TWO DAYS LATER

„Our nutcase is down wounded“. I need you to do the two of his stops closest to the town when you come back tomorrow evening to make sure the town itself stays secure. Ulrike does not like it, but the town must be kept secure. „What happened?“ - „Some kamikaze bird plunged down from the sky. Trivial to kill once it was down, but hard to spot at a distance. Nothing serious but he needed to get a few stitches. He needs a day of rest. I’ll have his team mount a twin gun and have them accompany you with one of our men usually running escorts added.“

D: Care to join us for some food?

P: Sure. Don’t you have enough of me after a full day on the road?

U: It will not take that long.

P: Very well. Wait, how ...

U: Seriously, this may mean that our days here are numbered.

D: With fewer than three ritualists this base makes no sense. The town itself does not justify spending the coins it takes to keep it secure. It allows for keeping important roads open at an acceptable cost keeping them free of intrusions. There is a point sending heavily armed convoys fighting off the monsters is the better solution.

P: So we are only here because they did not trust us enough to risk more central stuff to us.

U: Yes, we need to know that you’ll not do something stupid during an evacuation. We have been told that there will be an announcement tomorrow and that it may lead to internal strife in the police force and military..

P: And I was speculating about that. I see. No you were actually right. I don’t know enough and I need to learn more from competent people. I am not a revolutionary at heart. I’ll do as I am told.

--

We’ve returned from an uneventful trip to the border. Nobody of us likes heading out again. But we like getting surprised by an intrusion even less. GPS is an extremely useful thing if you need to find remote sites you have never been at. It does not help against blocked roads though. Especially not if the blockage is a medium sized car blocking both lanes.

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We find ourselves at a bridge over a creek on a narrow road. A car is blocking the narrow exit of the bridge, standing at a right angle on the road.

D: This is almost too perfect to be anything but a trap. We need to tow that car.

P: There are bushes and trees almost up to the road on the right side of the road. That creek is in pretty deep a ditch. A lot of things could be down there, where we cannot see them. If we send anybody along this road our machine guns would be firing at our own people if anything bad happens at that car. I am no soldier but this looks like a bad idea. This is a trap.

Ulrike radios the other car to order them to scan behind us and to the sides in case the accident was intended to be a distraction.

U: What do you want to do? Detour? Open fire at a civillian car with victims of an accident potentially still in it? We can put a vehicle into the field on the left of the road. They are 4WD and should be able to cope with that. That way we get at least a clear line of fire at the car and at the creek from the road.

D: We could fire warning shots into the creek and the wooded area.

I take out a spyglass to have a closer look

P: The interior of the car is full of blood.

U: We are still police. We have to help. Put the cars into field to the right, so that we have a free field of fire for the M2s.

Dejan did exactly that for our car. Ulrike did not like me being on the trigger, but she needed to be on the radio and would not risk the guy without training in driving off road to get our vehicle stuck at the most dangerous moment. She was on the radio.

U: They other car has volunteers. Two of them want to approach it on foot.

Better them than me.