261: Chapter 261 Five Tons Underground, Please Sign for Delivery

Cohen shook with rage: "In your dreams! Soldiers of the Squid Nation never surrender! Armored corps, fight to the end!"

He had just finished speaking—

Rumble rumble rumble...!!!

It wasn't an explosion, but a deeper, more terrifying vibration. It came from underground.

Cohen felt the tank he was in suddenly sink downward! He looked out of the vehicle in horror, only to see the ground in the center of the intersection cracking and collapsing! A massive sinkhole over twenty meters in diameter was forming, and the tanks and armored vehicles at its edges were inevitably sliding into the abyss!

"No—!" Cohen's scream was drowned out by a more violent explosion.

Underground, Muhammad pressed the red button.

Five tons of C4 explosives, pre-planted in the hollows beneath the "Three-Way Junction," were detonated simultaneously.

A massive shockwave erupted upward from the depths, completely flipping the ground of the entire intersection! Burning tanks, twisted armored vehicles, and the severed limbs of soldiers were tossed into the air, then fell back down like trash.

The flames of the explosion soared into the sky, painting the night a blood-red color.

Immediately after, fifty drones carrying napalm bombs flew in from all directions, dropping their incendiary payloads onto the sinkhole and the surrounding ruins. The napalm adhered to metal and human bodies, burning fiercely at temperatures reaching thousands of degrees, causing even steel to begin melting.

Screams, explosions, and the crackling of fire intertwined into a hellish elegy.

As everything gradually subsided, the "Three-Way Junction" had turned into a massive, burning graveyard. All twelve merkava tanks were destroyed—some blown into individual components, others burned down to their skeletons. Eight armored vehicles met the same fate. As for the soldiers... there were almost no intact corpses.

Khalid and his squad had already evacuated to a safe area through the tunnels. They stood on the roof of a distant building, silently watching that sea of fire.

The young Muhammad knelt on the ground and began to vomit. Abbas patted his back without saying a word.

Khalid picked up his binoculars and looked toward the edge of the sinkhole. He saw a figure—a man in an officer's uniform, his lower body pinned under the wreckage of a tank, his upper body still writhing, seemingly still alive.

It was the battalion commander, Major Moses Cohen.

Khalid remained silent for a few seconds before speaking into the radio: "Reporting to the Marshal, Plan 'Anvil' is complete. The target armored company has been wiped out. Found a heavily wounded enemy officer, possibly the battalion commander. How should we proceed?"

From the distant command post, Sinwar's voice came through: "Bring him back. We need him alive."

"Understood."

Khalid took two men with him, crossing through the still-burning ruins toward the dying battalion commander.

Major Cohen's face was covered in blood, his eyes half-open as he watched Khalid approach. His lips moved as if he were trying to say something.

Khalid crouched down and heard him say in a weak voice: "Water... give me water..."

Khalid unhooked the canteen from his waist, unscrewed the cap, and poured the cool water into Cohen's cracked mouth.

Cohen swallowed greedily; after a few gulps, he seemed to regain a bit of consciousness. He saw Khalid's attire clearly, and noticed the bullet casing necklace on his chest.

"You... won..." Cohen's voice was full of bitterness, "But you... will all die... Lavitz won't let you off..."

"Maybe," Khalid said calmly, "But today, we aren't letting you off."

He gestured for his subordinates to drag Cohen out from under the wreckage—his legs were crushed, but he wouldn't die just yet. They carried him on a makeshift stretcher and disappeared into the darkness of the tunnel entrance.

Behind them at the "Three-Way Junction," the flames continued to burn, illuminating the wreckage of the twelve merkava tanks like massive, steel-forged coffins.

At six in the morning, the first faint rays of dawn arrived at the "Three-Way Junction," where the smoke had yet to dissipate.

The sunlight pierced through the pervasive dust and smoke, illuminating this hellish scene that had been completely turned to scorched earth. The massive sinkhole was like a wound in the earth, its edges jagged, revealing the cross-sections of intersecting tunnels below. At the bottom of the pit and around it lay twisted metal wreckage from the fire—remnants of the once-imposing merkava main battle tanks and "Namer" heavy armored personnel carriers.

Of the twelve merkavas, not a single one was intact.

The most wretched one had its turret blown over thirty meters away, crashing into the second floor of a ruined building, leaving only the chassis slumped lonely by the edge of the pit, its engine compartment burned to an empty shell. Another had been half-swallowed by the ground collapse, the exposed part looking as if it had been bitten by a giant beast, its armor plates curled and torn. Several others had been repeatedly baptized by napalm bombs, the high temperatures melting the steel into grotesque sculptures, with everything inside the vehicles carbonized.

The eight armored vehicles met a similar fate. One was flipped over on the ground, chassis facing the sky, its wheels still slowly turning. Another had been hit multiple times by RPG rockets, its side riddled with honeycomb-like holes. Even more were destroyed by the dual forces of explosion and fire, turning into scrap metal that was hard to identify.

The air was thick with the pungent smell of burning, the stench of plastic fire, and... the sickly sweet scent of roasted meat. Those were the soldiers who hadn't had time to escape their vehicles.

A few relatively intact corpses lay among the ruins, frozen in their final moments of struggling or running, but most had been burned beyond recognition. Even more common were the scattered severed limbs, fragments of internal organs, and congealed blood clots. A pack of wild dogs hovered in the distance, greedily sniffing the blood, but they didn't yet dare to approach this freshly cooled killing field.

Sinwar's film crew arrived at the scene just one hour after the battle ended. Five Death Soldiers, carrying the most advanced cinema-grade photography equipment, drones, and recording devices, began their work in the darkest hour before dawn.

The team leader, codenamed "Lens," was once a BBC war correspondent; after being summoned by the system, he was given a new mission. He wore dust-covered civilian clothes, his face smeared with camouflage paint, his eyes sharp and calm.

"Group A, use the drones for wide shots. Start from a high altitude and slowly lower down, focusing on the scale of the sinkhole and the distribution of the tank wreckage," Lens commanded through his headset. "Group B, ground shots. I want close-ups—the identification numbers on the tank turrets, the charred enemy markings, the destroyed optical equipment. And those corpses, especially the officers', make them clear but not excessively gory; we want shock, not disgust."

"Group C, follow me. We're going to film the 'protagonist'."

The "protagonist" was Major Moses Cohen. He lay on the first floor of a relatively intact building ruin nearby. His legs had been treated simply with tourniquets and splints, but his injuries were too severe; he had lost too much blood, his face was as pale as paper, and he was in a semi-comatose state. Two Resistance Organization medics were tending to him, administering saline solution captured from an enemy ambulance.