128: Chapter 127 Tanks 128: Chapter 127 Tanks The opposition didn’t wait for dawn to launch their attack; at four in the morning, following a thunderous explosion, the opposition began their assault.
Based on the previous day’s combat performance on both sides, Gao Yang had thought it would take a prolonged attack for the opposition to possibly penetrate the Aziziya Barracks, yet reality proved Gao Yang wrong.
The battle lasted less than an hour before the opposition breached the first and highest outer wall.
Everyone, including Gao Yang, was convinced the decisive moment had finally arrived, but it turned out they were all mistaken.
Once the opposition entered the labyrinthine interior of the Aziziya Barracks, their progress faltered.
The Sirte soldiers, fiercely loyal to Gaddafi, engaged in intense urban warfare with the opposition inside the barracks.
The fighting that started at dawn had Gao Yang and his comrades anxiously awaiting until noon, yet the opposition had not breached their last line of defense.
Listening to the sounds but unable to see anyone, knowing that the battle was imminent, yet frustratingly unable to spot any targets to shoot at, was an awful feeling.
Under their commander’s loud shouting, the soldiers manning the machine gun posts were extremely tense.
More than once, the gunners fired at a large gate where no one was present.
After being chastised by their commander, it wouldn’t be long before meaningless gunfire rang out again.
However, it was thanks to the shouts among the Libyan soldiers that Gao Yang and his fellows were kept informed about the opposition’s progress.
But by three in the afternoon, the gate that Gao Yang and his men were directly facing was blown open with a thunderous explosion.
Immediately afterwards, countless figures charged in through the smoke-filled entrance; the opposition’s attack had finally arrived.
Flanking Gaddafi’s Palace, the four surrounding bunkers could form a perfect crossfire, and since there was only one door breached by the opposition, all six of the dual-purpose heavy machine guns on the three machine gun posts opened fire when the opposition finally emerged, along with the hidden machine gun positions inside the bunkers.
In an instant, at least a dozen machine guns poured bullets onto the doorway that was only about ten meters wide.
The soldiers left behind were loyal to Gaddafi; they were willing to die for him, but the problem was that loyalty doesn’t equate to combat effectiveness.
Seeing too many machine guns wasting bullets on a small doorway, Glolov, known as the Machine Gun Artist, couldn’t bear it any longer and yelled angrily, “These damn pigs—no, pigs are smarter than them!
Wasting firepower like this is begging for retribution!
Mortars!”
Before Glolov’s curses had finished, accompanied by a series of shrill whistles, several dozen mortar shells fell onto the exposed anti-aircraft machine gun and anti-aircraft cannon positions outside the bunker.
After the booming explosions, the unprotected anti-aircraft positions were a mess.
The opposition’s mortar fire was surprisingly accurate, forgoing trial shots and directly conducting a large-scale bombardment.
At least twenty shells landed on the ground close to Gao Yang and his position.
A shell also hit Gao Yang’s bunker; the walls of the bunker shook slightly, and fine dust floated down, covering Gao Yang and his comrades from head to toe.
On the two anti-aircraft machine gun and two anti-aircraft cannon positions, which together had about twenty men, only one soldier staggered in an attempt to retreat into the bunker for cover after the bombardment.
But he had only taken a few steps before collapsing to the ground.
Gao Yang covered his ears in time and wasn’t deafened by the nearby explosion.
Although there was still a ringing in his ears, it didn’t affect his hearing much.
Gao Yang saw Glolov’s mouth moving.
He took his hands off his ears and shouted, “What did you say?
Say it again.”
“I said, 82mm mortars, at least thirty of them.
It seems the opposition are much better with mortars than they are with the 152 and 122 artillery,” Glolov remarked.
Now that the opposition had finally arrived right before them, Glolov’s spirits relaxed completely; in fact, everyone felt the same way.
They preferred to face real combat than endure another minute of the torment of the unknown.
Gao Yang was surprised he could still muster a laugh, but he did, laughing heartily as he spoke, “At least now we know one thing: our bunker is sturdy.
We don’t have to worry about being blown away by mortars.
If the opposition agrees to accept a surrender from the mercenary leaders, we could just wait in here until we ‘turn over a new leaf,’ then turn our guns around, shoot Hamis and by the way rescue Abdul—and do it all for free.”
There was still no movement at the blasted gate; the machine guns hidden in the bunker were completely unaffected by the mortar fire, and they had the entrance locked down tight.
Glolov, with nothing else to do, shouted loudly, “Do you know?
The bunker we’re in is newly built, but that’s not the point.
The point is, you Huaxia people built this bunker in three days, and then after waiting a week for the surface cement to dry a bit, you took the money and left.
I was worried about the quality of this bunker, but it seems there’s no need to worry.
It might not withstand heavy artillery, but it’s immune to mortar shells.”
Gao Yang, astonished, said, “Where did you hear that?
I had no idea about this.”
Cui Bo slapped his head and yelled, “You were practicing hand-to-hand combat with Jinfang outside that day.
I was chatting with the Old Russian and the colonel, we heard it from him.
Gaddafi did something foresighted for once.
Before the opposition got their act together, he started working on adding more walls and bunkers, with a maximum construction period of two months.
He approached a European construction company, which said it needed a year and a half to complete and couldn’t do it.”
Then Gaddafi found a Korean company, but the project would take at least six months, and it couldn’t be done during the war.
In the end, he turned to a Huaxia construction company that was building skyscrapers in Tripoli.
The foreman said there would be no problem meeting the deadline and guaranteed both quality and quantity.
The Huaxia company worked overtime and finished all the work in three days; it took a week, including the time for the surface of the cement to dry.
After seeing the cement was dry, they promptly collected their money and left, just in time for the evacuation of their citizens.
That’s the whole story.
I meant to tell it to you as a joke, but I forgot.”
Glolov added, shouting, “The Libyans thought that a bunker built in three days was useless, but their own tests proved that the quality of Huaxia construction was the best.
Now that we have verified it for ourselves, I also agree with their conclusion, the quality of this bunker is pretty good.”
In such a situation, Gao Yang greatly admired Glolov and Cui Bo for still being in the mood to tell jokes.
However, he was indeed amused.
Just then, a loud noise, distinctly different from the sound of artillery, cut through, stifling Gao Yang’s laughter.
The bunkers were arranged in a trapezoidal formation on one side of Gaddafi’s Palace, and Gao Yang’s position, inside the bunkers on the left and towards the back, was relatively safe.
The gate that was blown open was right in front of the forward bunkers on their side, while the new breach in the wall was between the two groups of bunkers on the right.
When the machine guns inside the bunkers turned towards the new breach, they had barely fired a few shots when a huge black object leaped out of the smoke and dust, advancing to an area clear of smoke and stopping…
Seeing the massive object, Gao Yang’s heart sank.
He shouted, “Tank!”
On a modern battlefield, seeing a tank is neither strange nor particularly frightening, but when the tank belongs to the enemy, that’s a different, more terrifying matter, especially when one has no means of anti-tank defense.
What could be more frightening than a T-55 tank appearing before you?
Seeing two T-55 tanks show up at once.
Gao Yang and his group had no effective means of anti-tank warfare, and although the Sirte soldiers had some RPG-7 rocket launchers, Gao Yang seriously doubted they could be used against tanks.
Gao Yang yelled at Glolov, “Can a one-meter-thick bunker withstand a tank shell?”
“Don’t even dream about it, this is just a bunker, not a fortress!”
The first tank that entered finally took aim and provided an answer for Glolov.
The tank fired at a bunker, and although they couldn’t see the bunker’s walls being bombarded or the bunker flipping over, when they saw the dust billowing out from the bunker’s gun ports and the small door, Gao Yang immediately understood that in front of tank shells, a bunker designed to withstand light weapons was nothing but rubbish.
Gao Yang’s heart was cold.
Now, he was quickly considering the possibility of surrendering to the opposition forces.
At that moment, the second tank that had entered fired its cannon, turning the personnel in another bunker into mincemeat.
Two Sirte soldiers were very brave, each carrying an RPG-7 rocket launcher to the outside of the bunker because firing rockets in the confined space would likely kill their own comrades first.
One of them didn’t even get the chance to fire his rocket before he was shot dead by the tank’s machine gun, while the other successfully fired his rocket.
However, his rocket didn’t hit the tank; it grazed past the turret.
As for the courageous shooter, he wasn’t killed by the machine gun on the tank but by a mercenary from behind.
Gao Yang had been watching the movements of the two tanks closely.
When he saw the Sirte soldier with the rocket launcher being hit by bullets fired from behind him in the bunker, he exclaimed, “Gambler and his men are taking action, they’re turning on Gaddafi’s people.”
Gambler’s Mercenary Group consisted of twelve people, and together with another mercenary group of ten people inside another group of bunkers, they controlled four bunkers.
The sudden action came from Gambler’s Mercenary Group, but after they opened fire, Gao Yang saw through his scope that Gambler had stuck a white flag in his back and was the first to run out from the bunker.
Following Gambler’s lead, all twenty-odd men from the two mercenary groups ran out, each with a white cloth tied around them.
They approached the nearest bunkers, firing into them and throwing grenades.
The treacherous attack from Gambler and his men caused the resistance of the Sirte soldiers inside the remaining three bunkers to crumble instantly.