How/How Many
(How do you know? How did they treat you? How did you react? How were they carrying out this activity? How many people, trucks, tents, crates, trailers, antennas, backpacks, etc.)
All files should be in standard formats, such as .doc, .rtf, .jpg, or .wav.
Lastly, without compromising sources and methods or your own identity, give an honest written summary of the reliability of your source and rate it on a scale of 1 to 10.
INCLUDE DOCUMENTATION: Photos, sketches, maps, copies of documents, videos, audio interviews, radio intercepts, or interview transcripts/notes. SCAN THEM and put them on the USB stick with a related file name and matching dates. Each piece of documentation should be accompanied by a description with basic 5Ws/How (or SALUTE) information. Audio files should be in .WAV file format.
It was Stan’s dairy that allowed courier drop-offs and deliveries to the McGregor ranch without much chance of being noticed, even if the courier was followed. The McGregors owned their own producing dairy cow, but the milk delivery truck would still stop five days a week and exchange a full bottle of cream for an empty bottle that was left in their oversize mailbox. Hidden beneath the mailbox, a small sheetmetal box had been constructed by Ray. This spring-loaded box, only seven millimeters deep, allowed the delivery truck driver to surreptitiously drop off and pick up USB memory sticks. The tray would hold up to eleven sticks.
43
FERTILE CRESCENT
Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
The resistance war in British Columbia continued, with UNPROFOR steadily losing troops and equipment. Replacements were sporadic and never brought the units back to full strength. Morale of the French troops was deteriorating. Their road patrols became less frequent, more heavily armed, and more likely to be aborted, with an early return to base (RTB). There were very few nighttime patrols. Increasingly, the ALAT and IMa troops stayed bottled up in their compounds, and their helicopter flights became less frequent.
The few convoys that ventured out were always escorted by an APC or two or more technical trucks—pickup trucks with pedestal-mounted machine guns. Ambushing the UNPROFOR convoys was a challenge at first, but eventually the resistance cells became quite adept.
Rather than the traditional L-shaped ambush formation, the resistance adopted a crescent-shaped ambush perpendicular to a road, usually in places where the ambushers had the advantage of commanding terrain. Putting troops only on the short leg of the L and claymore mines on the long leg of the L made it easier for the ambushers to withdraw in an orderly fashion. Some of the resistance cells were large, so they could field fifteen-man ambush teams. Many of their ambushes were devastating, and so complete that they were able to advance into the kill zone and quickly scavenge weapons and ammunition from the dead UNPROFOR troops. Most of the ambushes, however, were conducted in classic guerrilla style—a method that minimized casualties among the ambushers: pounce and retreat.
Team Robinson, with just five field fighters (and sometimes only four, depending on Alan’s intermittent back problems), preferred deliberate crescent ambushes, using plenty of carefully positioned improvised claymores, which were detonated simultaneously. They used “breadpan claymores,” a popular design that they heard had been developed in Idaho. Theirs used explosives salvaged from French land mines instead of dynamite.
Malorie was exhilarated by her first ambush, but seeing two running men fall after aiming her M1 Carbine at them and squeezing the trigger had a strong effect on her. It was the knowledge that she personally had snuffed out their lights that bothered her. To just be “someone shooting” in an ambush was one thing, but to see two of her particular targets go down, and one of them kicking after he fell, was troubling. The images of them falling plagued her dreams for weeks. Gradually, she became more inured to it, but in a way she was never the same person again. She was now a killer, but she still had a Christian conscience.
The resistance ambushes became so successful that UNPROFOR had to adopt the tactic of sending out any unarmored vehicles only in convoys, with a three-vehicle minimum.
Because steel cable was so ubiquitous in logging country, the resistance cells often used it to block roads at ambush sites to prevent their targets from “blowing through” an ambush.
After several weeks of recon and ambush patrols, Malorie had switched to using a captured FAMAS carbine.
44
TAKING OUT THE TRASH
I believe that being despised by the despicable is as good as being admired by the admirable.
Terrence Billy was an enrolled member of the Secwepemc. He had been born into the T’exelc band and held a band card. He grew up on the Soda Creek Reserve near Williams Lake. He liked his job with the Central Cariboo Landfill. The job was a paid thirty-two hours a week (plus some overtime in snowy weather), had benefits, and wasn’t stressful. Four days of each week he drove the truck on regular routes. When the Crunch came, he was “made redundant,” but he had expected that. Not only was the money inflated horribly, but everyone expected diesel fuel to become scarce. Just before he was laid off, all of the litter cans, household rolling trash bins (called “Schaefer Carts” in most of British Columbia), and Dumpsters were collected, hauled to the transfer station, and stored in neat rows. It was announced that the old landfill off Frizzi Road would be available for use, but that all families and businesses would have to haul their own trash. Rather than using precious fuel to haul it, most of the locals started burning their trash in rusty open-topped fifty-five-gallon steel drums.
After his layoff, Terrence got by with hunting, fishing, and gathering bitterroot, cattail root, Siberian miner’s lettuce, bilberries, and huckleberries. He traded the extra meat and hucks for other things he needed, such as salt and soap. He slipped into the Old Way fairly comfortably.
When the French arrived, they brought with them the new money and a steady stream of fuel tankers. The oil was produced north of Edmonton and refined on Refinery Row, east of Edmonton. The fuel and new “blue back” currency got the economy going again. Within just a few days after the gas and diesel tankers began runs to the coast, Terrence Billy got his old job back. But now it was just twenty hours a week and had no health benefits.
Like many others, he had a deep resentment of UNPROFOR, because he’d heard how they were treating some First Nations girls, turning them into sex slaves and keeping them locked up. One of those girls, his seventeen-year-old cousin named Katie, was kidnapped out of his own band. He heard that she and the others were being held in a hotel that had been converted into a brothel-prison. The former hotel was euphemistically called a centre d’interrogation. Terrence was also angry that public gatherings had been banned, which meant that there would be no more Secwepemc gatherings. He considered the UN’s ban an affront to his culture.