The local volunteers mostly came from Prescott. Alex was disappointed that there were only two men that came from the town of Prescott Valley, which lay north of the highway between Humboldt and Prescott. Everyone met at the Conley Ranches clubhouse.
Cliff Conley did the initial organizing and rabble-rousing, but he soon handed the project off to Doctor K. Cliff opened the meeting, and after some introductions Doctor K. gave the “threat briefing.” In just a few minutes, he outlined what they had learned about La Fuerza, their ruthless history, their current location, and their likely next moves. Then he transitioned by saying, “I’d like to turn the next part of the briefing over to a young man who has earned my respect in the past few days. Please meet Jamie Alstoba of the Navajo Nation.” Doctor K. gestured with sweep of his arm to the back of the room.
There were loud murmurs in the crowd as a broad-faced boy, just thirteen years old and standing less than five feet tall, strode to the front of the meeting room. He wore scruffy stained blue jeans and a Pendleton shirt. Up until then he had hardly been noticed.
The boy spoke nervously in a high, early-adolescent voice, “Hey. My family, we live in Dewey, on East Antelope Way. The La Fuerza gang locked down the town 24/7, but they are fools and let kids my age and younger walk and ride our bicycles around, without hardly even noticing us. So I got to see exactly what houses they were in, and where they had their pea cups and armored cars parked. My dad sent me on my bike up here to get your help. I was sent to Mr. Conley, and he promised to help, and he sent me back to Dewey and Humboldt, to draw maps, the last two days. We transferred the Humboldt map onto this. . . .”
Doctor K. and Ian Doyle then carried in a large whiteboard from another room and set it on a pair of the meeting room chairs. It was marked “HUMBOLDT-As of 1400, Wednesday.” The boy pulled a laser pointer from the back pocket of his jeans, and continued:
“Okay, so here is what I saw: about two-thirds of their gang is in Dewey, and about one-third in Humboldt. I counted four of the bank-type armored cars in Humboldt, and one of the Army-tank-looking ones, except on wheels.”
Ian Doyle corrected, “Wheeled APC.”
Jamie nodded and, using the laser pointer, said, “Right, APCs. I marked their positions, here, here, here, and a pair of them, here. As you can see, most of those are on East Prescott Street. I’m pretty sure of those positions, but of course they could have moved them since I left. I marked the houses with the gang members in them, in red. There were two houses on fire when I left. I marked those, and the ones that had already burnt down, in solid black. The ones that are just outlines I think are still either cleaned out by the gang, nobody home, or somebody at home but just waiting to see if the gang kicks them out. I marked some hills that you can use for cover to sneak up on the houses and the vehicles: it is what Doctor K. says is called a ‘defilade approach.’”
There were murmurs of approval. Lars Laine, sitting in the middle of the crowd shouted: “We need to get him an appointment to West Point!”
Jamie Alstoba went on, still quite nervous, “Well, sir, before you ’gratulate me, let me tell you about Dewey.”
Ian Doyle and Doctor K. carried out a second whiteboard, marked “DEWEY-As of 1400, Wednesday,” placing it on another pair of chairs to the right of the first whiteboard.
The Navajo boy continued, “I don’t have as many exact details for you about Dewey, since the town is so much more spread out than Humboldt. Okay, so I counted seven of the boxy bank armored cars, mostly at the east end of town, parked on the road called Apache Knolls Trail, and three APCs, and those were on Apache Knolls Trail and South Tomahawk Trail, which is, uh,
Using the laser pointer, Jamie said, “They have machine guns on tripods set up in this house here, and this one
Jamie Alstoba waited for the laughter to die down, and then asked, “Any questions?
“Now, since then they may have looted a few more houses, but mostly for the last three days they seemed fat and happy. It’s just party-hearty time. They were pretty deep into
In all, fifty-eight men and three women would be going to Dewey and Humboldt for the raid, and a hundred more were involved in gathering the requisite gear and ammunition and upgrading defenses in Prescott.
Lars Laine was asked to explain the plan to set fire to La Fuerza’s vehicles. He rose and said, “If we get enough thickened gas burning in, on, or under most vehicles, it’ll do the job. We can speed things along by puncturing fuel tanks with rifle fire. Assuming we have to destroy fifty vehicles, we anticipate needing about two hundred Molotovs. And that’s the number we brought.”
Ian Doyle observed that they had brought a motley assortment of rifles and shotguns. They included everything from World War I-relic Mausers and Springfield 1903s to high-grade bolt-action deer rifles. He was glad to see that nearly half of the volunteers had semiauto battle rifles, including M1As, FALs, HK91s, L1A1s, AK-47 clones, and AR-15s in various configurations. Other than his own Ingram M10, he learned that they had only a few full-auto guns. These included a registered Stenling submachine gun (a Sterling SMG, built on a Sten receiver tube), an unregistered M2 carbine, and two unregistered AR-15 selective-fire conversions. Ian considered handing out a couple of his M16s but then thought better of it, realizing that in untrained hands semiauto rifles would actually be more effective in the assault.
Based on their intelligence, six ten-member squads would attack Dewey and two ten-member squads would attack Humboldt. The attacks would be coordinated to begin at 3:10 a.m., just before moonset. They wanted the skies to be as dark as possible to facilitate their escape following the raid.
Laine realized that many of the people involved had no combat experience. So, for fear of ruining the element of surprise with a negligent discharge, everyone except for the two men with sentry removal responsibilities were instructed to travel with their gun chambers empty until 3:09 a.m.
Ian’s sentry removal counterpart in Dewey would be Doug Parker, an Iraq war vet who owned an HK .45 ACP SOCOM pistol with a registered Gemtech suppressor. Parker seemed a bit boisterous, bragging that he’d make “one-shot stops to the ocular window.” That worried Ian, especially when Parker admitted that he had no formal handgun training. Parker’s small-arms training in the Army had all been with M16s, M4s, and M240Bs. In Iraq he had been on a 4.2-inch mortar crew.
It was decided that the two team leaders for the coordinated attack would be Lars Laine (for Dewey) and Alex Doyle (for Humboldt.)
They used a 60-power spotting scope. To reduce the risk of the sun glinting off the front lens of the scope, they made a foot-long extension tube from scrap cardboard and attached it with strips of olive drab duct tape. Their first vantage point was a long east-west ridge that lay between Humboldt and a mountain called The Anthill. Then they surreptitiously hiked to the military crest of a small hill on Eagle Drive, overlooking the sprawling ranchette developments of Dewey.
Prone in the brush, they had a great view of the closest houses that were occupied by La Fuerza. Lars thought that the full-length fur coats worn by their women looked comical. He noted that both the men and women carried rifles, carbines, or submachineguns at all times.
The scouting team’s observations confirmed what Jamie Alstoba had described. He was also apparently correct about the times that guard shifts changed: six a.m., noon, six p.m., and midnight. Lars mentioned that it
