Ch. 13: Kozienice
After putting some distance between themselves and Zwolen, the party pulls off of the road into a stand of trees to sort things out. The jeep is on its last legs and it is decided that it will be left behind. The party leaves a little surprise under its hood and gets back on to the road. As they pull back on to the 76 North, they see a group of military vehicles- a BRDM-2, two armored 5-ton trucks, a 2.5 ton truck, and a WTO jeep- heading in the same direction, presumably a pursuit force.
The party moves with haste, followed at just outside of small-arms range. Heading for the national forest just south of Kozienice, Mariusz and Jason, on point aboard the Ural motorcycle-sidecar combo, spot a waiting ambush just inside the woodline and direct the party onto an unpaved side road. The trucks make a sharp turn and begin heading perpendicular to the highway. The shadow convoy makes known its intentions with a burst of heavy machine gun fire, shredding one of the URAL wrecker's tires. The heavy truck swerves and bounces, throwing a crate of three HE 120mm mortar bombs, but remains on the road.
The convoy makes the relative saftety of the woods, stopping a few hundred meters into the trees at what appears to be the park caretaker's cottage. While the party attempts to make contact with the caretaker, Minh and Milk move east along the convoy's backtrail to see whether they are still being pursued. The pursuit force, led by the BRDM is still on the move. Milk and Minh emplace an AT mine in the roadway and heads back to the cottage to meet up with the rest of the group. The party decides to abandon the damaged URAL wrecker and transfers the disassembled mortar to the STAR gun-truck. They also decide to leave Jason and Mariusz behind to ambush the hostile pursuit force, hoping to delay them further, if not dissuade them altogether from continuing their pursuit.
As the main body of the convoy continues deeper into the woods, Jason and Mariusz watch as the pursuit force BRMD runs over the burried AT mine, blasting off one of its wheels and sending it caroming, patially ablaze, into a tree. As the enemy infantry dismount their armored trucks to begin their counter ambush manouvers, Jason and Mariusz open fire. The enemy troops immediately return fire and, as the ambush team hastily prepares to leave, Jason is shot in the thigh. Struggling through the pain, Jason nevertheless rides the URAL motorcycle out of the danger zone.
Meanwhile, the rest of the convoy races east, trying to put as much distance between themselves and the pursuit force as possible. Suddenly, a UAZ and a 4x STAR truck are spotted through the trees, moving quickly on a converging course along a feeder road. The party opens fire, their STAR's 23mm canon blasting the troop-laden bed of the larger truck. It smashes into some trees, burning furiously as its ruptured fuel tanks ingite. The UAZ, however, escapes serious damage and continues on down the forest road. The party stops to salvage the wreckage and wait for the ambush team to rejoin them. As soon as the motorcyle arrives, Jason is transferred to the bed of the STAR and Sam McCoy takes his place. The motorcyle team sets off in pursuit of the UAZ while the rest of the group prepares to ambush the pursuit force.
The Tarpan-Honker stays at the crossroads while Konrad, Milk, Minh, Stoner, and Ondar set up an ambush a couple of hundred meters to the east. They don't have to wait long. The Polish Army pursuit force's two armored troop-carrying trucks soon appear on the road through the trees. The ambush team waits for the first truck to pass before innitiating the ambush. Most of the team's fire is ineffective but Minh hits the truck's rear wheels with an RPG-16 rocket, bringing it to a sudden halt. The others engage the dismounting Polish troops with small arms and grenade fire, Milk bounding ahead to get a better shot.
As the first truck approaches the crossroads, Tucker threads 30mm grenade fire into its machine gun turret and through the driver's vision slit, instantly killing its entire cab crew. The driverless truck speeds forward another 50m or so before jacknifing among the trees on the north side of the road. A few seconds later, stunned and shaken Polish soldiers emerge from the armored bed.
Meanwhile, McCoy and Mariusz pursue the Polish army UAZ. They come across the broken-down squad carrier a couple of kilometers down the road. Both parties open fire on the other. Although outnumbered over two-to-one, McCoy and Mariusz manage to drive the Polish troops into the woods. As the enemy soldiers conduct a hasty fighting withdrawal, McCoy is wounded in the left arm. Nevertheless, the enemy troops are forced from the field, and the two attackers are left in sole possession of a damaged UAZ.
Back at the ambush site, Konrad, Minh, Milk, Stoner, and Ondar take on at least twenty angry Polish troops. More begin filtering towards the kill zone from the first truck, on its side a hundred meters down the road. It's a desperate fight, at the ambushers try to repulse nearly over four times their number. Accurate rifle and grenade fire thins out the force on the south side of the road while Stoner keeps reinforcements from the north side from joining the fight with sustained M240 fire. A barrage of indirect 30mm HE grenade fire called in by Konrad from the Tarpan-Honker further reduces the enemy's strength, allowing the ambushers to attempt to break contact to the southwest, through the woods. Just as the team is about to assault through the enemy survivors to the west, Clarence Milk is shot through the head. Ondar is wounded again trying to reach his mortally wounded fellow special operator. Unable to recover their fallen comrade's body due to accurate enemy fire and an impending counterattack from the other side of the road, the survivors beat a hasty retreat.
The ambush team eventually reunites with the Tarpan-Honker, STAR, and motorcycle teams and, remounted, they continue west, exiting the forest and turning on to a road leading back towards the main highway north to the riverside town of Gora-Kalwaria.
In the early afternoon, about midway to their destination, the bloodied, exhausted party decides to stop for the night. They exit the highway and head east down a two-lane road, arriving at a seemingly abandoned village. Just as they arrive, freezing rain begins to fall, turning to a blizzard just before dusk. The party camps out in a small, empty post office and awaits the coming darkness. At the same time, they inadvertently scare off a small group of armed men who had been sheltering in a ruined house across the street. Ondar and Cerny head out in surreptitious pursuit (more to keep an eye on them and determine their strenght and intentions). Shortly after they depart, Mariusz, on sentry duty at the post office, spots a strange procession heading towards the village through the falling snow. A caravan of several heavily laden horses and mules marches towards the post office, led by what appears to be a single-humped camel. Going out to meet them, Mariusz learns that it is indeed a merchant caravan out of Gora-Kalwaria carrying foodstuffs and liquor to the Polish army garrison at Kozienice, in an attempt to trade for badly-needed ammunition for the hard-pressed Gora-Kalwaria miltia. Caught in the unexpected blizzard, the merchant caravan leader- a self-styled gypsy by the name of Jupyzyk- decided to seek shelter in the abandoned farming village where the party has made their camp. Satisfied that the merchants pose no threat, the party allows them to stay the night nearby in an empty tractor shed.
Meanwhile, Ondar and Cerny track the armed men to a damaged building at the far east end of the small village. As they pair gets ready to head back to the post office, they are cornered by a pack of feral dogs. Using their silenced weapons, Ondar and Cerny kill one of the dogs and wound the alpha, sending the others scurrying for safety. They return to the post office to find a campfire waiting and the party spends an otherwise uneventful night in the mostly dry building.
The next morning, Mariusz and X are sent ahead to reconnoiter the route to Gora-Kalwaria in the Ural motorcyle/sidecar. Stopping at a conspicuous roadside crucifix several kilometers away from Gora-Kalwaria, the pair meets a horse-mounted militia patrol from the town. Using the gypsy merchant as a character reference, Mariusz secures entry for the party to the town and an audience with its leader.
This message was last edited by the GM at 02:41, Thu 15 Oct 2009.