Chapter 4: The Exercise (Part Four)
“Calling Red Dragon Two, how are our lower-tier horses preparing?”
“No problem, we’re all set on our side!”
“What about the Blue Team’s lower-tier horses?”
“They’re at our 036 direction, advancing side by side with you!”
Less than ten kilometers ahead of Red Dragon One, the other three tanks of the Red Dragon squad had already taken up ambush positions. Thanks to ample preparation time, they even laid out camouflage nets outside the ambush zone. These nets greatly reduced their infrared signatures and, from a distance, made them indistinguishable from the surrounding bushes. Achieving this had taken considerable effort from the entire Red Dragon team.
“Captain, I see you!”
“Then what’s behind me is up to you all!”
Red Dragon One swiftly passed through the ambush zone and immediately changed course toward 036 degrees. This was his strategy—his version of the Tian Ji horse racing tactic. Taking on eight charging enemies alone was taxing; therefore, the frontal enemies were handed off to his teammates. Three against eight, with cover, was a fight they could hold for the time being.
As for Makarius, the superior horse, he took the initiative to strike, launching an active assault against the isolated enemy flanking squad. One against four was far easier than one against eight!
“Type 61, at twelve o’clock, distance 4,800 meters!”
“Destroyed! Next target!”
The Lightning Squad, executing the flank, hadn’t expected the enemy to strike first—especially not that prodigy who seemed almost supernaturally gifted.
The squad leader’s vehicle, still moving in marching formation, was the first to be destroyed. There was no time to react; the laser warning barely sounded for two seconds before the shell struck.
“Captain?”
“Captain? What should we do?”
Listening to the uneasy calls over the comms, the Lightning Squad leader pressed his transmitter with a helpless sigh.
“If I’m dead, you figure it out yourselves!”
Immediately, he regretted his words. He never imagined that the three vehicle commanders under him were all reckless daredevils!
“Let’s avenge the captain, brothers! Charge!”
Upon hearing their leader’s resigned reply, the three commanders were fired up, launching a reckless charge without hesitation.
“These fools!”
The captain rubbed his forehead and let out a deep sigh. On the electronic map, the arrows representing his three comrades disappeared one by one.
“Sorry, Captain, we’re all dead!”
Soon, apologies came through the channel from the fallen crew.
---
“It’s okay. Victory and defeat are part of war. Next time, if we team up with Red Dragon, we’ll win it back!”
What else could the captain say? He couldn’t just let these reckless fools retreat to camp. So he offered words of comfort.
“As expected of the captain!”
His men all praised his extraordinary wisdom.
But on the other side, the blond handsome man was far from pleased.
“The Lightning Squad’s finished! It’s just us now!”
“No worries. If we take out the rest of the Red Dragon team, that’s victory too!”
The Red Dragon team’s ambush could be called a success. They lost two tanks but took out three from the Blue side. Now, the power ratio was five to two. Only one Red Dragon Three remained, wildly zigzagging under heavy fire, desperately fleeing.
“Take him down! Take him down!”
The Blue Team’s comms were chaotic. Five tanks lined up, trying to finish off the fleeing target as quickly as possible. Yet they couldn’t match Makarius’s pinpoint artillery accuracy at over four kilometers on a tank hurtling at 60 kilometers per hour. The marking shells were either too far or off-target.
“Faster! Fire now! Red Dragon One could be here any second!”
Under the Blue commander’s urgent orders, the tank he was in finally made progress. A marking shell exploded beside the enemy tank, splattering blue paint onto Red Dragon Three’s tracks.
If this were real combat, Red Dragon Three’s tracks might have been damaged, forcing a halt. But since this was an exercise, the sensors detected no malfunction, so Red Dragon Three showed no sign of stopping. Still, this gave the blond man a boost of confidence.
“One more hit… just one more!”
His eyes locked on the screen until the buzzer sounded. Then he pressed the fire button.
The shell left the barrel, tracing a slow arc through the air before landing on Red Dragon Three’s turret.
“Got it!”
“Boom!”
The smile on the blond man’s face hadn’t faded when the screen suddenly dimmed, replaced by a large “Destroyed” warning.
“That guy…”
He instinctively hit the transmitter but immediately remembered he was “dead.” With a helpless sigh, he spoke to the driver over the internal channel.
“We’re screwed. We lost the bet. Time to pay up!”
“No! I was going to take my girlfriend to Von Braun’s for vacation! I already paid the deposit on the engagement ring!”
The driver slammed his head in despair. Though their stipend as third-year armored cadets wasn’t comparable to active-duty soldiers, it still amounted to two thousand Hait per month, plus extra allowances for field training and exercises. Half a year’s savings was a tidy sum—enough for a spaceship ticket, which usually cost around five hundred Hait.
---
After the commander was destroyed, the remaining four Blue Type 61 tanks quickly reacted, attempting to intercept Red Dragon One as it came from their nine o’clock direction. But the latter unleashed another volley of precise fire from four kilometers away, knocking out another tank and demonstrating to the survivors how this prodigy fought.
“He’s too fast! I can’t lock on!”
“Switch to manual!”
“No! He’s firing again! Dodge!”
“John’s destroyed! Only two of us left!”
“Scatter! Scatter!”
The two Type 61 drivers wished they could just get out and carry their tanks on their backs. They tried desperately to evade through maneuvering, but the Red tank, marked by a fiery red dragon painted on its turret, kept tracking them steadily.
When the Type 61 on the right dashed into a depression after several seconds and thought it was safe to counterattack, the commander noticed Red Dragon One was nearby, maneuvering while keeping him firmly in sight. Just as the tank peeked over the slope, a marking shell slammed past, scraping the turret and leaving a long blue streak.
“Destroyed!”
“Good, Yudin, that’s it. After five seconds left, fake right, then turn to twelve o’clock!”
Following Makarius’s instructions, Yudin steered the tank with uncanny maneuvers, evading the last Blue tank’s attacks while steadily closing the distance.
“Damn it, why won’t it hit!”
Repeatedly missing near-certain shots put tremendous pressure on the Blue commander. He tried to steady his breath, telling himself that the closer the distance, the harder it would be for the enemy to dodge those strange moves. Still, the beads of sweat revealed his lack of confidence.
As Red Dragon One entered two-thousand-meter range, convinced this shot would land, he pressed fire when the buzzer sounded. Unexpectedly, a large crater suddenly appeared ahead of Red Dragon One. The enemy tank leapt right into the pit, dodging the attack.
“You planned for this too?”
Gritting his teeth, the commander ordered the driver forward. Unable to spot Red Dragon in the depression, he advanced a full thousand meters without seeing a trace.
“Did he move? Left or right?”
Turning the view repeatedly to scan the depression’s sides, he suddenly heard the driver shout.
“He’s right in front of us. He didn’t move!”
“What?”
The commander quickly swung the camera forward and saw a Type 61A2 tank aiming its twin cannons directly at them.
“Boom!”