The cold rubber eyepiece of the binoculars was clenched tightly by Song Heping's fingers, emitting a faint creaking sound under pressure.
His sweat had soaked the fitted rubber edges, stickily adhering around his eyes, yet his vision was unusually clear, clear enough to be suffocating.
This open space on the outskirts of Deir Ezzor at this mont has turned into the most primal slaughterhouse.
At the end of his line of sight, the leader of 1515 wearing a black turban flexed his muscular arm, raising a machete high above his head.
Beneath the blade, a woman in tattered black robes was pinned down hard by two militants on the scalding, rough ground, dust covering her fear-distorted cheeks.
A non-human shriek, like being grated by sandpaper, squeezed out from her throat, hopelessly tearing through the air.
That sound penetrated through the layers of the binocular lenses, through the thin mbrane of the eardrum, and through the heavy, constrained breaths from Jiang Feng in the communicator, and more so with the dying wails of a mother on the streets of Isriye, echoing deep within Song Heping's mory...
Instantly converging into a violent current, madly resonating and exploding across his taut nerves!
"No—!"
A piercing scream, like the mournful cry of a dying young beast, suddenly exploded beside him.
The boy whose hands had been bound behind him and curled in the dust, looking no older than fourteen, burst out with an astounding power.
He was like a desperate shell fired from a cannon, suddenly breaking free from the militants holding him, recklessly lunging towards the slaughter knife suspended over his mother's head.
The small body arched, attempting to intercept the impending destruction with his frail back.
"Seeking death!"
The leader carrying the machete sneered, his lips pulling back to reveal uneven yellow teeth.
His wrist turned with extre agility, the high-rising light of the machete carving a cruel yet precise tiny arc in the air.
The target shifted instantly from the woman's fragile neck to the unguarded head of the boy lunging forward!
In Song Heping's eyes, ti suddenly lost its normal flow.
The boy's charging figure, the twitch of the leader's lip muscles while sneering, the machete blade glinting due to reflection, stained with thick dark red blood...
Every small detail elongated infinitely, twisted, magnified, like the cruelest slow motion, fra by fra, with the screeching noise of tal friction, carving ruthlessly into the depths of his mind.
Anger roared like a volcanic flow of magma from the depths, wanting to explode out and burn everything before him.
Yet the remaining thread of cold reason, like a steel cable soaked in ice water, tightly restrained his nearly uncontrollable body and throat.
He could do nothing.
Distance, mission, the cost of exposure...
Countless cold weights heavily pressed onto the scale of anger.
"Jiang Feng, retreat."
Four words, almost crushed and squeezed out one by one from tightly clenched teeth.
Every syllable carried a rusty taste of blood.
On the other end of the communicator, a mont of silence, only a suppressed, deep breath akin to a wounded beast.
"...Alright."
Jiang Feng's voice was low and hoarse, like gravel scraping and rolling in a rough pipe.
Through that heavy breathing, Song Heping could even feel his extre anger.
The terror tactic often employed by the 1515 militants—publicly executing civilians, especially won and children, in occupied territories to sow seeds of fear.
Song Heping had long heard of such tactics over the past year or more.
But hearing and witnessing in person, screen-separated or right at the scene of this bloody sll, the impact is worlds apart.
In the last two years, the 1515 militants have been conquering town after town in the vast deserts of western Illiguo and the Eastern border regions of Siria, wherein the civil war mire and fragnted governnt control. Their forces have rapidly expanded like a snowball rolling down.
Their core "secret" is precisely this ability to transform terror itself into the most effective weapon—they are well-versed in exploiting the most primal human fears, dismantling the will to resist, conquering without fighting.
As a forr soldier who served for many years in a disciplined army, even though now clad in the gray attire of an international defense contractor, walking the blurred lines between war and politics, no longer daring to call himself a righteous ssenger, Song Heping still possess that soldierly baseline and instinct in his very bones, making him feel a visceral nausea and uncontrollable loathing towards such naked atrocities against innocent civilians, especially won and children.
This isn't war; it's slaughter.
Those committing such acts have departed from the realm of humanity; they are beasts clad in human skin, constituting a concentrated outbreak of anti-human genes.
"Stop watching, we can't help."
An deep, grating voice sounded beside him, with a thick Slavic accent.
Utekin had unknowingly approached.
On his weathered face, there was a nearly numb understanding.
"In this hellish place in the Middle East, you just get used to it. This crap happens every day, everywhere; the only difference is whether we know about it or not."
He blew out a heavy breath, seemingly wanting to disperse the invisible sll of blood in his nasal cavity.
Song Heping didn't respond, his throat seed to be blocked by scorching gravel.
His gaze was like being magnetically attracted, fixedly anchored to the eyepiece of the binoculars.
In his sight, that fallen body in the pool of blood, the broken neck presenting a nauseatingly jagged cross-section.
"Deir Ezzor is surrounded, like a sealed barrel."
Utekin's voice sounded again, deep and pragmatic, forcefully pulling the topic from suffocating bloodshed back to cold reality.
"Should we... still enter the city?"
His gaze turned to Song Heping, carrying inquiry and a subtle twinge of worry.
Heading into this besieged dead city, the level of danger spiraled upwards exponentially.
Song Heping suddenly closed his eyes, shook his head forcefully as if to fling out the hellish scene from his retinas.
However, uncontrolling flashes of more images crossed his mind: decapitated corpses casually discarded on the streets of Isriye, a charred little hand protruding from the ruins of a bombed-out house...
The flas of anger once again ignited in a surge within his chest, scorching his insides.
Yet he forcibly suppressed it, like sealing a volcanic opening with a massive stone before eruption.
His Adam's apple rolled up and down with difficulty; upon reopening his eyes, those eyes only held a near cold-blooded resolve.
"No." His voice was decisive, exceptionally clear, "The target is the cook, highest mission priority. We're not here to play firefighter for the governnt army."
He re-emphasized the core objective, seemingly also convincing himself.
"But..."
His tone shifted, a cold glint in his eyes.
"We can 'incidentally' lend them a hand, give 1515 a bit of trouble."
He pulled out the heavy military satellite phone from the side pocket of his tactical vest, with a suppressed fierceness, fingers dialing a number quickly and steadily.
After a brief waiting tone, the phone connected.
An anxious male voice with a heavy Illiguo accent imdiately ca through the receiver: "Boss? Thank God, it's you!"
"Samir," Song Heping's voice was cold and hard like stone, without any pleasantries, "How's the preparation on your side? Are your people ready?"
He cut straight to the point, every word resembling nails tempered by fire.
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