Free Vampire's Day (Book 2): Zero Model by Yuri Hamaganov Page A

dramatically since yesterday. Where once there had been port warehouses, now there was a giant blackened area of approximately two and a half square kilometers. For a moment it was almost as though she could smell a burning odor coming from the twisted wreckage. Interestingly, that is the smell of the hundreds millions dollars turned into ashes in these warehouses, along with dozens tons of marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamines?
    Sarah took a while to sort out where familiar objects were, so great was the destruction. A separate hangar with an antenna had stood there, so it meant that the piles of scrap metal were all that remained of a small refinery. There were skeletons of burned cars in the parking lot, a seared and rickety water tower and a lot more that was unrecognizable.
    She couldn’t see people down there and it seemed strange - she thought she’d see the local poor, who would go through the wreckage in an attempt to find something of value. But through the whole conflagration site she couldn’t detect any movement, and Sarah turned Butterfly, directing it over the city center.
    “No way.”
    Before the departure she had been told that the city had descended into shooting battles, with the surviving bandits working out who would take place on the empty throne of the drug empire. But the officers were convinced that the battle would end by the morning, and now she sees tha t the war was still in full swing.
    What was going on down there didn’t seem like gang violence; instead it reminded her of footage of urban fighting in Iraq filmed by drones. A full-scale war, which involved the whole city. Neighborhoods and entire streets were burning, and she heard the clatter of machine guns and mortars bursting through the drone’s microphones.
    People had come out of their homes to fight to the death with their neighbors; she saw a shootout between neighborhoods and massive slaughter wall to wall. It wasn’t possible to understand who was fighting, with whom or for what. There was no sign of leadership or coherence of units; it was complete chaos and every man for himself. And the same chaos reigned on the civilian radio that Sarah was listening to non-stop, trying to understand something in the jumble of cries for help, threats and attempts to call someone.
    There was particularly strong fighting in the central part of the city, near the villas of the rich drug lords, surrounded by favela. Most of the villas had already been destroyed by fire, but one of them, surrounded on all sides by high concrete fences, still held, and Sarah saw there some signs of an organized defense. She spotted snipers and machine gunners on the flat roofs, and battalion mortars set up in the courtyard – the villa had been turned into a fortress, besieged on all sides. Faced with a decisive rebuff, the attackers had dispersed into destroyed buildings, firing on the villa with light weapons. There were a lot of attackers and their numbers continued to grow; she saw crowds drawn to the battlefield, people walking or riding on cars, trucks, bulldozers and heavy tractors.
    As the reinforcements arrived, the shooting in other parts of the burning city begin to down; apparently, one of the parties had started to win in the street skirmish, and was now ready for the final, decisive battle for the drug lord’s fortress.
    “Sergeant, continue monitoring the central quarter. We have other observers watching for people leaving the city!”
    The Colonel personally directed the actions of those who were flying. Sarah continued to cut circles over the besieged fortress, while meantime on the airfield the engineers completely recharged Bumblebee with missiles and bombs - the attack squadron prepared for takeoff.

32. Confirmed losses
     
    “When did Louis die?”
    “Earlier this morning, at 3:40am, to be exact. It was inevitable; the doctors couldn’t do anything. Perhaps it's for the best. Even if he managed to somehow survive, he would have