by Zack Finley
The people in the vehicles left a lot of trash, water bottles, energy bar wrappers, old fast food cups and such. But no real clues. We kept the vehicle registrations just in case someone recognized the owners. The pickup held something worth rescuing because someone dragged a large box or crate off the bed, through the leaves, and onto the road where they were picked up. This happened before the rain started, so not long after the firefight.
The only sign of dawn was a mild brightening of the overcast. The rain increased to a steady downpour. Conditions were terrible for spotting threats. If someone was watching for us, they probably couldn’t see well either.
We took a convoluted path to last night’s main ambush. When we got there, we tucked the Humvee into one of the garages left open in the abandoned homes.
One guy stayed with our mount while the rest of us spread out to see what we could.
Three trucks were abandoned where they got hit. Based on the blood and tissue in them, I estimated at least two KIAs. Someone removed the bodies. I estimated at least 20 tangoes involved in last night’s operation, plus whoever picked them up after it was over. That was a lot of shooters.
Lots of brass littered the area around the pickups. We picked up as much of our own .50 cal. brass as we could. We weren’t as concerned about the 5.56 and the 7.62 brass, but we picked up some of that as well.
The guys picked through the brass while I searched the cabs for clues. The registrations were all I found of interest.
We piled back in the Humvee and headed to the next convoy site.
We parked next to a brick house, in a spot not visible from outside the cul-de-sac. Glenn, the convoy leader, sent a runner to lead us to the command post.
Glenn told me my Rangers were patrolling but left us a gift.
He opened the basement door and showed us two soaking wet men tied up in the basement. They were dressed in jeans and had scruffy beards.
We backed out of the doorway.
Glenn said, “All they say is they belong to the Lloyd Mountain Militia and that we will regret detaining them. One had an AK 47 and the other an AR 15. Both carried plenty of ammo and tactical knives. One was unconscious when your guys brought him in. The other refused to say anything more.”
“Did they have radios?” I asked. “Or any NVGs or other weapons?
“We should ask your guys, but they didn’t mention anything more,” Glenn answered.
“Have you ever heard of the Lloyd Mountain Militia?” I asked, knowing Glenn lived in the area for longer than I’ve been alive.
“The area has a few right-wing militias you hear about from time-to-time, but they normally stay below the radar. Some are part of the prepper culture. A few groups approached us over the years, but we don’t have the same agenda. Nothing ever came of it. They all were a lot more interested in guns and explosives than we are. Very few ever served in the military,” Glenn said. “Lloyd Mountain is just outside Huntsville, so that suggests they are local.”
“All the vehicle registrations we pulled are from Mecklin County,” I said. “Of course, they might have stolen the vehicles from people in the area. Did these guys have any ID on them?”
“No, just the weapons,” Glenn said.
“We need to split them up and I’ll see what I can get from them. But,” I said. “you need to get everyone ready to go while I do. I’ll have my team scout for other watchers.”
“The safe room is already empty, you can put one in there,” Glenn said.
I told my crew we would leave as soon as we could, but we needed to make sure we weren’t being observed. My group would rendezvous with the local Rangers then redeploy to support the withdrawal.
I wasn’t looking forward to the interrogations, but we needed to know what we were up against and why they were targeting us.
I took the lively one into the safe room. The other guy was barely conscious, I suspected a concussion. I dragged a no-nonsense wooden chair into the safe room for my guest.
I secured him to the chair with extra tight knots.
“My name is Jeremy, what is your name?” I asked.
“I’m cold,” the prisoner said.
“So Mr. Cold, what does the Lloyd Mountain Militia do?” I asked.
“I’m cold,” he said.
“Hm, maybe I can help,” I answered, grabbing the bucket of water I asked Glenn to leave me outside the door.
I poured half the bucket over his head. He knocked over his chair in his struggle to get away from the cold water.
“Now Mr. Cold, is that better?” I asked, squatting down near his face. “You are aware that hypothermia can kill you. If it doesn’t, you’ll still probably catch pneumonia and die now that we no longer have medical facilities.”
He was turning slightly blue, and his teeth were chattering.
“What is your name?” I asked using my most pleasant voice.
“Ch…charlie,” he said through the cold.
“Charlie, what did you do before all this mess happened?” I asked.
“At the gypsum plant,” Charlie said.
“Do you have any family?” I asked.
“My mom but she ain’t around here,” he said.
“Have you been in the Militia for long?”
“J..j..joined after the crash,” he chattered. “Knew of them before.”
“How so?”
“Lot of guys at the plant were really into it,” Charlie said.
“Why were you watching our place?” I said.
Charlie just glared at me, refusing to answer.
“Look, Charlie, I can keep pouring water on you until you pass out from the cold and then just kill you. Or you tell me what is going on and I might leave you alive.”
I continued, “I don’t really care if you talk or not since I have a spare. If I have to kill you, I’ll just be more careful with your buddy.”
“Not my buddy,” said Charlie.
“Oh?”
“He’s hard-core Militia. Look, I joined after the lights went off to eat regular. I don’t really care about that other crap. Jimbo, he’s different. He helped start the Militia. If he thinks I told you anything he’ll kill me. They never send out us newbies without someone who has been in a lot longer. I don’t think they care if we scoot, they just don’t want us taking their weapons and ammo with us,” Charlie said.
While I might be inclined to believe Charlie, I knew if captured I’d do everything to convince my questioner that I was a nobody.
“What were your orders?” I asked.
“To watch and report what we saw,” Charlie said.
“Who were you going to report to?” I asked.
“The guys who came later,” Charlie said.
“When did you expect ‘the guys’ to show up?” I asked.
Charlie seemed to be reconsidering his cooperation, so I picked up the bucket and held it above him. Charlie’s mini-rebellion faded as he continued to shiver.
“We weren’t told a specific time,” Charlie said, then quickly added as I indicated the bucket. “Just sometime late this afternoon.”
“When is the Militia planning to attack?” I asked.
“Not sure, just before the big gun was supposed to get here,” Charlie said. “You came early.”
“Where is your group holed up?” I asked.
“Backroads up near Lloyd Mountain,” he said. “No real address, you just have to know how to get there.”
“How many people do you have up there?” I asked.
“Don’t know, at least a hundred,” Charlie said.
“Why are you targeting us?” I asked.
“Orders,” he said. “I don’t know, I’d have raided easier targets like the middle school. They think you have a lot of good stuff. We can always use more ammo and weapons.”
I covered Charlie’s head with a dark sack and left him in the dark.
“Did you hear that?” I asked Glenn.
“Yeah, the baby monitor works great,” Glenn said.<
br />
“Toss the other captive in there and have someone monitor what they say,” I said. “But I think we should move out as quickly as you can get ready.”
“It will take about a half hour to load everyone in the vehicles, but all our stuff is ready to go,” Glenn said.
“Get them moving,” I said. I then sent instructions to my team to be ready to mount up in 20 minutes.
I was pleased to hear six acknowledgments. All the Rangers now carried radios. I had two more radios to hand out for the operation.
Charlie and Jimbo never said anything, I’m not sure Jimbo ever really regained consciousness. Glenn packed up the baby monitor and closed them up in the safe room. I wondered if it would be kinder just to shoot the two men.
I was tempted to bring one of them with us but decided against it. I knew I might regret it, but I wasn’t ready to go that next step beyond civilization.
Someone built a firing position for my Rangers in one of the pickups. I stationed it at the back of the convoy and led off with the Humvee. I was driving the Humvee, being the most familiar with the local roads. A Ranger manned the turret. The other Rangers were spread throughout the convoy. Glenn and his second carried the other radios.
It was still raining steadily when we pulled out. I sent the prearranged a signal for the valley to send teams to cover the ambush sites along our route. Once all units cleared the neighborhood, I broadcast “Bubba says it’s a lovely day in the neighborhood” on our CB radio to let everyone know we were on the move.
It was a nerve-wracking drive. Visibility sucked as I tried to keep my window and windshield clear enough to see through. Humvees had notoriously bad defrosters. This one was no exception. I hoped my guy in the turret was doing better, but I suspected he was struggling, too.
Anyone watching us would have just as much difficulty seeing us, although it would be hard to miss 20 vehicles.
I kept the speed up and chose the turns nearly at random, but without any interest in prolonging the journey. As we neared the closest ambush point, the team at that site sent us an all clear to go in. I pulled over and sent the group ahead, planning to cover any convoy followers,
My team told me we were covered and I swung into the column confident they had my back. I noticed we acquired a third vehicle at the ambush site.
I didn’t relax until the convoy was safe across the bridge and inside the valley. Even then I remained tense until the second armed Humvee was back in its new parking spot.
We left two guys monitoring the ambush site. The rest of that team put the two men they captured into the back of a pickup truck and brought them to join us in the valley. The captives were tied up in the back, with their heads covered awaiting questioning. When captured, they were armed with assault weapons but no LAW, RPG, or other anti-armor weapons.
I told my guys to stand down for thirty, unless on guard duty. Part of me was relieved to have our new prisoners.
I wanted to tell my dad what we learned before anyone questioned them. I also wanted to find out what he knew about the Lloyd Mountain Militia.
My dad’s face was grim after the briefing. He was happy since most of our new allies were now safely inside the wire. But I could tell the Militia was distressing news.
“The Lloyd Mountain Militia really got going about 10 years ago,” he said. “I don’t know how they learned about us, but their leader, Josh Lloyd, approached me several times. He ‘casually’ ran into me in different places around town. I suspected I was under surveillance, but I tried to tell myself that was dumb. He knew a lot more about our business than I was comfortable with.”
“What did he want?” I asked.
“He was looking for a partnership or an alliance. He thought our groups were alike. We weren’t, but he seemed to think we were. They were a lot more political than we are. A lot more anti-government. Real right-wing conspiracy nuts. I was polite and didn’t reject him hard enough the first two times. The third time he approached me I lost it and told him what I think of groups like his. He didn’t contact me after that,” my dad winced. “Not my finest hour.”
“Your mom did a records search on Josh Lloyd and didn’t find much. She thought he made up the name. She did find that Josh Jennings bought a large piece of timberland up near Lloyd Mountain from the timber company about 15 years ago. She remembered the sale. She nearly put in a bid, but it wasn’t close enough to the valley for our needs.”
“It was a half section out past Bull Creek,” my mom said. “I might have bought it if the whole section was for sale. I don’t think Jennings is from around here. Lloyd Mountain Militia’s Facebook page espoused a strict white nationalist agenda with more than 30,000 followers and an email address for recruiting. That attitude isn’t rare around here, so I’m not surprised he picked up at least 100 followers with the crash.”
She continued, “At the time I was concerned because we try to maintain a very low profile and he somehow knew too much about us. I don’t know how prepared they were for the crash, from their posts I assumed they were more interested in guns than food or fuel.”
“Maybe our guests can tell us,” my dad said.
We tried to avoid killing these guys, but at some point, we’d regret letting them take more than one shot at us. I also didn’t like Charlie’s casual attitude toward raiding the middle school to steal their food. I changed my mind about letting him go free after he shared that bit of news.
We emptied out a garden shed for the interrogation. No one wanted either captive to see anything of our compound. I was undecided about whether they would be alive at the end of the day.
◆◆◆
Chapter 11
We needed to retrieve the last of our supplies and several allies staging in the apartments, plus the rest of the Rangers. The vehicles gathered at the apartments were actually inside the empty solar warehouse. It was a hardened target linked through an underground passage to the apartments.
The guys humped the supplies from the safe house under the apartments into the vehicles through the tunnel. They even removed half the rooftop solar panels and placed the rest at ground level. This was as planned since they no longer needed the freezers or refrigerators. They were down to eating a combination of freeze-dried foods and MREs.
I decided to split our forces more evenly. I sent the message “Rambo had a lovely day” by CB ratio to let everyone know the convoy arrived safely. I then sent a message “Buzzer needs a quiet hand job,” expecting my team would know what I meant. To throw off potential eavesdroppers I then added a few throw-away phrases “Jessica gives lap dances” and “Barbie leaves tonight.” Today any phrase starting with a woman’s name was to be ignored. Tomorrow it was phrases beginning with the letter ‘B.’
I talked privately with my dad to find out whether we should send the captives back to Lloyd Mountain with a message. He volunteered to kill them for me if that was needed. I assured him my conscience wasn’t going to keep me up over it. I had no trouble removing a threat to my girls. What I needed was his assessment about whether this group could be warned off. I didn’t have much to go on, but I was starting to feel under siege.
“I was surprised they tried to attack last night’s convoy, but I’m shocked they were still planning to attack again,” my dad said. “Even knowing we have a heavy caliber machine gun. They might have a few LAWs or RPGs, but they also have a lot of people they don’t quite trust.”
“I don’t know whether to believe what Charlie told me, but the part about having a trusted man riding with someone on probation sounded true. Heck, we are talking about doing that. I just wasn’t sure whether he was the one on probation. Why they think we are such a soft target is what worries me.” I said.
“Well I might have had something to do with that,” dad said. “When I finally told him to leave us alone, I told him we were mostly Mennonites and didn’t believe in violence. Recruiting Rachel and Jacob probably reinforced that view. He may think we will turn the other cheek and not fig
ht back.”
“What about our armed Humvees?” I asked.
“He may have thought it was a bluff or his people didn’t recognize the Browning,” my dad said. “It’s been covered with a tarp even on the road. We didn’t shoot where anyone could see until they attacked the convoy. It may also be that Jennings wasn’t nearby when we fired. He may think his men are exaggerating about its firepower. They could also believe they can easily counter our Humvees but haven’t used it, yet.”
That made some sense. “I’m worried the group doesn’t have enough food and aren’t prepared to become farmers. If that is the case, he’ll get more desperate when his group gets hungry,” I said. “I guess we now have warlords in America. Major Thomas is certainly in no condition to help. I haven’t supported meeting with him because I expect him to demand we give him his Humvees back. He could probably justify lending them to the sheriff, but to private citizens? In many ways, he is too by-the-book to do well in this new environment.”
