapons systems, vehicles, order of battle (OB), UN deployment schedules, or anything else that the other cells needed to know. This also included providing training to the other cells, in areas such as SALUTE format reporting, military symbology, and battle tracking. For OPSEC, Joshua spoke only with the actual intel people involved in “training the trainer” mode. This way the intel cells could then train the rest of the members within their own militias.

There was already an incredible “unity of effort” within the resistance, an advantage of most insurgencies. Many military schools (the U.S. Army, in particular) teach the concepts of unity of effort, unity of command, and so forth. However, in reality, these concepts tend to go in one ear and out the other, particularly with occupying military forces that are engaged in counterinsurgency warfare.

A majority of the other intelligence cells were actually relieved that a centrally organized intelligence effort was now taking place. This added to the perception that the resistance was getting bigger and better. Just the word circulating of “the Spokane Intelligence Center” was a huge morale boost within the resistance in the region.

The first two weeks of setting up their TOC were rough going. Since they lived in a small rental house in the middle of a suburb, they needed to establish where the TOC was going to be located within the house itself. After briefly considering one of the bedrooms, they decided on the small dining area attached to the kitchen. Things needed to be as compact as possible to fit map boards and several netbook computers for report writing and maintaining an event log, along with a printer.

Next, they had administrative OPSEC issues. They needed to operate under maximum light and noise discipline. All blinds and drapes around the TOC were closed, with blankets taped to the window frames, and reinforced with black, heavy-duty plastic garbage bags duct-taped over the top. For a final yet important touch, they installed a “lightlock” around the back door of their house, which used the same principle as an airlock on a spacecraft or submarine, except for light instead of air.

They had one of the Maquis members test their light discipline one evening, using a captured PVS-14 night vision monocular to look for any light leaks that might be seen by someone with well-adjusted natural night vision, or through another night vision device. The lightlock was not perfect for concealing all trace amounts of light, but being located in town, it did not need to be.

They also had thermal signature considerations. Despite the fact that most houses used woodstoves all through the winter, they did not want to glow like a Christmas tree to any airborne thermal imaging systems at odd hours of the night. Heat was kept to a minimum since the bodies, radios, and computers created their own residual amounts of heat.

For noise discipline, the blankets over the insides of the windows worked well, though they also covered the linoleum floor of the dining area with throw rugs to absorb noise. This had the added benefit of providing heat insulation.

For message traffic, they encouraged the other cells to make a series of written SALUTE reports using USB thumb drives. They were to leave them at a dead drop inside a plastic play “fort” in the backyard of an abandoned house down the street. The dead drop was checked early each morning by Jean and Leo, who regularly rode their bicycles in the neighborhood.

Last but not least was access to the TOC. Since it sat in the middle of the house, they did not entertain guests. No one saying that they were a “militia member” could just enter the house. The only people permitted inside the TOC were the two Moscow Maquis leaders, and then only to receive briefings (or debriefs) by Megan, Joshua, or Malorie.

They encouraged the other cells to include as much detail as possible in their SALUTE reports and not to worry about redundancy within a report, such as mentioning equipment, or weapons, a second time. This made for more accurate reporting, they explained.

They also taught the other cells to “filter” or review and rewrite these reports, if necessary, rather than just sending lots of small, separate SALUTE reports. For instance, an analyst at a cell might receive a bunch of small, separate SALUTE reports coming to them from several different militia members, all seeing the same thing. This filtering would not only make Joshua, Megan, and Malorie’s jobs easier, it would provide better OPSEC, in limiting unnecessary message traffic.

Before they could get the TOC up and running, they focused on putting together their own situational templates (SITTEMPS) that would display all current information on events in the region.

A SITTEMP tells anyone looking at it, through military symbology, what is currently taking place on the ground. These were maps, attached to a board behind them, with clear acetate overlays placed on top of the map, with all three parts securely connected to one another using duct tape. Megan would have killed for some decent 1:50,000-scale military grid-reference system maps and a good map board to hang them on. However, all they could come up with were regular road atlases, some USGS maps, and some U.S. Forest Service maps of the national forests in the region. For the map boards, they used simple four-by-eight-foot sheets of half-inch plywood. Because of the limited quality and availability of maps, they maintained several separate SITTEMPS in different map scales.

Young Jean and Leo helped out as couriers, but because of their age, they mainly observed the daily routine at the TOC, read books, and quietly played with their toys. The map board became such a fascination for them that Joshua constructed a two-by-three-foot toy map board for them using Megan’s old Virginia Beach Quadrangle map and a sheet of acetate. This kept the boys from being tempted to doodle on the TOC’s working map boards.

Before the Crunch, as a prepper, Megan had been aware of an online mapping service called MyTopo.com. She had once looked at the website, but had never used it herself. It was a powerful resource, allowing people to take a “snapshot” of any place on earth, where they could choose whether they wanted a map in longitude/latitude, or in the global UTGM military grid-reference system. Their maps were also offered with lamination, meaning that users could still draw or stick symbology directly on them in the event that no transparent overlay material was available.