Direction of the northern mining area.
In Lumar's command vehicle, the air was as stagnant as a block of lead.
The communications officer futilely turned the knobs, sweat rolling down his temples, t only by screeching static or utter silence.
The ssengers sent to contact allied forces had vanished like stones dropped into the sea.
"General..."
The adjutant's voice was parched and hoarse, tinged with apocalyptic despair, "We... are completely isolated. The capital... is likely already fallen..."
Lumar's eyes were bloodshot, like a wounded lion cornered with no escape.
The imnse frustration and the anger of being toyed with burned through his reason.
"Who?! Who is controlling all this tonight?!"
He couldn't comprehend how, in just a few hours, the supre commander of the Defense Army, wielding tens of thousands of elite troops and holding sway over the governnt, had beco an "outlaw" abandoned by his country, betrayed by allies, and isolated without support?!
The capital had fallen, communications severed, other units watched with indifference...
He felt as if he were trapped in a ticulously woven, suffocating nightmare.
"Orders!"
Lumar's voice, distorted and hoarse from extre anger, commanded, "All units! Turn imdiately! Full speed! At all costs! Target—Butare!"
Though he knew full well that by the ti his exhausted troops marched across the hundreds of kiloters of desert and arrived, what awaited them would only be the already entrenched new regi and cold gun barrels.
And it would still take at least two days, after all, they were over four hundred kiloters from the capital, and these six brigades were armored brigades, with their track-march capacity maxed out at two hundred kiloters a day—this was the limit for this force.
But this was his last, desperate dignity as a soldier.
National Broadcasting Radio Building in the capital Butare.
Under the ghastly lighting provided by backup power, the equipnt had been fully tested, and the red "ON AIR" indicator light was coldly lit.
The Hunter captain unceremoniously pushed an icy microphone into the clammy, trembling hands of the national television's chief female anchor.
A printed statent lay on the smooth control panel before her.
"Read. Word for word."
The Hunter's voice, filtered through a gas mask, carried the friction-like sound of tal.
The female anchor's face was as pale as a sheet, her finely painted lips quivering violently.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and when she reopened them, she suppressed the near-explosive fear in her throat.
She strove to make her voice sound steady, even with a hint of "righteous" passion, as it spread instantaneously across every corner of Sena Republic through radio frequencies not yet fully suppressed and television signals partially restored:
"Citizens of Sena Republic! This is the Butare National Broadcasting Television Station. We now broadcast an urgent national statent!"
"In the na of the nation and its people, we solemnly declare: Forr President Du Er and his corrupt clique have betrayed the country, colluded with foreign enemies, embezzled the people's wealth, and exercised tyranny. Their rule has lost all legitimacy and is despised by the people!"
"Under the inspiration of the people's will and the support of the army's just force, a great transformation to cleanse the filth and restore national sovereignty and dignity has arrived!"
"Du Er's tyranny has been overthrown! Order in the capital Butare is rapidly being restored!"
"In this mont of national crisis, the "Sena Republic's Temporary Salvation Committee," ford by the Isis family, patriotic generals, and sages from all sectors, is now officially established! The committee will temporarily exercise national power to ensure social stability and quickly prepare for free and fair national elections!"
"We urge all ard forces to exercise maximum restraint and imdiately obey the orders of the Salvation Committee! All governnt officials are to stay at their posts and keep the national machinery running! Citizens, please remain calm, stay ho, and trust that the Salvation Committee will lead Sena towards peace, independence, and prosperity!"
"A new dawn has arrived! God bless Sena!"
This voice announcing the birth of a new order, like an invisible shockwave, swept through the darkened city and reached distant London...
MI6 Headquarters in London.
The reflection of the Thas River flowed serenely and elegantly on the floor-to-ceiling windows of Lady M's office.
She was signing her fluent na on a Middle East risk assessnt report using a Montblanc pen.
"Bang!"
The office door was slamd open.
The chief African affairs officer's face was white as a sheet, even forgetting basic manners, his voice distorted by utmost terror: "Madam! Sena! A military coup has occurred in Sena! Butare has fallen! Du Er is trapped in the President's Mansion! The national broadcast announced the establishnt of a 'Salvation Committee'!"
Lady M's Montblanc pen dropped with a "clatter" onto the expensive Isfahan handmade carpet, deep blue ink quickly staining the intricate patterns with an ugly smudge.
She jerked her head up, her eyes flashing with an unprecedented, near-breach of composure: "A coup?! Who?! What about Weber?!"
"Weber... and all our stations in Butare... have lost contact! The last signal was three minutes before the power outage, reporting 'All quiet'! The coup forces claim to be the Salvation Committee, backed by mbers with roots in the Isis family and parts of the military; the combination of civilian and military figures is complete, and the speed, professionalism, and destructive power of the entire operation... far exceed the ability limits of native Sena!" The analyst's speech was rapid as bullets.
Lady M stood up suddenly, striding over to the massive world map, her slender yet forceful finger stabbing at that point in central Africa—Sena Republic.
In her mind, countless bits of fragnted information raced and collided like high-speed trains—that strange vanishing white light spot on the Gelbi Mountain satellite image...
The abnormal "empty city" strategy in the northern mining area of Sena...
The greatest beneficiary of the stalled southward march of the Kurd Ard...
The recent abnormal flow of funds and materials by the Isis family...
As well as this alarmingly precise, swift to the point of being chilling, lightning coup tactic!
All the clues were instantly linked by a cold, invisible logical line, all pointing to the sa person.
A na she thought had long been physically erased by an Arican thermo-baric bomb, now resurfaced with hellish chill, clear and taunting before her!
"Song... He... Ping..."
Lady M's voice was as low as if it ca from the bottom of a frozen lake, each syllable laden with shock, the anger of being fooled, and a hint of...
The gravity of eting a worthy opponent.
"He... isn't dead. He orchestrated all of this."
She finally realized the truth—why had this coup so perfectly evaded MI6's detection?
How could it so efficiently paralyze a nation's central nervous system?
Because the puppet master behind the scenes was a "colleague" equally well-versed in intelligence gas, adept in special operations and strategic deception, and intimately familiar with the weaknesses of Western intelligence agencies!
She turned sharply, icy flas burning in her eyes: "Activate ergency response protocols, take the highest level of action! Utilize all resources—satellites, listening stations, sleeper agents, hacker assets—I want the core list of the Sena Salvation Committee within 24 hours! Especially the exact location of that mastermind! And..."
Her voice was like a poisoned ice blade, "Imdiately contact the Aricans, share intelligence with them, especially the summary of their operation at the Gelbi Mountains, see if we can confirm if Song Heping is truly dead! If not, tell the Aricans we're willing to cooperate with their pressure at the UN to demand the deploynt of Peacekeeping Forces!"
Outside the window, London remained imrsed in the brilliant lights of its imperial past.
But Lady M knew that a storm unleashed by a ghost had already descended on the African Continent, and at the center of this storm, the man returned from hell—Song Heping—had already, with cold authority, seized the throat of the Sena Republic.
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