He crouched down and began to climb. When he reached the second floor, Ruthra found no one, only a trail of blood that led to another room.
The buildings were unfinished – concrete and brick – so it left a footprint, as if on sand. Ruthra peered sideways into the room. It was a dead end – no windows or doors; though Ruthra couldn't look through it completely – there might be someone around the corner. He didn't take any chances; there were few supplies left, but Ruthra fired his grenade launcher into the room where the blood trail went. There was an explosion. The noise soon died down, and moans were heard. Ruthra quietly began to make his way into the room. He squatted down near the entrance, prepared his assault rifle, turned on his thermal imager, extended his rifle arm into the room and waved it around. The thermal imager showed that someone was there. Ruthra realized that from the moans, but he needed to know where. The thermal imager showed the outline of a body lying on the floor around the corner.
Ruthra stood up, calmly checked his weapons, and prepared for the assault. He decided to check the rear and surroundings beforehand. To do so, he cautiously approached the window opening, keeping a close eye on the exit from the adjoining room. All was quiet outside. "Where could the fourth or the fourth be?" – Ruthra pondered. He looked out onto the landing, looked down to the first floor. There was no one there. So he crept to the window again, stuck out his rifle with the thermal imager on, pointed it in the direction of the cabin from which he was being fired upon. The thermal imager showed nothing.
Ruthra decided to tackle the gunman in the room, carefully approached the entrance, quickly extended his rifle arm inside the room, in the direction where the wounded man lay, and fired a burst. There was a distinctive sound of bullets hitting the body. Ruthra covered his face completely with his helmet mask, turned on his night vision and night scope, and, keeping his weapon cocked, rushed into the room.
On the right side of the wall, a man was lying on the floor. Ruthra shot him in the head for good measure. There was a muffled wheeze. There was silence again. Ruthra approached slowly, kicked the body with force. It turned on its side, and there was an unintelligible sound of something rolling. Ruthra looked carefully in the direction of the sound, it was hard to distinguish in the night vision. The next second he was pierced by a clue: it was a grenade! The dead man had slipped it under him, clutched it with his body, and waited, knowing he would not survive.
Ruthra jumped out of the room. There was an explosion as he flew through the doorway. Shrapnel struck him, one in the leg. He fell, hitting his head; he was slightly stunned and confused, trying to get over the pain and turn off the night vision. Rutra couldn't recover from the surprise, for the doppelganger had said they had no grenades! So it was a hoax. Then what else could have happened unexpectedly? Although, in principle, the doppelganger hadn't specifically talked about grenades.
His thoughts were racing through his head, and Ruthra turned off his night vision, unable to realize what was in front of him. After a moment, he realized that a fourth was running up the stairs, firing at him at the same time. Ruthra rolled over and fired a burst. She jumped aside, then down.
Ruthra didn't stop firing until he ran out of ammunition. Then, quickly reloading his clip, he tried to stand up. It wasn't easy. It had hit him. Now his arm was wounded as well, blood pouring from the wounds. In all the other places where the bullets had hit (head, feet, chest) there was unbearable pain. The defense was solid, but the pain was also terrible. The unprotected places on his body were all stitched with shrapnel. Ruthra fumbled around in his suit, looked in his gas mask bag for bandages, plasters, or tourniquets. There were no medications, but he did find ARX-160 under-barrel grenades. In his haste, Ruthra hadn't noticed them.
The fact that there were no medications was a big oversight on Rutra's part. He had neglected their importance. However, in the current situation, it didn't seem that important anymore. It was more important to concentrate and figure out where the attacker had gone.
The wounds weren't too serious for a fighter of his level, and he could shoot, especially in the heat of the moment, in the face of death, the adrenaline of the wounds no longer felt much. Ruthra stood up, leaning back against the wall. He couldn't walk (much less run), and his right arm was wounded. He jammed the rifle between his legs, loaded the underbarrel, set it to fire from his left hand, turned on the laser rangefinder and the ballistic computer for the grenade launcher. All the time he kept his eyes on the stairwell, waiting for an attack, which had not yet come. To be sure, he checked how much more ammunition he had, though he remembered exactly how much. There were three grenades for the grenade launcher, one of them in the barrel; ammunition magazines – one for the rifle and two for the Glock.
Fear, anger, and a terrible desire to survive pervaded Ruthra. As he realized the real threat, he began to realize that it was impossible to imagine it in everyday life, but here it could literally be felt! His family – his children, his wife, his mother – flashed before his eyes like a vision. His father had died early, and Ruthra did not want to share his fate. He had given his life saving the Soviet Union, which it still didn't save. Rutra wasn't going to die for a mythical idea, he didn't "sign up" for it; if someone suddenly wanted to put his life on the line, he was determined to find out and get revenge.
He was still thinking rationally, but the question remained, why the gas mask? Ruthra stood up, looked out of the window, but there was no one there, so he limped toward the stairs. There was no one on the stairs either. There was no point in waiting. Ruthra went to the landing, looked down, and, pressing himself against the wall, began to descend. Once down one flight, he readied his pistol and fired a grenade launcher into the floor of the landing in front of the exit. Without waiting for the noise to die down, he began to make his way to the exit. There he turned on the thermal imager and stuck out his rifle to analyze the situation. The thermal imager showed nothing. Ruthra looked out, looking around. He thought, "Logically, she could only be where she first fired from, where she had the best cover. But he still decided to check the place he had attacked from in the beginning.
Rutra adjusted the grenade launcher's laser rangefinder and ballistic computer to the house where he thought the enemy was hiding. When the computer made the calculation, he fired a shot so that the grenade would explode, hitting the inside wall of the house. At the same time, Ruthra waddled over to where the first two dead men lay. He crept along the wall of the building from which he had come, so that he could see all the objects at once, though Ruthra himself was also in view. Just as he reached the edge where he could see the dead, shots rang out from the house that had been hit by the grenade. Ruthra lay down instantly, rolling behind the wall where the dead lay. Without getting up, he stretched out his arm at random, orienting himself by the noise. Looking around, he noticed that the dead had no weapons. It was clear she'd taken them. So she had enough ammunition.
Ruthra loaded the last grenade, pressed himself against the outer wall of the hall so he could see a little of the terrorist's hiding place, made a ballistics calculation with the computer, and fired so that the grenade exploded after falling to the floor where the woman had fired from. There was a rumble and a squeal. "Got you, bitch!" – he rejoiced and pulled his leg up, fighting through the pain, and headed toward the house.
