Both vehicles contained old married farming couples, volunteers, looking entirely natural in the environment. They were equipped with handheld VHF radios that they were only to use in an emergency, to warn the convoy. They rotated ahead of the convoy, taking it in turns to run point and check that the route ahead was clear of security force patrols and checkpoints. If they hit one, they would just pass through it and alert the convoy, who would take another direction with the remaining recce car.
The journey itself was uneventful; they stayed the night and headed out the next morning for the wooded hills, crossing the I-81 in the center of the Shenandoah Valley after the route had been cleared by the recce cars.
They wound up into the hills, the roads getting smaller, until they came to a parking area. Here, the recce cars left them and they waited, the new recruits pulling security around the convoy.
After a while, they were approached by a pickup truck with forest ranger markings; recognition signals were passed prior to the link up. Jack was impressed by all this; it was an example of the cut-out process at work.
The convoy moved further into the wooded hills and diverted from the asphalt road onto a fire trail which they followed for a couple of miles before coming to a concealed parking area in a natural bowl, cut back amongst the trees.
Oddly, under a camouflaged net at the back of the bowl, was a fuel tanker truck. There were a couple of other rugged looking pickups parked under nets and everyone gathered round the guide for a brief.
“Ok, welcome,” he said. “I’m Grant, your guide. We go on foot from here; it’s a couple of miles on a hiking trail. We have four ATVs with trailers and a couple of gators for the heavy gear and they will make a couple of trips as necessary. Leave your keys in the cars: once we have all the gear at the camp, we will move the extra vehicles out to satellite laagers to reduce our footprint.”
It was about a three mile hike on a small trail through the woods. It was slow going with the various family members struggling under their packs. Some gear had been loaded on ATV trailers and had gone ahead, what remained was under a guard force by the vehicles, ready for the ATVs to shuttle back up to the camp.
There were a lot of supplies to carry in; most of the families arriving here were preppers and had brought their salvaged food stocks with them, mainly in five gallon buckets, as well as equipment. What was useful was brought to the camp, and the rights of the families over their property were respected.
Bill had been clear that although he expected people would fall into a teamwork mentality and begin to meld and rely on each other at the camp, it was not a commune and people’s property rights were to be respected.
Jack noticed that they were mainly heading uphill until they were contouring along several hundred feet below the crest of a minor ridge, heading south down the eastern side of the valley, the ridge to their left.
He had a chance to talk a little with Grant as they walked. It turned out that he was a forest Ranger who had been employed in the surrounding National Forest. As such, Grant had an intimate knowledge of the area and had been instrumental in helping Bill find the various locations. Such local knowledge had been essential in the scouting missions that Bill had led, in order to find the location for Zulu and the well hidden abandoned farm that would become the training base.
They passed a well camouflaged bunker on the left of the trail, dug in with overhead protection.
The faces of two sentries were visible in the shadowed interior, the muzzle of a machine-gun protruding out and facing down the track the way they had come. A little way further there was an identical bunker on the right of the track, well sited to provide depth and mutual support.
They came to the edge of a draw, in fact it was more like a ravine, and the trail went off the edge and cut left diagonally down the face of the steep drop. They followed the trail down and found themselves at the bottom of the draw, in a place where it opened out to form a bowl.
The sides of the draw were quite steep and high, but not rocky or cliff like. There was an area of flattish ground in the central area where the draw opened out in a bowl like fashion, with a creek gurgling through the center of the feature. As Jack looked around him, he could see the wood framed entrances to multiple bunkers dug cave-like into the banks of the draw.
In the central area, which was dotted with trees, were several open sided roofed areas, created out of timber and boards and covered with a layer of dirt with tree litter strewn around on top of them. One appeared to be an open kitchen area, another maybe a meeting area or schoolhouse.
Between the entrances to the bunkers, these various structures and the trees was a combination of similarly roofed covered walkways. Camouflage nets, held up on poles and wooden frames, covered other areas and the gaps in general.
It struck Jack in an instant that this was a wonderfully planned and protected base. As they had been coming down the slope into the draw the effect of the roofs and camo nets had been to create a false floor, or canopy, above the ground of the open area. The effect of the camouflage netting was enhanced by the falling leaves, catching on top and adding another layer of obscuration of the ground below.
He needed to look more at the defensive plan, but from what he had seen the camp itself had been planned with an eye for avoiding aerial surveillance, both visual and thermal. The living bunkers looked deep and expansive and the areas outside were covered either with the roofs or thermally resistant camouflage nets, all of which would cut down thermal and visual signature.
What would make it succeed or fail was the discipline and patterns of life of those living within the base, and the defensive plan.
The guide told them to dump their gear and led them to the meeting area, where there were a series of benches under the roofed area, facing a lectern. The meeting area looked like it was also used for schooling and maybe religious services. They each grabbed seats on the bench and waited, the families huddled in shoulder to shoulder.
Jack noticed that under a camo net tucked up in the draw were parked a couple of the small tracked JCB type vehicles, the ones with a backhoe attachment, which must have been used to help the digging of the bunkers. They were small enough to get up the trail without doing too much damage and thus leaving too much sign.
A few minutes later Major Cassidy appeared. He was slightly built, average height, balding with glasses. He had an efficient but somewhat pedantic manner about him. He was dressed in old style woodland BDUs, self-styled with his rank and name tags visible.
After the introductions, Major Cassidy handed them off to Paul Granger, who was described as the camp administrator. They headed out for a tour of the base and to be allocated accommodation, prior to stowing their gear.
Major Cassidy had arranged with Jack to meet up again to discuss tactics and training, once he was settled. In the kitchen area Caitlin met and struck an instant friendship with Gayle, who was a matronly type coordinating the activities of a group of ladies, working hard over a mixture of propane ranges and wood fueled rocket stoves, laid out on tables.
Gayle was running the place with cheerful enthusiasm while driving them like a Sergeant Major.
One of the dug-out bunkers was a storeroom for group supplies; it had the doorway section of a shipping container somehow fixed into the wooden entrance to the cavern, securing the supplies behind. Clearly, it would not have been possible to get a whole shipping container up the trail, but they had cut, transported and welded the doorway part. A lot of effort and thought had gone into the building of the base.
Downstream of the base, within the secure perimeter but away from the stream itself, was a series of porta-john latrines that had been strapped to the back of an ATV trailer and driven up the trail. They had been modified by painting the usual blue color green. The floor of the receptacle part which usually contained the blue liquid, which was usually pumped out, had been cut out.