Taking Lives

Chapter 2. Baptism by Fire(9)

“They’re coming,” he said, coughing and breathing heavily, barely able to speak.

Max immediately jumped up and grabbed the weapon.

"How many are there?" he asked sharply, putting on his helmet.

– An armored personnel carrier, a car and trucks, maybe there were something else – it was raining heavily, I couldn’t make it out.

Max grimaced, as if his stomach had turned sour. Then he waved his hand and ran out into the street, leaving Kirill to catch his breath.

"It's time for dinner!" he shouted loudly.

This was a signal that the battle was about to begin.

The rain intensified, literally drenching the houses. Water poured from the roofs in streams, and the major was immediately drenched. He cursed, but there was no time to shake himself off and dry off, especially considering Kirill had beaten the bandits by literally a minute. The headlights loomed about two hundred meters ahead, and from there, drowned out by the rain, the occasional rumble of engines could be heard. Kirill watched their approach from a hill, and gained time only because the road they were driving on curved around it and was very muddy.

The six-man squad was dispersed in pairs among several houses. Two more pairs with machine guns occupied attics on opposite sides of the farmstead to provide crossfire. A large area formed within the semicircle, where the "wolves" were supposed to enter. Having heard plenty of eyewitness accounts of the bandits and their habits, Rodionov, not without reason, placed his hopes on their self-confidence and audacity. This was precisely what the battle strategy was built on.

Max glanced around the houses: the attic shutters were closed, meaning the machine gunners were out of sight. Sergei was in one of them with a grenade launcher. Rodionov had his hopes pinned on both of them, but he wasn't about to relax either.

When, despite the noise of the rain, the roar of the engines became clearly audible, Max darted back into the house, crouched by the window where the "Flies" had been stowed, and began to watch the column of bandits entering the village. Confident in their own strength, the bandits were indeed acting sloppy and overconfident, stumbling into the village en masse. So none of the locals had given up after all. The gamble had paid off.

An armored personnel carrier (BTR-80) moved first, followed by a UAZ with a makeshift metal roof and a machine gun mounted on it. Following them was a Kamaz truck, covered with a tattered tarp, and then another. The vehicles, as if they owned the area, made loading easier, and fighters in various outfits and body armor began to emerge from them, glancing nonchalantly around. Up until this point, everything had gone according to plan.

But Max didn't get to finish his inspection. The KPVT barrel on the APC was pointed right at one of the attics, and one of the recruits lost his nerve and started shooting. According to the plan, if the enemy had armored vehicles, the fight was supposed to begin with a shot from Vorobyov or Rodionov, depending on who was quicker to react or who had the better position. They were supposed to first disable the armored vehicles, and only then engage the bandits in a dagger-like crossfire. But plans often prove futile.

The first shots threw the "wolves" into confusion for a few seconds. It seemed they weren't given this kind of treatment often: one of the bandits fell, and the others rushed behind the APC. But the APC itself reacted surprisingly quickly – in the blink of an eye, the gun adjusted slightly, and the rapid fire of automatic and machine gun fire was joined by the loud, rhythmic pops of the KPVT. Large-caliber bullets literally pulverized the attic, along with the people inside. Even before the APC deployed its fearsome weapon, Max pulled the trigger on the grenade launcher, but nothing happened. A misfire. Without thinking twice, he grabbed a second one, but here, too, disappointment awaited him.

As for Andrei, with the very first shots, the boundaries of the tangible world for him narrowed to the thump of his wildly pounding heart. Of course, the sounds of gunfire were still there, but his ears were completely deaf to them. It felt as if his body was trying to shrink to the size of a hazelnut, easily able to fall into any crack in the ground. At that moment, the chaos around him was unimaginable, but later he would swear he didn't hear even the slightest sound, nothing but the resounding pounding of his own heart.

Vorobyov missed the target by just a little, some four or five seconds. At first, due to his lack of combat experience, he was confused, perplexed by the fact that the battle hadn't started as planned, but then he came to his senses, took aim, and fired. Unlike Rodionov, his grenade launcher fired and the round hit its target, but by then the lives of his comrades, who had been shot at by the armored personnel carrier, had already been cut short.

Completely ignoring safety, Vorobyov watched with awe and awe as the APC's doors, under intense pressure, flew off their hinges, knocking one of the bandits off his feet like a bowling pin. The hatch covers were bent and twisted, and flashes of flame lashed the vehicle from all sides. Thus, the most dangerous adversary had been defeated.

A nearby explosion from a shaped-charge grenade shattered the flimsy window and reverberated through Andrey's head, shaking him from his stupor and showering him with shards of glass. Driven by some unknown emotion, he rose to his full height in the window and, screaming furiously, began firing into the rain. If the crossfire from the defenders hadn't literally mowed down the bandits caught off guard, Andrey likely wouldn't have lived for five seconds.

The machine gun quickly expelled all its ammunition and fell silent, but Andrei didn't notice and continued frantically pulling the trigger with such force that his finger turned white. He was completely unaware that it was already over and the machine gun wasn't firing.