The grin spreading across Hailstone's face was harder to suppress than the muzzle climb of an AK. Pumping his fists hard in the air, he burst into boisterous laughter. "That guy always manages to pull off the damnedest surprises! I could kiss him right on the mouth—I fucking love him!"
Trench shrugged, teasing back, "Pretty sure Sledgehammer doesn't want you kissing him..."
*Boom!* An RPG-27 rocket slammed right against the northern window ledge on the second floor, tearing open a massive hole. The blast hurled the two mercenaries who had been crouched behind the wall guiding the aerospace forces with a laser designator through the air, completely wrecking the equipment.
Hailstone's expression shifted drastically. He whipped his head around and shouted urgently toward Carrier Pigeon, leader of the communications team, "Carrier Pigeon, backup designator, now!"
Carrier Pigeon immediately rushed over with two men lugging the backup unit, booted it up, and lased Hill 215.7.
At the same time, at an altitude of 7,500 meters, four Su-34 fighter-bombers finally arrived. After locking their Platan electro-optical targeting pods onto the designated laser spot, they successively dropped two KAB-500L and two KAB-1500L laser-guided bombs.
*Screeech—!* The five-hundred-kilogram KAB-500Ls and one-and-a-half-ton KAB-1500Ls plummeted toward Hill 215.7, unleashing a shrill, piercing howl.
First came the screech, tearing through the air past Mach 1. The sound of splitting air resembled train wheels grinding over steel tracks, drawing closer and closer, sharper and more frantic.
In the middle of reloading a magazine, Chen Ge caught the sound. He instinctively turned his head, peered through the breach in the wall toward Hill 215.7, and roared with every ounce of strength in his lungs.
"Everyone down! Hug the deck and keep your mouths open!"
Everyone dropped flat on pure reflex, pulling in their limbs, pressing flat against the floor with their heads tucked low, clasping hands tightly over their ears while letting their mouths fall open.
The next second, a blinding white light flashed across Hill 215.7.
It was not the pale flash of lightning, but as if the entire sun had been compressed into the size of a coin before violently bursting open.
A fraction of a second after the blinding light flared, the shockwave hit. The air turned into an invisible wall, sweeping forward from Hill 215.7 and smashing into the school building.
The entire structure violently shuddered, dust cascading down in sheets from the cracks across the ceiling.
More than a second later, the thunder of the detonation finally caught up. Seven or eight distinct blasts slammed together into an overlapping roar—the concussive thud of bombs hitting dirt combined with the vicious crack of shockwaves ripping the atmosphere apart. It left ears ringing, vision spinning, and chests compressed, as though struck repeatedly by a massive pneumatic hammer.
The rumble dragged on for several seconds as pulverized stone and dirt rained down from the sky, clattering against slabs and walls.
Chen Ge lifted his head and looked out through the breach.
The crest of Hill 215.7 had been shaved down by half a meter. The water tower was gone; the trees were gone. Thick black smoke roiled up from the craters, wrapped in tongues of orange flame, slowly blooming like a dark flower against the night sky.
Spitting out the grit from his mouth, he muttered in awe, "Damn... now that's a bomb."
Right on its heels, a three-story building on the southern flank of the heights and Ukrainian positions across both the eastern and western flanks were battered in succession by eight more KAB-500L and five KAB-1500L laser-guided bombs.
Peregrine had paid a brutal price of over twenty casualties to seize and hold this building to provide laser targeting guidance, and the Russian aerospace forces had not dropped the ball, scoring direct hits on every objective.
With the mission accomplished, the forty-eight surviving mercenaries of the Falcon Hunting Team gathered on the ground floor, preparing to make a last stand.
With their ammunition depot blown, followed by Wagner's intense artillery sweeps and devastating heavy airstrikes, the Ukrainian forces had suffered seven to eight hundred casualties. Their remaining strength was down to less than fifteen hundred men, roughly three hundred of whom were currently storming the school building!
Near the breach by the main entrance, the mortar rounds Big Bear had hauled in were completely spent. Chen Ge pulled the tin of 7.62 NATO rounds from his pack, tossed it to Big Bear, and told him to start loading magazines.
The HK417 truly performed like a dream. Paired with M118 LR precision sniper ammunition, it hit dead-on wherever he aimed within four hundred meters.
*Bang, bang, bang!* Chen Ge emptied another magazine. Just as he reached out to ask Big Bear for a fresh one, his pupils snapped tight. Off to his right front, a T-72B3 main battle tank rumbled into view.
"*Suka blyat!* Tank! Take cover!"
Before Chen Ge's shout had even faded, the 2A46M-5 125mm smoothbore main gun erupted. A high-explosive fragmentation round struck, blasting a gaping hole through the brick wall as though it were soft tofu.
*Boom!* The shockwave and shrapnel hurled Fortress, stationed behind the wall, along with four other mercenaries into the air, slamming them brutally against the concrete pillars and piles of rubble.
"Fortress! Lug Nut! Venom Fang! Hyena Rat! Iron Kettle!"
Ice Man, leader of Assault Squad 3, let out a ragged scream and darted forward in a low crouch, dragging back Fortress, whose chest had been punctured by jagged fragments and was hacking up blood on the floor.
There was no need to check on Lug Nut, Venom Fang, Hyena Rat, or Iron Kettle. Lug Nut's lower half was minced meat; half of Venom Fang's head was gone; Hyena Rat and Iron Kettle had suffered ruptured internal organs from the blunt concussion.
"*Cough, cough*... my... my death gratuity... make sure... it goes to my mom..."
Fortress's words came out haltingly as he coughed up two more mouthfuls of foamy pink blood, his lungs visibly punctured.
"Give it... to my mom..."
Whispering that final plea, Fortress twitched a few times and stopped breathing.
Ice Man's eyes burned red. Without shedding a tear, he reached out and gently closed Fortress's staring eyes.
Not far away, Chen Ge let out a quiet sigh, feeling a twinge of sour regret—mainly because Fortress still owed him five hundred bucks.
*Motherfucker!*
"Give me an RPG! Fuck this!"
Lightbulb handed over an RPG-18. Chen Ge disengaged the safety pin, hoisted the launcher onto his shoulder, suddenly sprang to his feet, and leaped out through the gap in the building, weaving forward in a low, erratic zig-zag.
Trench cursed furiously from behind. "You bastard! Are you out of your fucking mind?! Get your ass back here!"
Instead of falling back, Chen Ge poured on the speed, closing the distance to seventy meters off the tank's flank before pulling the trigger.
*Thump!* The rocket blasted out of the launch tube, rocketing toward the tank just as it prepared to fire its next shell.
He avoided the frontal armor; the RPG-18's penetration was roughly 375mm of rolled homogeneous armor, whereas a T-72B3's frontal hull, bolstered by Kontakt-5 explosive reactive armor, exceeded 600mm of effective thickness—it wouldn't punch through!
*Boom!* The warhead slammed into the side hull, and the tank erupted in an inferno. The turret was blown two meters into the air, crashing back down and crushing three Ukrainian infantrymen trailing behind it into bloody paste.
The second he fired, Chen Ge broke into a sprint. The backblast had completely given away his position, drawing fire from dozens of Ukrainian riflemen.
Hugging the ground as he sprinted for his life back toward the structure, he dove headlong through the fresh breach blasted out by the tank shell, rolling across the floor several times before sliding behind a concrete pillar.
Exhilarating. Absolutely exhilarating! God damn, blowing up a tank felt amazing!
During his six months in Syria, he had spent every day fighting those ragged, dirt-poor ISIS fighters; they had never encountered armor like this. Facing a couple of 120mm mortars was considered a major battle there.
"Trench, write it down! Sledgehammer just knocked out a Ukrainian T-72B3! Did they capture that beast from the Russian regular army or something?"
Seeing Chen Ge scramble back in one piece, the boulder resting on Trench's chest finally lifted. Keeping his face stern, he scolded, "I'll log it, but consider yourself warned: without my order, you are not authorized to pull crazy shit like that again!"
"Copy that!"
Chen Ge stood up, jogged over to Big Bear with rifle in hand, snatched a freshly loaded magazine, slammed it home, and resumed laying down suppressive fire on the Ukrainians.
Nearby mercenaries shot him glances dripping with sheer awe.
If that tank hadn't been knocked out, every last one of them might have been blasted to pieces.
*Boom, boom, boom!* A much denser barrage of shell detonations echoed in from the south. Ratibor had launched his offensive.
The intensity of the Ukrainian assault outside the school noticeably tapered off. Within ten minutes or so, Ukrainian units began falling back, abandoning the heights around Klishchiivka.
They had no choice. With their ammunition dump detonated, an entire battalion on Hill 215.7 mostly wiped out or wounded by precision-guided ordnance, and their artillery observation post in the water tower flattened, trying to hold Klishchiivka Heights any longer was sheer suicide.
Yet before issuing the general retreat order, the commander of the Ukrainian 93rd Brigade directed the 3rd Mechanized Battalion to muster all available rocket launchers, level the school building to the ground, and bury the brazen bastards who had slipped through their lines in disguise.
Chapter 20