the staff.
* * *
Alex was partly relieved by the briefings, which were mostly clear and concise. Obviously this small staff had been trained somewhere and by professionals. When they were done, Stevenson offered Alex a couple of guides to show him around the city, but he refused them.
“I can manage, thanks. A group of Indians in old clothes walking about with maps taking notes might attract attention. I’ll just take a cut out of the centre of the map for reference and see you back here early this evening. Can I meet with my own people, say around eighteen hundred?”
A few people at the table looked at Stevenson in surprise, but the colonel understood and appreciated Alex’s independent style. “Sure. Matt here will be your chief of staff and you can begin your own battle procedure right now. Okay, folks, that’s it for now. Planning meeting as usual at seventeen hundred. Alex, you can see your people after that.”
Wednesday, September 1, 1400 hours
Winnipeg: Main Street
Alex picked up his map and a notepad and made his way out the rear entrance of the Aboriginal Centre. He scouted around the east side to Maple Street; it was immediately obvious that the entire site was easy to defend. Early settlers had seen its potential and built Fort Douglas nearby in 1812 as the headquarters of the Red River Settlement. Both the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company built defended locations near Point Douglas, taking advantage of the natural protection provided on three sides by sharp turns in the Red River. The grounds now housed various native facilities and exhibitions, but Alex looked first at the high buildings and the railway embankment around which he’d formulate his defensive plan for the north flank of the downtown position.
He began to construct his plan, asking himself, then answering, a series of related, complex questions he had been taught in staff college and in real operations. Where is the key terrain, the ground that must be held if the mission is to succeed? Where are the approaches to the key terrain that must therefore be defended? Where are the killing zones into which attackers could be funnelled? Where is the “dead ground,” the possible avenues of attack we won’t be able to see – behind buildings, for instance – from the natural defensive firing positions? Where are the best sites for which weapons and how many people will be needed in each location? What’s the logical allocation of scarce weapons and people to tasks? How can the scattered sites best support each other?
Alex looked first at the east-west railway line where it crossed Main Street. That, he told himself, would be the northern boundary of his defensive position. With a few snipers and anti-tank weapons, it would be easy to barricade and defend the north Main Street approach where it passed under the tracks. Walking along Higgins, he decided he would have to barricade the Slaw Rebchuk Bridge at Salter, and the Disraeli Freeway as well, probably where they passed over Sutherland Avenue.
I can use buses and trucks, there and there, Alex thought, and support the roadblocks with a few well-placed gunners in the high windows of the Centre, in the tower of the abandoned fire hall at Maple and Higgins, and in the north-facing buildings on Higgins and Henry avenues. I’ll also need to secure my western flank with snipers and build hasty barricades around Isabel and Logan.
He looked again at the core of his position, the Aboriginal Centre. It was a perfect strongpoint to close north Main Street and provide some security for his headquarters in city hall a few blocks away. The city hall, he reasoned, wasn’t crucial to the overall plan, but from a military standpoint it was a useful outpost for protecting his main position, and moreover, the optics of a native flag of revolt flying from it on the TV news would help ensure a rapid rush by the Canadian authorities into the downtown. So he walked the back streets along King and Notre Dame to recce the city hall area, continuing to mark on his map the high buildings and narrow streets near the site, the ready-made firing points and spots for roadblocks.
After reconnoitring the approaches to city hall, he made a detour over to Dagmar and Notre Dame to check out the large fire and medical service centre there. His plan involved getting as many “first responders” as possible, along with their pieces of large equipment, deployed and stuck in separate street locations, not trapped in the station house. That would probably force the second wave of “rescuers” to find and extract the first responders who would be stuck all over the downtown area, further disorganizing the response. Besides, crippled fire trucks would become both convenient obstacles to military operations trying to retake the downtown, and potent symbols of chaos. He made another note on his map and headed to the next major target, Lombard Square, and the famous junction of Portage Avenue and Main Street.
Portage and Main, besides being Canada’s windiest corner, is the heart of Winnipeg’s financial district. In Stevenson’s scheme to hold the downtown core and attract a counterattack, Lombard Square was the hard nut in the centre of the chocolate. Alex circled back from the fire hall to Main Street at McDermot Avenue, pocketed his map and notebook as a police car drove by, then strolled into the concrete garden at the foot of the Richardson Building. He grabbed a coffee from a street vendor and sat quietly on a bench sketching the site in his mind.
Winnipeg Square is the key terrain to controlling the downtown area, he thought to himself. Whoever controls these high buildings controls the Square, whoever controls the Square controls the city centre, and whoever controls the city centre more or less controls Winnipeg. Which was all fine and good, but the Square presented a tricky tactical problem. He gazed around, trying to pull the complex of buildings, streets, and avenues into a pattern.
Six main buildings offered themselves as strong points, he decided. Control of only one or two, even the most central, would mean nothing if the police or the army controlled the others and got snipers high up, dominating my positions. But controlling and defending all six would take a lot of people. Too many. More than I have. I could cause enough trouble to keep a fight going for a while, but not nearly long enough. I’d have to put too many of my people in the Square, then the army would wipe me out here and roll up the other positions.
Alex got up and strolled about the Square, trying not to be conspicuous. He paused at the southwest corner, where a plaque declared that the Bank of Montreal had been established in 1871. A tough-looking bronze army officer stood guard in honour of the warriors of the 1914–18 war. Alex stopped to admire the statue and the idea it represented: liberty though strength and sacrifice. That’s our creed too, he thought. I’m still a soldier, he found himself silently assuring the bronze officer.
After a minute, he glanced across the Square to the TD Bank building. It wasn’t much of a fortress, despite its imposing height, especially because of the car garage behind it, overlooking Main Street. He drew a quick sketch of the area, awkwardly holding his notepad as he thought a street artist might, and marked imaginary interlocking arcs of fire from building to building.
He shook his head – the sketch confirmed his fears. If the police got into that garage, and they would, his guys wouldn’t be able to move anywhere along the street or down lower Main Street. The Manitoba Telephone and the Scotia Bank buildings provided firing positions northwards if they fell to the police, and they would. If he couldn’t hold or neutralize the TD building, life in the open Square would be miserable and short. A difficult situation, he thought. Too many options demanding resources and skills and people I don’t have.
Alex followed the civilians and tourists making their way from one segment of the Square to another via several flights of stairs leading down into the underground hub connecting all the streets together. After a few confused attempts, he surfaced at the Main Street exit at the Richardson Building and strolled past it, trying to visualize a plausible capture and defence of that site. Damn. There just didn’t seem to be a way.
At Lombard Street, his attention was drawn to the tall, elegant Union Tower building. A greenish plaque on its wall proclaimed it to be the site of the first Masonic Lodge in the Red River Settlement, established in 1864; the Northern Lights Lodge, led by Messrs. Shultz, Bannatyne, and Inkster. More land thieves, he thought sourly. He gazed up at the old structure’s high windows, noted absently the “For Lease” sign in the ground floor window, and turned back to the perplexing Square. And suddenly he saw the way. He had his plan. So simple it was