Chapter 8

We now had 12 companies engaged in guerrilla-style attacks. Most of them were going well, and the people embedded in Cheyenne Mountain had not tumbled to the fact that we were the ones applying the pressure. Oh, yes, we did lose a few men on our raids, and it weighed heavily on all of us, but no one was yet willing to throw in the towel. The loss of a single man hurt, but our leadership in the field and our tactics were carrying the day for us every time we attacked.

The Army had stopped sending drones and helicopters after us. The only time we saw them was when we attacked an instillation that had them on sight. We were just too good with our Stinger-type RPGs for the Army to waste their very expensive air assets on our small attacks. I was sure that a large attack would have brought out everything that the Army had, but we had managed to avoid that to date. One of these days, the Generals were going to realize that we were bleeding them to death with many little cuts, and we were happy as long as the situation was in our favor, as it was now.

Also, one of these days, we would be able to mount a direct attack on Cheyenne Mountain, but we were going to live with what we could get right now. And what we could get was all of the arms that we needed to keep fighting via the illegal arms dealers in Mexico. Our gold supply was just not showing any signs of running out, and we could pay whatever the crooks demanded to keep our battle going.

It was nothing new, except that it was new to us, but we managed to tap into what looked like an unlimited supply of RPG rounds which used the fuel-air (FAE) warhead. They were the individual soldier's version of bunker-buster bombs. At last, it looked like we had a weapon that could be used against the ONI headquarters buildings in the major cities. This would amount to a major escalation of the war, but it would not involve very many men. Essentially, it would be just one man to fire the RPG, one man to carry extra rounds, and three or four men to protect them by means of assault rifles.

One or two of these FAE warheads could easily bring down a six-story building if it fit certain other criteria, and virtually all of the ONI headquarters buildings did fit. The biggest problem would be collateral damage, and we could control that by hitting the buildings at night when innocent people would not be wandering by. The only problem would be the prisoners held in the depths of the headquarters building, but most of them would welcome death after only one session with the ONI torturers. We really had no alternative, so we were just going to have to live with the consequences.

I figured that the headquarters of ONI in El Paso was a good place to start. It was close enough to us to be a convenient test location, and the building itself was a near perfect fit with our criteria for destruction. A six-man team had been rehearsing for the big event, and I was beginning to think that they would get sloppy if we did not use them pretty soon. We had 12 such teams, and I would dispatch them as soon as I heard that the attack on El Paso went well.

El Paso was so close that they could drive to their target, make their hit, and drive home in less than 12 hours total. A lot of civilian traffic ran at night to avoid the heat of the sun during the day. In this section of the country, that was the habit all through the year, so our crew could travel at night without attracting too much attention from the Army. One of the vehicles we had "appropriated" for use against our enemies was a 2½-ton truck that had an enclosed and air conditioned box for carrying cargo. This was ideal for transporting our attack team, and they left right after supper.

The driver and his "shotgun" were not a part of the attack team. Their duty was to guard the truck while the attack team was in action. The truck would have to be parked at least a block away from the target because we wanted to stay off of surveillance cameras as much as possible. The longer we could keep the other side in the dark about how we operated, the better off we would be. As luck would have it, there was a good parking place just around the corner from the target building, so that was where the truck was parked.

The attack team moved away from the truck at 2200 hours, and they were glad to stretch their legs. The attack team also wanted to stay off the surveillance cameras, if possible, so they planned their attack from the corner of the building opposite the target. There was a small service/fire alley that they could operate from that was almost ideally located.

The plan was for them to put the first rocket through a window on the second floor, and they were to follow that up with a rocket through a window in the first floor. We were not sure it that was the ideal combination of shots to use, but we had to start somewhere. The team had two more FAE rockets to use if they were needed to destroy the building and if they had time to use them.

It took a few minutes to get set up and for all of the team members to get into position. Once they were ready, the first rocket was fired. The rocketeer's aim was perfect, and the RPG round broke through a second story window just as planned. The resulting explosion was far beyond expectations. There was no way of knowing exactly what were the conditions inside the building, but they must have been ideal for the FAE.

The team members could see the demolition of the building as the explosion forced its way toward the roof. It was almost as if an experienced demolition crew had set individual charges at crucial points throughout the building. Everything took place at lightning speed, but the people who saw the work of the FAE felt like they could see the destruction of each floor individually as it happened.

At last, the explosion reached the top story, and it lifted that several feet off the remainder of the building, or was it the building collapsing under it? Whatever the real cause, the result was spectacular as the building's components fell back into the cavity left as the building fell in upon itself. By the time everything had stopped falling, the first floor had disappeared in the rubble, and there was a fire of major proportions erupting from the building's cellar.

That was enough, and the men ran for their escape truck. There was only so much tourist time allowed, and the men had burned most of it watching the magnificent destruction of the building. However, they did have a record. At the last moment, a video recorder was given to the leader of the team to use to record the destruction of the building so that we could have a way to examine the results and to see how to improve our efforts.

The driver and his assistant were sitting in the truck's cab with the motor running when the attack team showed up. They jumped into the back of the truck, and the driver took them away from the scene of the attack as fast as he thought was prudent. The team arrived back at the cave at about 0300 hours.

There was so much interest in the attack that we showed the video tape as soon as everybody could gather around their TVs. We had long ago installed a closed-circuit TV system so that everybody could get a ringside seat of every council meeting from the comfort of their own apartments, and that was what we used to show the tape of the attack. In fact, we played the whole tape five times to make sure that everybody who wanted to could see it. Of course, we had made a copy of the tape before we showed it, just to make sure that we had a copy if the original was damaged. Well, every one of our citizens saw the tape, even the children!

To say the least, we were stunned at our success! None of us had expected such spectacular results. As far as we knew, the building was of standard construction and was fairly new. Did that mean that the FAEs were more effective than we had expected, or did that mean that corners had been cut during construction to give some people added profit? Consensus had it that the real fact was a combination of both reasons. The vast extent of the graft and corruption throughout the establishment was well known, but not talked about from fear of reprisals.

Anyway, we had absolute proof that this was an excellent way to attack any building that stood in the way of our eventual destruction of the current regime. We immediately prepared to send out the other 11 teams.

Fortunately, from our point of view, ONI made a point of having every person know where their headquarters building was in any city. The idea was to put psychological pressure on every citizen to conform to orders and conventions by knowing where they would wind up if they did not conform. Therefore, we had no trouble pinpointing our targets.