The guns are silent. With their command post and mortar battery overrun, the ZOMO forces have quit the field. At the now-abandoned patrol base northwest of Radom, our weary and battered collection of protagonists assembles. Also arriving are two more forces…

First, there’s a leadership contingent from the White Eagles, a Skarzysko-Kamienna-based battalion of the Polish Home Army, including:

• Major Felicjan Kozlowski, the White Eagles’ commander
• Captain Aleksander Grabowski, Kozlowski’s adjutant
• Lieutenant Marietta Rabarchak, commander of the White Eagles’ B Platoon and the PCs’ nominal advocate among the White Eagle command staff

There’s also a slightly smaller delegation from Von Bahr’s Irregulars, the band of former East German troops who threw in with NATO when Germany reunified, subsequently found themselves in a Soviet POW camp, escaped, and wound up in loose possession of a small hydroelectric power plant:

• Lieutenant Colonel Boris Von Bahr, the East Germans’ commander
• Senior Warrant Officer Thekla Adler, Von Bahr’s SNCO and chief advisor

---

The leaders of the various groups assemble (Red, Ellis, and Leks having jointly assumed the mantle of leadership for Ponikla’s defenders) to share intel and discuss the battle’s outcome. All but a handful of the Soviet advisors are accounted for, either dead or captured. The Soviet QRF is out of action, decisively defeated. The Radom ZOMO still has over a hundred combat-capable troops, but it seems to be in disarray – with its command staff dead or in Ellis’ hands, the more experienced cavalry and mechanized infantry platoons have withdrawn to the east, while the late-war conscripts and recruits of the foot infantry platoons are huddled in their base.

---

A couple of White Eagle trucks pull up and a handful of partisans begins setting up a field kitchen. Magda wanders over to help and winds up taking over.

A couple of Von Bahr’s troops came in with him and Adler as a security detail. Alexei wanders over to chat with some fellow Ossis. Amid the small talk, he learns that before the ZOMO started pushing them, the Irregulars were running patrols north of the river. They’d found the remains of several marauder (or presumed marauder) groups – cleanly and professionally killed, their remains marked with signs indicating their alleged crimes. Someone out there is cleaning up the neighborhood…

---

Ellis has been busy in the battle’s aftermath. After wrapping up “interviews” of the higher-ranking prisoners taken from the QRF, the ambushed convoy, the Soviet advisors, and the ZOMO command staff, he’s starting to develop a clearer picture of what threats remain in and around Radom. He also has a few new radios to play with, so as he organizes his notes, he and Bell sit down with headsets and begin scanning.

It isn’t long before Ellis and Bell hit paydirt. They intercept a transmission from the Soviet engineer unit in Radom giving a SITREP and requesting orders. The ZOMO have lost cohesion and the Soviet plan for stabilization in the Radom AO appears unsalvageable. The response – presumably from Reserve Front HQ in Lublin – is noncommittal. The engineers are ordered to stand by for orders in two hours.

Ellis notes the time… he’ll be back for the next episode of this show.

---

The joint command group has some things to work out. Chief among them is how much latitude Von Bahr’s Irregulars will be allowed. They’ve been good neighbors thus far, but the Home Army is leery of letting Germans on Polish soil have too much free rein.

After some negotiation, a joint security agreement exists between the Ponikla defense force, the Irregulars, and the White Eagles. The Irregulars will retain possession of the hydroelectric plant and its surroundings, including the adjacent village of Bialobrzegi, but they’ll allow the other parties access to the plant and will cooperate with infrastructure restoration efforts. The White Eagles will take the lead in securing Radom, including dealing with the elements of the ZOMO garrison who may be salvageable – mainly the post-1997 recruits who weren’t part of the prewar regime protection force.

With the social aspects out of the way, the groups begin dividing the spoils of war. Our protagonists come away with the UAZ-452A ambulance (everyone agrees that Red, as the only qualified doctor in the region, needs that), the ZOMO transport unit’s Star 266 heavy truck, and the Soviets’ Toyota Hilux technical and its AGS-17. Ellis requests the Mercedes S-Class from the convoy, as well… “I have a disguise in mind,” he says.

On the topic of armament, Ellis is adamant that his team keep the AT-5 launcher after the amount of blood they shed to get it. Kozlowski is fine with this, so long as it doesn’t wind up in Von Bahr’s hands. The team also gets an SPG-9 and one of the three 82mm mortars. It’s a significant boost to their anti-armor firepower after months of relying on rifle grenades and disposable rocket tubes.

As that discussion is winding up, Ellis gathers everyone around the radio. On schedule, the Soviet engineer detachment receives orders to negotiate with the local partisans for the return of captured personnel…

---

Pettimore, out on the perimeter, sees two sets of headlights approaching. He crawls over to the White Eagle RTO who’s been assigned to him and calls in the alert. One of the vehicles halts a couple of kilometers out; the other keeps coming. As it approaches, Pettimore can see that it’s a HMMWV with Soviet identification markings sprayed on the doors. The gun ring is empty. The occupants are a young man with junior enlisted rank insignia and a woman with captain’s rank tabs. Pettimore puts the reticle of his captured Dragunov on the driver and waits…

---

At the camp, there’s a brief stir, but this isn’t entirely unexpected. Ellis, Red, Leks, and Kozlowski go forward, with Von Bahr hanging back as the joint command group’s designated survivor in case this is some kind of ruse.

The HMMWV stops a few hundred meters away. Both occupants emerge. The driver slings his AKM and leans on the hood. The passenger unbuckles her pistol belt, drops it on her seat, and begins walking forward, waving a white flag.

The command group waves her forward. When she’s within conversational distance, she introduces herself as Captain Danila Marchenko. She’s a whipcord-thin, hard-worn thirtysomething with a bad case of thousand-yard stare.

Ellis introduces himself as Broadstreet.

Out in the darkness, Pettimore is too disciplined to allow his finger to tighten on the trigger.

Marchenko asks about the state of the Soviet POWs. A little of the tension cranks out of her posture when she hears that Major Maksim Volkov, the QRF commander, is alive. (Ellis’ interrogation of Volkov revealed that he and Marchenko are close friends and related by marriage.) “I’ll need proof of that,” she holds out.

Kozlowski gives the necessary orders. About twenty minutes pass before a truck arrives from the nearby farm where the prisoners are being held. A handcuffed Volkov emerges and takes in the scene.

Marchenko asks what it will take to get the prisoners released into her custody – just the Soviets, she has no orders regarding the ZOMO and doesn’t really want them back. The command group presents the demands they worked out while waiting for her to show up: withdrawal of all Soviet forces from Radom, withdrawal of support for the Radom ZOMO, and halting the planned demolition of the half-completed Soviet base adjacent to the FB Radom weapons plant.

Marchenko frowns slightly at the last point – the demolition orders came as part of her conversation with Lublin. “You’ve been listening,” she says, unsurprised. “I can do that. I have better uses for that Semtex anyway.” She turns and waves her white flag in a semaphore-like move. Through his scope, Pettimore sees Marchenko’s driver reach into the HMMWV and pick up a radio handset. The farther vehicle’s lights come on again and it begins crawling in slowly. It’s a 5-ton truck, two crew in the cab and an empty bed – presumably the vehicle that’ll take the prisoners away once the exchange occurs.

Volkov has been watching and listening with an expression of intense concentration. As the conversation pauses and the process of bringing the Soviet prisoners forward begins, he speaks at last. “Mister Broadstreet. You’re not like the ZOMO, like these.” He gestures at Kozlowski. “You’re awake.”

Ellis nods. “Yeah, that’s a thing.”

Volkov looks around the group. Looks at Ellis speculatively. Narrows his eyes. “Library.”

“Huh. Map,” Ellis responds acerbically.

Volkov nods slightly, exhales. “You’ve seen it, then.” He gestures with his cuffed hands, encompassing the world with an abortive, jingling sweep.

“We’ve seen some things,” Leks puts in.

Volkov cocks his head at the accent and looks up at the big Estonian. “Let me guess. You didn’t wait to be captured before going over to NATO.”

Leks grins.

“We could have handled the Baltics better,” Volkov admits.

“What have you seen?” Red asks, still turning over in his head the implication that Volkov has access to, or at least knows of, an intact library.

The Soviet officer shrugs. “We’re reconnaissance. They send us to find things. We… find things.”

“The training and drills you were running. That wasn’t just to keep their edge, was it?” Ellis asks rhetorically.

“No. Routine is the mind-killer. Days blur into days and people… lose time.”

“What else?” Leks prompts.

Volkov inhales sharply. “The first sign I couldn’t ignore? There was a village. They were friendly, but something took three of my men on three nights. We found what was left. No one would talk to us except one old woman, the one everyone else pretended wasn’t there.” His eyes meet Minka’s and he quickly looks away. “She told us enough. So on the fourth night… I had three female soldiers with me. I put them on guard duty. It couldn’t blind them, couldn’t lead them away. They caught it. It had a woman’s face. What was underneath…” he flinches. “Green, wet, and all teeth.”

“Rusalka,” Alexei murmurs.

Volkov looks at him sharply. Nods. His eyes track back to Ellis. He stands silent for a long moment, then something inside him breaks loose. “Damn you! We were trying to help here. We were here to stabilize this. Something’s happening up north, something in Warsaw.” His expression tightens as he sees the recognition in the Americans’ and Poles’ eyes. “Radom was supposed to be a bulwark, a shield against whatever’s coming from there. Establish some kind of order here, get the ZOMO under control and civilized again. Deal with the bandits, the anarchy. Be ready.” He makes a throwing-away gesture, frowns as the cuffs pull one hand after the other. “It’s your problem now, Mister Broadstreet.”

Ellis and Red look at each other. We could have worked with these guys passes unspoken between them.

Air brakes hiss, breaking the tension as a truck pulls up behind the group. White Eagle troops begin unloading Soviet prisoners. Marchenko crosses to stand next to Volkov, who’s mentally ticking off names and faces.

“If we see any of you back here,” Ellis says conversationally, “we’ll shoot you.”

Volkov snorts. “Don’t worry. If you see me back here again, you’ll probably have bigger concerns than shooting me.”

There’s a long silence. “Yeah. I get that,” Ellis admits.

Volkov holds up his wrists, jangles the cuffs again, raises an eyebrow. Leks waits just long enough to inject some doubt before grunting and producing a key.

Volkov rubs his wrists, as if reassuring himself he’s actually free. He doesn’t offer his hand before he turns to leave.

“Good luck with the wolves, Mister Broadstreet.”

PDF’d and posted because I’m too lazy to fight with reformatting it for here. This rolls up the team’s status and that of their allies and opponents, as well as the major captured items of interest. It’s not exactly an in-character document but it’ll probably drive a lot of discussion during the next session of play.

Ellis, Miko, Cat, Scott, and Quinn are hunting for the main group of Soviet advisors who’ve slunk off from the ZOMO offensive to do some unspecified commando action on Von Bahr’s western flank. Out of radio contact since they left the ambush site/rally point, they have no idea what’s been happening at the ZOMO command post and subsequently at the mortar battery.

[I’m blogging this separately for readability, but this scene ran in parallel to the mortar battery raid, with focus shifting back and forth at appropriate moments and at the end of each combat round. This scene had Ellis and Miko being played by their regular players; Cat being run by her player, whose primary is Minka; and Scott being driven as a rental by the player behind Red and Cowboy. Quinn stayed an NPC, as all she was doing was driving.]

It’s been a long afternoon of light rain, high humidity, and fruitless searching. The UAZ-469 with Ellis’ detachment aboard is crawling through the Polish countryside, staying in concealment and off main roads as much as possible. Patience is in short supply as the team rolls up from the south side of another little cluster of buildings at another nameless crossroads. Leaving the UAZ in a scattering of trees, Ellis, Miko, and Cat ease forward to scan with their binoculars…

Jackpot. On a rooftop on the north side of the not-even-large-enough-to-be-a-village are two men in Soviet uniforms with something Ellis hasn’t seen in a long while: the thick tripod-mounted tube of an ATGM launcher. About fifty meters closer to the team, near the actual crossing of the roads, two more men are hunkered down in a rubbled building. Cat picks out the wavering line of a radio antenna next to them, and the angular shape of a parked GAZ-66 light truck nearby.

The team crawls back to the UAZ to discuss tactics. The enemy forces are all on the north side of the settlement and oriented northward. Ellis’ quick analysis is that they’re waiting for Von Bahr to try a breakout to the west so they can neutralize his T-72… but they don’t appear to be watching their backs yet. So Ellis, Cat, and Miko will sneak forward to take up positions in buildings on the south side of the road. As soon as the firefight kicks off, Quinn will floor it out of cover, allowing Scott to bring the UAZ’s mounted M2HB (a recent replacement for the PK appropriated by Cowboy) into action.

At least, that’s the plan.

As Ellis, Miko, and Cat approach their selected buildings, they hear the faint rumble of a vehicle approaching the crossroads from the east. Ellis sees it first – it’s a battered BTR-70, one he recognizes after spending a good number of hours around it listening to its radio.

[With Magda strapped into one of the litters and unable to do her usual navigation job, Bell and Erick got a little turned around on the way out of the battle area…]

The Soviets aren’t unaware of this either. The launcher crew begins reorienting to the east and the duo in the rubble also swing around. It’s the latter group who catches sight of Miko and shouts the alarm, and the fight is on. As the first shots ring out and Ellis ducks into the nearest building, he catches sight of the BTR hitting the brakes and beginning to reverse into a J-turn.

Miko opens with a fragmentation grenade, stunning both of the troops in the rubble pile. Ellis and Cat exchange inconclusive fire with the duo atop the building. This attracts the attention of a third pair of Soviet troops, previously unseen by the team, who were stationed in another rubbled building on the north side of the village. Fortunately for our protagonists, they go for their rifles rather than engaging with the RPG-7 they’re carrying.

Both lightly injured, the two men in the southernmost position begin pulling back north toward the GAZ-66. Scott and Quinn arrive in a screech of tires, but Scott’s initial burst of .50 goes wide. One of the Soviets pulls himself into the GAZ and mans the PK mounted in the cab’s gun ring. His return fire tears through the UAZ’s cargo compartment and sends Scott and Quinn bailing out of the vehicle.

Miko dashes across the street and into another partially-collapsed building to hurl another grenade. This one goes wide, its only function to attract attention. Four AK-74s chatter and Miko goes down, bleeding out from a brachial artery wound [bleeding shoulder crit]. The RPG team starts running south, bypassing Miko and maneuvering to flank the team.

Cat continues trading fire with the Soviets on the rooftop as Ellis sneaks out the back of their building. He sets up just as they come into view. A burst from his G3 drops one Soviet in his tracks and sends the other scurrying back to cover. The two men trade fire and injuries for a few moments, Ellis finally resorting to his sidearm to drive off his opponent.

Cat moves up and boards the UAZ as Scott and Quinn resume their positions. The little jeep-analogue rolls out again, screeching to a stop between the GAZ-66’s machine gun and Miko’s prone form. Cat bails out and drags Miko to cover as Scott and the GAZ gunner trade fire, an exchange that leaves the GAZ with a leaking radiator and Scott with an injury that forces him and Quinn out of the UAZ again. Scott props his RPK across the UAZ’s hood and continues firing, managing to keep the ATGM team on the roof from making the situation any worse.

Cat gets Miko back in action, for certain values of “action.” With his functional arm, the teenager preps and tosses a grenade toward the GAZ. It flies true…

… and explodes in a shower of hellfire. Miko wanted to see what his recently-looted white phosphorus grenade would do. The two Soviets aboard the GAZ die screaming. Enraged, the ATGM team pops up and hammers Miko flat with another volley.

Horrified, Cat slams Miko down to the sidewalk and strips him of any more grenades before trying to resume treatment.

This is the point at which Ellis’ opponent returns to the main fight, appearing behind the pinned-down quartet and lobbing a frag of his own into their midst. Cat and Scott both catch fragments and are knocked prone. As the man levels his AK to finish the job, Ellis emerges behind him and casually empties his Beretta 85 into the soldier’s back.

Cat picks herself and her M4 up and blasts one of the ATGM team off the roof. His partner, realizing he’s the lone survivor, finally surrenders. As Cat resumes trying to save Miko, Ellis shakes his head, reloads, and walks over to see if the radio survived.

---

Running this in parallel with the mortar fight was a study in contrasts. I was genuinely afraid I might wipe this party. The dice just did not go in their favor until the last few rounds. The final damage was:

• Ellis: Health 1/4, Stress 5/6
• Miko: Health 0/5, bleeding shoulder crit
• Cat: Health 4/5, Kevlar vest destroyed
• Scott: Health 1/5
• Quinn: somehow uninjured, but also two-dimensional

This effectively concludes the Battle of Radom series. I’ll try to get some informational posts up so readers can keep track of all the secondary PCs and NPCs who’ve been introduced, and I also am considering a referee’s perspective post about the overall story arc here. There will be one more game session dealing with the battle’s aftermath, but due to scheduling and wanting everyone at the table for that, it’s about a week out at best.

At a crossroads near the former ZOMO command post, the team and a few of their allies link up. Using the radio aboard the captured UAZ-469, Leks established contact with Zenobia while she was delivering ammunition to Von Bahr’s troops, and the two groups were able to reunite. Ellis’ raiding party, lacking a radio of their own, remains out of contact, its whereabouts and status unknown.

The raid on the command post was costly. Magda and Cowboy both went down, the latter with a critical arm injury, and Pettimore also is leaking. An immediate medical evacuation and the addition of some reinforcements are necessary before the team goes after the ZOMO mortar battery. Erick, re-added to the group after he and Red finished with the last round of surgery, will command the medevac, with Bell, Ortiz, and Ross rounding out his crew. His job is to get the worst-injured team members – Magda, Cowboy, and Pettimore – out of harm’s way in the BTR-70K.

Von Bahr’s RPG team has stuck with the irregulars from Ponikla thus far, but their task now is to watch the ZOMO command post and maintain custody of the prisoners and material taken there. If enemy reinforcements show up in force, they’re to bug out.

This leaves Leks, Novotny, Turner, and Minka to go after the mortars with the OT-64. Joining them are Zenobia, back from the supply run, and Betsy, newly arrived with Erick.

[Nudging my players to build backup PCs a few sessions ago is paying off now. Betsy hasn’t been on screen until this session, but she’s the ex-POW AVLB crewwoman, the backup PC for Magda’s player.]

The team cross-loads their APCs, spends a few last moments with wounded comrades, and splits up – one group going toward safety, the other heading back into the line of fire.

---

Somewhere nearby, Alexei Brandt pedals his bicycle and its attached cargo trailer down a mostly-paved two-lane road. The light rain that’s been falling all day hasn’t been able to mask the sporadic sounds of fighting in the area, and the East German teenager hopes he doesn’t get caught up in it. His luck runs out, though, as he rounds a bend and sees a farm whose field is sprouting three hastily-dug pits, each tenanted by trio of Polish militia and the long tube of a mortar.

[Alexei is the backup PC for Pettimore’s player. I hadn’t planned to bring him in for another couple of sessions, but Pettimore’s injuries and this scene gave me the opening I needed to get him into play.]

Alexei tries to ride by casually, but as he passes the turnoff to the farm, three sentries – two more Poles and a third in Soviet uniform – yell at him to halt. They move away from their vehicle, a battered pickup truck with some sort of heavy weapon mounted in the bed, and approach him, ordering him off his bike. Alexei complies, raising his hands.

“What are you doing here? This is a restricted military area!”

Alexei shrugs. “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t see any signs.” He gestures to his bike’s trailer. “I’ve just got stuff, you know? Like, salvage.”

[This is not a verbatim transcript but it’s pretty much how the conversation went.]

The two Poles exchange a look. “What do you have?”

“Ah.” Alexei starts pulling things out of the trailer to display them. A set of engraving tools. A technical manual for BMW 3-Series automobiles. A snorkel and a set of swim fins. “Just stuff I’ve found, y’know?”

“You, uh, got any smokes?”

The Soviet, much more alert and hanging back a few meters, shakes his head in resignation.

Alexei grins and produces a half-carton of Marlboros. “Sure do! What do you have for trade?”

At this point, the trade deal is interrupted by the bellow of an engine and the squeal of tires as an OT-64 bearing extensive but superficial combat damage charges into view from the south and makes a skidding, swaying turn onto the farm’s driveway. Alexei and the sentries scatter, diving for cover.

Aboard the OT-64, Minka’s eyes widen as she recognizes the East German boy who worked the last prewar summer for her as an exchange student farmhand. “Don’t shoot the kid!” she yells as she, Betsy, and Novotny open fire. The broadside volley drops the ZOMO troopers where they stand and drives the Soviet toward the cover of the nearby trees.

Turner hits the brakes as the APC barrels toward the technical parked in the driveway. There’s a horrifying screech as the vehicles trade paint but neither one sustains serious damage. In the turret, Leks brings the KPV into line with the nearest transport vehicle, a Tarpan Honker with ZOMO markings and an attached cargo trailer, and mashes the trigger –

[Penetrating damage, 1d10 table… a 5 is… cargo.

Oh boy.]

The OT-64 rocks in the blast wave as seventy 82mm mortar shells detonate. The blast half-flattens the nearby command tent, smashes the front of the adjacent farmhouse, and stuns the battery crew into inaction just as they were beginning to react to the sudden appearance of a very hostile APC.

The 40mm grenade that Minka sends toward the command tent is almost anticlimactic. In its wake, she bails out of the APC, Betsy hot on her heels. Both women sprint toward the abandoned technical and its automatic grenade launcher.

“Minka!?” Alexei hauls himself to his feet and starts running in that direction. As he passes his bike, he grabs one of the items that he didn’t intend to offer for sale.

The Soviet advisor who was on sentry duty folds as Alexei swings en passant and dives into the pickup’s driver’s seat. Betsy wins the race by a stride and leaps behind the AGS-17 while Minka clambers aboard. The engine cranks and the tires fling gravel.

Sporadic return fire begins to crackle from the farmhouse windows. Leks ignores it to put his sights on the Star 266 heavy truck visible beyond the building. His salvo tears the fuel tank to shreds, sending a couple hundred liters of flammable alcohol gushing onto the fallow fields. The lone crewman there decides he isn’t being paid enough for this and begins running as fast as his legs can carry him.

Now alone in the OT-64’s passenger compartment, Novotny [piloted by Miko’s player] grins and puts a 40mm tear gas round through one of the farmhouse’s open windows.

Turner steers the APC around the farmhouse, surprising a trio of ZOMO who staggered back there after escaping the command tent. Their AKM volley does little more than chip more of the OT-64’s paint. Leks saves ammo and lets Novotny return fire, dropping one and convincing the other two to behave themselves.

The mortar crews are starting to get organized, grabbing their personal weapons and firing from their positions. Betsy’s freshly-appropriated AGS-17 thunkathunkathunks out a volley at one of the mortar pits, suppressing the trio of ZOMO there.

The OT-64 swings around the parked Star and the farmhouse to put all three of the mortar pits under its guns. This is about all the survivors can take and weapons begin to fly out of the pits.

---

This was designed as an easy fight if the players could neutralize the AGS-17 and the machine guns on the trucks, which they did rather swiftly. However, I ran this in parallel with the hunt for the Soviet advisors’ commando team, switching back and forth at dramatically-appropriate moments and at the end of every combat round. That fight… did not go as dramatically in the PCs’ favor.

After consolidating and reorganizing, Leks is leading Bell, Cowboy, Pettimore, Magda, Minka, and Novotny in a headhunting raid against the ZOMO command post. This is their best chance to disrupt the ZOMO assault against Von Bahr’s unit to ensure that their allies retain control of the derelict-but-repairable hydroelectric power plant.

Ellis wasn’t able to extract an exact location for the command post during his interrogation of captured Soviet QRF leaders – they legitimately didn’t know – but the team has a general idea. They’re looking for an elevated position a few kilometers southeast of the battle, close enough that the Soviet-supplied radios will enable the ZOMO commander to control his maneuver elements and mortar battery. Magda takes a look at the map that Zenobia recovered from the QRF HQ and points to a string of low hills. “There.”

In a small dot of woods a few hundred meters south of the position Magda indicated, Magda, Pettimore, and Cowboy slip out of the idling OT-64 and head north. As the stealthiest characters on this operation, they’re charged with pinpointing the CP’s location and calling in the rest of the raiding force. Because they have good Recon rolls and it’s no fun to play out hours of aimless searching, they find it, creeping in from the east amid light woods.

It looks like the ZOMO field force used this as a base camp before the cavalry and mechanized infantry moved out for the assault. A large number of tents are scattered around a clearing atop the hill, but none of them appear occupied at the moment. Trench lines to the north and south host a quartet of disinterested sentries. The hill’s crest to the west provides a natural barrier there. In the center of the camp are parked a Land Rover 110, with spray-painted camouflage over its original British paint scheme, and a UAZ-469, wearing ZOMO markings and sporting a large radio antenna. A half-dozen people in mixed ZOMO and Soviet uniforms are clustered around the rear of the latter vehicle.

Without radios, the team is back to more primitive methods of signaling. Cowboy tosses a red smoke grenade out of the treeline to the south. There’s an immediate reaction from the command post. Shouted orders send the nearest sentry climbing out of his trench to investigate. He’s almost to the source of the billowing crimson cloud when he sees and hears the OT-64 bellowing its way up the slope toward him. He turns to shout and run.

Cowboy opens fire on the cluster of officers. She’s carrying a PK and the heavy 7.62mm rounds tear into the group, dropping one of the ZOMO officers and suppressing the rest. The two Soviet advisors are faster to react, ducking for cover and moving to the rear of their Land Rover.

The roar of a large engine turning over alerts the recon team that they’ve overlooked a major and potentially fatal detail. On the north side of the camp, the crew of a BTR-50P is cranking their ride. From the factory, such a vehicle wouldn’t have been much of a threat to the oncoming OT-64, but it’s been up-gunned. A DShK heavy machine gun is pintle-mounted at the commander’s hatch. Of greater concern, though, is the SPG-9 recoilless rifle whose long tube sits atop the roof.

Magda sprints toward the BTR. She’s not much of a mechanic but she knows that most engines stop if you punch enough holes in them. The crew is focused on getting their weapons into action against the OT-64 and doesn’t see her until the muzzle of her Tantal is jammed into the engine’s cooling louvers.

[Does a BTR-50’s engine bay even have cooling louvers? I don’t know. Nor do I care. It was an awesome maneuver in play.]

Magda dumps an entire magazine into the BTR-50P’s engine compartment [bypassing the armor]. A cloud of dense white smoke erupts as thirty extra 5.45mm holes exceed the engine’s designed tolerances. Magda has just forcibly parked the ZOMO’s greatest anti-armor asset… but its guns are still in play.

Bell pulls the OT-64 onto the map just in time for an SPG-9 round to sail over his head. He begins driving evasively, throwing off the gunner’s aim for a follow-up shot but also giving Leks, Minka, and Novotny a horribly unstable firing platform.

Despite the swerving and bouncing, Leks’ hand on the KPV is steady. His return fire tears into the BTR’s glacis. The loader slams a round home, though, readying the SPG-9 for a second shot.

Fire begins reaching out from the trenches as the sentries react. Rounds ping off the OT-64’s hull and further damage the coaxial PK. Leks, undeterred, keeps hammering the BTR. Minka returns fire from the overhead hatches while Novotny dismounts and charges a trench.

[We really need to have a chat with Miko’s player about these tactics…]

Cowboy shifts fire to the Land Rover, tearing its suspension to shreds. The Soviets continue pulling gear from the back of the disabled vehicle. Pettimore sees one of them loading an RPG-16 and puts a round close enough to suppress him, but the anti-armor rocket launcher is still in play.

Magda, isolated at the camp’s northeast corner, comes under fire from the north trench’s sentries. She pulls back around the BTR’s corner, reloads, and begins trying to suppress the vehicle’s crew to keep them off their weapons.

Minka reloads her GP-25 and puts a 40mm round into one of the trenches. The ZOMO officer and sentry there are hurt [which the explosives in enclosed spaces rule from Urban Operations definitely facilitated], but neither man goes down.

A heavy rifle round slams into Cowboy from a heretofore-unrevealed sniper team atop the western hill crest. Pettimore reciprocates with a headshot, demonstrating why he’s the superior sniper, but the spotter is still in action. He’s nestled in behind a G3 and he flips the selector to full auto and continues firing on Cowboy. She goes down with a shattered elbow, bleeding out. Pettimore adjusts fire and coolly puts a round into the spotter too.

[The sniper team was up there observing the battle with a spotting scope. It took them a couple of turns to reorient on the unexpected fight and pick the best target. They should’ve gone for Pettimore first]

One of the northern sentries exits his trench and rushes Magda. There’s a close-range exchange of fire which ends both both parties injured and out of ammo. Enraged and desperate, Magda pulls her gardening knife and charges her adversary, but the initial exchange of blows shows she’s outmatched. Pettimore attempts to intervene in the melee, but his rifle finally fails him, going down to 0 Reliability:

A rifle butt smashes Magda in the face and she falls. The ZOMO trooper’s triumph is short-lived, as Pettimore swaps weapons and drops him around an arrow in the stomach.

Leks continues trading 14.5mm volleys against SPG-9 shells. The ZOMO gunner can’t seem to hit. Leks isn’t so handicapped. His KPV finally chews through the BTR’s front armor, killing the commander and sending the driver (who’s been hiding in his seat with nothing to do) into headlong flight.

Novotny overruns the southeast trench in a point-blank exchange of fire that ends with him standing atop two dead ZOMO.

Pettimore drags Cowboy into cover and begins applying immediate aid to keep her from bleeding out.

A final volley of fire from the ZOMO survivors disables the OT-64’s coxial PK. Leks curses, turns over the turret to Minka, and dismounts to press the assault with his MG3. The Soviets go down in a barrage of fire, having never gotten a shot off with their RPG-16. This is enough to force the three surviving officers, the BTR’s driver and gunner, and the one remaining sentry to surrender.

---

This was an ugly fight, ending with two PCs down, one with a crit. The dice made the BTR-50 tougher than the numbers say it should have been, but its crew passed a surprising number of Coolness Under Fire checks to avoid forced bailouts. For all that, they got like four or five SPG-9 shots off and never actually scored a hit.

It’s approaching noon when the team is reunited. A haze of burning truck and UAZ hangs over the ambush site. Red and Erick, their own wounds barely bandaged, are hard at work in their improvised field surgical ward. Minka goes to check on and help them, in that order. The rest of the team begins reloading, reorganizing, and trading stories with one another and the White Eagles.

Ellis and Leks take a few of the higher-ranking prisoners aside for interrogations. The news isn’t great. It gets worse when the White Eagles’ RTO comes to Ellis with a radio message from Von Bahr (with the loss of the BTR-70K’s radio, the team has no working comms themselves). Ellis pulls the team and the White Eagle command element together and summarizes the take:

• As suspected, the Soviets have been following their Afghanistan counter-insurgency template: protecting their own assets, trying to build up local forces to handle regional security in the rural areas, and preparing to move more Soviet forces into Radom to control the city.
• The greatest perceived security threat is Von Bahr’s loosely-NATO-aligned East Germans at the power plant on the Pilica. The PCs’/White Eagles’ strike against the Soviet QRF happened to coincide with the Soviet-backed ZOMO move against Von Bahr. The majority of ZOMO forces are in the field for this assault now.
• The Soviet advisor team is in a different chain of command than the QRF was. They both report up to commanders in Lublin, and they’re coordinating and communicating locally, but neither group answers to the other.
• There are about a dozen advisors. A few of them are embedded with the ZOMO forces but the majority are using the ZOMO action to mask their own unspecified commando action against Von Bahr.
• There are four main ZOMO elements in the field: a command post, a mortar battery with three 82mm tubes, a cavalry “company” of about 20 troops, and a mechanized infantry “company” with about 25 troops, an OT-64, and two BTR-60s. The remaining two foot infantry “companies” (in reality, platoons) are back in Radom for local security – presumably, one of these was the reinforcements that the team saw arriving at the QRF base.

Ellis does some quick map sketching. Von Bahr’s back is to the Pilica River, north of him. The ZOMO cavalry are moving in from the south as skirmishers while the mechanized infantry’s main assault comes in from the east. The mortars and command post are both southeast. This leaves Von Bahr’s western flank open, and that’s where Ellis suspects the Soviet advisors are operating.

Ellis, Red, and Leks confer with Rabarchak, the White Eagle commander on scene. As agreed, the White Eagles will support, but Rabarchak’s orders don’t allow her to move her troops forward and no one expected to have to ride to Von Bahr’s rescue today. But the team is behind the ZOMO’s lines and has an opportunity to disrupt this offensive without engaging another large force.

The team has to split up. It’s the only way they can do enough damage.

Ellis grabs Miko, Cat, Quinn, and Scott and the team’s own UAZ-469. They’re going hunting for the Soviet advisors.

[More introductions. Cat is the Ranger forward observer from Task Force Cobalt; she’s now the secondary PC for Minka’s player. Scott and Quinn are, respectively, the U.S. Army aviation maintenance NCO and the British parachute rigger from the POW column, both still NPCs.]

Zenobia takes the BTR-70K with Turner, Ortiz, and Ross. They’ll accompany Ellis’ group as far as possible, then split off to make a special deliver to Von Bahr. The Soviets had done some surgery on their captured FV-101 Scorpion, replacing its standard 76mm gun with a 73mm gun from a BMP-1. Presumably, this was to simplify their supply chain for the vehicle. For the team, this means that they’ve liberated a decent supply of 73mm ammo that Von Bahr’s troops can use in their own BMP-1, for which they previously had no main gun ammo.

[No new faces here, but reminders. Turner, Ortiz, and Ross are all NPCs rescued from the POW column. Turner is an MP, Ortiz is an infantrywoman SAW gunner, and Ross is an artillerist. Ortiz and Ross are both carrying moderate injuries from the convoy/QRF ambush but are still fit to fight.]

Finally, Leks will take Bell, Cowboy, Pettimore, Magda, Minka, and Novotny in the OT-64. They’re hunting for the ZOMO command post with the intent of performing a decapitation strike.

[And a few more reminders. Bell, Cowboy, and Novotny are all rescued POWs. Bell is the NPC linguist, still trapped in the OT-64’s driver’s seat. Cowboy is the MLRS crewwoman who’s now the secondary PC for Red’s player. Novotny is a Czechslovakian defector, an infantry grenadier who’s usually an NPC but will temporarily be under the control of Miko’s player.]

It’s not a perfect plan, but there’s only time for an adequate plan executed violently. The team rolls out.

The hit on the Soviet QRF base west of Radom will rely on a successful convoy ambush to draw off enemy forces. Without dividing the Soviets’ strength, the raid team will be severely outgunned. But they do have a plan…

The team splits up into four elements. Pettimore and Zenobia move in first, creeping up before dawn to take position in an abandoned house southeast of the base.

The main assault will come from two teams, each approaching on the main road in an APC. The team coming from the north will be Bell (driver), Cowboy (gunner), and Miko (dismount) in the BTR-70K. The heavier south assault will be Turner (driver), Leks (gunner), Magda, Minka, and Novotny (all dismounts) in the OT-64. Finally, a three-person RPG team on loan from Von Bahr will approach on foot from the southwest in case any QRF elements try to break out through their compund’s back gate. All three of these teams spend a couple of agonizing hours easing into position. If they’re seen or heard, the whole operation will be blown.

[Bell, as readers may recall, is the trombonist and SIGINT linguist rescued from the POW column in mid-August. Turner is the MP from the same group. Both of them are still NPCs. Cowboy is also a liberated POW, a former MLRS crewwoman who’s now the secondary PC for Red’s player. Finally, Notovny is a fourth ex-POW and NPC, a Czechoslovakian defector who’d subsequently been a grenadier in the 5th ID.

I probably need to do a roll-up post for all the characters we’ve introduced who haven’t yet gotten much screen time here.]

Everyone reaches their starting position without apparent detection. They’re committed now – without radios, they have no coordination between the four elements. On paper, the numbers still suck for our protagonists. Even with the planned diversion drawing off enemy strength, they’re still going to be outnumbered by veteran troops who are equipped at least as well as they are and who are in their home. On the other hand, they actually have done some pre-fight management for this assault, and they should have the additional advantage of…

---

Pettimore and Zenobia have been hunkered down in their hide for hours. It’s now mid-morning. Without a radio (the team’s only unit is in the BTR-70K), they don’t have direct communication to tell them when the convoy ambush goes off, but they can tell anyway. There’s a boil of action around the QRF base’s radio room. Within minutes, engines are cranking and hatches are slamming shut. The initial counter-assault package rolls out: the Scorpion, followed by the OT-64 with an infantry squad on board and the UAZ-469 gun truck with its AGS-17.

The rest of the QRF doesn’t rest. The other vehicles pull around to the front of the compound, ready to move once the ambush scene is secure. With the departure of the first package, this leaves a BTR-80, a HMMWV with a DShK, and the unarmed bukhanka ambulance and the Zil-131 recovery truck – plus, of course, the remainder of the infantry, the command element, and the mechanics and medics.

The sniper team waits. At a hundred meters out, they can’t hear the enemy radio, but their rifle optics give them a window into the command element’s body language. They can tell exactly when the counter-assault package hits the White Eagle ambush.

Pettimore sights in. Thoughts and Prayers cracks once. The QRF’s tower guard falls.

A kilometer to the north, Bell hears the distant shot. “I guess it’s that time,” he sighs, and cranks the BTR-70K’s engine. An equal distance to the south, Leks clanks the OT-64’s hatch shut and nudges Turner with his boot.

Pettimore and Zenobia move back into the shadows, watch, and begin marking targets. The Soviets are scrambling for cover, shouting back and forth as they try to determine where the shot came from and who was hit. They’re just getting organized when the bellow of engines heralds the arrival of both APCs.

From the previous week’s reconnaissance, the team determined that the Soviets’ initial reaction package should usually by the Scorpion, one of the APCs, and one of the gun trucks. Their plan calls for removing the biggest threat first: whichever APC remains at the base. Cowboy and Leks swing their KPVs onto the BTR-80 and cut loose. The Soviet APC’s hatches fly open and it shudders in a cascade of internal explosions as the 14.5mm deluge finds its ammunition feed.

From the OT-64’s air guard hatches, Magda and Minka open up on the workshop at the compound’s southeastern corner, suppressing the mechanics before they can get organized. The HMMWV’s gunner starts to swing his weapon in their direction, but Zenobia has been waiting for this. A single round from her M21 takes the gunner’s head off and sends the rest of the HMMWV’s crew scurrying for cover.

Miko jumps out of the BTR-70K and advances through the junked cars on the compound’s north side. He lobs a tear gas grenade into the former restaurant/tavern that now serves as the QRF barracks, then hunkers down as that attracts the attention and fire of the troops who’d already made it out of the building.

To the south, Leks turns his attention to an RPG team that’s trying to set up for a shot on the OT-64. Magda and Minka continue trading fire with the mechanics. Novotny dismounts but heavy fire forces him into cover before he can execute his assigned task of tear gassing the workshop.

Despite Cowboy and Miko’s best efforts, there isn’t enough weight of fire on the north side to pin all of the enemy troops in the barracks and headquarters building. One of the troopers manages to get an RPG-18 into play. The rocket hisses toward the BTR-70K and slams into its flank. The HEAT jet tears through the rear compartment, striking the priceless radio. Miko retaliates with more tear gas.

Heavy fire from the headquarters rattles off the OT-64’s armor. None of it penetrates but it forces Minka and Magda under cover and damages the APC’s coaxial PK.

Pettimore finds the source of the heaviest fire, a Soviet with an ancient Degtyaryov DP-27 propped on a window of the HQ. He sights in, breathes, and puts a round through the man’s heart.

Leks puts PK fire into the remaining members of the HMMWV’s crew, permanently deterring them from re-boarding their vehicle and getting their DShK into operation. Minka and Magda stay in the air guard hatches, sending short bursts toward targets of opportunity.

The Soviet RPG team sends a round toward the OT-64 but it goes high. Pettimore, Leks, and Zenobia focus fire on them.

There’s a momentary lull in the action as both sides maneuver and take stock. Miko, closest to the HQ, is the first to hear the call for surrender. With all his heavy weapons out of action, the Soviet commander seems to have realized the futility of continued resistance. The team moves in cautiously, but there’s no treachery afoot here. Under the guns of the APCs, the survivors lay down their weapons and have a seat on the pavement.

Aware that they’re on a clock, the team begins looting everything they can get. Zenobia goes for the HQ first and finds that the Soviet commander’s last action before surrendering was to toss a thermite grenade onto his radio and codebooks. There’s still at least one major intelligence win, though: a large wall map of Radom and its surroundings (which has some interesting implications about the Soviet commander’s headspace).

Miko and Magda head into the recently-fumigated barracks, working in quick bursts before ducking out to get fresh air. Minka makes a beeline for the workshop. Leks, Cowboy, and Novotny, aided by the East German RPG team (who are suitably impressed with the carnage), supervise the Soviet medics’ treatment of their wounded and herd the prisoners into the back of the Zil-131.

The team is about halfway through a good thorough looting when Pettimore, who’s remained on security, spots two heavy trucks approaching from the north. They halt about a kilometer away and an infantry platoon begins deploying. Through his rifle scope, Pettimore can see the ZOMO armbands.

The team drops what they’re doing and scrambles for their vehicles. Miko tosses a Molotov into the barracks; Leks drops the HMMWV into gear, aims it at the workshop, and leaves another Molotov in the driver’s seat. The impromptu convoy turns south, heading for a rendezvous with the White Eagles at the ambush site and hoping that side of the fight turned out as well as this one did…

---

We had an entire game session devoted to planning this fight before actually executing it, and that really showed the difference between randomly running into enemies and taking the time to think through and coordinate actions. Surprise and suppression played huge parts in the players’ success. The Soviets actually had a fair amount of anti-armor firepower that could have splattered the team’s APCs, but they didn’t have a chance to get much of it into play. At the end, the PCs killed 12 and captured 19 in exchange for minor injuries and stress. They also got away with the UAZ-452A ambulance, the Zil-131, and about half the Soviets’ gear and supplies.

With negotiation and reconnaissance concluded, the team preps their gear and moves to their staging areas. Red, Erick, and Ellis, along with NPCs Ross and Ortiz, move south in the UAZ-469. Their job is to link up with the White Eagles, await a suitable convoy, and support the ambush on the QRF. The main assault element for the hit on the QRF’s base is composed of Pettimore, Zenobia, Miko, Cowboy, Magda, Minka, Leks, and NPCs Bell, Novotny, and Turner with the BTR-70K and the OT-64.

The Battle of Radom begins fifteen kilometers west of the city. The White Eagle-friendly merchants in Opoczno report that a Soviet convoy is passing through on its way from Lodz to Lublin. It’s a BRDM-2 escorting two GAZ-66 trucks and a staff car. The ambush team moves into position and begins prepping the ground…

---

I resolved this as an off-screen mass battle scene, using a cobbled-together guidelines (too loose to be called “rules”) and a fair amount of improvisation. Here’s how it worked:

The White Eagles are committing their Platoon B: 25 experienced troops under Mariana Rabarchak. They’ll also provide one of their four vehicles, a pickup truck mounting an SPG-9 recoilless rifle. The convoy ambush will focus on disabling the vehicles and pinning down survivors so the QRF has an obvious reason to come to the rescue hastily.

Friendly force strength looks like:

• command section (Rabarchak and 3 troops with a PK machine gun; veteran quality)
• infantry section 1 (6 troops with an RPG-7; experienced quality)
• infantry section 2 (6 troops with an RPG-7; experienced quality)
• infantry section 3 (6 troops with small arms; experienced quality)
• SPG-9 team (3 troops; experienced quality)
• PC contingent (counts as veteran quality)

Expected enemy force strength is:

• convoy survivors (hopefully low numbers, small arms only, and experienced quality)
• QRF Scorpion light tank (veteran quality)
• QRF gun truck (veteran quality)
• QRF APC (veteran quality)
• QRF infantry squad (6 troops with some type of light support weapon, veteran quality)

Once the ambush goes off, combat resolution will be abstract. Opposed Command checks between Rabarchak (d10+d8) and the Soviet commander will determine which side goes first each round.

Each group gets one “attack” with one base die for every 3 troops, or fraction, still active. Base dice are determined by troop quality: experienced d8, veteran d10. Heavy weapons provide additional d6s, similar to ammo dice: 1 for a machine gun or RPG launcher, 2 for a heavy machine gun, auto grenade launcher, or cannon.

A unit can always target an opposing unit that attacked it on the last enemy turn. Alternately, it can roll randomly for its target, representing the chaotic and uncertain (and map-free) nature of maneuvering in this fight.

Hits on vehicles are resolved normally, using the attacker’s most powerful weapon.

Hits on infantry are resolved with a random roll to determine who’s hit (one per success on the attack) Roll 1d6; if it’s equal to or less than the weapon’s base damage, the target is a casualty (dead or too injured to keep fighting; exact fate to be resolved later). If the die result exceeds the base damage, the victim is injured but still in the fight; a second injury makes them a casualty. White Eagle/PC forces get a +1 modifier to this roll because they’re fighting from prepared positions.

---

An example:

White Eagle infantry section 1 attacks the QRF infantry squad. They’re 6 troops of experienced quality, so they get 2d8 base dice and another 1d6 for their RPG-7.

An unlikely roll of 7/6/6 yields three hits on the QRF infantry.

Randomly selecting victims yields three different Soviet troops taking hits. The RPG-7 has a base blast damage of 2, so we roll 1d6 for each of the hits. Die results of 4/5/1 indicate that the attack injures two Soviets and kills a third.

The Soviet infantry team is down to 5 combatants, 2 of whom are injured and will be dropped by any successful subsequent hit. They’re of veteran quality, so they’ll still be rolling 2d10 base dice for their return fire, plus bonus d6s if they have a heavy weapon.

---

The initial hit on the eastbound convoy goes off exactly as planned. The BRDM-2, on point, rolls directly over one of the team’s carefully-hoarded antitank mines. Although the resulting destruction of the fuel tank somehow doesn’t ignite a fire, the crew bails out anyway.

PK and RPG-7 fire rips into the GAZ-66s and the staff car. One GAZ rolls over, its driver’s dead hand no longer on the wheel. The second GAZ and the staff car are damaged, their drivers and passengers bailing out and taking cover. The White Eagles begin sporadic harassing fire to herd and pin them in place to be rescued…

---

The QRF halts about 500m out to dismount the infantry, then advances in wedge formation with the Scorpion on point, the UAZ (mounting an AGS-17, let’s not forget) on the left flank, the OT-64 on the right flank, and the infantry squad using the Scorpion for cover while providing additional eyes. They fail to defeat Ellis’ crafty positioning of the other AT mines, though, and the OT-64 finds one the hard way. The blast rips through the vehicle, scattering the ammo stowage for its coaxial PK and heavily damaging the suspension. The crew bails out and the fight is on.

---

Round One

The White Eagles win initiative.

An RPG-7 round strikes the Scorpion’s glacis. The light tank shudders as the HEAT warhead rips a chunk out of its suspension, but it’s still drivable and the crew remains on board.

Small arms fire peppers the abandoned OT-64, killing the vehicle’s commander before he can re-mount.

The SPG-9 crew engages the UAZ-469, hoping to take the area saturation weapon out of play. Their first shot kills the commander and injures the gunner, but the gunner and driver remain steadfast.

Ortiz and Ross target the Scorpion and volley the RPG-22s they brought to the fight. Ortiz misses, but Ross scores a hit. A fuel fire erupts! The Scorpion crew hangs tough, though, and does not bail out.

Fire from the convoy survivors indicates they’re willing to take an active hand in their rescue. Two of the White Eagle infantrymen fall.

The Scorpion crew manages to extinguish the fire before it can reach anything explosive. Trailing smoke from its wounds, the light tank searches for its tormentors.

The UAZ-469’s gunner returns fire on the SPG-9 crew, injuring one of them.

The OT-64’s driver and gunner re-mount their vehicle amid a hail of fire.

The dismounted Soviet infantry zero in on the firing signature of the RPG-22s. A well-aimed GP-25 round tears into Red and Ortiz.

---

Round Two

The White Eagles maintain initiative.

An RPG-7 round, an SPG-9 shell, and a wall of fire from the command section’s PK all go wide of the frantically-maneuvering UAZ-469. That AGS-17 is still in the fight…

Another RPG-7 round strikes the Scorpion. The crew’s luck runs out as the commander is killed instantly. The blast injures the driver and gunner, but they still refuse to abandon the scrappy little vehicle.

Small arms fire drops another of the convoy survivors.

The PCs return fire on the QRF infantry, killing two with well-aimed shots.

The Scorpion entered this fight with an HE round loaded and has found a target. The blast sends one of the White Eagle infantry sections sprawling; two remain where they fell. A follow-up round from the QRF infantry’s GP-25 injures another.

The OT-64’s gunner locates the White Eagle command section and cuts loose with the PKV. Rabarchak’s RTO is torn apart.

Round Three

The White Eagles still have the momentum despite their losses.

An RPG-7 rocket ends the UAZ’s evasions. The vehicle comes apart in a yellow flash as its AGS-17 ammo detonates.

Another RPG strikes the OT-64’s bow, killing the driver. The gunner is alone on board his immobilized ride, but he refuses to bail out.

The SPG-9 crew loads HE and shifts fire to the QRF infantry, killing one more.

Hoping for a lucky hit, the PCs catch the Scorpion in the side with massed automatic fire. Sparks fly and a track link is severed.

The remaining Scorpion crew aren’t giving up yet. The gunner slams another HE round home, slews the turret, and engages the PCs. The blast knocks down Ross and Erick with moderate injuries.

The OT-64 gunner is still in the fight too. The KPV walks through one of the White Eagle infantry sections, claiming another victim.

The dismounts and the isolated convoy survivors have had enough, though. Both groups are below half their original strength. Their morale is flagging. Caught in a fire sack, they surrender [below 50% original strength and failed troop quality checks for morale]. The isolated OT-64 gunner realizes he’s in a stationary target that is about to attract at least three antitank attacks; he, too, pops a hatch and waves a towel. The Scorpion crew takes a bit more convincing, but with one dead, one injured, and a barely-functional vehicle [Reliability 1], they have to admit they can’t carry the fight on their own.

---

Red and Erick bind their own wounds, give Ortiz and Ross a quick assessment and patch job, and begin triaging the White Eagle casualties. Two were immediately fatal; three more are severe trauma cases.

Ellis, somehow uninjured, reloads his G3 and starts rounding up the prisoners. The haul is better than he expected: nine convoy survivors (three injured), the Scorpion driver and gunner (both injured), the OT-64 gunner, and three of the dismounts (including the platoon commander).

I also ran this in a Discord chat channel. Lacking a really good social conflict system, I reduced it to a series of opposed Persuasion checks. The negotiating team’s objectives were:

• Establish general military cooperation and intelligence sharing
• Obtain assistance with the planned raid on the Soviet QRF base in Radom
• Cut a deal for ammo, particularly 14.5mm for the team’s APCs
• Obtain more information on the White Eagles’ capabilities and force strength
• Obtain support for a general push on Radom

---

Red, Minka, and Erick take the UAZ and head down to Opoczno. The team’s White Eagle contact is Lena Lewandowski, the unnervingly-cheerful proprietress of a market stand that trades in soap, other personal hygiene products, and medicinal herbs. She’s married to unfailingly-polite and unblinking Antoni, the local barber. Between the two of them, there’s probably not a couple in Opoczno who’s better-positioned to hear all the local gossip.

Lena listens to the pitch, purses her lips in thought, and rings a small handbell that’s chained to the side of her stall. One of the kids who’s loitering on the fringe of the market square comes running up. She tosses the urchin an apple and says, “go fetch Dimi.”

A few minutes later, a teenager with a well-maintained mohawk and a thousand-yard stare ambles up. Lena introduces him as Dmitri Boykov. “He’ll be your guide,” she says. “Dimi, the lady and these two Amis need to talk to Major Kozlowski.”

Dmitri looks over the negotiating team. “Huh. Okay,” he says. “You got food? Petrol? This might take a day. Get what you want to take and meet me down by the highway.”

As promised, Dmitri is waiting for the team at the side of the road. He’s carrying a pack and a cloth-wrapped bundle that looks a lot like a folding-stocked AK of some sort. He piles into the back of the UAZ and directs Erick to drive east. About eight kilometers on, he indicates a turn-off into the forest to the south.

It’s late afternoon, several hours into a twisty, turny odyssey through old-growth forest that shows little sign of prewar habitation or use besides the unpaved road itself. Dmitri points out a badly-overgrown side trail. A few hundred meters down, completely hidden from the “main” road, is a large hunting lodge. “You wait here,” Dmitri orders/explains. He retrieves his pack and bundle from the back of the UAZ and heads off into the forest. As an afterthought, he calls over his shoulder, “it’s unlocked,” before vanishing.

The lodge is a two-story structure with a rough, unfinished basement. There are indications here and there that it’s been stripped of former luxury furnishings, but what remains (or what’s been brought in to replace them) is sturdy and well-kept. The pantry is stocked with nonperishables, there’s a good supply of firewood. Three bedrooms are furnished as such. The fourth is set up as a makeshift two-bed infirmary with bandages, disinfectant, some basic instruments, and a few doses of morphine. There’s no electricity or running water but a pump out back appears to be connected to a clean well and the outhouse isn’t all that sanity-blasting.

Around the time Red, Minka, and Erick are finishing dinner, the sound of an engine comes from outside. An older Land Rover Defender 110, faded blue with a white roof and what looks like Austrian registration plates, pulls up. Three men and a woman emerge along with Dmitri. All are carrying basic infantry kit and uniformed in the “frog” camouflage pattern of older Polish fatigues, with the same white eagle on red armbands that Magda sometimes flies. One remains with the vehicle; the others walk up to the porch. Dmitri knocks politely.

The man leading the group is in his forties. He’s unusually dark-complected for a Pole, short, broad-shouldered. He holds out a hand. “Major Felicjan Kozlowski, Home Army.” He indicates the grim, scraggly-bearded man to his left. “Captain Aleksander Grabowski, my adjutant. And you’ve met Lieutenant Rabarchak.” Red and Minka recognize Marietta Rabarchak, who was in command of the first White Eagle group they met. Dmitri slips back outside to join the driver/bodyguard at the Land Rover.

Kozlowski moves to the pantry and takes one of the better bottles of sliwowica. “We use this for meetings on, mmm, undisputed ground,” he explains as he rummages in the dining room’s sideboard for glasses. “Usually with the Bracia Wilkow.” He gestures for the team to sit. “I’ve been wanting to meet you.”

There’s a bit of social lubrication over light drinking – the usual polite nothings that avoid touching on prewar homes and families or wartime traumas. Rabarchak asks after Magda; Kozlowski inquires after Red’s injury. After twenty minutes or so, Kozlowski leans forward. “All right, Captain.” Red’s already introduced himself as a Navy lieutenant, so the mis-titling sounds like Kozlowski has made the association and has chosen to use the equivalent Army rank. “Much as it’s pleasant to meet the neighbors, you didn’t come down here for this.” He taps the half-empty bottle. “What do you think my company can do for you?”

---

General cooperation and intel sharing: Red is at +2 for assistance, +1 for regional coalition strategy, +1 for previously helping the White Eagles, -1 for the White Eagles being a larger faction.

Red 2 successes; Kozlowski 2 successes.

Kozlowski listens with interest. “I’m willing to engage in equal exchanges,” he says. “But you are – and I mean no offense, Captain – a foreign officer speaking on behalf of a Polish community.” He nods to Minka. “While I appreciate you bringing a Polish representative, the Home Army needs to be certain you’re not acting as an occupying force. I’d want to send an inspection team to assess your community’s status before agreeing to any meaningful exchange. Anything else we settle on tonight would need to be contingent on that.”

---

QRF base raid: Red is at +2 for assistance, -1 for the White Eagles being a larger faction, -1 for asking for something dangerous.

Red 1 success; Kozlowski 1 success.

Kozlowski looks over at Rabarchak. “Lieutenant? It’s your patrol sector.”

Rabarchak leans forward. “If we’re risking our troops for your diversion, we need more guarantees than whatever we can salvage from burning wrecks. I’m assuming you want us to neutralize the quick reaction force so they don’t turn around and hit your strike force in the back. That will cost us. You’re not your people’s only medic, no?”

Minka nods as Rabarchak looks at her.

Rabarchak points at Red. “Then you, personally, stay out of the fight and with our command element. You provide priority medical care for any of our people who are injured in this diversion. That’s the price for our blood and ammunition.”

---

Ammo trade: Red is at +2 for assistance, +1 for Trader, -1 for the White Eagles being a larger faction, -1 for asking for something valuable.

Red 2 successes; Kozlowski 1 success.

Kozlowski sits back and lets Grabowski handle the trade negotiations. There’s a fair amount of back-and-forth, with Minka taking the lead once the discussion veers into Ponikla’s production and salvage capabilities. The eventual offer is one shipment of ammunition for one shipment of mead and personal hygiene supplies, and future ammo supply drops to be negotiated in exchange for salvage rights from the railyard.

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Intel on White Eagle capabilities: Red is at +2 for assistance, -1 for the White Eagles being a larger faction, -1 for asking for something dangerous.

Red 3 successes, Kozlowski 3 successes (!)

Maybe if Ellis were here, he could gently extract some intel from Kozlowski without the Polish commander knowing what he was up to, but the team’s more pointed requests for additional information about their erstwhile partners are not well-received. Kozlowski eventually agrees that if he’s going to send an assessment team to Ponikla, he should at least return the courtesy and host a delegation in Skarzysko-Kamienna.

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Participation in a general push on Radom: +2 for assistance, -1 for not having a strategy or good intel at present, -1 for the White Eagles being a larger faction, -1 for asking for something dangerous.

Red 1 success; Kozlowski 0 successes

Kozlowski looks like he’s about to reject the whole concept but Rabarchak leans in. “Major? A word?”

They step outside, away from the lamplight coming from the windows, and are gone for nearly a quarter-hour. At last, they return. Rabarchak looks tense but confident; Kozlowski is tightly-controlled. He sits back down and sighs. “All right. We’re not strong enough to do it, but they’re Moscow’s puppets.” He looks to Rabarchak. “And slavers. So if you can manage your raid on the QRF, and if you can prepare the battlefield enough that we have a solid plan and aren’t just going to shatter against fixed defenses, we will start preparing to drive the ZOMO and the invaders out of Radom.” He raises a hand in caution. “If. You have a lot to deliver on, Captain Greyson.”

---

Despite being an NPC and thus incapable of pushing rolls, Kozlowski is a competent leader (Empathy B + Persuasion B) and was rolling pretty well throughout this. Also working against Red was the fact that every single one of his dice was either a success or a 1 – meaning it was impossible for him to push any of his own rolls.

I ran this operation similarly to the previous reconnaissance of Radom. However, as the PCs were focused on a specific location, I decided that each success on the observation rolls would provide intel on one of the following key areas:

• vehicles
• troop strength
• defenses
• deployment practices
• patterns of life
• equipment

The QRF base started at Alert 2.

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Day 1 (September 1; light rain, -1 to observation and +1 to stealth)

The team rides to the vicinity of the QRF base on the outskirts of Radom. They establish a concealed campsite.

Pettimore and Zenobia remain at camp to further camouflage it and prep their ghillie suits (Pettimore 2 successes, Zenobia 3 successes).

Ellis and Magda move ahead to identify ingress/egress routes for their surveillance. They’re able to pick up a patrol returning to the base and trail it for a while, Ellis overhears enough conversation to determine that foot patrols around their base are a regular thing for the QRF – the recon team will need to be disciplined.

Moving in a bit closer, Magda and Ellis are able to get a good idea of the base’s general layout. It’s located on the west side of a four-lane highway. The Soviets are using a former restaurant as their main barracks. The scrapyard’s office appears to be their headquarters office and team room, while its workshop is in use as designed for vehicle maintenance (and, from the sound of power tools and a small generator, seems to be well-equipped).

Alert remains at 2.

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Day 2 (September 2; cloudy, no modifiers)

Before dawn, Ellis and Pettimore move into an abandoned house a few blocks away and focus their optics on the base. Over the course of the day, they’re able to identify a total of seven vehicles in the QRF’s inventory. There are two APCs: an OT-64 identical to the team’s own and a BTR-80. There are also two more light combat vehicles: a UAZ-469 fitted with an AGS-17 automatic grenade launcher and a HMMWV mounting a DShK heavy machine gun. Two support vehicles are present, a Zil-131cargo truck and a UAZ-452 ambulance. Finally, there’s a rather odd duck for this area: what appears to be a British FV101 Scorpion light reconnaissance tank. One infantry squad is on security duty at all times, with three troops in one of the light vehicles, two walking the perimeter, and the sixth in a rickety observation tower atop the workshop.

After dusk, Magda and Zenobia relieve the day shift. They have a stressful close call on their way in (+1 Stress to both women) when a foot patrol leaves the front gate just as they’re approaching the house, but the Soviets turn the other direction. Once they’re settled in, they get a good look at the QRF’s setup. These guys feel secure enough to run their generator for electric light, including security lights on the north, east, and south approaches. They’re well-equipped – newer (relatively speaking) rifles, body armor, all of the vehicles except the HMMWV are in good condition. There’s a base station radio in the headquarters and at least one man-portable backpack radio in use by the patrols. There’s no evidence of farming, but these guys are using the restaurant’s kitchen to cook, indicating that they’re getting fresh ingredients from somewhere – they’re not subsisting on crap rations.

Alert remains at 2.

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Day 3 (September 3; thunderstorms, -2 to observation and +2 to stealth)

Ellis and Magda try out a couple of new hide sites on the south side of the compound. With crap weather, the Soviets aren’t too excited about patrolling aggressively. Over the next few hours, they’re able to work their way around the east side again, watching through windows and open doors to get a fairly accurate count of total personnel on site. By the end of the day, the breakdown looks like this:

• command element (3): commander (captain), senior sergeant, radio operator
• infantry platoon (25): platoon leader (senior lieutenant) and four 6-person squads
• recon vehicle platoon (10): platoon leader (lieutenant) and three 3-person crews
• support element (8): leader (sergeant), 5 mechanics, 2 medics

The captain is keeping them busy. They’re maintaining the guard rotation; the rest of the troops get the assorted joys of PT in the rain. There’s about an hour of vehicle recovery drills, with an infantry squad covering the mechanics while they hook up the “disabled” BTR to the Zil for emergency towing – all while incoming fire is simulated by the rest of the unit pelting them with walnuts. There’s the expected amount of bullshitting and grumbling but the overall impression is that these are professionals. Ellis identifies their parent unit as the 126th Reconnaissance Battalion, an element of 6th Guards Motor Rifle Division, which is the Lublin garrison unit.

Zenobia and Pettimore swap in after dark. It should be easy but Zenobia crosses upwind of the compound and finds out that the garrison is keeping dogs (+1 Stress to Zenobia from a push, +1 Stress to both for near-detection). The combination of night and rain makes for lousy observation conditions, but Zenobia does get a good look inside the workshop and verifies that the QRF is operating a medium still in the shed out back.

Alert, thankfully, remains at 2.

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Day 4 (September 4; sunny, +1 to observation and -1 to stealth)

With a bright, sunny day, Ellis opts for caution and doesn’t send anyone in until after dark. Zenobia and Pettimore refresh their ghillie suits, as the vegetation is wilting (Zenobia 2 successes, Pettimore 3 successes).

After sunset, the newly-camouflaged snipers creep in from the west, finding a good hide site in an overgrown vacant lot. They behold an odd tableau: the mechanics, with the enthusiastic but unskilled assistance of some of the other troops, appear to be refurbishing a trio of the junkyard’s Polski Fiat compact cars (a 125 and two 126ps). Surely they’re not so hard up for transport that this seems like a good idea? And yet, they spend a good two or three hours sweating under the work lights. There’s a cheer all around when, close to midnight, all three engines cough to life.

About half an hour after the infantry platoon leader calls a halt to this performance, he takes two squads out the gate. They head off to the east. Twenty minutes after they leave, there’s a sudden crackle of rifle fire. The sentries glance to the east but don’t react; this seems to have been anticipated. The gunfire continues sporadically for an hour. After it stops, that group comes back into camp. Pettimore and Zenobia sneak off to investigate. About a kilometer east, in the parking lot of an abandoned warehouse, they find a 50-meter training range that’s clearly seen heavy use – not just tonight. These guys have enough ammo for rifle practice (though they’re collecting their spent brass) and their leadership is making them do night training.

Alert is still at 2 somehow.

Day 5 (September 5; thunderstorms, -2 to observation and +2 to stealth)

The team has enough intel to prepare an assault, but one key element remains: they need to see what a response looks like when the QRF believes a partisan attack is in progress. Ellis and Pettimore head back to the abandoned house to observe. They nearly cross paths with an outbound foot patrol (+1 Stress each), but the Soviets are slogging through the rain and don’t notice them. They settle in, but the rain is keeping the troops indoors today and there’s nothing new to record.

Later that afternoon, Magda and Zenobia ride west to stage something that will prompt a response, but look like the aftermath of a drunken party when the QRF investigates. They spend some time setting the scene: empty beer bottles, discarded food scraps, a small and reluctant campfire, a muddy blanket, a torn t-shirt. At their prearranged time, just after dusk, they initiate the ruse. A flare streaks skyward, followed by a few bursts of celebratory gunfire. A few minutes later, they launch two more flares and burn off the rest of an AK magazine. Work complete, they slip away, leaving the campfire smoldering.

The sentry in the tower is huddled inside his poncho, clearly miserable, but he’s doing his job. As the first flare lifts over the horizon, he gives two sharp blasts on a whistle. What follows is a well-choreographed scramble. The three troops on duty at the HMMWV crank it up and pull out onto the road. Infantrymen boil out of the barracks. A three-man crew runs for the Scorpion and fires it up. Within a few minutes, the Scorpion is heading west at a speed that’s unnerving for a tracked vehicle, followed by the HMMWV and the BTR-80.

A second infantry squad clusters under the eaves of the building nearest the OT-64, while crews test its engine and that of the UAZ-469. A little slower, the two medics load the UAZ-452 ambulance and four of the mechanics prep the Zil-131 cargo truck. The remaining personnel crowd into the radio room, waiting for a report.

Out at the diversion site, Magda and Zenobia watch from a prepared hiding place as the vehicles approach cautiously. In the darkness and rain, vision must be nearly impossible. The Scorpion and HMMWV pull to either shoulder to allow the BTR-80 to advance. Its turret and infrared searchlight are swinging back and forth – there’s a good chance its night-vision systems are still working. The women have prepped their observation post with care, though, and they remain undetected. They watch as the vehicles take up an overwatch position and the infantry squad dismounts from the BTR. The troops advance cautiously. They spend about twenty minutes checking out the site. It’s obvious when their leader gives the all-clear – they don’t completely lose vigilance, but there’s a ripple of relaxation. They re-mount the BTR and the convoy heads back east.

Back at the compound, it’s also obvious when the “this was bullshit” radio call comes in. The second-stage QRF stands down, pulling their vehicles back into their parking spaces and unloading their sensitive gear. The radio room stays packed until the first-stage team is back on site, though. Once they’ve parked, the mechanics carry a couple of jerrycans out to top off fuel. The captain pulls his lieutenants and sergeants together for a conversation – almost certainly a debrief on what the first team found.

To Ellis and Pettimore’s eyes, it looks like the SOP is to launch the Scorpion, one of the gun trucks, and one of the APCs with an infantry squad as the initial QRF. The second group, consisting of the second gun truck, the second APC, and the ambulance and recovery truck, are prepped to head out and render aid once the scene is secure.

Magda and Zenobia also observed that while the infantry squad didn’t proceed much farther into the woods, they did have one member who appeared to be functioning as a tracker. He spent an awful lot of time examining the ground, and the squad leader deferred to him before calling the all-clear.

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 Ellis scribbles notes, checking his watch on identification, scramble, departure, check-in and return. Shakes his head with concern, noting what he already suspected. These aren’t bandits, shattered remnants, or any of the other amateur or under-supplied units – they’re veterans, well-drilled and disciplined.

He leans over to Pettimore and shows him his notes and time calculations “Well… I’m not saying we can’t do this or that we shouldn’t do this… But I do think we may want to discuss our risk appetite because this is a different kind of risky than hitting some marauders.”

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Watching the response procedures is the last piece the recon team needed. They creep back to camp and pack their gear for the return trip to Ponikla.