Chen Ge was an ordinary man, and a thoroughly worldly one at that, not above a love for money and fine women.
In the normal course of things, worldly people had at least a touch of vanity, and he was no exception. He thoroughly enjoyed the looks of shock, awe, and that faint trace of adoration.
It felt damn good. Truly satisfying.
He reached up, adjusted his slightly crooked tactical goggles, and said to Bull, "The Ukrainians are just probing. Their main goal is to map out our fire deployment. Just use staggered fire to keep the annex tunnel entrance pinned down."
"Understood!"
Chen Ge carried the mortar tube downstairs, taking no shells with him since there were plenty on the first floor.
Once he was gone, a middle-aged K-soldier with a metal dog tag reading K112-419 hanging over his chest marveled, "Damn, he's incredible! That's the first time I've ever seen someone shoot a mortar handheld without a bipod and hit so dead-on. More accurate than my rifle."
The convicts had their own exclusive dog tags: prefixed with 'K', followed by 112 for the prison block, and 419 for his personal roster number.
In daily operations and assault calls, commanders only ever yelled the last three digits. Only fighters who proved their combat prowess and earned true recognition were granted a battlefield callsign, freeing them from those degrading numerical designations that made them feel like disposable tools instead of human beings.
For instance, 419, who had survived in Bakhmut for thirty-three days, already possessed a callsign: Greyhound.
A young K-soldier beside him turned toward the window, peering out at the dense smoke blotting out the sky, and asked in confusion, "Greyhound, how do you know his rounds hit the target?"
Greyhound glared at the young soldier with utter disgust and cursed, "Blyat, I hate talking to fools, but I just can't stop myself from setting an idiot like you straight. The moment Sledgehammer dropped his rounds, the Ukrainian heavy machine gun went dead silent. Are you deaf?"
The young K-soldier froze, then scratched his head in embarrassment. Thinking back carefully, right after Sledgehammer fired that first shot, the heavy machine gun in the annex ruins had indeed stopped firing.
He found it mind-boggling. How could anyone treat a mortar like a sniper rifle?
"Isn't that kind of gunnery a little too miraculous? Could it have been a fluke?"
Hearing that, Bull, who was checking his body armor plate nearby, looked up and drawled, "A fluke? 749, you really are a shortsighted pig, always viewing geniuses through your own narrow little lens. Sledgehammer has another nickname: the Artillery King!"
"Back during his deployment in Syria, he could land a shell right on the roof of an IS terrorist vehicle speeding across the gravel desert a kilometer away. His accuracy is leagues ahead of your pathetic shooting. Hitting a Ukrainian heavy machine gun in the annex ruins less than two hundred meters out is as easy for him as breathing. Now do you still think it's a fluke?"
At those words, Greyhound, 749, and the surrounding K-soldiers were completely dumbfounded. Their eyes went wide as saucers, their minds buzzing.
Was he an Artillery King? No! He was an Artillery God!
Bull slapped his tactical vest, picked up his AK-12, and got to his feet, shouting, "Listen up, all of you! Stagger your fire and suppress the annex tunnel opening! If anyone fires blindly and gives away our positions, I'll toss him out the window!"
The K-soldiers nodded vigorously and opened fire in strict accordance with Bull's commands.
***
First-floor lobby.
Chen Ge looked down at Kuzma, who was sprawled on the ground gasping for breath, a look of mild surprise in his eyes. The bastard hadn't died. It was downright absurd.
Just moments ago, Night Cat had marched him outside at gunpoint to plant mines. A few minutes later, the Ukrainian attack began. As smoke rounds came in, Night Cat and the two barrier detachment guards retreated back into the building. Kuzma had wanted to run back as well but hadn't dared. He hugged the ground to dodge bursts from the Ukrainian heavy machine gun, only scrambling and rolling back through the rear door after finishing the deployment of all five MON-50 directional mines.
Had Kuzma been in normal condition, Chen Ge might have understood. But this freak had been slammed into a wall by Chen Ge until he passed out, and then taken a brutal beating from Night Cat. How could he look as if he had only suffered minor surface scrapes?
His constitution seemed rather extraordinary, and his luck was unnaturally good.
Interesting.
Chen Ge eyed Kuzma with amusement, then took the black remote control handed over by a barrier detachment fighter nearby.
The MON-50 directional mine had several triggering methods. The most common were tripwires or an electrical cable linked to a PN manual exploder.
Cable detonation was too cumbersome, while tripwires were easily spotted by the enemy. Veteran Russian soldiers on the front lines often modified them by hand.
They wired an external relay receiver module, connecting one end to the mine's electric detonator and the other to a battery. A signal sent via radio or remote control would close the relay, completing the circuit to trigger the blast, with an effective remote range easily exceeding five hundred meters.
The five MON-50 directional mines Archer had brought had all been converted for wireless remote detonation.
This was Chen Ge's first time using the Russian version of the Claymore, and he was eager to see its destructive power.
"Suka! RPG!"
Octopus yelled from the laboratory on the right side of the southern corridor, followed immediately by the blast of an explosion.
Chen Ge tilted his head to listen carefully, just catching a fierce, guttural shout.
"Smoke deployed! Low crawl toward the rear entrance!"
Japanese volunteers!
Chen Ge grinned, moving briskly toward the back door to wait for his prey.
Team Five of the Sakura Detachment had lost eight of its eleven men to Chen Ge's four mortar rounds the moment they showed themselves. Mortified and enraged, Yamamoto Kamimine had decided to revive his ancestors' old specialty: a banzai charge!
He ordered his men to loose five RPG-7 rockets in rapid succession while launching ten GP-25 smoke grenades from underbarrel launchers. The western side of the Laboratory Building was once again shrouded in thick gray smoke.
The smoke volume from the GP-25 grenades was decent, but their duration was mediocre, lasting only about sixty seconds. That gave the Sakura Detachment a window of just one minute to press their assault.
Across a distance of a hundred and twenty meters, disregarding casualties, could a dispersed low crawl make it across in time?
The answer was an absolute, resounding no.
A low crawl under combat load took even top-tier special forces with peak physical conditioning at least two and a half minutes.
It would take the Sakura Detachment at least four minutes—and that was assuming the defenders hadn't laid mines.
What a stroke of luck that the five MON-50 directional mines Kuzma had planted were waiting right there.
*Rat-tat-tat! Bang, bang, bang!* From the upper and lower windows, the K-soldiers and veterans fired blind, spraying indiscriminate bursts. Though the thirty-nine men across the Sakura Detachment's four assault teams stayed widely dispersed, crawling forward at breakneck speed like creatures creeping through the dark, more than a dozen were still killed or wounded in the very first sweep of defensive fire.
The DShK-M heavy machine gun manned by Lightbulb and Octopus, along with two Kord heavy machine guns, proved the most devastating. Their 12.7×108mm rounds skimmed right along the dirt, gouging out deep craters the size of soup bowls. If a Japanese volunteer was grazed by a bullet, he was maimed; take a direct hit, and he was dead.
One Japanese volunteer, belly pressed flat against the earth as he kicked off with his feet to crawl rapidly forward, met with rotten luck. The instant he raised his head to observe, Lightbulb swung his barrel toward that very spot.
A heavy round slammed dead-on into his right cheek. With a sharp crack, his head burst apart, spraying gray matter and blood everywhere. His shattered cranium remained wedged inside his helmet, tumbling into a nearby puddle with a wet splash.
The ground-skimming rounds showed no mercy, ripping downward from his neck to his left leg. Flesh and bone tore to shreds, scattering severed limbs and mangled organs across the churned soil.
Despite mounting casualties, the Sakura Detachment crawled faster and faster. Just before the smoke dispersed, Kraken, crouching by the tunnel entrance to observe, ordered another round of smoke for cover.
After four consecutive salvos of smoke grenades, the surviving twenty-one men of the Sakura Detachment finally crawled to within ten meters of the back door.
Five meters ahead of them lay the five MON-50 directional mines, spaced three meters apart in an arc centered on the doorway, their fragmentation faces aimed westward, disguised under heaps of shattered bricks.
It had to be said that Kuzma's mine-laying skills were solid; those five directional mines perfectly blanketed the fan-shaped approach before the entrance.
Seeing the back door right ahead, unblocked and without anyone posted to cover it, Yamamoto Kamimine suddenly had a bad feeling.
Yet they had no way out. They had to breach the Laboratory Building and prove that the Japanese were strong, not cowards, or else... No, there was no other choice.
Yamamoto Kamimine took two deep breaths, his eyes hardening with ferocity. He drew an RGD-5 grenade, yanked the safety pin, and hurled it forward, screaming at the top of his lungs:
"Attack! Slaughter these bastards!"
Chapter 61