Give him a little something?
Then give him a little something!
What was Gao Fei afraid of? He couldn’t have asked for more.
“Sure! Fire.”
There was only one machine gun on the position, and it was in Glaski’s hands. When Sholokhov said to fire the machine gun a bit, Glaski stopped cleaning it. The moment Gao Fei agreed, he immediately snapped the rounds into the feed tray, closed the receiver cover, and eagerly brought the gun over to Gao Fei.
Gao Fei took the machine gun. It was heavy—heavier than he had imagined.
So far, Gao Fei had fired a gun three times: twice in single shots, once in a burst. Altogether, he hadn’t even gone through one magazine. And now, he was about to fire a machine gun.
Gao Fei knew how a machine gun was used. He knew how to load it, how to pull the charging handle, how to change the belt and change the barrel.
Gao Fei also knew that a machine gun’s primary function was suppression.
Suppressing enemy infantry charges, striking light armored targets, suppressing enemy firing points—with a high rate of fire and large ammunition capacity, it could provide sustained firepower and protect friendly infantry.
But everything Gao Fei knew about machine guns was only on paper. He was already so familiar with the PKM machine gun that he couldn’t be any more familiar with it, and he had watched a great many videos of people firing PKMs—some firing from the hip, some firing while walking, though of course most were fired prone from the ground.
But not a single article or video had ever said how a complete beginner was supposed to fire a machine gun.
Also, four hundred meters was already a very long distance. At that range, a person looked like a moving little black dot. If most of their body was hidden behind cover and only their head was showing, then you simply couldn’t see them.
At that range, using a machine gun with only iron sights to shoot at a person, missing was normal. Hitting would be abnormal.
Gao Fei unfolded the machine gun’s bipod and set it on the ground, then shouldered the stock and tried aiming.
The sights were very simple, no different from a rifle’s. But the four-hundred-meter distance was somewhat beyond Gao Fei’s ability to judge accurately.
Within one hundred meters, Gao Fei’s eyes were rulers; the error would absolutely not exceed two meters.
Within two hundred meters, the error would absolutely not exceed five meters.
But beyond two hundred meters, it wouldn’t work. In the projects Gao Fei had worked on, the farthest distance had only been burying a pole every two hundred meters. As for four hundred meters, he had no real concept of that distance.
He tried aiming and found that all he could see was a stretch of uneven ground. If no one went up to higher ground, then even if someone was moving four hundred meters away, he definitely wouldn’t be able to see them.
Gao Fei took his eye away from the front sight and said to Sholokhov beside him, “How is it possible to see the target like this? Our position is too low.”
Sholokhov chuckled, while Glaski said impatiently, “We’re not asking you to shoot a target on the flat ground. See that tree?”
Glaski pointed in a direction. Gao Fei looked carefully and could make out a dark shape.
Sholokhov smiled and said, “That’s an observation point for a forward position. It looks like a tree stump that’s been blown apart, but it’s actually made from sheet metal. It’s an observation post.”
Gao Fei froze for a moment, because what Sholokhov and the others were talking about was something from the First World War.
World War I was trench warfare. Everyone was down in the trenches and couldn’t see far. In order to monitor the enemy’s movements and guide machine gunners onto targets, both sides had, as if by tacit agreement, built a lot of fake tree stumps and the like for people to hide inside and observe from.
The problem was, no matter how realistic the camouflage was, it was useless. Any high point protruding from the ground was bound to become a focus of the enemy’s attention.
So this kind of high ground called an observation post was, in reality, an execution spot where you went to die.
Gao Fei said, very puzzled, “Would anyone be stupid enough to climb up there?”
Glaski said with full confidence, “Yes. There definitely will be.”
Sholokhov smiled and said, “As long as there are recruits, someone will definitely go up. Some rookie will definitely climb up out of curiosity to take a look. Whether it’s on our side or theirs, there will definitely be rookies like that.”
Glaski said very seriously, “I fired at it twice. Didn’t hit.”
“Our whole company has killed twelve idiots at that observation post in total. The sniper on the neighboring position killed four of them, and their machine gunner killed two.”
Sholokhov spoke very seriously. He sighed and continued, “This observation post is between the two positions of our squad. The neighboring side has killed six. Then we should at least have killed some too, but so far, we haven’t killed a single one.”
Glaski spread his hands and said helplessly, “Their machine gunner has a sniper helping him, but we don’t have a sniper on this position. We don’t have a scope.”
Sholokhov curled his lip, but he didn’t embarrass Glaski. Instead, he continued saying to Gao Fei, “We’ll wait. As soon as someone goes up, you fire. There won’t be many chances—only one. And you can’t test-fire. How about it? Are you confident?”
Gao Fei aimed at the observation post Sholokhov had pointed out. He found that the observation post was even smaller than the front post of the iron sight. In other words, if he tried to aim, the front sight would completely cover the target.
It was difficult. Truly difficult. But Gao Fei wanted to try.
Although he had the bipod for support, once the distance became too far, aiming at the target made the entire target seem blurry. The place he needed to shoot was simply a haze.
He adjusted his vision. When his eyes focused on the distant target, the front sight before his eyes blurred again, as if it had split into several.
Also, with his breathing and the slight tremble of his shoulder, the target seemed to sway inside the rear notch. One moment it appeared to the left of the front sight, the next it appeared to the right.
Actual combat really was different. Gao Fei truly hadn’t known that shooting a distant target was this troublesome.
Only now did he understand: those snipers who used iron sights to hit targets several hundred meters away really were godlike existences.
Seeing Gao Fei constantly adjusting himself, shifting back and forth, Sholokhov couldn’t help asking, “How is it? Can you shoot?”
So that was what Sholokhov had meant when he kept asking whether he could shoot.
“I can shoot!”
Even if he couldn’t, he had to say he could. In any case, it wouldn’t matter if he missed.
Gao Fei rose again. He looked at the rear sight. The PKM machine gun’s rear sight ranged from one hundred meters to fifteen hundred meters, but the battle sight setting was at three hundred meters, and the rear sight on Glaski’s machine gun was currently set to three hundred.
To make himself look professional, Gao Fei wanted to push the sight to the four-hundred-meter mark, but his hand wasn’t accurate. With one push, he moved it two notches, to the five-hundred-meter mark.
Glaski didn’t say anything, but Sholokhov said in astonishment, “Wow! How did you know the observation post is five hundred and fifteen meters away? I didn’t tell you, did I?”
This time, it really was a guess. A pure guess.
Gao Fei, who had been planning to pull the rear sight back one notch, stopped his hand and said calmly, “It looked like it.”
After adjusting the rear sight, Gao Fei looked at the belt. Glaski’s machine gun wasn’t using a belt box, but directly using a length of belt. Judging by the look of it, there were about forty or fifty rounds left. The belt had one tracer round for every five ordinary ball rounds, a common ammunition configuration for light machine gun use.
He didn’t know what type of round was in the firing position, so it was more reliable to open it and check. Gao Fei opened the receiver cover and took a look, discovering that the round in the firing position was an ordinary ball round.
“At five hundred meters, how large is the difference in trajectory height between ball rounds and tracer rounds?”
Gao Fei asked a very professional question. Glaski froze for a moment. He thought about it and said, “There should be five meters or so, but I’ve never paid special attention. We usually don’t shoot targets that far away.”
Sholokhov said, sounding slightly nervous, “Do you need to change the belt? Do you need to change the rounds?”
He had absolutely no idea about the trajectory, nor did he know anything about the ammunition type, so it didn’t matter whether he changed the rounds or not.
“No need.”
Gao Fei closed the receiver cover. Then he pulled the charging handle, directly chambering the machine gun and putting it into a ready-to-fire state.
He aimed again at the observation post. This time, he had gained just a tiny bit of experience; he could see the target without deliberately adjusting his eyes.
At that moment, Samir said cautiously from behind him, “Sir…”
“Shh!”
“Shut up!”
Both men glared angrily at Samir. Samir said with a helpless expression, “Can I dig later? I also want to see if he can hit it.”
Before Sholokhov could speak, Gao Fei hurriedly said, “Samir is my brother. Let him watch too. This is a rare chance.”
“Come over. Keep some distance. Watch quietly.”
Sholokhov gave Gao Fei face. Then he said cautiously, “Do you want to observe with the binoculars yourself, or should I guide you?”
Without binoculars, it was impossible to tell whether anyone was on that observation post. But if he observed by himself, then after spotting the target, lowering the binoculars, grabbing the gun, and then firing, he obviously wouldn’t make it in time.
“I’ll take a look first. Then you observe and guide me to the target.”
Glaski immediately handed over the binoculars.
Gao Fei took the binoculars and discovered that they were actually Steiners. These were clearly not standard Russian military binoculars.
“Nice binoculars.”
“I captured them.”
This wasn’t Gao Fei’s first time using binoculars, but the ones he had used before had cost a little over a hundred yuan. The imaging quality felt completely different.
They were very clear and very bright. He could clearly see a black cylindrical shape, and even the bullet holes of various sizes on it were perfectly distinct.
Just as Gao Fei saw the observation post, he noticed a helmeted head poking out.
“Fuck!”
He rapidly put down the binoculars. Gao Fei grabbed up the machine gun in one motion, his mind not thinking anything at all, and directly aimed at the top of the observation post.
As Gao Fei put down the binoculars, Glaski immediately went to take them, while Sholokhov already had a pair of binoculars in his hands. At the same time that Gao Fei hurriedly grabbed the machine gun, he cried urgently, “He’s out, he’s out!”
Gao Fei set up the gun and pulled the trigger the instant his firing posture steadied.
Before his brain could even think about whether this shot should be fired, before his ears could hear Sholokhov giving the command to fire, his finger directly pulled the trigger.
His hand was faster than his brain.
When the bullets flew out and the massive recoil shook Gao Fei’s shoulder, only then did Gao Fei realize what he had done. After he instinctively released his finger, the short burst was already complete. Three rounds had already been fired.
In other words, Gao Fei’s brain reaction time was the time it took a PKM to fire three rounds.
“You hit… you hit him! He fell off!”
Sholokhov cried out in shock.
Glaski finally saw the observation post through the binoculars, but he didn’t see the person. So as he fine-tuned the binoculars’ focus, he said in an extremely regretful voice, “Suka blyat, I didn’t see it. I didn’t see it…”
Sholokhov was utterly astonished, but he couldn’t bear to put down the binoculars. As Glaski cursed in frustration, he couldn’t help saying as well, “Suka blyat, that actually fucking worked!”