[Icelander]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Presumably he has someone to drive the truck while he's shooting out the back? Don't forget the limitations on Aiming in "Weapon Fire from a Moving Vehicle" on p. B469.

Igor, our Russian Spetsnaz sniper, would have to let a sicario drive. Happily, Alberto is a former truck driver from Bolivia, working in the illegal mining industry, and still drives valuable shipments for his employees when he is not part of paramilitary death squads. Alberto has actually rammed his way through blockades by militants, as well as driving stolen trucks away from pursuit during what amounts to gold heists from rivals in the illegal mining sector. This won't be his first stint as a getaway driver while someone else fires at pursuing vehicles, though, granted, it will be the first time those vehicles are police, as opposed to rival Andean criminals or militants.

The Acc cap rule is pretty unrealistic, in that it produces the result of having a pistol, a carbine and a door-mounted machine gun all having the same effective engagement range. Also, reflex sights on vehicle-mounted arms would be worthless, which is demonstratably not true. I'll look up the suggestions from David Pulver and Hans Christian-Vortisch of using a penalty based on low Stability, instead of an Acc cap.

I'm debating whether Igor will be prepared to fire a Barrett M82A1 CQ from inside the box truck. .50 BMG and only a 20" barrel means that the noise will feel like a grenade in there. On the other hand, he'll have $200 electronic ear muffs and a prepared spot with a shooting blanket to dampen it.

If it's too loud, he'll use a LWRCI IC-SPR rifle in 5.56x45mm with a ATN X-SIGHT 4K INT 3-14X night vision scope. Less Night Vision in GURPS terms than the AN/PVS-22 UNS clip-on NV device mounted with the Vortex Razor HD GEN II 3-18X50 FFP on the Light Fifty, but any shots he makes from a moving vehicle wil be at relatively close range. Either rifle will be far more than ordinary patrolmen, who may or may not have longarms, do not have NVDs and do not have rifle vests, can deal with.

Approaching too closely with anything less than armored SWAT vehicles, filled with trained officers wearing tactical vests with rifle inserts, armed with NVD-equipped weapons, is probably going to result in more officers down without necessarily stopping the OpFor. The high percentage tactic for law enforcement is to follow outside of engagement range until sufficient tactical resources can be mobilized, but the problem is that Igor might be able to shoot at any vehicle within visual range of his truck.

Raul, the leader of the OpFor, is betting their lives or freedom on being able to reach the extraction point and scatter in clean vehicles before helicopters or SWAT are mobilized. Unless he's very unlucky as regards a random DPS helicopter flying by, assuming he manages to carry off the ambush at all, he's probably right about being gone before a helicopter has eyes on anything (or is airborne at all).

On the other hand, it's impossible for Raul to predict exactly how many patrol vehicles will reach I-45 and the Galveston Causeway before he can cross it. If he's lucky, they might blow through without any more shooting. More likely, they'll have to discourage pursuit by taking out one or more patrol vehicles. And it's not all that unlikely that by the time the OpFor reaches the Galveston Causeway, they'll be followed by several Galveston PD and GCSO vehicles and in front of them will be an emerging improvised roadblock made of LE vehicles, probably 1-2 GCSO patrol cars, one or more Highway Patrol cars and possibly a response from either Bayou Vista PD or Texas City PD.

In that last case, the OpFor odds look bad, but it's also by no means an ideal situation for the deputies, officers and patrolmen. Those would be men on routine patrol when they heard the news, wearing NIJ Level IIIA vests at best, armed with handguns and possibly having a shotgun or patrol rifle in the car, with only minutes to prepare, probably while driving at top speed toward the scene. Better hope that some of them are combat veterans and/or part-time SWAT, because the training they received in small town departments to be patrol officers or deputies does not prepare them for a situation like this.

Originally Posted by johndallman

As for the rear doors, I can see several ways of doing it within half an hour's work:

Remove the pins from the hinges and replace them with something much weaker, so that a good blow will break them and make the doors fall off. This leaves the vehicle looking distinctive, and is bad for any friendly cars following you, although the Russian may not care much about that. It's also tricky to get right: too strong a material, and you may be fighting to get the doors off; too weak and they may fall off by themselves.

Remove the doors beforehand, and make the truck look like the kind of beat-up vehicle that might be driving around with a load of junk in the back.

Make an arrangement with bungee cords and/or wooden or metal props that will keep the doors open and not flapping. Probably the best idea. Lets you close the doors again with a minute or so of works wile stopped.

Well, once the OpFor get confirmation that the local police plan to move their target by ambulance, to the hospital, the truck takes up position next to Broadway Street. It will be partially blocking a private access road, but it's after midnight and the nearest house is 200' away. The OpFor just has to hope that no one in there comes out to ask questions. In any case, even parked in cover behind trees on the access road, with a clear route to intercept on Broadway Street, the truck actually doesn't block traffic and shouldn't be obvious. It would just look like a truck waiting to turn into Broadway Street.

In any case, the hope is that no one sees the truck all that clearly until it is used for the ambush. If anyone got close enough to see (it's dark, so pretty close), they'd panic because of all the men with guns, anyway, and ruin the ambush. So, that's already one point of failure for Raul to worry about, but it's not actually made any worse by having the truck be without rear doors.

After the ambush, the truck will obviously be the attacking vehicle and it may be damaged and/or with bullet holes. If possible, Raul would prefer the target to be transported in the car his own driver operates, as the truck is less likely to make it, but while he believes the target can be safely helped a few steps, he needs to account for the possibility that they'll have to carry her on stretchers, in which case she might need to be put in the back of the truck (this would also mean that Igor could not use the M82A1 from the truck).

In any case, after the ambush, the truck is supposed to drive 5.6 miles along the freeway before taking an exit that leads to an extraction point in a parking lot in Bayou Vista. From there, the OpFor will scatter in new getaway cars (and truck), leaving the truck and the vehicles used in the ambush.

So, I think removing the doors beforehand would work fine.

Originally Posted by johndallman

Anyone got Explosives (Demolition), and willing to risk a famous quotation?

The skill, yes. Actual explosives, not unless Dallas gun stores sell them or there was some way to obtain the materials in Galveston and make explosives quickly.

There was a time during the afternoon when the OpFor believed they'd have to ambush the PCs once it got dark. It's not implausible that someone went to the store and bought something to use to blow up or burn a PC-mobile full of guns, if it was easy to obtain. Igor has the skills to make IEDs, as do two of the sicarios and both Tomás and Eduardo, the security contractors.