609: Chapter 602 The Enemy is Desperate 609: Chapter 602 The Enemy is Desperate Tommy had taken out a sniper, but the chain reaction resulting in a glorious victory, had at least led to five casualties in the Holmesny Mercenary Corps if those men were indeed part of it.
Although it wasn’t clear whether the enemy was dead or alive, one thing was certain—whether it was the Holmesny Mercenary Corps or someone else, they would continue trying to rescue them.
The ammunition Tommy needed had arrived; this time he had as many as forty shells at his disposal, but the only problem was that the enemy would also adapt.
Tommy was ready to keep firing, but no one ran out to get blasted anymore.
After two failed rescue attempts, they had changed their strategy.
Two BMP-2 armored vehicles drove in quickly and then stopped in front of a fallen man.
They planned to use the armored vehicle for cover to take away the wounded or simply the bodies.
The armored vehicles kept firing, the shells whistling strongly and flying over Gao Yang and their heads or burrowing deep into the sandy ground after hitting the earth.
All Gao Yang and his men could do was hide in their foxholes, unable to even raise their heads.
The 30mm shells had strong penetrating power—if the machine gun’s shells landed correctly, it was very possible they would penetrate nearly a meter deep into the sand and then turn them into mincemeat.
Thankfully, the likelihood of this was very small, and Gao Yang and his men were also quite lucky.
Tommy was unable to continue firing shells, but Zhou Zhou could.
Upon learning that the enemy was using armored vehicles for the rescue, continuous shells began to fall.
The 60mm mortar couldn’t cause fatal damage to the armored vehicles, but it could kill the people who left the vehicle to rescue others.
Although the power of the 60mm mortar was not great, continuous direct hits on the armored vehicle could damage it.
Although the people inside wouldn’t die, it would definitely not be pleasant.
Additionally, 107mm rockets also started falling abundantly.
Although they couldn’t target the armored vehicles with direct aim, after a large number of shells fell, they finally hit the armored vehicle directly.
The armored vehicle couldn’t withstand such fierce shelling and soon drove back, and in the end, three enemy bodies could be confirmed on the ground.
Although the enemy had deployed armored vehicles, they still hadn’t managed to take the bodies back.
However, Gao Yang began to wonder whether the enemy would still try to retrieve the bodies after the continuous intensive shelling.
The wounded definitely needed rescuing, but once the wounded turned into bodies, there was no need to risk more lives in a hurry to take them away, since the wounded couldn’t be delayed while bodies could be retrieved when the fighting was less intense.
Contrary to Gao Yang’s expectations, the enemy was still making efforts to take the bodies away, seemingly at any cost.
When the armored vehicle retreated, and after about ten minutes, tanks appeared.
As soon as the enemy’s tanks entered the scene, Gao Yang immediately signaled his men to pull back into safer cover— their foxholes wouldn’t withstand a direct hit from tank fire.
The two sides engaged in a back-and-forth skirmish over a few bodies.
Although they were just bodies, the British seemed determined to retrieve them, while Gao Yang and his men aimed to use those bodies to inflict as many casualties on the enemy as possible.
Gao Yang greatly admired the courage of those British, but this was war, and eliminating the enemy using all available conditions and resources was the right thing to do.
Respect for the corpses?
Let’s talk about that after the battle is over; releasing the water is absolutely impossible.
Gao Yang had asked around, and there weren’t many shells left.
The mortars and rockets were down to half their normal count.
They didn’t have enough for another prolonged, intense artillery battle.
However, Gao Yang decided that even if there wasn’t a single shell left, they had to stop the British from scavenging the bodies, and the consequences of doing so wouldn’t be too severe since more shells would soon be delivered.
Although the enemy deployed tanks, these tanks couldn’t carry away the bodies and mostly served as cover.
However, the weapons Gao Yang and his team now used in their sniping tactics weren’t rifles.
Tanks could block direct shots, but not the arcing fire of artillery shells.
The mortars and rocket launcher indeed couldn’t damage the Chieftain tank’s armor, but they could stop people from collecting the bodies.
After the tanks came on the scene, there were no personnel visible.
So, it was eerily quiet on Gao Yang’s side.
Then, two armored vehicles entered, stopping behind the tanks.
At that moment, the artillery finally fired.
Among the booming sounds of artillery, the enemy’s tanks didn’t move, doing their best to provide cover for the armored vehicles behind them.
Gao Yang couldn’t see what was happening and didn’t know if the enemy had managed to take the bodies away, but he knew that if the enemy wanted to manually carry away the bodies, they would have to leave the armored vehicles, and doing so would come at a significant cost.
Although unable to confirm if the enemy had taken the bodies, Gao Yang could see through the smokescreen that one of the enemy’s tanks was fitted with a rocket-resistant grille while the other wasn’t.
It seemed the enemy was in the process of installing grilles on their tanks but hadn’t completed the task yet.
The enemy’s body-collecting efforts were still not completed.
However, Gao Yang knew that their shells were running out and the density of the fire had decreased.
Zhou Zhou planned to prolong the artillery fire as long as possible, so they had to sacrifice the density of fire.
Gao Yang checked his watch; it was almost noon.
He estimated that within an hour or so, more shells would be delivered, and reinforcements would also arrive.
At that moment, a tank suddenly started up and then rushed toward their direction.
Following that, a second tank also started up, leaving its position and heading in their direction as well.
The enemy was truly enraged now, driven by the artillery fire that Gao Yang and his team had launched, so the tanks hesitated no further and rushed toward their direction.
The enemy’s sudden tank assault wasn’t too surprising to Gao Yang; they had already prepared contingencies for dealing with the tanks.
Lacking anti-tank weapons, their only option was to evade.
Seeing the direction of the tank’s assault, Gao Yang immediately screamed into the radio, “Retreat, watch the direction of the tanks, move to the side, Instruction Platoon!
Prepare the rocket launchers to hit the tanks’ tracks!”
The RPG-7s couldn’t penetrate the armor of a Chieftain tank, and with the addition of an anti-rocket grille, penetration was even more unlikely.
However, targeting the tracks might still be feasible.
The Skull Gang’s RPGs prepared two kinds of rockets: a tandem armor-piercing shell designed to hit armored targets or bunker-type fire positions, and an explosive bomb for hitting infantry.
At that time, almost all the RPGs were loaded with armor-piercing shells.
Gao Yang and his team all moved toward the Instruction Platoon’s position.
There were at least twenty RPGs there, and Gao Yang didn’t believe that with so many rocket launchers, they still couldn’t damage the tracks of a tank.
(To be continued.
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