Sleeping late the next day, they rose at around lunchtime for food, and then in the afternoon Shimazu and Hunter went shopping for medical supplies and lab coats for their "disguises", while the rest of the team drove the getaway route, checking for sensor dead spots, concealed positions and roadworks or other things that might trip them up.
Kai confirmed the schedule with Kiril, and in turn got confirmation that the crew were ready. As they went over the plan again, Hunter found himself gazing up at the roof, where he saw a small grip tab sticking out from the thin material that covered the cab's upper surface. Moving to stand in the middle of the rear seat, he carefully examined the patch, and tentatively tugged at it, hearing the familiar ripping sounds of hook and loop tape parting, before a large square patch of the roof material came away in his hands. Removing this revealed a hatch, with reinforcing bars on either side and some kind of mechanism.
With a bit more wrangling, he flipped open the hatch in the top of the cab, and could stand up on the back seat, his upper torso sticking up into the night air. He put his weight on the two bars on either side of the hatch, and slowly transferred his weight onto them, without them flexing at all – and he realised that it would be easy to affix a pintle mounted weapon in the future. Marius checked over the bracing and structural bars, pronouncing it fit to mount anything up to a heavy calibre machine gun without issue. For now, it meant that Tads could stand on the seat and poke her head out of the hatch, and get great line of sight all around the vehicle for casting spells.
They drove to the services at about 10pm, and started their observations. While Aswon and Tads took the first shift, Kai grabbed the mirror from over the small toilet in the back, and sat staring into it – ignoring the snorts from Hunter. He concentrated hard, and slowly the tone and texture of his skin started to change. Over a period of perhaps ten minutes, his skin darkened as more and more melanin rose to the surface, and his features seemed to slowly twist and change. His eyes rounded slightly, and the epicanthic fold faded somewhat, changing the shape of his face until he barely resembled his previous form – at least facially.
"Huh – nice trick." Hunter's smile had faded away, and he gave Kai a cool and considering stare. "Very useful."
"Yes indeed. I think I can probably pass for a local now, yes?" Hunter nodded in agreement, watching as Kai pulled out some of the local clothing they'd purchased earlier in the day. Certainly if Kai did get caught on any security cameras or spotted by witnesses, he'd be almost unrecognisable later.
Kai headed off into the service station, checking out the facilities and the food court. They were fairly run-down and basic, with the weapons scanner at the door non-functional and only the most rudimentary of closed circuit cameras watching over the doors and entrances to the shops. There was a security guard present – but he looked like a retired cop - greying and a little overweight, he was likely to call for backup rather than try any heroics. Even his sidearm looked a little ridiculous – a lightweight 6mm pistol that probably caused more damage to the ears than being shot by it…
At about 11pm they moved their truck, and shortly after the target vehicle arrived - a battered and old cargo transporter, but with extra armour welded onto the doors and a reasonable looking mag-lock on the rear cargo area. Three crew got out, wearing lightly-armoured work clothes and carrying pistols, stretching and working out the kinks in their backs while they called up to the remaining crew in the vehicle, asking for their order from the fast food outlet in the service station. As the team watched them, they could see at least two shapes moving around in the cab, both in the front seats.
As the group of three guards headed towards the service station, the team split into two - Marius driving, with Kai and Tads in the cab, whilst Aswon, Hunter and Shimazu approached the target vehicle under cover of an invisibility spell that Tads assured them would render them invisible to both human eyes and camera systems.
As they approached, they realised they didn't have to be stealthy, as the loud pop music from inside the truck covered their approach more than adequately. They surrounded the vehicle, and on the go command from Kai, Tads stopped sustaining her invisibility spell, revealing the team with weapons raised. Aswon stood with his rifle aimed at roughly where the driver should be behind the reflective glass, while Shimazu had a pistol held in each hand on one side, while Hunter had an assault rifle cradled in his grip on the other.
"Open the door, get out of the truck! Now!" Hunter shouted, his tusks and gravelly voice making the words sound distorted – but still clear enough, they were sure.
Each of the windows opened about a hands width, and then a pistol was carefully thrust out aiming up into the air. A moment later both of the occupants started to fire wildly into the air, pumping shots up into the night sky until the slides locked back on an empty magazine - clearly aimed so the team were not in any way in danger. The team jumped back, confused as hell for a moment – until they realised that while they could see there was no risk to themselves, if there was any kind of CCTV in the cab, it would look like a valiant attempt to scare off the attackers to whoever reviewed any footage later – or the local police.
The crew then opened the doors and climbed down to the ground, then proceeded to lay down on the floor with their hands behind their backs, so they could be restrained. A whiff of gun smoke wafted out of the cab and they could see bullet casings still rolling around in the footwell. As the smoke started to drift towards the team, Tads ducked back inside the cab, trying to keep clear of the pale cloud. Aswon and Shimazu took their guns and holsters, tied up the two guards, grabbed the keys and then headed round to the back. A quick wave of the key and the mag-lock sprang open, revealing a cargo area full of shipping boxes.
They started to check the boxes, looking for the small flashes of red tape that Kiril had said would mark the specific cargo they needed to grab. As they pawed through the cargo area, they couldn't see anything that matched the description – finding only several with flashes of black tape in the corner
"Thirty seconds! Move it!" Marius called out, spying the three guards starting their return journey down the central corridor of the service station, laden down with bags of food and drink.
Shimazu spotted a little hand written note trapped between two boxes saying "no red", and realised what had happened – then called out to the others to grab the boxes with the black tape on. They unloaded the boxes, grabbing the three marked boxes as well as one other one, loading them into their truck. As they did so, the three crew emerged from the service station and spotted the team transferring the last of the boxes into their truck. They dropped their food, and broke into a run, heading towards them across the darkened car park, firing their pistols towards them. At this range it was hard to tell if they were shooting to miss or not, but the combination of darkness, movement and distance meant there was no real danger of hitting the team. Tads concentrated hard, and dropped all three to a stun-ball spell, sending their bodies sprawling onto the tarmac.
They loaded up the boxes of goods, including the last box that Shimazu had grabbed, one without a piece of tape. As they skidded across the car park, he pulled open the top of the box and checked the contents, finding random electronics inside in anti-static bags. Hopefully they'd be able to shift those on to make a little extra profit…
Marius expertly drove through the far reaches of the car-park, driving around and through the supports for the overhead motorway and using them for cover, mounting the kerbs and taking the shortest route out of the car park towards their destination – which also avoided most of the cameras. With a final bounce they cleared a small planted area and skidded onto the single lane approach road, driving up the on-ramp to the freeway. Tads concentrated again, her illusion spreading out to mask the vehicle in a spell. As they drove up towards the top of the ramp, a ripple flowed down the truck from front to back, replacing the olive green with white and completely changing the shape, making it look like a white panel van.
She slumped back in her seat, breathing hard and concentrating on maintaining the illusion, and a trickle of blood ran out of her left nostril as the effort of casting the spell and chanelling mana through her body took its toll. Kai checked her over quickly, then handed her a few tissues to try and soak up the blood and give her nosebleed a chance to clot.
They made their escape cleanly, it seemed, and drove for some distance down the motorway, before pulling in at a small layby to stop for a moment, and concentrate on the roads around them, checking for pursuit or surveillance - but none were to be seen. Hunter did have a text waiting for him from his contact Julius however, with a link to a series of very high res satellite shots of the Iranian border. Hunter checked the map and directed Marius off at the next junction, and down to a small strip mall which according to the map included an electronics store.
They purchased a roll-out screen from the electronics boutique at the mall, to help with looking at the images, and then set to downloading the Gigapulses of data over their pocket secretaries. Marius did a proper assessment on the extra box they took, and confirmed the contents - remote sensors for a security system - motion detectors, pressure pads, door sensors, all useful stuff, and probably worth a good five thousand Nuyen at retail prices. They drove south, out of the edge of town and back up on to the freeway, heading to Lankaran, still keeping a wary eye out for pursuit. Kai sent a message to his contact Ngo, saying they were close to the border crossing, and checking on the details of the IDs as they drove through the quiet night, steadily working their way south.
They got to Lankaran at about 5am, driving past miles of fields, greenhouses and agri-domes on either side of the road. The land was lush and obviously very fertile, and the area seemed reasonably clean and healthy, making a pleasant change to what they'd seen closer to Baku. Arriving in the city proper they discovered a mass of tram tracks on all of the main roads, with the city having the sort of mass transit system more often found in a first world major capital. They decided to push on, and drive through the city before it got busy, and took the R48 main road, heading towards Lerik.
As they were leaving the city, on the agreeably flat, straight and well-maintained road, it was suggested that Hunter connect into the vehicle and try driving, with Marius to support and teach him. The team exchanged smiles when Hunter tried to lean unconsciously to get the truck around the first bend – showing that he was much happier on a motorbike than in a car, but he soon got the hang of it, and got some valuable driving practice in.
Even though the truck was pretty large and tended to wobble slightly in the turn, the datajack allowed him to use the virtual dashboard and see the status of the vehicle much more intuitively than if he was using manual controls. It was nowhere near the symbiosis that Marius achieved with his Rigger interface, but it was enough to let Hunter get the basics down fairly quickly. He was nowhere near ready for combat yet, but at least someone else could jack in and drive the truck - an important consideration when it had no manual controls.
Driving up the road, through various villages, they spotted some of the farmers selling the "less than perfect" fruits and veg by the side of the road, and stocked up on cheap local produce for their meals later. They found a good place to lay up for a while, and grabbed some rest, having left the suburbs of Lankaran behind.
Ngo called Kai back at about 10am, they discussed the crossing, and she advised that she would get a some IDs to them if they could get to the village of Razi, about 20km across the border. Just as he was concluding the call, he noticed the police car behind them, with the officer approaching. Kai got out of the cab and greeted him, watching the policeman doing a cursory examination of the truck. The Policeman asked where they were going, and who they were, obviously recognising them as foreigners, starting in Azerbaijani and then swapping to Russian to talk with Kai. He explained that the truck had illegal tyres with insufficient tread - a barefaced lie - the off-road tyres clearly still had about 20mm of tread depth.
Kai immediately realised that the "ticket" was a request for a bribe, and gave the policeman a careful look up and down, assessing him and trying to work out what this was going to cost him. The policeman saved him the effort by telling him that he had to pay a four hundred Nuyen fine to deal with the matter at the roadside. Kai put a little effort in to looking shocked and a tiny bit upset before capitulating and pulling out a small handful of their paper money, grudgingly handing over the plastic strips to the policeman. It wasn't like he was going to accept a credstick transfer for an off the books deal like this, after all. With the fine paid though, policeman happily went on his way.
After the break, they continued on up in the foothills, driving towards the forested slopes and higher ground ahead. Aswon was keeping an eye out, looking at the woodlands, and then asked to stop and pull over into the Gizil-Agach State Reserve so he could search for the right kind of timber to make a spear from. Marius expressed his displeasure at stopping and delaying their progress, but the others seemed quite keen on having a small break as well, so he looked for a place to pull up, spotting a lone building up a small side track, on the edge of a large plantation. He turned in and headed towards the building, pulling into the deserted car-park.
They examined the small visitor centre with its automated displays and information screens, purchased some of the e-books showing the extensive fauna and flora in the area and scoffed at the cheap and tacky plastic souvenirs in the vending machines, before they went outside and into the edge of the forest, looking for materials.
Tads had rested after her earlier efforts with concealing the truck, and with a little effort she summoned a forest spirit to help them look, which led them to stand of trees that were perfect – just the right thickness to make a decent staff or spear, and agreeably straight. Unfortunately they were all live trees, with no deadfall around.
Aswon asked if he could take the trees, and the spirit asked what he would give in return. They bargained, and Aswon agreed to plant two new saplings / cuttings in the forest, to replace what he had taken, and two new cuttings outside the forest, to help it grow. Whilst Aswon was searching for his spear material, Tads was picking flowers that seemed to her to have the potential for magical properties, and Hunter found some odd looking plants in a shaded area that triggered some memory. After reading through their books, they discovered that it was a rough analogue for Deadly Nightshade...
After some hours of searching for materials and planting trees, they got back on the road, heading west and climbing into the mountains. As the roads started to get a little more twisting and turning, with the trees crowding together in places and making a tunnel over the asphalt, Marius took over from driving, nursing the truck up the hills. By early afternoon they made it to Lerik, pushing through the terraced but pleasant-looking town, and onto the ever smaller and rougher roads up into the hills proper. The terrain changed, becoming more scrubland and more open, leaving the forests behind them. As they made their way up the valley, Hunter spotted a military jeep pacing them along a ridgeline, obviously watching them as they headed to the border. Marius detected radio transmissions from the vehicle as they called in a contact report, and quickly decided not to jam them - it would only cause trouble.
With the change in terrain to a more rocky and open environment, Tads called a mountain spirit and asked it to detain the vehicle by causing some kind of accident - but the driver of the jeep had other plans. With some expert off road handling, he manged to avoid all of the loose rocks and pot holes that appeared in the way, throwing the jeep around wildly. Realising that the plan wasn't going to work, the team pulled up and started to obviously make camp - starting a fire and preparing some stew.
The patrol watched them for a while, and then started to head down the mountain towards them - the team just managed to notice a chopper in the distance, watching them - not sure if it was a gunship, a troop carrier or some hybrid, they determined to play nice. The commander of the jeep asked for their papers and visa documents, but was told they were all back in the corporate enclave in Baku. Playing on the "medical students" legends they were starting to develop and for which they'd bought all the supplies, Simazu, Hunter and Kai spun an elaborate series of stories about medical studies, pranks and experiences, convincing the Captain that they were just medical staff out camping up in the hills. The team invited the soldiers to join them for dinner, and they shared food and stories with them, before the soldiers headed off to the north, warning the team again that they were to return to Lerik and the lowlands, and not go any nearer to the Iranian border.
The team agreed, waved goodbye, and then set to discussing how to do exactly that, using careful driving and spirit powers to conceal their approach...