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.