Bakhmut

One day later, on the T-05-13 highway, 40 kilometers northeast of Donetsk. At nine in the morning, the sunlight was bright and the temperature stood at 17°C. October was a cool, dry autumn. Next month would be miserable—cold, damp, muddy, with clothes that never dried. Chen Ge sat in the cargo bed of a Ural-4320 truck older than he was. The canvas cover was off, since they needed to watch for drones. They had reached Donetsk at eleven last night. At six that morning they assembled and set out for Bakhmut. There were many vehicles on the highway, but they were well spaced, more than 100 meters apart. The reason was obvious: by day the view was unobstructed, a drone high overhead could lock onto the entire convoy from far away, and bunched-up vehicles could easily be crippled several at a time by a single munition. All fifteen mercenaries in the truck bed were nervous, every muscle taut, heads tipped back, eyes fixed desperately on the sky. Only Chen Ge was calm, smoking at his leisure. Drones really were terrifying, but he was using a cheat… no, wrong—if it was never switched off, it was never switched on. His spider sense had a maximum warning range of 3.5 kilometers, and the threat levels were graded: mild, moderate, severe, critical—the kind of danger where you were completely screwed. Unless the warning was the you're-screwed kind, he didn't even want to look. Half an hour earlier, for instance, an FPV drone had come in from the northeast. The danger sense had given only a moderate warning, and then the drone hit a BTR-82A armored vehicle 550 meters ahead. He had roughly worked it out: threats beyond 500 meters were mild or moderate, 100 to 500 meters were severe, and anything within 100 meters was critical. This spider sense was absolutely a lifesaving skill on the battlefield. Unless he took a precision hit from a rocket or missile traveling at Mach 2 or faster, or got carpet-bombed, he could basically avoid everything ahead of time. Take the Ukrainian military's D-20 towed howitzer: its high-velocity shell covered 500 to 650 meters a second. At the upper figure, 650, even 3.5 kilometers would take 5.38 seconds. In 5.38 seconds he could run more than a hundred meters. His sense of security went through the roof! And a shell did not fly at a constant speed. Air resistance kept slowing it, so by the time it had covered 3.5 kilometers, its speed would be 450 meters per second at most. That gave him a full seven or eight seconds to dodge! The NATO-supplied PzH 2000 self-propelled howitzers, CAESARs, and M777 towed howitzers were about the same. Mortars? Pfft. Garbage. They just give you a few extra seconds. “Sledgehammer, how come you're not nervous at all? Please look up at the sky—it'd give me a little sense of security. Thanks.” Rock, the leader of Assault Team One, sitting across from Chen Ge, had been watching him for quite a while. Chen Ge was hunched over his phone watching cached videos of the Russo-Ukrainian battlefield, never once scanning the sky, which left Rock feeling very insecure. After all, Chen Ge had the best eyesight in the Falcon Hunting Team—3.0 vision, practically a naked-eye telescope. Everyone turned to Chen Ge and clamored all at once, asking him to keep watch. Asking, mind you. Their tone was very gentle, even a little ingratiating. No one would be stupid enough to offend Chen Ge. Did they want to die? Piano from Assault Team One said with a pained face, “Sledgehammer, please keep an eye on those damned drones. I'm really scared!” Spark, who had a centipede-like scar on his face, chimed in, “Right, Sledgehammer, stop looking at your phone. Are you chatting with Aisha? Delete her and I'll introduce you to a pretty girl…” Chen Ge: ??? What did that mean? How did everyone know about him and Aisha? “All right, enough. I'll watch! I'll watch, okay?” Chen Ge put away his phone, tipped his head back to look at the blue sky, and said seriously, “Shut your mouths. FPV drones have a very distinctive buzz—listen carefully and you can hear it. All of you, prick up your ears.” No sooner had he spoken than Chen Ge's ears twitched. He whipped his head toward the southwest. Spider sense warning: moderate—then it rose swiftly to severe. His eyes caught an FPV drone coming in at ultra-low altitude. “Sukablyat!! Drone! Stop the truck!!” Chen Ge jumped up and hammered the cab roof with his hand, bellowing. The driver was experienced and slammed on the brakes. The mercenaries leaped from the truck bed and scattered into the wasteland beside the road to take cover. The FPV drone came screaming in, saw the men had left the truck, turned around, and headed for the truck behind—another Falcon Hunting Team vehicle. Chen Ge was frantic. “Shoot! Shoot, for fuck's sake!” Everyone snapped to and raised their guns. A dozen or so rifles fired at once, a dense stream of bullets whizzing past—and not one so much as grazed the FPV. Chen Ge raised his AK-12 and tucked it into his shoulder. His right thumb pushed the selector lever all the way forward to the last position—Semi-Auto, single shot. He aimed at the drone and was astonished to find that he could not only clearly see the seam between the miniature camera lens and its housing, but also that the drone's flight seemed to slow. At 150 meters, against a moving target like that, he could hit it every time. Bang. The shot rang out. The drone, moments from hitting the rear truck, was struck and fell straight down, smashing into the road ahead and to the left of the truck. The RPG warhead slung under its belly exploded, shrapnel spraying and clanging off the front of the truck. Everyone froze for two seconds, then burst into loud, jubilant cheering. Chen Ge stood rooted to the spot, eyes wide with astonishment, his expression a picture. Was his dynamic vision's frame rate really this good? The first Spider-Man had this ability, the second was the strongest—he could even see bullet trajectories—and Holland's was the weakest. His visual frame rate had to be around 250 frames per second. With dynamic vision and perception like that, his reaction time was about 0.004 seconds! He could hit an FPV every time—unless it was a swarm attack, or an extreme high-speed run skimming the ground and weaving through complex terrain; obstacles blocking his line of sight would interfere, and even with his powerful vision he could easily lose the firing window. Big wolf spider, I owe you an apology! I shouldn't have stomped you to death and crushed you to bits in the toilet. I'm sorry! Chen Ge apologized to the wolf spider in his heart and clicked the rifle's safety back on. No one knew he was the one who had downed the drone. Everyone had been shooting, after all. But Chen Ge had spotted the drone in advance, called for the driver to stop in time, and ordered the men to shoot at it, saving the people in both trucks. Everyone looked at him with gratitude. Captain Trench strode over and clapped Chen Ge hard on the shoulder. His usual stern, cold, deadpan face was all smiles. “Sledgehammer, well done. I'll report this to the detachment and get you a commendation—a mission performance bonus, a team contribution bonus, and the bounty for downing the drone goes to you too.” Chen Ge was thrilled. Wagner's bonuses came in several kinds. For a performance like this, the mission performance bonus would be at least 800,000 rubles; downing a drone was worth 50,000 rubles; and the team contribution bonus specially approved by the commander—also called the team survival bonus—was 1 million rubles. That made 1.85 million rubles in all. At the current exchange rate, that was roughly thirty thousand U.S. dollars. The Russo-Ukrainian battlefield really was good. The money came faster than in Syria, and there was more of it. One FPV drone downed was $817. If he shot down ten a day, how much could he make in a month? 245,000! Three million a year. Mm. That line of thinking was too dangerous. Shoot down too many drones and the Ukrainian military would concentrate their fire to kill him, fixing on him and bombing him every day. Chen Ge banished the stray thoughts, stood at attention, and said, “Thank you, Captain.” “We're the ones who should be thanking you. From now on, as long as you spot a drone in advance—whether or not you can shoot it down—I'll specially approve a 10,000-ruble bonus for you.”