Dead silence.
A harrowing silence, swallowing the echoes of gunfire.
Only the wind, carrying the lingering smoke and the sweet tallic tang of fresh blood, swept past the jagged rocks where Song Heping was hiding, bringing a chill from the depths of Hell.
He lay prone behind the cover, bloodshot eyes locking onto the entrance of the Sand Valley below, which had just been a purgatorial furnace.
The sporadic gunfire had completely ceased.
The figures of GNA soldiers vanished as if swallowed by the desert's giant maw.
All that's left were the charred skeletons of burning pickup trucks, scattered wrecked weapons, and…
Layers upon layers of twisted, rigid corpses.
The "Jackal" armored vehicle stood alone at the entrance, with its turret drooping and machine gun aid at the ground, resembling a dead dog with a broken spine.
"Boss… down there… seems… empty?"
"Wrench's" voice ca through the earpiece, filled with great confusion.
This guy had stayed at the best observation point, and seeing such a strange scene now left him bewildered too.
The Haftar soldiers around Song Heping exchanged uncertain glances, their faces sared with blood, sweat, and sand, staring blankly at the scene before them.
A mont ago, they were under the shadow of death like a mountain, and the next mont the pressure vanished, leaving only an unsettling vacuum.
"Did Allah… perform a miracle?"
"Are they… all dead? Or… did they run?"
Song Heping furrowed his brows, but his vigilance remained taut.
This eerie silence was more chilling than a hail of bullets.
Where is Don?
Where is Yarif?
Where are those SBS phantoms?
Thousands of living people couldn't just evaporate, could they?
"Wrench."
Song Heping's voice sliced through the silence as he cautiously said, "Take two people and go forward to recon. Keep your eyes peeled, watch out for traps. Everyone else, stay alert and cover, no one moves without my order."
"Understood!"
Wrench's response was imdiately tense.
Three ghostly figures slid down from the rock crevices above, using the wreckage and craters for cover, advancing alternately, nerves taut as they crept toward that dead zone.
Every rock could harbor fatal danger.
Ti dragged on in agonizing tension.
In the earpiece, Wrench's suppressed breaths and halting reports beat on everyone's nerves:
"…Entrance…corpse pile…GNA's…many…"
"…FUCK! It's SBS… I see a few… dead for sure…"
"…Command vehicle… blown to scrap…still burning…"
"…Behind the dune, FUCK…"
A few minutes of silence followed.
At last, Wrench's voice carried a note of incredulous complexity: "Boss… it's safe. Co down… it's all dead below. Don… is lying there too."
Song Heping took a deep breath, the smoke and stench of blood rushing into his lungs.
He stood up and waved to the tense soldiers behind him: "Team One, Team Two, follow . Everyone else, stay put like nails!"
Dozens of soldiers who could still move, including the veterans of the special operations platoon, quickly assembled, following Song Heping, stepping on sticky blood-soaked sand, re-entering the enemy position steeped in death.
A vision of Hell unfurled before their eyes.
As far as the eye could see, death was the only the.
The bodies of GNA soldiers piled up in layers, filling the narrow entrance to the Wind Rock Area, covering the sand on both sides.
Postures twisted and frozen in their final terror or last frenzied monts.
Blood dyed large swaths of yellow sand into a dark red mire, exuding a nauseating stench.
Burning wreckage emitted the foul stench of charred flesh.
Skirting around several burnt-out pickup trucks, the backward slope of the dune revealed an even more shocking scene—this was the center of the storm.
Crater-pocked land, smoke not yet dispersed.
The command vehicle, only a charred skeleton remaining, twisted steel beams emitting blue smoke.
Pickups used as cover turned to warped scrap tal. But most shocking was the scattered corpses—
Among these bodies, there weren't many in SBS combat uniforms, well-equipped, but their deaths were grueso, almost all shot into sieves at close range; more were soldiers in GNA uniforms, falling as if charging, with bodies piled on top of each other, speaking of their desperate madness at the final monts.
In a relatively "open" sandy area, Song Heping finally saw the "wrench," lying at his feet was his opponent this ti — Captain Don Rodriguez.
This once arrogant SBS commander, who looked down on human life, now lay like a discarded, blood-soaked rag, face down in the dark red sand.
The combat uniform, once proud and symbolic of "elite," was torn into rags by countless bullets, soaked with thick, half-coagulated blood plasma.
The back, lower waist, thighs...
Were filled with dense bullet holes, like a human-shaped sieve.
One arm was twisted strangely under the body, while the other was stretched forward desperately, fingers dug deep into the sand, as if still trying to crawl back to his bullet-riddled command vehicle before gasping his last breath.
Song Heping squatted, his hand, clad in tactical gloves, turned Don over without any respect, like flipping over a salted fish.
A face was revealed — pallid as paper from blood loss, covered in sand and blood scabs.
Once filled with self-righteousness and violence, the eyes were now empty, wide open, with dilated pupils reflecting the glaring but cold sun of the Sahara.
Don's mouth was slightly opened, frozen in extre shock and imnse reluctance.
The wounds on his chest and abdon were even more appalling, with shattered organs vaguely visible.
As Song Heping prepared to stand up, Don's long-dilated pupils moved ever so slightly!
Imdiately, a weak, leaking sound like a broken bellows ca from his throat, "Ho… ho…"
A trickle of dark red, foamy blood oozed laboriously from the corner of his mouth.
"Damn! Not completely dead yet?"
Song Heping was also taken aback.
This vitality rivals that of a desert lizard.
All around, soldiers instantly cocked their guns with a clattering sound, nerves on edge.
Song Heping raised his hand to stop them.
He knew very well, at this point, Don was no different from a corpse.
The only difference was the heartbeat.
His gaze, cold as a probe, scrutinized Don's dying face.
Those empty eyes struggled laboriously to focus weakly on Song Heping's face.
There was no anger, no hatred, just boundless, almost overwhelming pain, and a near-humble, naked plea.
His lips trembled violently but couldn't make any clear sound, yet the ssage in his eyes was clearer than any shout.
"Kill… … please..."
Song Heping looked at him silently, his face devoid of expression.
The battlefield was left with only the crackling sound of flas burning and Don's increasingly weak, increasingly painful "ho… ho…" sound, like a broken bellows making its final struggle.
There was no rcy, nor any gleeful satisfaction of revenge.
Only a sense of detachnt in dealing with battlefield refuse, even tinged with the absurdity of black humor — the final resting place of this arrogant SBS officer was under the rain of bullets from African soldiers, ultimately and humbly abandoned here.
Then, he still had to beg his enemy, whom he viewed as prey, for a bullet to end him like a worm.
A few seconds of deathly stillness felt as prolonged as congealed ti.
Song Heping slowly pulled out the Glock 17 pistol from his waist.
The cold black gun fra reflected a ruthless light.
He raised his arm, the movent steady without a tremor, the gun muzzle aid firmly at the blood-sared skin on Don's forehead.
"Bang!"
The gunshot was crisp and succinct, exploding in the deathly silent battlefield, particularly piercing, carrying a resolute finality.
Don's spasming body stiffened abruptly, with the final "ho ho" sound decisively cut off. On his forehead, a brand-new, black-edged bullet hole neatly ended all pain and that pitiful reluctance.
Those empty eyes finally lost the last glimr, leaving only a frozen gray.
Song Heping flipped his wrist, the pistol smoothly returned to its holster, as if he had just stepped on a botherso insect.
He stood up, surveying the slaughterhouse created by madness and stupidity that surrounded him.
His gaze swept over the cold bodies of the SBS team mbers, over the piled remnant of GNA soldiers, and finally landed on Don's completely lifeless, frozen face of pleading.
"Clean up the battlefield."
His voice was as calm as the desert night's breeze.
"Valuable stuff, weapons, ammo, gear, especially those precious SBS communication gadgets and individual equipnt, leave none behind, strip it clean. Be quick, don't waste ti."
"Yes!"
The soldiers answered with a roar, pouncing on the remains like hungry wolves.
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