Liberators Page 27

  Then they dropped down into arid country alongside the Little Salmon River. Except for the town of Riggins—which was the farthest northern point of UNPROFOR occupation—the population density was very light, and there was no sign of UN troops except for a couple of daytime convoys.

  A local, who was a former whitewater rafting guide, warned them to avoid a UN roadblock that was at the north end of Riggins. He advised them of the route they should take, and drew them a tracing of a Forest Service map. They would have to turn off on Big Salmon Road and take a long detour. This squiggly route, which took them through abandoned Salmon Hot Springs and then up the mountainous gravel Salmon-Grangeville Road (on NF-263 and NF-2630), had not been maintained since before the Crunch. Because of landslides and downed timber, the road was just barely passable in spots with their game carts, and would have been impassable for anything else except perhaps dirt bikes. The detour took them two grueling nights and fifteen hundred feet of elevation change, but ironically it deposited them back on Highway 95, less than a mile north of Riggins.

  They now could make better speed, but they still traveled only at night, for fear of bandits or being strafed by UNPROFOR helicopters, which had been seen as far north as White Bird.

  On August 20 they passed through White Bird and started up a long, steep grade to the Camas Prairie, skirting around the town of Grangeville.

  There were several buildings near Grangeville that were blackened ruins. They didn’t stay to ask if the buildings had been burned by looters or by a long-ranging UNPROFOR gunship. They just avoided getting close to the town and moved through the area as quickly as possible.

  After transiting the Nez Perce Indian Reservation, they dropped down to the city of Lewiston. They ended up taking the dozens of switchbacks on the Old Lewiston Grade to avoid any vehicles on Highway 95. Once at the top of the grade, they entered into the rolling Palouse Hills country. Although mostly cleared and cultivated, the region offered lots of shady forested canyons, where they could lay up each day. Once up on the prairie, there was a maze of small farm roads that they could take toward Bovill.

  By September 5 they were in the hamlet of Blaine. Finally, on September 9, they reached Bovill. There, a man with the local CB network contacted Todd Gray’s ranch. Ken Layton came to pick them up in Jeff Trasel’s pickup truck, towing a box trailer.

  There were lots of hugs. The carts and backpacks were quickly loaded on the trailer. Riding with Ken in the cab of the pickup, Joshua and Megan sat with their rifles between their legs. Malorie sat in the bed of the pickup holding on to the boys. She was joyously singing them an old French Canadian sea shanty.

  When they approached the lane from the county road that led to Todd Gray’s house, Ken said, “I love you like a brother, but I’ve got to warn you that things are crowded here. So crowded, in fact, that there’s already talk of splitting the group and putting half of us down at Kevin Lendel’s ranch, which is just a few miles down the road. Until that happens, things will be very cramped.

  “Since UNPROFOR is already in southern Idaho and central Montana, we expect them to move in to northern Idaho next year, and things may get dicey. In fact, Todd made the mistake of speaking up and identifying himself publicly, when a UN spokesman came to give a speech at the Moscow-Pullman airport a few months ago. So when the Blue Helmets do arrive—and that could be as soon as this autumn—we may be at the top of their hit list. Todd and Mary are thinking that we may have to bug out. Now, don’t get me wrong, from a self-sufficiency standpoint, this is a great region to live in. I just don’t think that it’ll remain safe for you here at Todd’s ranch for very long.”

  Joshua asked, “So what do you recommend, Ken?”

  “I’ll make some inquiries, but I think that one of the big cattle ranches around St. Maries might be looking for a team like yours. You will, of course, have my strong recommendation, plus the letter of recommendation you’re carrying from that rancher you worked for near Driggs.”

  Joshua sighed, and then said, “We’re going to have to pray about this and talk it over. We all have skills, and we want to help fight the ProvGov, but we have the safety of little Leo and Jean to consider.”

  Ken said, “I’ll leave it up to you. Working at a ranch is probably the best option since you have your kids with you. But if you have enough precious metals to support yourself for a while, then maybe you’ll want to go and get involved with one of the militias that are forming. They’re popping up all over the region. I’m sure that they could use the help of folks with a background in intel gathering and analysis.”

  They slept in the living room of Todd and Mary’s house just one night. They stayed up late, sharing stories of their adventures and testifying of God’s providence and protection. They caught up on events in different parts of the United States as they had played out during the Crunch and its aftermath.

  The next morning, they awoke early. Joshua, Megan, and Malorie prayed together. Over breakfast, Joshua talked with Ken. Joshua said, “We reached a conclusion. We’ve decided that God has protected us thus far, so we need to continue to trust in him. So we think that we should get involved with one of the new resistance groups in the region. For the sake of the boys, we need to keep a fairly low profile. We’d like you to make the introductions, but please do so under our assumed names from the very beginning.”

  Ken nodded, and said, “You got it, brother.”

  37

  BLENDING IN

  Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. Selah.

  —Psalm 32:7 (KJV)

  Moscow, Idaho—September, the Fourth Year

  Joshua rented a house on Harden Road, on the northwest side of Moscow, just north of the University of Idaho campus. As a college town, Moscow had been depopulated following the Crunch, and only now was it getting back to its earlier population level. There were plenty of rental houses and apartments available. They also started attending Christ Church, which met nearby on Baker Street.

  The Moscow Maquis already had eighteen members. With Ken Layton and Todd Gray vouching for their bona fides, Joshua, Megan, and Malorie were recruited to form a new cell within the organization—one that specialized in intelligence analysis. Their new cell and its location would be known only to the two key leaders of the Maquis, and they would be identified only by their first names during their interactions. For the sake of OPSEC, the Moscow Maquis leaders habitually referred to Joshua’s small cell as “the intelligence guys in Spokane.”

  The local economy was starting to recover and there were even hopes of reopening the university, but the threat of invasion by UNPROFOR loomed on the horizon. To have enough silver to live on, Joshua, Megan, and Malorie shared a twenty-four-hour-a-day job as “receptionist/concealed-carry security guard” at the front desk of Christ Church. They each took an eight-hour shift. The job paid $1.20 a day, which was just enough for them to live on. Though they had to deal with many issues as receptionists (mainly referring refugees to sources of aid), there were also lots of quiet hours at the desk, time Joshua devoted to gathering intelligence about ProvGov activities and UN troop movements. Malorie took the day shift so Megan could homeschool the boys, Megan took swing shift, and Joshua took the graveyard shift.

  Their new living arrangement worked well through the winter. They settled into a steady work routine. Thanks to Malorie’s skills as a mechanic, they even set aside a little more silver.

  Moscow, Idaho—October, the Fourth Year

  The Moscow-Pullman region was immediately thrown into turmoil when the UNPROFOR armored column appeared. As usual, UNPROFOR began with flowery promises, but eventually delivered tyranny.

  In response, Joshua’s cell went completely underground. They quit their receptionist jobs and began full-time intel analysis. With the Maquis now paying their rent and delivering them groceries once a week, Megan and Joshua decided to set up their own higher-level Tactical Operations Center, o
r TOC.

  Instead of just setting up another collection or analysis cell attached to an individual militia, Megan and Joshua decided on the brigade-level TOC concept for several reasons. First was Megan’s recent military expertise, both in uniform and as an NSA contractor. She had spent a lot of time working in a tactical TOC and knew that she could set one up herself if she ever had to. There were not many other intelligence analysts in the region with her expertise. Second, the other intelligence cells attached to the Maquis and other militias were usually busy collecting raw intelligence and had few analytical skills or resources. Third, and most important, since the Moscow Maquis was currently the largest and most active militia in the area, these other intelligence cells needed someone to provide intelligence synchronization. “The intel people in Spokane” could battle-track the big picture for the entire region and then create intelligence reports, situational map templates, and so on, to brief the two Maquis leaders. And they wanted to fulfill the intelligence requirements (IRs) that these militia leaders had for their region as close to real time as possible.

  Joshua was chosen as the contact to sell this arrangement to the other militias’ intelligence cells (some of which consisted of only one person, a collector). Joshua’s intention was to get the other cells to routinely report events and incidents as they occurred. In return, the other cells were encouraged to make their own Requests for Intel (RFIs) to Megan, Joshua, and Malorie. The other cells could also rely on them for “reachback” support, meaning research and analysis of particular weapons systems, vehicles, order of battle (OB), UN deployment schedules, or anything else that the other cells needed to know. This also included providing training to the other cells, in areas such as SALUTE format reporting, military symbology, and battle tracking. For OPSEC, Joshua spoke only with the actual intel people involved in “training the trainer” mode. This way the intel cells could then train the rest of the members within their own militias.

  There was already an incredible “unity of effort” within the resistance, an advantage of most insurgencies. Many military schools (the U.S. Army, in particular) teach the concepts of unity of effort, unity of command, and so forth. However, in reality, these concepts tend to go in one ear and out the other, particularly with occupying military forces that are engaged in counterinsurgency warfare.

  A majority of the other intelligence cells were actually relieved that a centrally organized intelligence effort was now taking place. This added to the perception that the resistance was getting bigger and better. Just the word circulating of “the Spokane Intelligence Center” was a huge morale boost within the resistance in the region.

  The first two weeks of setting up their TOC were rough going. Since they lived in a small rental house in the middle of a suburb, they needed to establish where the TOC was going to be located within the house itself. After briefly considering one of the bedrooms, they decided on the small dining area attached to the kitchen. Things needed to be as compact as possible to fit map boards and several netbook computers for report writing and maintaining an event log, along with a printer.

  Next, they had administrative OPSEC issues. They needed to operate under maximum light and noise discipline. All blinds and drapes around the TOC were closed, with blankets taped to the window frames, and reinforced with black, heavy-duty plastic garbage bags duct-taped over the top. For a final yet important touch, they installed a “lightlock” around the back door of their house, which used the same principle as an airlock on a spacecraft or submarine, except for light instead of air.

  They had one of the Maquis members test their light discipline one evening, using a captured PVS-14 night vision monocular to look for any light leaks that might be seen by someone with well-adjusted natural night vision, or through another night vision device. The lightlock was not perfect for concealing all trace amounts of light, but being located in town, it did not need to be.

  They also had thermal signature considerations. Despite the fact that most houses used woodstoves all through the winter, they did not want to glow like a Christmas tree to any airborne thermal imaging systems at odd hours of the night. Heat was kept to a minimum since the bodies, radios, and computers created their own residual amounts of heat.

  For noise discipline, the blankets over the insides of the windows worked well, though they also covered the linoleum floor of the dining area with throw rugs to absorb noise. This had the added benefit of providing heat insulation.

  For message traffic, they encouraged the other cells to make a series of written SALUTE reports using USB thumb drives. They were to leave them at a dead drop inside a plastic play “fort” in the backyard of an abandoned house down the street. The dead drop was checked early each morning by Jean and Leo, who regularly rode their bicycles in the neighborhood.

  Last but not least was access to the TOC. Since it sat in the middle of the house, they did not entertain guests. No one saying that they were a “militia member” could just enter the house. The only people permitted inside the TOC were the two Moscow Maquis leaders, and then only to receive briefings (or debriefs) by Megan, Joshua, or Malorie.

  They encouraged the other cells to include as much detail as possible in their SALUTE reports and not to worry about redundancy within a report, such as mentioning equipment, or weapons, a second time. This made for more accurate reporting, they explained.

  They also taught the other cells to “filter” or review and rewrite these reports, if necessary, rather than just sending lots of small, separate SALUTE reports. For instance, an analyst at a cell might receive a bunch of small, separate SALUTE reports coming to them from several different militia members, all seeing the same thing. This filtering would not only make Joshua, Megan, and Malorie’s jobs easier, it would provide better OPSEC, in limiting unnecessary message traffic.

  Before they could get the TOC up and running, they focused on putting together their own situational templates (SITTEMPS) that would display all current information on events in the region.

  A SITTEMP tells anyone looking at it, through military symbology, what is currently taking place on the ground. These were maps, attached to a board behind them, with clear acetate overlays placed on top of the map, with all three parts securely connected to one another using duct tape. Megan would have killed for some decent 1:50,000-scale military grid-reference system maps and a good map board to hang them on. However, all they could come up with were regular road atlases, some USGS maps, and some U.S. Forest Service maps of the national forests in the region. For the map boards, they used simple four-by-eight-foot sheets of half-inch plywood. Because of the limited quality and availability of maps, they maintained several separate SITTEMPS in different map scales.

  Young Jean and Leo helped out as couriers, but because of their age, they mainly observed the daily routine at the TOC, read books, and quietly played with their toys. The map board became such a fascination for them that Joshua constructed a two-by-three-foot toy map board for them using Megan’s old Virginia Beach Quadrangle map and a sheet of acetate. This kept the boys from being tempted to doodle on the TOC’s working map boards.

  Before the Crunch, as a prepper, Megan had been aware of an online mapping service called MyTopo.com. She had once looked at the website, but had never used it herself. It was a powerful resource, allowing people to take a “snapshot” of any place on earth, where they could choose whether they wanted a map in longitude/latitude, or in the global UTGM military grid-reference system. Their maps were also offered with lamination, meaning that users could still draw or stick symbology directly on them in the event that no transparent overlay material was available.

  The symbology used in a SITTEMP was basically the same as that found in the old Avalon Hill war simulation board games that were sold in toy stores. This was one of the reasons Megan enjoyed the tactical side of intelligence analysis. In her training, that was basically what a map exercise (MAPEX) was: an elaborate war board game. With symbology that represented un
its, movement, actions, situations, and unit boundaries, a person skilled in reading a SITTEMP could read this information like words on a page. That, after all, had always been Megan’s personal standard.

  Megan had brought her old military map bag with her that she had carried since her days at the Navy and Marine Corps Intelligence Training Center (NMITC). She wouldn’t have been much of an analyst if she hadn’t. In it were several military map-reading protractors in 1:50,000 and 1:100,000 scale. There was a variety of fine-point permanent ink pens in various colors, Vis-à-Vis brand temporary markers, and a small felt pen that was filled with alcohol for erasing, a set of military symbol stencils, and a folded 1:50,000-scale military map of the Virginia Beach area that she had been allowed to keep after her Advanced Individual Training (AIT). There was also a DVD that had been prepared for each student, containing PDFs of various Army and Marine Corps manuals, such as Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield (IPB), and TOC Operations. Megan also had a stack of transparent, single-sheet document protectors. She had been taught how to use these to make “mini” SITTEMPS, using a single-page photocopy of a map, or anything else that was on one sheet of paper, inserted. By stapling other empty document protectors on top of the one holding the map, one could make a product of multiple overlays, depicting avenues of approach, hydrology (rivers, lakes, and streams), restrictive terrain, and obstacles.

  One thing that Megan was able to acquire was a spare copy of Army FM 101-5-1 (Marine Corps MCRP 5-2A): Operational Terms and Graphics. A copy had been given to her by Jeff Trasel, of the Northwest Militia. He told her that he had picked up several copies from an Army surplus store in Sandpoint, Idaho, that he jokingly called Grogan’s War Surplus. Each copy still had its price tag of $2.49, from before the Crunch.