The enemy jumped straight into the trench instead of throwing a volley of hand grenades first. There was, of course, a reason for this: camouflage netting—or rather, protective netting.
Originally, the primary purpose of camouflage netting was to conceal artillery positions. But once drones became widespread, people realized that camouflage netting was extraordinarily effective against suicide drones. Soldiers in trenches soon took to stringing camouflage netting overhead to stop them.
If you lacked camouflage netting, a fishing net would do just as well, so people quickly began calling it protective netting instead.
Gao Fei and the others had protective netting strung above their heads. Though the mortar shelling had torn several gashes in it, its overall structure remained intact, and as long as it held its shape, it could deflect enemy hand grenades.
To wipe out the trench's defenders as quickly as possible, the attackers skipped throwing grenades altogether and jumped straight in to force hand-to-hand combat.
Normally, when a fight reached this stage, it was practically over.
The problem was that Gao Fei was no ordinary man. He wasn't even normal. In fact, he barely fell into the category of human at all.
To Gao Fei, having the enemy leap into the trench was just fine.
Instinctively aligning his muzzle with the enemy dropping into the trench, Gao Fei squeezed the trigger. This was no time for single shots; he held the trigger down, sending a stream of bullets sweeping upward through the attacker.
The enemy crashed into the trench without a twitch, collapsing limp as a sack of grain.
Rifle in hand, Gao Fei stepped out of the dugout. He looked left—clear. He looked right—clear. Finally, he looked straight ahead. At least ten men.
The nearest was poised to leap in; the farthest was barely five meters away.
This assault wave had been timed impeccably with the mortar fire, giving the defenders practically no time to react.
Charging in a skirmish line, their tactic was brutally simple: get everyone into the trench immediately.
Unless Gao Fei could wipe out all ten-plus men in a split second with twenty-odd rounds, close-quarters combat inside the trench was unavoidable.
Of course, close-quarters combat didn't necessarily mean resorting to bayonets and entrenching shovels. At point-blank range, firearms remained the weapon of choice.
Gao Fei only had time to fire a single round at the closest soldier before another enemy let out a roar and threw himself straight down at Gao Fei's head.
The engagement distance had shrunk to under three meters. No matter how phenomenal Gao Fei's marksmanship was, he couldn't shoot left and right simultaneously.
The moment he saw Gao Fei stand up in the trench and open fire, an enemy soldier who had been off to his right immediately changed direction. From two meters away, the man launched himself into the air, turning his entire body into a projectile aimed straight at Gao Fei.
Jump in, tackle Gao Fei, and roll with him in the mud. As long as he kept Gao Fei from shooting, his comrades would follow up and finish Gao Fei off.
Even if Gao Fei still managed to shoot, the jumper would take him down with him.
It was a purely suicidal tactic. It didn't require elite combat skill. Even a raw recruit on the battlefield for the first time, even the most cowardly man, would find the courage to die alongside an enemy in a moment like this.
The attackers had been driven to desperation too.
When a battle dragged on to this point, everyone felt despair. But once a chance at survival presented itself, whether green recruit or seasoned veteran, any competent commander could coax far greater combat power out of them than they normally possessed.
Gao Fei's rifle had no bayonet.
Even if it did, he didn't know how to fight with one.
Everything unfolded in the blink of an eye, and Gao Fei could only react on pure instinct.
Stepping backward as he saw the hurtling enemy leveling a rifle at him, Gao Fei brought his own weapon up toward the airborne figure and pulled the trigger.
Even in this extreme crisis, Gao Fei's reflex was sharp enough to target the enemy's head. But though the bullet blew through the man's skull and killed him midair, the lifeless body crashed down onto him anyway.
Hit from above by well over a hundred jin of dead weight, Gao Fei couldn't resist the sheer force and tumbled backward.
The enemy was wearing body armor, and his entire upper torso crushed down onto Gao Fei's face, slamming him flat against the trench floor.
Blinded by the weight, Gao Fei shoved desperately at the corpse, only for another soldier to leap into the trench right beside them.
The moment the newcomer hit the ground, he raised his rifle and pointed it straight at Gao Fei's head.
This was true despair.
Gao Fei had made no mistakes. He had executed everything perfectly, pushing himself to the absolute limits of what a soldier could do, yet he was still going to die.
The enemy raised his rifle, but never fired. His body jerked violently, and he pitched forward onto the ground right before Gao Fei's eyes.
The barrel of the man's rifle struck Gao Fei's face, the impact sending a jolt of sharp pain through the corner of his eye. But no shot was fired.
By sheer luck, the muzzle struck Gao Fei first, pushing the weapon back, and the dead soldier never squeezed the trigger.
Gao Fei's own face had prevented the dying man's residual nerve reflex from firing the bullet.
This man had been millimeters and microseconds away from killing the sharpshooter.
A miracle had happened, though Gao Fei didn't understand how until he turned his head and saw the machine gunner sent from D Company firing from inside the dugout.
So it was D Company's machine gunner who had saved his life.
In a situation like this, the sustained firepower of a machine gun was truly the only thing that worked.
Without standing up, the machine gunner knelt on one knee in the trench, cradling his weapon as bursts of fire ripped along the trench line.
Gao Fei could barely hear a thing, but he saw Andrey, coated from head to toe in dirt, crawling out of the dugout on all fours toward him.
Another enemy leapt into the trench, landing right behind the machine gunner. Just as the gunner spun around in shock, the stumbling attacker leaned against the trench wall, jerked his muzzle upward, and emptied an entire burst straight into the machine gunner's face.
Samir Bek was crouching in the trench—not out of cowardice, but because ducking was the only way to avoid being shredded by the machine gunner's outgoing fire.
Now that the machine gunner was dead and the weapon silenced, Samir, who had been facing the gunner, raised his rifle and pumped a continuous burst into the soldier who had just killed him.
You shoot him, I shoot you. Life and death hung on a heartbeat, separated by mere seconds.
Andrey scrambled up beside Gao Fei. Without asking questions or trying to shoot at the soldiers jumping into the trench, he threw his weight into hauling the corpse off Gao Fei.
Gao Fei braced his rifle horizontally across the dead man to shove, while Andrey pulled from the side. Combining their strength, Gao Fei finally threw the heavy body clear.
Gao Fei wasn't weak, but having that dead weight crash directly onto his head had left him completely dazed.
A dazed brain didn't stop him from shooting, however.
Samir was still alive because Andrey had cleared away the corpse blocking Gao Fei's line of fire.
Lying flat on his back, Gao Fei leveled his rifle past Samir and fired the moment another enemy leapt into view.
Given the chance to pull the trigger, Gao Fei feared no enemy, no matter how close.
Samir spun around to see an enemy soldier, already dead in midair, crash down beside him.
Samir was shouting something, but Gao Fei couldn't hear it.
Gao Fei was lying with his head pointing toward the left side of the trench and Samir to his right. Right now, he could lock down the entire right half of the trench with his rifle, but he couldn't cover the left unless he got up and turned around to fire.
Judging by Samir's expression, though, enemies were coming from behind him.
Frantic, Gao Fei found his legs still pinned beneath the dead man. He kicked violently, trying to shove the body away so he could get back on his feet.
Andrey's mouth opened wide in a shout.
Crammed inside the narrow trench alongside the dead, Andrey surged to his feet and lunged behind Gao Fei.
Samir raised his rifle toward Gao Fei's direction. Lying on the ground, Gao Fei craned his neck backward and saw Andrey tackle an enemy who had just dropped into the trench.
Grappling for the man's weapon, Andrey wrestled the attacker down onto the trench floor, their bodies tangled in the narrow space.
Another enemy leaped in. Samir fired at him, while Gao Fei, still on his back, took down another leaping soldier.
Conscious thought was completely unnecessary now.
Firing in such tight quarters carried an immense risk of hitting friendly troops, but nobody gave a damn about friendly fire anymore.
There were too many enemies to count; the only rule was to shoot anything you could see.
Gao Fei pushed himself into a sitting position and twisted toward Andrey behind him. Andrey had pinned his opponent down, gripping the enemy's rifle with both hands and bearing down viciously.
The enemy shoved upward desperately with both hands, trying to throw Andrey off.
Gao Fei wanted to shoot the pinned soldier, but before he could squeeze the trigger, another enemy dropped into the trench, bringing his boots down straight toward Andrey's back.
Instinct drove men to jump toward whatever they perceived to be the most immediate, critical threat. The enemy could have fired directly into Andrey's back, but Andrey had body armor, and firing carried the risk of hitting the pinned comrade underneath him. So the man chose to drop his full weight down on Andrey instead, hoping to break the grapple.
Yet what the eyes saw was not always the truth. The most dangerous presence in this trench was Gao Fei. It had always been Gao Fei.
The corpse resting against Gao Fei served as his perfect camouflage.
Bringing up his rifle, Gao Fei fired the instant Andrey was slammed face-first into the dirt. The round blew through the attacker's head. Lowering his muzzle, Gao Fei fired almost point-blank into the head of the man who had been thrashing beneath Andrey.
Gao Fei whipped his muzzle back around toward Samir's side. The trench was temporarily clear of live enemies. He waited a beat—it felt like ages, though it couldn't have been more than a single second—before another enemy dropped down. Once again, Gao Fei killed the man in midair.
Sensing that his magazine was running low, Gao Fei kept his rifle in his right hand and reached out with his left to snatch up a rifle dropped by one of the fallen enemies.
To Gao Fei, swapping weapons was faster than reloading.
Rifle in hand, Gao Fei kicked the corpse pinning his legs away, knelt on one knee in the trench, and sprang to his feet.
D Company's assistant machine gunner emerged from the dugout, took the machine gun from the gunner's body, rose somewhat recklessly, and slammed the weapon onto the parapet.
The enemy's assault had nearly succeeded. They had been separated from victory by a mere fraction of a second, by a few millimeters.
Had Gao Fei died, this stretch of trench would certainly have fallen.
But Gao Fei had survived, which meant this section of the trench was an impassable chasm.
Now that Gao Fei had caught his breath, this trench was the line between life and death.
No one needed to jump in; step too close, and you died.
Chapter 76