The blast was - as Zhenya had expected - massive. Even from his crouched position, he could sense the shrapnel which whistled overhead at breakneck speeds. He could feel the intense heat of the explosion irritating his skin for a split-second, but after that, there was nothing but an eerie silence punctuated by the shouts and yells of the wounded. In hindsight, the bomb run by the Su-25s had probably done little to add to the devastating wrought by the Smerch battery.

"Forget good effect, that was total destruction." Medved-One muttered, then cleared his voice. "Good work," He said into his mic, addressing the pilots and artillerymen sharing the frequency. "Lima captain wants another gun run on his mark. Su-25s, expend your rounds and head back to base. We will take over from there. Out."

There was no confirmation from the pilots, but the spine-chilling sound of their gatling cannons opening up on their target a few seconds later told Zhenya that they had indeed received the order. The planes flew low, their wings almost clipping the trees as they pulled up from their strafing run, but they had certainly maximized the effectiveness of their guns. Whatever that had survived the initial bombardment was almost certainly torn to shreds by the Su-25s.

"Medved to Lima, we will be taking a different route. No point for all of us going in one direction, eh?" Medved-One said, then with a nod of acknowledgement to Zhenya, skulked off into the forest. "We will go around the airfield. We have targets of our own to pursue and mark for destruction, but we will keep as close as we can. Let us know if you require assistance."

Zhenya followed the rest of his squad towards the airfield. Looking at the devastated landscape ahead, he wondered just where the Captain expected him to set up his machine gun. There was quite literally nothing left that could be use as cover - anything that was not vaporized by the bombardment was on fire, and those not on fire were close to collapsing under their own weight. Eventually, he found a suitable spot behind the wreck of a car, or what he assumed used to be a car. Deploying the bipod, Zhenya set up his weapon and get his eyes downrange.

The RPD, while old, was still a venerable weapon, as the dazed and confused TIAF survivors of the bombardment soon found out. His machine gun spat out round after round, each of them finding their intended target. Slow-moving, and none of them doing much to actively evade fire, the enemy soldiers were easy pickings. "Covering," Zhenya reported simply.