Patriot Dawn: The Resistance Rises (36 page)

As Director Woods left the
RTOC for the day, he headed down the corridor flanked by his two security guards, on his way to the elevator to the parking garage, where the rest of his detail awaited with the armored vehicles.

Suddenly, around the corner ahead of him stepped Lieutenant Jefferson, M4 rifle raised at the ready position. In a rapid succession of shots, the two security guards were gunned down, Jefferson advancing down the corridor to finish them with a shot to each of their heads. Director Woods stood between the two bodies, frozen and stunned.

Woods snapped out of it, “What the hell is this?! Stand down!”

Jefferson advanced towards him, rifle held in the
ready position. Woods put his hands up defensively, but Jefferson jabbed the rifle muzzle into his mouth, smashing Woods’s front teeth. He followed up with a muzzle swipe to Woods’s temple, knocking him back against the wall, blood smeared across this forehead and running from his smashed mouth.

Woods’
s defiant confidence evaporated, leaving just the cowering bully that he was. Leant against the wall, he held up a hand imploringly.

“Jefferson, wait, wait. You are one of us, you’re a brother. You’re a black man; you have to be on my side. We can take care of you. I was wrong about you,” said Woods, his tone wheedling.

“No Sir, I’m not like you, I’m an American. I’m a U.S. Army Ranger. My color is the color of my uniform. You, Sir, are a traitor, a coward and a disgrace. Your racism sickens me.”

Lieutenant Jefferson shot Director Woods twice in the chest
, knocking him back against the wall. He shot him again through the forehead and Woods slumped to the ground, leaving a red stain across the wall as he slid down it.

Suddenly, two military police came round the corner
, handguns drawn. Jefferson swung his weapon around, firing rapidly as the two MP’s ducked back round the corner into cover.

Then, he ran, desperate to get out of the building.

Chapter Sixteen

Jack drove his team hard. He had to get to the RV to be there to account for and organize his people. He took a direct route to the ERV, cross graining the generally north-south running terrain features and ridges as he moved west. They only paused for brief water rests and a couple of times for a little longer to eat what rations they had.

             
Jack could feel the exhaustion in him as he walked. His legs no longer had spring; he felt the leaden weight of them as he was walking uphill, the exhaustion embedded deeply in them.

As they continued to walk, they had to constantly snack on high energy foods. They were not hanging around, they w
ere moving fast, and their blood sugar was always on the edge. A couple of times Jack felt his vision narrow and dim, and he had to eat something to get his blood sugar up. Hypoglycemia was the danger, and as soon as the sugar hit his bloodstream he felt himself come alive again.

Jack was amazed by Ned. He was older than Jack, but his endurance was impressive. However, the long march took its toll. As they were cresting a
particularly nasty climb up what had seemed an endless slope to a ridge, the team sat down at the top to take a rest. They were some ten miles from their destination.

Ned was exhausted, mumbling and slightly incoherent. Jack tried to feed him an energy bar, passing pieces into his mouth. Ned sat there, trying to chew, and then he just let it all dribble out down his chin and over his shirt. Jack just couldn’t get him to take food on board.

However, Ned never gave up. Jack was exhausted, and would have found it hard enough to keep going without taking energy on board, but Ned never stopped.

Twenty four hours later his team walked into the ERV and was met by the security party.

              Jack set up an OP over-watching the ERV itself, in case any of his teams had been captured and gave away the location. The OP included some guides who would meet incoming teams. They would be guided to a further checkpoint for accountability and then an assembly area one mile away.

             
Once at the assembly area they would be provided food and water and allowed to rest up.

             
Over the course of the next week, all of Jack’s teams trickled in, with the exception of those in the two pickups which had gone missing. Some had experienced adventures, pursued by Regime elements or drones, and had taken long diversions or been forced to lie up under the thermal ponchos, others were simply exhausted.

             
Jack decided to take a different approach with the Yankee patrol base. They were too far inside West Virginia, away from any realistic target areas, to carry out operations from here. He decided that they needed to rest up and plan their next move.

             
Jack set up a treatment center under Megan for the various wounded personnel, located tacked on to Yankee to make use of the people there to help with the healing and management of the wounded fighters.

             
He established his fire support platoon co-located with the fighting vehicles in a laager area. They were to be used as a quick reaction force for a mobile defense in case of a Regime incursion into the area.

             
He now dispersed the three 82
nd
squads to the three platoons and had each platoon set up a defensive patrol base dispersed around Yankee. This gave him a defensive screen round Yankee where the families and recovering wounded were being housed.

             
Once the defenses were set up, they went into a busy period of equipment and weapon cleaning and maintenance, as well as physical rest. They conducted a light patrolling program into the surrounding area.

Jack realized that to get back in the fight, he was going to have to move his forces back into a position where they could begin operations against the Regime again.

Two weeks later, Bill arrived. Jack was amazed.
Jack had moved his TOC into a bunker he had had built just outside of Yankee, in order to be central to the defensive positions around the base. They grabbed some hot water from the central kitchen, made coffee, and walked up to his bunker where they sat inside on camp chairs by the light of a kerosene lamp.

             
They had a lot to talk about. Bill wanted to go over the after action reports from the recent combat, and Jack wanted news from the outside world. The big strategic question was about what was next for them.

             
The war against the Chinese was still ongoing west of the Rockies, with General Wall leading USPACOM. There were no significant breakthroughs to report either way from that theatre as yet. The demarcation line still held to the south with the Southern Federation, but there were rumblings of war.

             
“Listen Jack,” Bill said, “I want to get your buy in on a plan.”

             
“Ok, run it by me.”

             
“Remember the guy I sent to Texas?”

“Yea.”

“Ok, well they know all about your Company in Texas. Jack’s Juggernauts, aka the Mountain Men,” Bill chuckled. “You are famous, and very well regarded. I have been in negotiations and my guy reports that Texas is offering sanctuary to the families, on the basis that we move the Company to Texas. You will have to submit to operational control from the Federation chain of command and they will use you to further the Southern Federation’s military agenda.”

“You say ‘you’ – where do you fit in to this?”

“I would stay here, at the farm, and continue to run the network. Intelligence gathering.”

“
I see,” said Jack, “but how do you feel about this? This is your Company, you created it, and we would no longer be fighting in Virginia?”

“I appreciate that Jack, but actually you need to give yourself more credit. I started this thing, but now I’m the network guy. You have fought and bled with this Company, it is yours. I want to see
the families safe, and I think we could hit back at the Regime more effectively with the support of the Federation military. Anyway, they are likely to send you back in to conduct operations once the families are safe in Texas.”

Jack mulled it over.

“Ok Bill,” he finally said, “Let’s get some of the main players together and see what they think, and if they agree then we can run it past the group.”

It was not just a military decision. They got the commanders together along with the leaders from the civilian side, including Caitlin and some of the other key women such as Gayle who ran the place.

             
It was unanimous. They wanted to get to Texas. It would keep the families and kids safe, and then the Company could join the fight again secure in the knowledge that their loved ones were out of harm’s way. From a military point of view, they would no longer have to allocate combat power to protecting the families.

             
The next question was how?

             
Bill wanted to keep some OPSEC around this one so he pulled Jack aside and told him: C-130 Hercules aircraft. STOL operations, which stood for ‘short takeoff and landing’.

             
Texas was prepared to send in Texas Air Guard aircraft to extract the Company along with the families in return for the agreement that they would fight for the Southern Federation.

             
Bill outlined the plan: he would hang around until they could find a suitable landing field. Once that was established, he would return to his farm, allowing suitable travel and planning time, and pass the message to Texas. On a specified day, the aircraft would come in and lift them out.

             
They needed a suitable dirt field three thousand feet long. They did a map recon and located some potential locations, following up with recon patrols. They found a suitable location on some upland pasture land dotted with occasional trees and low shrub. It was located in a small valley. It was perfect for two thousand feet and had three thousand feet of clearance available at a pinch.

It would need a little work but it was only a mile from Yankee. Jack had some work parties set to work clearing the
few trees and the bushes, creating a dirt landing strip.

Meanwhile, allowing for time to get the landing strip ready, Bill took the coordinates, set a date with Jack, and headed back to his farm. They set an initial date for a daylight pickup, with further dates if they first one was missed for any reason.

They had agreed, in accordance with information that Bill had brought with him from his coded radio exchanges with his agent in Texas, to go for a dawn pickup time. This would allow the Texas Air Guard aircraft to fly in by night, but give them the advantage of daylight to conduct the STOL landing on an unknown and less than ideal landing strip.

Ten days later the Company was waiting in a defensive position in the trees at the end of the makeshift landing strip. It was just a flattish grassy field which they had cleared of trees and bushes. The fighters had a perimeter around the families, who were organized into four ‘chalks’, one for each aircraft.

             
They only had their basic gear with them, weapons, tactical vests and rucksacks. The larger support weapons, ammunition, food and equipment had been placed into the dug outs at Yankee and camouflaged, making it into a huge cache, while the vehicles were hidden under netting deep in the woods, including the military vehicles liberated by the defectors.

             
If they ever came back out this way, for whatever reason, they would be able to break out the gear from Yankee.

Under Jim’s supervision, day-glow panels had been placed out to mark the landing strip.

              They waited in the pre-dawn light.

Shortly after the sky lightened, the first C-130 Hercules came roaring over the treetops above them, the first of four. It came over
and buzzed them low after flying ‘nap of the earth’ up from Texas, hugging the terrain contours at two hundred feet to stay below Regime radar.

             
There was a separation between aircraft and the first circled the landing strip, getting eyes on the terrain, followed by the others. They came around in a loop and lined up for the approach.

             
The first aircraft came in and lined up on the airstrip. As it came in its nose dropped towards the strip and then it went to ‘full flaps’ as it swooped in to land, taxiing down towards the end of the strip. As each aircraft landed, it taxied down to the end of the runway and made space for the ones landing behind.

Once the fourth had landed, they put their engines in reverse and rapidly backed down the airstrip in a
single file to where the fighters waited with their families.