Dan and the Bottle Ch. 24

He left out the minor detail that he was one of those guys. He didn't want to sound like he was bragging. He was, in fact, a member of the 'mile and a half' club. He'd killed a number of Chinese Officers over the past ten years, usually at ranges between seventeen hundred and twenty one hundred yards.

He looked over the class, noting that he had their full attention. The distances he was talking about must have seemed insane to most of them.

"This is the military version... the proper designation is M1907A1. It is a magazine fed bolt action with a capacity of ten rounds... eleven if you have one in the chamber. Some of the best among us can fire each round at a different target and empty the magazine in half a minute....or less."

He started them off, that day, teaching ballistic math. After a half day studying bullet drop and wind drift, and after lunch, he took them down to the range, where they saw that the shooting lanes had each been set up with a shooting chronometer. They eyed the devices curiously, noting that not only was there a digital readout attached to each one; all were plugged in to laptop computers.

"As you can see, we're going to find out just how fast your rifles shoot. It is Imperative that you know the exact muzzle velocity of your particular rifle. If you don't know your muzzle velocity, all of your calculations will be off... and you will miss." McCrosky concluded, a grim look on his face.

Today, he was having them shoot their weapons of choice. He noted that most of the women opted for lighter rifles; .220 Swifts, .223s, and .270 Remingtons. The men, for the most part, went with heavier calibers.... the .308s, .30-06s, and, in one case, a .460 Weatherby Magnum.

"Boy, don't that thing make a mess of your shoulder?"

"I've been shooting this since I was fifteen, Sir. I'm comfortable with it."

"What's in the other case?" McCrosky asked, noting the second rifle case underneath the open one.

"That's my other favorite, Sir..... Winchester .45/70."

The Militia instructor nodded to the young man, then moved to the next young person, a young woman who looked to be about fifteen. As he walked up, he was muttering to himself about kids and their cannons.

McCrosky smiled inwardly.... this was exactly why he'd told them to bring their everyday shooters with them. He wanted them to use something they were already familiar with. He had each one fire twenty rounds, writing down the muzzle velocity of each round, getting a good average for each of their weapons.

This class would continue, three days a week, for the next six weeks, but in the end, twenty new snipers joined the ranks of the Rocky Mountain Minutemen.... each one certified out to at least five hundred yards.

In northern California, Don Anderson was going over the weekly report; new inventory, both from other military bases and the old storage lockers they'd opened up. New recruits, and the class currently in basic. Towns and villages that had joined their cause, and what they traded for, and how many people each had sent to Klamath for training. What fields were growing what, and which ones were laying fallow.

The main reports, though, were scouting reports on different Chinese bases and camps around the territory they occupied.

This week, there were three, all to the south of Klamath base; the nearest was well over forty miles away, but it was big.... and growing bigger. Worse, each one was no more than thirty miles from the other two, well within reinforcement range. From the report, he learned that the closest of these housed at least four thousand fighting men.

And Klamath barely had seventeen hundred.

One of the scouting teams had whittled away part of that advantage, mining the road just out of sight of the main gates with a mix of Bouncing Bettys, Claymores, and several heavy anti tank mines.

Then they made their way back to the camp and, in a synchronized shot, had taken out every guard they could see, the guard dogs, and anyone else they saw walking outside... and nobody heard or saw a thing.

The team Sergaent, Carl Wagner, reported thirty one Chinese bodies left behind, and God only knows how many taken out by the mines hidden along the only road going into the camp. Don read the last paragraph with a fair amount of humor.

'Private Willard ran off on his own at one point, just took off running. Came back thirty minutes later hauling a dead deer. Said we couldn't have a successful raid like that without a feast afterward.'

Don smiled a bit at this. That explained the donation of fifty pounds of venison to the food bank. Word would spread about turning the march back into an impromptu hunting trip, which would be copied many times from that point on. Some of the men took to carrying a silenced .22 caliber semi-automatic pistol in a second holster, using it on the way back to pick off a few rabbits and other small game, which was plentiful in the area.

Others went in the opposite direction, taking along high caliber rifles with ten or twenty rounds, calling it their 'backup' piece. One squad used one of these to bring in a seventeen hundred pound buffalo. It took the entire ten man squad to carry the pieces of the butchered and skinned animal back to the base.

The local patrols picked up on the practice, to the point that the food bank had no more room for it in their freezers. Don made a note to inform the next storage digging crew to keep their eyes open for a few new freezers, and to spread the word that after-patrol hunting was being discouraged for the moment, so as not to waste any meat.

Of course, a few guys ignored this; they just took the meat home with them. They had freezers, too, after all. One thing was certain.... nobody at Klamath base was going to go hungry anytime soon.

Word of this soon spread to the Militia outpost to the north of Klamath, and then to every Militia posting in the territory, with predictable results. Soon enough, base grocery stores were pricing venison lower than beef, and rabbit went for even less.... a boon to a few people with large families and not quite enough income.

Mike O'Connell, down in Texas, was meeting with some of his neighbors over beer and barbecue, to discuss what to do about the Cubans, who were now setting up small encampments to the south, east, and south west of their cluster of ranches and farms.

"Well, I'm not sure there's much we can do, right now, boys... the smallest of those three holds about two hundred men. We've got, what? Eighty men? Tops?"

Marsh Johnson, their intelligence officer, nodded. "Eighty-three, actually. Not near enough to go toe to toe with them bastards. We need to go guerilla on these guys. Send out a small team, no more than ten men, guys who can get close to one of these camps without setting off any alarms. They can find someplace well concealed to shoot from, silenced rifles, of course, wait until right after the guards are changed, each of our people take out a couple or three guards, then fade back into the woodwork and wait three, maybe four days before showing up again and doing the same thing."

Mike frowned a bit at this and shook his head. "Better idea.... on the return trip, have the guys take along some heavier stuff. Dynamite, grenades, a few of those grenade launchers with plenty of shells, maybe a bunch of small blocks of that C-4 with a remote detonater. If they can get close enough, stash four or five of those among the fuel barrels, maybe attach one to a couple of legs of the water tower, or, better yet, a few of those guard towers...... back off to the cover of the woods and set it all off at once."

"I like it....kill a few dozen at a time, give 'em a day or two to settle down, then hit again, harder."



"Make it a week..... maybe ten days. Let 'em think it was a one time thing and go back to dozing.... then go back and fuck up their whole day. Wait a month or so, then go back and mine the road they go in and out on. Anti-tank, anti-personnel, bouncing betties, claymores, anything you can come up with."

Johnson nodded. "I'll start picking the team members for phase one right now...but I think we should reverse the order, there. Send in the explosives guys first time, utterly trash the place while they're still complacent, then go back in a week or two with a dozen sniper teams. Maybe have them mine the road, like you said, but do it just before they start shooting the guards and stragglers. The next morning, they find the bodies, come boiling out and run right in to the minefield."

"Perfect. Get the wheels turning. You have everything you need?"

Marsh nodded. "Give me a week, so the teams can memorize the surveillance photos, get their targets figured out, choose their equipment. There needs to be a chance to kinda.... fine tune it, ahead of time. Set off everything at once, they'll think Ol' Scratch himself has come by for a visit." The old man smiled, an utterly evil, predatory grin.



Hector set the rifle aside after dropping out the empty magazine and confirming that the chamber was clear. Turning to his instructor he said "Finished, Sir"

After using the 'clothesline' to bring the target back for inspection, seeing that twenty of the thirty rounds fired had hit in either crippling or killing spots. "Not bad, Hector, but there's room for improvement."

"Si, Senor.... I try, but sometimes it just seems impossible."

"Nothing is impossible with enough practice, my friend. I've been shooting a rifle for thirty years. Here, let me show you what you can do with a lot of practice. Hand me your rifle and a full magazine."

He hung up a fresh target out to the fifty yard range, which Hector had been practicing at. What followed was too quick for the old farmer to follow.

Sergaent Willis set the carbine to 'three round burst' and started shooting. Two bursts took out the eyes, another set squarely between them. Another burst hit in the chest, a fraction left of center. Another burst went into each shoulder, then each kneecap. Two bursts went into the stomach area, and the last three rounds added insult to injury, landing in what was clearly the groin area.

Hector looked on, stunned, as his instructor proceeded to shred the target.... and did it all in less than a minute.

"Senor, do you really think I could get that good?"

Willis clapped him on the shoulder and nodded. "Yes, my friend... you will have to practice a lot, but you could be that good. You have a lot of potential, but you just haven't had the time.... or the ammo, for that matter... to tap that potential. We're going to change that."

Far to the northeast, in central Maine, Thomas Densmore was busy drilling his troops again, marching them in a wide circle just inside the curtain wall, building up their endurance. They'd started out, two months ago, barely able to manage one circuit around the wall, which he figured was about three miles, total.... he now had them up to six times around, and wouldn't stop until they were doing a full ten.... then they could start working on speed.

After they were finished walking the wall, it was off to the training yard, for half an hour of push-ups and sit-ups, building up their upper body strength, then an hour of sword practice and another hour with bows and crossbows at the target range. By the end of the day, many of them were complaining about sore muscles and exhaustion.... but he refused to let up.

He didn't realize he was being watched.

The king watched as Thomas ran his men through their paces, nodding approvingly as the young sergaent shifted them from swordplay to archery. This group would make a fine addition to his army. Having seen enough, he sent a page to the master-at-arms.

Master-at-arms Gregory Ford made his way to the king's offices, wondering what he had done to warrant such a summons. Before long, he was standing before his king.

"You sent for me, Milord?"

"Ah, Gregory. I called you here to ask your opinion of young Sergaent Densmore."

"A good man, Milord, though a bit zealous in his methods. His training platoon is head and shoulders above the rest of the men currently in training... including my own, oddly enough... though his men aren't very happy about it."

At the king's raised eyebrow, he continued. "Three of his men came to me last week, begging to be transferred to Sergaent Sanders' training platoon. I denied them, of course, told them they were lucky to have him.... he is preparing them to survive battles, and to win. Sanders, by comparison.... well, if we went into battle tomorrow, I doubt those men would last very long."

He gave a cold smile and concluded. "I also told them if they continued to whine about it, I would have them horsewhipped."

The king smiled at this. "Sounds like you need to.... what is the old expression? Ah, yes.... 'step up your game' a bit."

"I already have, milord. Though I've a bit of catching up to do." The sergaent at arms replied with a rueful grin.

While these two notables were discussing Thomas, he was also being watched from a different angle. The lady Anne looked down upon him from a room high in the north tower.

She was still trying to come up with a good reason to summon him to her chambers. He wasn't hard to keep track of; he was the only man who trained in a mail shirt. When asked about it, he replied that he was getting his body used to the extra weight.

She wondered, idly, how he would handle her weight. Her father did his best to keep her away from the men, which meant she was always horny. It was time to have a bath with one of her maids again.

Back at the Cave, the main body of the Wyoming militia were busily training troops from all over the territory they controlled. Jim Dougherty had long since lost track of how many people he'd taught over the years, but he knew it had to be well into the hundreds. Even with all of the people they'd 'loaned out' to other bases and camps, they still had over a thousand fighters at the complex, all of them trained as snipers and scouts.... and this new class, scattered between half a dozen instructors, would add nearly three hundred to that number.

His current class was a full sixty-five people.... he normally tried to keep his class sizes under fifty, but so many were turning up to be trained, he'd been forced to compromise.

He refused to compromise his methods, though.... His classes still lasted two months; one month in the classroom, learning to calculate different shots, from fifty to over five hundred yards out, with the second month spent at the target range, learning to shoot a variety of rifles and pistols at varying distances. The big Barretts were particularly popular.

Most of this class wouldn't be here for very long, of course.... a good number of them would go back to their small towns and villages to serve as 'force multipliers'... teaching their neighbors what they had learned.

Kip Mitchell wasn't a fighter or scout. He was a mechanic, and a lot of his time was tied up in finding old pickups and SUVs to rebuild. giving them to the new trainees when they completed their training, so they could take small truckloads of weapons and ammunition, among other things, back to their homes, then use the trucks for trading with the other small towns in their areas.

He was currently about forty miles out from the Cave, digging through old garages and barns for salvagable vehicles. So far, today, he'd found three.... a Ford F-250 and two Dodge Rams. Marking the last one on his GPS, he turned and headed for home, the old Ford secured to the flatbed he was driving. He figured the three old trucks would keep himself and his team busy for a good six to eight weeks each.

He was within five miles of his underground home when they hit.

The road ahead was blocked by several old junkers, parked nose-to-nose so they blocked the road from shoulder to shoulder. Armed men stood behind them, holding a variety of pistols and rifles.

He grabbed for the mic for his radio and called out to the Cave, getting an immediate answer, while Bruce Lockley, his helper, reached behind the seat, grabbing for his rifle and his pistol belt.

He described the situation quickly, and was told to stand by... help would be there in minutes. Several choppers were currently out patrolling anyway.

Getting out of the truck with rifle in hand, he shouted "You men have two minutes to clear the road!"

One of them gave a bark of laughter. "Maybe you can't count, boy! We got you outgunned!"

The timing was perfect; the Apache came in low, flying just above the treetops, and stopped, hovering ninety feet in the air, about a hundred and twenty yards away.

"Fool, we're the Wyoming Militia.... and we're NEVER outgunned! Now clear the fuckin' road or our friends up there will do it for you!"

Wayne Williams looked at the big, heavily armed and armored chopper in utter horror, nearly pissing his filthy pants. He'd heard that this area was under the control of some sort of military force, before coming down here from Canada, but had scoffed at the very idea. Now he was finding out how very wrong he'd been.

"Oh, Shit! Clear the road! "

The would-be highwaymen jumped to push the two old cars out of the way, but they were already too late. The pilot of the Apache had already decided to do it for them.

The Maverick missile impacted the old Plymouth on one side of the roadblock, blowing the two cars apart like toys, and turning the six men behind them into greasy stains on the old, cracked pavement.

Kip smiled and thumbed the mic for a moment. "Now that was a waste of a perfectly good rocket!"

Carol Taft smiled into the heads up display of the pilot's helmet before replying into the built in mic.



"Yeah, but it was fun! We did leave one alive..... let that idiot run back to his buddies and let 'em know that we mean business!"

Kip smiled and decided to let it drop. It wasn't like they were running short on the rockets--they'd reverse-engineered them years ago, and were building new ones as fast as they could. Even with the two old steel mills they'd brought back into production, and the enormous number of old wrecks they were chopping up and melting down, turning them into new steel, they occasionally found themselves getting behind, but at the moment, he knew they were running a small surplus.

Of course, now they'd have to get a road repair crew out here... there was a good sized hole in the ground where a section of the road had been.



Mike O'Connell was making his way back from Marsh Johnson's place, riding a four wheeler they'd found in an old storage building a few months back. They were still in the planning stages for an assault on the next Cuban camp, and it wasn't going well; they'd already planned it out twice, and both times the Cubans took on more troops, causing them to have to re-assess their plans.

He was within a mile of his home when they hit, and he never stood a chance. The members of the Cuban patrol team shot from cover, hiding behind boulders and bushes, and Mike took four rounds in his left leg and his torso.

It would be another two hours before his ranch foreman realized that he was long overdue.

The search party found him, three hours after the shooting, barely alive and paralyzed from the waist down.... one of the AK-47 rounds had clipped his spinal cord just above the hips.

The local doctor was called, of course, and he did all he could, removing the bullets, sewing up the wounds, giving him shots of locally made antibiotics as close to the wounds as he dared and giving his wife several jars of a locally made antibiotic ointment and a small box of bandages and surgical tape so the wounds could be kept cleaned and covered while he healed, and instructed the ranch foreman, James Bledsoe, to find an old wheelchair for him.