Patriot Dawn: The Resistance Rises (23 page)

Jack gave the order to fire and the mortars engaged,
before the three dump trucks moved in bounding over-watch back through a series of positions to avoid the counter battery fire. The technical screen to the east fired in the direction of the armored Regime forces, allowing the now mounted maneuver platoons to start moving out from the warehouse in a series of small packets on multiple different routes.

Once the warehouse was clear, the screening technicals starte
d to move back by bounding over-watch and then peel out and move in small teams out to the north west. The dump trucks ceased fire and moved off.

As dawn broke, Jack was stood with Jim in the pass up to the hills, out to the north west. He looked back at the burning town, at the pall of smoke that still hung over it.

             
“Well,” Jim said, “we certainly dropped the property values in that neighborhood.”

             
Jack smiled grimly, “Ok, let’s get back to the RV and get the butchers bill.”

             
The plan had been for the elements to move back through a series of unique RVs, as they got further away from the town and safer into the hills they would begin to consolidate and join up with the other elements, before finally all coming together at a secure RV deep in the forested hills. They were avoiding moving back to Victor Foxtrot for the time being, in case they were being tracked.

When
Jack made it to the final RV in the early afternoon, they went through the accountability process. After a full report, it turned out that from the Company of one hundred and twenty fighters, they had lost twelve fighters killed, six VSI (very seriously injured) who were still alive and being treated, eight missing in action and thirty one with injuries of varying severity that would need some form of medical treatment..

That was not to mention that most of the fighters had minor cuts and lacerations, as well as bruised and battered bodie
s, from the harsh nature of the fighting.

             
The use of body armor and helmets had limited the number of deaths, reducing penetrating injuries to the head and torso. Most of the wounds to the limbs were treated initially with a tourniquet and then later with some minor surgical intervention. The six VSI that had survived so far were all traumatic amputations of the limbs that had been correctly treated with tourniquets to prevent death from extremity bleeding.

The Company was exhausted but jubilant. The key thing now was to reorganize, treat the casualties, and move back to the base.

Chapter Eleven

Two days later, they were back at Victor Foxtrot, licking their wounds. Those with families at Zulu, Jack included, were desperate to go and see them, but there were a multitude of things that had to be done first. They had to run a thorough debrief and after action review (AAR), learning what lessons they could from the battle. They also had to do extensive weapons and equipment cleaning and repair.

             
Bodies had to heal, and Megan was busy with her medical staff doing what she could. Jack had put a call out to Bill on the network for a doctor or surgeon if possible, and as many antibiotics as they could muster. The troops were exhausted, and needed to heal. It was a time of consolidation, administration, and rest.

             
Following the full Company AAR in the barn, Jack got up and spoke to them. He told them how proud he was, and how well they had done. It had been a victory; they had achieved the mission that they had set out to do, and had wreaked death and destruction on the Regime forces. He praised them for doing as he had asked, and remaining light on their feet, not getting sucked in to standing and slugging it out toe to toe with the Regime heavy armor and overwhelming numbers. He praised them for their initiative and their teamwork.

             
Once the work was done, he was able to grant ‘home leave’ in limited numbers, working in shifts. He got to head down to Zulu with the last group and see his family.

After he finished hugging
Caitlin and the kids, he sat at the table in their subterranean home and felt the weight of it come crushing down on him; the loneliness and responsibility of command. When he was out there, in command, he had ‘leaders legs’ and always drove on to the goal. He was fully mission oriented, he always had been.

             
Sitting there now, drinking a coffee at the table with his wife, kids in his lap and Jasper at his feet, in their odd home, he felt the strangeness of the current situation and the responsibility he had taken on. He could never have envisaged that it would come to this, fighting his fellow countrymen, former comrades in arms, in full scale battles in the Shenandoah Valley.

Such was the
nature of the fall of the United States, its slip into totalitarianism.

             
Caitlin did not push him for the details. She could see that he was exhausted and simply needed her support. She held his hand as they talked about the kids and life in Zulu. Apparently Caitlin had naturally risen to a leadership and organizational position. To free her up during the day she had taken on a sitter, the sixteen year old daughter of one of the families. Her name was Vicky and she was lovely, according to Caitlin. Kind and responsible, she took pains to provide educational activities for the kids.

             
Apparently Andrew was also enamored, Caitlin told him, chuckling. Not that you would know it to see him, moping around and pretending that he didn’t like the girl.

Teenagers, what could you do?

              Temporarily released from the responsibility of command, Jack felt the crushing tiredness come over him like a physical weight. His eyes began to droop and he went and lay down on the cot. His head hit the pillow and he was out like a light.

The next day, Jack was back at Victor Foxtrot. As he headed over to the aid station to check on the casualties, a middle aged man walked out, wearing a white lab coat, stethoscope round his neck, and bifocals balanced on the end of his nose. Megan walked out behind him.

             
“Hey Jack,” she said, “let me introduce you to Dr. Chris Davis, our new surgeon.”

             
“Excellent, nice to meet you,” said Jack, extending his hand.

             
“Happy to be here,” said Dr. Davis.

             
“Did Bill send you?”

             
“Yes.”

             
“What kind of surgeon are you?”

             
“I’m a vet.”

             
“Great, where did you serve?”

             
“No Jack, I’m a veterinary surgeon.”

             
Jack looked at him and grinned, “Seriously?”

             
Megan was smiling “Jack, he’s done some excellent work with the wounded.”

             
“Cool,” Jack smiled, “happy to have you on board. Can I see them?”

             
“Sure,” said Megan as they headed inside.

             
Jack pulled her to the side as they were doing the rounds, “How is Jim’s concussion?”

             
“Oh, he’ll be all right with that thick skull,” she said, grinning.

Bill showed up himself two days later. Jack met him with Jim and Caleb. They shook hands and moved over to the operations room, where they sat around on plastic chairs drinking coffee. Bill was enthused by the ‘Battle of Harrisonburg’ as he was calling it.

             
“I know you guys took some casualties, and I am genuinely sorry for that. On the positive side, it was a great success, a huge blow for Regime credibility. Of course, the propaganda machine is spinning it that they won a huge battle and drove the insurgents out of Harrisonburg, but that’s not what the people on the ground are seeing. The Regime got a butt kicking, and I am putting the word out on the network, including copies of some of the footage you took.”

             
He went on to explain that the Apache footage had made its way as far as Texas, and people were sitting up and taking note. The Regime was not invincible, despite its overwhelming combat power.

However, word from informants in Bills network was pointing towards a consolidation of Regime efforts in the valley, as they tried to save face over such
effective resistance this close to the Capital.

It appeared that Jack had been right, and Bill agreed with him. Now that the Regime was being drawn into the valley, it was their job to turn it into a crucible of destruction
for the Regime forces.

“Keep your recon patrols out,” Bill stated, “I expect some permanent FOBs to be placed here
in the valley, and I would not be surprised if they start combing these hills for this base. Be alert.”

Jack’s current aims were twofold. Firstly, he needed to allow time for his fighters to rest and recover. Many of the walking wounded needed time; they would mostly all recover back to duty, but it would take some longer than others. Secondly, he needed to keep his eyes out in the valley and keep the pressure on the enemy.

             
Jack gave orders for the IED activity to continue in the valley. It was combined surveillance and opportunistic strike missions, and he started sending out two IED teams at a time to selected sectors to continue operations. Now they had concentrated force in Harrisonburg for the big battle, it was time to remain dispersed and lay low for a while.

             
Jack reactivated a small training cadre to take care of the new recruits he had asked for from Bill. He needed battle casualty replacements for those that had been lost or rendered combat incapable after the battle. Victor Foxtrot needed to remain operational as a training base, on a smaller scale than before. It would also be useful to have the training cadre for continuation training to prevent skill fade.

It
was also an opportunity to employ some of the better guys who had been wounded and would not be able to return fully to the fight.

             
He had been long concerned about the security of Zulu. Its strength was in remaining covert, but the force protecting it was not his ‘A’ team. Now he had a fully trained company, blooded, he decided to allocate one of his maneuver platoons to defense of Zulu. One at a time, the platoons would rotate through this task, two weeks at a time, and it would be useful operational experience with training value for them.

             
Zulu was on the west slope of a ridge that ran roughly north-south. The trail from the southern side of Zulu’s ravine was where the trail from Victor Foxtrot joined. That trail ran in a south easterly direction up and over the ridge to the valley where Victor Foxtrot was located. There were several further ridges and terrain features to the east of Victor Foxtrot that kept it concealed and away from the main Shenandoah Valley.

             
Jack had originally walked in to Zulu from the north, along the trail, and that seemed to him to be the most vulnerable direction to approach, given how the terrain was in the area. The valley that Zulu was on the side of opened up further as it ran to the north, down to where they had originally accessed the parking area with the fuel truck that had been concealed off an old fire road.

             
Jack ordered Caleb to take his platoon on the first shift. He trusted him most out of his platoon leaders to get the place set up right. Jack explained that he wanted a triangular patrol base, dug in with foxholes and concealed, upslope of the trail that ran into Zulu, covering the trail. He wanted this defensive position to be around three hundred meters north of the bunker sentry positions that protected the trail before it ran into Zulu.

             
The patrol base would be triangular, with two-man foxholes, a squad on each side. This configuration would provide excellent all round defense. One side of the triangle would face west to the trail, another looking north up the valley, with the third protecting the rear. The fighters would not have to live in the foxholes, they could set up shelters behind each one covered by thermal ponchos, but the triangular formation would act like a defensive rock if assailed by a larger force on all sides.

It was not to be merely a static defensive position. It was to be a patrol base, and the platoon would send out team or squad sized patrols into the surrounding area. There would always be two squads and a headquarters element in the patrol base.

This arrangement would add depth to the defense of Zulu, while allowing patrol surveillance and short term OPs to be sent out into the surrounding area, keeping the approach routes under observation.

They would call the patrol base Zulu Delta.