Song Heping didn't pause after taking out the team leader.
He knew well that the building must be entirely surrounded, so breaking out from other locations would also be quickly detected.
Thus, he decided to do the unexpected.
The agents must have assud he'd run upstairs, jump to the neighboring building, and sprint away to safety.
That's what normal people would do.
So, the direction of the café—the front side of the building—would actually be the least guarded.
Returning to break through from there could yield unexpected success.
Again, reality proved Song Heping's judgnt to be spot on.
The entrance guards Langsen and the team leader were down.
Song Heping stepped out the front door of the building and surveyed the area—nothing but bodies.
He headed straight toward the café.
A communications agent stepped out from inside.
Upon seeing Song Heping, the man froze in place.
Due to earlier disruptions, he'd stayed in the café, frantically trying to establish contact with his superiors and request technical support.
But to his surprise, the target had turned back and was now standing right in front of him.
"Please—"
Before the agent could finish his plea, Song Heping raised his gun and fired.
Everything was smooth and unhesitating, as if rehearsed.
No rcy.
No hesitation.
Any hesitation would an his own death.
The technician dropped to the ground, and Song Heping entered the bar area, crouching beside the corpse to remove the man's earpiece and put it into his own ear. He then took off his backpack and shoved it into the counter.
He checked the ti.
Five minutes had passed.
The battery on the signal jamr was halfway drained.
That ant five more minutes of signal blackout.
He had to ensure the area remained in communications silence, with no signals getting out.
He pulled out a hand grenade from his canvas bag, removed the safety pin, and carefully placed it under the technician's body, setting up a small trap.
Song Heping didn't have ti to assess the effectiveness of such a setup.
But it was bound to cause trouble for the enemy.
That was enough.
As Song Heping busied himself in the café, the CIA agents outside were spiraling into chaos.
The two teams dispatched to the back of the building failed to locate any trace of him.
"Has anyone seen him?!"
"No sighting yet!"
"Is communications restored?!"
"Not yet!"
The Secret Action Departnt agents were entirely unprepared for tactics that relied on complete radio silence.
Without communications, they had to revert to shouting instructions, making their coordination clumsy and ineffective.
"Did the boss make it upstairs?"
Conte suddenly noticed a strange silence ahead.
He'd heard explosions earlier.
Now, it was eerily quiet.
Two teams were supposed to block all escape routes, with the leader and Langsen taking the offensive.
The silence implied one of two things: either the team had entered the building and found no one inside...
Or...
Conte suddenly realized sothing was wrong.
"Rod, stay here and keep watch. Shout if anything happens. I'm checking the front entrance."
"OK!"
Conte gripped his MP5 and sprinted toward the front entrance.
Soon, he encountered a shocking scene—
The leader was sprawled on the side of the street, Langsen was nowhere to be seen, and there wasn't a single friendly face visible through the café's windows.
He hurried over, inspecting the area for danger before crouching to check the leader's vital signs.
Regrettably, there was no pulse.
The body wasn't cold yet, aning he had died recently.
"Rod! Rod! FUCK! The boss is down!"
Terror crept over Conte.
He instinctively backed up, pressing against the main building.
It was a natural reaction to threat—humans tend to stick close to walls, where there's no exposure to potential threats at the rear.
After shouting a few tis, Conte ca to the frustrating realization that Rod couldn't possibly hear him.
This wasn't a single building; it was an entire block of structures.
He doubled back toward the rear of the building, spotting Rod near the corner, still tensely watching the upper floors.
"Rod! FUCK! He's not in the building! He ca out the front! That slippery bastard!"
Rod finally heard him.
"What?!"
It was hard for Rod to believe Conte's words.
"He escaped through the front door!"
"FUCK!"
The word "FUCK" was now their favorite expression, encapsulating shock and fury.
When Watcher's two squads had been wiped out in Illiguo, the news reached the Secret Action Departnt, and agents had sneered at Watcher, calling them overrated.
Now they understood: Watcher wasn't overrated; they themselves were the naive ones.
The adversary was unlike anyone they'd ever faced before.
Rod rushed toward the front door, and Conte felt slightly reassured.
Two n were better than one.
Conte sprinted toward the café and found the communications agent lying behind the counter, only half visible.
"Harbert!"
Conte dashed over.
The technician was face down on the floor.
Conte wanted to flip him over to check his injuries.
Bullet hole—headshot. No saving him.
But as he moved the corpse, sothing rolled out from underneath.
"Grenade!"
Conte scread, leaping toward the door.
Boom—
The explosion roared as the shockwave flung him two ters out.
His jaw throbbed intensely with pain. Reaching up to touch it, his hands ca away bloody.
"Rod! Be alert! No idea how many traps this guy has set around here!"
His courage to pursue had evaporated.
At this point, simply surviving would be a blessing from God.
The enemy resembled a ghost escaped from Hell—rciless, cold, and cunning.
Conte now felt uneasy unless surrounded by a dozen allies.
While Conte's team descended into chaos, Song Heping had already traversed two streets.
He now had to head west, toward the sea.
According to the original plan, a ship nad "Pearl" would be docked at the Beirut coastal port outside the city. It had been arranged by Persian agents under Avanti's orders. Boarding the cargo ship would allow Song Heping to escape Liben, bypass the Red Sea, and dock at Egypt's port. From North Africa, others would guide him back to Persia.
Since he had entered from the east via a land route, the CIA was undoubtedly aware of this path. They would set up blockades along the way—taking the eastern land route back to Persia ant traversing Siria and Illiguo, giving the Aricans countless opportunities to eliminate him.
Heading directly to Egypt was a different story.
The diterranean was vast. Finding him there wouldn't be easy.
He glanced at his watch—the interference ti had just expired.
The CIA agents' communications were now back online, which posed a significant disadvantage to him.
Looking up at the sky, he adjusted his cap to better conceal his face.
In a villa perched on a hillside in the outskirts of the city, Kelly paced back and forth, her gaze repeatedly sweeping across the computer monitors.
The plan had been impeccable.
Using fabricated profiles of deceased agents dressed in black, she had gained Ferrari's trust, earning this rare opportunity for a face-to-face transaction.
This was the closest she'd gotten to killing Song Heping in the past year.
If executed well, there was no way he could escape the grip of her Five-Finger Mountain of traps.
To ensure success, Kelly had summoned an additional Watcher team and six tactical squads from the Special Operations Departnt.
All of them were elite operatives. With so many hunting down one Song Heping, the odds seed heavily in her favor.
Kelly believed she had accounted for every detail.
But from the very outset, Song Heping had seized the advantage.
Just in the past ten minutes, her first-line assassination squad had been completely cut off from the command center.
It was only monts ago that the signal had suddenly been restored.
That was when Kelly realized that the initial squad stationed at the rendezvous point had been decimated.
The contact "Black Snake," the female agent in the café, and two other operatives—they were already corpses.
The remaining mbers had utterly lost track of Song Heping, only knowing that he exited through the back of the café and vanished into the labyrinth of the cityscape.
"Imdiately contact Mossad and urgently request their cooperation in our operation!"
With nowhere else to turn, Kelly finally thought of Mossad.
The Daishe Bird Country had been entrenched here for years, fighting against Pearl Party forces and other anti-Daishe Bird movents. They had acquired nurous informants and planted a significant number of undercover operatives.
Kelly had to admit that in this region, Daishe Bird's intelligence capabilities surpassed hers, driven by stronger motivations and geographical advantages.
After issuing instructions to her subordinates, Kelly added, "Deploy two more drones. I want every street in the vicinity monitored. I refuse to believe Song Heping can turn invisible!"
She was unwilling to squander this opportunity for an assassination.
Moreover, if the mission failed again, her competence would undoubtedly be questioned by higher-ups.
After several previous failures, Pence hadn't explicitly criticized her but had increasingly hinted at replacing her.
The disagreents during the Silia Gelashuk Town incident had made Kelly realize that Pence didn't truly value her; she was just a convenient pawn.
When this pawn's usefulness wore off, he wouldn't hesitate to discard her.
"Deploy all our personnel and blanket the area within a ten-kiloter radius of the café. Lock it down completely—I don't care if it takes flooding the streets with agents, Song Heping isn't flying out of here like a bird!"
Kelly went all-in with her final gambit.
Every operative involved in the Liben operation, without exception, was assigned to the street zone. Total commitnt.
Only by sealing off the area thoroughly would killing Song Heping beco achievable.
Whatever fallout this caused was irrelevant!
Liben was a small nation; at most, it would require minor diplomatic smoothing out. Sensible nations wouldn't dare to stir trouble for her.
A fleet of SUVs pulled out from the villa's courtyard on the hillside, heading swiftly toward the Hamra District.
At this mont, Song Heping was walking along the streets of Beirut's Hamra District. The number of pedestrians and tourists had visibly increased, and he felt a trace of reassurance.
The best place to hide was in plain sight.
More people ant better cover for his movents.
However, he underestimated the Aricans' technological prowess.
Unbeknownst to him, two drones had already erged overhead. In the control room, operators divided the flight area into segnts and ticulously planned flight routes.
All images of Song Heping, as well as pedestrians and tourists, were captured and fed into a computer database for rapid analysis and target identification.
What Kelly's team didn't realize, though, was that their efforts to hunt down Song Heping had inadvertently led them into his carefully orchestrated trap.
"Jiang Feng, what's the situation on your end?"
"I'm in position."
"Good. I'll be heading your way. I'm three blocks out."
"Understood. I can't move right now; there must be drones overhead."
"Stay put. Moving risks exposure."
"Disaster Star, what's your status?"
"The tech team is analyzing the signal source; they say they'll track it soon."
"They're mobilizing units to hunt down..."
Before Song Heping could finish, he noticed the communication device he had found on the CIA agent had gone silent.
He realized the enemy had detected the breach and switched their communication channels.
"They've discovered the channel was compromised. Focus on locating their command center. Hit them hard. Bring that woman back alive for interrogation."
"Got it, boss. Stay safe out there."
"I will."
Song Heping ended the call.
A Middle Eastern-looking man approached from ahead.
Even at a distance of over ten ters, Song Heping had already noticed his right hand...
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