189: Chapter 189 The Backlash of the Perfect Weapon: An Indiscriminate Carpet Bombing!

The temperature in the Zagros Mountains was still climbing, heating even the stones until they were hot to the touch. But right now, Pops only felt cold all over, a chill seeping out from the marrow of his bones.

He curled up behind a massive granite boulder, panting heavily. Every breath he drew was filled with the thick stench of blood and the acrid, chemical smell of burning.

"Ah—! Save me! Pops, save me!"

A blood-curdling shriek echoed from the other side of the boulder. Pops poked half his head out.

The young Ranger medic, Mike, was pinned to the ground by the front pincers of a "Walker". The metal scorpion's abdomen glowed with a creepy red light, and the stinger on its tail slammed into Mike's thigh.

Highly corrosive green acid gushed out from the injection wound.

There was no blood. Mike's combat uniform, tactical vest, and the flesh and bone beneath liquefied in seconds like ice meeting boiling water. Before he could even utter a second scream, his entire body dissolved into a puddle of bubbling, steaming green sludge.

"Motherfucker!"

The machine gunner, Hans, saw red. He stood up from behind cover, holding an M249 light machine gun, and held down the trigger.

Brass casings rained onto the ground as a torrential storm of bullets pelted the Walker's carapace, kicking up a dense shower of sparks.

It was useless. Completely useless.

The Walker turned its head, which was covered in crimson compound eyes. Its eight mechanical legs suddenly lunged, its massive body leaving an afterimage behind.

It was too fast.

Before Hans could even turn his barrel, the Walker had already pounced in front of him. With a swing of its massive front pincers, Hans was snipped in half at the waist along with his gun. His upper torso flew over a dozen meters away, spilling his organs across the ground.

Pops gritted his teeth, slapped a block of C4 explosive onto his tactical vest, and clamped his thumb tightly over the detonator.

They couldn't win. This thing was simply not something humans could fight.

Its bulletproof scale armor couldn't even be penetrated by armor-piercing rounds, its speed was incredibly fast, and it could spit acid. Where on earth did those brain-dead morons at The Pentagon get this kind of monster?

He glanced to his side. Out of the entire squad of over sixty elite special forces soldiers, only he and David, the radio operator whose arm had been sliced off, were left.

David's face was covered in blood. He was twitching in agony, biting down hard on a rag to keep himself from making a sound.

"David, listen," Pops whispered, quickly giving instructions. "I'm going to rush out in a moment and detonate the C4. No matter how tough this thing is, a high-explosive blast at point-blank range will cripple it. Take that chance to run down the mountain."

David shook his head frantically, tears mixing with blood as they streamed down his face.

Ignoring him, Pops took a deep breath and suddenly lunged out from behind the boulder.

"Hey, bastard! Look over here!" Pops roared, charging straight at the nearest Walker.

The Walker instantly locked onto Pops, raising its tail stinger high.

Five meters. Three meters.

Pops slammed his thumb down on the detonator.

Nothing happened.

He froze for a split second. Looking down, he saw that the fuse of the C4 had been burned through at some point by a splash of acid.

In that half-second delay, the Walker's tail stinger was already before his eyes. Pops closed his eyes in despair.

Al Dhafra Air Base, UAE.

The command center was so quiet that only the hum of the air conditioning ducts could be heard.

On the giant screen, the footage transmitted back from the tactical recorders continued to play. Shreds of flesh, severed limbs, and smoking puddles of green liquid littered the ground.

Five Walkers, glowing with red light, were crushing the U Federation's most elite special forces unit bit by bit, like stepping on ants.

General Kendal slumped on the sofa, his collar unbuttoned, sweat soaking through his expensive military uniform shirt. His eyes were glued to the screen, his Adam's apple bobbing with difficulty.

It was over. All over.

How was this showing off their muscles? They were practically begging to be slaughtered!

"General..." The chief of staff swallowed hard, his voice trembling violently as he leaned in close to Kendur's ear. "Colonel Coleman... is still in those mountains."

Kendur shuddered violently and snapped his head around to look at the chief of staff.

"The coordinates of Coleman's crashed F-16 are less than two kilometers from the combat zone," the chief of staff said, his face pale. "These five killing machines are completely out of control now, operating in an indiscriminate attack mode. Once they finish off our men, their next step will be to track heat signatures and head right over."

Kendur felt a loud buzzing in his head as his blood pressure spiked straight to his skull.

Coleman!

He was Senator Gelliman's nephew! That old bastard treated his nephew like his own son, sending him to the Middle East theater just to get some easy credit and pad his resume so he could return home to earn a general's star.

Great. Now, padding his resume had turned into a death sentence.

What was even worse was that the thing killing Coleman wouldn't be an Iranian missile or a guerrilla sniper's stray bullet, but the "new toy" that Kendur himself had insisted on buying at an astronomical price against all objections!

If those politicians in Congress found out that he had spent taxpayer money to buy a batch of out-of-control monsters that tore their own ace pilot and dozens of elite special forces soldiers to shreds...

Court-martial? That would be the least of his worries.

The military-industrial complex tycoons backing them would absolutely send CIA agents to drown him in a toilet in the dead of night, then stage it as a heart attack.

"Re-establish the connection! Hurry!" Kendur jumped up and roared at the tech desk. "Input the self-destruct code! Use a hard bypass! Do whatever it takes, just make them stop!"

The bespectacled technician, drenched in sweat, typed so fast his hands were a blur. "It's no use! General, the core logic is locked! This isn't a system malfunction—this is a hardcoded command written into their genes and motherboards! They aren't accepting any external signals right now!"

"Then cut the power! Cut the signal source!"

"They're biological weapons! They have their own internal energy cycle! We can't shut them down!" the technician cried, on the verge of tears.

The muscles at the corner of Kendur's eyes twitched violently.

On the big screen, Pops' spine had already been crushed under a Walker's foot, and he was crawling desperately across the ground. The Walker was in no rush to kill him, instead playing with him like a cat with a mouse, using its front pincers to crush his limbs one by one.

No survivors can be left.

No evidence can remain.

Absolutely no one can find out that these five monsters killed Coleman and the rescue squad.

A flash of murderous intent crossed Kendur's eyes. He reached for his waist and drew his sidearm.

"Bang!"

The gunshot exploded in the enclosed command center, deafeningly loud.

A blossom of blood erupted from the back of the typing technician's head, and his body slumped over the console. Blood ran down the screen, dripping onto the floor.

Everyone in the command room was petrified. The chief of staff fell back onto his rear, and several officers instinctively reached for their sidearms, but froze when they saw that the shooter was their supreme commander.

Wisps of smoke still drifted from the barrel of Kendur's gun. He swept a cold gaze over everyone present, his voice freezing cold.

"This kid was an Iranian spy. He just uploaded a virus that paralyzed our tactical network."

No one dared to speak. Even their breathing was hushed to a minimum.

They were all seasoned schemers; who couldn't see through this act? The technician was dead, and dead men tell no tales.

"Listen carefully." Kendur slammed his gun onto the table, leaning over the console as he glared at the chief of staff. "Cut all upload channels for the tactical recorders on the front lines immediately. Shred the footage we just saw completely, and physically destroy the backup servers along with it."

The chief of staff scrambled to his feet. "Yes... Yes! But General, what about the front lines..."

"The front lines?" Kendur sneered, pointing at the screen which had already dissolved into static. "The front lines were ambushed by the main force of Da Shi State's Revolutionary Guard. The enemy deployed an unknown, internationally banned biochemical weapon, resulting in the total annihilation of our rescue squad. Colonel Coleman died a heroic death."

A cold sweat broke out on the chief of staff. He was going to completely cover this up.

"What about the five Walkers?" an operations staff officer nearby asked, summoning his courage.

"What Walkers? We have never deployed such things. Those are Da Shi State's biochemical weapons." Kendur's face was grim as he grabbed the red secure phone. "Get me Air Force Command."

The call went through.

"This is Kendur. Highest authorization level. Scramble two B-1B strategic bombers immediately, loaded with GBU-57 bunker busters and napalm."

The other end of the line paused. "General, our men are still in the target area..."

"I said they are all dead!" Kendur roared into the receiver. "Coordinates: Zagros Mountains, Area A4. Give me indiscriminate carpet bombing! I want that hilltop cleared so thoroughly that not even a single fly is left alive! Now! Immediately!"

Hanging up the phone, Kendur panted heavily.

As long as that place was bombed into scorched earth, all evidence would turn to ash in the extreme heat. Whether Coleman was dead or alive, and no matter how tough those Walkers were, under a joint cleansing of napalm and bunker busters, they would all be reduced to an indistinguishable pile of carbonized slag.

As for the money spent on buying those weapons...

Kendur gritted his teeth, knowing he just had to take the loss. He would find an excuse to report the loss to The Pentagon later. Saving his own skin was his top priority right now.

In the command room, the staff officers quickly began destroying the data. No one paid any attention to the technician's corpse on the floor.

They were all in the same boat; if this leaked out, the entire command staff would end up on the gallows.

Ten minutes later.

Two massive B-1B "Lancer" strategic bombers took off from the runway of Al Dhafra Air Base, screaming through the sky as they headed straight for the Zagros Mountains.

Their bomb bays were fully loaded with destructive munitions capable of erasing a small mountain from the map.

At the same time.

Umbrella Corporation Underground War Room.

Chen Feng leaned back in his executive chair, looking at the intercepted internal US military communications on the big screen, and chuckled.

"Tsk, tsk, how ruthless," Chen Feng said, taking a sip of his coffee. "Bombing their own people, not even caring about his own nephew. Those U Federation bureaucrats are far better at passing the buck than they are at fighting."

Standing to the side, Sarah watched the two bomber blips moving rapidly on the screen and pushed up her glasses. "Boss, if they bomb them like this, our Walkers will be destroyed too. Those are five actual, finished products."

"Finished products? Those are industrial garbage," Chen Feng waved his hand dismissively. "They have to bomb them. If they don't, how are they going to pin the blame on Qasim? And if Qasim doesn't take the fall, how is this fire going to burn bright?"

He stood up, walked over to the giant holographic globe, and tapped his finger on the location of the Zagros Mountains.

"This show is just getting started. They want to destroy the evidence?" Chen Feng sneered. "Then let them bomb it. The harder they strike, the bigger the 'surprise' Qasim will receive."