DAY 5 – APRIL 22nd 2000
PRASZKA, POLAND – MORNING
The party moves to the nearby outpost as agreed with CJA, where their guide is waiting for them. From there they are escorted around the defensive perimeter of the inhabited part of Praszka to its eastern side, where they enter a blocky building similar to the one at Fabryczna 9. On the top floor the guide points outside the smashed window at a building on the opposite side of the road, about 100m from them.
“That is Wanda Chotomska school, our eastern outpost”
LED uses his binoculars to take a look without exposing himself: the main part of the building appears to be all at ground level, with a rectangular part protruding north with a second floor and a smaller, separated second floor over the main entrance. The lot is surrounded by a short metal fence and in between the fence and the building is a garden, just a few meters wide where the building nears the street, but a lot wider on the remaining sides.
There’s a patch of trees South of the building, but all the trees within 50m East and South of the building have been cut.
“We cut the trees for better visibility” explains the guide.
“Mines? Traps? Killer robots?” asks LED while scouting.
“No. Sandbags near the windows to the East and barbed wire along the fence East and South. We had a machinegun on the second floor, over the entrance, but we moved it to the other side of town at the start of the attack last night. There is another one inside the outpost, but we do not know if they have found it”
“Lots of windows on this side, but nobody in sight” says LED.
“What’s in the arsenal in there?” asks ALEX.
“A few pistols, about 10 assault rifles, mostly AKMs, a PKM and ammo for everything. Also, some helmets, some flak vests and some grenades we made ourselves”.
Everyone just stares at the guide.
“Ah, and one RPG-7” he adds.
“Are we really doing this?” asks NASCAR.
“Of course, you can’t take any of that” says the guide seriously “all weapons belong to Praszka”
“I was wandering where the catch was” comments LED.
A young man arrives, the same one LED and ALEX saw talking to CJA at the outpost. He delivers a few sheets of paper and a portable radio to the guide.
The guide lifts an old chair from the floor and positions it in the next room over, then he places one of the sheets on it: it’s a hand-drawn map of the school complete with doors, windows, stairs and divided between the two floors.
While the group is studying the map, the guide is reading the other document he received.
“If you capture the enemy commander alive, there will be a reward for you”
“What kind of reward?” asks ALEX.
“We’ll see”
“Not the best of incentives”
“Don’t worry, it will be worthy of your troubles”
NASCAR gets closer to LED “LT, are we really doing this?”
“The answer to your question is: no, I don’t like it. But, yes, we’re doing this” answers LED.
“Am I missing something LT? Do we have artillery standing by to level that building?”
“I don’t think our friend here would let us damage the building” says LED with a nod to the guide who’s now in a deep conversation over the radio. LED keeps his eyes on him while gesturing to his team to get closer. Everybody huddles up.
LED starts whispering, his eyes checking the guide “we are going to let the locals do the heavy lifting on this one. Let them make noise and draw fire. Be smart, be careful. We don’t need heroics; we just need to do our part and get the job done”
“Good to know there’s still some sanity around” comments DONNA.
LED returns to a normal tone “there’s no windows on the north side, on both floors”
“Good approach direction” says ALEX.
“Agreed. We sweep the north wing and proceed towards the central part. Then up one floor and same in reverse”
“This corridor is a good place to pin us down” says NASCAR, his finger on the map.
“Look at it the other way around” is LED’s response.
“What do you mean?”
“If they place someone at the end of the corridor, then they can pin us down, but…”
“If we get in place first, we can pin them down” finishes NASCAR “sounds risky”
“Then we’re sticking to last night’s theme”
At this point the guide has finished his chat and joins the players.
“How many men did you gather for this?” asks LED.
“One squad, six men, to fire on the building and pressure them. Another squad, 7 men, to assault the school”
LED raises his brows “I was hoping for more men”
“And more squads” adds NASCAR.
The guide smiles “then we would have not needed you”
“Right” comments LED “do you have something planned already?”
“Yes, there’s two houses, just on the other side of the street. First team opens fire from one house and second team assaults the main entrance moving from the second house. We just need to cross the street and the garden; we will be at the door in no time. You follow second team and we split when inside”
LED looks at the map a bit horrified “well…”
“What do you say?” asks the guide.
“No” says LED “I say no. We can’t all assault the front door, we’d run into a bottleneck, and right where they probably expect us; what’s the point in having multiple squads?”
The guide shakes his head “main door is at shortest distance from the house. We hide into the house, and when they are distracted by the other team firing, we cross the street. We can be at the door in 10 seconds. If we attack from any other direction, there is more distance to cover and they have more time to fire at us”
“Listen” begins LED calmly “you asked for our help and our help starts here: let me show you a slight variation on your plan. Split the 6 men squad in two 3 men teams: one at the house with a machinegun to engage anyone who’s stupid enough to show up at a window; the other team moves through the trees to the South up to the tree line and engages the windows to the South and East. Your assault team stays at the second house and crosses the street but not to the main door; have them enter through the windows of this office here. As for my team: we move from the North, there’s more ground to cover but there’s no windows so they won’t see us, and we can enter from the North-West door, here”
“That door is locked” says the guide looking at the map.
LED thinks for a moment “locked how? Is there a chain? Is it locked from the inside?”
“It’s locked with a key. It was already locked when we turned the school into an outpost and we never found the key, so we left it locked”
“We can solve that”
[LED has a set of lockpicks in his gear]
“So, what do you say? This way we can cover almost all the windows, attack from two directions and the guys in the tree line can kill anyone who tries to flee East, though I’m not expecting these fanatics to flee”
OPPOSITE PERSUASION ROLL [click to expand]
LED is trying to convince the guide to change his plan: this is an opposite PERSUASION roll. LED gets a +1 for what is (hopefully) a well-conceived plan and a +1 for his Psy Ops specialty. The guide (EMP C, Persuasion D) gets a +1 for being part of the faction with the most troops participating in the assault (this is house-ruled, or rather house-interpreted):
- LED rolls PERSUASION [D12+D12] = 0 SUCCESSES (rolled 1 and a 5)
- The guide rolls PERSUASION [D8+D8] = 1 SUCCESS
LED decides to push the roll (he will take a stress point as he cannot re-roll the 1):
- LED pushes his PERSUASION roll [D12] = 2 SUCCESSES (rolled 11)
LED has (luckily) more successes than his opponent and manages to persuade him. The price is 1 additional stress point.
“Okay American, we will do it your way” agrees the guide after going over the plan once more.
LED sighs with relief “tell the leader of the assault team to cross the street fast. Also, make sure his men know the enemies wear a white armband” LED shows the guide his arm “and we don’t”
“I am the leader of the assault team” says the guide “and my men know who to shoot at”
“Good. One last thing: we could use some grenades if you have any to spare”
The guide shakes his head “no grenades. We had 5 men in the outpost and maybe they are now hostages. If you use grenades, you can kill them”
LED doesn’t want to argue with that “right” he says nodding. “Okay, we’ll get in position” he offers the guide his hand “see you when it’s over”
The guide shakes LED’s hand vigorously “name’s MARKO, and good luck to you too”
FINAL COMMENTS
Once more into the breach. The players have agreed to again help Praszka. This time, they will have to assault a prepared enemy who is certainly expecting them, and they won’t have the cover of darkness. Also: hostages.
The risk factor is higher, the difficulty is higher, and the reward is uncertain.