The Coming Storm: Liberators Part 14

The citizenry was happy to see some commerce restored, but one of the immediate shocks was that their lifetime savings in the old dollars were now worth a pittance. With the exception of small change and the Looney and Tooney coins, the old dollar lost its full legal-tender status. The old paper dollars could be exchanged at banks for the new bills, but at a one-hundred-to-one ratio. Meanwhile, all deposits in bank accounts had two zeroes lopped off. In the case of the McGregors, their $81,220.52 balance at RBC became an $812. 20 balance. The same thing happened to their Registered Retirement Saving Plan (RRSP)-an account similar to a 401(k) in the United States. The net effect was that they'd had 90 percent or more of their lifetime savings inflated away; and everyone implicitly knew that inflation was a hidden form of taxation. Somehow it was the government-enmeshed bankers, brokers, and bureaucrats who came out of it with a profit and a smile.

For the average workingman, the new economic order seemed strange. The new "living wage" was set at $1.20 new dollars a day. And while rents and groceries seemed less expensive with the s.h.i.+ft of two decimal places under the new currency scheme, their real prices were actually higher. The most painful thing for farmers, ranchers, and commuters was that gasoline and diesel were both "fair market" priced at twenty-two cents per gallon. But when 62 percent of those prices was paying an "Economic Recovery Tax" levied by LGP, then everyone naturally asked, "How truly fair is this market?" Very few people could afford to pay five Moonies for a tank of gas.

About the only good news for the McGregors was that Alan's coin collection would now buy a lot of groceries, and that their property tax bill dropped two zeroes. But there was already talk of property rea.s.sessments. LGP began sticking its nose into many aspects of life by pegging wages and prices. All land transactions-even within families-had to be approved by a fairness monitor, and it was soon rumored that they didn't get out their approval rubber stamps until some cash ("le pot de vin") was slipped to them.

Private transactions in gold and silver were officially banned. By law, any holders of bullion and miners could sell their refined metals to the government only at the "Free Trade and Fairness Balanced" official prices, which were quite detached from reality. Of course black market gold and silver transactions flourished, despite the government's threats of fines and lengthy prison sentences.

The bankers would still accept deposits of the 1962 to 1981 mint date Canadian nickels (which were 99 percent nickel) and both pre-2000 dimes and quarters (which had various compositions of silver and nickel, depending on their vintage) at face value. But n.o.body was surprised to see that once accepted, hardly any of those older coins were returned to circulation. Somehow, they just "disappeared." Only the later-issue copper and steel tokenlike coins were recirculating. Alan McGregor could see through this smokescreen, so he held on to all of his pre-2000 coinage. He liked to say, "Gresham's law can never be repealed."

There wasn't much of it going on in the western provinces, but they heard on the shortwave that European investors were snapping up prime farmland in Ontario for a pittance, using their new euros. The new euro had a fixed exchange rate of 4.5 to 1 to the new Canadian dollar. This made a hectare of Canadian farmland worth only about 20 percent of the price of comparable land in Europe.

The LGP was clearly either firmly in league with the UN, or an outright puppet government. From their first few days in power, they requested the "temporary a.s.sistance" of UN military police and "technical experts." Not surprisingly, most of these UN troops dispatched to Canada were from France. (There were also smaller contingents from Holland, Chad, and Morocco.) The UN troops were under their own command structure, which was dubbed the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) Security a.s.sistance Command.

Along with the LGP's much-heralded beneficence also came its new bureaucracy. It seemed as if Bloc Quebecois had magically staged a coup. Every school that reopened had a French-speaking princ.i.p.al. These were snooty easterners with ubiquitous red maple leaf pins on their lapels and purses, a symbol that was fully co-opted by the new government and the Agenda Nouveau. By decree, all school students in the western provinces had two hours of French instruction daily, in a curriculum with a simplified vocabulary. Their goal was all too transparent: They wanted compliant "worker bees" who understood enough French so that they could understand orders, and a statist mind-set, so that they would accept orders unquestioningly.

Although news of it emerged slowly, there was a none-too-subtle long-term Francophone transition plan. Starting with the following academic year, all kindergartners would have 100 percent French instruction, and that mandate would advance one year, per year, so that after twelve years, all primary and high school students would gradually transition to French-only instruction. The obvious historical a.n.a.logue to this mandatory language s.h.i.+ft was in Alsace-Lorraine, where successive waves of invasion attempted to mandate public school instruction in German. In the case of western Canada, the s.h.i.+ft in language would be more gradual.

Phil made a habit of saving recordings of shortwave broadcasts. To do this, he used an Olympus DS-50 compact digital recorder that he'd bought for his use as a DCS agent. But that had mainly sat unused in his glove box because of the SCIF rules on bringing in personal recording devices. Since the impedance of the radio's headphone matched that of the recorders' microphone input, all that he needed to make the recordings was a "male-to-male" ministereo plug cord.

To hook up the recorder to his shortwave, he used a Y headphone splitter and a "male-to-male" stereo miniplug cable. That way he could listen with his headphones and record at the same time.

In a meeting with his nascent resistance cell, Phil reported, "There's a ham radio guy I've heard who is using no callsign, but from his procedure he is obviously a ham. I gather that he is a Canadian, but he is now a refugee somewhere in Montana. He's displayed the cojones to repeatedly broadcast at twelve-point-something megahertz the planned deployments of UNPROFOR-their whole order of battle. If he and his OB doc.u.ments are legit, then in western BC we'll soon be facing two French units . . ."

He paused to turn to some handwritten notes in his binder, and then read aloud: "'One brigade of Infanterie de Marine (IMa) from the Troisieme Regiment d'Infanterie de Marine (Troisieme RIMa) and a helicopter detachment of Aviation Legere de l'Armee de Terre, or ALAT.' Literally, that can be translated 'Light Aviation of the Land Army.'"

He closed the binder and continued, "On my laptop, I did some checking using my Wikipedia archive CD and I read that the Troisieme RIMa has most recently been garrisoned in Vannes, a small city in western France. But the IMa's main responsibility for many decades has been policing brushfire wars in their former colonies, so these aren't just rear-echelon troops. Many of the NCOs in these units have probably seen combat in Afghanistan-with Task Force Korrigan-and in Mali fighting the Tuaregs. So these guys won't be pushovers. Not on a par with the U.S. Marines, but still Marines. Tough guys. The ALAT troops are more technical, but they can rain down death from the air. They use Gazelle, Puma, and Eurocopter Tiger ground attack helicopters. I'm not sure which model that they plan to base in western Canada, but because of their great mobility and firepower, any of them will be significant threats.

"Supporting UNPROFOR will be some quisling elements of the RCMP. These guys will be loyal to Menard. So they've got their own Maynard to idolize. How ironically coincidental.

"I should also mention that we'll be in a different situation than the resistance down in the States. They're doing their fighting in the midst of a grid-down collapse. But here, the hydro grids are up-although the economy is still a shambles-which will cause some peculiarities. For example, the UN garrison and motor pools will all be lit up with security vapor lights."

Alan interrupted, "We have to be careful about directing any fire on RCMP cars, because these are local cops, and we don't want the local populace turning against us. So I think that we should concentrate on sabotaging the RCMP's vehicles and radio towers. If we keep them immobile and incommunicado, then they won't be much of a theat. But if we start picking off Mounties, then we'll turn their relatives into UN loyalists."

The land units of the Canadian army-including reserve units-had all been disarmed and disbanded a year before, when UNPROFOR declared them "unreliable." Nearly all of their vehicles and weapons ended up in the hands of UNPROFOR-although two Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI) and Lord Strathcona's Horse (LdSH) armories suffered "mysterious thefts" of nearly all of their small arms in the days just before the announced armory takeovers.

The French UNPROFOR troops were fiends for planting land mines in large quant.i.ty, and making intricate maps of where they had been planted, complete with GPS coordinates. But the region was so lightly populated that the majority of the inflicted casualties were on deer, and the main beneficiaries were bald eagles, ravens, and other scavengers.

Their favorite method was to use a land mineplanting machine to bury mines alongside roads. The placement of these mines was so regular (usually with mines s.p.a.ced exactly four meters apart) and so obvious that the resistance soon learned how to dig them up and defuse them.

The resistance quickly learned-the hard way-to check for stacked mines, where a pressure-release mine was buried beneath a standard mine, to act as an antihandling device.

A resistance cottage industry was quickly established using a sheet metal brake and tin snips to make disarming clips for the mines. Disarming pins were usually just wire from paper clips. Hundreds of the plastic-bodied mines, of four different types (three antipersonnel and one antivehicular), were collected. Many of these were disa.s.sembled and their explosive charges and detonators were repurposed into homemade Claymore mines and various types of IEDs.

30.

TOP CONDITION.

Believe in your cause. The stronger your belief, the stronger your motivation and perseverance will be. You must know it in your heart that it is a worthwhile cause and that you are fighting the good fight. Whether it is the need to contribute or the belief in a greater good, for your buddy, for the team or for your country, find a reason that keeps your fire burning. You will need this fire when the times get tough. It will help you through when you are physically exhausted and mentally broken and you can only see far enough to take the next step.

-MSG Paul R. Howe, U.S. Army Retired, from Leaders.h.i.+p and Training for the Fight: A Few Thoughts on Leaders.h.i.+p and Training from a Former Special Operations Soldier Whistler, British Columbia-Three Years Before the Crunch The men had met by chance at the annual Ironman triathlon compet.i.tion in Whistler, British Columbia. Their meeting had been precipitated by the mere sight of a red-and-white diver's flag sticker on the back of one of their bicycle helmets. Two of the men were from Vancouver, and two were from nearby Coquitlam. All four men were triathletes in their late twenties, and all four were recreational scuba divers. At the tail end of a thirty-minute session of swapping diving stories, they exchanged e-mail addresses and agreed to meet in a few weeks to dive "The Wall" at Ansell Point, near West Vancouver.

When they met for the dive, they learned of even more coincidences in their lives: All four men were conservatives and members of Methodist churches. Eventually, as the French invasion swept through Alberta, they formed a resistance cell that was part of the informal Nous sommes la resistance (NLR) umbrella organization.

The NLR got its start with aboriginal and mixed blood (metis) people in Quebec, but it soon spread throughout Canada by word of mouth. Since it was a leaderless movement, it was impossible for UNPROFOR and the Canadian puppet government to stop. Aside from some motivational and general guidance doc.u.ments that were widely distributed nationwide, the NLR leaders.h.i.+p exerted no control of local resistance groups and had no communication with them. In effect, NLR was a philosophical leaders.h.i.+p for the resistance cells, rather than a command structure.

While the NLR's detached relations.h.i.+p and leaderless cells made it extremely difficult for UNPROFOR to penetrate the resistance, their lack of centralized control also became a weakness when resistance units occasionally showed poor judgment in picking individual targets, or failed to exercise fire discipline and caused collateral damage. Such acts tarnished the image of the entire resistance movement. On several occasions the occupational government was caught attempting to pin blame on resistance groups for ma.s.sacres that they themselves had committed.

There was a huge variety of resistance cell structures and methodologies. This added to their unpredictability, which made locating and eliminating them difficult. The majority of the cells were dedicated to sabotage. Others had traditional infantry squad or even platoon structure, and could handle multiple tasks, including sabotage, demolition, raids, and ambushes. Some of the most successful Canadian resistance cells patterned their field organization on the USMC's Scout Sniper Team organizational concept. The teams ranged from four to six individuals. Unlike the Marines, they typically used two scoped bolt-action rifles instead of a machine gun and a sniper rifle. The heavy weapons carried by their two-man security elements varied widely, depending on the weapons that they were able to scavenge on the battlefield. The fifth man was usually a radio operator/rifleman, and the sixth man filled a variety of roles, ranging from RPV controller to demolitions man.

One of the first engagements between the NLR and UNPROFOR dismounted infantry was near Indian Head, Saskatchewan. The shooting started when six NLR fighters armed with scoped deer rifles engaged two squads of French infantry armed with FAMAS bullpups, across an open field. The resistance wisely opened fire at 570 yards. The French returned fire, but their 5.56 rifles lacked sufficient accuracy at that range. Instead of calling for fire support or a guns.h.i.+p, the French patrol leader attempted to outfire and outmaneuver their enemy. The end result was fourteen dead for UNPROFOR, and fourteen captured weapons. The NLR lost only one man in the extended firefight. This incident ill.u.s.trated the mismatch in small arms. In essence the occupiers had three-hundred-yard-capable rifles, while the resistance had six-hundred-yard (or longer) range rifles.

In recent years, the preferred "budget" elk and caribou rifle in western Canada had been the Remington Model 770, chambered in .300 Winchester Magnum, with a twenty-four-inch barrel. These rifles could be found new, and factory-equipped with a 39x40 variable scope for less than $375, or less than $500 in the more weather-resistant stainless steel variant with camouflage stock. The scopes were already bore-sighted at the factory. One of these rifles, along with a few spare four-round detachable magazines was, effectively an "off the shelf" sniper rifle capable of six-hundred-plus-yard shots on man-size targets.

A significant part of the resistance war was a war of words. Individual NLR cells produced and distributed pamphlets on sabotage and resistance warfare. Among the most popular were a digest of the book Total Resistance by von Dach, and reprints of the OSS Simple Sabotage Field Manual, which had been decla.s.sified in 2008.

Through its publications, NLR also sought aid from sympathizers in Canada and the United States. Its most urgent needs were electric blasting caps, detonating cord (also known as det cord or Primacord), and rifle ammunition. Some of its specific requests for ammunition seemed odd or antiquated to residents of the United States, but these cartridges were still used regularly in Canada: .303 British, .300 Savage, .250-3000 Savage, .303 Savage, and .280 Ross.

31.

STEEL s.h.i.+PS AND IRON MEN.

Military a.n.a.lysts pretty much agree j.a.pan lost the war in the Pacific because they were playing chess while we were playing checkers. Overthinking all but guarantees failure. Engineers will tell you complexity increases as the square of the subsystems involved, or near enough, something survivalists should keep in mind when they attempt to replicate their 'normal' life. And no, being a nice, deserving person with good intentions won't make failure modes go away.

-Ol' Remus, The Woodpile Report Vancouver, British Columbia-July, the Third Year On July 7, the Kingsway resistance cell received an intelligence report that was marked "SAM Sensitive." These messages had sources and methods (SAMs) that if revealed could do great harm, for example, endangering the life of a confidential informant.

Their informant's report gave them details on the upcoming arrival of two French cargo s.h.i.+ps operated by La Compagnie Maritime Nantaise (MN). The MN Toucan and MN Colibri were sister s.h.i.+ps, with a gross weight of more than nineteen hundred tons each. These were commercial roll-on-roll-off (RO-RO) vessels, specifically designed for transporting vehicles. The s.h.i.+ps had loaded at the HAROPA terminal at Le Havre fifteen weeks earlier and had transited the Panama Ca.n.a.l. They were both laden with a mixed cargo of twenty-five-ton vehicule blinde de combat d'infanterie (VBCI) wheeled APCs, fourteen-ton vehicule de l'avant blinde (VAVB or armored vanguard vehicle), and an a.s.sortment of military cargo trucks and Renault Sherpa 2 utility vehicles-the French equivalent of the U.S. military Humvee. Based on the recent experience of the resistance in Canada's eastern provinces, the VBCI "armored vehicle for infantry combat" was considered a key threat.

The two s.h.i.+ps were standing in 170 feet of water in the Burke Channel, just a few miles from the port of Bella Coola. This inlet had been glacially carved during the Ice Age. Much like the fjords of Norway, Bella Coola Bay was surprisingly deep. Only the magnitude of its daily tides and its rough outer waters kept it from becoming a more significant seaport.

The s.h.i.+ps were not yet anch.o.r.ed; their automatic station-keeping thrusters slaved to their GPS were holding within a few meters of their plotted location. The docking and unloading were scheduled for just after the regular midcoast BC ferry departed the ferry terminal at 9:45 P.M. The unloading was expected to take two full days.

Originally destined for Vancouver, the two s.h.i.+ps had been diverted to Bella Coola when threat a.n.a.lysts from the French Directorate of Military Intelligence (Direction du Renseignement Militaire or DRM) decided that Port Metro Vancouver was too vulnerable to a mortar attack by demobilized Canadian Defense Force soldiers. Bella Coola, they reasoned, was a "safe backwater port."

The royal-blue-and-white-painted s.h.i.+ps both had the enormous letters "MN" painted in white on their blue sides, so they were hard to miss. The s.h.i.+ps were in good mechanical repair but were heavily streaked with rust.

As the town's small fis.h.i.+ng fleet (now down to just four boats) motored out for the evening, the captain of one of the boats was careful to position his boat at the south side of the flotilla. Inside his boat, four divers were suited up and checking their gear. They crawled onto the boat's aft working deck, concealed by a stack of crab pots. A quarter mile before the boat came alongside the two French s.h.i.+ps, the divers-now wearing dry suits-quickly slipped into the water.

They bobbed at the surface for a few minutes, to adjust the buoyancy of both the rubber bags containing the limpet mines and their own dive vests. At first the bags were too heavy and were dragging them down, but some squirts of air from their regulators into the bags soon brought them to neutral buoyancy. Then their dive vests gave them too much buoyancy, so they had to bleed air to get them back to neutral buoyancy. (This was the same procedure that they had used when adjusting the buoyancy of their camera and gear bags during sport dives.) They hadn't had the time to do a trial run with the limpet mine bags, and spending this much time on the surface now made them wish that they had.

They swam toward the s.h.i.+ps at a depth of ten feet, welcoming the warmth from working their muscles in the chilly water. The leader popped his head above the surface for a moment to catch sight of the s.h.i.+ps, then ducked back under and motioned with his arm, showing the others the correct bearing to follow. He held that position while the other three men consulted their wrist compa.s.ses and spun their outer bezels to set a rough azimuth for their directional arrows.

Swimming underwater to the s.h.i.+ps and attaching the limpets was strenuous, but within the capabilities of the divers. Because they were nervous, they were all sucking air from their tanks faster than they would on a recreational dive. They each carried three limpet mines. All twelve mines already had their timers preset.

As they approached the s.h.i.+ps, by prearrangement they diverged into two teams. The visibility was thirty feet, which was above average for the Burke Channel. One member of each team had to surface briefly to reestablish their bearings. Pressing on with only their wrist compa.s.ses to guide them, both teams had the enormous bulk of their target s.h.i.+ps loom into sight after fifteen minutes of hard swimming. They had been told to attach the limpets at least six feet below the waterline. They opted for fifteen feet to reduce the chance that they might be spotted. The mines were magnetically attached directly over welded seams, at twenty-foot intervals. Each attachment made an audible clunking sound, and this worried the divers. Once the last mine was removed from each bag, they drained all of the remaining air and let them sink down into the depths.

Swimming under the keels of the s.h.i.+ps, the two teams set their compa.s.ses for due north. They checked their compa.s.ses and wrist.w.a.tches regularly. They were still anxious and going through their air supply quickly.

Two of their air tanks ran low when they were still two hundred yards from sh.o.r.e, so two of the divers had to clip into octopus rigs and share air, swimming side by side. Then they all ran low and one tank ran out completely. Their only option was to begin porpoising, surfacing once every twenty feet to breathe through their snorkels for the final eighty yards of their swim. They all reached the sh.o.r.e within seconds of each other and checked their watches.

There were still eleven minutes until the fireworks. Transitioning to just their cold-water neoprene booties, they rapidly walked uphill toward their planned rendezvous point, a location that was memorized but intentionally left unmarked on their maps.

Thirty seconds before the scheduled detonation they began to quietly but gleefully count down out loud in unison as they walked. At ten seconds before the detonation, they stopped at a clearing in the trees and looked back toward the bay. They sat down side by side and continued counting down, in their quiet chant. Right on schedule, they saw white gouts of foam jumping up the far sides of both s.h.i.+ps. A few seconds later, they heard the dull thud of the simultaneous explosions. They sat, enthralled. They cupped their hands over their eyebrows, watching for signs of distress from the s.h.i.+ps. Faintly, they heard some sort of klaxon. After two minutes, both s.h.i.+ps had perceptibly begun to list on the sides where the limpets had been attached. And after five minutes, the s.h.i.+ps were both listing at least forty degrees. Tony-their leader-said dryly, "They're done. Let's go." They resumed their hike, feeling invigorated. One of their local resistance contacts was waiting for them at the rendezvous point.

The four divers were all given the boots and bundles of clothes that had been handed off the day before. Their air tanks, regulators, masks, fins, weight belts, and other gear were buried in a large hole that their contact had dug earlier in the day. As they were refilling the hole, the four men downed Endurox liquid meal supplements-the same drink that they used after Ironman races. They had been saving their last few of these for a physically challenging day like this. Tony raised his in a toast and said, in a fake heavy French accent, "Vive la resistance!" and they all laughed.

They had timed their detonators for 9:45 P.M., just as the ferry was scheduled to depart, so that there would be no doubt that both s.h.i.+ps would still be in deep water. The limpets were state of the art, from U.S. Navy UDT war reserve stocks, smuggled into Vancouver nearly a year in advance. The plastic-cased platter-shaped devices weighed seven pounds each and contained four and a half pounds of RDX explosive. (The magnets used for attachment took up most of the rest of their weight.) Their digital timers could be set to detonate up to 999 hours in advance.

When the limpets had first arrived, the logistics cell commander had questioned their potential use before setting them aside for terrestrial sabotage. But quite soon, they realized their intended maritime purpose. The limpet mines were smuggled to Bella Coola on a succession of fis.h.i.+ng boat transits.

The team of divers was shuttled up to Bella Coola only forty-eight hours after intelligence of the planned RO-RO s.h.i.+p diversion was received. Their 620-mile drive took just over thirteen hours. The four men and all of their diving gear were crammed into an aging Dodge camper van. Their cover story was that they intended to conduct a series of hydropower dam inspection dives. Otherwise they had no justifiable excuse for the length of their journey or the presence of their dive gear. The only guns that they carried were two revolvers, both hidden behind a panel in the van. Luckily they encountered only one UNPROFOR roadblock, where they were simply waved through.

Their dive was carefully timed to coincide with the outgoing tide on their approach to the s.h.i.+ps, twenty minutes of slack tide for their close approach and attaching the mines, and then the incoming tide to hasten their swim to sh.o.r.e.

After the sinking of the two s.h.i.+ps, the four-man diving team had to go into hiding and wait two weeks before making their journey home to Vancouver. With dozens of roadblocks set up in the region, they had to make arrangements to get back to Vancouver by sea. This required the cooperation of five fis.h.i.+ng boat skippers, who pa.s.sed them "down the chain" to Campbell River, and finally Vancouver. In the aftermath, a rumor circulated that it was an American SEAL team that had sunk the s.h.i.+ps.

After the sinking of the RO-RO s.h.i.+ps, the occupation forces viciously clamped down on British Columbia. More checkpoints were established, and raids on suspected resistance safe houses increased. Most of these were the homes of innocent civilians with no connection to the resistance. Brutal acts of reprisal were carried out. Anyone who was a known scuba diver had his home searched, and dozens were arrested, interrogated, and even tortured.

The greatest fear of the resistance was the French helicopters. When paired with pa.s.sive forward-looking infrared (FLIR) technology, they provided a formidable guerilla-hunting platform.

Whenever helicopters were heard, resistance fighters would quickly head under a tree canopy cover and don homemade equivalents of Raven Aerostar Nemesis suits. The Nemesis overgarments-nicknamed "Turkey Suits"-included a jacket, pants, hood, and face s.h.i.+eld, all made with Mylar underneath uneven layers of fabric. The suits mimicked foliage and blocked the transmission of infrared heat signatures. (Emissivity is the value given to materials based on the ratio of heat emitted compared to a blackbody, on a scale from zero to one. A blackbody would have an emissivity of one and a perfect reflector would have a value of zero. Reflectivity is inversely related to emissivity and when added together their total should equal one for an opaque material.) The IR emissivity of Nemesis suits was between .80 and .82, which was close to that of vegetation, whereas human skin had an emissivity of .97, which was just below asphalt at .98.

The fighters who lacked Nemesis suits would cover themselves with heavy-duty olive-green s.p.a.ce blankets, supplemented by a top layer of untreated green or brown cotton fabric. (Cotton, as a plant fiber, did a good job of mimicking vegetation.) When constructed, these blankets had all of their edges altered by tr.i.m.m.i.n.g or by tucking and st.i.tching, so that they did not present any straight lines or ninety-degree corners against the natural background.

Just by themselves, the cotton-covered commercial s.p.a.ce blankets-which were silver Mylar on the inside and olive-green plastic on the outside-did a fair job of obscuring IR signatures. Without a distinctive human form, the covered resistance fighters would be invisible for the first twenty minutes. Then, as spots on the s.p.a.ce blanket eventually warmed with the transmission of body heat, they would look like indistinct blobs that could not be distinguished from the heat signatures of wild game and range cattle. But if someone wrapped himself tightly in a s.p.a.ce blanket, then a FLIR could detect a distinctive human outline in less than an hour. Eventually the NLR fighters learned to position branches to create an air s.p.a.ce between their bodies and the blankets, so that the blankets would not be warmed above the ambient air temperature. (FLIRs could distinguish temperature differences as small as one-half of one degree.) The other trick that they learned was to curl up into the fetal position, so that the distinctive outlines of their arms and legs were not obvious. One two-man sniper team even tried getting on their hands and knees whenever they heard a helicopter, hoping to resemble the heat signatures of bears. The resistance fighters appreciated the fact that there were so many wild game animals and so many cattle in British Columbia, providing a wealth of false targets for the FLIRs.

Bare faces and hands (with high IR emissivity) were a no-no. Gloves and face masks made of untreated cotton in earth-tone colors were de rigueur. (Since camouflage face paint had about the same emissivity as bare skin, it was ineffective in s.h.i.+elding from FLIRs.) The same rule applied for uncovered rifle barrels, plastic b.u.t.tstocks, and handguards. These were all wrapped in two layers of earthy-tone burlap. Overcoming active IR was much more difficult than overcoming pa.s.sive IR. Fortunately, few UNPROFOR soldiers used IR pointers or searchlights. Resistance units learned that standard cotton camouflage military uniforms (such as BDUs and Canadian DPMs) did not reflect much IR from an active source, but once they had been washed with modern detergents or starched, they became veritable IR beacons. The detergents with "brighteners" were the worst offenders, since they also gave cloth infrared brightness.

Preoperational IR clothing checks became part of the "inspections and rehearsals" SOP for resistance field units, both day and night. The fighters would first be observed with a starlight scope and given three "right face" commands. This was then repeated with the scope's IR spotlight turned on, and they would be "painted" up and down by the IR spotlight. Any clothing that failed the IR reflectivity test had to be discarded and put in a designated "decoy" duffel bag.

The overly IR-reflective clothes and hats from the decoy bag were later used to create fake resistance encampments, intended to lure UNPROFOR ground units and aircraft. "Scarecrows" constructed of branches wearing the reflective clothes were either p.r.o.ned out or stood up. Plastic milk jugs (with about the same IR emissivity as human skin) took the place of heads, and rubber examination gloves filled with soil stood in for hands. The scarecrows were topped with boonie hats or pile caps that had been washed in brightening detergent. When seen at a distance from a helicopter, the scarecrows were surprisingly effective, prompting the UNPROFOR helicopter crews to waste many thousands of rounds from their machine guns. They even credited one or more "confirmed kills" in some of these incidents. The ALAT was notorious for failing to follow up with ground action after aerial attacks.

The French made most of their Reconnaissance et Interdiction (REI) flights using their pair of Gazelles. These flights used a crew of three: pilot, copilot, and door gunner. They also could carry two "dismounts." Typically these would be a FN-MAG machine gunner and a sniper. They preferred to have the Gazelles operate as a pair for maximum effectiveness.

Following the loss of most of their APCs and trucks in the sinking of MN Toucan and MN Colibri, UNPROFOR systematically requisitioned civilian and corporately owned pickup trucks in British Columbia. Using Ministry of Transportation vehicle licensing abstracts, they searched for heavy-duty Ford and GMC pickups that were less than four years old and that were painted green or brown. Composite teams of RCMP officers and French Marines were sent to the registered addresses, carrying seizure paperwork printed in both French and English, and stacks of newly printed Canadian Provisional Government currency. Curiously, owners with French surnames never had their pickups requisitioned. These forays were more successful than their aborted attempts to disarm registered gun owners.

Owners of the pickups were forced at gunpoint to sign "voluntary" t.i.tle release agreements and to sign receipts for the cash that they were handed. Once the pickups were driven back to the garrisons, they were spray-painted in flat camouflage patterns, and twelve-inch-tall "UN" stencils were applied to the doors, hoods, and tailgates in light blue paint.

The new war of resistance in Canada had some interesting aspects stemming from the U.S. border. In the early stages of the guerrilla war, American citizens were busy with a war of their own. After the corrupt U.S. ProvGov led by Maynard Hutchings and his cronies at Fort Knox, Kentucky, was overthrown, however, attention to the situation in Canada reached prominence. Inevitably, small arms, ammunition, and explosives began to cross the border, starting as a trickle, but eventually becoming a torrent. The Canadian Border Logistics and Training Volunteers (CBLTV) network sprang up and grew rapidly. The group, whose acronym was half-jokingly spoken as "cable TV," included thousands of U.S. citizens in border states and beyond.

The flow of arms to the resistance in Canada from the CBLTV did not go unnoticed. The Menard government publicly chastised it as "the fiendish work of the CIA" when in fact nearly all of the materiel was donated and transported by private individuals. LGP soon announced a Land Purchase Plan for all privately held or tribally held land within ten kilometers of the U.S. border. This program was mandatory, and the forced resettlement all took place in a ninety-day span, starting in May. The only exception was incorporated areas, where towns and cities were in close proximity to the border.

This cordon sanitaire, also known as une zone totalement depeuplee-was a ten-kilometer-wide strip that would be 100 percent depopulated. In this border zone UNPROFOR border guards could fire at will at anyone attempting to cross. The free-fire-zone policy was not publicly acknowledged at first, but warning signs were posted along its length, and eventually parts of it were planted with land mines, which killed deer with alarming regularity.

32.

PUMAS AND GAZELLES.

At the beginning of a 4th Generation civil war, everybody starts with a finite amount of ammunition. The ones who never run out are those who make every round count and thus are able to forage out the ammo pouches of the dead men who didn't. That's why marksmans.h.i.+p training matters.

-Mike Vanderboegh, Sipsey Street Irregulars blog Williams Lake, British Columbia-August, the Third Year Phil Adams was not surprised to learn that a detachment from the Cinquieme Regiment d'Helicopteres de Combat (part of the Fourth Brigade Aeromobile, or Fourth BAM) had established a helibase at the Williams Lake airport. They had brought in two types of helicopters, Pumas and Gazelles, both manufactured by Aerospatiale.

The larger SA 330 Pumas could carry up to sixteen troops, while the SA 342 Gazelles could carry only three. Phil considered these helicopters a key threat to the resistance, one that needed to be eliminated as soon as possible.

Lazy at heart, the UNPROFOR's local command foolishly set up its three roadblocks just five kilometers out of Williams Lake and didn't have any others until just outside Bella Coola to the west, Prince George to the north, and Kamloops to the southeast.

Driving his Ford F-250 pickup with a camper sh.e.l.l, Alan McGregor was able to drop off the three-man team just two miles before the roadblock. He then continued into town to buy supplies, as he did once every two months.

Canada's infrastructure had fared better than that in the United States, in part because the power grid was predominantly powered by hydroelectric power. There was still grid power up in much of Canada. Some stores were still open, but it was a scramble to find anything to buy. Alan and Claire were often disappointed on these trips. It wasn't until they learned to bring butchered sides of beef with them in their pickup that they got fully in tune with the barter networks in Bella Coola and Williams Lake.

The three raiders-Phil, Ray, and Stan-had opted to travel lightly armed, for the sake of speed on their planned exfiltration. Phil carried his M4gery with four extra magazines; Ray had his Inglis Hi-Power pistol with stock/holster and five extra magazines. Stan had a Ruger Mini-14 with four magazines. Stan and Phil also both carried .22 pistols in their packs. All three of their backpacks were bulging with gla.s.s cider jugs filled with napalm and padded with quilted poncho liners and their Nemesis suits. Each pack weighed nearly sixty pounds.