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Reader Submission: The Assault on Crackhouse

 [This raid was submitted by a reader. If there are any other readers who have battles or raids they want to stream via text, feel free to send them to me.  I'm on discord: cperk#8871 or cornflake-cperk when trapped in Tarkov] 

I spawned on Customs next to the Crackhouse with an SA-58, some grenades, health, a PACA and a 6B47: Horribly underequipped, but I am trying to do Punisher Pt. 5 (kill 10 PMCs while wearing that crap armor).
I immediately sprinted up the stairs to check for folders of intelligence and was smart enough to close the door behind me. After entering I quickly checked the first room on the right, but remembered that the good loot spawned in the first, bigger room with the computer and the filing cabinet. And indeed, there I found a folder on the very first shelf. I headed deeper into the room to check the other places, and just when I was searching the floor at the far end I heard someone running up the metal stairs and coming in. The closed outer door obviously gave him enough confidence to make so much noise, but after entering the building he immediately noticed the open doors inside. You could feel how he went from relaxed to maximum concentration, thinking and listening. Being unsure if someone was still in the building he started walking around the first room and then coming down the hallway. I was crouching completely still, knowing that I had a very bad position.
Not sure, if I made a sound or if he came to the conviction of enemy presence himself, but suddenly he started shouting angry russian phrases. When I didn't react he started trying to throw grenades through the door. At that point I gave up slow-walking. I knew that you could jump out of the windows, but only through the first one, and grenades were still exploding there. So I stayed back and tried to throw some grenades back, out of the room. Obviously that was just a waste of rubles: The guy was waiting further back in the hallway and with my poor strength skill the grenades hardly bounced off the wall. Due to my poor angle at least one even exploded inside my room, but at least that kept him from pushing. When the explosions died down we both approached the door, hearing each other's every footstep on the other side of the wall. Nobody dared to peek though.
His idea was to trap me inside the room, and when I saw that he closed the door from the outside I took my chances, sprinted to the first window and jumped out. I hit the floor and casually turned left, to the gap between wall and house, to escape. To my great surprise there was a guy crouching and waiting at that very spot, maybe 3 meters in front of me. I instinctively point-fired in his direction and killed him instantly. He must have been as surprised as I was. Realizing that I had a broken leg from the drop a swift escape was impossible. So I turned around and threw a grenade back into the window I jumped out. The whole interaction - jump, kill, realization, grenade throw - took 2s max. But it worked and held off the first guy long enough for me being able to limp to the front door of the Crackhouse and take cover directly behind the door.
I heard the the first guy pacing up and down above me, but I also heard a third guy running on the other side of the building, trying to anticipate where the killer of his colleague (must have been a duo) might show up from. Little did he know that this uber chad, who jumped out of the first floor and casually shot his friend in one swift move, crouched fearstruck in a corner with a broken leg, hardly hidden behind a wooden door. Suddenly the guy above me started shooting and I assumed those two found each other and were battling it out now.
That gave me the courage to go into my inventory and start healing: Some strong painkillers (the ones that make sprint possible, even with a broken bone), but when I wanted to actually heal my leg I realized a grave mistake: I forgot to take a second magazine (I died in the previous raid and didn't pay attention while preparing) and had only 40 loose bullets in my case. Afraid that the gunfight around me might end and I would be caught with my pants down I decided against healing my leg, unloaded the mag from my gun and started reloading it with the spare bullets.
After an eternity the mag was reloaded and to my surprise I was still alive. I decided to check on the guy above me as the gunfight was still going on, though less intense. I might be able to 3rd party him successfully. I went up the stairs halfway and spotted him through the door in the first room. My shots missed, he returned fire but missed as well. Reminded of my actual skills I decided to retreat to the containers behind the busses. I kept very close to the wall after stepping through the front door, so that he couldn't get an angle on me from the first floor. At that point I was not concerned about noise anymore, just sprinting away into cover, a painful moan for every step on my still broken leg.
When I ran into the open area between Crackhouse and the containers I spotted another body directly in front of me. I didn't have time to think, however, as I was hit by a bullet in the stomach from behind and kept running for my life. Behind the white containers I turned right, towards the garage and couldn't believe I had survived. The gunshot didn't cause any bleeding and I was still in a relatively good shape, if you can call a deep red stomach and broken leg that. I figured, that the gunfight I heard while I was reloading my mag must have been my first guy killing the fourth guy (the body I just stumbled upon). That seemed like a plausible assumption from an angle-point-of-view. However that meant the bullet I just caught with my stomach could have been shot by the colleague of my first victim, who might even had stayed undetected by the first guy until now. Just when I finished that thought I heard footsteps approaching. I only had time time to find cover behind some cardboard boxes and pre-aimed where I suspected him to appear. He probably thought he wounded me more severely than he actually did and peeked way too confident: He suffered the same fate as his friend - a bullet to the head.
Two down (actually three down) it was now back to the start: My Russian friend from the first floor against me. I was convinced he was still alive and therefore, after finally healing my leg and stomach I crouch-walked towards the garage, but then turned right and stuck to the big shipping containers, trying to get a better angle on the Crackhouse. I switched between observing the metal stair door and the big windows with the green glass on the ground and first floor, but didn't see or hear anything. Just when I thought my guy must have run off I heard him doing the same move I did earlier, running from Crackhouse towards the containers. He must have heard (and probably also seen) the other guy dying. I took some shots at him but missed miserably and he vanished behind the white containers.
At that point I realized I would soon have a massive problem, as I still only had that one mag and not a lot of spare bullets in my container anymore. I had not been able to loot the body of my second kill before because it was visible from the metal stair door. And now there was an enemy waiting for me. With pushing that last guy out of question the only other option I had was to loot my first kill, hoping nobody else had done that in the meantime. Obviously I also considered just running away, but I felt I earned those two kills and the idea of the remaining guy taking my loot pissed me off.
I moved across the open area back to Crackhouse, constantly checking if the guy was going to peek. Fortunately I arrived safely at my first victim and looted a meta Vector with multiple drum mags. A bit more confident I thought I might get a better angle from the upper floor. When I entered the room with the shelves, to my great surprise I found a body, completely looted. Another guy?! Including myself, did 6 people really just try to take Crackhouse? My initial plan failed though, as I couldn't see the white containers from the windows and looking out the metal stair door felt like an invitation for a headshot. So I decided for the direct confrontation. I exited Crackhouse through the front door once more and very slowly moved towards where I assumed he was. Suddenly I saw the guy sprinting from behind the container closest to the hole in the wall to the small patch of grass, bringing a bush and some debris between us. I didn't shoot as I was not sure if he saw me, and I didn't want to repeat my previous mistake of taking half-assed shots: I was again using my trusted SA-58 (its 2x scope felt more appropriate for the distance than the red dot on the looted Vector) so I couldn't afford to waste any more bullets. Not knowing what to do I basically just stayed where I was, completely in the open (only covered on the right from Fortress), waiting for him to show up. And that he did: Covered by the bush he retreated back to the red brick building and moved behind the metal trough, where the gym bag is. A very clever move. His mistake was to do a very short peek with only his head, to check my location, and then re-peek the same spot to take the shot. I saw the first peek already and was able to line up perfectly for my third headshot of the day.
Aftermath: I spent way (!!) too much time looting the guys, running back and forth between all of them, with almost no cover. Somehow we all either had no or only small backpacks on us, but finally on the last guy I found a Trizip. After some more Tetris and the realization that I would not be able to carry everything I decided to hide my SA-58 as it was already late into the raid and I figured chances were good to get it back. I wanted to spend even more time on Tetris, but when I saw my energy levels dropped to 4 I knew I could not go down like this ... not after what just happened. Fortunately power was already on, so ZB-13 was open. I hastily covered the area between Crackhouse and Fortress, hoping nobody else would be around. When entering the Fortress a lone sniper from across the tracks tried to bring me down, but luckily he missed multiple times (I was bunny-hopping like a pro) and I safely extracted.
- Om3ga

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