Grease doubles back, parks
Pole Position on the road, nose facing the woods where the alleged 5th ID survivor is hiding out. With Honeybear providing over-watch, Sarge, Bird, Sandy, and Deacon dismount and advance cautiously towards the tree-line. They find the lone survivor- he's unarmed, save for a pistol (M9), and he lost his K-Pot somewhere along the way. “I had to choose- radio or rifle,” he explains.
“Vehicles inbound from the north!” PR shouts from the starboard front air-guard hatch. The Diamond dismounts are 230m away from the SKOT.
A military convoy is approaching at a pretty fast clip. The lead vehicle appears to be a BRDM scout car. It’s trailed by a jeep-like vehicle mounting a tube-like crew-served weapon of some sort (probably a recoilless rifle), followed by a van and a 6x6 cargo truck.
Grease deftly re-orients
Pole Position to face the oncoming threat- this makes the APC a smaller target, as well as facilitating re-boarding for the dismounts. Honeybear opens fire first, at just over 300m range. The burst produces a bright flash and brief shower of sparks from the BRDM’s small turret. The scout AFV slows and makes a sharp left turn, disappearing into the rubbled village.
The Diamond dismounts leave the main body of the woods and run towards a line of tattered trees oriented on a diagonal about 120m from the road (and
Pole Position). Luckily, there’s already a slit trench dug there- a remnant of the battle that enveloped this area a little over two weeks ago.
The second vehicle in the convoy is now on point. The Tarpan Honker (a jeep-like Polish military vehicle) stops in the middle of the road 260m from Pole Position; its crew lowers the windshield and takes aim at the APC with an SPG-9 recoilless rifle…
PR and Honeybear are quicker on the draw. 12.7mm rounds chew through the Tarpan’s grille, while small arms rounds pelt the exposed crew cab, wounding the gunner.
Behind the Tarpan, the van takes a right and disappears into the rubbled hamlet. The 6x6 cargo truck stops in the road, dismounts a squad of infantry. The Polish riflemen (identified by their speckled, olive green uniforms) hit the ground running, following the BRDM and van into the ruins east of the road.
“They’re tryin’ to outflank us! Right side!” Walker shouts. This is supposition, as none of the Polish infantry are visible to any of the Diamonds at present.
The Diamond dismounts continue running towards the trench, Bird and Sandy outpace the others, but pay for their exertion with a twisted ankle and a pulled hammy, respectively. Eager to contribute, Bird takes a knee a few meters short of the trench; aims at the recoilless rifle gunner. When he pulls the trigger, nothing happens. The round is a dud.
PR and Honeybear both engage the Tarpan. PR’s M16A2 jams. Honeybear’s Soviet-made HMG proves more reliable. He hits the enemy jeep with another burst of 12.7mm rounds, killing the gunner and vehicle commander, and damaging the suspension. The Tarpan’s driver and loader are splashed with gore; traumatized but uninjured, both crouch down and try to make themselves as small as possible.
The cargo trucks- a STAR 266- turns right, stopping a few meters off road (now facing west). This unmasks a ZU-23-2 anti-aircraft gun mounted in the bed. The twin-barreled 23mm auto-cannon thunders out a long burst, directed at
Pole Position. Fortunately for the Diamonds, the enemy gunner’s aim is off. The ZU crew begins to reload the auto-cannon.
Sandy reaches the trench, takes aim at the biggest threat (the STAR gun-truck) with her M203. The bulbous 40mm HE round traces a shallow arc through the air, exploding just above the STAR’s gas tank which, miraculously, fails to ignite. The gun crew, however, momentarily drops out of sight in the truck bed.
Assuming that the recoilless rifle in the Tarpan is no longer a threat, Honeybear rotates the SKOTs armored cupola a few degrees to the left, takes aim at the STAR gun truck. Roaring and spitting fire, the Dishka blasts apart the gun truck’s front left wheel and sends a 12.7mm round through its unarmored cab.
“Lets go get our people! Take us off road,” Walker shouts over the SKOT’s intercom. Grease complies immediately, accelerating smoothly into a tight left turn. Honeybear struggles to rotate the gun cupola fast enough to keep the HMG’s muzzle on target.
Pole Position rumbles forward, off road, heading towards the scraggly tree-line from which the dismounts are still firing on the two visible enemy vehicles.
Just as it completes its turn, the enemy ZU-23-2 crew opens fire on the OT-64 SKOT. 23mm HE rounds explode against the right side of the SKOT’s troop compartment but fail to penetrate the Polish-made APC’s steel hide. A second or two later, the SPG-9 loader, now acting as gunner, fires the recoilless rifle at the moving SKOT. The rocket-assisted 73mm HEAT round leaps forth and fireballs against the ACP’s flank, burning a hole into its engine compartment. Somehow, the HEAT round doesn’t do enough damage to the SKOT’s engine to disable it. Pole Position continues to bounce across the field towards the friendly dismounts.
Honeybear was zeroing in on the STAR when
Pole Position was hit (in fact, he assumes all of the hits were from the ZU). He squeezes the Dishka’s butterfly triggers and watches with satisfaction as green tracers streak into the ZU-23-2, producing several sprays of sparks. The STAR’s entire crew bails out, starts running east towards the ruined ville.
At this point, the Polish infantry squad and the BRDM-2 still haven’t reappeared. It’s not entirely clear what they’re up to, but they’re most likely still moving through the ruins on the east side of the road in an attempt to flank
Pole Position’s last known position. The bulk of the surviving enemy force is now east of the road, rubble interposed between it and the Diamonds. Walker hatches a tactical plan to take advantage of the current situation.
Trailing a cloud of dust,
Pole Position jerks to a stop behind the tree-line trench; Walker opens the rear hatches from the inside shouts, “Mount up! Let’s go!” Sarge echoes the order.
With the APC crew providing cover fire, the dismounts climb out of the trench and re-board the APC, Walker doing a head count. Sarge grabs the bound and blindfolded ex-Red Army by the LBE and tosses him out the back door. As soon as everyone is back aboard, Walker orders Grease to go. The driver steps on the gas and
Pole Position lunges forward, heading west until he finds a gap in the trees, then hitting a sharp right turn to head north.
While the Americans were briefly out of sight behind foliage and a couple of farm outbuildings west of the road, the surviving SPG-9 crew dismounted their recoilless rifle, set it up pointing at the spot they expect the OT-64 to reappear.
As
Pole Position leaves concealment and bounces across a fallow field, the opposing forces resume exchanging fire. Incoming rounds from small arms ping harmlessly off the Skot’s side armor and raised air-guard hatches. Sandy, standing in the right-rear air-guard hatch, spots the SPG-9 set up in the road. Before the enemy loader-turned-gunner can take another shot, he’s cut down by her rifle fire. Sandy’s rifle misfires just as her primary target falls, mortally wounded.
Having cut approximately 700m across the field,
Pole Position reaches a dirt road branching off to the northwest from the main north-south [paved] road. As Grease maneuvers onto this branching road, the BRDM-2 announces its return to the fight by loosing off burst of 14.5mm fire at the retreating OT-64. The incoming tracers miss the SKOT gunner’s cupola by a few inches, but it’s so close that Honeybear instinctively duck’s down inside the troop compartment.
Now on a relatively firm, even surface, Grease puts the pedal to the metal, leaving the enemy in his dust (literally). The engine doesn't sound quite right, but it continues to do its job for the time being.
NOTES:
As mentioned in the last installment of notes, I prepped for this encounter by drawing cards and looking at the results on the Encounter Categories table. The first result didn’t of Crater didn’t make sense, given the AO; the second result was Military Convoy. Looking at my map, I couldn’t think of a compelling reason for a convoy to be travelling the stretch of road the Diamonds were using at the time, so I pulled a third card. The result was Military Patrol. I tried to make a story out of the latter two results but something was missing. I rolled on the Radio Chatter table and the result was a badly wounded American calling for help. That was the missing piece. I decided that there was a Polish 10th TD outpost in a large village up the road. This outpost hosts a mounted patrol tasked with hunting down American stragglers detected by an RDF team (the Ural van). This RDF team triangulated the wounded American’s position when he made contact with the passing Diamonds and dispatched the outpost's hunter-killer team consisting of a BRDM, Tarpan Honker with SPG-9, UAZ-452 RDF van, and STAR 266 gun truck carrying a squad of veteran infantry. This was the “military convoy” in the cards. I worried that this force was too strong, but I wanted this encounter to be both realistic and a serious challenge for the party.
This was my first shot at vehicle combat. Luckily, Honeybear drew an earlier initiative card than the BRDM-2 gunner, so the good guys got to shoot first. He made it count, hitting the BRDM’s turret and wounding the enemy gunner (who failed a CUF roll). I ruled that the commander ordered the vehicle into cover since it couldn’t return fire at that time.
For the SPG-9, which isn’t stat’ed in the rulebook, I used the numbers for 73mm AP (i.e. HEAT) ammo. I was really worried when the enemy gunner rolled a hit on Pole Position. When Engine came up on the damage table, I thought it might be the end for the Diamonds. Fortunately, the OT-64’s side armor held up, and the net damage wasn’t enough to destroy/disable the engine. For the ZU-23-2 hit on the SKOT, the result, luckily, was Ricochet.
Sandy hit the STAR with a 40mm grenade. The result on the appropriate table was Fuel Tank. I was hoping the fuel would ignite, but neither of the D6 blast dice showed six. The hit still made the gun crew go prone, though, effectively stealing their turn. Honeybear's second hit on the STAR resulted in a damage roll of Cargo. Was the ZU-23-2 cargo? It was the only object in the truck's cargo bed, so I ruled yes, and the burst (6+ damage) hit the ZU. That brought its reliability rating below zero, destroying it.
I rolled a lot of jams in this firefight- I risked pushing rolls to hit the enemy heavy weapons, trying to neutralize them before they scored punishing hits on Pole Position (which would have stranded the Diamonds). Bird, who’s usually a crit machine with his M21 (I haven’t kept track, but he’s racked up the most kills of anyone else in the unit so far, by a wide margin) experienced one of said jams, and didn’t score a single hit during the entire firefight.
Grease came up big on his Driving rolls. He always succeeded, usually earning extra distance, and only once needing to push (on the last roll of the firefight).
Bird and Sandy both injured themselves pushing Mobility rolls. Luckily, neither were hit during the firefight, so the -1s from the failed pushes didn’t really hurt.
I’m getting a lot faster Ref’ing firefights. I don’t have to look as much stuff up in the rules. The Ref screen and weapons cards helped with this, since I didn’t have to flip through the Rule Book half as much, and my ad-hoc combat tracker is proving indispensable.
This map shows the various unit locations at the time the engagement ends: https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/ed...933013394&z=15
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