Max Velocity - Patriot Dawn - The Resistance Rises

Jack bit down on his retort.

Jumped up little prick.

“So, Major, you are determined to go ahead with it?”

“Yes.”

“Right then. I’ll get Caleb.”

The patrol left four days later. Caleb led them as the patrol leader. Jim had given them a crash course in some of the explosive devices they had already created.

Jim had been building a metal shop but he had not so far got around to milling any of the copper cones that were required to create the off-route mines that he planned, based on the design of the ‘explosively formed penetrator’ mines, or EFPs, used so prevalently in Iraq.

Instead, Jim supplied them with improvised claymores with command wire triggers. They also had some procured AT-4 anti-armor missiles, the one shot type in the plastic tubes that slung on a man’s back. That was their only way to stop armored vehicles at this point. They also had four SAW 5.56mm ‘squad automatic weapons’, one for each of the four teams in their patrol.

They had spent the last four days going through orders, rehearsals and refining their ‘actions on’ drills. They had already worked extensively together so their team drills and battle discipline were good. Jack spent a long time sitting down with Caleb going over the ambush plan. It was the best they could come up with given the weapons available.

There were no thermal ponchos available for the patrol to take; they had not been produced yet.

The patrol moved from Victor Foxtrot to their drop-off point in several covert vans. From the outside, the vans looked just like contractor work vehicles. They did not go in a convoy, but split the patrol up and infiltrated by a couple of routes in teams. Once together at the discrete drop, the patrol reformed in cover and moved off into the woods.

The plan was for a different pick up location, for which every man had the location description of the markers to the dead drop. A guide would return to check the dead drop at a certain time each day starting in several days. If the dead letter box was active, he would bring the vehicles to exfiltrate the team.

It was a eighteen man patrol. Caleb was the team leader and he had with him ‘Doc’ Oliver as the medic, making a small two man headquarters element. Under him were two squads of eight men.

Alpha Squad was led by Rob Olson, a former Army Ranger who had separated from active duty with combat fatigue after too many deployments. He had needed a rest.

Bravo Squad was under Vince Chavez, a deserter from the 82nd Airborne, formerly a career light infantry platoon sergeant. Olson was a single man, but Chavez’s family shared the dugout with Caitlin and the kids back at Zulu.

The patrol was out for a week before they accomplished their mission.

They had patrolled cross country using the terrain and forests to remain concealed. They approached the 1-66 objective area from the south and went into all round defense in an objective rally point (ORP).

Caleb went forward with a security team to recon the ambush site. He planned a linear ambush using a cut where the road passed through between some wooded embankments. He found a spot where the woods curved back in to the road on each side of the cut. This would allow him to place his cut-off groups closer to the road, which was essential to his plan.

The left side cut-off group position had a great view of the road to the west where the convoy was expected to arrive from.

He had Bravo Squad split into two teams, four men occupying each of the cut-off positions on the left and right flanks of the ambush. Alpha Squad was the kill group and lay in the tree line along the top of the embankment, some seventy five meters back from the road.

By night, they laid the command wires for the improvised claymores down to the road, some of them fed through a drainage culvert to the wide median between the eastbound and westbound lanes of the 1-66.

He laid out a series of improvised claymores along the near side of the road, aimed to fire into the kill zone. He also set up claymores in the median, angled to sweep the grassy area with ball bearings. The median itself formed a grassy depression between the east and westbound lanes, some twenty meters wide, sloping inwards to a central drainage ditch. It would provide some cover from the fire of his kill group up on the embankment.

Doc lay to the rear of the kill group, providing rear protection and a casualty collection point.

From Intel received, Caleb expected a mixture of armored and unarmored vehicles to form the convoy. Probably a lead, middle and rear armored Humvee, with a mix of other vehicles, including a couple of LMTV trucks and a bus. He did not have enough explosives to blow a crater in the road, nor did he have any off route mines to conclusively destroy the lead armored vehicle.

His solution to stopping the convoy was to wire up a couple of trees near to the right, or eastern, cut-off group with demolitions charges to bring them down over the road ahead of the convoy.

Each cut-off group had two AT-4 rockets and one SAW. From their position closer to the road they would have enfilade fire up and down the road, which meant more of a head on or rear end angled shot into the convoy than the kill group would have.

The sectors of fire of the two cut-off groups were de-conflicted so that they did not fire towards each other, but rather at an angle into the kill zone.

There were another two AT-4s in the kill group. The remaining two SAWs were situated at each end of the kill group.

The Intel said that the convoy usually left Front Royal at dawn. That morning, Caleb got the signal from his left cut-off group an hour after dawn. He was controlling the triggers to the various demolition charges and claymores that they had, with the labeled triggers laid out in front of him.

The ambush would be initiated by the firing of the demolitions on the trees.

Caleb lay in the tree line as the convoy crept up the curve of the road at a steady convoy speed from the west. All his men were silent in position, ready with their weapons.

The convoy did in fact have the three Humvees, as well as three LMTV trucks and a central bus containing the main body of the newly trained regime storm troopers, the blue shirts.

As the convoy reached the middle of the killing area Caleb sprung the ambush by firing the clacker on the tree demolitions; there was a loud concussion, severing and kicking out the bases of the two trees. They didn’t sway and fall like they would if they had been cut; they simply went smashing down across the roadway.

As the convoy came to a halt, the kill group erupted in a fury of small arms fire as they poured rounds down into the vehicles. Caleb hit the next clacker, firing the array of six improvised claymores down by the roadway, at the bottom of the cut. The six brutal detonations hurled shipyard confetti into the convoy, ripping into the LMTVs and in particular tearing through the sides of the bus and wreaking carnage inside.

In the two cut-off groups, the team leaders directed two men to fire the AT4s as their other man provided covering fire with the SAW. Each cut-off team targeted a Humvee at the front or rear of the columns, respectively, and having two AT-4s meant there was less chance of missing.

At each end of the ambush the rockets streaked into the escorting Humvees at about fifty meters range. The HEAT round on the warheads detonated on the armored Humvees, melting the copper cone inside the warheads and sending a stream of molten metal into the vehicles, killing all inside.

The central armored Humvee was destroyed by AT-4s fired from up at the kill group, the first one clipping over the top of the vehicle and detonating in the median while the other smacked into the rear armored door and killed everyone inside.