469: Chapter 469 Forty-two words for twelve lives

In the rain outside the Penang Parliament Building, Lin Meihua screamed into the loudspeaker, "Paste that photo on the door of the Parliament Building." Her voice grew raspy from shouting, so she dipped her fingers into the rainwater to moisten her throat. Then she continued to shout.

In Pudu, in the center of Kuala Lumpur, Chinese merchants boarded up their doors and windows with bed planks and scrap metal. A grocery store owner carried a box of compressed biscuits up to the attic. His wife squatted at the top of the stairs and turned the volume on her mobile phone to the maximum. Anwar's voice emerged from the phone's speaker, echoing in the cramped stairwell: "I order all military personnel to immediately cease hostilities against civilians—lay down your weapons—"

In the old town of Ipoh, Principal Chen burned the audio file of Anwar's speech onto a USB drive. His hands hovered over the computer, afraid to rest them, fearing he might damage the monitor that had been smashed by the UMNO Youth and was leaking light from the bottom right corner of the cracked screen. That drop of trembling light rolled over the shards of broken glass as he struck the final Enter key, and solidified once more on the wood grain of the desk.

On the Titan Division positions on the outskirts of Petaling Jaya, Zhao Yuxun turned on the holographic projector of the armored command vehicle. A three-dimensional image of Zhang Cheng appeared over the downtown area of Kuala Lumpur at an altitude of three hundred meters—a height that would allow more than half of the people in the city to see it when they looked up.

The image unfolded in the night sky of Kuala Lumpur. Zhang Cheng stood in front of a three-dimensional model of the Parliament Building, with live footage of the Kra Isthmus rocket artillery position behind him—the launchers of six PHL-191 rocket systems loomed in the shadows of the rubber forest.

"Citizens of Kuala Lumpur—I am the President of the Federation of Myanmar, Zhang Cheng."

His voice was pushed toward the city by the holographic projector's directional sound waves. The sound waves penetrated concrete, passed through the ventilation shafts of underground bunkers, and pierced through windows boarded up with wooden planks, vibrating with a faint echo in every room where people remained.

"Starting tonight—a humanitarian corridor in downtown Kuala Lumpur is now open. Civilians may head north along the Petaling main road to leave the combat zone. Any armed action along the humanitarian corridor is prohibited—any act of firing upon the humanitarian corridor will be considered a war crime and prosecuted in real-time. The Joint Task Force will ensure the safety of the evacuation route and establish medical stations and supply points along the evacuation route."

He raised his right hand and drew a blue safety marker on the map over Pudu and the areas where ethnic Chinese resided. The blue marker spread out across the night sky, lighting up section by section along the pre-set route nodes.

"Prime Minister Anwar has already issued an order to the national military to lay down their weapons. To the Malaysian soldiers who obey the order and lay down their weapons—your lives and dignity will be protected. To those who continue to execute the orders of the Rashid coup regime—I will only say this once: You are buying time for a man to escape, and this man has already prepared thermobaric bombs and javelin missiles for you."

He paused, looking up in the direction of Merdeka Square.

"One last sentence—for the person in the bunker. Rashid Hassan, regarding the call you made to Barrett, he replied to you with exactly forty-two words. Those forty-two words cost you twelve launch sites and the lives of forty-two Malaysian children. You promised on the radio to live and die with the city—but the seat you reserved on the Gulfstream is a window seat, right next to Zainuddin."

The image vanished, and the directional sound waves ceased. Li Lanzhi recorded on her tablet—one hour after the humanitarian corridor opened, the number of civilians registered for evacuation had exceeded twenty-four hundred. The number was still jumping. Each time it jumped, the orange-red color of the Kuala Lumpur area on the situation map faded a little more. In the Naypyidaw Command Center, this was the only number still jumping.

Midnight.

In a regimental headquarters of the 9th Infantry Division in the southern district of downtown Kuala Lumpur, the first mutiny occurred.

A Malay lieutenant opened the gate of the regimental headquarters and walked out onto the street with twenty-one soldiers. Their rifle barrels were pointed downward, their military caps were removed, and the rank insignia on their collars had been torn off halfway. The lieutenant filmed a video with his phone—facing the dark, dimly lit street, he said: "We are Company B, 3rd Battalion, 9th Infantry Division of the Malaysian Army—twenty-two of us in total, refusing to continue fighting for the anti-Chinese regime. We are now surrendering to the Federation of Myanmar."

He held his phone above his head, letting the camera capture the advancing tank unit. The video was not transmitted—Vega had blocked unencrypted civilian uploads. However, the video was captured by a Myanmar frontline reconnaissance drone, and the signal, after being automatically compiled and organized, was routed to Naypyidaw.

Twenty-three minutes later, the second mutinying unit walked out of the positions of the 11th Reserve Division. This time there were ninety-seven men, led by a major. He brought the entire battalion to surrender their weapons and requested that the humanitarian corridor be opened to them.

At 4:00 AM, an UMNO Youth stronghold located near the city center clock tower was outflanked from the rear by the mutinying Malay troops, who transported the ammunition out the back door of the stronghold without firing a shot. The UMNO Youth attempted to counterattack, but the mutinying soldiers and the Myanmar infiltration special forces team had already blown up the two covered passages leading from the stronghold to the outer streets. The UMNO Youth's javelin anti-tank missiles could not be fired in the crawl tunnels—the seeker head required open space, leaving at least enough room for the backblast from the firing. They were trapped in the bunker they had built themselves.

Barrett's encrypted telegram arrived again at 4:17 AM. This one was even shorter—only three lines. Rashid glanced at it and placed the telegram on the table. The content of the telegram: "US military assessment indicates that the risk of direct intervention is too high. We can dispatch more irregular personnel and provide satellite photos. But please ensure you hold for at least four more days. Within four days, international public opinion will shift—"

Rashid did not finish reading. He said to Army Commander Jamaluddin, "Four days ago, he told me forty-eight hours."

The curfew in Kuala Lumpur, which had gone into effect the evening of the second day, was effectively defunct by the early morning of the third day. The number of civilians who had evacuated through the humanitarian corridor exceeded one hundred and ten thousand. The remaining armed forces in the city were scattered across sporadic streets and underground bunkers. Some UMNO Youth continued to dig combat tunnels around the Parliament Building, but the high water table caused the tunnels to flood with over half a meter of water within four hours, causing the backup batteries for the javelin seeker heads to be completely ruined by soaking.

6:00 AM. Dawn was approaching.

Night Owl crouched on the third floor of a row house in the southwest of downtown Kuala Lumpur. He and eleven "Shadow Blade" team members had set up the final infiltration line of defense here—from intelligence deduction to power tunnels, target trajectories, electromagnetic leaks, and other multi-line clues, they had formed the final coordinate anchor point to lock onto Rashid's location.

He reported to Zhang Cheng via an encrypted channel: "Target locked. Third level of the Parliament Building underground bunker, East Wing operations room. There are about four hundred defenders, including the core of the UMNO Youth and the remaining general staff led by Army Commander Jamaluddin. Infiltration route is prepared. Ready to complete the breach in forty minutes. Requesting execution of decapitation strike."

Zhang Cheng stood before the situation map, overlooking the situation in Kuala Lumpur. The north-south encirclement had closed, the humanitarian corridor was still operating, and the city had fallen into a silent darkness. He reached out and drew a circle with his fingertip over the location marker of the Night Owl team, approving the operation request.

"End it," he said.