2024

by H. Berkeley Rourke

  We found nothing in the parts of the helicopter that might be useful except a couple of boxes of fifty caliber ammunition. I tied the ammo boxes to a rope that my dad and my boys pulled up after calling them by radio and telling them what we had for them. Then Ruthie and I went off on a lark. We left the wreck and headed north up the little stream that was at the bottom of the canyon.

  We had carried with us enough stuff to make a pretty nice camp. We had a tent and some soft bedrolls with fold-up cots that we carried on our backpacks. We had plenty of water and purification pills for the water in the creek if we needed it. We planned to stay one or two nights. We ended up staying there for five days.

  It was wonderful. It was loving, fun, almost like being college kids again, romping around half nude, or nude if we wished, reveling in each other. God, my wife is a gorgeous woman. I must have told her that at least a hundred times when we were in the canyon together. We touched a lot. We caressed a lot. We engaged in making love slowly and with great passion and speed, and we held each other tightly in the aftermath many times. We recaptured a lost moment of youth and sexual love as well as the deep abiding love we shared out of our mutual respect for each other.

  I think it inspired my parents that we stayed down there for several days longer than expected, to reengage with each other as well. My kids, when we got back up the cliff said, “Gosh we are so glad you are back. Grandma and Grampa have been so mushy and lovey dovey since you left that it was getting sickening.” Ruthie and I smiled, said something like “It's good to be home,” and then laughed with dad and mom like crazy about that after the kids went to bed.

  One Friday night Allan came with his family for a visit, a chance for the kids to romp in the woods, and some decompression from the tasks of governing the Missoula area as well as the small communities near us. He was concerned about some of the things he was hearing from the north.

  “We are hearing from our furthest barracks up Hwy 80 up near the Idaho border that the folks in Kellogg and the little towns outside that area are headed west into Spokane and that Couer d' Alene is getting pretty sparse in population as well. The militia causing problems there is concentrated in the Couer d' Alene Forest to the north and west of the city of Couer d' Alene, up in the Spirit Lake area where the FBI had its problems a few years ago.”

  “How well armed are they as far as your intelligence goes Allan,” my dad asked?

  “We think they may have some small artillery pieces, something like jeep mounted recoilless rifles, maybe even some mortars but we cannot confirm any of that other than by hearing explosions and its for sure we are hearing those and lots of them. So they have some kinds of artillery and plenty of ammo for them apparently.”

  “Where the hell would they have gotten that kind of stuff?” My dad was shaking his head when he asked that question.

  Allan did the same and then said “We think they have been furnished by North Koreans and are being brought across the border from Canada after coming into Canada by ship from the Far East.”

  I asked, “Allan is there any indication they are coming our way?”

  “Well yes, that is kind of why I wanted to come out here this weekend. We have heard that they are moving down Hwy. 80 toward us and that their intention is to go as far as Missoula in order to secure all of the eastern border of what is now Idaho. We have even heard crazy stuff like they are going to try and go northwest and occupy Seattle and all the coastal cities of Washington in order to give themselves a port city from which to export goods. My friends,” he said, “it's about to get crazy around here again.”

  Well that was a little bit of an exaggeration. It was quite a while before the militia from Idaho ever came close to Missoula. “I started thinking about this a long time ago, dad; Allan, Ruthie, mom, kids. This is our home. We should not have to run away from our home. Those anarchists didn't cause us to do that the last time and they by God won't do it this time either. But,” I said, “we might want to get the kids out of this area to somewhere a little safer than it might be here.”

  And then I turned to Allan and I asked him, “How many people do you have on the force now that are working Hwy. 80 or this part of Montana Allan?”

  “Our roster expanded to twenty-four last week, Will. Why do you ask?”

  “How many of those men have seen combat, do you know?”

  “No, that was not one of the required answers on the application forms we were provided by Butte. But it would be easy enough for me to find out I suppose. I think a well educated guess based on conversations would be maybe fifteen out of that group.”

  “Do we have any other source of manpower that we could draw upon and create a fighting force here Allan?”

  “Butte has a National Guard outfit there. But hell, Will, those people don't have any officers that are combat experienced and worst of all they don't have any non-coms that are combat experienced. You know what has been going on here. Most of the eastern half of the state is a smoldering mass of jelly after the nuclear attack. The people at Montana University think we are damned lucky that the attack didn't tip Yellowstone into erupting. It could have happened according to what I have been told and then it would have been Katie bar the door for us all.”

  “So the best fighting force we can come up with is maybe what twenty to thirty men? Is that what you are saying Allan?”

  “I suppose so, Will. And I already know what your next question is and we have no estimate but think their numbers are over five hundred, maybe over one thousand. Of course with those numbers we would be talking about logistics, truck drivers, all that crap. They probably don't have one in fifty of their men that is trained as a night fighter in the forest.”

  “As far as we know do they put out sentries every night?”

  “Yes. You can see the lights of their fires from our planes flying out of Butte. We stay at least twenty to thirty miles away. They have fired some shoulder mounted SAMS at us when we tried to take a peek at them.”

  “And if I understand the terrain properly Allan there are three mountain passes of at least thirty-five hundred feet elevation for them to climb and go up and down and around curvy roads before they can get close to Missoula. What about their forest area? Is it like ours? More dense, or less so? What is it like up there in the Couer d' Alene Forest?”

  “You are sure right about the roads, Will, and the forest they live in is dense, more so than it is here. That is about all I can tell you about that place.”

  “Do you think it would be possible to slip one or two men in there in the dark, take some looks around, do a little havoc creation in their sentry posts, and slip back out again?”

  “I suppose you and I could get in there in a State Patrol Cruiser, close in to the town, and do a little scouting, maybe have a little fun as well. Sure. But we would have to be out of there and back down this direction quite a ways by the early morning sunlight hours.”

  “Well all right then. We've got some fun to look forward to. So let's start getting our gear put together and pick the right guy so that we know he will have a place to go for about five to six hours before he comes back to pick us up. Silenced and bows would be good, and a very little food but a lot of ammo in already packed clips that are black as night and won't rattle. The old K-Bar is probably a good one to have as well.”

  “Okay, Will. I will pick my guy carefully. In fact I think I mentioned to you and your dad a long time ago that Marty Jimson was working with me. He will be our guy. He's another of our brand of war dogs, another Recon Marine. And I think he would relish the chance to go into the woods with you, Will, if you want to take him.”

  “I mean no disrespect to Marty at all, Allan. Having heard what my dad said about training him I am sure he would do well. But you and I have already been back to back once and that kind of makes it imperative for us to team again. So it will be you and I if our wives will let us go on this foray.” I was looking at Ruthie when I said that and she just laughed a little and mut
tered something about there being any chance of her stopping me.

  It took us about three weeks to get everything together in terms of materials, timing for all three of us and our families, and preparation for or what we thought was preparation for the detection devices they might have selected to use to defend their enclaves. We had to acquire some ultra long range spotter scopes for this trip since we did not intend to go close to them at all this time.

  Marty Jimson would do the driving and pick us up after two days of recon. He was going to go into Couer d' Alene, the city, and stay there as though he was on days off from his patrol. He knew a girl that lived there and he was single and ready to get his ashes hauled so he was avid about the trip in a variety of ways. Marty is a good looking young guy, in his late thirties now, has some college education and wants more, but right now he is all about finding a willing lady who likes sex as much as he does.

  Marty dropped us off about ten miles out of Couer d' Alene at the peak of one of the hillsides that you climb coming out of that city. A beautiful place to be for sure. It was full dark when we got out of the car. We headed right into the woods.

  Walking in the Couer d' Alene forest proved a little more difficult than it was in our area. The forest was denser, the canopy was less giving of moonlight, and there were no trails that we wanted to follow particularly, so it was very slow going. And that was good for us. It took time to look for ground based devices that would pick up the footstep of a man if they were there. It also took a great deal of time to look constantly into the trees themselves to see any little tiny red dots that might mean a camera was focused on your dumb face! So we moved with great care and no speed.

  We made some progress and were probably a mile into the forest by the time the dawn began to peek over the eastern sky. We found a deep, dark copse of trees and bushes, made sure it was not occupied by a bear or some other critter and moved into it for the day. As the forest lightened slightly we were able to gather some boughs of broken branches to use as the base for our bedding. We covered the little area we were in after making sure of drainage and set it up to drain away from us if it rained as it often does in those mountains. We made it as comfortable as it could be and created several small holes in our covered area by moving branches around gently so that we would have a view of the area in which we were staying. And we went to sleep.

  Our deal with each other was that one of us would sleep until the other started to snore. Once that happened the sleeper would be awakened and have to stay awake and wait for the other one to do that. We hoped to make sure of no noise that way. Noise carries in the forest for a long distance. In the mid afternoon Allan woke me up. He had a finger to his lips and his weapon at the ready. I heard why in a matter of seconds. Someone, and they could have been fifty yards away or two hundred yards away, said “God dammit they have to be around this area somewhere. The seismic devices don't lie. They walked through here last night. Fan out a little more and we will make one more pass at it. Hell they may have gone out of here by now. Who knows?”

  By the sounds of the group that “fanned out” from that conversation there had to be about ten of them. We sure as hell didn't want a firefight with that many and it was too light to shoot a couple and make our way back toward the road. They would just follow. So the only thing we could do was hunker down in complete silence and stay that way, hoping they would not find us. After about an hour of hearing thrashing around in the woods, mostly from a significant distance beyond our location we heard them gathering again.

  They were all chattering. It was getting cold out there. There was a misty rain falling and the day was waning. The leader of this group said, “Okay, we will leave you, John, you Ray and you Nathan, to stand guard and watch the meter for movement. You have your radios so keep them on. If anything happens or these guys, whoever the hell they are wandering in our forest, happen to walk by just shoot them. Leave their bodies. The animals will take care of that part of the deal.”

  What the hell? They were already killing innocent people? They didn't know whether we were a couple of teenagers that came out in the woods to get a little or what. And they would just shoot us and leave our bodies for the animals to dispose of? That didn't sit well with either Allan or I. And as the night began to fall we very silently broke our camp, packed up our stuff and moved out of the copse of trees, silently.

  We could see their camp. They were only about fifty yards from where we were. They did not have night vision on. They were relying on light from the fire they set and from their flashlight mounted rifles to pin us down and kill us if they heard or saw us. They didn't hear us for sure. They were too busy talking and preparing dinner for that to occur. We ate the food that they had prepared. It was pretty good but kind of too bad for them they didn't get to share any of it since they were all gone to another place.

  Now we were in a quandary. If we moved around there would be more come to search for us. If we stayed put we were too badly outnumbered to fight and especially that was true in the daylight hours. But Allan had his satellite phone so he called Marty and made arrangements for Marty to pick us up at a given milepost the next morning at or near six a.m. We decided to see if we could spot their seismic devices. We found a couple of them and disabled them. The results were astonishing. We had moved several hundred yards away from the two disabled sound detection devices when mortar shells fell exactly where those things were located. They must have them plotted by GPS. Allan and I both thought and said that at the same time. And then we very carefully got the hell out of there. We must not have tripped any other seismic devices because they didn't fire any more mortars at us. Or if we did, they saw we were leaving and let us go the way we had come. As the three of us drove back to Missoula that early morning Allan said, “Those people are a little more sophisticated than those we took on down in Frenchtown, Will. And it is evident they are a lot better armed and prepared to fight. I hope we have not stirred a sleeping bear up there. We would need a lot of people to stand that bunch off I think.”

  “One thing about them is for sure Allan. They are really defensive about their territory. But we have no signs yet of them wanting to add to what they already have.”

  For the first time Marty Jimson chipped in a comment about the group. “They are looking to expand, Will. Here, take a look at this. I found it in town while the lady and I were getting a bite to eat. These flyers are all over the place.”

  The flyer was rudimentary but to the point. It announced that the city of Couer d' Alene was being annexed along with the city of Kellogg, into the “New State of Idaho and Washington” and that soon they would expand westward and annex the city of Spokane, Washington. Marty added to the flyer's contents by telling us that the lady had heard, in a loud bar conversation that occurred earlier in the week, that the talk was they would expand south as well with the intent to take over all the small cities and towns along the roads paralleling the national forests of the center of the state and that they eventually intended to annex all the territory to the south as far as Boise at least. That appeared to mean that they were probably going to try and take some land in Oregon and most likely toward us in Missoula area as well. Wow.

  The flyer had one more thing in it that was noteworthy and that was a warning to anyone who was not willing to fall under the authority of the government of the New State of Idaho to leave immediately. It announced the penalty for disobeying a lawful order of any official of the New State of Idaho and its armed forces of death. No disagreement or argument would be brooked. The government was not a democracy, there was no vote to be had. If you didn't want that then you had better leave.

  To say that reading these flyers was a little sobering is a gross understatement. We took them home with us of course. We wanted the people of Missoula, Frenchtown, all the surrounding small towns, to be aware of what the New State of Idaho people were planning, what their attitudes toward governing were going to be. There would be town hall meetings in our areas. />
  We were still trying to operate within the “democratic” framework of government even though it was tempered with the necessity for very tight law enforcement controls. The State Police force in Missoula was expanded a great deal by Allan. He took in some of the police from the old City of Missoula Police Department, some from other small communities in the area that essentially did not exist any longer, like Frenchtown. He began to train them not only in police techniques but also in military style shooting and tactics of shoot, move, shoot, move, present no target to the enemy, conceal, shoot, move, all the stuff that we had used so effectively in the night against the Frenchtown/Arlee/Alberton groups. But his force was pitifully small by comparison to what appeared to be hundreds, if not thousands, of militiamen waiting in Couer d' Alene to take over the entire State of Idaho. Maybe, maybe with some luck we could slow them, make them anticipate more losses than they wanted, make them decide the price for dictatorship of the State of Idaho was not worth paying. Dad and I discussed that notion a lot, as did Allan and I. Dad, Ruthie, mom and the kids were safe in our enclave so long as the numbers didn't get too high against us. Even given a siege status, we could use new tunnels that we had worked on all through the summer to our great advantage.

  None of us thought these new “northern” militiamen, as we termed them, would do anything in our direction until the winter was over. Sometimes the snow in the mountains around Couer d' Alene and between there and Missoula could be brutally deep, make travel of any kind except by helicopter or plane, extremely dangerous and difficult. We were a little too sanguine in those beliefs I think in retrospect.

  Soon, late into the fall months, we began to see and hear small planes flying around the area of Frenchtown, heard reports of Arlee being a center of activity for small aircraft and Alberton as well, where there was a fine airport built just for that type of aircraft. A couple of times we saw a plane that seemed to be joyriding right down the canyon walls behind dad's place. By that time we had done the best we could to camouflage all our trails, all our spider holes, all our sound powered or seismic powered listening devices and the small cameras that were concealed in the trees as far as a mile away from the house in every direction.