At the mont the countdown hit zero, beneath the car repair shop, five hundred kilos of military explosives and two tons of homade charges detonated simultaneously.
The explosion started underground.
It wasn't a single blast, but a series of layered detonations.
The first wave sheared off the main load‑bearing pillars, the second wave destroyed the foundation, the third wave…
The third wave lifted the entire building off the ground.
Old Man saw the horrifying scene right in front of him—
First the ground bulged, as if sothing enormous was trying to force its way up from beneath the earth.
Then chunks of concrete were hurled into the air, so as big as cars, so as small as fists, tracing tens of thousands of arcs in the first light of dawn.
Then ca the shockwave.
It was like a transparent wall, spreading out from the blast center in all directions. Everything in its path was flattened.
The fifteen‑ton M‑ATV armored vehicles were flipped, tumbling like toys.
The sandbag fortifications were blown apart, the grains inside turned into lethal bullets.
Only after that ca the sound—a sound that went beyond anything you could call a "bang."
It didn't feel like it entered through the ears; it vibrated the skull directly, shattered the organs inside. Everyone within two hundred ters of the blast, with or without cover, had their eardrums rupture in an instant, blood pouring from their ears.
Alpha Company's Team A, twelve n inside the building, didn't even leave bodies to find. Team B was on the west side, a little better off, but even they were buried under the collapsed debris.
Team C was on the periter and took the full brunt of the shockwave—half died on the spot, the rest were gravely wounded.
Only Old Man and a handful from the command group, standing in the relatively open central yard of the plant, were blown clear by the shockwave and thrown more than ten ters. Their bones were shattered, their organs bleeding, but they were miraculously still alive.
If the word "alive" still had any aning.
He lay on the ground, his right leg twisted at an unnatural angle, his left arm reduced to half, white bone exposed at the torn end.
His helt was gone, his face was a mask of blood. One eye was completely blind, the other a blur.
But he was still alive.
He could still hear—or rather, still feel—the gunfire, explosions, and screams coming from farther away.
That was in Bravo Company's direction.
The school complex hadn't blown up.
At least, not imdiately.
After discovering the explosives, the Commander had decisively ordered a withdrawal.
Most of the personnel had pulled out of the buildings, but just as they reached the playground, the ambush was sprung.
Not explosives—people.
From every surrounding building, every ruin, every sewer outlet, black‑clad gunn sward out.
Not scattered, not chaotic, but organized, in waves, each with clear tactical objectives.
First wave: snipers and machine gunners took the high ground and suppressed Bravo Company's retreat routes.
Second wave: anti‑tank teams, using RPGs and anti‑tank missiles, hit the armored vehicles.
Third wave: infantry assault teams, flanking around from the sides to cut up and encircle them.
Fourth wave: suicide attackers with explosives strapped to their bodies, charging straight into the densest clusters of n.
This was a carefully orchestrated massacre.
Bravo Company was well trained, but hit by a full‑spectrum ambush, their formation disintegrated in an instant.
The Commander tried to organize a counterattack.
He led a dozen rcenaries who could still move into a small building at one corner of the playground, using machine‑gun fire and accurate shooting to temporarily hold the frontal assault.
But the flank collapsed.
A group of gunn burst out of the underground Garage, cutting them off from the main force.
Then ca fire from above—the rooftop of the classroom building suddenly lit up with machine‑gun fire, raking them from high to low.
"Retreat! Fall back to the northwest!"
The company commander yelled over the radio, but all that answered him was static. Communications were jamd or severed.
He looked around. Fewer than ten n were still on their feet.
The wounded were moaning, and the enemy shouts were getting closer.
"Sir, what do we do?"
A young rcenary asked, blood and dust sared across his face.
The company commander drew a deep breath.
"What else can we do?"
He said, pulling the pin on his last grenade. "Kill one and we break even, kill two and we're ahead."
He burst from cover and charged the nearest cluster of enemies.
The grenade detonated in their midst, taking at least five n with it.
He himself was hit by bullets and fell in a pool of blood.
But the fight wasn't over yet.
Or rather, the slaughter wasn't over.
Ahd's Suicide Team had completely taken control of the battlefield.
They hunted down every Alliance Army soldier still breathing, like a pack of wolves.
No prisoners, no intel—just pure killing.
Back toward the car repair shop, Old Man, with the one hand he could still move, fumbled out his pistol.
There were seven rounds left in the magazine. He listened to the footsteps drawing closer, to the fevered shouts.
He thought of his wife and daughter far away in the United States.
He thought of their last video call, his daughter saying that when he ca ho, they'd go to Disney together.
I'm sorry, he said silently, Daddy's not coming back.
Then, when the first black‑clad figure entered his field of view, he raised the pistol and squeezed the trigger.
The first shot hit a head.
The second shot struck a chest.
The third shot, the fourth shot…
Until the magazine ran dry, until more enemies sward over him…
The world slowly went dark.
The last thing his eyes saw was the dawn sky over Titrick, turned gray by smoke.
Outpost command center, 06:40 hours.
Colonel Kote stood in front of the big screen, motionless, like a statue.
The battlefield situation map on the screen was already a ss.
The blue icons representing Alpha Company and Bravo Company had mostly turned into flashing red marks—indicating loss of contact or confird casualties. The few still moving were being surrounded and swallowed up by an ever‑thickening swarm of red arrows.
The radio channels were filled with chaotic voices:
"This is Alpha Company! We're surrounded! Requesting support! Requesting any kind of support!"
"'Bravo' Company, Third Platoon has been wiped out! Repeat, wiped out!"
"The enemy pickup convoy is charging in from the northeast! At least twenty vehicles!"
"Kurd units are routing! They've abandoned their positions! The line has collapsed!"
Every voice was like a hamr smashing into Kote's heart.
He felt short of breath, his vision went dark, and he had to grab the console to keep from falling.
Defeat cos like a mountain slide…
If they'd had any advantage before, it had all been squandered in this Dawn Hamr raid.
"Sir…" the operations staff officer's voice was trembling, "what… what do we do?"
Do what?
Kote's mind went blank. All his plans, all his calculations, all his confidence, had gone up in smoke with that explosion.
Seven hundred shells, one hundred and sixty elite rcenaries, four artillery batteries…
All traded for a complete, annihilating defeat.
No, not a defeat.
A catastrophe.
"Order…" his voice was as hoarse as a broken bellows, "order all units… to retreat. Bounding overwatch, fall back toward the northwest extraction point."
He said that word.
The word he had wrestled with for days and refused to let leave his mouth.
Retreat.
But the order ca too late, or rather, in the face of total collapse, any order had already lost its aning.
The Kurd units on the front line broke first.
They'd already been at the edge; the failure of Dawn Hamr was the last straw that broke the cal's back.
Soldiers dropped their weapons, jumped out of trenches, scrambled into anything that could move, or simply ran for their lives on foot, fleeing away from the city.
Panic spread like a plague.
One position collapsed, exposing the flank of the neighboring position; then that position collapsed too, the chain reaction spreading like dominoes.
In less than forty minutes, the entire defensive line crumbled.
The roads clogged in an instant.
Trucks, APCs, jeeps—every vehicle tried to squeeze onto the few available retreat routes. Vehicles ramd each other, overturned, went up in flas.
Abandoned weapons, gear, even the severely wounded, were left by the roadside.
The 1515 Ard turned into a wolf pack of pursuers.
The pickup-mounted mobile teams known as "Flying Cavalry" poured heavy machine-gun and rocket fire into the jamd retreat routes.
Every burst of fire left dozens hit and dropping.
Even more lethal was Ahd's Suicide Team.
These fanatical fighters specialized in striking command nodes, artillery positions, and logistics hubs.
They worked like a scalpel, cleanly slicing apart the Alliance Army's already-chaotic command system.
One Thunder Defense Mortar position was infiltrated from the rear and flank; all the gunners were killed, and the ammo detonated.
A dical convoy evacuating wounded was ambushed in a narrow street; the lead and tail vehicles were knocked out by RPGs, the whole road blocked, and the wounded inside were massacred by militants rushing up behind.
A Kurd Brigade command post was intercepted while relocating; the brigade commander and staff were all killed in action, and the brigade completely lost command.
In the air, F-16s and Apaches scrambled on ergency launch found themselves in a hellish situation.
Below them was chaos everywhere, masses of fighters all mixed together, no way to clearly distinguish friend from foe.
One Apache tried to rake the pursuing pickups with its gun, but accidentally hit a nearby Kurd convoy that was retreating, causing dozens of casualties.
"Cease all ground attack! Cease all ground attack!" the air controller scread over the net. "Targets cannot be confird!"
But even without attacking, the helicopters themselves beca targets.
A "Stinger" fired from the ruins slamd into the tail boom of one Apache; trailing black smoke, it barely limped back to crash-land in the rear, written off for good.
The retreat turned into a rout, and the rout turned into a slaughter.
In the command center, Kote watched it all unfold, powerless to stop it.
He had beco the witness to this catastrophe—and its author.
"Sir, we have to relocate." The Guard Captain burst in. "The enemy's leading elents are less than three klicks away. If we don't move now, we won't get out."
Kote slowly turned his head, his eyes empty.
"Go?" he echoed. "Go where?"
"To the extraction point, sir. The helicopters are already on standby on the roof."
Kote looked at the screens, then around the room.
The staff were frantically destroying docunts, smashing hard drives, burning maps.
Everyone's face was ashen, their eyes full of fear.
This was the end.
Everything he had painstakingly built, everything he had staked on the Dawn Hamr operation, had bought nothing but a panicked flight, leaving a field of corpses and wreckage behind.
He laughed, a rasping, despairing sound.
"Go." he told the Guard Captain. "You all go. I… I'll stay a while longer."
"Sir—"
"That's an order!" Kote suddenly roared, his eyes bloodshot. "Get out! All of you, get out!"
The Guard Captain clenched his teeth, saluted, and turned to leave.
The others pulled out one after another, until only Kote remained, standing alone in the empty command center.
The red on the screens kept spreading, like poisoned blood flowing through veins, devouring the entire battle zone.
Kote walked up to the console and opened an encrypted channel.
It was an ergency line straight to the Pentagon.
"This is Outpost Command, Colonel Kote reporting."
His voice was terrifyingly calm. "The Dawn Hamr operation… has failed. Repeat, the Dawn Hamr operation has failed. The Alliance Army is in full retreat, casualties… casualties are heavy."
He paused, then went on: "All responsibility will be borne by alone. Over."
Then he cut the link and drew his sidearm.
The muzzle pressed up under his jaw, the tal's chill seeping through his skin.
He thought of many things.
He thought of his West Point Military Academy graduation, of the first ti he led troops, of the burning ambition he'd had when drafting the Balance Beam operation, of Song Heping's eyes that seed to see through everything.
"Damn it."
He said silently.
Then he pulled the trigger.
The gunshot echoed through the empty command center, then was drowned out by the ever-closer thunder of guns outside.
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