Globall War of Terror - Jungo

Globall War of Terror - Jungo

Most of the convoy being oblivious to most of the massacre we had driven past, we were now headed on the playa towards Jungo Road.

About half the route was a fairly well maintained mining road until about a decade ago. The other half had never properly been maintained.

This was one of the scenarios for which I had insisted that each vehicle be equipped with (or loaded on the flatbed) at least three (3) spare tires. This meant a small stack of tires chained down with recovery chain over the flatbed hitch.

Normal vehicles and drivers were advised to avoid Jungo Road due to the difficulties of getting a tow truck, lack of cell coverage, and large rocks that would cut open the sidewalls of tires.

Jungo Road is in fact a normal, humdrum road for the vast majority of the world. It's a route. Not paved. Rarely graveled. Sometimes with proper drainage, more likely not. If it had not been early summer, muddy patches ... but if one worked at it, you could find mud on the shoulders and get so stuck only a tow truck could get you out.

We brought our own tow truck, didn't want to communicate with anyone else, and all of our drivers had a crash course (in virtual reality) in off road driving techniques. So Jungo Road was perfect for us.

I kept telling myself that when the shuttle bus threw her first flat. Of course it was an inside rear tire. Buddy had a great sense of humor about it as he pumped the handle of the industrial jack, supervised the blocking off of the opposite tires, used plywood and cribbing to support the rear axle, took off both tires, replaced the inner one, and reversed the process.

Our passengers were not so understanding. But they weren't going to wander off in the midst of what looked like moon rocks. And if they did, I would leave them behind to die of thirst. They knew this because I told them so.

This was a good spot to throw away the fragments of the destroyed satellite phone. I kept the battery for reasons.

An hour later we got going on the road again ... and promptly the barracks van threw a flat too. That was faster, a half hour job. Buddy didn't do that one, the guards did.

Half an hour after that, we reached a spot with a yellow diamond sign with one word on it.

"DIP."

The "DIP" was a sixty foot wide washed out gully with collapsed earth on either side. Buddy stopped short. He got out and walked it. This is actually the most important technique in crossing rough terrain -- walk it before you drive it.

He shook his head.

"Boss, I'm torn. If I power through with the flatbed and get stuck, we are totally fucked with no way to unfuck ourselves. It will also be hard on the mothers and patients even if I don't get stuck. If we unload the flatbed, I'll make it easy. But we will run out of light and either re-load with lights or wait for dawn."

That was easy. Suckage, but easy.

"Order of fires. Unload the flatbed. Pull through to the next wide point. Uncouple from the flatbed trailer. Each vehicle attempts the gully in number of passengers order - empty. Passengers walk, infants and patients are carried. Use the recovery truck as needed. Reassemble at the forward wide point."

Buddy nodded and started working the problem.

Meanwhile I started deploying our personnel.

"Brooke, you have rear security. Take two able bodied men with shovels. Dig yourself a fighting position off the road to cover our rear. Take grenades and adequate ammo, also water and a tarp. You may not arm your assistants. Once you're dug in, radio me on low power and I'll send a guard to escort them back to us.

"Matt, you get front recon. Take a bicycle, water and a tarp. Two radio batteries and binoculars. Go forward. Radio me on low power until you are just barely in range. Pick out a wide spot for Buddy if you get the chance. Then set up an observation post off the road and get comfortable.

"Doug, take the monitors with you through the obstacle. Designate a meetup spot on the far side, well out of the way of any vehicles that come roaring through. Bring the monitors back, walk the passengers through in groups of twenty. They can carry what they want to carry but they will be stuck carrying it. No going back and forth to the vehicles. We don't plan to be here long but shit happens.

"[Firefighter], when the third group of passengers through, send one medic and one patient. Repeat twice more. Then space out the mothers and kids.

"Just in case let's have the passengers carry about .... forty gallons of water with them. Each group can take ... 5 gallons.

"Emergency Action Plan. If we come under air observation, everyone freeze. If we are approached from front or rear, passengers scatter into the rocks. We defend as needed, final defensive position is a cross-cross using the walls of the gully. No break contact plan until the convoy is reassembled."

The rest was details, but finicky details. Buddy revved up and hit his horn twice. Going for it. He backed up and proceeded at a comfortable speed.

Half of skill is knowing what you're good at. The other half is judgment. He hit downward slope at twenty five miles per hour, shot across the dry hard creek bed, and the recovery truck's momentum slammed it through the resulting geyser of mud on the upward slope. He carefully did not apply power until all his tires had purchase, then applied maximum torque, dragging the flatbed up and over.

The recovery truck stopped; I could not see but I could hear from the engine sound change. It briefly BEEP BEEPed from a slight reverse. A door opening, metallic CHUNK CHUNK sounds for a few moments, door slamming, and another engine rev. Then engine off. Uncoupled the flatbed.

Meanwhile I was inspecting the gully slope. The heavy truck had furrowed deep ruts about eighteen inches deep in the mud.

The vans were not going to be doing this slope without assistance.

But next up was the interstate bus. Buddy would be driving it again.

Two groups of passengers slogged up the slope.

Buddy backed up the passenger bus for its - empty - run across the gully.

Then all of us heard the recovery truck's engine start as Matt radioed urgently, "Someone is stealing the truck!"

I ran up the gully slope, unencumbered and cursing that I was not carrying a rifle. But I had to see to give orders.

Buddy was in the bus, he couldn't see either. I keyed up as I ran.

"Buddy! Is the truck kill switched?!? Yes or no!?!"

He heard the urgency in my voice and replied at once.

"Yes to kill switch. Fuel pump kill switch. Switch is on repeat on. Truck will disable, repeat kill switch is on and will disable."

"Matt check fire copy back!"

"Copy check fire."

As I made it up the gully slope I could see the truck start to disappear in the distance and engine start struggling.

"Out of the way! Van coming through!" I heard on radio.

I dodged sideways as the barracks van flew down the slope, shot across the gully, and up and through the upslope at a good forty miles per hour.

It did not stop for shit. It pulled ahead of the truck as it came to a shuddering halt.

I could visualize the scene but I could not see it.

"DRIVER! GET OUT OF THE TRUCK OR WE SHOOT YOU! HANDS UP, TURN AWAY FROM ME! LIE DOWN ON THE GROUND NOW! NOW MOTHERFUCKER NOW! HANDS AWAY FROM YOUR BODY!"

The ambulance - empty of patients I hoped! - tried to make the run at only thirty and, although it struggled mightily, became stuck just short of the top.

This was OK, we had chain and straps and come-along jacks and winches.

Buddy came jogging across. He and I followed our wayward truck on foot.

We came up to a guard standing with his rifle leveled. He was still shouting at about forty people all lying on the ground, terrified. He moved in a careful circling motion, verbally abusing the people he was protecting.

"Perimeter Raid! Lie down, eyes down, hands on top of your heads! Stay the fuck down! Do NOT move! I said Perimeter Raid you dumb asshole! Close your fucking eyes or I shoot you! Stay down!"

He was demonstrating a piece of training I hoped that my guards would never have to use. A man with a semiautomatic weapon controlling a crowd of unarmed people.

Of course, I'd taught that course with the opposite situation in mind - that the crowd would properly recognize an immediate threat to their lives and take the losses to beat the man to death with their fists and his own rifle, minus the first six to eight people who would be shot rushing him.

"I got this, sir!" he shouted as we jogged past. It took us a few minutes to get to the truck, door still open, barracks van, door open.

One guard continued pointing the barrel of his rifle at the back of the thief's head. The other guard had already zip tied his wrists behind his back and ankles together and rolled him on his side to prevent positional asphyxia.

"No weapons," he reported to me as I came up. Buddy's attention was all on his truck. He did a quick inventory of the contents. All good.

"Any comms?"

"No."

"Stand him up."

They did.

"What were you thinking?" I screamed at him.

Now that he was covered in dust above the waist, and mud below, he realized that he had deeply fucked up.

If he had succeeded in stealing the truck, he would have doomed everyone else, except the handful we could carry in the barracks van and the ambulance, to certain death for lack of water.

Buddy hadn't thought to lock the truck and I hadn't thought to guard it. Only the normal industry precautions of a tow truck operator had saved all those lives.

But the thief would have lived. And that was clearly all that was important to him.

As convoy captain, this was my decision. I knew my crew would back any decision I made. I knew we could continue to control the refugees as well.

I holstered my pistol.

"Load him in the back of the van. Let's get back to it."

It was the work of a moment for the recovery truck to free the ambulance.

The bus did get stuck, even with Buddy driving - but after Buddy set up the winch, he asked me to take the winch controller while he got back behind the wheel. I took up pressure and he slowly applied the gas ... rocking ... freed up, and gently brought the bus up to hard ground.

This much we could do with the built-in lights on the recovery truck.

Then the Godforsaken shuttle bus threw a second flat, this time a front tire, just after we winched it up the slope of the gully. Buddy dragged it clear.

Meanwhile, the passengers were sitting on the opposite shoulder in clumps with their own elected monitors walking among them carrying shovels and tire irons. Four guards took each of the corners facing inward, with rifles. And one grenade each.

The would be truck thief was in the center of it all. And the reason for it.

The scene was lit by several area lights, and two bags of flares were handy for emergencies. I really hated to burn the batteries but this situation needed controlling.

There were no kill switches on the barracks or nursery van. There was a kill switch on the ambulance, but only because it had been my personal van. I showed the crew where it was. The bus and shuttle bus had ordinary commercial air brakes, but no kill switches.

So there would be no unescorted access to vehicles and keys would stay in the pockets of armed guards. Buddy took his holster out of his belt interior and was now openly wearing his Colt .45 pistol.

Muddy, tired, after midnight, but all alive and unhurt, all vehicles were on the correct side of the wash, at the cost of two shuttle bus tires, a lot of sweat, and a total absence of trust in the people we were trying to save,

I walked over to them.

"Mic Check. This man tried to steal the main tow vehicle. If he had succeeded ..." I outlined the scenario. That we might have been able to shuttle people to the nearest water source, but there we would all be stuck ... if we didn't run out of gas going back and forth before we saved everyone. That when he was caught with his stolen truck he would be a red arrow pointing right back to us.

"It is up to you, both as individuals and as a group, to keep anything like this from happening again. I will tell you right now, if this were a Homeland convoy my answer would be very simple. Shoot him, shoot ten of you at random, tell the survivors to be more attentive to each other. But that's the entire point! We are trying to get you _out_ of that situation!

"I can't tell you where we are going because of exactly this - that if I tell all of you, and one of you decides to fantasize that he can save his worthless life by damning all of the rest of us, he just needs to make a brief phone call to Homeland. It won't work - they'll clamp his nuts and cut out his fingernails just like everyone else - but we'll all still be just as dead! Or wishing we were.

"Your elected monitors are now armed with tools. I would issue them firearms but Federal law prevents that. I am now authorizing them to use force if this happens again .... up to _and including_ deadly force!

"I am again in the disgusting situation of being forced to pass judgment on a worthless criminal's actions. But he is not _my_ criminal. He is _your_ criminal. Talk among yourselves, talk to your monitors. Then they will come to me with your recommendation and I will consider it. If you recommend mercy, I will consider it. If you recommend no mercy, I will consider it. Have a taste of the decisions we have been making for you.

"Clean up and mount up. Last bathroom break, in groups of five guarded by a monitor and an armed guard."

Off to the side, the mothers and small children and patients had heard what I had said. They had been on the other side of the gully when everything turned to shit. It was not their fault. But they were embarrassed.

At long last we were all mounted up. I recalled Brooke and Matt and we headed out.

Eight miles later.

"DIP."

Oh, how I would come to hate that word.

Most were passable without stopping, although we had to slow and sometimes walk the area. Twice we popped tires in motion - one on the bus (ugh) and one on the nursery van, as we hadn't reloaded the flatbed. But we made short work of the tire changes.

Only one more time did we have to break bulk and get the vehicles through individually and empty of passengers.

GLONASS and odometer confirmed that by dawn we had made it thirty miles down the Jungo trail and were perhaps fifteen miles short of the old mine entrance.

I called a halt. I called the monitors together.

"We don't have time for a trial. But I'm using you as the jury. What do we do with him?"

Two felt we should kill him. One felt we should cut off his dominant hand. The others were willing to carry him to our destination but never wanted to see him again after that.

"I will keep him alive for future judgment as long as he does not pose another risk to us. Those of you who want him alive, guard him well. Spread the word."

I then explained the importance of the count and reinforced that we all had to stay together as a body, that stragglers could endanger us all as soon as they ran into someone else or found a means of communication.

Then we rigged tarps, set up overwatch, and took turns sleeping through the heat of the day - hungry, tired, dusty and upset.

But alive.