Hearing the radio command, the picket teams from the south and north immediately pulled into the main defensive doughnut, which stretched eighty-five yards along a ridge. The east picket triad stayed in place, as did the one to the west. The west pickets were not spotted as the Federals passed by their well-camouflaged foxhole, which sat under a clump of hawthorn bushes.
Under the Alpha plan, the pickets were not to fire unless fired upon. Their job was to wait until contact with the main doughnut occurred, and then to fire on the attackers from the rear, to produce confusion. The pickets generally called this role a “DIP” (Die in Place). Few expected an isolated triad to ever survive a night raid by a large enemy force.
The Federals continued their advance, directly toward the Keane Team’s doughnut. The radio man at the west picket called out the distance from the doughnut: “500 meters… 450… 400 meters… they’re moving fast… 300 meters.” The watch officer switched frequencies on his Maxon and radioed, “Hit the west strobes, now!” A twelve-year-old girl in one of the western-most foxholes of the main doughnut sounded a warning blast with a boater’s air horn, gave a silent two count, closed her eyes, and pulsed the strobe lights three times, at five-second intervals. The six commercial photography strobe lights were wired to the limbs of trees two-hundred-and-fifty meters forward of the doughnut, and twenty meters apart. They were set up to flash in unison. The first flash caused the image intensifier tubes on the Federals’ starlight scopes and NVGs to shut down. The series of flashes also ruined the approaching Federal troops’ night vision for several minutes. Some stumbled and fell. There were numerous curses and shouts of surprise.
With their recent training, the defenders recognized the air horn signal, and waited with their eyes shut during the three flashes, counting aloud. Then, with well-rehearsed precision, the Keane Team launched a counterattack, while the less practiced Moscow Maquis members held their places. The Keane Team ran down the hill directly at the Federals, in triad formation.
The air horn sounded again. The charging guerrillas knew that this second blast was a ruse to get the Federals to close their eyes for another fifteen seconds. During this time, the six triads of guerrillas continued down the hill directly into the lead Federal platoon, firing with discriminate care. They fired two shots at each soldier, mowing down most of the lead platoon like a hay cutter. The few survivors turned and ran. Overestimating the size of the counterattack, the middle company of Federals also panicked and ran. They ran headlong into the trail formation.
Thinking that these were guerrillas who were counterattacking, the trailing companies fired in long bursts, killing twelve members of the retreating platoons, and wounding fourteen others. The remnants of the retreating company did not stop. They continued past the rear company, shouting inco-herently. Seeing their panicked flight, hearing their shouts of “retreat,” and seeing the muzzle flashes of the approaching guerrillas, the middle company caught bug-out fever, and also bolted. All but a few members of the remaining company on the north-flanking hill, stood fast. They began to concentrate their fire on the guerrillas, stopping the charge. Three of the guerrillas—from two different triads—were killed.
Before they retreated, Matt and Eileen Keane threw tear gas grenades at the Federals’ hillside positions. The wind was favorable, so the grenades had good effect. The triads retreated back up the hill in good order, giving mutually supporting fire, moving by bounds.
Without waiting for the Federals to counterattack, the guerrillas counted heads and got ready to displace. Triads were quickly reorganized to make up for those that had been killed. They quietly helped each other with their packs and headed east, toward their widely scattered prepared hide positions.
As part of the prearranged plan, a triad of teenagers stayed back and set up the trip wires for four Claymore mines. Since they had practiced setting up the wires in the dark several times, it took just a hundred seconds. Less than two minutes after they left, they heard the gratifying sound of three of the four Claymores detonating in rapid succession.
The Federal attack on the Keane Team/Maquis position did not delay the Moscow raid. It was decided that operational security had not been breached.
Their mistake, they realized, was in using a 5-watt transceiver from a camp location, and being DFed. That mistake would not be repeated. The Keane Team and the Moscow Maquisards made new SOPs that any transmissions over 500-milliwatt strength would only be made after displacing the transmitter at least two kilometers from any encampment.
For their operations, the Keane Team normally wore field expedient ghillie capes patterned after Matt Keane’s. They had been made by cutting up captured Federal vehicular hexagonal or diamond shaped camouflage nets, and adding additional frayed burlap garnish. But since there were several militias involved, it was prearranged that for this raid only, every raider would wear a standard camouflage uniform with a special identifying four-inch wide blue sash around the waist. They were meant to reduce the risk of friendly fire incidents. For OpSec reasons, use of the sashes was kept secret until just before the raid. The sash material was distributed during the final inspections and rehearsals in the hills northeast of Moscow. There were 188 members in the combined raid team.
A twelve-year-old militia “drummer boy” videotaped the raid from a concealed position two hundred yards south of the barracks’ main gate. The Moscow barracks were a pair of dormitories on the old U of I campus. Three buildings near the dormitories had been flattened “for security reasons.” A fifteen-foot high double fence wrapped around the buildings. The wide area between the dorms was used as a motor pool.
The Moscow raid started with a “Trojan horse” ruse, utilizing a BTR-70 wheeled APC that had been captured from the Federals more than a year earlier. The resistance had kept it deep in the Clearwater National Forest, hidden under camouflage nets at the end of a disused logging road. They had kept it ready for a “special project” all this time. Fresh fuel and extra ammo for its 14.5-mm gun had been laboriously carried to it, and special efforts were made to keep its batteries charged. The resistance even dispatched a mechanic to ensure the APC’s road-worthiness.
The APC drove up to the Moscow barracks’ main gate at BMCT (“Before Morning Civil Twilight”). The gate guards dutifully opened the pair of gates and waved it through. As one of the gate guards was logging the APC’s bumper number on his clipboard, he looked up in surprise to see the muzzle of a sawed-off double barrel shotgun. The man holding the shotgun held his forefinger to his lips and whistled, “Ssshhhh.” The guard didn’t make a sound. He was visibly shaking.
The four gate guards were quickly herded into the guard shack and bound and gagged. A hidden “panic button” that was presaged by the turned Federal in the Moscow Maquis was disabled with snips from a pair of wire cutters. One of the raiders stayed behind to guard the prisoners. He was holding an M16 with bayonet fixed.
The APC wheeled into the well-lit motor pool. The solitary guard at the motor pool shouted at the APC, “Will you get on your radio and tell those idiots at the front gate that they forgot to close the ga…” He was killed with eight head shots, fired through one of the APC’s gun ports with a silenced Ruger Mark II .22 pistol. After the guard went down, a resistance soldier popped out and jogged to the motors’ shack. He returned carrying a sheet of plywood festooned with keys, each labeled with a vehicle’s bumper number.