“When they end up looting a town,” Gray added, “it can take a couple of days or more. Sometimes it’s even three or four days before they can get the soldiers sobered-up, their pants zipped, and back on the road. Now assuming that they don’t bypass us and keep going straight on up to Coeur d’Alene, I’d say that we have somewhere between four days and ten days before they get here. And, if by chance they do divert to make a sweep down the Clearwater, we could have three weeks or more to prepare. I agree with Doug, though. I don’t think that the Feds will do that, so we aren’t going to have the luxury of that extra time.
Gray then asked in a serious tone, “The next question, which I’d like to present to you all for a vote,is this: ‘Do we melt back into the hills, fight them guerrilla-style, or just completely beat feet and disappear?’ Let’s see a show of hands. How many of you vote for the latter—for opting out and disappearing?”
Only Margie Porter raised her hand.
Gray then asked, “So, do we fight?” Everyone but Margie raised either their hands or their rifles with a mighty shout. He turned to face Mrs. Porter. “I can appreciate your reluctance, Margie, but consider this. If we did take off, where would we go? Unless they are stopped, the Feds will eventually conquer the lower forty-eight states. Then it will just be a matter of time before they consolidate their gains. Canada? I don’t think so. Canada is part of the problem, not the solution. It was firmly in the socialist-slash-globalist camp even before the Crunch. We’ve heard that they’ve got UN ‘peacekeepers’ up there, too.
Sooner or later, even Alaska will be on their list. Once they consolidate power, they’d eventually just track us down and exterminate us, no matter where we went. To them, we represent the old America—free, sovereign, and independent. The UN can’t stomach having people like us around. What they don’t realize is that we represent the quiet majority of the citizenry.
“Eventually people in the conquered states will rise up and put an end to the Hutchings puppet government, and kick out the UN. It is just a matter of time. As for me, I’m not willing to live as a slave and wait for that to happen. I’d rather start to make it happen myself.” Doug Carlton shouted, “Oo-rah!” Gray continued. “The bottom line is that I’d rather die fighting on my own terms with a rifle in my hands, than to die whimpering and begging for mercy in some ditch with my hands tied behind my back.” The men and women around him clapped and cheered. “Even if I die trying, my little boy there will grow up knowing that I at least tried to regain his freedom. I owe him that much.” The metal walls of the barn reverberated with more applause, whistles, and shouts.
“Okay, then, here is my basic plan, at least off the top of my head, but as always, I’m open to suggestions. I propose that we evacuate both retreats and regroup temporarily at a place that Mike picked out a few miles from here, up in the National Forest. He found it when he was leading a security patrol last April. From what he’s told me it’s a good defensible location, well away from any roads, and it’s in heavy timber for concealment. There is a good-sized level opening where we should be able to land the Doyles’ Star Streaks.” Nelson gave a thumbs-up in agreement.
Todd nodded back to Nelson and continued, “We’ll use that valley as our initial base of operations. Within a few days, though, we will probably want to split back into two separate organizations and locate and operate independently. We wouldn’t want to put all of our eggs in one basket. There is the chance that the Feds will have aircraft with FLIR pods, so I want to keep our signature small. Ten-man squads at most. If we pick up any recruits, we should start breaking up into smaller independent cells to stay under that ten-man threshold. Luckily, the hills are crawling with deer and elk, so there will be lots of false thermal targets to confuse them. If and when the Federals do get here, they will no doubt want to absolutely level our house and barn, and probably Kevin’s too, just as ‘examples.’ I don’t want to be in their sights when that happens. These Federals have no compunctions about throwing their weight around.”
Ian Doyle chimed in. “I first heard about these goons when I was in Arizona. And I heard some more about them when we were in Utah, on our way up here. As far as I’m concerned, these Federals are no better than looters. They’re just better armed and organized. They wear the cloak of legitimacy, but there’s nothing legitimate about them. They’re just another band of thugs, flying that Tidy-Bowl blue UN flag.”
He continued, “Our two planes are available for recon, of course. And, I’ve also got some other goodies down in the basement.” He thrust up a forefinger and blurted out, “Wait! I’ll be right back.” He left the barn abruptly leaving most of those gathered wondering what could be so important that he had to miss part of the meeting. While he was gone, the militia members started chattering among themselves about contingency plans and G.O.O.D. kits.
Doyle returned to the briefing after just a few minutes. Laying a bulky olive drab nylon duffel bag on the floor of the barn, he proclaimed, “Well, here they are. There are five of them. Well, originally I had seven, but therein lies a long story all in itself. I’ll just make it simple and say that I’ve got five left. They are all, the later ‘A2’ model. I broke them down into halves so they’d fit here in the duffel.” Doyle started to unwrap the front assemblies and rear assemblies of what at first glance looked like later-model Colt Sporters, padded by his extra sets of ACUs and BDUs.
As he continued to talk, he laid out the halves in pairs on the floor of the barn, and then began assembling them, snapping their pivot pins into place. “I got these gems from the AP’s arms room, along with three Beretta M9 pistols.
They were the last guns still in there. Unfortunately, there was no small arms ammo left on base. They only kept a small quantity onhand for base security, and that had been cleaned out when the APs left. The nearest ammo supply point was way the heck down at Fort Huachuca. Luckily, I had a few hundred rounds of commercial .223 at home, plus three .50 caliber ammo cans full of nine-millimeter ball, tracer, and soft nose.” He added with a smile, “In case you are wondering, I did indeed sign Uncle Sugar a hand receipt for these guns. Heck, if I hadn’t put them in safekeeping, who knows whose hands they’d be in by now.”
Doyle went on, “The reason I ran to go get these was because I just had the idea of mounting these in a rack in the front of one of the Larons with some sort of remote firing mechanism. With five of them firing simultaneously, I could do some major Vandammage. Oh yeah! My Star Streak will be C-A-S capable.”
“What’s C-A-S?” Lon asked.
Doyle turned toward him and replied, “C-A-S stands for Close Air Support.”
Lon Porter eyed the M16s and stroked his chin and said forthrightly, “No sweat, I can probably fab that up for you in a day or two.”
Mike Nelson added, “What about our M60? Could we build a mounting bracket for it on the other Star Streak?”
“Why not?” Doyle laughed. “We can have two armed birds in the air at the same time that way. Mounting the M60 should be even easier than mounting these sixteens. It’ll be just like the old days, Todd. We’ll just cut to size, file to fit, and paint to match!”
CHAPTER 25
Egress
“Stand your ground.
Don’t fire unless fired upon;
But if they mean to have a war,
Let it begin here!”
—Captain John Parker, Lexington Minute Company, April 19, 1775
Just after the morning meeting, Mike Nelson and Ian hiked up to reconnoiter the new base of operations. They scouted a small valley four miles to the east that Mike had picked out months before. Ian said that the meadow in the center of the valley looked fine for landings. They walked the length and width of the meadow several times, looking for landing gear obstructions. They found none. The pair hiked back to the retreat, had a hurried lunch, and pre-flighted Ian’s Laron. The flight to the valley took only a few minutes. They both wanted to see what the site would look like from the air. Ian made a test landin
g in the meadow. Before they took off again, Mike left his HK91 wrapped in a poncho, with his web gear harness lying beside it, in a thick clump of trees just beyond the east edge of the meadow. It was the first of what would soon become a small mountain of equipment. The site would soon be known as the militia’s tactical command post or “TAC-CP.” As they walked back to the plane, Nelson remarked, “I think we’ll call this place Valley Forge.”
The remainder of the two companies spent the day and evening in feverish preparation. The first order of business was for every individual at both retreats to repack their “G.O.O.D.” backpacks. Lon Porter, Mike Nelson, and the Doyles consumed their next two days mounting the five M16s on Ian’s Laron, and the M60 on Blanca’s. There was no way to mount the guns in the cramped noses, and mounting them on the planes’ fragile wings looked very difficult.
The solution was simply to remove the planes’ canopies and mount the guns in the front seat area, with their muzzles protruding over the front lips of the cockpits. A large narrow bin was constructed of sheet metal to hold the ammunition belt for the M60. When belts of ammo were linked together continuously and loaded into the bin, it was found that it would accommodate one thousand and sixty rounds.
In the case of the M60, the firing mechanism was made with a bicycle cable and the gearshift lever from Mary’s ten-speed. The bike was in disuse, since its tires had partly rotted out and replacements were unavailable. For the five M16s, the fire control mechanism took five separate triggering rods, all linked together on a common axis bar. It in turn was linked by a “traveling arm” to a firing lever mounted on the front of the left armrest of the rear seat. Using scrap metal and more parts from the rack on Mary’s bicycle, Lon built this mechanism in less than three hours. The sights were a home-brew affair, made out of six-inch-long sections of Schedule 40 one-and-one-half-inch white plastic water pipe, with crosshairs made out of stiff wire at the front of each.
These tubes were attached to the gun mountings using bolts and fender washers. Stacks of washers were gradually built up until the point of aim in the crosshairs matched the bore-sight view. Test firing confirmed the point of impact.
Lon completed the mountings by fabricating brass catchers out of scrap sheet metal. He primarily used the front panel of Kevin Lendel’s disused electric dishwasher, and license plates that had been taken off of the various cars and trucks at the retreat. The catchers would serve to both save the fired brass and links for reloading, and to prevent fired brass from causing any damage to the planes, or getting underfoot inside the planes.
Since the Larons had dual controls, it was simple enough to fly them from the rear seat. This required repositioning the throttles. It was a long reach to hit the starter switches, since there were no equivalents in the rear seats, and the visibility from the rear seats was not as good as from the front. The instruments were largely out of view as well, particularly on the green Laron with the wide M16 mounting rack. However, Doyle expected that the upcoming flights would be all “seat of the pants” flying anyway. Without the canopy, the slipstream would be tremendous at full throttle, but manageable in slow flight. The Doyles were given two pairs of the Grays’ army surplus “Goggle: Sun, Wind, and Dust” to compensate for the lack of canopies.
The gun mounts themselves were a marvel of quickly improvised tube bending, machining, and welding. The mount for the M16s bolted directly onto the rifle’s receiver extension tubes. It was found that in order to save space, the buttstocks and pistol grips would have to be removed. The removal of the buttstocks left the threaded buttstock hole available at the back end of each receiver extension. An eighth-inch-thick plate of two-inch-wide steel was drilled for these bolt holes. The missing pistol grips meant that there was nothing to hold the selector switch springs and detents in place. Rather than fabricate something special, it was expedient just to tape the selector switches in the “Burst” position. This kept them from falling out of the receivers.
The forward mounting point for each of the M16s was their forward pivot-pin hole. These pins (along with their springs and detents) were removed, and long carriage bolts were put in their place. These same bolts bisected a piece of tubular steel. It in turn tied into the main framework. Once assembled, the entire mount could be removed with the guns intact by simply unclamping four bolts. This, Lon predicted, would simplify cleaning the guns. The brass catching bins were assembled and mounted separately. They, too, could be removed easily if need be. They also had clever sliding metal doors at the bottom that allowed the fired brass to be shoveled out into a sack. The handguards of the five M16s were removed to provide better airflow for cooling.
Almost as an afterthought, Lon mounted Video 8 camcorders that belonged to the Grays and Kevin Lendel on each of the planes, using one-quarter-twenty bolts. It was Kevin Lendel who made the effort to mount the cameras.
He explained, “The only way to counter the Federals’ propaganda is with the truth, and what better truth to show than some exciting gun camera footage?”
A third camera, from Pastor Dave’s house, was borrowed to document any upcoming ground engagements. Charging the two sets of batteries for each camera took two days.
For the test firing, the M16s were fired in their semiauto mode, and the M60 was fired in a few brief bursts, in order to conserve ammo. Operationally, the M16s would be used in their “burst” mode. To those assembled for the test firing, Doyle explained, “The M16A2 has a three-position selector, just like the older A1s, but the third position produces a three-shot burst setting instead of traditional full auto. Instead of teaching troops proper fire discipline, the military decided to solve the ‘spray and pray’ problem by making a mechanical change to the rifle. The A2 selector mechanism has a little ratchet that clocks up to three and then stops the burst. You get subsequent bursts by releasing the trigger and pulling it over again. Pretty nifty technology, but a sad statement on the caliber of Army, Navy, and Air Force volunteers. It’s sad, in my opinion, that they needed three-shot burst control technology to begin with. It should have been a training issue.” He shook his head in dismay, and then went on.
“Anyway, we will be using the burst setting. With thirty-round magazines, that will give us ten bursts of three shots each on each sortie. With five guns on line, that’s fifteen rounds per burst. Should do the trick, eh?”
Lon asked Doyle, “You don’t expect those M16s to stop tanks and APCs, do you?”
Ian shook his head and replied, “No, these M16s and the M60 are for antipersonnel use, and perhaps against unarmored vehicles. You’ll need to figure out something else to stop tanks and APCs.”
Doug Carlton smiled. “Don’t worry, Ian. We have a goodly supply of thermite grenades and Molotov cocktails for that. We assembled them a year and a half ago.”
The Doyles spent three full days ferrying supplies toValley Forge in both of the Star Streaks. It required twenty-five round-trip flights. Landing at the meadow on the first ferrying trip, Ian and Blanca unbolted the guns from their planes to make room for cargo. On the subsequent flights, they carried fuel and oil—a total of fourteen five-gallon cans of unleaded premium and a case of forty-weight motor oil. Next was ammunition. They took all of the M60 belt links and more than half of the remaining .308 and .223 ammunition still available at both retreat houses. This totaled almost twenty-four thousand rounds. The last ferry trips carried, food, tents, sleeping bags, and cold weather gear. After that, the canopies were removed again and the guns were remounted and reloaded.
While the work on the planes went on, large quantities of gear were hauled to Valley Forge on pack boards, with garden carts, or on the Porters’ sturdy mountain bikes. The bikes proved particularly useful. They were better at negotiating the rough terrain than the garden carts, and could haul nearly as much. Most of the loads were slung in stuff sacks on both sides of the center of the bike frames and on the panniers. It was impossible to ride the bikes when they were so loaded down, but walking alongside them was easy enough
. The bikes could each carry two hundred pounds or more per trip.
In all, it took more than fifty round-trips to haul the supplies to Valley Forge. The militia members were careful to take numerous routes so that they wouldn’t leave a distinguishable trail. After making several trips, Mary commented that it would have been prudent to establish a cache many months before. She remarked to Margie, “Just imagine if we didn’t have a few days’ warning like this? We’d be S.O.L.! And what if we had to beat feet in the dead of winter, even if we had some warning? There would be no way to move this much gear in just a few days. We should have pre-positioned half of our food, fuel, and ammunition at an off-site cache a long time ago. That way we wouldn’t have to rush to move it all at once. We’re very lucky that we got away with putting all our eggs in one basket for so long.”
As the heaps of supplies grew under the trees at Valley Forge, they were covered by camouflage nets. Fortunately, the Grays and other group members had the foresight to buy dozens of waterproof containers before the Crunch.
They were essential for keeping the weapons, ammunition, food, and field gear dry outdoors. The ammunition and links were stored in Army surplus ammo cans, mainly .30 and .50 caliber size. Much of the clothing and field gear was stored in light green “Bill’s Bags” and Paragon Portage Packs. These were whitewater rafting “dry bags”—waterproof rubberized duffel bags—that Todd and Mary had purchased before the Crunch from Northwest River Supplies in Moscow. Some of the heavier items were carried in forest green Rubbermaid plastic storage bins.
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