A young woman by the door jumped into the conversation. She hadn’t said one word the whole day. Talking was not her job.
“Sir, with all due respect, you know I can’t allow that.”
The major laughed for the first time in a long while. “Relax, Sergeant. I know what I’m doing.”
The gal relaxed all right… into a loose fighting stance. “Sir, you of all people should understand the rules we live by.” Her hand unconsciously hovered over the Glock pistol clipped to the back of her blue jeans.
Gorgas tried to stare her down. Maybe he could intimidate or replace her, but what an example for discipline that would make. The system was his idea, after all.
He organized the Floridian resistance under the classic guerilla war “cell division” concept. Each independently operating team held between 3-15 members, depending on its function as an assault, sabotage, reconnaissance or logistics cell. For security purposes, no member of any group knew the identities or locations of any other unit. If someone was compromised, they could only give away a single team. The one exception was the executive command cell, which Gorgas led.
The members of this “brain” team were the only ones that knew the names, contact methods and whereabouts of all insurgents in the state. Not an ideal arrangement, but it was the best compromise between coordination and secrecy they could manage. Their weakness, obviously, was that the capture and interrogation of any one of those eight leaders in the cell would unravel their entire operation overnight.
That’s why he had forbidden their leadership from taking direct part in any combat op. To reinforce that prohibition and guard against any unknowns, each executive cell member was assigned a bodyguard, drawn from their most fanatical fighters, to protect them… or kill them if capture was imminent. How could he talk this woman down? Gorgas didn’t even know her name. The guards were rotated every week to prevent fraternization from undermining their resolve. Judging from the iron in those eyes and steel in that voice, she took her duty seriously.
Gorgas surrendered. “You are right, of course. I’ll guide them from here as best as I can.”
That was the other pain in the ass with their organizational style. Outside of a few assistants and bodyguards, Gorgas and the other leaders had no staff to plan the details of operations. They had to do everything themselves. Too much damn micromanaging.
Still, despite all their handicaps, in the last three months their small gang managed to kill more of the president’s henchmen than all the URA in their phony war out West had.
Most worrisome, for Washington at least… Gorgas and the rest of his Floridian insurgents were just getting warmed up.
Sgt. Dore was the last through the swinging door of the empty elementary school. After checking that they’d left no one behind, he pushed right into his officer’s face. Tactically reloading his rifle, the giant amateur body-builder tried to keep his growl low enough that the other men couldn’t hear. Tried and failed. “Well boss man, any other hero ideas? Tell me you can pull some other great plan out of your ass!”
Donaldson didn’t have the energy left to come up with a comeback or even tell his equally exhausted NCO to shut up. The last two hours since landfall were a total clusterfuck. Sure, the touristy part of town they landed in was, as expected with the state under martial law, devoid of snowbirds. What the genius planners out West overlooked was that those massive waterfront hotels made great barracks for occupation troops.
Imagine the liberators’ surprise to find the 20-story Ritz-Carlton they planned to occupy turning out to be the Forward Operating Base (FOB) for a federal infantry battalion! Donaldson’s men might have surprised the enemy, but only because no one ever expected the rebels to do something so suicidal as charging a fortified base in broad daylight.
Through shock and, frankly, a huge dose of luck, most of Donaldson’s command fought their way out of that disaster. Heavy losses, but they gave as good as they took, near as he could tell. The only problem was that his survivors were scattered to the four winds. Some on foot, some in stolen civilian cars, but all strewn over a two square mile sector.
In a miraculous display of organizational skill that Lieutenant Donaldson never even thought twice about, he somehow managed to set up rally points and scoop together his scattered squads into four scratch platoons. All over an unreliable radio net while running and shooting at the pursing Feds himself. The only people he couldn’t communicate with were the other five landing parties. As far as he knew, they were all gone.
In this deserted school, maybe they could find a few minutes of peace. Judging from the increasing thumping of helicopter blades outside, that wouldn’t last for long. He took all of five seconds to catch his breath before getting back on the radio.
“Net call, all stations, this is Moccasin 6. Stand by for FRAGO, over.”
“Moccasin 3–6. Roger, over.”
“Moccasin 2–6. Standing by, over.”
Silence. That was all he had left. First platoon took the worst beating, sure, but still… oh well. He shoveled the doubts out of his mind.
“All right, 3–6. You’re only two clicks from the primary objective, so you’re responsible for shutting down that television station. If you can’t hold, then destroy it and try to extract to rally point Echo. Break…
“Moccasin 2–6: You’ve got most of our wounded. Stay put another 15 minutes; see if you can collect any more stragglers. Then you are going to secure our secondary objective, the Mercy hospital down by the beach. Get the wounded squared away first. You should be able to hold out in the surrounding medical complexes for a while. I don’t think the Feds would use any heavy weapons on a hospital. Any questions, over?”
Silence.
“All elements acknowledge, over.”
They all sounded off. Not terribly confident, but motivated enough. Donaldson stood in front of his 40-man platoon pulling security down the halls. This elementary school was really a brilliant place to hold up, but it felt wrong, even if there weren’t any kids around.
He tried injecting some serious gusto in his voice. “Listen up!” All eyes locked on him. Donaldson could not return their looks. That massive wave of puppy-dog loyalty, of unquestionably obeying orders that they knew would get them killed was just too fucking much. In only six months, he’d jumped from mere private to lieutenant. More accurately, been pushed up by a chain of command desperate for heroes. He wasn’t ready for this shit.
The men and women waiting breathlessly for motivation from their fearless leader weren’t quite ready for this either. The 21-year-old warrior leader in front of them doubled over and puked unashamedly. He didn’t even try to turn around.
When he could finally pull himself upright, still with tears in his eyes, no one made a sound. Donaldson took off his Kpod helmet, wiping the vileness from his mouth with a sweat rag. He surprised everyone again by laughing. With all his fears finally out in the open, the most surreal peace washed over him.
“Well, I guess the secret is out. Everything has gone to shit and I don’t know how to fix the situation. We have no way to communicate with any outside help. Hell, Sacramento might have intentionally cut us off. All I can tell you is that as long as we still have people out there dying, I’m going to keep on fighting. You all can hole up here or ditch your gear and try to melt in with the local population, but I won’t say anything either way. I can’t even pretend to have any command authority left. I’m going to set up a blocking position on that major highway intersection a click west. If you follow me, we’ll probably all be killed eventually. If you go your own way, you have a decent chance of surviving. Good luck.”