On the Old Silk Road*
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Date: Summer 2004*                     
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Battle Location: Takla Makan Desert, Chinese Turkestan*
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Battle Type: U.S. and Chinese Meeting Engagement*
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Design by:  The Camo Workshop*
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Scenario description: "When the icy winds sweep down from the peaks of that most mysterious of mountain ranges, the Kuen-Lun, the camel-dung fires blaze up briefly, then smolder and smoke, and the dust of thousands of years stirs along what once was the Silk Road from China to the West.  The voices around the fire grow still and men listen into the night for the passing of ghost caravans traveling to ghost cities lost in the Taklamakan." (from Louis L'Amour's "Education of a Wandering Man")*
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L'Amour's quote is among the background information provided for your "snatch" mission.  SOC-HQ was not very forthcoming, but you know that a team of researchers from the US, Great Britain, France, and Germany has been clandestinely inserted into one of the most remote regions of the world -- the Takla Makan Desert in the Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous Region, an expansive wasteland as large as Texas and Oklahoma put together.*
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Apparently, the research team was looking for something -- and found "it" -- "it" reputed to be a technological artefact of immense antiquity -- and of EXTREME interest to the western intelligence community.  The retrieval of the team was planned for the dead of night, but reconnaissance satellite photographs detected the hurried advance of a Chinese mechanized unit heading straight for the research team.  This means the team has to be retrieved now, in broad daylight.*
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Your Ranger company is being airlifted from Afghanistan with MH-47 Chinook Gunships -- the only helos that can operate in the extremely high altitudes found in the eastern extremity of Afghanistan that leads to the Takla Makan.  A CH-47 Chinook is attached to retrieve the researchers.*
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You have been warned that the Chinese will react violently to a violation of their borders -- the more so, since the area is not that distant from the space vehicle launch site of Lop Nor.  Your unit includes Stinger SAM teams in case the Chinese Air Force intervenes.*
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Your mission is to evacuate the Research Team at all costs.  The briefer at HQ cast the alternative in stark terms:  "Failure to evacuate the team and the object they have discovered will have grave consequences for the future of western civilization."*
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Note: This scenario has a unique victory condition.  The U.S. player must evacuate the Research Team unit off of the map.  If the team is destroyed or captured, the scenario is to be considered an automatic decisive victory for the Chinese.  Exiting the map can be accomplished by moving a unit to the map's edge, and then onto the gray border surrounding the map.  The unit will depart the map at the end of the turn.  The research team will appear sometime after turn four in the area bounded by the victory hexes.  This scenario is best played with a Chinese AI.*
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