Just before sunset, Ian landed his Laron and taxied it toward its normal hiding place. Lon ran over to help him push it back into the trees and camouflage it. Ian was shocked when he heard about the crash and Blanca’s condition. He was relieved when he saw her. She was by then asleep. Doyle said quietly, “Thank you so much, Margie.” She replied, “I’m just taking notes here.
It was Mary who stitched her up. She says that barring any complications, she’ll be fine in a few weeks.” Ian sat down next to his wife, on edge of a Lamilite ground pad. He commented, “What a day, what a day. Thank you, Father God, for your protection.” Margie joined him when he read the 34th Psalm aloud.
Blanca awoke that evening, in pain. Mary gave her some Tylenol and a cup of strong tea made with comfrey leaves, sweetened with honey. Blanca’s pain began to subside a half hour later. Mary gave Blanca a strong dose of titrated tetracycline. It was supplemented with a supply of herbal ointment that she had prepared a month before. It was made with marigold, comfrey, and aloe vera. Mary also made Blanca another tea—this one made of echinacea and chamomile.
Life at Valley Forge gradually worked into a routine. Every three or four days a patrol would go out to conduct a reconnaissance, liaison, sabotage, or ambush.
They were only back for a day or two between patrols. Small cooking fires were burned only during the day. Every evening either Todd or Mary would cuddle with little Jacob and lead him in prayers when his bedtime arrived.
Jacob’s prayers always ended the same way. He would follow along and say, “I pray that everyone that we know and love is happy and healthy, warm, dry, well fed, safe and free, and have their salvation, amen.”
CHAPTER 28
Tenacity
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”
Throughout the fall, the Second Corps (Composite) of the Democratic Army of the Provisional Federal Government was having serious trouble in northern Idaho. Resistance forces struck unpredictably and with surprising success. Convoys could only travel in daylight, and only with accompanying armor. There were seemingly no “rear” or secure areas for the Federal and UN troops.
In one much talked-about incident, an eighty-two-year-old grandmother walked up to three Belgian lieutenants that were loitering at a city park in Lewiston, with their weapons slung. She said in a sweet, quavering voice, “I have something for you,” and from a picnic basket pulled a hundred-and-ten-year old Merwin Hulbert .44-40 revolver. She shot and killed one of them, and critically wounded the second before the third soldier cut her down with two bursts from a PDW-80.
The guerrillas were almost impossible to locate. The vast areas of National Forest, much of it roadless, were ideal hiding places. The townsmen were sullen. Only a few cooperated with the authorities. Most of them clearly favored the militias and did their best to feed them with supplies and current intelligence. There were countless acts of sabotage against parked vehicles. They ranged from punctured tires and sand poured in fuel tanks to immolation with Molotov cocktails.
There had been some poisoning incidents, so many soldiers distrusted any fresh food that had been out of their sight. Despite a strictly enforced two-man rule, sentries disappeared or “woke up dead” with alarming regularity. Many deserted. Others were stabbed, clubbed, or shot. Nearly all of those killed had their weapons, web gear, and boots taken. Sometimes their bodies were found with even their uniforms missing. The garrisoned soldiers didn’t feel safe anywhere. Nor did the new Regional Administrator and his staff. They all had large complements of heavily armed bodyguards and traveled only in APCs.
The local militias had sufficient supplies of weapons and ammunition for an extended campaign. Increasingly, they were using captured weapons. Stories about the resistance, some of them apocryphal, were circulated by word of mouth and in a variety of mimeographed and photocopied broadsheets with names like “The Maquisard,” “Resist!,”“The Free American,” and “Say No To The NWO.”
These broadsheets carried a mix of resistance pep talks, interviews, and technical advice on ambushes and sabotage. One of them printed instructions for producing and purifying a powerful toxin called ricin, derived from castor beans. They advised mixing it in the solvent DMSO, so it could be absorbed directly through the victim’s skin. Another broadsheet showed how to extract colchicine from fall crocus flowers.
A regularly recurring rumor was of the militias issuing “butter knife” guns to young teenagers who joined resistance cells. As the story went, they would send them out with older, less useful guns in odd calibers to shoot sentries or to ambush off-duty garrison soldiers. They were told that they could keep any weapons that they captured, and then pass the “butter knife” along to the next young volunteer. The resistance leaders called it “using a butter knife instead of wasting a steak knife.” The practice was part of the new members’ initiation for some cells.
The Federal government’s shortwave stations and satellite TV broadcasts announced that they had “secured” Moscow, Lewiston, and Coeur d’Alene only a week after the arrival of the Second Corps. On the first of September, they declared “victory” in Idaho. The propagandists said “residual banditry” in Idaho was “contained and limited to a few small pockets” and that the state was officially “pacified.”
The news of guerrilla successes spread rapidly. A resistance cell that called itself the Bombardiers carried out a flawless thermite and Molotov raid on a row of five parked helicopters during a heavy rainstorm. A guard and an avionics technician were shot and killed. Two pilots were badly wounded. All five helicopters, plus a twelve-hundred-gallon fuel bladder of JP-4 and a “Federally requisitioned” Ford pickup truck, were destroyed. The Bombardiers only suffered one minor injury in the raid. There was considerable pride in mentioning the fact that the oldest member of the cell was only sixteen. The youngest of them had just turned twelve.
Ironically, the destruction of the helicopters caused a great increase in Federal and UN air activity in the following weeks. To compensate for the loss of the aircraft, the Federals redeployed ten more helicopters from the First Corps in Montana. They were all older models—mostly UH-1 Huey “slicks,” Bell Jet Rangers and Kiowas, and two Huey Cobras. Two of the Jet Rangers still had multicolor civilian paint jobs. The expected newer model AH-64 Apache and UH-60 Blackhawk models never appeared. “Rumor control” in the resistance had it that the reason that the older helicopters were still flying and that the newer models weren’t was because the latter used more exotic hydraulic fluids and had more recent generation avionics that were more prone to failure.
By the time the extra helicopters arrived in Idaho, the Northwest Militia had long since split back into two distinct companies. Todd Gray’s company remained atValley Forge. Meanwhile, Michael Nelson’s company had displaced to a heavily wooded area five miles northeast, taking half of the logistic supplies with them.
Blanca Doyle gradually recovered from her wounds. In addition to the wounds to her thighs, it was found that she had broken her left wrist in the crash. Just twenty-five days after her surgery, she was hobbling around on crutches. By October, she had graduated to a cane, and her wrist was nearly healed. On November fifth, she announced that she was pregnant. Since she was immobile, first due to her injuries, and later because of her pregnancy, Blanca became the camp cook at Valley Forge. Meanwhile, Rose Trasel became the cook and full-time C.Q. at the other company’s camp. She had her infant son to care for, so she could not go out on patrols. Thomas Kenneth, Trasel was eleven months old, and just learning to walk.