Nodding to her orders, Quyen heads aft and works the rigging that deploys the inflatable in the water. Pulling it along with a rope, she guides it to the port side and secures it. She will then climb down inside the boat and receive any stores that need to be loaded.

"Ready down here." she calls. "Big stuff first."
This message was last edited by the player at 08:34, Sat 20 Sept 2008.

Ondar points to the pack that he came aboard with. Attached to the frame is the Soviet manpack radio that Milk had been monitoring with the frequencies the deserter had provided.  Some sort of carbine-length rifle is wrapped up in camouflage netting and bungie-corded to the right side of the ruck.

"Yes, got ruck," confirms Ondar. "Got strong back, too.  Maybe help load.  Or maybe march out front.  Make easier shoot Ondar in back if act up."

He smiles quizzically.

"Strong back huh and easy to shoot... good." Bayer (half) jokes. "You are not a prisoner. Prove yourself, and you'll get your weapons back."
This message was last edited by the player at 08:46, Sat 20 Sept 2008.

Taking a short break, Dawid admired the bicycles.

"That is good work, Sanjay. I heard that the Vietnamese people used bicycles for transport during the War of Liberation from the Americans. Never knew about the bar."

Mariusz stood waiting in his fighting load, weighed down and ready to go. He held the G3 and moved to the boat when Bayer ordered him too.

Griet shook her head at Bayer's suggestion, "The amount of humanitarian goods we can carry is so small that it's useless. We traded for enough to feed a hundred people for a month and for tools and clothes for as many. Now we might as well give it all away because we can't carry enough to make a difference. Our only hope is to load up on weapons and ammo. We're no longer a humanitarian mission, we're bandits, so we might as well be well-armed bandits or when we get to Warsaw we'll be useless to the people there. If we have weapons at least we might be able to fight for them because we won't be able to evacuate them or alleviate their suffering."

"Almost," she replied, deeply engrossed in her papers.
"I'm not yet sure how we're going to split it up and who's going to have what, but the list is virtually done."
With that, she slapped down a sheet of paper showing a list of all the items they'd inventoried over the past week or so. Many more items had been crossed off than left, some of which normally they'd be mad to go without.
"It's not anything like I want, but it'll have to do."
"I'm going to take one of the RPK-74s myself and leave my Uzi behind. Those with nine millimetre pistols are welcome to the ammunition."
One hundred and twenty eight rounds were now available from her four magazines, and another three thirteen round mags for the HP-35 she'd been carrying aboard the tug would soon be thrown in to the pot as well.

OOC: I've emailed a list to Rae for his approval and posting but it's essentially what's in OOC.

Bayer could do nothing but agree, "Alright, if that is how it is. We will just have to overcome this problem in Warsaw. Weapons and ammo then... and food for us."

"Yessir. Walter, Captain?"

Milk takes Walter and Adam back to the radio room/weapons locker and sets them up with rucks and basic LBE. For Walter, he selects one of the less worn AK-74s and for Adam, the more compact AKS-74U carbine. This will ensure cross-load capability with the majority of the security team, most of whom carry the AK-74 or one of its derivitives. Both crewmen have some experience with the AK-47/AKM rifle, so the transition should be fairly straight-forward.

Sanjay, busy packing his gear for transfer to the refugee barge, responds,

"Thank you sir. Similar bicycles are used for carrying heavy loads in parts of my own country. I hope these prove useful to you. It's the least I can do."

Dawid sighed as he agreed in Polish.

"Griet, my friend, our humanitarian mission was doomed when the Yanks decided to "use" your father and the rest of us to transport their RESET plans.

By inflection, he made it clear that "use" in context meant "ruthlessly take advantage of".

"Your father had a ship, the Yanks needed it, and so be thankful they simply did not seize it from him by force. If we want to keep tagging along they will be happy to let us, but don't think for a moment that if needed the Yanks still won't sacrifice everything, including our lives, to continue to carry out their mission.

"If it had just been us opposed by some pirates on the Vistula, I am certain we would have had at least a chance of success, at least to get there.

"Instead, with the Russians and their Communist government lackeys alerted ahead of time, we've had to fight almost every step of the way. Not all opponents we faced knew or were involved with opposing the Yanks, but we've had to deal with Spetsnaz teams lying in ambuscade for us, snipers picking us off, a fucking helicopter(!), tanks, and now even a battalion of motor rifle troops!

"It was inevitable that as we overcame lesser obstacles the Communists put in our way, they were forced to put everything they had in front of us to stop us. (Assuming they really are there, but I guess we'll never know.) The stakes were too high, with RESET involved, for them to do otherwise.

"Now we must continue on in a different capacity. Perhaps the half-dozen of us who are staying on in Warsaw (and are not leaving with the Yanks and RESET) will manage to defeat the Black Baron and his army with whatever we can carry on our backs or capture or steal along the way.

"I am but nothing if not an optimist."

Stubbing out his cigarette, he put the butt in his blouse pocket with the others. Wearily, he started picking up his gear.
This message was last edited by the player at 11:18, Sun 21 Sept 2008.

Griet nodded grimly, her fellow countryman's assessment was bald and bitter, but it was also accurate. Milk's mission had put an enormous target on Adam's head and it had only been a matter of time before the mission was doomed. She'd tried to make her father see sense, but the same Quixotic nature that had sent him on a near-suicide mission to try to resue family in Warsaw also gave him a connection to Milk.

Sticking with the American would lead to the same place eventually. The Soviets would search for them and send ever increasing forces at them until they were all dead and RESET was in their hands.

"I don't disagree with you, my friend, we are the cat's paw to the American's monkey. Poland has ever been used thus, and we are just a microcosm of that. For now, however, or fates remain linked, even if we split up, the Soviets will track us down and destroy us to see if we have the papers so our best bet is to stick with the Americans who constitute the best shooters we have. Later, we may prove to have made the wrong decision again, but later is another world." She placed her AKSU into the general pot, it was too heavy for her to carry with all her other gear, "Now is not the time to fragment. Later," she shrugged, "who knows?"

She moved once more to help unloading and see if she could find her father and talk to him privately, there was one final and desperate throw of the dice that she wished to discuss with him and him alone.

In reply to Griet Niewiadomska (msg #247):

Dawid grinned.

"I do not complain for the sake of hearing my own voice. Well, not only for the sake of hearing my own voice.

"Only that every soldier needs to know and understands the mission objectives, even if they disagree. So far this unwillingness to face the truth (the humanitarian mission never had a chance) has cost us dearly.

"Possibly every casualty we have taken except those at Tarnobrzeg have been at the hands of those seeking to steal RESET back. If we'd have known then what we know now, we may not have treated the fight at the locks so cavalierly, without the barge hanging around our necks we might have traveled fast enough to outdistance our pursuit, and so on."

He shrugged as if to say "who knows"?

"I misspoke when I referred to RESET as being American plans. They are, of course, in a sense our plans."

"That is true," Griet agreed, "I have tried to explain the problem to my father several times, but he seems to be fixated on two things: the first is to get to Warsaw to save his family, a task that has cost him two craft and over a dozen lives already, and now, we continue even though there is no hope of extending aid to them, the second is his trust in Milk, he seems to attach a great importance to him, he has entwined our fates with a faction that cares nothing for us or for Poland. Once again, we'll pay the butcher's bill and the Americans will benefit from the proceeds. My friend, I wish there was a different way, I'll try once more with my father, but I'm afraid that I really already know what his answer will be."

In reply to Griet Niewiadomska (msg #249):

"My friend, I think perhaps the Yanks would help us if they could. It's just that they can't, and they have their own goals to attend to even if they could.

"it is of little importance now. I believe Adam does us little good and it's certainly not safe for him! I agree he should stay.

"Personally, I intend to go on to Warszawa, see what I can do. I was there during NATO's siege, perhaps it is fitting I return."

Taking a short break on deck between sorting and packing and resorting and repacking, Jan lights up a smoke. Standing where he is he cannot help but overhear some of what Dawid and Griet have said.
"My new friends, I did not mean to listen, but I could not help but to overhear some of what you said. I do not know all of what has passed for you in your trip but I can tell you this, you have said a great truth but only a partial truth.
You are soldiers like I, and it is our right, sometimes our only right, to doubt and wonder if the orders we follow are doomed. It is true that Poland has suffered in this war but there are none that have not suffered. It is true that the great powers of the world treat the small as tools and game peices. It has always been so and always will.
I remeber Czechoslovakia with a child's memory and I remember our escape. We made a home finaly in France and learned to fit in. I am a French citizen and I am proud of that, I earned that with my blood and the blood of others I spilt. But in the Legion there is a truth we learn early, we are there so real frenchmen do not have to die. It is a harsh truth but it is always preferable to have another group die or suffer rather than your own. That is war, politics, and life in one truth.
Whatever it is this RESET you have, it is obvious it is greatly valued by both the soviets as well as the americans. I hope it is worth what will be paid."

In reply to Jan Cerny (msg #251):

Smiling, Dawid shook his head and corrected Jan in Polish.

"You are quite mistaken my friend."

"Perhaps I should have clarified, but as you can see, I am Polish, not American, so these are not my orders. I am not under orders from the US Army, I am acting under the orders of the Polish Home Army (the western-allied Polsih government forces) and must look after Poland's best intersests before the Amis."

He tapped the red-and-white armband that signified he was a member of the Polish government-in-exile's forces.

"You may be content to die so a Frenchman might not have to, but again, you alone made that choice to be in their army. So often we Poles die for the cause of others, not our own. As a soldier I only ask if I must give my life it be for the cause I choose.
This message was last edited by the player at 16:11, Sun 21 Sept 2008.

While folks prepare to transfer as much of their supplies and equipment ashore as they can feasibly carry once they get there, the scouting party of Tucker, McCoy, Mariusz, and Cerny piles aboard the powered Zodiac. With Minh alone at the helm (Stoner is still too weak to go along on such a mission quite yet), they set off up the tributary, heading northwest towards Zwolen.

The Zodiac motors along between tree-lined banks only 20m or so apart in places. The thick screen of vegetation on either side of the river (a stream, really, in comparison to the mighty Vistula) provides good concealment from any prying eyes on the flat pasture land that stretches away on both flanks of the waterway. However, that same concealment could work just as well for a waiting ambush party.

The boat pushes on through a latice of shadows cast by overhanging boughs. As it pushes further upstream, the river narrows and the branches reaching out from either bank above them grow close enough to touch their counterparts. The noise of the outboard motor is painfully loud, the sound literally hedged in by the the trees and the underbrush. To those in the boat, however, it sounds as if the whole of Poland can hear them passing through.

Without an odometer, it's hard to judge the distance they've travelled, but after about an hour, Mariusz indicates that he believes they are getting close to the friendly farm at which he and his small partisan band had sheltered for a spell last winter. The party finds a particularly thick stand of robust, old willow trees and beaches the Zodiac. They spend a few minutes listening in silence before pushing through the screen of trees to look out across the pasture to the north. Mariusz's dead-reckoning was right on the money. About a kilometer to the north can be seen the long, low cow sheds of the farm. Just past the sheds, the top of a grain silo can be made out through the haze. With the stay-behind element in place, Minh heads quickly back to the Krolowa to begin the tedious process of ferrying goods and people back and forth to the hide sight.

After a somewhat tense and lonely return trip, she arrives back at the tug where preparations for departure are well under way. The refugees are anxious to get going, especially when rumours that government soldiers may be after the tug's crew begin to circulate aboard their barge.

Actions?

OOC: Time is running out to interact with any of the refugees. I gather that ya'll intend to leave everything that you're not taking with you to them, correct? What about the Krolowa's barge? She can continue to drag it with her until she reaches a place where she can swing around with it. Or you can sink it. Also, looking at the map, the River Princess is close by, probably within visual range.
This message was last edited by the GM at 21:22, Sun 21 Sept 2008.

In reply to Dawid msg 252:

Smiling at Dawid, Jan shakes his head.
"I see we are both misunderstanding. I ment the orders of Adam which you seemed to feel were doomed. Not the Americans."
Lighting up another cigarette and offering one to Dawid as well he continues,
"I ment the position of the Legion only as an example. I made that choice myself. I blame noone for it, at the time it was the best of the options open to me. I have done well there, but I am  holding no illusions as to its role. All we can do is care for what is ours in an imperfect world and try  as best we may to have the least of the many evils prevail."

As Milk continues to monitor Ondar's R-143 radio for Soviet traffic, and still temporarily relieved of his firearms, Ondar reaches into his ruck and produces a sealed one-pound bag of whole coffee beans.

"You excuse," the Soviet deserter announces to Milk as he exaggeratedly hefts the bag in his hand and points toward the barge.  "Ondar got promise keep.  Man of word."

He leaves the chart room of the tug and moves toward the gangway connected to the refugee barge.  Once aboard, he finds the barge master at the wheelhouse and presents the battered Pole with the coffee, a commodity worth it's weight in gold in the present barter economy.  He then pulls a small velvet pouch from a chest pocket of his fatigue blouse and pours out a number of small gemstones and various forms of precious metal.

"As promised," he declares in the captain's native Polish as he presses the loot into the barge master's blackened dirt-caked hand.  "Payment on delivery."

He scans downriver pensively.

"You should be moving soon," Ondar cautions.  "Government troops not far behind.  Bad news for you if still here.  Go and prosper.  And best forget you ever saw me."

Ondar returns to the boat he find the captain of the Krowlowa.  Once he finds Adam, he approaches and requests a moment of his time.

"Captain Rataj," he begins, speaking again in broken Polish. "I come at great risk to warn you great danger to vessel.  Ondar make no secret allegiance to American mission recover RESET.  Want settle in Montana.  In meantime, see no reason why can not asset to your team and family.  Good fighter, strong back, loyal friend.  All these Ondar is. Time will prove."

He extends an open hand in friendship and inquires what he can do to assist.

The barge masters eyes grow wide as he studies the glistening gemstones resting in the palm of his grease-stained hand. The sound of the barge's engines coughing to life breaks the spell.

"Er, thank you. I can't say that I was pleased to have you aboard when you first appeared, but this whole... episode, has benefitted us greatly. Good luck to you and your new companions. As far as I remember, we never saw any of you. I will try to make this clear to our passengers. Now, if you'll excuse me, the engines are a little peevish."

With that, the barge master returns to the pilot house to finalize preparations for departure.

Adam hesitates, temporarily refusing to take Ondar's hand.

"You must understand, Mr. Ondar, we have been betrayed by one of our own once already. My daughter tells me that I'm far too trusting and I'm beginning to think that she's right. Why are you doing this? You are an experienced warrior, are you not? Why abandon your army after so many years of service? It doesn't sit right. If you want me to trust you, you must trust me. Tell me why you are doing this."

"Adam," Anneka interjected urgently.
"We've taken what we can off the barge. I suggest we let the refugees pick it over before they leave then sink it next to the wreck of your other tug. It might buy us a little more time, maybe..."
She wasn't too confident the ruse would be believed for even a heartbeat, but they might as well try to give themselves, and those who were staying aboard, as much of a head start as they could.

As he helps ready the stores for tranfer to the cache, Jason takes a break when Minh returns down the tributary.  He makes his way to her and says, "I'm glad to see you made it back.  Are you all right?  How's the arm?"  It is just about all he can do to keep from throwing his arms around her.  He continues softly. "I do worry about you, you know.  Not that you can't take care of yourself, of course."

Later, he looks up Anneka.  "Major, what would you like for me to carry?  I can probably hump about 9 kilos more.  If we put my pack on a bike, I can move faster, and probably carry another 4 kilos." 

Returning to work, he adds a bundle of items to the pile waiting to go to the cache.

Ondar nods solemnly.

"Yes, Ondar understand." he continues in broken Polish.  "Ondar know about betrayal.  Maybe it come with territory."

He sighs deeply.

"Ondar story long and sad.  Ondar not know all words tell.  I go find that other Pole for translate if have time."

With that Ondar excuses himself to locate Piotrowski and interrupts him.

"Earlier, Plutowny, you offer translate." Ondar reminds the Polish artillerist. "My English good enough for Americans, but now must speak to Captain in personal matter.  Trust your Russian is better than my Polish, maybe you come speak for me?  Am grateful."