all explosives, detonating cord, and blasting caps, all explosives precursor chemicals,
all firearms regardless of type that are chambered for military cartridges such as 7.62 mm NATO, 5.56 mm NATO, .45 ACP, and nine-mm parabellum, all silencers,
all night vision equipment including infrared, light amplification, or thermal, all telescopic sights,
all laser aiming devices,
all handguns regardless of type or caliber’… And…”
Clarke turned a page and went on. “The Accord further proscribes private possession of armored vehicles, bayonets, gas masks, helmets and bulletproof vests, encryption software or devices, and all radio transmitters—other than baby monitors, cordless phones, or cell phones.
“In addition: full metal jacket, tracer, incendiary, and armor piercing ammunition, all ammunition in military calibers, chemical agents of any sort including CS and CN tear gas, OC ‘pepper spray,’ and all military-type pyrotechnics and flare launchers.”
“Now there will, of course, be exceptions for registering equipment used by properly trained law enforcement agencies that are under Federal or UN control.”
Looking back up from his notebook, he recited with finality, “‘Any firearm not meeting the new criteria and all other contraband listed herein must be turned in within the ten-day amnesty period after the UN Regional Administrator or sub-administrator, or their delegates arrive on site. Alternatively, if Federal or UN troops arrive within any state to pacify it, a thirty-day amnesty period will begin the day the first forces cross the state boundary. All other post-1898 production firearms of any description, air rifles, archery equipment, and edged weapons over six inches long must be registered during the same period. Anyone found with an unregistered weapon, or any weapon, accessory, or ammunition that has been declared contraband after the amnesty period ends will be summarily executed.’ This may sound severe, but keep in mind that the new law was enacted to ensure public safety.”
In the middle of the crowd, Dan Fong yelled, “Public safety my ass!Your so-called ‘contraband’ has saved my life several times in the past three years. Furthermore, do you think that looters are going to abide by your gun registration scheme? Only responsible and peaceable citizens would abide by it, and they are precisely the people who don’t require any control, because they police themselves. You’re nothing but a damnable fascist tyrant, that’s what you are!”
Holding his rifle above his head, he shouted, “You’ll get my gun when you pry it out of my cold dead hands!”With that, the crowd burst into continuous loud applause and cheering.
In the midst of the tumult, Todd Gray worked his way through the crowd, and bounded up to the top step to stand in front of Clarke. When the cheering finally started to die down, Todd announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Todd Gray. Most of you have met me. I started the Northwest Militia. Most of you here have no doubt heard of us, and the Troy Templar organization. We are two local groups, composed of sovereign Idaho Citizens, that have been working together to restore a local Constitutionally-based government.”
Todd turned 90 degrees so that he could see Clarke’s face, and continued. “From what you have told us today, Mister Clarke, I don’t think that there is much that your provisional government has to offer us that we cannot provide for ourselves. Restoring industry, utilities, transportation, and communications are indeed worthy goals. However, if doing so means surrendering our personal freedom, then our answer is an emphatic no. In fact, I find your concepts of ‘necessity,’ ‘public safety,’ and ‘the public good’ are completely out of line. And I believe that I speak for the vast majority of the Idaho and Washington Citizens assembled here.”
Throughout the crowd there were cries of “Hear hear!” and “You tell ’em, Todd.”
Todd looked directly at Clarke and commanded, “Without further ado, I’d like to invite you gentlemen to immediately get in your airplane and go find yourselves somebody more naive to swallow your globalist horse manure.” As Todd spoke, Clarke stood stammering, and his already pink face turned noticeably red.
Before Clarke could reply, Gray went on. “Don’t bother sending out your so-called ‘Regional Administrator.’ Whoever it is will either be sent packing or end up the recipient of a tall tree and a short rope.” There were more cheers and applause.
Clarke looked at Gray and boomed, “I’m warning you! We represent the legitimate government of the United States and United Nations. You cannot defy us. To do so would be treasonous and seditious, and would be dealt with accordingly.”
Gray lowered his right hand to rest on the butt of his .45. He cocked his head slightly to the side and shouted, “You do not represent anything legitimate, Mister Clarke. You represent a totalitarian globalist oligarchy instituted without the benefit of any semblance of democratic process, or incorporating a republican form of government.” More shouts of agreement came from throughout the audience. Todd again looked Clarke directly in the eye and said, “You have ten seconds to get on that aircraft, and head back to Maynard-land.”
Clarke stood his ground for a moment. Then, seeing his pilot make a dash for the plane, he followed close behind. Behind him, the crowd was taunting and jeering. From the door of the plane with the sound of the turbine engines winding up in the background, Clarke shook his fist and shouted in Todd’s direction, “We’ll be back!”
The crowd moved backward as the plane’s propellers began to spin. Within seconds, the C-12 began its roll. Obviously in a hurry, the pilot did not bother taxiing the distance to the runway. He took off directly from the narrow taxi strip and turned to head southeast.
Still standing on the porch of the terminal with his hands on his hips, Todd watched the plane’s progress until it was a dot on the horizon, and then disappeared. His hand still resting on the butt of his pistol, he muttered to himself, “Come back if you dare. And when you do, you’d better bring a lot of ammo, plenty of extra grub, and a good supply of body bags, because you’re going to be in for a deuce of a gunfight.”
• • •
In the months that followed the “visit” by the Provisional Federal government, a number of militias began to form spontaneously throughout the Palouse Hills region. The motivation was news of the Federals’ ruthless and often bloody consolidation of power. Numerous stories of Federal atrocities were passed across shortwave and CB radio relay networks. If even half of them were true, it was clear that the Federals and their UN “partners for peace” were unmitigated tyrants.
Most of the new militias in the inland Northwest region were small, from two-man cells to squad size. A few were near company strength. Their organization, structure, logistics, training, and even their terminology varied greatly.
Some had geographical names like the Moscow Maquis, the Weippe Wolverines, the Helmer Heilanders, and the Bovill Blue Blaze Irregulars. Others were named in memoriam, such as the Gordon Kahl Company, the 9/11 Company, and the Samuel Weaver Company. Many of the new militias were all male, some were mixed, and one—that started with a squad of former University of Idaho Sigma Epsilon sorority sisters—was all female.
As the best-known tactical organization in the area, the Northwest Militia was approached for advice by many of the leaders of these fledgling militias.
They sought technical expertise and training on a variety of topics, and Todd and his militia did their utmost to comply. A few large-scale training exercises were held. Some of the group’s excess logistics—mainly shelter half-tents and extra sets of web gear—were distributed on “long-term loan” to militias that had none.
The decision to again “give until it hurts” was based on the likely prospect of fighting a war of resistance in the near future. Unlike the resistance organizations that were formed in Europe during the Second World War, there would be no outside sources of finance or supply. Everything for the militias had to be provided from local resources. Todd reasoned that since he and his friends had been so richly blessed, it was their
responsibility to help out as many others as possible in anticipation of an armed struggle that looked inevitable.
A few of the new militias asked to be directly incorporated into the Northwest Militia. In every instance, they were turned down. Todd was of the firm opinion that large militias would only make themselves lucrative targets. He advised all of the militia leaders to keep their organizations small—preferably three to twelve members. If they recruited any new members that brought them up over the twelve-man threshold, they should divide into separate and independent units.
There was a conscious decision to form what Kevin Lendel called “an organization without an organization.” Most referred to this methodology as the “phantom cell” or “leaderless resistance” approach. All of the militias in the region, they decided, should share common goals, but should have wholly independent leadership.
Without central leadership, it would be impossible to decapitate the militia. Also, through strict “need to know” security measures, it would make it almost impossible to infiltrate more than one of the local militias. Everyone was warned not to give their names when conducting joint field exercises. They constantly stressed that given the disconnected cellular organization, if any member of any of the militias was eventually captured and tortured, that individual could at most expose the names of just a handful of members in their cell.
The other proviso that was constantly stressed was that virtually nothing was to be written down, aside from perhaps a few unit SOPs. There would be no written rosters, no description of assigned areas of operation, and no lists of frequencies or call signs. Further, no maps were to be marked with any notations whatsoever. They were even warned not to leave maps folded in such a way that they emphasized a particular operational area. Everything of potential intelligence value was to be committed to memory.
Coordination between the militias was actively discouraged, again for security reasons. Each militia picked out an area of operations, which they communicated by word of mouth to their neighboring militias. A few rallying points were agreed upon for eventual tactical coordination, but beyond that, everything was kept cellular. Aside from the assigned rally points, the local resistance cells were advised to operate wholly independently, using the leaderless resistance concept. They would use generalized principles and planning, but decentralized tactics and action.
One of the few militias that the Northwest Militia regularly trained with was the Moscow Maquis. The Maquis were led by a fifty-year-old man with piercing blue eyes named Lawrence Raselhoff. Raselhoff was both a dog breeder and gun dealer before the Crunch. Much of his gun inventory was handed out to unit members in the first few months after the Maquis was formed. Even though he was confined to a wheelchair, Raselhoff was an energetic leader. He often went to the field with his unit in a dogcart, on a dog sled, or on his white snowmobile. Both Todd and Mike had long conversations with Raselhoff, making contingency plans.
Many of the Northwest Militia meetings in the late fall of the third year concerned the possible invasion of the region by the Federals or their UN counterparts. It was decided that guerrilla warfare would be the most appropriate response. The threat of armored vehicles seemed the most obvious. Both Jeff and Doug had seen tanks and armored personnel carriers in action, and they could appreciate how well they could stop most conventional attacks. It was Doug Carlton who crystallized the approach that they would take in countering the armor threat when he said, “What we will really need are some anti-tank missiles—LAWs,Vipers, Dragons, or TOWs. Unfortunately, we have none available, and they are very difficult to improvise.”
Lon asked, “What can we improvise? How about Molotov cocktails? Those are easy enough to make.”
Carlton responded, “Molotov cocktails will work, but it takes a lot of them to stop a tank or APC. You also need to thicken the gas to make it stick. Otherwise it just pours off of any vehicle that the bottle breaks on. You can thicken it with laundry detergent. Styrofoam also works great. You want to get it thickened to the point where it has the consistency of heavy maple syrup.”
He went on, “If you can get close enough to use them, what works even better than Molotov cocktails is a TH3 grenade—commonly called thermite in the civilian world. According to one of Todd’s Kurt Saxon books that I read, thermite is really easy to make. It’s a mixture of iron oxide—just rust—and powdered aluminum. It’s a very powerful oxidizer that burns at something outrageous like five thousand degrees Fahrenheit. It’s what chemists call an exothermic reaction. It will melt through two inches of steel tank iron like butter. I saw a TH3 grenade used at a firepower demonstration at Fort Knox. They laid a thick old car door sideways across a couple of sawhorses and set the TH3 grenade on top. They warned us several times not to look directly at the flames to avoid damaging our retinas, and then an NCO pulled the pin. The thing went completely through the door and dropped to the ground within a few seconds.”
Rose exclaimed, “Wow, that would really do a number on a tank.”
Doug warned, “Now keep in mind that employing either Molotovs or thermite grenades against armored vehicles or both would be very, very dangerous, particularly Bradley M2s or M3s. You’ve got to be right up close for Molotovs, and even closer for the thermite grenades.”
A day later, Mike and Lisa Nelson started mass production of Molotov cocktails. Just the week before, they had been making goat’s milk soap for the retreat, using lye that they had derived from ashes. But this week they were firebomb makers. For the Molotov project, they selected the most-untrustworthy gas stored at the retreat—that which was stored in small cans and the vehicles’ fuel tanks. The gasoline was thickened with laundry detergent powder in an open fifty-five-gallon drum that was placed seventy yards away from the house. The noxious mixture was stirred with the handle of a broken rake. It was ladled into quart canning jars and sealed tight with Mason lids and rings.
An eighteen-inch long strip of rag was made for each jar for ignition. Lisa epoxied a one-inch square of “hook side” Velcro fastener to each lid. A corresponding one-inch square of “pile side”Velcro was sewn to the center of each of the rag strips. They soaked all these strips in diesel fuel and sealed them in individual Ziploc bags which were duct taped to the sides of each jar. To use a Molotov, the rag would be removed from the plastic bag, and attached to the jar with the Velcro. Then the rag would be lit with a match and then the jar could be thrown.
By separating the main fuel component from the ignition component, Lisa Nelson explained, it made the devices “about a thousand percent safer” to use or carry than the traditional rags-stuffed-into-wine-bottles method. When they did a demonstration of one of the prototypes, Lisa mentioned that they would have preferred to have developed some sort of friction igniter, but there weren’t enough supplies of chemicals available. Instead, they opted for the method of packaging the diesel-soaked rags with each cocktail. Most of the cocktails were packed into the original cardboard cases that the canning jars came in, for ease and safety of transport. In all, they assembled two hundred and twenty of the firebombs. For safety’s sake, the cases were stored in a dry corner of the barn.
Mike, Della, and Doug were named the ad hoc committee for thermite grenade construction. After a few days of inquiries, they discovered that there was a quantity of Creslite coarse brille aluminum powder in the hands of an owner of what had been a bronzing shop in Moscow. Before the Crunch, he had run a mail-order business bronzing items like baby’s booties and judge’s gavels. He was happy to part with his remaining sixty pounds of bronzing powder in exchange for one hundred rounds of .223 ball, and twenty rounds of .30-06 AP.
The iron oxide came from the owner of the paint store in Moscow. He still had two fifty-pound sacks of natural black iron oxide pigment in stock. Before the Crunch, he had mainly sold it to contractors who used it for tinting concrete. After some confusion, when he first tried to sell them some synthetic iron oxide powder, he came back from his large storeroom with two sacks of the
chemically correct, “natural” item made by Pfizer, loaded on a dolly. He agreed to trade the two sacks for one hundred rounds of Federal .308 match grade ammunition. He was happy to get the ammo. They also found a fifty-foot reel of magnesium ribbon. It was in the hands of a former University of Idaho chemistry professor. He had taken home most of the chem lab’s inventory for safekeeping. When he found out why they needed the ribbon, he refused any offer of payment. He declared, “Hey, it’s for a good cause.” The professor snipped off four feet of the ribbon from the reel to keep for himself, and handed Doug the rest.
The casings for the grenades were simply empty aluminum soda cans. The main igniting compound was road flare igniter, in conjunction with magnesium ribbon. A quiet call went out to the community, and road flares of all descriptions started arriving at the retreat in the next few days. A few had gotten wet at one time and were swollen. These were discarded. Mike was also disappointed to find that in response to the request for “flare igniter” a few neighbors were confused and sent the plastic caps and friction pads from road flares. What they needed instead was the black tar-like substance that protruded from the end of a flare. That was the actual igniter. It took some clarification before more of the correct material started to arrive. The flare igniter was moistened with alcohol to a putty-like consistency and molded around both the fuse and a two-inch long strip of magnesium ribbon. The tail end of the ribbon extended into the thermite mixture.
Mike, Della, and Doug used a hand crank concrete mixer from the Andersen’s farm to combine the aluminum powder and iron oxide powder.
They used a ratio of three parts aluminum powder to eight parts iron oxide powder. A blob of flare igniter, bisected by lengths of one-eighth-inch cannon fuse and the magnesium ribbon, was taped into the opening of each can on top of the thermite mixture.
The first of the finished products were declared “crude but effective.” Only two of them were used for tests. When the first was lit, it worked as planned.
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