The drone was tiny, no more than a black dot in the sky, moving slowly across.
Gao Fei had no idea how Sholokhov could tell it was an artillery reconnaissance drone. He must have been here long enough to distinguish them.
“Artillery recon drone overhead. They’re about to shell us…”
There was only one walkie-talkie and one radio in a position, and the walkie-talkie was on squad leader Sholokhov.
Sholokhov was warning the comrades in the nearby positions to watch out for shelling, but before he could finish, Gao Fei heard a shriek like a truck roaring past. Then a deafening explosion drowned out Sholokhov’s voice.
Explosions rang out one after another, with extremely short intervals between them, but it was still possible to tell that some were far and some were close, and that blasts were landing in front, behind, left, and right.
The explosions lasted only a short while. A few dozen shells, roughly, and then after one salvo, it stopped.
Only firing one salvo was not good news. It was clearly ranging fire.
Ranging fire, and wide-area ranging fire at that—not a creeping barrage, not precision fire aimed at a specific target, but the prelude to a large-area saturation bombardment.
Military enthusiasts did have a bit of an advantage on the battlefield. Knowing some basic military knowledge was useful, and if you were a veteran enthusiast like Gao Fei, you would definitely know what to do when facing large-scale shelling.
Curl up in the shell-proof dugout, squat on the ground, cover your ears with both hands, and pray no shell lands beside you. That was all.
What came next was purely up to fate. Whether you lived or died was entirely down to luck; it had nothing to do with knowledge or skills.
After waiting for a full minute, Gao Fei suddenly felt the ground tremble beneath his feet. Even though his hands were covering his ears, the tremendous explosion seemed to shake his internal organs directly.
The first shell had landed nearby, but the good news was that it had not landed in the trench.
The explosions became so dense that there were no gaps between them. Tremors kept coming through the ground underfoot, and soil kept pattering down from overhead. There was no telling when the shell-proof dugout might be shaken into collapse.
Gao Fei’s legs began to tremble. He was almost unable to maintain his squatting posture.
If your upper body shook, it was from an excess of adrenaline. If your legs shook, that meant you were truly afraid.
Gao Fei could not help shouting. He screamed himself hoarse, but the explosions were too dense; even if he yelled, no one else could hear him, so it was not too embarrassing.
The extremely dense artillery fire continued for dozens of seconds, but to use an old cliché, Gao Fei felt as if decades had passed.
Rapid fire could not possibly last too long. After what was more or less the limit for a single round of rapid fire, the density of the explosions immediately dropped.
In just one short minute, if you were not dead, it simply meant no shell had exploded at close range. It was that simple.
The shelling was still going on, but Gao Fei knew that this kind of bombardment could not be maintained for long. A bombardment on this scale required at least a hundred guns firing continuously. But with the battlefield depth so large, after firing at most one basic load, those guns should concentrate their shells on the forward positions.
As long as this round of wide-area shelling was not being carried out by Ukraine purely to vent anger, then it was artillery preparation for a large-scale counteroffensive.
Sure enough, just as Gao Fei had run through all the types of large-scale bombardment in his mind, he heard Sholokhov shout.
“Don’t go out. Keep waiting.”
Sholokhov had the walkie-talkie. If there were any changes up front, only he would know at the first moment.
Fine, then. First time on the battlefield, and it was a hell-difficulty start.
Explosions were still sounding, but Gao Fei could no longer feel tremors underfoot. That was a good sign, but only temporarily.
Because the artillery fire would extend. It would blast its way over step by step along with the enemy’s advance.
So he could not rush out of the shell-proof dugout now. He had to wait for Sholokhov’s order.
Just then, Gao Fei heard Samir roar beside him, “Rex! Are you still alive?”
“I’m fine! You?”
They were very close, but they still had to shout at the tops of their lungs.
“I’m still alive…”
Just as Samir replied with that useless sentence, Sholokhov roared, “Shut up!”
Fine. If they were not allowed to yell, then they would not speak. They would wait in silence amid their fear.
This time, time seemed to pass much faster. Half an hour had clearly gone by, but it felt like only a few short minutes.
The ground beneath his feet once again felt a violent tremor. The extending fire had finally landed over Gao Fei and the others, and this time the points of impact were even closer.
With a thunderous boom, clods of earth above Gao Fei’s head fell and struck him, but the shell-proof dugout did not completely collapse. And that terrifying close-range explosion happened only once.
All the changes indicated that the forward position had already been broken through, and the enemy was about to come up.
At last, Sholokhov shouted, “Into position! Engage the enemy! Out! Everyone out!”
Gao Fei did not have to wait long for his first battle. To put it another way, the war did not give Gao Fei any more time to adapt.
Gao Fei did not hesitate. All his fear vanished with Sholokhov’s command. He left the shell-proof dugout, lay down at the firing position, then raised his head and looked in the direction from which the enemy would appear.
It was not a vast, open plain, and the enemy would not line up and charge forward to die. Although trenches were not very different from those of World War I, tactics had changed greatly.
Infantry no longer charged head-on into machine-gun fire. They would advance under the cover of tanks, enter the trenches, and seize the enemy’s positions.
Coming straight at them were two tanks and at least four armored vehicles. The tanks charged in front, with two armored vehicles following behind each tank. The armored vehicles drove forward along the tracks left by the tanks, rumbling toward Gao Fei’s forward left.
The distance was three hundred meters. At that range, tanks and armored vehicles could close in with one rush.
The forward position had definitely collapsed completely, and the only thing that could truly stop the enemy’s attack was the position Gao Fei was in. So retreat was impossible. They could only hold to the death.
The distance grew shorter and shorter. The tanks quickly broke through the two-hundred-meter mark and reached an extremely dangerous range. Gao Fei was already looking toward the rocket launcher, desperately recalling how to use it.
Sholokhov was also standing in the trench. He watched the enemy tanks while holding the walkie-talkie instead of a gun, and he showed no intention of picking up a rocket launcher either. He simply lay at the position and quietly watched the enemy tank.
Then the enemy’s lead tank suddenly exploded.
Whether it was a missile or a shell, Gao Fei could not tell with the naked eye. But the enemy tank suddenly burst with sparks and exploded, its turret flying straight into the air.
It seemed there was no need to carry a rocket launcher and fight tanks at close range. But that was only normal. Ukraine had artillery; of course the Russians would too.
The armored vehicle following behind the destroyed tank stopped, then turned, trying to fall in behind the remaining tank. Just as the armored vehicle turned, at least four rocket launchers fired at it.
Three rockets missed, but one rocket accurately struck the front of the armored vehicle. So after a plume of white smoke rose from it, that armored vehicle also stopped where it was.
Not bad. The Russian defensive line was quite tight.
This was the advantage of pretending to be a veteran. While the new recruits in the forward positions had already been blown to death by shells, in the rear positions there was artillery support. As long as you survived the first round of shelling, didn’t that mean you lived?
At the same time, shells came smashing down toward the enemy armored unit.
The fields of fire had long since been divided. Now the defenders only needed to report fixed coordinates, and the shells would land accurately. So this attack should have ended here, right?
But just as Gao Fei began to feel optimistic, he heard explosions rumbling behind him again.
All right. Now it was an artillery duel. The enemy had begun striking the exposed artillery positions, so this battle was far from over.
Until the second tank hit a mine. With its tracks blown apart, the tank had no choice but to stop where it was.
The minefield was becoming dense. Once the tank clearing the way stopped, the three armored vehicles following behind fell into an awkward situation.
Logically, they should have retreated. But after the armored vehicles remained on the battlefield for about a dozen seconds, they suddenly turned and went around the tank. The three armored vehicles continued forward in a single column.
Sholokhov finally said, “Rocket launchers ready. Hit the ones that retreat.”
Gao Fei looked toward the rocket launcher. It was very close to him. He ran over and snatched up an RPG-27.
“What are you doing? Use the RPG!”
The RPG-27 was part of the RPG family, but when someone simply said RPG, they meant the RPG-7.
The RPG-27 should be used in especially urgent moments. When things were not that tense, using the RPG-7 was fine.
Just as Gao Fei sheepishly put down the RPG-27, Samir had already picked up the RPG-7.
Sholokhov was neither flustered nor rushed. He did not even look at the armored vehicles that were already right before them. Instead, he stared at Gao Fei and said, “Are you really a veteran? Tell me the truth.”
Gao Fei said in astonishment, “At a time like this, you’re still talking about that?”
“I need to make an accurate judgment about you, and I trust my own eyes.”
As Sholokhov spoke, another armored vehicle hit a mine. This time, after it struck the mine, the remaining two armored vehicles finally stopped advancing.
The distance was only about a hundred meters, but those hundred meters were something the armored vehicles could not possibly break through.
The armored vehicles began to reverse, while the armored vehicle that had hit the mine suddenly opened its rear door. The infantry it carried began jumping down.
Gao Fei gripped the handguard with his left hand, pulled the charging handle with his right, released it, flicked off the large lever safety, shouldered the rifle, aimed, found the front post sight through the rear notch, lined up on a soldier who had just gotten off and was sprinting wildly, aligned the three points, and pulled the trigger.
Textbook-accurate shooting movements, standard and flawless.
He fired. He hit the target. The bullet struck home. He did not know where the bullet hit, but the way the target fell was very unnatural; it was definitely not a deliberate prone movement.
Unfortunately, Sholokhov did not see it. He had not looked at the enemy at all, and had been staring at Gao Fei the entire time.
“Ha, I knew it. A veteran would never shoot like that. You’re just…”
“Good shot!”
Samir suddenly shouted, then said impatiently, “He killed the target.”
Sholokhov turned in astonishment. At last, he looked toward the enemy, but his face was full of disbelief as he said, “Impossible! Absolutely impossible!”