Doug hesitated for a moment and then said, “Well, strategically speaking, the Camas Prairie and Palouse Hills are mainly open and grassy, with just a few small stands of timber, mainly in the draws. Those are all real tanker country.
They can cruise around wherever they want without any regard to staying on roads, at least in the summer months, when the fields and pastures are fairly dry.
Up on those prairies, they’ve got line of sight to forever. It would be almost impossible to try to fight them there. It’s not until you start getting into the heavy timber here in the eastern Palouse—east of Moscow, or in the upper reaches of the Clearwater River valley, that the tanks would start having mobility problems. When you get into thick timber and/or really steep terrain, virtually all the vehicles are forced to staying on established roads. That tends to funnel them into a few restricted avenues of approach.”
Carlton stopped and scanned the semicircle of faces around him. “In fact, if we had known about their advance earlier, we could have organized and hit them down in the canyon lands, south of Riggins, before they came up onto the Camas. It’s really steep and narrow down there and we could have bottled them up and really kicked some butt. Too late for that now. Like I say, between us and where they are right now, they’re in tanker country. The only other place to conceivably stop them would be the Lewiston grade, before they come up out of the river confluence and onto the Palouse. But even if we had the time to gather a force—which we don’t—that probably wouldn’t work because there is no concealment on that grade for an ambush. They’d be able to spot us, stand off, and pound us with ‘arty.’
“In terms of the route they will take as they continue northward, I would bet that they keep right on going up Highway 95. The other option, of course, is for them to take an axis to drop down into the Clearwater River valley on Highway 13, and then go west on Highway 12 to Lewiston. From there, they could resume their original avenue of approach. A diversion into the eastern Clearwater River Valley could be very costly and time-consuming for them. It is restrictive terrain and therefore ready-made for ambushes and roadblocks. From what I’ve heard, Kamiah and Kooskia were big-time survivalist country before the Crunch. They have quite a large local militia structure developed down there these days.”
Carlton shifted his feet, and went on. “A few moments ago, Todd was telling you about some folks down in the southern part of the state that have sold out to the Federals. The covenant communities up here in northern Idaho are mainly Mormon too, but there is no way that they are going to go along with any ‘regional autonomy’ scheme. They are dedicated patriots and will fight to the last man for their freedom. The Feds could get bogged down for weeks in that country, even if they do have seven thousand men in that division. So again, in my estimation, if the Feds have even halfway decent intel, they will consciously skip going through the upper Clearwater area—at least until they have the rest of Idaho under their thumb.
“The other thing that I want to mention is the risk of radio interception and radio direction finding. From here on out, we’ve got to assume that our CB transmissions are going to be monitored. They might even have some PRD-12 portable direction finders with them. If they have two direction finding sites operational in the area, and they coordinate with each other to get lines of bearing on us, they could pinpoint our transmitters in a matter of minutes. They call this direction finding ‘DFing’ for short. I saw a demonstration that an Army Reserve military intelligence company put on. That was at my ROTC Advanced Camp. They were calling in simulated artillery strikes within a couple of minutes after somebody keyed a microphone. I strongly suggest that we use strict radio silence unless in actual engagement from here on out. Using couriers is slower, but it sure beats getting DFed and having an artillery or MLRS barrage land on you. It can ruin your whole day.
“Any questions, or anything else you’d like my perspective on?” Doug asked.
“Yeah.If they do come straight up 95,how long ’til they get here?” Mary asked.
Carlton shrugged his shoulders, and answered, “That’s not my bailiwick. Perhaps Todd or Mike could answer that.”
Todd stepped forward and answered, “That is hard to say, Mary. I’ve talked this over quite a bit with Jeff, Doug, and Mike. Let me first digress to mention that, unfortunately, I made the mistake of giving our family name and mentioning the Northwest Militia and the Templars by name when I gave my little rebuttal speech a couple of years ago at the Moscow airport. I’m sure that that bastard Clarke made notes, and that they’ll come looking for us. In retrospect, I don’t regret speaking up, but I shouldn’t have mentioned any names. Pretty stupid of me. I apologize. Oh well, hindsight is twenty-twenty. I suppose that I should have remembered the old Japanese proverb: ‘The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.’ It’s hard to get a low profile back, once you’ve given yourself a high one. Once again, folks, I’m very sorry for shooting my mouth off.”
Gray hesitated for a few moments, and kicked the hay at his feet. He blinked twice, looked up, and carried on. “Now getting back to your question… Mike and I concluded that the feces the Federals are presently in—down in Grangeville—will definitely slow their advance. Then they’ll face some fighting in Lewiston, and then maybe even more in Moscow. From what we’ve heard, they are nice and friendly when there is no resistance. They just drop off their Administrators, tax collectors, and some garrison troops. They give the old ‘We’re with the government, and we’re here to help’ line. What a crock of bravo sierra. But when there is resistance in a town, the UN boys feel they have the green light to rape, plunder, and burn.
“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.