The weapons were experimental—some untested in real combat—but Kontrachenko had no room for hesitation. Barbed wire that unrolled effortlessly across the frozen ground replaced the time-intensive installations of the past.
He would turn the battlefield into a nightmare, a maze of death that even the enemy's massive numbers couldn't overcome.
"Let them come," he muttered, his breath a plume of frost in the winter air. "I'll show them what it means to fight the Demon of the Battlefield."
"If we lay shrapnel mines beneath that barbed wire, they won't stand a chance," Kontrachenko mused. These weren't ordinary mines—where traditional explosives killed only those who stepped on them, these new weapons annihilated everything within a 25-meter radius.
"Commander, all mines are in place!" an officer reported.
"And the machine guns?" Kontrachenko asked.
"Arranged in three lines, sir. But what if they flank us? The minefield and barbed wire would be rendered useless."
