Kilroy Was Here
The ambush team continues towards the northwest, now dispensing with the bounding overwatch, all four running at once. Ondar badly wanted to return for Milk's body, but the sound of a truck approaching from the south, along with an exploding barrage of Polish rifle grenades from the east, convinces him that discretion truly is the better part of valor. Somehow, the grizzled Tuvan warrior knows his African-American counterpart would have wanted the rest of the team to escape, rather than risk death or capture to recover the empty husk of his now lifeless corpse. Spurred on by the buzz of bullets passing low overhead, the group makes their best speed; a few hundred meters away from the battle site, Konrad leads the ambush team back towards the road.
The Tarpan-Honker is waiting for them. Mariusz, exhausted but unwounded, is at the wheel. Jan, wide-eyed, covers the rear with the AGS-17. Anneka is treating Tucker's badly wounded arm on the floor at the bottom of the truck bed beside Jan while Griet tries to stay alert in the passenger seat. The ambush team piles aboard the Polish jeep, making room where they can, and the group heads north up the road.
They arrive at the STAR a few minutes behind Dawid (driver) and Sam (passenger), who'd forged on ahead aboard the Ural trike. The reunited team takes a few minutes to reorganize and then, with the trike on point, the jeep in the center, and the gun-truck following up at the rear, they head out north on the dirt road.
The road leaves the trees and emerges into an open pasture, curving slowly east towards the main north-south road between Kozienice and Gora Kalwaria. There are a few seconds of marked alarm as the group spots a lone BTR on the highway, a few hundred meters ahead. In the growing light of morning, they quickly realize that the BTR is a derelict, soot-stained and streaked with rust, its tires burned away to expose naked, mishapen rims sunken into the soft earth of the road's eastern shoulder.
The second thing that catches the group's attention is a small, badly shot-up building set near the intersection of the dirt road and the paved highway. The party can see the rising sun shining through the myriad, jagged holes through its concrete walls. It looks like it used to be some kind of pre-war traffic checkpoint or ranger station, tasked, most likely, with keeping wayward civilian traffic off of the forest access road the party has been travelling -and fighting- on for the past couple of hours.
A small team dismounts a few hundred meters from the guardhouse/BTR to clear the area before the vehicles proceed past and onto the highway. The clearing team comes upon a large, hand-painted sign just south of the small, empty building. It faces south and reads (in Polish),
Warning! Now leaving government-controlled area. Proceed at your own risk.
The sign is embellished with a couple-dozen bullet holes and a crude graffiti of a cartoon man peeking over a ledge at the viewer with "Gdzie jest Józef Tkaczuk?" scrawled beside it. Even smaller, in permanent marker, someone has added, in English,
Good luck. You're on your own.
Looking south, down the highway, towards Kozienice, the group can see the distant, twisted spires of the badly damaged power plant, portruding above the trees.
Everyone in the group- at least though not too distracted by the pain of their wounds- feels as though they are being watched from the trees near where the highway emerges into the open field. Through binoculars, one can see a low earthen fortification flanking the road, about 700m distant. Movement among the mounds suggests that it is occupied. Not pausing to study it any longer, the convoy pulls onto the highway and begins travelling north, towards the town of Gora Kalwaria, a renowned pilgramage site and the largest settlement on the Vistula between Kozeniece and Warsaw.
They leave not a moment too soon, as a mortar round explodes not far from the lonely checkpoint building behind them.
Actions?
This message was last edited by the GM at 00:40, Fri 06 Feb 2009.