Chapter 1083 - 982: Deadly Desert (Part 2)

Boom Boom Boom Boom——!

The consecutive explosions blew a huge hole in the barricade, smoke filled the air, and screams were constant.

"Break through! Grab the vehicles!"

Song Heping was the first to rush through the smoke-filled gap, his HK417 spitting fire and precisely taking down several enemies attempting to resist.

The team behind him surged like a flood, pouring over the barricade, rushing into the relatively open Gobi Desert outside.

There, a dozen military trucks belonging to the GNA militia camp and several armed pickups were parked, drivers and guards frantically trying to start the vehicles to escape.

A close-range melee broke out instantly.

Bayonets, rifle butts, fists...

All available weapons turned into tools of slaughter. Song Heping darted to the driver's seat of a truck, where the driver had just pulled out a pistol, only to be shot in the head by Song Heping through the window.

He opened the door, dragged the body out, and jumped inside himself.

"Wrench! Drive! Everyone else! Grab the vehicles! Take them if they can be driven away! Quick!"

The roar of engines rose and fell.

Haftar was stuffed into the back seat of a truck cabin by Hunter and the guards.

Disaster Star team members and the remaining soldiers quickly seized the vehicles, killing or driving away the guards.

An armed pickup tried to reverse and escape but was blown into a fireball from the side by Viper using a scavenged RPG-7 launcher.

In less than three minutes, twelve trucks and two driveable armed pickups were seized!

Song Heping screamed into the radio: "Direction due south! Full speed! Charge into the desert!"

The convoy roared like a herd of frightened wild horses, engines howling, kicking up a dust storm, and plunged into the boundless dark Gobi to the south.

Behind them, the burning silhouette of Desert City grew smaller, but the sound of chasing gunfire and headlights quickly closed in from other directions like maggots clinging to bones.

London, MI6 headquarters, strategic command center.

It's already early morning. On the huge curved screen, the heat imaging satellite clearly showed a top-down view of Desert City.

Green dots representing GNA forces clustered densely, encircling the city like a swarm of ants. Meanwhile, a glaring red arrow in the city's southwest corner pierced the green encirclement at an astonishing speed, entering the dark yellow area representing the Gobi and rapidly moving south.

"Target breakthrough! Southwest defense line breached! They've grabbed vehicles! They're fleeing south!" A technician's voice broke the dead silence of the command center, filled with incredulous astonishment.

Crack!

Ms. M snapped the pencil in her hand.

She stared intently at the swiftly moving red arrow on the screen, facial muscles twitching slightly with disbelief.

There's a pin-drop silence in the command center.

All analysts and technicians held their breath, eyes darting between the glaring red dot on the screen and Ms. M's ashen face.

"Useless! Is GNA a bunch of pigs?!"

Ms. M's voice sharply rose, as piercing as glass scraping, filled with almost uncontrollable hysteria.

"A complete encirclement! Yet a ragtag band managed to slip away under our noses and even seized vehicles?!"

She suddenly slammed the pencil she held onto the ground!

"Contact Sayif! Immediately! Right away!"

Ms. M's chest heaved violently, pointing at the red dot moving away from Desert City on the screen, her finger trembling with anger.

"Tell him! If Song Heping manages to enter the Sahara Desert alive, Sayif's provisional government shouldn't expect any support from us at the UN!"

The next day, at noon.

The Sahara midday sun was a scorching incandescent ball suspended overhead, ruthlessly baking the earth. The blistering air warped the view, turning distant sand dunes into ethereal lakes.

Twelve worn-out military trucks, like abandoned steel beasts in a golden ocean, quietly lay on an ancient trade route almost buried by shifting sands.

The engine hoods were open, twisted metal radiated scorching heat waves, mingling with the boiling sand to steam off the remaining moisture.

There's an odd silence around.

Only the moaning of the hot wind blowing through the gaps in the vehicles and the heavy, desperate panting of the defeated soldiers inside and outside the trucks.

Song Heping jumped down from the driver's cabin of the leading truck, his boots making a soft "hiss" as they hit the sand, as if stepping on a red-hot metal plate.

His face was covered in a thick layer of dust, sweat carving channels through it, then quickly drying.

He hurried to the second truck, where Wrench was half-buried in the engine compartment, holding an almost empty plastic oil can, his face filled with undisguised despair.

"Boss... not a drop of oil left."

Wrench's voice was as dry as sandpaper scraping, "Damn it, last night we rushed out of the city, didn't have time to draw more barrels from the fuel depot! This damn road, the soft sand burns at least thirty percent more fuel than usual!"

He slammed his oil-stained hand on the scorching car door, producing a muffled echo.

Song Heping said nothing, his gaze sweeping over the line of vehicles paralyzed in the sand sea.

This was their last possession snatched from Desert City last night, loaded with the remaining hundred or so soldiers of Haftar's forces, some wounded, and a scant few supplies.

Their plan was to rely on these iron mules to cross the border before the pursuit caught up, entering the relatively familiar territory of Northern Darfur.

Now, with the last drop of diesel exhausted, that hope has completely extinguished.

Maps showed they were less than a hundred kilometers in a straight line from the border.

But in the Sahara, this seemingly short hundred kilometers was akin to an insurmountable chasm.

Marching on foot?

Under the merciless midday heat, without sufficient water and food, facing the pursuit that could appear at any moment?

This was tantamount to collective suicide.

"General."

Song Heping walked to a truck in the middle.

Haftar leaned against the open truck's shadow-covered panel, exhaustion and despair written across his once resolute face.

His arm was wrapped in a blood-stained bandage, his eyes somewhat dazed.

"The truck... is out of fuel. Can't move anymore."

Haftar's murky eyes shifted slightly, gazing southward as if he could see through the endless sand to his homeland.

He swallowed, managing only a raspy sound: "...嗯." ("...hmm.")

Despair spread like a plague through the convoy.

Soldiers lay slumped in the hot truck beds or beneath them in the shadows, eyes vacantly staring at the glaring sky. Some futilely slapped their empty collapsible water bottles, creating hollow echoes.

Air was filled with the scent of sweat, blood, diesel, and an even more pervasive scent of death.

"Anvil, inventory remaining supplies! Especially water and ammunition!"

Song Heping's voice shattered the dead silence, carrying a non-negotiable hardness, forcefully pulling everyone from the abyss of despair slightly.

"Doctor, check on the wounded! Those who can walk, prepare minimal gear! Those who can't..."

He paused, didn't finish speaking, but the unspoken intent weighed heavier than any words.

"Disaster Star, take a few men, scout ahead! North, South, West directions! Watch the dune lines!"

He quickly issued orders, his sharp gaze surveying the surroundings.

This area was relatively open, with only some low dunes and heavily weathered rocks, lacking ideal defense positions.

Staying here to hold out meant dying.

They had to move, even if on foot, they had to head south!

"Boss, I estimate the pursuit is less than two hours away."

Wrench threw the empty oil can onto the sand, looked at Song Heping worriedly.

"I know."

Song Heping's voice was as dry as the desert. He looked up, squinting southward at the distorted horizon.

One hundred kilometers. The distance between life and death.

At that moment, a faint whistling sound, different from the sound of hot wind, faintly came from the north.

"Disaster Star!"

Song Heping suddenly crouched low, his ear pressed firmly against the burning sand.

Disaster Star's massive body immediately sprawled down.

A few seconds later, he raised his head, face grave: "Engine sounds! Multiple vehicles! Direction...due north! Distance...about ten kilometers! Speed very fast!"

The pursuit!

Coming even faster than expected!