After emptying this magazine, I loaded a new high-explosive grenade into the M203: "Retreat! Ji Ling, take the lead!"
After shouting, I pulled the trigger. The grenade hit a man who had just started to charge. Flesh, blood, and shrapnel flew in all directions. This scene shocked his companions to a great extent. They all howled and opened fire at me. Bullets hit the fuselage with a clanging sound, sending out sparks.
Ji Ling and Ji Han threw smoke grenades towards the way they came. A vast expanse of white smoke spread out behind the helicopter. After creating the cover smoke, Ji Ling stopped in place first. After the other side finished their probing shots, he was the first to rush out. His figure quickly disappeared into the smoke.
Half a minute later, Ji Ling opened his earpiece: "Follow me!"
I fired a second grenade. Ji Han, Luo Bing, and the rest of the people started to move forward along the path that Ji Ling had taken earlier. The three injured people made their progress slow. After a few bursts of fire, Liang Dong's light machine gun fell silent completely – it had run out of all the bullets of its user. He then picked up the GAU rifle equipped on the helicopter. I took out two magazines from my ammo pouch and handed them to him, saying, "Use it sparingly!"
"Don't worry!" Liang Dong shrugged and showed me his FN57. The continuous shooting made his speech a bit slurred: "I can still take out twenty of them with one shot each."
"Too bad they're not kids – Watch out!"
Liang Dong fired again, and an armed man who had just shown his head fell to the ground. Seeing that the other side had the intention to charge again, I quickly fired grenades continuously until I ran out of them. After being fired back at with a few bullets, the battlefield fell into an eerie silence.
"Hey, hey," Lu Wanqing called me. "Son, are you still alive? If you're dead, just say something. If you're alive, hurry up and get out of there. I can't see a thing here."
"I'm still alive and kicking, just with some minor injuries." I replied, gasping for breath. "Have you seen Ji Han and the others?"
"No." Suddenly, gunshots came from Lu Wanqing's side: "Damn it! You bastard, shoot your grandpa –"
"I can see Ji Ling here." Jiang Li spoke up after Lu Wanqing had some fierce exchange of fire with someone. "Valentina (name) (I assume this is a name, but I'll keep it as is since it might be a specific term in your context) is coming to meet you. What's the situation on your side?"
"Damn it – Comrade Jiang," Liang Dong fired two shots. "Whether you'll see me and Old Gu wearing white or yellow tonight depends on whether we can be like Rambo now."
"Assassin would be more appropriate." I interrupted. "Rambo wouldn't run out of bullets."
"So serious? No..."
"Hit the deck!" I shouted and crouched down with my head covered. After there was no grenade for fire suppression, the anti-government forces once again took out their RGD-5s. I've always hated having a direct firefight with them. They don't have bulletproof vests, planes, or tanks, but each of these armed men has several RGD-5 grenades, which cost only $5 each but can easily penetrate the "Raider" bulletproof vests.
"Damn it!" Liang Dong changed to the next magazine and fired wildly. He emptied the magazine in just two or three seconds, and the gun barrel turned red. He had run out of bullets. But even if there were bullets in this situation, we might be in even more danger – an overheated gun barrel could cause the bullets to fire spontaneously or even cause the gun to explode.
He switched to his self-defense pistol. I emptied the last half of my magazine at a sneaky guy hiding behind a tree and shooting at us. The smoke gradually dissipated. Seeing that only two people were defending the helicopter, the anti-government forces rushed up like they were on drugs. They were determined to take this place.
Similarly, the dissipated smoke gave 029 enough shooting vision. Intense gunfire came from behind. Many people were shot dead halfway. I directly dropped a magazine of my M1911 on the ground and started the next round of rapid pistol shooting. In other words, Liang Dong and I were just shooting randomly. The purpose was to make the armed men afraid to charge and to boost our courage.
One person managed to stagger in front of me after being hit by two.45 ACP bullets from me. The third bullet went through her head. Liang Dong and I were in a dilemma. Now we were about fifty meters away from 029. We either had to choose to throw smoke grenades and run away, or hold our ground here until the people coming to support us arrived and then figure out a way to get us out of here. For the former, I believed that even in the smoke, without the cover of friendly fire, we couldn't outrun the native Aklians; for the latter, as long as our friendly forces were a bit careless and let an RPG fly over, we'd both be doomed.
I replaced the last pistol magazine but didn't continue firing. The other side had obviously noticed that we were out of ammunition. The direct attacks on the helicopter had significantly decreased. If I guessed right, their intention was to capture us alive.
I carefully poked my head out and pulled the corpse closer. Liang Dong also gave up shooting and grabbed the legs of the corpse. The wide-open eyes of the female corpse stared at me fixedly, which was really creepy. The bullets fired at us hit the riddled fuselage, making a clear metallic collision sound. I yanked the AK rifle from the dead body along with three and a half magazines. Liang Dong took four grenades and threw one to me.
"What for?"
"For a heroic death." Liang Dong casually pulled the pin of the first grenade and held it in his palm. "I don't want my corpse to be paraded around on the streets."
"Even if there's only half of you left, it makes no damn difference to them." I adjusted the gun's mode to semi-automatic. There was no inscription on the AK, and I didn't know which small workshop it came from.
"By the way..." Liang Dong suddenly threw the grenade. "If I die, please help me deliver my will to my sister in person."
"You have a sister?" I was quite surprised and started aiming. "I've never heard you mention it. No – Aren't you an only child?"
"She's not my biological sister."
After firing a few shots, I realized how ridiculous this thing was. The original owner hadn't calibrated the gun, and the manufacturer hadn't given it a sight. The wooden stock was showing signs of cracking. I had no idea where the aim was off to. If it weren't on the battlefield, I really wanted to open it up to see if there were riflings inside. To some extent, it was no different from a useless thing. The only advantage was that it could still fire. So I simply gave up aiming and started shooting by feel.
The magazine was quickly emptied. I ducked back and replaced it with a new one. When I turned around, I found that the enemies were actually retreating. "What's going on?"
No one answered me. These Aklians had come on like a raging tide, but when they retreated, it was so quiet. No one was attacking us. Most of the enemies had disappeared. Only the corpses, bullet casings, and gunpowder smoke all over the ground told us that this wasn't a dream.
...
Class 7 and Class 13 took over the entire battlefield five minutes later. The fleeing enemies got into pickups and quickly disappeared into the surrounding mountains and forests. Even satellites couldn't track them. In this hastily ended battle, the anti-government forces left about fifty corpses behind.
I vaguely felt something strange but didn't know exactly what was so odd. I turned around and saw Jiang Li staring blankly at the logistics troops busy around the wreckage of the helicopter.
"What's wrong?" I asked her.
Jiang Li was still looking at the damaged Black Hawk: "I think... this is just the beginning."