The hike to the ridge is uneventful and neither of you attempt to keep up a facade. Esme is pretty certain that, and she has more experience with than you after all. The ridge is quite a thing, the edge of a massive and clearly ancient canyon that has eroded away the halves of two small mountains. Its not very deep, but it is miles wide. You both crawl to its edge and peek over into the space below. The wall of the cliff is a near vertical fall straight to the wide open plains below. From here you can see the river that carved this valley, the road leading northwest, and the checkpoint. From this distance the checkpoint is nothing but a little nodule of gray concrete on rolling yellow grassland, a metal fence like a silver thread stretching from its either side to the walls of the valley. Esme pulls out a pair of Binoculars and checks the scene before handing them to you.
There look to be three buildings, aside from the squat gatehouse itself. There's a concrete tower which seems to hold a machinegun nest or something like it, a smaller building to the right of the road past the gate, and a large one to the left. Judging from some thin smoke rising from the right hand building, its likely the utilities or something of the kind. The large building is likely the barracks that Esme told you about; its where any info would likely be stored. You make note of all the guards; there are 7 in total that you can see. Two are in the gate house, two in the tower, and then the other three are beyond the gate. One of those beyond the gate is sitting in a half circle of sandbags with a mounted machine gun pointed at the gate. The other two are just sort of hanging out next to the larger building.
Over the hours you watch, the two guards that aren't in a set position kind of just wander about. If they have a set patrol its either so erratic you can't follow it or they're straight up ignoring it. Sometimes they walk together, sometimes they split up, mostly they just do laps of the compound and occasionally walk the fence. You keep watch for the rest of the day and even into the night, past when Esme has called it quits and set up camp a few hundred feet away, hidden by the woods. There look to be about 25 people at the checkpoint in total and three shifts which change out at 8 hour intervals. These intervals seem to be set up like this First shift from 4:00 - 12:00, second from 12:00 to 20:00, and last from 20:00 to 4:00. They take about 20-30 minutes to fully change over and the one starting at 4:00 seems to be the slowest to assemble and get into positions.
During the time you watch, there are only two vehicles that enter the area; a large truck and a bus that is likely a prison transport. The truck stops at the gate and then stops again inside the checkpoint where the soldiers unload some boxes and then move them to the smaller, right hand building. The bus does not stop inside the checkpoint, but continues up the road as soon as it is past the gate. Both of them return a few hours later and are let past with much less scrutiny.
Esme joins you again around 5:00 and asks how it looks. You tell her what you've learned.
"If we're dropping a rat spy in there, I'd think that maybe dropping it in the middle of the night shift is best. Likely the commander is asleep and no one should be wandering the halls."
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Topic: The Left-Hand Path (Read 118963 times)