Free Patriot Dawn: The Resistance Rises by Max Velocity Page A

were DC to the north east and Richmond to the south. DC was clearly the center of the Regimes power base and operations were ongoing to subsume the surrounding urban areas into the pacified zone; as such, Manassas was currently being ‘pacified’ by Regime forces.
    The Regime was also conducting ongoing route clearance and convoy supply operations along the main supply routes (MSRs) in the region; the I-95 joining DC and Richmond, with the I-66 heading out west from DC and the I-64 similarly from Richmond. The I-66 and I-64 joined up with the I-81 that ran north-south through the Shenandoah Valley and was also an MSR.
    The Regime was operating patrols on this route, the I-81, which bisected the forested terrain of the Shenandoah ridge to the east and the George Washington National Forest to the west. It was in these forests that the hidden camp and the training base were located.
    In the areas to the west of Manassas and Richmond, and particularly in the Shenandoah Valley and the surrounding rural areas, the regime presence was currently not strong enough to effectively lock down the area.
    It was the intent to begin to train and develop an effective armed Resistance, initially operating to disrupt regime operations in the Shenandoah Valley. The intent would be to start slowly, conducting harassment operations to deny use of the I-81 and the valley, before expanding the scope and area of operations.
    Bill was determined to keep his Resistance organization safe from electronic warfare, tracking and interception. He, and several others in the region, did have ham radios that were primarily used for listening in to events and news as they were passed on the network; there were multiple Resistance movements across the country and they were not centrally coordinated, but rather fragmented organizations of individuals, communities, militias and ad hoc groups in all shapes in sizes. 
    The primary means of communication within Bills organization was a mixture of dead drops, ‘runners’ and caches. It would make the tempo of operations slower, but keeping it low tech would limit surveillance and tracking by Regime assets.
    Both Bill and Jack had served in Afghanistan and they well remembered how the electronic warfare assets would listen in to ICOM chatter on enemy networks in real time as attacks were taking place. The Resistance did possess VHF ‘walkie-talkie’ type radios and there was a place for them, but mainly the focus would be on being ‘old school’ and low tech.
    Bill also had a satellite system that he could use while the internet was locked down to transmit messages to the internet that remained outside of Regime control.
    Supply would largely be conducted by a ‘quartermaster’ system using cut-outs, dead drops and caches. Caches would be identified with a marker system to allow the location to be passed on and found by subsequent users.
    In simple terms, directions would be given to go to a certain location and identify the primary marker. This could be something such as an identifiable tree or fence corner, for example. From the primary marker the searcher would look for the described secondary and tertiary markers, leading to the location of the cache, hidden or buried in waterproof containers.
    For other situations, a policy of hiding in plain sight could be adopted. For example, discreet farmers markets had grown up since the collapse, bartering in goods. It was a simple thing for a covert Resistance team to show up at a market and ‘barter’ for supplies, that would then be driven away in plain sight.
    One of Jack’s concerns was the co-location of a training camp in the same place as where the families were to be in hiding at Camp Zulu. They developed the concept further in discussion together. It was agreed that Zulu remain as a well hidden ‘family only’ camp.
    They would establish another training camp separated from Zulu. Bill had some ideas based on a n abandoned farm he had come across while