The next morning, they awoke early. Joshua, Megan, and Malorie prayed together. Over breakfast, Joshua talked with Ken. Joshua said, “We reached a conclusion. We’ve decided that God has protected us thus far, so we need to continue to trust in him. So we think that we should get involved with one of the new resistance groups in the region. For the sake of the boys, we need to keep a fairly low profile. We’d like you to make the introductions, but please do so under our assumed names from the very beginning.”

Ken nodded, and said, “You got it, brother.”

37

BLENDING IN

Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance. Selah.

—Psalm 32:7 (KJV)

Moscow, Idaho—September, the Fourth Year

Joshua rented a house on Harden Road, on the northwest side of Moscow, just north of the University of Idaho campus. As a college town, Moscow had been depopulated following the Crunch, and only now was it getting back to its earlier population level. There were plenty of rental houses and apartments available. They also started attending Christ Church, which met nearby on Baker Street.

The Moscow Maquis already had eighteen members. With Ken Layton and Todd Gray vouching for their bona fides, Joshua, Megan, and Malorie were recruited to form a new cell within the organization—one that specialized in intelligence analysis. Their new cell and its location would be known only to the two key leaders of the Maquis, and they would be identified only by their first names during their interactions. For the sake of OPSEC, the Moscow Maquis leaders habitually referred to Joshua’s small cell as “the intelligence guys in Spokane.”

The local economy was starting to recover and there were even hopes of reopening the university, but the threat of invasion by UNPROFOR loomed on the horizon. To have enough silver to live on, Joshua, Megan, and Malorie shared a twenty-four-hour-a-day job as “receptionist/concealed-carry security guard” at the front desk of Christ Church. They each took an eight-hour shift. The job paid $1.20 a day, which was just enough for them to live on. Though they had to deal with many issues as receptionists (mainly referring refugees to sources of aid), there were also lots of quiet hours at the desk, time Joshua devoted to gathering intelligence about ProvGov activities and UN troop movements. Malorie took the day shift so Megan could homeschool the boys, Megan took swing shift, and Joshua took the graveyard shift.

Their new living arrangement worked well through the winter. They settled into a steady work routine. Thanks to Malorie’s skills as a mechanic, they even set aside a little more silver.

Moscow, Idaho—October, the Fourth Year

The Moscow-Pullman region was immediately thrown into turmoil when the UNPROFOR armored column appeared. As usual, UNPROFOR began with flowery promises, but eventually delivered tyranny.

In response, Joshua’s cell went completely underground. They quit their receptionist jobs and began full-time intel analysis. With the Maquis now paying their rent and delivering them groceries once a week, Megan and Joshua decided to set up their own higher-level Tactical Operations Center, or TOC.

Instead of just setting up another collection or analysis cell attached to an individual militia, Megan and Joshua decided on the brigade-level TOC concept for several reasons. First was Megan’s recent military expertise, both in uniform and as an NSA contractor. She had spent a lot of time working in a tactical TOC and knew that she could set one up herself if she ever had to. There were not many other intelligence analysts in the region with her expertise. Second, the other intelligence cells attached to the Maquis and other militias were usually busy collecting raw intelligence and had few analytical skills or resources. Third, and most important, since the Moscow Maquis was currently the largest and most active militia in the area, these other intelligence cells needed someone to provide intelligence synchronization. “The intel people in Spokane” could battle-track the big picture for the entire region and then create intelligence reports, situational map templates, and so on, to brief the two Maquis leaders. And they wanted to fulfill the intelligence requirements (IRs) that these militia leaders had for their region as close to real time as possible.

Joshua was chosen as the contact to sell this arrangement to the other militias’ intelligence cells (some of which consisted of only one person, a collector). Joshua’s intention was to get the other cells to routinely report events and incidents as they occurred. In return, the other cells were encouraged to make their own Requests for Intel (RFIs) to Megan, Joshua, and Malorie. The other cells could also rely on them for “reachback” support, meaning research and analysis of particular weapons systems, vehicles, order of battle (OB), UN deployment schedules, or anything else that the other cells needed to know. This also included providing training to the other cells, in areas such as SALUTE format reporting, military symbology, and battle tracking. For OPSEC, Joshua spoke only with the actual intel people involved in “training the trainer” mode. This way the intel cells could then train the rest of the members within their own militias.

There was already an incredible “unity of effort” within the resistance, an advantage of most insurgencies. Many military schools (the U.S. Army, in particular) teach the concepts of unity of effort, unity of command, and so forth. However, in reality, these concepts tend to go in one ear and out the other, particularly with occupying military forces that are engaged in counterinsurgency warfare.

A majority of the other intelligence cells were actually relieved that a centrally organized intelligence effort was now taking place. This added to the perception that the resistance was getting bigger and better. Just the word circulating of “the Spokane Intelligence Center” was a huge morale boost within the resistance in the region.

The first two weeks of setting up their TOC were rough going. Since they lived in a small rental house in the middle of a suburb, they needed to establish where the TOC was going to be located within the house itself. After briefly considering one of the bedrooms, they decided on the small dining area attached to the kitchen. Things needed to be as compact as possible to fit map boards and several netbook computers for report writing and maintaining an event log, along with a printer.

Next, they had administrative OPSEC issues. They needed to operate under maximum light and noise discipline. All blinds and drapes around the TOC were closed, with blankets taped to the window frames, and reinforced with black, heavy-duty plastic garbage bags duct-taped over the top. For a final yet important touch, they installed a “lightlock” around the back door of their house, which used the same principle as an airlock on a spacecraft or submarine, except for light instead of air.

They had one of the Maquis members test their light discipline one evening, using a captured PVS-14 night vision monocular to look for any light leaks that might be seen by someone with well-adjusted natural night vision, or through another night vision device. The lightlock was not perfect for concealing all trace amounts of light, but being located in town, it did not need to be.

They also had thermal signature considerations. Despite the fact that most houses used woodstoves all through the winter, they did not want to glow like a Christmas tree to any airborne thermal imaging systems at odd hours of the night. Heat was kept to a minimum since the bodies, radios, and computers created their own residual amounts of heat.