Date 10/12/2059, Location 36.66332, 48.47854

The team arrived in Zanjan just before midday, and pulled into the truck stop just off the highway, getting out to stretch their legs. The police officers assigned to them followed Marius around – not in a threatening fashion, but making it clear that they were keeping an eye on him. They visited the small market next to the truck stop and picked up a few supplies, such as some fresh coffee and warmer winter clothes, to make their lives a little more enjoyable.

Whilst the cops where watching Marius, Aswon placed a call to "Omar", the delivery contact, leaving a message in English on his answering service, asking him to get in touch.

Housekeeping completed, they got back into the truck and onto the highway, engaging in a discussion with Tadibya once on the move. The team discussed the possibility of using her magical spell to create an illusion around the ID, to change the colour and appearance to match the rest. After some time they came to the conclusion that it was too risky, and not worth it – as the documents were going to be scrutinised, carefully, by suspicious people – the chance was too high that the effect would be spotted – and it would also be very difficult for Tadibya to manipulate the magic to such a fine degree for the intricate work on the ID papers.

Down the highway they travelled, until they reached another province checkpoint. Knowing the drill by now, Marius got out of the vehicle, presenting his hand to be fingerprinted and standing ready for the photograph. Soon thereafter, they were on their way again, still with their police tail, following sedately along behind them.

A couple of hours passed, the truck trundling along the highway with the high mountains on the horizon both left and right, and boring and repetitive views of scrubland on either side of the truck luring them into a stupor. Tadibya glanced out of the window, then gave a sudden start – asking if anyone else had seen that too? Seen what? No? It appeared that no-one had any idea what she was blathering about. She got Marius to run back the sensor feed from about two minutes ago… then on the roll-out screen, showed them a white Toyota Hi-Lux overtake them, followed by a red Ford F350 flareside, closely followed by short bus, painted in yellow. The team seemed unimpressed, not seeing what the issue was – until ninety seconds later in the feed, they were overtaken by… a white Toyota Hi-Lux, followed by a red Ford F350 flareside, closely followed by short bus, painted in yellow. They appeared identical, in every way…

They quickly checked back behind them – no, no more repeats. They contemplated action, but it didn't seem to be anything aimed against them, and with the police car still behind them, they had limited options. In the end, they continued along the road, slightly more alert to their surroundings.

Shortly afterward they approached the city of Gazvin, the highway curving all the way around the city, up the west side, around the north, and then breaking away to head south east. The town appeared much like the villages, a hodgepodge of closely stacked stone boxes, with almost no greenery or parks, no gardens, a narrow maze of streets and awful traffic. In the centre were some high-rise buildings, in what appeared to be the CBD. As the truck turned east, and travelled along the north side of the city, they did finally see a change in the scenery. A university campus displaced the normal buildings, large sculpted parklands, lecture halls and laboratories in a relatively high-tech looking environment. Shortly afterwards though, they were back into normal buildings, staring again at white, yellow and brown boxes.

Just as the road started to bend towards the south east, they saw another break in the building design – something that caused them to pay even more careful attention. The tank laager had a large clear area around it, with double mesh fences and towers in the corner, and inside were a large number of modern looking main battle tanks, set in three rows. To the south they could see rows of armoured personnel carriers, being worked on by the troops. The road soon bent further east, putting the base behind them, and the scenery returned to "normal".

Twenty minutes later though, life got interesting – the police car behind them burst forward, blue lights flashing and siren blaring, and they were frantically waved over to the verge. Marius complied, and the police car slowed, letting the officer in the passenger seat jump out and run towards the truck. As he approached he shouted and waved, holding some kind of device in his hand. As Marius started to climb down out of the truck, the officer waved this hands to stop him, grabbed his leg and fitted some kind of tracking tag around it, before sprinting back to the police car and diving in through the open door. The car burned rubber, and accelerating hard headed down the road, out of site, leaving the team by the side of the road looking very confused.

They saddled up again, and followed the police car, heading east towards Karaj. A few miles down the road, as they crested a rise they could see a large complex to the left of the highway, with a handful of police cars forming a barrier across the site entrance, engaged in a heavy firefight with someone inside. Tadibya manipulated the illusion to cover the sides of the truck, but to leave the top open – just in case magical support was headed in to assist the police, hoping that the viewing angle of an aerial spotter would minimise the chance of seeing the spell. As they pulled level with the complex they could make out the name of the factory and what it made – industrial diamonds – and they also saw who was engaged in the battle with the police – a white Toyota Hi-Lux, alongside a red Ford F350 flareside, with a short bus, painted in yellow, at the back of the facility. Marius maxed out the acceleration of the truck, moving away from the battle, just as they spotted someone appearing through the top of the illusion on some of the vehicles, attaching a machine gun to the ring mount and then opening up with sustained fire.

They drove on, seeing more police cars streaming towards the heist on the opposite carriageway, and catching the start of a crash caused by rubber-neckers blocking the scene, adding to the chaos until the road twisted the view out of line of sight of the large rear-view mirrors and sensors. Ten minutes or so down the road, they came across the last province checkpoint before they got to Karaj – and a problem. The toll-booth style setup was clogged up, with traffic four to eight vehicles deep on every lane. By the looks of things, a second group of police had closed the crossing, turning the normal commuters into a very efficient road block. The team pulled over to the truck lane, parking up behind the six vans and delivery trucks waiting there. Already a number of people were out of their vehicles, gesticulating wildly and obviously engaged in angry conversation with the guards, who were responding equally angrily and telling people to go back to their vehicles. Looking around, the team could see the single chain link fence on either side of the road, stretching up the slopes on either side – it certainly didn't seem that much of a barrier. Their attention was drawn again to the crossing as someone made a grab for one of the border agents, and things escalated quickly with a few shots fired into the air – leading to a general exodus back to their vehicles and some longer ranged, but slightly safer shouting.

A disturbance down the road caused people to turn and stare, then frantically dive into their vehicles – coming up the road at speed was a truck, the bulky figure of an ork swadled in robes visible through the sunroof firing a heavy machine gun down the road behind him at the massive phalanx of pursuing police cars, streams of gunfire taking out tyres and engines and causing cars to flip and explode violently. The red F350 barrelled off road, its heavy duty suspension flexing and sinking as they hammered over the rough terrain, easily pushing 60mph. The ork had spun around, and was now blazing away at the ground in front of the fence, sweeping long bursts of autofire into the ground – and being rewarded very quickly with a series of loud explosions as the mines guarding the fence were set off by the heavy duty rounds. The Ford smashed through the fence, a number of mines exploding under the armoured chassis as it rolled over them but with no apparent effect, then roared off down the highway. A police car, braver than the rest, drove after them – but his luck ran out. The narrower treads of the car couldn't match the truck tracks, and hit a mine, and by the size of the explosion, it was obviously an anti-vehicle shaped charge, not one of the smaller anti-personnel mines. The resulting explosion tore the police vehicle to pieces, sending debris raining down into the area, in turn setting off a ripple of further explosions in the area around. The other cars slid to a halt, unwilling to risk the minefield.

Aswon and Shimazu climbed down out of the truck and made their way towards the devastated police car, trying to see if there was anyone left alive. Shimazu stopped at the edge of the road, looking at the pockmarked landscape, craters and bits of flaming rubber bearing testament to the mines recent activity – and decided that was far enough for him. Aswon pushed on, getting close enough to the wrecked chassis of the car, peering into see the two carbonised and charred remains of the officers. Shaking his head he turned and backed away, trying to retrace his footsteps, back to safety.

Click.

Aswon froze in place, tuning out the shouts of policemen and civilians back on the road, and carefully crouched down, pulling out a knife and sliding it carefully under his boot, questing with the tip until he could feel the plunger on the mine… it felt quite small, so probably only an AP device… but still not anything he wanted to be near. He slid the blade in between the plunger and his shoe, then applied downward pressure, gingerly moving his foot away and then questing out with his body, until he could reach a piece of the wreckage. Slowly and carefully he pulled the lump of metal over, and rolled it on top of the knife, then pulled the blade out with slow careful movements. Finally he eased himself up, and then taking exceptional care to tread only in his footsteps, he walked back to the road, barely sweating.

Back at the checkpoint, the border agent on the truck line demanded to know what he was doing – was he crazy? Aswon answered in broken Farsi, telling them they were doctors, and he had to check, had to help if he could save a life. The agent interrogated them, and received the story they had worked up – Doctors without borders, going to the refugee camps at Karaj, trying to help the dispossessed. The agent gave him a funny look, then suddenly swept him up into a most atypical hug, thanking them. With shouted commands, he got the line of trucks at the checkpoint to back up, clearing the way for the team to approach and clear the checkpoint, and be on their way. He seemed so happy, that he didn't even check their papers as he waved them through…

The team watched in their mirrors as the other vehicles demanded to be let through too, and the confrontation between the agents, the police units and the waiting drivers started to heat up again – but for now, they were alone on the road, heading down out of the hills towards Karaj.

The highway swept down out of the hills, giving them a good panoramic view of Karaj – and in the far distance the ruins of Tehran and the mountains beyond, white-capped and forbidding – a quick check on the map showed a number of them over three and a half thousand metres. Karaj appeared to be "more of the same" – massive housing blocks, terraced boxes in white, sand or brown colours, clustered together densely around narrow streets with little to no greenery present. Interspersed were larger mid-rise blocks of apartments, cheaply made but at least having some landscaping around them. They called the contact again and made arrangements to meet, just after prayer time, at the business location in the CBD. In the meantime, they pulled off into a side street and Marius had a look at the tracker on his leg – and snorted. It might be good enough to flummox a teenager or your average criminal – but it was old technology and not that great in terms of design. Less than two minutes later, the tracker was off his leg and ready to dump in a passing bin lorry that would do the rounds of the city, its stupid electronic brain convinced it was still attached. Tadibya concentrated on the illusion spell wrapped around the vehicle, and as they emerged from the alleyway, they changed to becoming just another courier truck delivering goods around the city.

The team headed down to the warehouse and office building of "Precision Communications", and were mildly surprised at how much traffic there was still on the roads around prayer times – it was still fairly busy. They made it to the offices at about the same time as their contact, "Omar". He directed them to the goods entrance and called the gatehouse to clear them through. By the time Marius had the truck cleared of the gate, into the goods yard and then turned around and backed up to the raised loading dock, Omar was just coming through the side door and heading towards the back of the truck, rubbing his hands together in expectation. After inspecting the goods and making sure the kit was all there and working, he agreed to pay, and wanted to know what form they wanted payment in.

After much discussion, working out of finances and a bit of haggling with Omar about taking goods in kind, they finally settled on a set of discreet communications gear designed for security use – tiny earbuds, a pickup throat patch and basic encryption to keep them secure against casual eavesdropping – then a bunch of local currency in cash, for use to get them out of the country, with the remainder on a credstick in good old fashioned Nuyen. Taking forty-five million in local currency, and deducting the cost of the comms gear, they ended up with a stick with a balance of 214,706 Nuyen.

Omar said he had to go to the bank to arrange this, and the team should keep themselves busy and wash the truck whilst he was away – so that's what they did. When he returned, he had a large holdall, filled to bursting with notes for ten, twenty and even fifty thousand Riall – but forty-five million still made for a lot of notes.

The team got back in the truck and made a few calls, looking for a fixer to put them in touch with a chop shop or discreet garage to make some repairs in. Paying a couple of hundred nuyen they were put in touch with "Turkwan" who could accommodate their needs. Starting up, they headed off into the darkness, heading to a small industrial area near the junction with the highway and the Mahdasht Road, looking for a place to fix up the damage to the truck.