The drone was small, just a black dot in the sky, passing slowly overhead.
Gao Fei didn't know how Sokholov had judged the drone to be an artillery reconnaissance drone; he must have been there long enough to tell.
"An artillery reconnaissance drone is right over our heads. Artillery fire is coming…"
Each position had only one walkie-talkie and one radio; the walkie-talkie was carried by squad leader Sokholov.
Sokholov was warning nearby comrades to watch for artillery fire when, before he finished, Gao Fei heard a whistling sound like a truck passing overhead, then a deafening explosion drowned out Sokholov's voice.
Explosions rang out in quick succession, with very short intervals, but it was clear some were far and some near, and blasts came from front to back and left to right.
The explosions lasted only a short while—about dozens of shells—just one salvo before stopping.
Firing just one salvo was no good news; clearly this was a test firing.
A test firing, and a wide-ranging one at that—not a creeping barrage, not precision fire on a specific target, but the prelude to large-scale saturation bombardment.
A military enthusiast had some advantage on the battlefield; basic military knowledge was useful, and a seasoned enthusiast like Gao Fei certainly knew what to do under massive artillery fire.
Huddle in the dugout, squat on the ground, cover your ears with both hands, then pray no shell lands nearby.
After that, it was pure luck—life and death left entirely to chance, nothing to do with knowledge or skill.
After waiting a full minute, Gao Fei suddenly felt the ground tremble beneath his feet. Even with his hands over his ears, the enormous explosion could shake a person's innards.
The first shell landed nearby, but the good news was it didn't hit the trench.
The explosions came without pause, tremors kept rising from the ground, and dirt kept pattering down from overhead—no telling when the dugout would collapse from the shaking.
Gao Fei's legs started shaking; he could barely hold his squatting posture.
Shaking in the upper body was from too much adrenaline; shaking in the legs was real fear.
Gao Fei couldn't help shouting, yelling at the top of his lungs, but the explosions were too dense for anyone to hear him, so it wasn't too embarrassing.
Intense fire lasted tens of seconds, but as the old saying goes, it felt like decades to Gao Fei.
Rapid fire couldn't last too long; after about the limit of one salvo, the intensity dropped immediately.
Within a minute, not dying simply meant no shell had exploded nearby—nothing more.
The bombardment continued, but Gao Fei knew it couldn't be maintained long; this scale required at least a hundred guns firing nonstop, but with such battlefield depth, after firing at most one salvo, those guns should concentrate shells on the forward positions.
As long as this wide-ranging bombardment wasn't fired by Ukraine out of spite, it was fire preparation for a large-scale counterattack.
As expected, Gao Fei had just run through all types of massed bombardment in his mind when he heard Sokholov shouting.
"Don't go out. Keep waiting."
Sokholov had the walkie-talkie; only he would know first about any changes ahead.
Fine—starting on the battlefield meant hell difficulty.
Explosions still sounded, but no tremors could be felt underfoot—a good sign, but only temporary.
Because the fire would creep forward, exploding step by step with the enemy's advance.
So they couldn't rush out of the dugout yet; they'd wait for Sokholov's order.
Just then, Gao Fei heard Samir Bek shouting beside him: "Rex! Are you alive?"
"I'm fine. You?"
They were close, but they still had to shout.
"I'm alive…"
Just as Samir Bek replied to Gao Fei with some nonsense, Sokholov roared: "Shut up!"
Fine, if they weren't allowed to shout, they wouldn't; they'd wait quietly in fear.
This time it felt much faster—half an hour had passed, but it seemed like only a few minutes.
The ground underfoot shook violently again; creeping fire had finally landed on them, and this time the impacts were closer.
With a tremendous boom, clods of dirt fell from above and struck Gao Fei's head, but the dugout didn't collapse completely, and such a terrifying close explosion happened only once.
All the changes showed the forward position had been breached, and the enemy would be coming up soon.
Finally Sokholov roared: "Take positions, meet the enemy, out! Everyone out!"
The first combat didn't make Gao Fei wait long; in other words, the war didn't give him more time to adapt.
Gao Fei didn't hesitate; all fear vanished at Sokholov's order. He left the dugout, dropped into a firing position, and poked his head up to look toward where the enemy would appear.
It wasn't a flat plain, and the enemy wouldn't march in lines to die. Though the trenches weren't much different from WWI, tactics had changed greatly.
Infantry no longer charged into machine-gun fire; they advanced under tank cover, entered the trenches, and seized enemy positions.
Coming toward them were two tanks and at least four armored vehicles, tanks in front, two armored vehicles behind each tank, the armored vehicles following the tank tracks, rumbling toward their front-left.
Three hundred meters; at that distance, tanks and armored vehicles would reach them in one rush.
The forward position had surely collapsed completely, and the only position able to block the enemy advance was the one Gao Fei was in. So withdrawal was impossible; they could only fight to the death.
The distance closed; the tanks soon broke the two-hundred-meter mark, reaching an extremely dangerous range. Gao Fei had already looked toward the rocket launcher, desperately recalling how to use it.
Sokholov also stood in the trench, watching the enemy tanks, holding a walkie-talkie rather than a rifle, with no intention of taking a rocket launcher—just lying on the position quietly watching the enemy tanks.
Then the enemy's lead tank suddenly blew up.
Whether it was a missile or a shell was hard to tell with the naked eye, but the enemy tank burst into flame and exploded, its turret flying into the air.
No need to lug a rocket launcher for a close-range tank kill now. That was normal enough—Ukraine had artillery, and so did the Russians on this side.
The armored vehicle behind the destroyed tank stopped, then turned, trying to fall in behind the remaining tank. But as it turned, at least four rocket launchers fired at it.
Three rockets missed, but one accurately hit the armored vehicle's front, and after belching white smoke, it too stopped in place.
Not bad—the Russian lines were tight.
That was the benefit of posing as a veteran: while new recruits on the forward position had already been blown apart by shells, rear positions had artillery support. Survive the first salvo, and you lived.
Meanwhile, shells rained down on the enemy's armored forces.
The fire sectors had long been mapped; now the defenders only needed to report fixed coordinates, and the shells would land accurately. So this attack should be over, right?
But just as Gao Fei grew optimistic, he heard explosions booming behind him.
Fine—now it was an artillery duel; the enemy had begun striking exposed artillery positions, so the fight was far from over.
Until the second tank hit a mine; with its track blown off, the tank had to stop in place.
The minefield was becoming dense. After the lead tank stopped clearing a path, the three armored vehicles behind it found themselves in an awkward spot.
By rights they should retreat, but after lingering on the battlefield for about ten seconds, the armored vehicles suddenly turned, bypassed the tank, and the three vehicles continued forward in a column.
Sokholov finally said: "Prepare the rocket launchers. Fire at the retreating ones."
Gao Fei looked toward the rocket launcher; it was close by, so he ran over and snatched up an RPG-27.
"What are you doing? Use an RPG!"
The RPG-27 belonged to the RPG family, but when someone just said RPG, they meant the RPG-7.
The RPG-27 was for especially urgent moments; when things weren't that tense, an RPG-7 was fine.
As Gao Fei sheepishly put down the RPG-27, Samir Bek had already picked up the RPG-7.
Sokholov was neither flustered nor hurried. He didn't even look at the armored vehicle right nearby, but fixed his gaze on Gao Fei. "Are you really a veteran or not? Tell me the truth."
Gao Fei stared. "At a time like this, you're asking that?"
"I need to make an accurate judgment about you, and I trust my own eyes."
As Sokholov spoke, another armored vehicle hit a mine, and after this explosion, the remaining two armored vehicles finally stopped advancing.
The distance was about a hundred meters, but in that hundred meters, the armored vehicles couldn't break through.
The armored vehicles began to retreat, and the one that had hit a mine suddenly opened its rear ramp; the infantry mounted on it began jumping off.
Gao Fei gripped the handguard with his left hand, worked the bolt with his right, released it, flipped off the safety catch, shouldered the rifle, aimed, lined up the rear notch sight with the front post sight, sighted on the soldiers who had just dismounted and were sprinting, and pulled the trigger.
A textbook-perfect shooting motion—standard, flawless.
He fired and hit the target. The bullet struck the target; he didn't know where, but the target fell in an unnatural posture—certainly not a deliberate dive to the ground.
Too bad Sokholov hadn't seen it. He hadn't looked at the enemy at all; he'd kept his eyes on Gao Fei.
"Ha, I knew it. A real veteran wouldn't fire like that. You're…"
"Good shot!"
Samir Bek suddenly shouted, then impatiently said: "He killed the target."
Sokholov turned in astonishment. He finally looked at the enemy, but his face showed disbelief: "Impossible! Absolutely impossible!"},
Chapter 9