"Can't tell from looking at him, but his bones are quite tough."
Watching the high-ranking ETO member being bandaged by medics and quickly moved into a Black Hawk helicopter for transfer, Shi Qiang muttered to himself.
By then, David had washed his blood-stained hands with mineral water and approached Shi Qiang.
"Isn't that normal? After all, he's some kind of cult leader or something."
David looked up, watching the Black Hawk circling overhead. For some reason, although everything seemed much smoother than expected, David still felt a vague, instinctive sense of unease.
[Psionic Ability: Precognition] was at work.
As time passed, David's palpitations grew stronger. He watched the joint China-US formation, which had completed its bombing mission and was flying back toward the Russian airbase in Syria according to plan.
David suddenly spoke up. "Did the UN send enough people this time? Without air cover, what happens if we face retaliation from the Jihadists?"
Hearing this, Shi Qiang—who had been thinking about getting firsthand intelligence before anyone else—paused. He then slapped David's shoulder and burst into a loud laugh.
"Brother, we're here for counter-terrorism, not a full-scale war. Who would dare to openly attack a joint task force of the Permanent Five? Are they planning to go to war with every major nation in the world?"
That's exactly what I'm worried about.The Trisolaris Organization really isn't afraid of going to war with Earth.
David's gaze swept across the village situated among the mountains. On both sides of the village were mountains, and beyond them lay barren, bald sands. Scattered mounds sat at the edge of the desert, surrounding the village in a semi-circle. The Jihadists had built permanent fortifications atop these mounds.
The primary objective of the UN force's first bombing wave was to root out these fortresses. In fact, the coalition's bombing had been highly effective, leveling the Jihadists' main mountain strongholds almost instantly.
While Shi Qiang could now vaguely guess that the Earth Federation's enemies were not simple, he clearly had not yet envisioned the "enemy" as being too powerful. In his eyes, whether it was Shen Yufei or Pan Han, they were at most small-time thieves with relatively high status in human society.
Oh no!
In that instant, a fatal sense of crisis suddenly filled David's chest, making his hair stand on end. Yes, he no longer feared small-caliber firearms of human civilization, but that was it.
"Get down!"
David grabbed Shi Qiang, who was about to go inspect Pan Han's body, and used the immense strength born from his psionically-enhanced body to shove him hard onto the sandy ground.
"Hey! Brother David? What's going—"
But David had no time to answer him. Through his psionic vision, David clearly saw a silver-white sphere suddenly rising on the eastern slope of the valley, facing toward the Fertile Crescent. The terrifying destructive power radiating from that sphere made even David's heart skip a beat.
"General Chang!" David shouted at Chang Weisi, who was discussing detailed plans with foreign representatives to continue striking local Jihadists.
Hearing David's shout, a look of confusion flashed across Chang Weisi's face. The silver lightning was still brewing, but at that moment, it was about to burst forth.
After pinning Shi Qiang down, David lunged toward Chang Weisi. At the same time, a dazzling silver-white flash, like another moon hanging above the valley, expanded at an extreme speed. In just a few seconds, it turned into a massive silver-white curtain enveloping the entire valley.
"Danger!"
David pressed Chang Weisi down beneath him, and at the same time, pushed down the American colonel standing beside the General.
Although this UN vanguard consisted of only about two hundred people, they were truly an elite force. Almost at the exact moment David shouted, most soldiers immediately entered a state of tactical concealment.
Thus, when the thunder inside the light sphere on the eastern side collapsed under its own weight, releasing bursts of silver electrical waves toward the surroundings, only a very few people were caught with their upper bodies exposed to the silver light.
"Damn it! Enemy attack! Enemy attack!"
When Alexei saw half of his comrade's body slide down from mid-air—the wound at the waist looking as if it had been surgically removed with a scalpel, revealing a clean gap mixed with charred internal organs—he immediately assumed a combat stance and shouted at the top of his lungs.
Amidst the cries of the Russian soldiers, the paratroopers quickly restored order. They calmed down with extreme speed and formed combat lines, beginning to organize a defense using their available equipment.
"Pah! What the hell was that just now?"
Shi Qiang spat out a mouthful of sand. He saw the two M1 Abrams tanks used to clear roadblocks at the village entrance; only half of their hulls remained. The upper sections looked as if they had been swallowed by some kind of force, vanishing into thin air in just a few seconds. His eyes widened, and he angrily grabbed a nearby officer from the Earth Defense Security Department.
"Damn it! What the hell are we investigating? I'm not afraid to die, but I don't want to die in this godforsaken place without even knowing why!"
While Shi Qiang was cursing and trying to squeeze more information out of the Security Department, the conversation between David, Chang Weisi, and the others was much calmer.
"I owe you a life." Chang Weisi pulled out his pistol, warily watching the only road in the valley leading to the village.
"The enemy's sonic weapon destroyed the radios." After the American officer crawled up, he violently tore the radio from a half-destroyed all-terrain infantry vehicle and smashed it on the ground. He then pulled out a satellite phone, complaining as he looked at the completely vanished signal. "We have no contact with the outside world! We can't even call for resources."
"Don't worry, Jon, at least we're still alive," Chang Weisi consoled him.
"And we have an extreme lack of ammunition," the officer named Jon said in dry, broken Chinese. "All vehicles are disabled. We can only rely on the 'firewood sticks' in our hands and at most two hundred rounds of ammunition per person! There's very little medicine and food! Fortunately, there's a well in the village; I just hope they didn't poison it... Oh god! I never thought war could be fought like this!"
The American officer used a pair of binoculars pulled from his pocket to observe the distance. A convoy of technicals was moving from the desert toward the village. Estimating the number of Jihadist troops, Jon's face turned pale.
"There are at least a thousand of them." Jon shook his head, trying his best to stay calm.
"There are also snipers in the shadows," David said calmly, picking up a specialized plastic bullet casing from the ground and showing it to Chang Weisi and the American.
A bullet, affected by the valley wind, grazed the cheek of a soldier who was trying to push a disabled vehicle to the village entrance as a barricade. The sound and movement were very low, escaping almost everyone's notice except David's.
Using his psionic overhead view to trace the source of the shot, David saw a killer lying in a haystack on the hillside, holding a sniper rifle without blinking, aiming at the UN troops in the valley.
Hearing David's words, the American's face grew even paler. For the first time, even Chang Weisi's expression became grim.