At 11:32 PM.
A civilian house in Gela Town.
This was the town center, where low houses were scattered everywhere.
Gela Town used to be prosperous, located between the two major cities of Titrik and Mosul. In the days when Illiguo's per capita GDP exceeded ten thousand US dollars and every household owned a car, this place had its mont of glory.
However, after the First Gulf War, it began to decline gradually.
A mber of the Salafi Ard Organization was on the rooftop of the house, keeping watch with an AK47. About a kiloter away from him was a large compound that served as the temporary headquarters of the organization.
They could relocate their headquarters at any ti, thanks to so intricate local connections, so getting their hands on houses and corners was not difficult.
One advantage of hiding in the town was that if anyone ca to encircle them, they would be reported before even entering the town.
Unless they wiped out everyone in the town, they couldn't do anything to them.
From a distance outside the town, a thick cloud of dust could be seen rolling under the moonlight, and the sentry could see it clearly.
He vigilantly took the safety off his AK47 and then picked up the walkie-talkie to report to his superiors, "An unidentified convoy appears outside the town."
"Identify who they are! Keep reporting!"
"Wait..."
The sentry looked left and right, then after a mont, he picked up the walkie-talkie and said, "It seems to be our convoy, our people..."
"Our people?"
Obviously, the superior at the nest was sowhat incredulous.
"Stop them and check it out to see what's going on!"
Inside the lair, a leader put down his walkie-talkie, rushed across the courtyard, ran to another yard, then stopped in front of a room and knocked on the door.
"Boss! A convoy has arrived from outside the town, the sentry says it's our convoy!"
The door quickly opened.
A man with a tense face looked at the leader in front of him with a skeptical gaze, "Are you sure it's our people?"
"Yes, the sentry won't make a mistake."
"They lost contact over an hour ago, how did they suddenly return?"
Boss Hahn thought about it and felt sothing was off.
He snatched the walkie-talkie from the leader's hand and asked loudly, "Who are they? Did you get a clear look?"
"It's our convoy."
The sentry replied imdiately.
"Stop them, get a clear look."
"Yes, Boss."
Outside the town, the sentry blew a whistle, and several dark figures erged beside the house downstairs to guard the road.
"Stop the convoy and check it out."
He ordered several of his fellows.
"Got it!"
The dark figures took off the safety.
The convoy entered the town and was quickly obscured by the buildings.
But the sound of the engines could still be faintly heard.
Shortly after, the convoy reached the sentry's guard position.
"Stop! Stop!"
One of them, gun in hand, stood in the middle of the road ordering the vehicles to halt.
The lead truck was a pickup, from whose passenger side a head stuck out, a hand extended.
"Elmi, it's ..."
The one with the gun took a look.
Huh?
Wasn't that Anis?
So he too raised his hand in greeting, "Anis..."
Before he could finish, suddenly there were several faint sounds from behind.
The rooftop sentry realized sothing was wrong.
He saw the fellows beside several houses downstairs suddenly fall to the ground.
"Enem..."
He tried to sound the alarm, but suddenly felt a hand wrap around his neck from behind.
The force was so great it felt like his Adam's apple would shatter.
In a flash, a chill crept up his spine from behind.
It seed to be a knife...
Then, the knife that had penetrated his body twisted inside him.
The sentry's vision went dark, and he made a "urgh urgh" sound from his throat, going limp like an octopus.
Before he lost consciousness, he saw the head of Elmi, who was standing in the road, burst with a spurt of blood, and then he fell to the ground.
Song Heping withdrew his knife.
Blood gushed out of the sentry's body like a fountain, splashing all over him.
He slowly laid the corpse down, careful not to make a noise by dropping the gun.
"Leave three people here on watch, the rest follow the plan and start encircling their lair; report to once in position."
Having said that, he climbed down the building, jumped onto the pickup, and said to Samir at the driver's seat, "Keep driving, don't stop."
"Alright, Boss."
Samir cast a glance at the skinny man beside him who had turned deathly pale and laughed, "Don't worry, it'll be over soon."
The convoy continued on.
But this ti, they slowed down significantly.
About two hundred ters away from the civilian house that served as the headquarters of the Salafi Ard Organization, Song Heping and a team got out of the vehicles.
The skinny man, tied up like a zongzi and gagged, was thrown into the back seat of the pickup.
According to the information provided by the skinny man, there were about 200 mbers of the Salafi Ard spread out in various houses within a two-hundred-ter radius around the town, with about ten buildings occupied, and about thirty people in the compound that served as their headquarters.
When Song Heping was at the water station, he had divided his troops, including the mortar squad, into ten teams, each assigned to a building. The teams consisted of as few as two mbers and as many as three, depending on the task.
In terms of numbers, the enemy had the upper hand.
But as the skinny man had said, apart from sentries on the outskirts of the town, there was only one sentry left at the entrance of the courtyard; most others were asleep inside the houses at night.
The Salafi Ard Organization had sentries on all four sides of the town, but there was a flaw: the sentries on these four directions were quite far apart, and the convoy had entered from the north, so only the northern sentries could see the convoy.
As long as they didn't engage or fire shots, the sentries on the other three sides would have no idea that the northern watchpost had been taken down, and their defenses breached.
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