GWOT Walking The Line
Dec. 10th, 2018 01:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT Walking The Line
It is the third day of our frantic perimeter construction project. I am still carrying the pump action shotgun slung across my back, in addition to my rifle. It seems prudent.
The convoy has gone out and come back twice now. Perhaps today the convoy will come back too.
I am personally inspecting the entire perimeter. The very best we can do -- adjacent to the gates -- is eight feet of chain link topped by barbed wire, with signs and an 15' area on either side cleared of shrubbery more than ankle high. Further along it is a waist high strand of barbed wire with two strands of straight (non-barbed) wire below, which any cattleman would be ashamed of. Then single wire, sometimes even old Category 3 network cable that has the singular virtue of bing blue. Further yet, it is yellow CAUTION tape strung between stakes. This is taken down and re-used as we expand. In entirely too many places it is a 3' to 10' wide patch of dirt cleared down to bare soil, the better with which to show footprints, and a sign every 50' explaining why not to trespass in words adapted to the meanest understanding. Plus a skull and crossbones.
The worse the perimeter, the more guards are required to cover it. We are short on materials, using impressed labor, and have no budget.
The alternative is unthinkable. Allowing thousands of starving, desperate people to enter our premises.
As I watch, two guards are 'supervising' a crew of fourteen Perimeter campers as they use hoes and rakes to make that bare soil. One has wooden vinter's stakes and the other has a sledge. Right now the poles stand forlornly, not yet connected.
Among the paperwork in the site Security Office I found parcel maps - the actual, legal definition of where our property stops and our neighbors begin. Just at the moment I don't really care that much, because some of it is government owned parkland, some of it is ranch land being maintained by no one (our contract rancher is dead; his son is recovering in our infirmary), and some of it is City owned.
But I still need to check the bounds and the touchy spots. This is a touchy spot, a creek bed. Existing wire fencing has been breached. I look carefully, touching the cuts with a hand. Not rusty. Recent.
I key my radio.
"I need a single REACT team to my position please," I call.
I don't add my position. Our sniper observer team on H5 has me in view. To quote a phrase, "I could smoke that bastard, but then who would pay us?"
I watch the bushes carefully. Our presence working on the fence line has disturbed birds and insects, of course, but it is still unnaturally quiet. I have that sixth sense of someone taking a bead on me.
I stroll calmly over to the one of the Perimeter workers.
"Hey, buddy, I need you to come over here and start digging a hole for me."
I pace it out - about 4' by 6' - and he nods, going to work with a will.
"How deep?"
"Deep. Foxhole," I murmur under my breath.
He digs faster.
I lay down my backpack as if I'm going to take care of a little personal business. I unsling the riot shotgun and carefully place it on the ground, action up, slowly racking the slide to chamber a round and flicking the safety off.
Then and only then do I also unsling my rifle, slowly drawing back the bolt and also flicking the safety off.
I rummage through the backpack while sitting on the edge of the knee-deep hole. I hold up a roll of white toilet paper.
Hopefully the people watching are going to make an assumption about what I'm doing. And assumption is always spelled with ass.
More importantly, I lay out four rifle magazines next to my rifle. And two dark green spheroids with large solid pull rings attached to pins.
Rummaging deeper in the backpack, I take out a packet of ten sand bags.
"Hand me the shovel. Go get a couple buddies," I direct. He does; I dig with a will, putting the spoil in front of the foxhole.
When they come back, I have them start filling sandbags as I pick up the rifle and cover the creekbed and the bushes beyond.
Now it's obvious they are digging me a fighting position. So if we have a sniper in those bushes, their moment is now.
I hear a metallic sound, a faint snick, from the bushes. I pause for a moment and key my mike again.
"Three REACT teams, Code 2," I murmur as I keep scanning. No time to get my binoculars out, not that they will help that much.
One of the guards covering the detail has noticed my unnatural alertness, and lopes over towards me.
"What's up boss?"
Pointing out what is going on to him will definitely trigger what is up.
"Have the crew break for lunch."
"Huh?"
"Have. The crew. Break. For. Fucking. Lunch."
"Sir!"
They gather up their tools, minus two shovels, and head back for the perimeter encampment with no escort. Their two guards stay with me.
The other guard has figured out what is up. He picks up a shovel, walks about fifty feet away, and hastily starts digging a shallow fighting position for himself.
The first guard looks at him, me, the remaining shovel ... and my ferocious glare. He therefore starts digging the foxhole deeper.
None of us have been in the military. But I have at least read the manuals.
I am kneeling next to my weapons, watching carefully, ready to open fire or to throw a grenade at any moment.
Over the crest of the low rise between us and the site, five Employees in jeans, response vests and carrying equipment appear. The team leader sees what we are doing and spreads out his crew at once. Only two are armed with rifles, a third with a shotgun. The team leader picks up my shotgun after getting a nod of permission.
"Bushes?" he says.
"Yup," I say without moving my lips. I can feel it, we are definitely under observation.
The remaining unarmed React employee takes over the shovel from the guard, who immediately lies down in the shallow position he has scraped out for himself, bringing his rifle up and scanning for targets. He goes over to the foxhole and jumps in, digging swiftly and economically. The other guard belatedly puts down his shovel and picks up his rifle, standing with a foxhole right next to him. Idiot.
The React team leader pushes him into the foxhole, slings the shotgun, takes a shovel, and starts digging deeper next to me. He has seen the grenades, knows what they are for, and has my shotgun.
This frees me up to do the stupid thing. To advance back to the cut wire, and without pausing in the fatal funnel move through it.
About ten feet past, I can see that the bushes conceal trash and debris, what had likely been a homeless encampment before the Firecracker. And I hear whispers.
This is technically our neighbor's land. But I am far, far past caring.
The second REACT team pauses briefly by the emergency perimeter defense, hears a few words from the first REACT team leader, and patrols right through the wire gap up to me.
I don't have my bullhorn. But my throat works just fine.
"ATTENTION! Site Security is going to sweep this area for trespassers! If you are here, call out now or run away! This is your warning! Announce yourself or we may fire without further warning!"
Silence.
So we start our sweep. My one plus the REACT team's five means three pairs. I take the most dangerous center, with a REACT member with a pistol backing me up.
About thirty feet up the stream bed, we hear rustling as people - more than one - get up and run away. We of course allow them to.
About a hundred feet in, I call a halt with a raised hand. The REACT members kneel, holding what they've got.
Our sweep has shown that we are under observation.
I key my radio.
"Echo 18, I need three Perimeter crews with tools as soon as they can be made available."
I leave the REACT team in place and casually walk back to the perimeter. There is a knee-deep fighting position and a nice deep foxhole now. I recover and pocket my grenades, and huddle up with the first REACT team leader.
"We need to trim as much of those bushes and shit as we can beyond the wire. The debris needs to be carried back here and laid out on our side. We have between now and nightfall. As soon as we can free up enough guards I'll cut REACT loose, but in the meantime, we need to cover this."
I go back with a shovel and a slung rifle. A shovel is not the best tool for this, but I go after bushes with a carefully directed fury.
Soon I have the Perimeter crews, with the proper tools. The key point is to deprive future infiltrators of any potential cover for approaching the creek bed gap.
Meanwhile, we are using a roll of barbed wire to create a thicker defense for the creek bed - V shaped gap so that we can get through it quickly but an attacker in a hurry cannot.
I am tempted to patrol further forward, but decide against it. I have to release the REACT team back to coding.
But first I take photographs of the cut wire, the boot prints under the bushes, the trash, the filthy mattress someone had been lying on watching us...
If I had missed it, it would have been a midnight road into our defended space.
I took my time staring around, taking photos as needed. I would be back tonight, dressed and equipped very differently.
I gave a note to the REACT team to take back with them.
"Establish Perimeter Post 14A. Need a wireline phone to the foxhole before dusk. Two guards tonight, relief at two hour overlapping intervals. I'll be taking a patrol out through this point. E18."
The foxhole was now a healthy eight feet deep, with a six foot observation step and a few sandbags so that one could look over and expose as little of their skull as possible. Also in one corner, another four foot deep hole, two shovel blades around, for drainage and also grenades.
We needed to establish a permanent post here, but we didn't have the guards to devote to it. What we really needed was going to be a dedicated IR camera covering the area, which would require network connectivity and power and ... yeah. Not something we could do in a few hours. But a telephone with a thousand feet of cord, that we could do.
The creek bed on the far side of the wire was now denuded. Not bare, not even close, but no place left to hide.
The brush we'd cut up was scattered on our side. The crew had started to pile it in front of our foxhole and I'd briefly but bitterly explained that it looks fine now, but when it dried out would be an arrow pointing to the post.
I wouldn't get any further down the line today. But we'd cut the problem down some, the amount of perimeter which H5 had to cover through night vision and sniper fire.
These are the compromises you learn to make in an apocalypse. Or give up and die. That's always an option too.
It is the third day of our frantic perimeter construction project. I am still carrying the pump action shotgun slung across my back, in addition to my rifle. It seems prudent.
The convoy has gone out and come back twice now. Perhaps today the convoy will come back too.
I am personally inspecting the entire perimeter. The very best we can do -- adjacent to the gates -- is eight feet of chain link topped by barbed wire, with signs and an 15' area on either side cleared of shrubbery more than ankle high. Further along it is a waist high strand of barbed wire with two strands of straight (non-barbed) wire below, which any cattleman would be ashamed of. Then single wire, sometimes even old Category 3 network cable that has the singular virtue of bing blue. Further yet, it is yellow CAUTION tape strung between stakes. This is taken down and re-used as we expand. In entirely too many places it is a 3' to 10' wide patch of dirt cleared down to bare soil, the better with which to show footprints, and a sign every 50' explaining why not to trespass in words adapted to the meanest understanding. Plus a skull and crossbones.
The worse the perimeter, the more guards are required to cover it. We are short on materials, using impressed labor, and have no budget.
The alternative is unthinkable. Allowing thousands of starving, desperate people to enter our premises.
As I watch, two guards are 'supervising' a crew of fourteen Perimeter campers as they use hoes and rakes to make that bare soil. One has wooden vinter's stakes and the other has a sledge. Right now the poles stand forlornly, not yet connected.
Among the paperwork in the site Security Office I found parcel maps - the actual, legal definition of where our property stops and our neighbors begin. Just at the moment I don't really care that much, because some of it is government owned parkland, some of it is ranch land being maintained by no one (our contract rancher is dead; his son is recovering in our infirmary), and some of it is City owned.
But I still need to check the bounds and the touchy spots. This is a touchy spot, a creek bed. Existing wire fencing has been breached. I look carefully, touching the cuts with a hand. Not rusty. Recent.
I key my radio.
"I need a single REACT team to my position please," I call.
I don't add my position. Our sniper observer team on H5 has me in view. To quote a phrase, "I could smoke that bastard, but then who would pay us?"
I watch the bushes carefully. Our presence working on the fence line has disturbed birds and insects, of course, but it is still unnaturally quiet. I have that sixth sense of someone taking a bead on me.
I stroll calmly over to the one of the Perimeter workers.
"Hey, buddy, I need you to come over here and start digging a hole for me."
I pace it out - about 4' by 6' - and he nods, going to work with a will.
"How deep?"
"Deep. Foxhole," I murmur under my breath.
He digs faster.
I lay down my backpack as if I'm going to take care of a little personal business. I unsling the riot shotgun and carefully place it on the ground, action up, slowly racking the slide to chamber a round and flicking the safety off.
Then and only then do I also unsling my rifle, slowly drawing back the bolt and also flicking the safety off.
I rummage through the backpack while sitting on the edge of the knee-deep hole. I hold up a roll of white toilet paper.
Hopefully the people watching are going to make an assumption about what I'm doing. And assumption is always spelled with ass.
More importantly, I lay out four rifle magazines next to my rifle. And two dark green spheroids with large solid pull rings attached to pins.
Rummaging deeper in the backpack, I take out a packet of ten sand bags.
"Hand me the shovel. Go get a couple buddies," I direct. He does; I dig with a will, putting the spoil in front of the foxhole.
When they come back, I have them start filling sandbags as I pick up the rifle and cover the creekbed and the bushes beyond.
Now it's obvious they are digging me a fighting position. So if we have a sniper in those bushes, their moment is now.
I hear a metallic sound, a faint snick, from the bushes. I pause for a moment and key my mike again.
"Three REACT teams, Code 2," I murmur as I keep scanning. No time to get my binoculars out, not that they will help that much.
One of the guards covering the detail has noticed my unnatural alertness, and lopes over towards me.
"What's up boss?"
Pointing out what is going on to him will definitely trigger what is up.
"Have the crew break for lunch."
"Huh?"
"Have. The crew. Break. For. Fucking. Lunch."
"Sir!"
They gather up their tools, minus two shovels, and head back for the perimeter encampment with no escort. Their two guards stay with me.
The other guard has figured out what is up. He picks up a shovel, walks about fifty feet away, and hastily starts digging a shallow fighting position for himself.
The first guard looks at him, me, the remaining shovel ... and my ferocious glare. He therefore starts digging the foxhole deeper.
None of us have been in the military. But I have at least read the manuals.
I am kneeling next to my weapons, watching carefully, ready to open fire or to throw a grenade at any moment.
Over the crest of the low rise between us and the site, five Employees in jeans, response vests and carrying equipment appear. The team leader sees what we are doing and spreads out his crew at once. Only two are armed with rifles, a third with a shotgun. The team leader picks up my shotgun after getting a nod of permission.
"Bushes?" he says.
"Yup," I say without moving my lips. I can feel it, we are definitely under observation.
The remaining unarmed React employee takes over the shovel from the guard, who immediately lies down in the shallow position he has scraped out for himself, bringing his rifle up and scanning for targets. He goes over to the foxhole and jumps in, digging swiftly and economically. The other guard belatedly puts down his shovel and picks up his rifle, standing with a foxhole right next to him. Idiot.
The React team leader pushes him into the foxhole, slings the shotgun, takes a shovel, and starts digging deeper next to me. He has seen the grenades, knows what they are for, and has my shotgun.
This frees me up to do the stupid thing. To advance back to the cut wire, and without pausing in the fatal funnel move through it.
About ten feet past, I can see that the bushes conceal trash and debris, what had likely been a homeless encampment before the Firecracker. And I hear whispers.
This is technically our neighbor's land. But I am far, far past caring.
The second REACT team pauses briefly by the emergency perimeter defense, hears a few words from the first REACT team leader, and patrols right through the wire gap up to me.
I don't have my bullhorn. But my throat works just fine.
"ATTENTION! Site Security is going to sweep this area for trespassers! If you are here, call out now or run away! This is your warning! Announce yourself or we may fire without further warning!"
Silence.
So we start our sweep. My one plus the REACT team's five means three pairs. I take the most dangerous center, with a REACT member with a pistol backing me up.
About thirty feet up the stream bed, we hear rustling as people - more than one - get up and run away. We of course allow them to.
About a hundred feet in, I call a halt with a raised hand. The REACT members kneel, holding what they've got.
Our sweep has shown that we are under observation.
I key my radio.
"Echo 18, I need three Perimeter crews with tools as soon as they can be made available."
I leave the REACT team in place and casually walk back to the perimeter. There is a knee-deep fighting position and a nice deep foxhole now. I recover and pocket my grenades, and huddle up with the first REACT team leader.
"We need to trim as much of those bushes and shit as we can beyond the wire. The debris needs to be carried back here and laid out on our side. We have between now and nightfall. As soon as we can free up enough guards I'll cut REACT loose, but in the meantime, we need to cover this."
I go back with a shovel and a slung rifle. A shovel is not the best tool for this, but I go after bushes with a carefully directed fury.
Soon I have the Perimeter crews, with the proper tools. The key point is to deprive future infiltrators of any potential cover for approaching the creek bed gap.
Meanwhile, we are using a roll of barbed wire to create a thicker defense for the creek bed - V shaped gap so that we can get through it quickly but an attacker in a hurry cannot.
I am tempted to patrol further forward, but decide against it. I have to release the REACT team back to coding.
But first I take photographs of the cut wire, the boot prints under the bushes, the trash, the filthy mattress someone had been lying on watching us...
If I had missed it, it would have been a midnight road into our defended space.
I took my time staring around, taking photos as needed. I would be back tonight, dressed and equipped very differently.
I gave a note to the REACT team to take back with them.
"Establish Perimeter Post 14A. Need a wireline phone to the foxhole before dusk. Two guards tonight, relief at two hour overlapping intervals. I'll be taking a patrol out through this point. E18."
The foxhole was now a healthy eight feet deep, with a six foot observation step and a few sandbags so that one could look over and expose as little of their skull as possible. Also in one corner, another four foot deep hole, two shovel blades around, for drainage and also grenades.
We needed to establish a permanent post here, but we didn't have the guards to devote to it. What we really needed was going to be a dedicated IR camera covering the area, which would require network connectivity and power and ... yeah. Not something we could do in a few hours. But a telephone with a thousand feet of cord, that we could do.
The creek bed on the far side of the wire was now denuded. Not bare, not even close, but no place left to hide.
The brush we'd cut up was scattered on our side. The crew had started to pile it in front of our foxhole and I'd briefly but bitterly explained that it looks fine now, but when it dried out would be an arrow pointing to the post.
I wouldn't get any further down the line today. But we'd cut the problem down some, the amount of perimeter which H5 had to cover through night vision and sniper fire.
These are the compromises you learn to make in an apocalypse. Or give up and die. That's always an option too.
