"No," he agreed pleasantly, "we aren't KGB. But the Stasi, that's East German KGB, will be here eventually when these vopos don't check in by radio. This is an East German sector and they take commo protocol seriously. What I'm trying to say is, you can't be stalled here when they do show up, probably by helicopter, and deploy troops to scour the area for insurgents. And anyone that saw anything. So if you can't get this thing moving, you need to get moving. Care to maybe ease up on the trigger a bit? I don't want to get shot accidentally."

Of course, he had a point -- triggers could only take so much pressure before breaking, and he didn't try anything like reaching for his AK, now slung across his chest. She had him pretty dead to rights, and he felt like he could talk his way out of the situation. He kept his hands off his weapon, real calmly, and didn't try to gesture with them, as that was threatening. He was wary in posture, watching the weapon as he did the talking, to make sure that the girl wasn't going to just blast him down. There were others around, his comrades, and he wasn't sure how some of them might take the situation either -- if  they saw an armed person aiming a gun at Daniel, they might well decide to shoot first and ask questions later.

"It's real simple, basically. There is no time. So if you can get the car fixed and get it out of here, great. If not, you need to probably come with us." He hated the idea of dragging these people along, but Holmes didn't seem like the type that would want to leave people milling around an ambush site and they weren't really the kind of guys that were going to kill witnesses just because. "And you gotta stop pointing the gun at me, there's a bunch of mountain boy militia here that are gonna shoot anyone that's armed and pointing a gun at a friendly out of fear."