Liberators

by Rawles James Wesley

  “Amen to that.”

  • • •

  As dawn broke over Sigutlat Lake, Rhiannon could see that they were just three hundred feet from shore. Rob started the plane’s engine. A flock of bufflehead ducks was startled by the noise and took flight. Rob maneuvered the plane to the tiny, deserted fishing village at the southeast corner of the lake. There were still two cabins standing, but what had been the larger lodge was a blackened ruin. A woodstove and a rusty Servel refrigerator body were still standing near the middle of the ruin.

  The wooden dock was a T-shape with its shorter leg paralleling the shore. It was weathered to gray but appeared to be in serviceable condition. Rob handed Jake a length of rope and had him step out on the pontoon. After Rob had expertly maneuvered to the side of the dock, Jake was easily able to hop over and tie up the plane to a cleat. After shutting down the engine Rob jumped out and added another mooring line. Surprisingly, there were still some floating plastic buffers, and they were able to shift the plane down the dock to them, to protect the starboard pontoon from any damage. Once the plane was alongside the buffers, they snugged up both lines.

  They were almost immediately attacked by mosquitoes. They wore mosquito repellent almost continuously, henceforth. Unloading the plane took a half hour, and then shifting the cargo to the woods behind the village took another two hours. All that they left on board was the one hundred pounds of ammunition and batteries that had been promised to the resistance fighters who would be refueling the Cessna at the mouth of the Dean River.

  Rob shook their hands and said, “I’ll be praying for y’all. Before I fly out at sunset tonight, I plan to take a long nap and then do some catch-and-release fishing for rainbow trout with a hand line. I hope that I catch at least one big one. But even if I don’t, I’ll still have bragging rights.”

  Rhiannon gave him a questioning look.

  Rob clarified. “I mean bragging rights to say that I flew seven hundred miles into occupied Chinese territory while being painted by PLA air defense radars and dropped off a team of scrappy resistance fighters along with their fully automatic weapons, rocket launchers, explosives, and night vision gear. Then I did some fishing before I flew out. What a great story to tell my grandkids, someday.”

  Rob grinned and gave them a stylized parade float royalty wave. Then he turned to walk back to the dock whistling “Dixie.”

  Janelle readied her pack, filling her canteen with filtered water from the lake, and headed out with a GPS. (Since she was the most confident on a horse in the bush, it was decided that she would be the best one to hike out and lead back the horses.) While she was gone, the others planned to gradually shift the cargo and packsaddles to an agreed location six hundred meters away to a place even deeper in the timber. There, they would make a cold camp, set up thermal camouflage, and wait.

  It took Janelle three and a half days to hike thirty-three miles east to the Andy Cahoose Meadow Indian Reserve. The trail was in worse shape than she had remembered it, with a lot of newly downed timber. By prior arrangement, there was a resistance team summer grazing a herd of cattle and a string of packhorses and mules. When she arrived, Janelle met the First Nations husband and wife team, who were camped in a yurt. They saw her walking in and asked, “Are you Janelle?”

  “That’s me!”

  They wasted no time and soon had two horses saddled, and halters and leads on the rest of the string. While the husband stayed to watch the cattle, his wife, Maggie, would accompany Janelle back to the lake. In addition to their sleeping bags, they each carried an axe and a bow saw to deal with the worst of the downed timber.

  With the each horse’s lead tied to the tail of the horse ahead, the pack string looked like a herd of elephants. It took them five grueling days to get back to the cold camp. While they could detour around a lot of the fallen trees, some of them were on steep, rocky, or brushy slopes and had to be cleared. By the time that they reached the camp, Janelle and Maggie were exhausted and ravenous, since they had packed only four days’ worth of food.

  Rhiannon had been quite worried by Janelle’s long delay. Janelle assured her she was fine. “But that trail is a mess. We’d better plan on four days just to make it back to the meadows.”

  Jake and Peter had already organized the loads equally alongside each packsaddle.

  There were a couple of ornery mules in the string, but they had them all saddled and loaded within two hours. That afternoon they covered only eight miles before they camped at dark and hobbled the pack string. The next morning they were short one horse, and found that even though it was hobbled, a dappled gray gelding had covered four hundred yards in crow hops. “That’s the thing about horses; there’s not two of them with the same personality,” Rhiannon said.

  The next three days were frustrating. Because of the downed timber, they had to break up the string and lead horses individually or in pairs on some stretches. But everyone remained in high spirits, and each night Maggie entertained them with stories of what had happened in the region since the Crunch. Maggie said that she had been a horse packer for the resistance but that she had never personally engaged in any combat. She had lost three toes to frostbite while resisting the French, and had lost her left earlobe to frostbite while resisting the Chinese.

  Back at Andy Cahoose Meadow, they shared a barbecue with Maggie and her husband. Like Maggie, her husband knew of the McGregors only by reputation and had not heard any details of what had happened at the ranch since the Crunch. Since they wintered at the Michel Gardens Reserve (fifty miles east of Anahim Lake), they had news only of families in their immediate vicinity.

  The next morning as they prepared to head out on the forty-five miles of trail to the McGregor ranch, Jake asked Maggie’s husband what he might need from their cargo. “I could use some aught six shells, some .303 shells, and some matches.” Jake filled all of his requests, with two hundred rounds of each type of ammunition, and four large boxes of matches. He also added the bonus of a twenty-dollar-face-value roll of Canadian silver quarters.

  Maggie accompanied them the next morning on her Morgan mare. The plan was that once they reached the McGregor ranch, she would lead the pack string back to Andy Cahoose Meadow by herself.

  The next two days went quickly. They were now on well-maintained trails, so the going was much easier. They spent the first night in the woods near the Blackwater Meadow Reserve. Maggie explained that from here on, it would be safer to camp where there were cattle pastured to confuse “those Chinese thermal things.” They spent the next night at the Louis Squinas ranch, which was technically a First Nations reserve, but to all outward appearances was just a typical British Columbia cattle ranch. One family lived there, but the ranch was currently unoccupied because the family was running their cattle for the summer up at a place they just called “Fourteen”—their summer pasture range.

  Though they were now quite close to the McGregor ranch, they stayed an extra day; they were getting closer to civilization and needed to transition to night travel to decrease the chance of being spotted by Chinese drones or patrols.

  Up until now, they had been riding with handguns on their hips, but with all of their guns stowed, they asked Maggie if it was wise to break them out. She said, “No. If they attack with a gunship, then we’re all dead anyway. And if a ground patrol spots us, we’re better off trying to outrun them and ride back into the timber. From there, we can set up an ambush.”

  They left the long guns stowed.

  Although it was only a mile to the town of Anahim Lake, and another seven miles to the McGregor ranch, it took them all night to get there. They had to take a circuitous route around the hamlet of Anahim Lake.

  They arrived at the ranch at 5:00 A.M. and were greeted by an ambush.

  Phil and Malorie were up and cooking breakfast when they heard “Alert zone three.”

  “Get ready to thermite all of the files and maps!” Phil shouted. Then he and Malorie rushed out of the house and ran down the nort
h draw to reach one of their planned ambush sites. Just as they got into position, the pack string came into the far end of the kill zone. Phil flipped down the bipod legs of his MAG, quickly positioned the Bulldog bag, and clipped on its belt to the gun’s twenty-round teaser.

  When the strangers were in the middle of the kill zone, Malorie shouted, “Halt! Who goes there?”

  Rhiannon, on the lead horse, sharply reined her mount to a stop. She hesitated, and then answered, “Rhiannon McGregor Jeffords, and a group of friendlies.”

  It took a few minutes in the early light of dawn to straighten out who was who. Phil and Malorie quickly identified themselves as “friends of Ray” and residents of the ranch.

  When they reached the house, Janelle and Rhiannon were crying tears of joy as they saw their brother, Ray, for the first time in more than a decade. Their happiness, however, was quickly shattered when they learned that their parents had been killed by the PLA.

  56

  RECUPERATION

  Tears are the silent language of grief.

  —Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet)

  The McGregor Ranch, near Anahim Lake, British Columbia—August, the Eleventh Year

  After all of the panniers were unloaded and the packsaddles were stowed in the barn, they turned out all of the horses in the east corral, which was partly shaded by trees. Here, they reasoned, there was less chance of a Chinese drone operator noticing the sudden influx of livestock.

  Maggie stayed for the day. Before she left that evening, she was given a captured FAMAS F1, seven spare FAMAS magazines, five hundred rounds of 5.56mm ball ammo, a custom leather scabbard for the FAMAS that had been handmade at Stan Leaman’s ranch, a cleaning kit, and a copy of Malorie’s English translation of the French army FAMAS manual. They also gave her five of their packsaddles and their panniers, with the assumption that she would get more use out of them than the McGregors would.

  “I’m glad that you got here when you did,” Ray began. “The PLA administrators have announced that they’re starting a nationwide census in less than two weeks. After that, any adult who is caught without an internal passport will be subject to arrest or perhaps even summary execution.”

  Rhiannon had three passports: Canadian (lapsed), Australian, and U.S. Janelle had two passports: Canadian (lapsed), and United States Peter had Australian and U.S. passports. Jake had only a lapsed U.S. passport. They decided that Rhiannon and Janelle would queue up for the Chinese passports, while Jake and Peter would try to stay “under the radar.”

  Fortunately, the Chinese had very few FLIRs. But what the PLA lacked in technological sophistication, it made up for in sheer numbers.

  “What we need are force multipliers—technologies or tactics that dramatically increase combat effectiveness. With modern conventional armies, these multipliers are typified by electronic communications, aerial bombardment, intelligence gathering, rapid troop transport, electronic warfare, force concentration, and the use of precision guided ‘smart’ munitions. In the context of guerrilla warfare, we’ll depend on command-detonated explosives and perhaps even toxins,” Phil said.

  “When we were up against UNPROFOR, they essentially played nice, at first. They also had a relatively small force. But the situation with China is considerably different. The gloves have been off from day one, and this is truly asymmetric warfare. They’ve got a huge, highly mechanized, and largely armored force with plenty of firepower. Their targeting capability is weak, however. It’s almost like Elmer T. Fudd lugging around a big blunderbuss but not knowing where to point it.”

  “And we’re those Wascally Wabbits,” Jake offered.

  “Right. So we confuse Elmer. We demoralize Elmer. We starve Elmer. We freeze Elmer. We give Elmer stomach trouble. We blind Elmer. We give Elmer sleepless nights. We pour itching powder down Elmer’s shirt.”

  Phil paused to take a breath, and then went on. “Just ‘think outside the box,’ folks. Arson and sabotage will be key force multipliers. Given the cold climate of the interior, two of our primary goals will be depriving the Chinese of liquid fuels and burning them out of their barracks. I intend to freeze them out of BC over the next winter or two.”

  57

  BIG TREBLE

  A clever rabbit’s burrow has three holes.

  —Chinese proverb

  Near Nimpo Lake, British Columbia—September, the Eleventh Year

  Their recon mission was a failure. They had been detected, perhaps by a ground sensor, so now Peter and Ray were on the run. After he had shot just four rounds, Ray’s FAMAS carbine jammed. He tried the traditional “slap/pull/squeeze” method of clearing the jam, but a glance in the ejection told him that the jam was a dreaded “double feed,” which could take a long time to clear. He didn’t have a lot of time.

  “VBT!” he shouted to Peter, quoting one of Malorie’s favorite fake acronyms. Recognizing Ray’s predicament, Peter laid down covering fire for their withdrawal with pairs of semiautomatic shots from his Pindad SS2.

  Ray safed the FAMAS and slung it across his back as he ran.

  Nearing a boulder that would provide decent cover, he pulled his Inglis pistol from its stock/holster. He fired two quick shots toward his pursuers. Seeing that Peter was up and running, Ray fired three more times. Then he pulled the wooden shoulder stock from its harness, attached it to the butt of his pistol, and adjusted the gun’s tangent rear sight to two hundred meters. Shouldering the gun, he tried to engage the advancing Chinese squad as best he could, firing deliberately. Once he heard Peter firing again (following his own rush), Ray jumped up and started a rush, reloading as he ran.

  This series of withdraw-by-fire and rushes went on for several minutes. Peter was briefly stunned when a bullet hit him near the top of his TBAS trauma plate. He realized later that he would probably be dead if it weren’t for his armor. Mainly because of their superior accuracy, the PLA squad stopped pursing them after they had taken four casualties. Peter shot and killed three PLA soldiers, and Ray badly wounded another.

  After they broke contact, Ray and Peter kept running, heading for dense timber. They were in an area just a few miles from the ambush of the French Gazelle helicopter five years earlier.

  They were certain that the Chinese would resume their pursuit once a larger unit arrived to back them up. What they hadn’t planned on were scent-tracking dogs.

  When the heard the dogs, Ray shouted as he ran, “We’ve gotta think fast. They may have transponders on their dog collars, so even if the handlers can’t keep up with them, they can use those returns to vector attack helicopters in on us.”

  “There’s another VBT for us,” Peter said.

  If they got pinned down, he expected the Chinese to call for a gunship. It would be either a Z-9 (a clone of the Eurocopter Dauphin) or a Z-10, a more formidable attack helicopter similar in capability to the Augusta 129 or the Eurocopter Tiger.

  After running for another minute, Peter said, “Hey! How about treble hook lines?”

  “Could work!” Ray answered. “Let’s look for a narrow spot.”

  They found the right spot a few hundred yards ahead where the trail crossed a swale that was hemmed in by trees and some large boulders. The dogs now sounded as if they were getting closer—perhaps only a mile behind them.

  They stopped and grounded their weapons. Ray dug into his pack and pulled out his medical kit, which contained several battle dressings and a combat application tourniquet (CAT). Beneath that was a brown plastic clamshell soap box that was about the size of his hand. Inside it was a piece of cardboard with eight separate pieces of 120-pound test monofilament wrapped in notches that had been cut along the sides of the cardboard. Each nine-foot-long fishing line had a three-quarter-inch-wide treble hook tied at both ends.

  To save time, Ray pulled out his tanto pocketknife and cut the cardboard in half. He said, “Four for you and four for me. Doggie chest height, naturally.”

  They quickly unwound the snare lines and started to string them up a
cross the trail.

  Phil had taught them the technique. He’d learned it from a Special Forces NCO. The idea was to attach them to a strong synthetic line such as spiderwire fishing line. Typically one end was attached to the hook and the other to the ceiling rafters or doorframes with enough slack to allow the hooks to lie on the floor near the edges of the wall. They could place these in what Phil termed a “fatal funnel”—an interior ambush zone inside a building. According to Phil, using treble snares could delay, distract, and unnerve a SWAT-style raid party, allowing defenders to have a brief period of advantage wherein they could shoot the invaders. The attackers are slowed and stunned by pain, allowing the defenders to spring a trap and fire upon the attackers, all caught nicely inside a restrictive space. The same sorts of treble hook snares were also useful in wilderness areas on trails.

  By the time that they were done emplacing all eight snare lines, the barking dogs sounded much closer, perhaps only a half mile away. “Crud, they’re gaining fast,” Ray muttered nervously.

  Ray and Peter grabbed their rifles and resumed running. They had run about fifteen hundred yards when they heard a terrible commotion behind them. They stopped to listen. The many shrieks, howls, and barks from the dogs made it clear that the pack had gotten themselves into a big tangle. The howls went on and on, and both men felt bad to have been forced to harm the dogs the way they did.

  Peter uncapped his canteen and took a long pull from it, and offered it to Ray, who also took a sip.

  Handing the canteen back, Ray said, “Thanks. I think I have time to clear that jam now.”

  58

  EBB TIDE

  All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable, when using our forces we must seem inactive, when we are near, we must make the enemy believe that we are away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him.