Prepper's Crucible - Volume Six: The End (4 page)

“What did she die from?”

“Old age.
Her heart gave
out.” Eric thought for a moment,
then
added, “what you
said earlier about Don being the glue isn’t quite right. According to Cory, Don
kept everyone alive, but Kate was the glue. She was a mother figure to everyone
else and the peacekeeper in the group.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but did Cory and
Kate love each other?”

“Absolutely.
We all loved
each other.”

“I mean as a lover?”

“I knew what you meant the first time; I just wanted
to see if you would ask the question. I’d
advise
against asking Cory that question, but between you and me, it’s definitely a
possibility.” Eric turned and again started up the mountain. After another
fifteen minutes of walking, they arrived at the base of the hill where the cave
was located. They climbed up the steep incline and entered the cavern though
the
almost-invisible
mouth of the cave. Stopping for a
moment to let his eyes adjust to the dim light, Eric then moved farther into
the cave.

“My God, this looks like a garbage dump,” Horace
said. He was right. The cave
was littered
with food
wrappers, cigarette butts, discarded camping gear, and empty water bottles.

“It’s still used by the younger members of the
militia. Most of them are in their sixties now and are still active. They come
here to hunt and overnight in the cave. For the most part, they don’t tell
anyone where it is, because they want to use it themselves.”

“So this is where it all started?”

“Yes, this was the original location of our group.
We started our ambushes from here. Later, it became the headquarters for the
militia. When those numbers got too large, it
was converted
to a weapons and ammo depot. We stored everything we looted from the Mexican
Army here.”

“And this is where Cory spent all those years he was
missing?”

“For the most part, but he took weeks-long hikes
through the forest, too. This was the place where he stored supplies. He came
back here when he ran low on food and water. There’s a spring behind the cave
that is so clean you don’t have to filter or boil the water.”

“This place should be a shrine, not a trash dump.”

“People still use it, and Cory doesn’t need or want
a shrine.”

The two men moved back to the cave’s entrance,
stopped to admire the view for a moment, and then started down the hill. The
walk back to the ranch was considerably easier than the climb and Horace found
himself enjoying the trip back. When they arrived, Cory was again awake. The
driver and Eric loaded him back into the ambulance. Cory motioned for Horace to
join him in the back of the vehicle. Horace took a seat on a bench that ran the
length of the vehicle and waited for the governor to speak. After a long
silence, Cory looked at him.

“You ever hear of the book
Rules for Ranging
?”

“No.”

“It was written in 1757 by Major Robert Rogers. He
was an officer in the French and Indian Wars.
He created a mobile, well-trained force that was capable of living off the
land indefinitely. The
Rules
was intended
to
serve as a manual for his men. He personally selected 600 soldiers to serve
with him during the wars. He blended Native American tactics and his own combat
techniques. His tactics were considered revolutionary by the standing military
at the time.” Cory paused and then added, “
those
rules
are still used to this day. Each candidate for the U.S. Army Ranger School
is given
a copy of that book. It’s amended now, and shorter,
but it’s still in use.”

“Why do you bring
this up?”

“Because I used that book to wage the war against the Mexicans.
I found it in Don’s library at the ranch and adopted all
his techniques during the war. It was required reading for every unit leader.
We only had the one copy, so it took some time, but
it was
the basis of everything we did
.”

“The books about
the war all describe you as a military genius.”

Cory barked a short
laugh and replied, “I didn’t think of anything new. I just followed Roger’s
Rules
and hoped for the best. Tell you the truth, I had no idea what I was doing most
of the time, but I couldn’t let the men know that.”

“That’s hard to
believe.”

“A lot of things
are.” Cory paused and turned to look out the window. When he turned back and
faced Horace, his expression was one of determination and his eyes glowed with
intensity. “I want to talk to you about the next article you write.”

“Yes.”

“You have to tell
the people that I support statehood. They need to know that the person who
sponsored the law now thinks it needs to be overturned and we should rejoin the
Union.”

“If the word gets
out you’re talking to me, the entire world is going to come here to try to
interview you.”

“Small price to pay.”
They rode back to
the home in silence, with Cory gazing out the window until he again fell
asleep.

Horace walked back
to the office, crossing the square and then climbing uphill past the Hassayampa
Hotel. He entered the newspaper building, walked to his office, and sat down at
his desk. His fingers hovered over the keyboard to his computer as he attempted
to organize his thoughts. After a moment, his fingers assumed a life of their
own and the headline appeared on the screen. It read, “Former War Hero and Governor
Breaks Twenty-Year Silence.”

EMP PLUS FIVE MONTHS

PRESCOTT NATIONAL FOREST

Cory stood in the clearing waiting for other groups
of fighters to join him. His group had spent the previous two weeks stapling
notices to trees along the trails. The notices asked anyone living in the
forest to meet at the meadow where he stood, at this date and time, to organize
a resistance movement. He stood with his AR slung from his shoulder, muzzle
down. It had been a desperate gamble to post those notices, but he had little
choice. Since the Mexican Army no longer patrolled the forest, the risk was
acceptable. After a few minutes of waiting, four men entered the meadow, with
three of them carrying rifles aimed directly at him. The fourth man did a slow
circle around the clearing and then stood in front of Cory.

“What’s on your mind?” he asked. Cory examined the
man carefully. He was of average height, but whippet slender, and his beard was
a wild creation that seemed to grow in every direction.

“Just what the notice said. We want to hurt the
Mexicans so bad they go home.
We’re
all nipping at
their heels, but I want to bite their head off. So do the rest of my group.”

“How in the hell are we going to do that?”

“We’re going to get organized and take the fight to
them. We take over some smaller towns around Prescott and hold them as long as
we can. We make them fight street-to-street, and bleed them for every inch of
territory they take back from us. Before that, we head down to the area around
the town and ambush convoys until we all have fully automatic weapons, .50
machine guns, and grenades. We take what we need from them to fight against
them.”

“That’s a pretty ambitious plan.”

“I have seven fighters in my group and
we
already have M-16s and hand grenades. We can do it, but
we
gotta
get organized so they can’t pick us apart
one at a time.”

“What’s your name?”

“Cory,” he replied, extending a hand.

“Mine’s Caleb.”

“Pleased to meet you.”

The two men shook hands. Caleb examined Cory for a
moment,
then
said, “you don’t look crazy, so I’ll hear
you out.”

Another group of six entered the clearing and
approached Cory, then a group of four, followed by four more. Soon, eighty men
and women stood in the clearing, all armed. They began milling around, shaking hands
and introducing themselves. Finally, Cory cleared his throat and said, “I’m
with the group that posted the notices, and I want to say a few words if you
don’t mind.” Everyone fell silent as Cory continued. “I’ve lost a wife and two
kids to the Mexicans.” He stopped for a moment, cleared his throat, and
continued. “I’m guessing everyone here has lost someone.
But
it’s time we stand up and take the fight to them.
I’m
tired of hiding in the forest and waiting for them to show up. It’s pretty
clear to me that we need to get organized and go after them.”

“How the hell are we supposed to do that?”

“As I was telling Caleb,” Cory said, pointing to his
new friend, “we ambush convoys and take the weapons we need to stand and fight.
Then we take over some small towns and force the Mexicans into street fights,
bleed them dry, and disappear into the forest when we can’t hold on any
longer.”

“That’s crazy,” a tall woman said as she approached
him. Her dark hair
was pulled
into a bun and her brown
eyes stared at him with a startling intensity.

“The men that founded this country were all
considered crazy,” Cory replied calmly.

“What? You think you’re George Washington?”

“No, but I bet there is a Washington out there
somewhere, and I can run things while we wait for him to show up.” The woman
stared at him, noting his calm expression and relaxed demeanor.

“Okay. I’m listening.”

“I want to call a meeting for tomorrow at the same
time and place. We need to have one leader from each group attend. We
won’t
get anything done with this many people and we are
creating a target-rich environment for the Mexicans. Will each group appoint
someone to attend the meeting tomorrow?” Several heads nodded. Cory added, “
if
you can do it now, we can at least meet each other. The
rest of you should get out of the meadow and find concealment for the next few
minutes.”

The groups all huddled, talked, and then seven men
and the tall woman walked to where Cory stood. They all introduced themselves
and Cory closed the meeting by saying, “I’m going to bring eight M-16s here
tomorrow so each unit has one fully automatic weapon.” The leaders looked at
him in amazement and then silently disappeared into the forest.

“It’s a start,” Cory said to himself, and followed
the others into the forest and made his way back to the cave.

EMP PLUS FIVE MONTHS

PRESCOTT NATONAL FOREST

By the
time
Cory was able
to begin to organize the various groups in the forest, they were becoming a
formidable force, although they still operated as individual, small units. They
continued their ambushes as separate groups but operated closer to town and out
of the mountains, and reaped enormous gains in terms of the weaponry they
possessed from looting the victims of their ambushes. They had four Humvees
with .50 Ma Deuces mounted in the rear of the vehicles. The cave
was filled
with cases of grenades and ammo for the M-16s
they liberated from the opposing force, and they managed to get four Barret .50
sniper rifles with 200 armor-piercing rounds.

The ranch continued to feed the group from its vast
store of dried and canned food, as well as the occasional steer or chicken they
slaughtered on their trips back to keep provisions moving to the partisans that
were now their allies. Cory calculated that they could feed everyone for
another year, so long as they spent one day a week hunting and fishing. He made
a priority of moving as much long-term food to the cave as would fit, and
together with the other fighters in the forest, never came back from one of
their raids without stopping at the ranch to load supplies to bring back to the
woods. Cory had mixed feelings about sharing the location of the cave with men
and women who
might be captured and made to reveal their
hiding place;
but, like everything else, it was a calculated risk.

Ben moved back to the ranch and lived in the barn to
care for the livestock during the cold weather. It worried Cory and the others
to no end that he was there by himself, and they all knew that, eventually, the
Mexican Army would somehow find the ranch and they would lose whatever supplies
and livestock remained there; but they could do little to change the situation.

As their activity level increased, so did the
reprisals against the populace of Prescott. General Santamaria, who they learned
from a soldier they captured was the commanding general of the Mexican forces,
was killing ten Americans for every Mexican soldier Cory’s group killed. They
took men, women, and children alike to fill the quota. Daily execution squads
roamed the streets, picking people at random to face firing squads. As the
death toll in town increased, so did the number of volunteers who entered the
forest to find the partisans and a means to take revenge for their executed
loved ones. They were hard people, many of whom felt they had nothing to lose,
and fearless warriors.

Infiltrators were a constant worry by then, as Tim
pointed out to the leaders at one of their meetings
;
so they tried to establish a system of not accepting anyone who did not know
existing members of one of the groups.
And
they
continued to operate as individual groups, so nobody outside that particular
group knew operational plans and movements. However, that was about to change,
at least for a few larger missions that required coordination.

When Cory finally felt like they had enough weapons
and ammo, he called another meeting of the leaders of the various groups that
lived in the forest. They came to the cave for the meeting, and Cory held it
after they had a meal of barbequed chicken, freshly slaughtered at the ranch
and brought to the cave for the occasion. When everyone finished their meals,
Cory stood and began speaking. “I think it’s time we establish some goals for
ourselves. We have five areas of operations I want to focus on, and I need all
your best thinking on each one. First, we need to disrupt their communications
so they
can’t
coordinate attacks or responses to us.
Second, we still need to pick a small town to seize and hold for some
period of time
to show the populace we are a viable alternative
to just letting the Mexicans have their way. That has to wait for now, but
we’ll
get to it before too long. Third, we have to pick up
the pace in terms of ambushing convoys. At the rate
we’re
growing, we won’t have enough food and weapons for our fighters. That leads to
point four, which is we need to start planning raids on their stockpiles. Not
only does that pressure them by cutting their supplies short, it allows us to
sustain the militia we need to become to win this fight. Last, we need to own
the night and force them to stay on their bases so we can operate freely.
Questions?”
The room was silent, so Cory turned to Justin
and said, “Justin, give us an update on the U.S. Army, based on your ham
reports.”

“Well,” Justin said, standing and moving to the
center of the cavern. “We just took El Paso and we still have air superiority
over Texas. The Army took heavy casualties in the fight, but seems to be moving
our way. I can’t tell you how long it will take them to get here, but the rate
of advance
seems
to be slowing quite a bit.” He sat
down and glanced at Cory, who nodded at him and again spoke.

“We need to send in some spies to help us identify
several targets in town and then we need to hit them all at the same time. That
will deliver a devastating blow to the enemy and put them back on their heels
for a while.”

“We’re sort of obvious,” Caleb said. “Look at us.
None of us has had a bath in months and we all carry weapons.”

“You stop at the ranch on the way into town, bathe,
shave, and get clothes. We still have power and water there and
there’s
clothing in the house that will fit everyone. We
leave our weapons in the barn with Ben and go into town.” Some of the leaders
looked doubtful, so Cory added, “I’ll be leading the mission and you guys can
come or not. Either way, we have to do this.”

“I’m in,” Krista said. She was the tall woman with
the intense eyes that Cory met in the meadow.

“Me too,” Caleb added.

“Okay,” Cory said, nodding his approval. “We need to
find several sites to attack. We have to find their communications center and
knock it out of commission for the rest of the attacks to work.
That’s
the first priority. Can you do that Caleb?”

“We own it.”

“We also need to find their supply depot and get as
much food and ammunition as we can. Krista?” She nodded back.

“You’re going to be at the battle site longer than
the rest of us if you have to load supplies. You sure you want to take this
on?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, but if it looks dicey, just burn the place
down and get the hell out of there.”

“I will.”

“When we attack those two sites, we have to make
sure they pay dearly when they try to come out of their bases,” Cory continued.

“We can scout that,” Manfred said. “I got a son that
still lives in town and he’ll know where the bases are.”

“Finally,” Cory said, “the forces coming out of
those bases will be heading toward the communications center and the supply
depot. When they get by the first ambush outside the bases, we need to have
another one between them and where they’re headed.”

“I got that,” Lloyd replied.

“It would appear we have a plan. All team leaders
meet here tomorrow. We finalize things and move out tomorrow night to the
ranch. The next day we head into town. Say goodbye to your loved ones and make
peace with your God tonight. If we live through tomorrow and the initial
attacks, we got a shot at beginning to take this place back.”

Cory barely slept that night. He knew
a lot of
people were going to die in the attacks, if not
during the reconnaissance mission. He went to Kate’s bedroll and nestled in
behind her. She rolled over and moaned once. Cory said, “
don’t
take this the wrong way. I’m scared and I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“Don said that all the time.”

“I thought he knew what he was doing.”

“He didn’t think so, and neither do you.
It’s
the sign of someone who is willing to doubt themselves.
Go to sleep. I’m tired and you’re being irrational.”

“Guess so. Goodnight and thanks for letting me sleep
here.”

“It’s only for tonight so get over it. But I do like
the arm around me when I go to sleep.”

“Good night,” he said before falling into a troubled
sleep.

The group left the following morning after the other
fighters arrived. The all had bathed, shaved, and found new clothing before
going to bed. 

The following day, their recon went well and they
returned unscathed. They went unarmed, so the repeated searches of the two ATVs
they drove produced nothing. The bonus was that they were able to recruit two
friends of Cory’s to help them locate their targets, and things went much more
quickly than they thought possible. Most important, Cory’s friends also knew
where General Santamaria lived. It was the old house close to the Mexican
operations center in what had been the home of the last territorial governor.
The front of the house was in the line of sight from a hill about 500 yards
away. The group returned to the cave and decided to delay a day to allow them
to sight in one of the Barrett .50 sniper rifles. They were going to try to
kill the general as he left the house to go to the operations center to respond
to their attacks. Tim chose a model 82A1 from the four they had captured, and
left the cave to sight it
in
. He picked the 82A1
because it had a new ATN Ares 6-2 6-x scope with night vision. It was the best
scope they had and perfect for the kind of shot he would take.

As the size of the mission grew, so did the
complexity of pulling it off with minimum casualties.

They ghosted into town on ATVs at the idle. Each
group took a separate route into town and moved cross-country until they could
find alleys and secondary streets to move down to avoid hitting any roadblocks.
They parked the ATVs behind houses and crept through the alleys to get to their
ambush points. When they were all in position, Cory pressed his mic key once
and waited. Time passed, and the only thing he could hear was the faint sound
of Mariachi music, apparently
being played
on radios
by the Mexicans who occupied the checkpoints and other facilities that
surrounded them.

An hour later, Cory fidgeted nervously. He was at
the second ambush point with four fighters on each side of the road that led
from the base closest to the supply depot. It was close to two o’clock in the
morning and they were almost an hour behind schedule. The attack was due to
start long ago, and he had yet to hear the final squelch on his radio that told
him Krista was in place. Each of the six teams
was given
a number of squelches to emit when they were ready. Her signal was six
squelches. His earbud was fixed in his left ear so the wire
didn’t
interfere with moving his rifle. “Damnit,” he whispered. A few seconds later,
he heard the six squelches. Two minutes later, he heard the gunfire commence.
It started with two single gunshots. “Sentries at the supply depot,” he
thought. Then two
more,
and he knew the fight at the
communications center had started. The volume of fire grew quickly until it
seemed like a wall of gunfire. Cory patted the man next to him and motioned for
him to advise the next man down to get ready. They were on a ridge overlooking
Highway 69. All the men began removing grenades from a bag that sat on the
ground behind Cory and dispersed to their positions, leaving thirty feet
between them across the top of the ridge.

The gunfire from the communications center slowed
and then two massive booms split the air. “Hand grenades,” Cory thought, and
smiled with satisfaction. Then, he heard the gunfire diminish from the supply
depot. It stopped and he heard the roar of ATVs at full throttle. That sound
stopped and Cory again smiled. Total silence ensued for around five minutes,
and then he again heard the ATVs at full throttle again. The raid on the supply
depot had just ended.

He then heard the roar of the Barrett. One shot, and
then a second, and he thought to himself, “
the
general
is down.” He smiled in satisfaction and then frowned when he thought of the
reprisals that would undoubtedly occur.

“Get ready and pass it down,” he hissed at the man
closest to him. He heard engines straining in the distance, and as the sound
grew closer, he pulled the pin on his first grenade and held the safety lever
down. As the column of trucks started to pass his position, he yelled, “throw!”
Four hand grenades rained down on the column of vehicles below them, and Cory
stood when the blast noise stopped and fired into the men below. The rest of
his group did the same, and Cory saw more grenades coming out from the end of
the line that they formed on the ridge. He fell to the ground, waited for the
explosions to echo off in the distance, got to his knees, and continued to fire
on full automatic. He stood again and emptied his second magazine at the men
who staggered out of the trucks, many holding their hands over their ears, and
downed three men before his mag ran dry. The other shooters also ran dry and
the gunfire subsided to nothing. A few shots rang out from the Mexicans who
still stood, and Cory decided to break contact.