Chapter 62: The Final Showdown
“Brothers, friendly forces are here to rescue us, hurry to the dock… to the dock!”
Just as Su Yaoyang was leading the third battalion in fierce combat with the Japanese army at Zhongshan Dock, the captives driven down to the riverbank by the Japanese army also began their self-rescue; under the command of several officers, they ran toward the dock.
“Da da da…”
But they had only run a few steps when the sound of the Type 92 heavy machine gun rang out, and more than ten war captives were instantly hit by bullets and fell on the riverbank, their blood dyeing the river water red.
In a firepower point, two Japanese machine gunners were using a Type 92 heavy machine gun to sweep the riverbank, the machine gunner cursing while pulling the trigger.
“Baka… all die die…”
“Boom…”
At that moment, a 75mm high-explosive shell exploded near the firepower point. Although it did not directly hit the machine gun position, the violent shockwave still sent the machine gun and the two machine gunners flying into the air.
Snowflakes were still falling from the sky. Although the temperature had plummeted, the river water had not completely frozen over at minus ten degrees; thousands of war captives roared as they stepped on broken ice and charged toward the dock, blood foam surging into a red tide among the floating ice.
A captain tore off the ropes binding him and roared in Suzhou dialect: “Brothers, charge! Those who cross the river live!”
When the tracks of the Xiafei tank crushed a discarded Japanese army lunchbox on the dock, John saw a strange sight through the tank commander’s periscope.
Thousands of ragged war captives were desperately running from the riverbank toward the dock, while the garrisoned Japanese army was using machine guns to sweep toward the riverbank.
Five or six machine guns almost completely sealed off the river surface; countless war captives fell by the riverbank just like that, but the war captives behind still stepped over their comrades’ bodies and desperately ran toward the dock.
“God!”
John let out a pained exclamation; he swore this was the most tragic run he had ever seen in his life.
He kicked hard at the buttocks of the co-driver Zhuang Xiaoman sitting next to Bridge Class 2: “Fuck… you bastard, what are you still stunned for, hurry up and fire… fire… take out all those Japanese monkeys for me!
And you all, are you waiting for me to invite you to drink before opening fire?”
John’s voice echoed in the tank, even overpowering the roar of the engine.
“High-explosive ready!” The loader pushed a 75mm shell into the breech, closed the breech block, and shouted loudly.
“Three o’clock direction, two hundred sixty meters… Japanese machine gun firepower point, fire!”
Accompanying John’s voice, the gunner stomped hard on the firing pedal.
“Boom…”
The shell rushed out of the breech at 550 meters per second and hit a spot less than ten meters from the firepower point; the violent explosion and flames instantly engulfed that firepower point.
Qiao Erdan yanked the control lever hard, and the tank’s left track suddenly lifted into the air—they charged up a row of bluestone steps. The hard bluestone scraped against the tracks, producing a roar like a church organ; to their right, more than ten Japanese soldiers were roaring as they ran toward them holding explosive packs.
When the turret rotated to 47 degrees, the M1919A4 air-cooled machine gun serving as the coaxial machine gun suddenly spat out tongues of fire, and the barrel began turning dark red in the minus twenty degrees.
More than ten Japanese soldiers were hit by a long string of machine gun bullets before they could scatter.
At such a close distance, these Japanese soldiers instantly turned into a mass of severed limbs and arms, leaving only a large pool of blood, but in the low temperature, this blood froze into a large coral-like crystal after flowing on the ground for a short time.
And the sharp-eyed Zhuang Xiaoman suddenly pointed at the thing smoking ahead and roared: “Explosive pack… explosive pack is about to explode!”
“Reverse quickly… reverse…”
Upon hearing the word “explosive pack,” John was almost scared out of his wits and slapped Qiao Erdan on the head, shouting loudly.
Qiao Erdan almost instinctively shifted into reverse and yanked the control lever desperately.
“Creak creak…”
The Xiafei tank’s snow tracks gouged fan-shaped cracks in the ice surface, crashing butt-first into a pile of ruins.
“Boom boom…”
Two twenty-pound explosive packs exploded almost simultaneously; due to the too-close distance, the violent explosion and shockwave nearly flipped the 18.5-ton Xiafei tank.
While the Japanese army’s attention was drawn to John’s Xiafei tank, Su Yaoyang also led the third battalion across the barbed wire broken by the tank and charged into the dock.
The sky was dyed gray by thick gunpowder smoke, and the air was filled with the pungent smell of gunpowder.
At the edge of the dock, sea waves gently lapped the shore, as if silently recounting the tragedy of this conflict. The ground was littered with corpses strewn in all directions.
In the darkness, the firelight from the Japanese machine gun positions flickered endlessly, appearing particularly glaring amid the swirling gunpowder smoke.
“Hurry, blast those firepower points for me!” Seeing several soldiers shot down by machine guns and lying in pools of blood, Su Yaoyang pointed at the machine gun spitting tongues of fire and roared.
“Quick… set up the gun here.”
Xiong Junfeng directed the soldiers to set up an infantry gun on a step, stuck out his thumb to gauge the distance, then shouted loudly: “Distance three hundred sixty meters, six o’clock direction… fire!”
More than ten seconds later, a high-explosive shell was loaded into the breech.
“Boom…”
The flying shell exploded dozens of meters away from the firepower point.
“Idiot!”
Xiong Junfeng turned his head and cursed at the gunner, “Did you forget what I told you? In this weather, the low temperature of over ten degrees below zero will reduce the propellant burn rate by at least 19%; you must factor in the firing delay too!”
“Understood… increase the propellant, Charge One!”
The gunner gritted his teeth and added another propellant charge to the base of the mortar.
“Fire!”
“Thud…”
Another high-explosive shell broke free of gravity’s pull, arcing through the sky and smashing onto a firepower point.
“Boom…”
The recoil from the shell leaving the barrel sank the gun mount several centimeters into the frozen soil.
As the projectile spun and tore through the snow curtain, Xiong Junfeng saw the ice crystals along its trajectory burned into rainbow-colored mist.
What rose from the explosion point was not black smoke, but thousands of glass-like ice shards…
The bulletproof steel plate on top of the Japanese machine gun firepower point had become extremely brittle in the low temperature and was shattered by the shockwave into a deadly storm of shrapnel.
Three Japanese machine gunners instantly turned into sieves of blood; the farthest corpse even flew into the river surface.
“Well done!” Su Yaoyang, hiding behind a sandbag, felt particularly exhilarated seeing thick smoke rising continuously from the opposite Japanese position.
“Order the artillery company to blast out the little devils’ balls for me!”
“Boom boom…”
When another shell accurately hit a Japanese mortar position, the melted steel mixed with the frozen soil into magma-like substance; three or four ammunition boxes flew twenty meters high in a chain of detonations.
Under the desperate charge of the third battalion soldiers and the back-and-forth ramming by the Xiafei tank driven by John and his crew, the Japanese army on the dock was killed and scattered in retreat, and the war captives on the riverbank finally rushed onto the dock.
