Patriot Dawn: The Resistance Rises (12 page)

Jack
and Jim had discussed the concept and design of the thermal ponchos at some length and agreed it was a good plan and design. If feedback were to come from the fighters that the design could or should be improved, they were happy to make the modifications.

One of the problems they had was a lack of thermal imaging gear to actually test the ponchos, so they would have to rely for the moment on their theoretical design, in
the knowledge that at least they had considered the thermal threat and taken steps to counter it.

Now that they had the fighters actually arriving at the base and getting settled in, administrated and equipped to standard, they were able to start selecting their training cadre and allocating teams. They took the initial training cadre from the original platoon, which in the end resulted in them taking a squad of guys away from Caleb, who had to reorganize his remaining fighters into two squads.

             
The initial few days of the training effort revolved around training conferences with the new cadre and the building of facilities. This included the building of a twenty five meter and one hundred meter rifle range back in the woods. They identified suitable outdoors areas where they could run tactical training in the trees, which were providing less and less cover every day as the leaves fell.

They also found another abandoned group of farm buildings a couple of miles away through the woods and decided that they would use it as a training site. It was suitable for an objective for various t
ypes of training, such as recon patrols, attacks, defensive planning and also as a basic urban operations site, for room clearing and urban assault.

However, once they began the training, it
would be crawl, walk, run and they would start with the basics. It did not matter that some were veterans and others were at different levels of training; it was key to get everyone on the same page and up to standard together.

They
planned a program which started at the basics of shooting, field-craft, navigation and tactics and moved up from there. The shooting started at the basic marksmanship principles and evolved into combat shooting in multiple positions. The tactics started at individual field-craft and moved on to larger formations; team, squad and platoon. In addition they included movement and administration in the field.

They had to cover it all, because they were effectively training a light infantry
company to conduct irregular warfare from team up to company level, so they needed to be good at what they did. Once they mastered the basics of combat shooting in parallel with the field-craft, the intent was to meld the two and begin to learn fire and movement, starting at individual level and building up.

On top of these skills would be built the other operations of war, from patrolling through offensive and defensive operations.

Once the basics were mastered, at the same time as they moved on to train in the conventional infantry tactics, they would also begin lessons on the small team insurgency aspect, including role based training for those chosen as the IED specialists and the sharpshooters.

It was to be a hard school, exha
usting and practically oriented, not simply for the sake of selection and trimming numbers but to ensure that the fighters were up to standard.

They would have to manage the volunteers as the approaching winter and basic diet took a hold. They could
not be out all day, every day; they had to plan for warming classes back in the barn classrooms and rest periods.

However, there would be a time and a place, as the skills and training buil
t, for field training exercises, full rehearsals for what was to come.

Jack had been keeping up a close dialogue with Major Cassidy throughout his work to set up the training site. The Major kept out of his way, and was mainly involved with planning in his tactical operations room, or TOC, inside the farmhouse.

Jack
had a notion that they needed to separate the training and operations functions, for operational security reasons, and had been trying to inoculate the Major to the notion of eventually moving his TOC to an alternate site, perhaps on the other side of the valley on the plateau. It wasn’t urgent anyway, because while the training was in its early stages there were no ongoing operations anyway.

             
The security of the training base was the responsibility of the operations room and they had established a covert observation and sentry post overlooking the one entry gate. The gate accessed a long dirt drive up to the farm though the trees, feeding off a back country road. There was a field telephone run back to the operations room. The sentry post could be approached in cover so that sentry exchanges could not be observed from the road. It kept the place low key but ensured they had security.

They also ran an air sentry with a couple of fighters placed in a position of observation to watch the skies and horizons for approaching aircraft. They had a field telephone
and also an air horn to sound a ‘take cover’ alarm if necessary.

Major Cassidy always addressed Jack
by the formal Captain Berenger. Jack and Jim were not standing on ceremony with the Company, first names were fine, and the only titles were those of the position the person filled, such as squad leader. It was working fine, and if it did not, then those responsible for bucking the system would be moved out to another role. Self-motivation and discipline was the basis, with good teams and leaders in place to reinforce the motivation of the individual.

Given the nature of the fight that was ahead, it was crucial in
Jack’s opinion that they ran effective ‘mission command’. This meant that the teams would be given a mission, with a ‘reason why’ and their commander’s intent. This was made even more crucial given the handicap caused by the lack of, or slowness of, communications that they would be operating under.

The theory
with mission command was that when the situation changed on the ground without a higher commander to immediately refer to, the teams would be able to make an informed decision about what course of action to take.

It was also important in the light of that approach, to allow people to com
mand, and operate effectively, within their own sphere. This also meant that people’s strengths and weakness were extremely important, and should be taken advantage of to strengthen the overall effort.

An example of this was
Gayle, the lady running the field kitchen back at Zulu. It was her thing, she had created a great team, it wasn’t broke, so don’t fix it.

A messenger found Jack and asked him to report to Major Cassidy in the TOC, which he did. Cassidy always liked him to salute when he entered the office, so he did to keep him happy.

“Captain Berenger, I need Lieutenant Jackson and his two available squads for a mission.
I have an Op Order for him. They will leave in four days. Please make it happen.”

Jack
was nonplussed, “Wait – what? Come again?”

“A m
ission: We have credible reports of a regular Homeland Corps convoy. They run to and fro from a training base they have up near Front Royal. They run this convoy every couple of weeks with newly graduated recruits back into DC.”

“Uh huh,” grunted
Jack.

“The next convoy is coming up. We are going to hit them where the I-66 runs through the defile in the State Park east of Front Royal.”

“Surely not?”

“What?” said Major Cassidy.

“Well,” Jack gathered his thoughts, “it’s too much too soon. We need to start off asymmetric, using the small IED teams, before building to larger concentrated operations on our own terms at opportune moments. Hitting the Interstate with a platoon ambush now is too high profile.”

“Really,” said Major Cassidy, “now is not the time for cold feet. It’s not as if you are going out with them, is it?”

Jack bit down on his retort.

Jumped up little prick.

“So, Major, you are determined to go ahead with it?”

“Yes.”

“Right then. I’ll get Caleb.”

The patrol left four days later. Caleb led them as the patrol leader. Jim had given them a crash course in some of the explosive devices they had already created.

Jim had been building a metal shop but he had not so far got around to milling any of the copper cones that
were required to create the off-route mines that he planned, based on the design of the ‘explosively formed penetrator’ mines, or EFPs, used so prevalently in Iraq.

             
Instead, Jim supplied them with improvised claymores with command wire triggers. They also had some procured AT-4 anti-armor missiles, the one shot type in the plastic tubes that slung on a man’s back. That was their only way to stop armored vehicles at this point. They also had four SAW 5.56mm ‘squad automatic weapons’, one for each of the four teams in their patrol.

They had spent the last four days going through orders, rehearsals and refining their ‘actions on’ drills. They had already worked extensively together
so their team drills and battle discipline were good. Jack spent a long time sitting down with Caleb going over the ambush plan. It was the best they could come up with given the weapons available.

There were no thermal ponchos available for the patrol to take; they had not been produced yet.

C
hapter Seven

T
he patrol moved from Victor Foxtrot to their drop-off point in several covert vans. From the outside, the vans looked just like contractor work vehicles. They did not go in a convoy, but split the patrol up and infiltrated by a couple of routes in teams. Once together at the discrete drop, the patrol reformed in cover and moved off into the woods.

The plan was for a
different pick up location, for which every man had the location description of the markers to the dead drop. A guide would return to check the dead drop at a certain time each day starting in several days. If the dead letter box was active, he would bring the vehicles to exfiltrate the team.

It was a
eighteen man patrol. Caleb was the team leader and he had with him ‘Doc’ Oliver as the medic, making a small two man headquarters element. Under him were two squads of eight men.

Alpha S
quad was led by Rob Olson, a former Army Ranger who had separated from active duty with combat fatigue after too many deployments. He had needed a rest.

Bravo S
quad was under Vince Chavez, a deserter from the 82
nd
Airborne, formerly a career light infantry platoon sergeant. Olson was a single man, but Chavez’s family shared the dugout with Caitlin and the kids back at Zulu.

The patrol was out for a week before they accomplished their mission.

They had patrolled cross country using the terrain and forests to remain concealed. They approached the 1-66 objective area from the south and went into all round defense in an objective rally point
(ORP).

Caleb went forward with a security team to
recon the ambush site. He planned a linear ambush using a cut where the road passed through between some wooded embankments. He found a spot where the woods curved back in to the road on each side of the cut. This would allow him to place his cut-off groups closer to the road, which was essential to his plan.

The
left side cut-off group position had a great view of the road to the west where the convoy was expected to arrive from.

He had Bravo S
quad split into two teams, four men occupying each of the cut-off positions on the left and right flanks of the ambush. Alpha Squad was the kill group and lay in the tree line along the top of the embankment, some seventy five meters back from the road.

By night, they
laid the command wires for the improvised claymores down to the road, some of them fed through a drainage culvert to the wide median between the eastbound and westbound lanes of the 1-66.

He laid out a series of
improvised claymores along the near side of the road, aimed to fire into the kill zone. He also set up claymores in the median, angled to sweep the grassy area with ball bearings. The median itself formed a grassy depression between the east and westbound lanes, some twenty meters wide, sloping inwards to a central drainage ditch. It would provide some cover from the fire of his kill group up on the embankment.

Doc lay to the rear of the kill
group, providing rear protection and a casualty collection point.

From Intel received,
Caleb expected a mixture of armored and unarmored vehicles to form the convoy. Probably a lead, middle and rear armored Humvee, with a mix of other vehicles, including a couple of LMTV trucks and a bus. He did not have enough explosives to blow a crater in the road, nor did he have any off route mines to conclusively destroy the lead armored vehicle.