“Affirmative. Security team moving out.”
The vehicles speed up, driving around the hill the Colonel has chosen for his command post so as to stay out of the sight of the enemy, and quickly move towards the road leading to the south.
“Driscoll is closing the kill zone,” the Sergeant Major tells Tarasov with a grin. “No rag-head will get out of here alive, not even if they’re disguised as Minnie the Mouse!”
Two small, light trucks arrive on the hill.
What are they doing here? Tarasov asks himself. No armor, no nothing…unless that thing under the cover is some piece of artillery.
“Looks bad for the scavengers,” the Sergeant Major tells him, pointing towards the besieged Stalker base. “They’re in deep shit. A real clusterfuck.”
Tarasov raises his binoculars. The container wall around the Antonov is shattered, while here and there tracer bullets still fizz towards the waves of enemies who swarm around the Stalker base like a sea of ants.
“Major,” he hears the Colonel calling, “you will not take part in this battle. You will only have the pleasure of watching it. But before it begins, I give you a mission.”
Tarasov turns to him with a bad feeling festering in his guts.
“You were right, Major, we have no friends here. But I don’t think that Stalkers and the Tribe will ever be friends. I ordered my men into this battle because I want you to be in my debt.”
This doesn’t sound good, the major thinks.
“I want you to be in my debt because I will task you to do something that is almost impossible,” the Colonel says. “I give you the task of staying alive until you have done what you came here for. Afterwards, I want you to find my son and give him what you have found in that village. Tell him what you have seen here — everything. Are you willing to do this for me, in exchange for the miserable lives of a few scavengers?”
“What if I die, no matter how hard I try to stay alive?”
Another huge explosion rocks the Stalkers’ defenses.
“Would you dare to disappoint me?” A grim smile appears on the Colonel’s face. “You better make up your mind now, because your friends seem to have only minutes left to live.”
“Yes, I will do that for you. If I can stay alive.”
“Consider that a direct order from me. Take this damned pen drive and guard it with your life. I have saved everything on it that you’ll need to know to find my son. When you find him, you will understand what I said about heroin, and why we littered the poppy fields with corpses. And now… now you will see me unleashing the greatest warriors the earth has ever seen.”
“Assault team has reached Phase Line Akron. Sierra Bravo,” Tarasov hears a voice crackling in the radio.
“Security team is in position,” comes another report.
The Colonel looks up to the endless grey sky and takes a deep breath. His trembling nostrils tell of excitement barely withheld. “I love battles at dawn… let the sky crumble. Top — send the assault team in!”
“Assault team, proceed through Phase Line Boston to Phase Line Charleston,” the Sergeant Major commands through his radio. “When you reach Charleston, wait for the big man’s command before you strike.”
“Assault team. Affirmative.”
Tarasov raises his binoculars to his eyes. The column starts moving, turning eastwards on a narrow road through the forest.
The vehicles keep precisely the same distance from each other, as if they were railway carriages pulled by the same locomotive, even upon reaching the plain where they accelerate and swirl up a huge plume of dust and sand.
“Assault team crossing Phase Line Boston.”
So far, all the call signs, orders and destination codes sounded to Tarasov like a normal military operation, but now the Colonel barks an unexpected command.
“Top! Sound the bell.”
“Oorah, sir!” The Sergeant Major waves his hand to the light trucks. Their crews remove the canvas from the tops but, to Tarasov’s surprise, it is not a weapon that they are carrying but a massive set of loudspeakers.
Suddenly, Tarasov hears the toll of a huge bell, its sound so deep and menacing as if it heralds the Apocalypse itself, and so loud that it feels as if it is crushing his eardrums. The dreadful toll rolls through the plains and echoes back from the hills far away.
“Our way of letting them know that doom is coming,” the Sergeant Major shouts over with a wide smile, putting his helmet on.
“Assault team has reached Phase Line Charleston,” comes through the radio.
“Assume assault formation, Ramirez,” the Colonel commands. “Fire support team, the kill zone is yours.”
“Fire for effect! Give’m hell!”
On the Sergeant Major’s orders, the mortars fire a salvo and the heavy machine guns on the Humvees start barking.
The column has reached the plain and deploys into a semi-circle, outflanking the enemy like a gigantic snake raising its head to strike its prey. The Humvees slow down for a minute and turn towards the enemy who are already being hammered by the Tribe’s mortars and heavy machine guns.
“Assault team in position.”
“Assault team — go!” the Colonel commands. “Fire support, shift your fire!”
The sound of guitars now screams from the loudspeakers at skull-crushing volume, playing a symphony of pure rage. A desire for destruction overwhelms him and Tarasov feels the urge to run down from the hill with all guns blazing, unleashing a scream to join the singer’s brutal cry. He feels like a puppet moved by the toll of the bell, blending with the merciless rhythm coming from the loudspeakers.
A glance from the Colonel stops him dead. In the gray glow of dawn, the massive roar of battle blends with the music rolling over the plain below.
Tarasov believed that the Tribe had earned its notoriety by pure cruelty. But what he sees now unfolding is the most impressive deployment of mobile firepower he has ever witnessed.
The line of vehicles accelerates, the mounted machine guns and grenade launchers spitting bullets and explosives into the enemy ranks. They don’t slow down as they smash into the dushmans, throwing bodies and shattered limbs into the sky. Now the warriors jump off and charge forward while the machine guns on the vehicles cover the area ahead of them with a deadly rain of fire. Tarasov sees a warrior blasting the heads of two enemies with his machine gun while devil pups charge forward, their fixed bayonets red from the glowing alloy and blood.
A Humvee gets separated from the line and is soon surrounded by the enemy, only to unleash a massive streak of fire from a mounted flamethrower and clear a circle filled with burning corpses around it. He sees a devil pup dying, then another one who had tried to protect his fallen comrade. For a moment the line falters, but a few senior warriors fill their loosened ranks and mow the enemy down with rifle fire. The Tribe’s iron gauntlet closes around the enemy, mercilessly and irresistibly pushing them forward to the container wall, where the defenders’ bullets rain down into their massed ranks.
Tarasov swings the binoculars towards the Stalkers who are fighting a pitched battle against the dushmans, several of whom are climbing up the wall. A Stalker in a heavy suit kicks one in the head, only to be shot in the back by a dark-clad figure crawling up the wall. Two rounds from a defender’s shotgun blow the dushman’s head off. Tarasov sees the enemy starting to falter, but at the gate, blasted and half ruined by RPG hits and hand grenades, a group of heavily armored Chinese commandos hold their ground among the terrified, routing dushmans and pushes on towards the gate.