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– with its command staff dead or in Ellis’ hands, the more experienced cavalry and mechanized infantry platoons have withdrawn to the east, while the late-war conscripts and recruits of the foot infantry platoons are huddled in their base.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.