The Ultimate War Of The Apocalypse
Chapter 236 - 232 Main Force Big Brother

Chapter 236: Chapter 232 Main Force Big Brother

An ambush had unexpectedly turned into an encounter battle, fought in utterly bewildering circumstances.

For both sides, if the entire battle could be described in one word, it would be confusion.

But an encounter battle is not some random street fight; once the battle has erupted, it can’t easily be halted, because whoever stops firing first is essentially asking for death.

At this point, both sides were surprised by the other’s tenacity.

Li Jingang and Panxin had been left at the forefront. They didn’t want to retreat, but once they had been pinned down by enemy fire, even an elite special forces unit was without recourse.

Now, firepower was needed to suppress the enemy, whether it be mortars, rocket launchers, machine guns, sniper rifles, or superior rifle firepower. As long as the enemy could be suppressed to prevent them from aiming and shooting calmly, then Li Jingang and Panxin would be able to withdraw.

Gao Yuan was that variable. Currently, only Gao Yuan could use hand grenades for long-range suppression, creating an opportunity for Li Jingang and Panxin to counterattack.

Identify the enemy’s firing point, wait patiently, and when the enemy sticks their head out again, seize the moment and let loose a volley. If the enemy was killed, one enemy firing point would be removed. If not, start over from the beginning and, at any rate, prevent the enemy from being able to aim and shoot easily.

But there were still too many enemies, and Li Jingang and Panxin could only retreat slowly.

"Cover and retreat alternately!"

Panxin shouted, and then Li Jingang began to squirm backward on the ground.

The area was completely bare, offering no terrain that could be used as cover—retreating from here was indeed not an easy task.

What was Gao Yuan doing at this time? He was waiting for hand grenades.

The cargo on the truck was important, but the truck itself was even more crucial. The enemy clearly had machine guns and rocket launchers; if they managed to damage the truck, Gao Yuan and his team of about a dozen men would lose their most important means of transportation.

The two vehicles had been withdrawn far enough, and Gao Yuan’s pace had been too fast, resulting in him losing touch with Yu Shunzhou and the others. Now that Gao Yuan had used up all his hand grenades, he could either turn back to retrieve more or wait for Yu Shunzhou and the others to bring them.

Four men were gasping for breath; the distance shouldn’t have been tiring, but sprinting over at full speed would leave anyone breathless.

"Give me the grenades!"

It was Gao Yuan’s turn to give orders, but faced with the current situation, he was uncertain whether to continue advancing to close in on the enemy or to establish a position on the spot and cover Panxin and Li Jingang’s withdrawal.

Xiang Weiguo might have said something about this, but what exactly should be done now?

Gao Yuan couldn’t say he was completely at a loss, but he genuinely didn’t know what the best choice was, so he quickly added, "Cover their retreat!"

Song Qian ran over to Gao Yuan, taking off the hand grenades from his body and handing them to Gao Yuan one by one, while Cao Zhenjiang shouted, "Hit the deck! Find cover and open fire on the spot! Don’t push forward!"

Yu Shunzhou and Nie Erlong, who were still on the move, stopped, then Cao Zhenjiang threw himself to the ground. He set up the bipod of his Type 81 machine gun, shouldered the weapon, took quick aim, and fired a burst.

Gao Yuan had seen this tactical action before; it was the same one Xiang Weiguo had demonstrated to him.

Cao Zhenjiang’s tactical movement was outdated, suited for the rapid firing of the Type 81 Rifle Family. After the Shenzhou Army had fully replaced its rifles with newer models, such tactics had become obsolete, discarded.

Each gun has its own specific deployment action. The AK47’s fire selector and safety are on the right side, set up for shooting in a prone position—right hand to lift the gun, drop to the ground, extend the gun forward, support the gun with the left hand while the right hand flips the fire selector and takes hold of the grip, then fire—the whole sequence is a single tactical movement.

The Type 81 rifle had long been phased out, and the Type 81 machine gun had been retired for many years. Therefore, although everyone could use the Type 81 machine gun, few could perform the corresponding tactical actions properly, as current soldiers no longer needed to practice these movements specifically.

Short bursts followed by a longer one, repeatedly, after several short bursts, Cao Zhenjiang yelled loudly, "You two idiots! Get out of my firing line, withdraw, and stay away from the bombs! Charging forward like that is asking for death. Come here and reload for me!"

Yu Shunzhou and Nie Erlong glumly crawled back to Cao Zhenjiang’s side.

Gao Yuan got up from the ground and crouched there; he looked ahead and then suddenly stood up, throwing a hand grenade with all his might.

Now Cao Zhenjiang at last appeared to be in command.

During firing, there was no time to care, but once the shooting stopped, he couldn’t help but find an opportunity to curse.

"Idiots! Take out the magazine!"

Thump thump thump.

"Are you blind, replace the magazine!"

Thump thump thump.

"Gao Yuan! Throw the grenades when I’m firing, throw several at once to give them a chance to withdraw!"

Ratatat.

"Damn it, what kind of training did you bunch even receive!"

Gao Yuan and his three companions turned pale under the scolding, yet they didn’t have a word to say in response.

But in all fairness, Gao Yuan, Yu Shunzhou, and Nie Erlong had been trained by the same master. Xiang Weiguo’s instruction was tailored to each of their abilities, focusing primarily on the tactics and skills they most needed to master, more akin to those of special forces operatives.

Flanking, infiltration, surveillance, close-quarters combat indoors, guerrilla warfare, and the like—Gao Yuan and the others had learned these quite well.

As for Song Qian, when he was transferred out of the new recruits’ company, he went straight into the guard squad. It wasn’t that he couldn’t shoot or fight, but the type of combat they were engaged in now certainly wasn’t his forte.

This was open terrain, long-distance fire suppression and shooting—exactly the kind of battlefield regular infantry were most familiar with, but not something Gao Yuan and his team specialized in.

In the underground base, there wasn’t even a firing range over a hundred meters, and now asking Yu Shunzhou and the others to shoot with Type 81s at targets over five hundred meters away was just unfair.

Although all combat is warfare, not all warfare is the same; the battlefield is never monolithic and unchanging.

However, with Cao Zhenjiang joining in with his machine gun, the pressure on Li Jingang and Panxin lessened once more. From a certain perspective, let Cao Zhenjiang curse if he wanted to—after all, wasn’t he the main force and elder brother right now?

Li Jingang and Panxin lay prone on the ground, slowly retreating at a very slow pace. The enemy, while somewhat suppressed, was not completely held down due to scant long-range firepower, so they also couldn’t just stand up and run; all they could do was gradually move backward like this.

"No good, the barrel will overheat in a little while. There’s definitely more than this handful of enemies; I estimate a platoon, but we must be wary of enemy reinforcements arriving soon," Cao Zhenjiang suddenly stopped firing, loaded a new drum magazine, and said to Gao Yuan, "Do you still have grenades? Toss a few more. When the enemy tries to shoot again, have Mr. Jian and riders kill some of them, only then can we make them retreat quickly."

Gao Yuan whispered, "Only four left."

Cao Zhenjiang fired a short burst, thought for a moment, and then said, "That’s fine, continuously throw all four grenades."

Right then, Panxin urgently said through the radio, "No! Don’t waste the grenades. Allow Nemesis to throw the grenades more accurately; target the enemy precisely!"

Cao Zhenjiang was stunned for a moment before he exclaimed loudly, "What joke is this? I would have understood if you were throwing grenades five hundred meters, but throwing them that far and still precisely hitting the target? Are you dreaming?"

Only then did Gao Yuan realize that Cao Zhenjiang’s commands weren’t completely correct.

Panzin ignored Cao Zhenjiang’s interrogations and whispered into the radio, "By my estimate, the enemy still has over twenty rifles. Their machine gun just started firing again. Nemesis, your task is to suppress the enemy’s machine gun as soon as it starts firing. Mr. Cao, when you suppress the enemy with your fire, give us a signal, and we’ll quickly retreat."

The concept of close-quarters firefight differs from long-range combat; if this were an indoor battle, once the two sides met head-on, it was inevitable that one side would leave a few corpses behind. But in this open-space suppression and counter-suppression, there was much more room to maneuver.

Cao Zhenjiang fell briefly silent, then he shouted loudly, "All right, I’ll fire a three-shot burst, wait two seconds for a ten-shot long burst, then you look for an opportunity and retreat quickly, get ready."

Gao Yuan picked up a grenade, stood up from the ground, but only stood for a moment before he quickly crouched down and moved to a different spot—having been shot once, he dared not stay in the same place without moving.

Gao Yuan was looking for the enemy’s machine gunner, and finally, he threw the grenade with all his might.

The enemy’s machine gun fire was fierce, specifically targeting Cao Zhenjiang’s machine gun position. Bullets whizzed all around them, but as Gao Yuan’s grenade flew through the air, it exploded a few seconds later with a colossal bang, and the enemy’s machine gun fell silent.

Cao Zhenjiang was astonished and shouted, "That worked? Damn it, that actually worked?"

While talking, Cao Zhenjiang’s movements didn’t slow; he had already risen from the ground, kicked Nie Erlong’s leg, and said, "What are you dazed for? Change position, quick!"

Crouching, Cao Zhenjiang ran quickly about twenty meters to one side before lying down again. Once down, he didn’t immediately open fire, instead yelling to Gao Yuan, "You, change position too! Damn it, why are you all just standing there? Waiting for a rocket? If the enemy had mortars, a single shell could blow you all up!"

Before Cao Zhenjiang had even finished speaking, he heard an ominous sound.

"Mortar! Get down!"

As Cao Zhenjiang yelled, an explosion thundered about thirty to forty meters behind them.

As the dust settled, Cao Zhenjiang stared blankly and exclaimed, "82-mortar! Damn it, they actually have mortars!"

"The enemy has set up mortars behind us! Move your position quickly, quick!"

The battlefield situation seemed to have become more complicated; Panxin loudly instructed Gao Yuan and the others to move positions through the radio. At this moment, Li Yang, armed with a sniper rifle, had finally arrived.

Cao Zhenjiang shouted, "That was a ranging shot, move now! Scram to both sides, quick! The enemy isn’t playing by the rules. What kind of battle is this?"

In just a little less than two minutes, the situation on the battlefield had changed and changed again, leaving everyone utterly bewildered.

Just then, Li Yang shouted to Gao Yuan, "Take these grenades, cover their retreat!"