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.