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Entry tags:
The Company
On April 29, we had Bonnie ("Xiang Wen," a.k.a. "Wu Xie Zhi" and "Dot"), Marc ("Anabel Windsor," a.k.a. "Abigail Wilson" and "Vicky"), and Torsten ("Qoqa Ramazanova," a.k.a. "Zoya Petrovna Sidorova").
Time: Thursday, April 24, 2014 (early evening).
Place: Islands southeast of Athens.
Last Event: A daring raid begins!
The Agents announce their arrival with the detonation of a hefty C4 charge that turns the fuel tanks atop the nearby hill into a greasy fireball – and an instant after that, with mortar bombs that pummel four targets spread across the island. Moments later, the group races up the hillside by motorcycle, their approach obscured by smoke and muffled by the racket of secondary explosions. Paul ends up in the lead; Klas and Lev, in the rear. At the summit, Paul sees the mobile survivors of the fuel-tank blast dragging their incapacitated associates away from the flames licking the helipad. He ditches his bike and preps his rifle before the enemy can react. His nearest allies, Anabel and Qoqa, follow his lead.
Paul's sudden arrival triggers a quick-and-brutal firefight. There's lots of shooting on both sides, but the Agents have the jump on their opponents, along with the advantage of numbers as the rest of the team arrives. By the time the entire group is on the scene, the skirmish is over. Qoqa counts eight fallen enemies, which accounts for the entire complement she saw on her trip up the hill to plant the bomb. Checking the status of her own people, she finds that the only injury is a bruise sustained by Paul when his advanced armor vest stopped a rifle bullet.
The Agents involved in the shootout quickly reload. Jili grabs a tactical headset off one of the dead men and tunes in just in time to hear, "Comms compromised! Switch to alternate!" A glance at the numeric keypad tells her that there's no way she's going to guess the cipher key. Wen takes the opportunity to set up her 12.7×99mm anti-materiel rifle and camouflage her position before the smoke clears – she isn't going to find a better place to snipe from than this hilltop, which affords her a view of the rest of the island. Klas, Lev, and Paul take advantage of this vantage to scan the surroundings with binoculars.
It's evident to the naked eye that the mortars inflicted casualties in all four target zones, though smoke prevents an exact body count. Klas observes that the bulk of the enemy forces are pouring into the building on the opposite hilltop; formerly Grandfather's mansion, armored shutters and a Minigun emplaced above the fortified entrance have converted it into a fortress of sorts. Paul spots a small column of Jeeps and HMMWVs racing toward to this strongpoint from the suspected barracks, leaving behind a team to set up a pair of 81mm mortars. Lev sees a group of 10 men hastily arming themselves down by the docks, doubtless as a prelude to a counterattack.
As soon as Lev hears the others' observations, he starts barking commands. He orders Wen to engage the enemy mortar crews before they can turn the Agents' end of the island to craters. Then he explains to the rest of the team that he's going to lead them back down and around one side of the hill on foot, to preempt the counterattack that he suspects will come from near the boathouse. After rolling the group's motorcycles out of sight behind the crest (Qoqa stashes Wen's as well as her own), Lev's squad moves out, leaving Wen to snipe from her concealed position.
Wen's shooting is, as usual, impressive. Her first shot mangles the traverse/elevation cluster of one of the mortars and smashes its sight unit on the ground. Successive shots destroy the other mortar and put insurance on the deal. For good measure, she scopes in on the Minigun that Klas reported and puts a round into it, right down the rotation axis. Once she's out of enemy heavy weapons to disable, she caps her optics, collapses her bipod, and gets ready to relocate. Throughout all this, she sees the enemy searching the hillside with binoculars and firing in her general direction, but it's evident that they have no clue where she actually is.
Capitalizing on the distraction of Wen's booming rifle, Lev leads Anabel, Jili, Klas, Paul, and Qoqa around the hill and behind a rocky outcropping. The combination of skilled leadership and long practice at stealthy movement enables the group to get to concealment on one side of the path of the approaching enemy, who appear to be doing some stalking of their own to take the hilltop by surprise. From their position, the Agents can see that their rivals are moving in two teams of five, each composed of a machine-gunner, a grenadier, and three riflemen. Lev assigns targets, ordering his best shooters to engage the more-distant overwatch squad. Then he signals the attack!
The ambush is over almost before it begins. The Agents lay down withering full-automatic fire, making a special effort to chop up legs and feet, and then hosing down anyone who's still twitching. It's bloody, brutal, and effective. Lev's people leave 10 victims bleeding on the rocks without sustaining a single hit.
The moment Wen hears the rattle of automatic weapons from over the hill, she crawls to a new shooting position. Bullets continue to smack into the hillside, but none of them hit anywhere near her. As far as she can tell, this is blind fire. Ignoring it, she calmly sets up in a new position and scans the enemy-controlled end of the island for a reaction to her associates' attack. At first she sees no response, but after a few seconds, a pair of armored HMMWVs – each sporting an M2HB with a gun shield – roars toward the hill.
Realizing that this could mean trouble for her friends, who must hike back up the hill to their motorcycles, Wen warns the others by radio and then engages the vehicles. She begins by turning the heads of the enemy gunners to pink mist with her rifle, which is overkill against human beings. No new heads pop out to replace them; these guys aren't that dumb. However, the HMMWVs keep coming, so Wen puts a round through the armored driver-side window of one, causing it to veer off course temporarily. She's in the process of doing the same to the other driver when – doubtless thanks to the grit she was crawling through – she experiences a stoppage.
As Wen works to clear her weapon, she warns her allies that she cannot cover them right now, and to expect opposition with heavy machine guns on the hilltop. Lev acknowledges Wen's report and manages to get his people flat on the ground, in shooting positions, before the approaching vehicles roar into sight. Fortunately for Wen, the HMMWVs drive right past her. Their crews seem to have no idea where she is. An instant later, the enemy reaches the burning helipad.
To be continued . . .
Time: Thursday, April 24, 2014 (early evening).
Place: Islands southeast of Athens.
Last Event: A daring raid begins!
The Agents announce their arrival with the detonation of a hefty C4 charge that turns the fuel tanks atop the nearby hill into a greasy fireball – and an instant after that, with mortar bombs that pummel four targets spread across the island. Moments later, the group races up the hillside by motorcycle, their approach obscured by smoke and muffled by the racket of secondary explosions. Paul ends up in the lead; Klas and Lev, in the rear. At the summit, Paul sees the mobile survivors of the fuel-tank blast dragging their incapacitated associates away from the flames licking the helipad. He ditches his bike and preps his rifle before the enemy can react. His nearest allies, Anabel and Qoqa, follow his lead.
Paul's sudden arrival triggers a quick-and-brutal firefight. There's lots of shooting on both sides, but the Agents have the jump on their opponents, along with the advantage of numbers as the rest of the team arrives. By the time the entire group is on the scene, the skirmish is over. Qoqa counts eight fallen enemies, which accounts for the entire complement she saw on her trip up the hill to plant the bomb. Checking the status of her own people, she finds that the only injury is a bruise sustained by Paul when his advanced armor vest stopped a rifle bullet.
The Agents involved in the shootout quickly reload. Jili grabs a tactical headset off one of the dead men and tunes in just in time to hear, "Comms compromised! Switch to alternate!" A glance at the numeric keypad tells her that there's no way she's going to guess the cipher key. Wen takes the opportunity to set up her 12.7×99mm anti-materiel rifle and camouflage her position before the smoke clears – she isn't going to find a better place to snipe from than this hilltop, which affords her a view of the rest of the island. Klas, Lev, and Paul take advantage of this vantage to scan the surroundings with binoculars.
It's evident to the naked eye that the mortars inflicted casualties in all four target zones, though smoke prevents an exact body count. Klas observes that the bulk of the enemy forces are pouring into the building on the opposite hilltop; formerly Grandfather's mansion, armored shutters and a Minigun emplaced above the fortified entrance have converted it into a fortress of sorts. Paul spots a small column of Jeeps and HMMWVs racing toward to this strongpoint from the suspected barracks, leaving behind a team to set up a pair of 81mm mortars. Lev sees a group of 10 men hastily arming themselves down by the docks, doubtless as a prelude to a counterattack.
As soon as Lev hears the others' observations, he starts barking commands. He orders Wen to engage the enemy mortar crews before they can turn the Agents' end of the island to craters. Then he explains to the rest of the team that he's going to lead them back down and around one side of the hill on foot, to preempt the counterattack that he suspects will come from near the boathouse. After rolling the group's motorcycles out of sight behind the crest (Qoqa stashes Wen's as well as her own), Lev's squad moves out, leaving Wen to snipe from her concealed position.
Wen's shooting is, as usual, impressive. Her first shot mangles the traverse/elevation cluster of one of the mortars and smashes its sight unit on the ground. Successive shots destroy the other mortar and put insurance on the deal. For good measure, she scopes in on the Minigun that Klas reported and puts a round into it, right down the rotation axis. Once she's out of enemy heavy weapons to disable, she caps her optics, collapses her bipod, and gets ready to relocate. Throughout all this, she sees the enemy searching the hillside with binoculars and firing in her general direction, but it's evident that they have no clue where she actually is.
Capitalizing on the distraction of Wen's booming rifle, Lev leads Anabel, Jili, Klas, Paul, and Qoqa around the hill and behind a rocky outcropping. The combination of skilled leadership and long practice at stealthy movement enables the group to get to concealment on one side of the path of the approaching enemy, who appear to be doing some stalking of their own to take the hilltop by surprise. From their position, the Agents can see that their rivals are moving in two teams of five, each composed of a machine-gunner, a grenadier, and three riflemen. Lev assigns targets, ordering his best shooters to engage the more-distant overwatch squad. Then he signals the attack!
The ambush is over almost before it begins. The Agents lay down withering full-automatic fire, making a special effort to chop up legs and feet, and then hosing down anyone who's still twitching. It's bloody, brutal, and effective. Lev's people leave 10 victims bleeding on the rocks without sustaining a single hit.
The moment Wen hears the rattle of automatic weapons from over the hill, she crawls to a new shooting position. Bullets continue to smack into the hillside, but none of them hit anywhere near her. As far as she can tell, this is blind fire. Ignoring it, she calmly sets up in a new position and scans the enemy-controlled end of the island for a reaction to her associates' attack. At first she sees no response, but after a few seconds, a pair of armored HMMWVs – each sporting an M2HB with a gun shield – roars toward the hill.
Realizing that this could mean trouble for her friends, who must hike back up the hill to their motorcycles, Wen warns the others by radio and then engages the vehicles. She begins by turning the heads of the enemy gunners to pink mist with her rifle, which is overkill against human beings. No new heads pop out to replace them; these guys aren't that dumb. However, the HMMWVs keep coming, so Wen puts a round through the armored driver-side window of one, causing it to veer off course temporarily. She's in the process of doing the same to the other driver when – doubtless thanks to the grit she was crawling through – she experiences a stoppage.
As Wen works to clear her weapon, she warns her allies that she cannot cover them right now, and to expect opposition with heavy machine guns on the hilltop. Lev acknowledges Wen's report and manages to get his people flat on the ground, in shooting positions, before the approaching vehicles roar into sight. Fortunately for Wen, the HMMWVs drive right past her. Their crews seem to have no idea where she is. An instant later, the enemy reaches the burning helipad.
To be continued . . .