Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse

CHAPTER 31 Keane Team

Greetings and “war stories” went on for half the morning. They had met at a rally point four miles northeast of Troy, in a dense stand of fir. Most of those attending used maps and captured GPS receivers to navigate to the obscure rally point. Coordinating the meeting took two weeks, with messages sent by the well-experienced network of resistance horseback and mountain-bike couriers. It was the first time that so many resistance leaders in the region had gathered together in one place since before the Federal/UN invasion. Lawrence Raselhoff, Mike Nelson, and Todd Gray already knew each other. The only relative newcomer was Matt Keane. He was known by both Tony and Teesha Washington, but none of the others had met him.

When Mike Nelson shook Matt’s hand, he said, “The Matt Keane. Wow. I’ve heard about you and your ‘Keane Team.’ Your reputation precedes you, sir. You’re a living legend. They talk about you on the shortwave all the time. That kayak raid your unit did on the Italian encampment at St. Maries—that was brilliant! And rumor has it that you were the ones that dynamited the UNPROFOR headquarters in Spokane last summer. Was that really you?”

“Yeah, that was us,” Matt replied in a soft drawl. After four years back in the Pacific Northwest, he still spoke with a trace of his acquired southern accent.

He added, “But some of the things they say on the shortwave are outrageous exaggerations. For instance, they say that on a provisioning raid I once killed six sentries in less than ten minutes with a bayonet. That’s not right. It was only four. My sister Eileen got the other two. And we used axes. One thing that they did get right was that we’re the ones that did the demo job on the UNPROFOR building.”

“How did you ever sneak that large a quantity of explosives in there?”

Keane looped his thumbs into his ghillie cape netting, and answered, “We knew we couldn’t get close on the street. They had a stand-off perimeter with anti-vehicular barricades a block in all directions. So we decided to do an old-fashioned sapping job. For almost a year we had been saving up the unex-ploded bombs and mines that we had defused. We had quite a pile of them. We went in through the city storm drains, and dug a tunnel into the HQ’s basement boiler room. We had to tunnel only about fifteen feet. The tough part was the concrete walls of the storm drain and the brick basement wall. We did a blitz job with a couple of short miner’s picks on that last wall, the night before we touched it off.

“We had word in advance that they were going to have a party up at the old convention center, so there were only two guards inside the headquarters building. They were the only ones there, aside from the gate and perimeter guards. Even the radio operator skipped out to go to the party. One of the interior guards was on our side. He made sure that the duty roster was adjusted so that he had duty that night. He also conveniently got the other interior guard so drunk that he passed out. So we didn’t have to worry about the noise from our picks and the falling bricks. My little-big brother designed a special trolley for hauling the explosives in the round cross-section storm drains. We calculated that we hauled in around 1,950 pounds. We laid it all up against the center load-bearing wall and tamped it with the gunnysacks full of dirt that we had saved from digging the connecting tunnel.

“The charges went off at 9 a.m. sharp. Our inside man had told us that they had a 8:45 a.m. staff meeting scheduled up on the third floor. All four floors and the basement compacted down to a rubble pile less than twenty feet high. There was just one of the sidewalls left standing, and it was only the height of the first story. A couple of weeks later someone wrote ‘MENE, MENE TEKEL’ in letters six-feet high on that wall, just like from the book of Daniel.

For some reason the UN people never painted that graffiti over—from what I’ve been told, it’s still there. Maybe they didn’t realize what it meant. Or maybe they did, and deep down they realized it was true. Their days are numbered and they have been weighed and found wanting.

“Our inside man took a video of the charges going off from six blocks away, and then he immediately headed for the hills. The UN press release said that twenty-three of their people were ‘killed by a freak gas explosion,’ but that was pure hokum. We got word later from a mortician in a resistance cell that the actual count was one hundred and twelve.”

Mike nodded his head and offered, “It was a beautiful demo job. I don’t think any of the Tidy Bowl men got out of there alive. Horrific, but that’s war.”

“Reminds me of a verse eight from the 35th Psalm: ‘Let destruction come upon him at unawares; and let his net that he hath hid catch himself: into that very destruction let him fall.’”

Mike added, “They caught themselves in their own net all right. Blown up with their own land mines! As my dear departed friend Tom Kennedy used to say, ‘Dulce et decorum est.’”

Matt nodded his head and said, “‘Sweet and appropriate,’ indeed.”

“You’ve studied Latin?”

“Of course. I was homeschooled. We studied hard, eleven months a year. We didn’t get the same slack that the public school kids did. By the time my brother Chase was twelve, and I was fifteen, our parents had to hire tutors for some subjects. They hired Dr. Cecil, a Jesuit fellow from Gonzaga University, to teach us Latin on weekday afternoons and alternating Saturdays. I still have dreams about all the conjugations we memorized. It’s something that you never get out of your head.

“Neither of my parents got past geometry, so they also hired a neighbor down the street, to teach us trig and calculus. Mister Critchfield had just retired from teaching higher math, also at Gonzaga. My dad bartered the labor for a bathroom remodeling for the six months of trigonometry, and a kitchen remodeling for the eight months of calculus.”

Mike cocked his head and asked, “Where are your folks now?”

“My dad stepped on a mine last summer. He lived for a couple of days. Chase and Eileen and I had the chance to pray with him before he died.” Matt exhaled loudly, and went on. “My mom got killed by willy-peter bomb, just six weeks ago. I guess you’ve heard that the Feds have started burning every remote cabin they can spot, whether it looks occupied or not, just on general principle. It fits into their ‘denial operations’ strategy: Deny us any food sources, and deny us shelter.”

Mike nodded.

Keane continued. “My mom had been crippled up with arthritis and was staying by herself at the cabin, while we were out playing maquisards. We heard from neighbors who lived in the mine tunnel on the adjoining claim that there wasn’t anything left of my dad’s cabin.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Don’t misunderstand me. I envy my parents. We’ll be with them in heaven someday. If I keep that in mind, I can fight fearlessly. I fear only the righteous wrath of God. Like Paul said, when he was in chains in a Roman jail cell:‘Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: everywhere and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.’ That’s Phillipians 4-11 through 13. Those verses are a great comfort to me. I fear no man, and no circumstance.”

Keane gestured with his forefinger, and continued, “Getting back to the ‘denial operations’ concept, just consider this: I had a friend who was a reserve Army intelligence officer before the Crash. He often told me that the three essential abilities on the battlefield are ‘to shoot, move, and communicate.’ Without all three you are ineffective in any conflict. If you look at how the Federals are operating, they are doing everything they can to deny us all three. They’ve declared our guns contraband. They’re restricting travel with their checkpoints and internal passports, and they’ve banned private possession of radio transceivers. Very systematic. But we are beginning to do the same to them, and they can’t stop us because they can’t often locate and engage us. We are denying them ammunition and other key combat logistics by burning their depots and arsenals, we are impeding their ability to maneuver tactically and to move their logistics with our ambushes and sabotaging their vehicles. And, we are taking down the power grid and phone system faster than they can put it up, so they can’t communicate long distance or spread their propaganda. We’re going to win in the long run. It’s simple mathematics. There are a lot more of us than there are of them. It may cost us a lot of lives… but in the long term? They’re doomed.”

Mike asked quietly, “I heard Tony Washington mention that you used to be a racist, but now you are not. What’s up with that?”

“I wouldn’t say that I was a racist, per se. I equate racism with supremacism. If anything, I was a separatist, not a supremacist. And yes, frankly, I was reluctant to work with blacks. I had always kept my distance. But fighting alongside the Washingtons certainly reformed me. They were with us on the St. Maries kayak raid. Tony saved my life two different times that day. I owed him. And I owed him an apology.”

Mike cocked his head and asked, “So you’ve sworn off racism? You don’t have any animosity toward blacks?”

“Absolutely none. They’re fighting and bleeding along with the rest of us.

I’d be happy to have anyone of Tony’s caliber join the Keane Team regardless of race. I don’t care if they are white, black, or green.” Matt grinned and added, “We’re equal opportunity destroyers.”

Mike shook Keane’s hand, and looking him in the eye, declared, “You’re a good man.”

Planning the big raid took a day and a half. There were extensive discussions, and detailed analysis of maps, photographs, and floor plans. This was followed by sand-table exercises and a briefing by a reliable “turned” Federal supply sergeant who had formerly lived at the barracks. Coordinating an operation this large was difficult. It included diverse units with distinct command structures, organizations, and standard operating procedures. The planners also had to be diplomatic in dealing with the leaders of less experienced militias.

Some of them were amateurish, and several had overgrown egos.

Rather than traditional squads and platoons, the Keane Team was organized into something they called “Thomas Triads.” These were mini-squads of three guerrillas each. The philosophy behind the triads was that three men was the minimum number that could be combat effective.

A three-member guerrilla team did not present a signature that was easily spotted, except in the most open terrain. A single triad was used for reconnaissance or sabotage patrols. Two to four triads could be combined to conduct an ambush. Three to twelve triads could be combined for a raid.

In a defensive mode, or “in laager,” one member of the triad was on “guard” while the second was on “sleep,” and the third was on “support”—tending to cooking, fetching water, and/or gathering edibles. Every eight hours the roles rotated. Thus, each triad provided for its own security, and, depending on circumstances, its own sustenance.

The rule of thumb was: if more than five triads had to be combined for an operation, it was verging on conventional warfare, and that immediately following the operation, it was time to displace, disperse, and go back to low-echelon guerrilla tactics. The guerrillas spoke with dread about “going conventional.” Meeting the better-armed Federals toe-to-toe was rightly recognized as foolhardy.

The origin of Thomas Triad organization was forgotten. Keane explained, “It’s just what we were taught by another group. I don’t know who the ‘Mr. Thomas’ who dreamed this up was, but it works. Some guy in California, that’s all I heard. Maybe he’s in that Harry Wu outfit. Results are what counts, and the triads produce results, so that’s the structure we use.”

A week before the planned Moscow barracks raid, the thirty-member Keane Team and the forty-eight-member Moscow Maquis rendezvoused at a hilltop north of Troy for final coordination and to conduct rehearsals. Since their two units were the intended spearhead for the upcoming raid, rehearsals were critical. They had arranged the rendezvous with two short radio transmissions. The transmissions were under thirty seconds each, consisting of a few four-letter code groups read aloud.

At 4 a.m. the morning after they made their rendezvous, a call on a 500-milliwatt Maxon headset radio came in from the western picket triad. “We have movement. Definitely men on foot. Stand to. Will advise.”

The “stand to arms” order was quietly and rapidly passed around the defensive doughnut. Within a minute, a second call came in, “I can see them clearly through my NVGs. Most are carrying M16s. They’re all wearing Kevlars and digital pattern camos. Definitely looks like Federals, at least a platoon strength unit. With as much noise as they’re making, probably a lot bigger.”

The night watch officer radioed back to the picket, “Execute night-defense plan Alpha.” His platoon sergeant heard the command, and echoed it in whispers to the triads on either side of the command bunker. Each triad in succession passed it down the line in both directions, verbally. The watch officer muttered to himself. “Federals? Man! This is going to get ugly. Why couldn’t it be the French or Italians? The Federals must have DFed us.”

Hearing the radio command, the picket teams from the south and north immediately pulled into the main defensive doughnut, which stretched eighty-five yards along a ridge. The east picket triad stayed in place, as did the one to the west. The west pickets were not spotted as the Federals passed by their well-camouflaged foxhole, which sat under a clump of hawthorn bushes.

Under the Alpha plan, the pickets were not to fire unless fired upon. Their job was to wait until contact with the main doughnut occurred, and then to fire on the attackers from the rear, to produce confusion. The pickets generally called this role a “DIP” (Die in Place). Few expected an isolated triad to ever survive a night raid by a large enemy force.

The Federals continued their advance, directly toward the Keane Team’s doughnut. The radio man at the west picket called out the distance from the doughnut: “500 meters… 450… 400 meters… they’re moving fast… 300 meters.” The watch officer switched frequencies on his Maxon and radioed, “Hit the west strobes, now!” A twelve-year-old girl in one of the western-most foxholes of the main doughnut sounded a warning blast with a boater’s air horn, gave a silent two count, closed her eyes, and pulsed the strobe lights three times, at five-second intervals. The six commercial photography strobe lights were wired to the limbs of trees two-hundred-and-fifty meters forward of the doughnut, and twenty meters apart. They were set up to flash in unison. The first flash caused the image intensifier tubes on the Federals’ starlight scopes and NVGs to shut down. The series of flashes also ruined the approaching Federal troops’ night vision for several minutes. Some stumbled and fell. There were numerous curses and shouts of surprise.

With their recent training, the defenders recognized the air horn signal, and waited with their eyes shut during the three flashes, counting aloud. Then, with well-rehearsed precision, the Keane Team launched a counterattack, while the less practiced Moscow Maquis members held their places. The Keane Team ran down the hill directly at the Federals, in triad formation.

The air horn sounded again. The charging guerrillas knew that this second blast was a ruse to get the Federals to close their eyes for another fifteen seconds. During this time, the six triads of guerrillas continued down the hill directly into the lead Federal platoon, firing with discriminate care. They fired two shots at each soldier, mowing down most of the lead platoon like a hay cutter. The few survivors turned and ran. Overestimating the size of the counterattack, the middle company of Federals also panicked and ran. They ran headlong into the trail formation.

Thinking that these were guerrillas who were counterattacking, the trailing companies fired in long bursts, killing twelve members of the retreating platoons, and wounding fourteen others. The remnants of the retreating company did not stop. They continued past the rear company, shouting inco-herently. Seeing their panicked flight, hearing their shouts of “retreat,” and seeing the muzzle flashes of the approaching guerrillas, the middle company caught bug-out fever, and also bolted. All but a few members of the remaining company on the north-flanking hill, stood fast. They began to concentrate their fire on the guerrillas, stopping the charge. Three of the guerrillas—from two different triads—were killed.

Before they retreated, Matt and Eileen Keane threw tear gas grenades at the Federals’ hillside positions. The wind was favorable, so the grenades had good effect. The triads retreated back up the hill in good order, giving mutually supporting fire, moving by bounds.

Without waiting for the Federals to counterattack, the guerrillas counted heads and got ready to displace. Triads were quickly reorganized to make up for those that had been killed. They quietly helped each other with their packs and headed east, toward their widely scattered prepared hide positions.

As part of the prearranged plan, a triad of teenagers stayed back and set up the trip wires for four Claymore mines. Since they had practiced setting up the wires in the dark several times, it took just a hundred seconds. Less than two minutes after they left, they heard the gratifying sound of three of the four Claymores detonating in rapid succession.

The Federal attack on the Keane Team/Maquis position did not delay the Moscow raid. It was decided that operational security had not been breached.

Their mistake, they realized, was in using a 5-watt transceiver from a camp location, and being DFed. That mistake would not be repeated. The Keane Team and the Moscow Maquisards made new SOPs that any transmissions over 500-milliwatt strength would only be made after displacing the transmitter at least two kilometers from any encampment.

For their operations, the Keane Team normally wore field expedient ghillie capes patterned after Matt Keane’s. They had been made by cutting up captured Federal vehicular hexagonal or diamond shaped camouflage nets, and adding additional frayed burlap garnish. But since there were several militias involved, it was prearranged that for this raid only, every raider would wear a standard camouflage uniform with a special identifying four-inch wide blue sash around the waist. They were meant to reduce the risk of friendly fire incidents. For OpSec reasons, use of the sashes was kept secret until just before the raid. The sash material was distributed during the final inspections and rehearsals in the hills northeast of Moscow. There were 188 members in the combined raid team.

A twelve-year-old militia “drummer boy” videotaped the raid from a concealed position two hundred yards south of the barracks’ main gate. The Moscow barracks were a pair of dormitories on the old U of I campus. Three buildings near the dormitories had been flattened “for security reasons.” A fifteen-foot high double fence wrapped around the buildings. The wide area between the dorms was used as a motor pool.

The Moscow raid started with a “Trojan horse” ruse, utilizing a BTR-70 wheeled APC that had been captured from the Federals more than a year earlier. The resistance had kept it deep in the Clearwater National Forest, hidden under camouflage nets at the end of a disused logging road. They had kept it ready for a “special project” all this time. Fresh fuel and extra ammo for its 14.5-mm gun had been laboriously carried to it, and special efforts were made to keep its batteries charged. The resistance even dispatched a mechanic to ensure the APC’s road-worthiness.

The APC drove up to the Moscow barracks’ main gate at BMCT (“Before Morning Civil Twilight”). The gate guards dutifully opened the pair of gates and waved it through. As one of the gate guards was logging the APC’s bumper number on his clipboard, he looked up in surprise to see the muzzle of a sawed-off double barrel shotgun. The man holding the shotgun held his forefinger to his lips and whistled, “Ssshhhh.” The guard didn’t make a sound. He was visibly shaking.

The four gate guards were quickly herded into the guard shack and bound and gagged. A hidden “panic button” that was presaged by the turned Federal in the Moscow Maquis was disabled with snips from a pair of wire cutters. One of the raiders stayed behind to guard the prisoners. He was holding an M16 with bayonet fixed.

The APC wheeled into the well-lit motor pool. The solitary guard at the motor pool shouted at the APC, “Will you get on your radio and tell those idiots at the front gate that they forgot to close the ga…” He was killed with eight head shots, fired through one of the APC’s gun ports with a silenced Ruger Mark II .22 pistol. After the guard went down, a resistance soldier popped out and jogged to the motors’ shack. He returned carrying a sheet of plywood festooned with keys, each labeled with a vehicle’s bumper number.

He walked up and down the double row of vehicles, occasionally tossing sets of keys wrapped in white handkerchiefs in front of an APC or tank. When he threw the key rack board itself to the ground near the fence, the militia APC disgorged sixteen troopers, all wearing tanker CVC helmets. They ran in pairs to six BTR APCs and two M60 tanks. In less than a minute, they had unlocked the vehicles’ hatches and loosened the locks and chains on their controls. A whistle sounded and they nearly all started up simultaneously. Two of the APCs didn’t start because they had dead batteries.

The horizon was getting noticeably lighter. Upon hearing the captured vehicles starting up, the rest of the raid team went into action. A detonating cord explosion neatly cut gaps in the back fences. A steady rain of LAW rocket and RPGs began to impact both barracks buildings. They were fired from the roof of the nearby five-story library building. At the same time, seven well-experienced snipers began to fire on any targets that presented themselves in or around the dormitories.

The captured APCs and tanks lumbered out of the motor pool and split up. They began a heavy barrage of fire from the 12.7-mm and 14.5-mm guns on the APCs. There was also sporadic fire from the main guns of the M60 tanks.

Both dorms were hosed down liberally. Most of the fire was concentrated at the ends of the buildings, which housed the arms rooms. After a minute of continuous fire, a white parachute flare went up from the “Trojan horse” APC.

A heavily reinforced company of sixty-five resistance fighters, all wearing blue sashes, rushed out of a classroom building across the street and through the open front gates. At the same time, another sixty, also wearing sashes, charged through the breaches in the back fences. The firing from the tanks and APCs stopped. The resistance infantry poured into the barracks, first securing the arms rooms and the C.Q. offices. There was little organized resistance. The Federal soldiers had been completely surprised by the raid. Most were sleeping when the shooting started.

Although most of the Federals kept their loaded small arms at the ends of their bunks, all of their rocket launchers and crew-served weapons were out of reach in the locked arms rooms. The shouting resistance fighters systematically herded the Federals into the cafeterias. Only a few Federals fired at the militia as they cleared the halls. Those that did were quickly cut down. Just three militiamen were killed and five wounded in taking the dorms.

All told, they captured 442 Federal soldiers. The Federals suffered 53 injuries, many of them critical. The militia also captured included the Corps commander and his entire staff. More than 80 Federals were killed in the raid, mostly in the opening “prep” fire. The fighting was over and the fires extinguished by the time the sun crept over the hills in the east.

The original op order called for an occupation of the barracks not to exceed one hour. During this time, they systematically searched for useful logistics and for maps and papers that might have intelligence value. A procession of two-and-a-half and five-ton trucks were backed up to the dorms to load up the captured supplies. As the militias were getting ready to leave and “melt into the hills,” nearby Federal unit commanders started to call in, one after another, through the field telephone switchboard, to ask for their terms of surrender.

Matt Keane at first thought that the calls were a trick. “They want to know how they can surrender? But they outnumber us. This is crazy! They should be pounding us with arty right now.”

Mike Nelson shook his head, and said, “No. Just think about it, Matt. Their headquarters is gone, and their commander is no longer commanding. The snake has been decapitated. For the subordinate units, this is their chance to surrender gracefully. They’ve probably been waiting for an opportunity, and this is the best one that we could have given them.”

Once the first two maneuver units in the Corps surrendered, nearly all the rest—as far north as Coeur d’Alene in the north and Grangeville in the south—capitulated in rapid succession. One field artillery battalion made some trouble. They shelled the downtown and campus areas of Moscow on the afternoon of the raid. Dozens of civilians were killed. But since the battalion’s battery locations were known, a heavy counter-battery MLRS barrage soon silenced them. Then, like most of the other units before them, they capitulated via radio or field telephone. Militia teams were sent out to each unit in APCs and trucks to formalize the surrender and disarming process.

At sunset, Todd Gray was given the honor of lowering the UN flag at the Moscow barracks, and raising the Idaho flag. Once he had raised the flag, he kneeled down and prayed his thanks. Seeing this, the ranks of armed militia-men and disarmed Federals on parade did likewise. It was a solemn and emotional moment.