The five teams split up and advanced toward the Laboratory Building.
Thump, thump, thump! An AGS-30 grenade launcher from Volcano's team opened fire, detonating the booby traps and perimeter mines laid by the Ukrainian forces and tearing through the outer defenses around the building.
Hacksaw scuttled over to Chen Ge in a low crouch. Standing only one meter seventy-two, he was built like a brick, wearing the Ratnik-2 combat system and a 6B47 "Big Green Pot" helmet that made him look bulky and clumsy.
He clapped a hand on Chen Ge's arm and said earnestly, "Hammer Brother, Team Two is under your command from here on out."
Chen Ge raised his eyes toward the Laboratory Building and replied somberly, "All right. Split your twelve men into two squads. You take one, Wild Boar takes the other!"
Hacksaw turned and waved at Wild Boar.
Wild Boar, a retired Alpha operative, jogged over. Hacksaw divided the men, splitting Team Two's twelve mercenaries into two combat squads.
Trampling over rubble, shattered bricks, and corpses, they closed in to within one hundred and fifty meters of the Laboratory Building. The Ukrainian troops inside opened up. A dense storm of machine-gun and rifle rounds swept toward them, prompting Chen Ge to roar, "Take cover! Fire the Bumblebees!"
The three combat squads scattered behind obstacles for cover. Three mercenaries hoisted RPO-A Shmel launchers to their shoulders, aimed at the front of the Laboratory Building, and fired three 93 mm smoke rockets.
Each smoke round carried 2.3 kilograms of aerosol smoke agent, laying down a smokescreen dozens of meters wide that blocked both visible light and infrared, shielding them from drone reconnaissance.
Over on the right flank, Rock and his men also fired off two MRO-A smoke rockets. In an instant, the open ground before the Laboratory Building was swallowed by an impenetrable wall of smoke.
The Ukrainian soldiers holed up inside were already on edge, and the sudden blindness sent their panic off the charts. They unleashed everything they had in a desperate frenzy—light and heavy machine guns, assault rifles, grenade launchers, and RPGs sprayed blindly into the fog, accompanied by a rain of thrown grenades.
Chen Ge led the Fire Support Team around the building's left flank, slipping past the fire until they were stacked under the sill of a ground-floor window. Crouched in a single file flush against the wall, Chen Ge could see the muzzle flash of a Ukrainian PMK protruding from the window less than a meter away.
He flashed a hand signal to Manhole Cover and Lightbulb. Catching his drift, both men lowered their rifles, drew a pair of RG-60TB thermobaric grenades, yanked the pins, and stayed low as they lobbed them hard through the window.
Boom! Boom!
Of the seven Ukrainian soldiers inside, six were killed on the spot and one was wounded. The machine gun went dead. Chen Ge called Hacksaw over the tactical radio, bent his knees slightly, and leapt two meters straight up, bounding cleanly through the window into the room.
Big Bear and the others, having long grown accustomed to Chen Ge's superhuman feats, scrambled up the sill and tumbled inside after him the ordinary way.
Hacksaw came sprinting up with his squad. Chen Ge poked his head out the window and barked, "Hurry it up! Don't drag your asses!"
"Copy that!"
A rush of heavy footfalls echoed down the corridor outside. Chen Ge brought his boot down on the neck of the twitching, blood-coughing Ukrainian soldier on the floor, crushing it, and drew an RGN grenade to toss out the doorway.
Boom!
Four of the eight Ukrainian soldiers rushing toward the blast were blown off their feet. The remaining four ducked into rooms on either side of the hallway, thrust their barrels around the doorframes, and fired blind.
The Soviet-style laboratory building followed a rigid, functional design: a long central corridor flanked by laboratories on both sides, workbenches set beneath outer windows, fume hoods along interior walls, exposed piping, no drop ceilings, heavy ventilation shafts, steel-reinforced wood doors, bare concrete floors, and narrow strip windows. It was cold, symmetrical, and purely practical.
In a building laid out like this, when enemies were dug into the rooms to your left and right, how were you supposed to fight?
Chen Ge's tactic was simple and brutal. He reached into the grenade pouch at his lower back, pulled out four RG-60TB thermobaric grenades, leaned against the doorframe, and, with the hand speed of a man single for twenty-one years, yanked the pins and flung two to the left and two to the right.
Boom!
A sharp primer crack gave way to a deafening explosion, shaking the entire building to its foundations.
Five Ukrainian soldiers in the adjacent rooms and the one diagonally across were killed or maimed instantly. The rest fared little better, suffering agonizing flash burns and concussive shock from the blast wave.
"Ahhh! My eye! My fucking eye!"
One unlucky bastard had his left eye punched out by a flying piece of brick, and he shrieked in agony as he clutched his gushing socket.
The instant the grenades detonated, Chen Ge charged out of the room in a low sprint. He hurled two RGN grenades toward the stairwell, dove into a roll into the room diagonally across, and raised his HK417, putting down two wounded Ukrainian soldiers with a sharp burst.
"Blyat! Get down! Grenade!"
The grenades detonated on impact. Four of the seven Ukrainian soldiers holding the stairwell dropped dead on the spot. The only one still mobile scrambled up the stairs hauling a PKM, desperate to set up his gun at the landing.
Gunfire and explosions overlapped in deafening waves as bullets whistled through the air. Rock's element had breached the building from the right flank.
The two squads led by Hacksaw and Wild Boar vaulted through the window, signaling the true start of the room-clearing battle.
There were plenty of Ukrainian troops on the first floor, scattered across virtually every room.
Chen Ge and his men were currently in the four rooms at the far end of the corridor. Moving toward the stairwell, there were four more rooms lining the two-and-a-half-meter-wide hallway.
Standing by the doorway, Chen Ge tilted his head to listen. He threw a quick hand signal across to Hacksaw and Wild Boar, slipped out the door, and moved forward a few meters with his rifle raised, stopping outside a storage room marked with a plaque that read KOMORA № 3.
The four Ukrainian soldiers inside had already heard the footfalls and tossed out two F-1 grenades.
Chen Ge did not dive for cover. Instead, his boots snapped out—smack, smack—kicking both grenades straight back into the room.
The Ukrainian soldiers froze, stunned out of their minds. What kind of move was that?
Boom! Boom!
The four defenders were blasted into the air, slamming against the walls and desks. Chen Ge leaned his head in for a glance, fired two quick shots into the two who were still twitching, and pumped insurance rounds into the other two.
Suddenly, his spider sense flared with danger from the Main Mixing Tower to the northeast.
Two hundred meters away, on the third floor of the mixing tower, a Ukrainian officer spotted Chen Ge through the window and ordered two soldiers to put an SPG-9 73 mm recoilless rifle round into the room.
Chen Ge turned his head, his gaze meeting the officer's across the distance through binoculars. He raised his hand and offered the internationally recognized middle finger.
Whoosh—boom! The shell ripped through the window and exploded against the floor, blowing the four Ukrainian corpses into shreds. Cracks splintered across the walls, but the structure held.
Having flashed his bird, Chen Ge had already stepped out of the room and flattened himself against the corridor wall.
He waved away the stinging smoke with one hand, turned, and warned the others, "Watch the mixing tower! Focus on the left-side rooms—suppress them and clear with grenades!"
The men nodded and fanned out behind Chen Ge, continuing to clear the rooms.
With a powerhouse like Chen Ge pinpointing enemy positions by sound alone, the four remaining rooms were swept clean in minutes.
Rock's team had likewise finished clearing the eight rooms to the right of the stairwell and reached the hallway junction.
"Die, you Russian scum! Open fire!"
A Ukrainian soldier shouted from upstairs. The defenders perched at the landing and along the staircase opened up with everything they had, hurling down over a dozen grenades.
Rock and Chen Ge had anticipated the barrage and ducked back into the rooms ahead of time.
Chen Ge slapped in a drum magazine, pulled the pin on an F-1 "little lemon" grenade, and held it ready. Looking at Hacksaw and Wild Boar, he said, "The second it blows, we charge!"
Both men nodded. Hacksaw muttered, "Watch yourself."
Chen Ge edged along the wall to the corner. The instant the Ukrainian gunner at the landing paused to swap ammo boxes, Chen Ge hurled the grenade hard against the far wall, ricocheting it directly around the corner.
Boom!
The machine gunner was blown apart, and two more soldiers on the stairs were felled. Chen Ge vaulted forward up the steps in a single bound, lobbing another thermobaric grenade ahead of him.
Over a dozen Ukrainian soldiers crowded around the second-floor stairwell were just bringing their rifles up when the grenade slammed squarely into one man's face, clattering onto the concrete floor.
"Fuck! Get away!"
Boom! A blinding flash erupted as a fireball swallowed the soldiers clustered at the landing. Hacksaw and Wild Boar stormed out with their squads, boots thudding up the steps. They pumped follow-up rounds into the dying men on the floor while laying down heavy suppressing fire into the rooms on both sides of the second-floor corridor.
Rock poked his head out from the junction below and called up to Chen Ge, who was stooping to snatch up an abandoned PKM off the steps, "Sledgehammer, take the men and clear the upper floors! I'm heading down to blow the utility tunnel!"
Without looking back, Chen Ge checked over the captured machine gun with practiced ease. "Watch your back. Don't die down there."
"Hell, I'm not dying. You don't die either, brother. Upper floors are all yours."
Rock cursed under his breath, turned, and led his men charging toward the rear exit. The entrance to the underground utility tunnel lay inside the annex behind the Laboratory Building.
Gunfire, explosions, curses, and screams echoed from both ends of the hallway. The number of Ukrainian defenders on the second floor was clearly far greater than on the first, and their mouths were filthy as hell, spewing raw expletives alongside the frantic chatter of their rifles and machine guns.
"Yob tvoyu mat! Fuck you, Russian bastards!"
Yob tvoyu mat—translated into Chinese, it simply meant... fuck your mother!
Chapter 45