476: Chapter 473 Cannon Fire at Black Panther 476: Chapter 473 Cannon Fire at Black Panther Nate Schumacher hadn’t gathered his team members, as each member of the Angel Mercenary Corps knew what they had to do and where they had to be.
The first to open fire were the snipers, Gao Yang saw three soldiers carrying sniper rifles turning the street corner, followed immediately by continuous gunfire.
Even though Cui Bo was equipped with an HK416, he had a night vision scope mounted on his rifle, which allowed him to function like a sniper at short distances.
Thus, Cui Bo also joined the ranks of the snipers.
Two minutes passed, and the artillery fire started on time.
The command issued by Nate was to concentrate fire quickly, so when the distinctive puffing sounds of the mortars firing began, they never stopped.
From the moment he heard the first explosion, Gao Yang began to count silently—it was his habit, but he quickly lost track of just how many explosions there had been.
He couldn’t keep count because the explosions were too closely spaced.
Five seconds after the artillery barrage began, Nate finally shouted, “Charge!”
The assault troops of the Angel Mercenary Corps leaped forward, rushing out from behind the street corner toward the Black Panther Squad.
The Satan Mercenary Corps and Ivan’s men lagged a bit but followed close behind the Angels, charging out altogether.
After all, it was their first time cooperating; they couldn’t really be said to have any tacit understanding.
So when Nate’s command was not clearly sounded, Gao Yang, who had been close behind Nate, didn’t understand that it was the signal for the assaulters to charge until after Nate had darted out.
Then, keeping Nate in his sights, he began to sprint fiercely.
Upon rounding the street corner, Gao Yang saw four mortars still in the midst of continuous firing.
One of the mortars was manned by Tommy, who was crouched on the ground, controlling a mortar tube with both hands, with another person loading shells.
Every time the mortar fired, the loader would immediately insert a new shell into the muzzle, and Tommy would make minor adjustments to the direction in a very short span of time, ensuring the shell landed exactly where he wanted it to.
With two people manning a mortar, the rate of fire was extremely fast.
The loader was clearly experienced, handling the shells in one hand and loading them with the other, doing so without even looking as he tossed them into the muzzle.
Such a firing rate was certainly beyond the extreme rate that a mortar could sustain.
The rate of fire for all four mortars was about the same, and the impact points of the shells were still within a controllable range.
Gao Yang wasn’t surprised at this, as he knew the limits of what Tommy was capable of.
Furthermore, he had already witnessed the mortar capabilities of the Angel Mercenary Corps in Bosaso and was deeply impressed.
The front line of the Black Panther Squad was held at bay two hundred meters away, now immersed in a sea of fire.
As a police SWAT team, the main battlefield of the Black Panther Squad was in the city.
They were adept at street fighting and CQB operations, and skilled at hostage rescue and dealing with hijackings, but they were truly not trained to cope with large-scale artillery barrages.
The sudden and fierce artillery attack left the Black Panther Squad’s position in complete disarray; casualties were heavy, several vehicles had been hit and caught fire, burning fiercely with thick black smoke rising.
The ground was covered with the wounded and the dead.
Vehicles are not good cover against artillery fire, but aside from the vehicles, the Black Panther Squad had nothing else to use as cover.
With the artillery barrage covering him, Gao Yang felt a sense of amazement as he charged because he had never imagined that an assault could be so simple.
The Angel Mercenary Corps had about fifteen people launching the assault, while Gao Yang’s team had nine.
As they drew closer to the Black Panther Squad’s position, now less than a hundred meters away, Gao Yang heard an excited shout.
He looked back and saw that, somehow, Andy He had joined the ranks of the assaulters.
Andy He, with a face filled with excitement, ran at the forefront, his sprint utterly unrestrained.
Holding a FAMAS rifle, Andy He shouted loudly in French, moving surprisingly fast and rushing from the back to the very front of the column.
When Andy He rushed past Gao Yang, Gao Yang felt that Andy was like a wild beast that had been caged for too long and had finally been set free, as Andy’s expression seemed not of someone in battle but of happiness and satisfaction after regaining freedom.
A perfectly good doctor choosing to fight, Gao Yang thought Andy He must be sick in the head with no hope of recovery.
Even though he ran to the front, Andy thankfully didn’t lose his senses completely.
He neither blocked others’ line of fire nor fell out of formation with the assault team.
When they were less than fifty meters from the Black Panther Squad, artillery fire that had previously swept from front to back returned, deliberately focusing on the foremost positions.
Any survivors of the bombardment who tried to shoot at Gao Yang and his assault team were met with a second round of strikes.
For the Black Panther Squad, the most fatal thing was that they were located on a wide main street with no shops on either side.
They had to brave bullets if they tried to disperse from the convoy to the sides, but remaining without the vehicles’ cover meant dealing with the shells.
Less than twenty meters from the forefront of the Black Panther Squad’s defense line, Andy He, running in front, was the first to open fire.
He paused briefly, then fired a three-round burst, taking down a man who stumbled out from behind a vehicle.
After the artillery’s barrage, Gao Yang found that their charge was mostly to deliver final shots.
Andy He’s gunfire started it off, and the sounds of rifle fire began to ring out continuously.
However, the assault team had hardly any moving targets left to shoot.
Because it was an ambush, the Black Panther Squad on their way to the battlefield had been intercepted, stretching their battle line long and compact at the front, where most of their men were concentrated.
The Black Panther Squad had at least a dozen vehicles stopped on the highway, including six minibuses.
Now, all the vehicles had been blown to pieces by mortar shells.
Gao Yang and his team, after rushing into the convoy, pushed the artillery fire forward, bombing the elongated fifty-meter vehicle convoy all over again.
People of the Black Panther couldn’t have all died under the shells, but very few were left to stand and resist.
Since starting the charge, Gao Yang hadn’t fired a single shot, since the few unharmed men that occasionally emerged were taken down by the ferocious assault team’s volley of gunfire.
This had ceased to be a fight and become a slaughter, he felt no need to fire an additional shot.
Gao Yang felt that his mental fortitude was somewhat lacking.
If the enemies were drug traffickers and anti-government militants, he could fire without any psychological burden or hesitation.
But now, slaughtering members of the SWAT Team, he felt an unease in shooting wounded men who posed no threat.
Gao Yang thought the Angel Mercenary Corps were too ruthless.
He wanted to suggest to Nate that they should spare the wounded who were no threat, but watching Glolov fire emotionlessly at a struggling shooter, he aimed upwards, delivering a burst into the man who was not on the ground.
Gao Yang swallowed back the words that never made it out.
Soon, Nate shouted loudly, “Obstacles cleared, we can depart.
Group A, cover us; everyone else, get in the vehicles.
We’re leaving Bogota.” (To be continued.
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