490: Chapter 490 Interception of Operation Firestorm

Barrett stared at the computer screen in front of him. On the encrypted channel was the latest telegram sent by "Widowmaker" — —

[ Supplies exhausted, requesting extraction. ]

The telegram was sent an hour ago. Barrett did not reply. He typed a message on the keyboard, looked at it after finishing, and then deleted it all.

"Who is that Widowmaker?" Abramovich asked.

"Black's deputy, a lieutenant colonel from the Marine Corps Special Operations Command. Before Black died, he handed over operational command to him."

Barrett stood up and walked to the military map on the wall of the secret room, which showed the terrain of the western slope of Mount Kinabalu. On the map, sky-blue arrows representing the coalition forces were closing in on the main peak from three directions. On the summit, only one symbol was marked in red: W.

"Black is dead. He took over command." Barrett's voice was low, "He fought for three years in Afghanistan and two years in Syria. He is one of the commanders most skilled in jungle guerrilla warfare in the active-duty US Special Operations Forces.

The command post he established deep in the crevices of Mount Kinabalu utilized all the tactics he accumulated from his last time dealing with the Taliban — — natural karst caves, multi-layered defensive barriers, using mountain crevices for ventilation and power generation, and hiding satellite antennas in water-eroded pits. Unless swarms of infantry are sent to attack, it is very difficult to break in."

"How much longer can he hold out?"

Barrett did not answer. He was still looking at the red W symbol on the map.

Haskins glanced at his tablet again. A new push notification popped up on the screen — — a press release from the Federal Prosecutor's Office, titled "CIA Sarawak Station Chief Mel arrested, confesses to Barrett's signed documents." He flipped the tablet face down on the table and did not read it out.

3:00 AM on the third day. Lin Xiao-7's squad crept up to the crevice entrance.

The crevice was hidden in a pile of aerial roots of three dipterocarp trees. The entrance was less than a meter wide, and the limestone edges were scorched Black by the heat from the generator. When she saw this gap through her night vision goggles, her right hand touched something sticky on the rock wall — — it was lubricating oil. The US military had coated both sides of the crevice with lubricating oil to prevent climbing.

"Professional enough." She scraped off a bit of the oily sludge with her fingernail and tapped her knuckles three times on the channel — — this was the signal for "entrance found."

The crevice at the entrance was only wide enough for one person to pass through sideways. Inside the crevice was a natural limestone karst cave; stalactites hung from the ceiling of the cave, and the floor was a slippery travertine surface. It was completely dark inside, with only the faint light of the night vision goggles flickering in her field of vision. The air was cold and damp, and every breath carried the chill seeping from the limestone.

After penetrating sixty meters, the cave branched into three passages. The left branch led to the upper level of the cave, the middle branch was a short dead end, and the right branch sloped downward, leading deep into the mountain. The satellite signal source came from the bottom of the right branch.

Lin Xiao-7 stopped at the entrance of the right branch. She crouched down and scanned the passage with a laser rangefinder — — there were traces of manual excavation on the passage floor, and on the smooth ground remained rubber imprints from US military boot soles; the tracks on the travertine were still fresh.

"Tripwire mine." She tapped her knuckles four times on the channel.

The bomb disposal expert crawled forward and dismantled the first set of tripwire mines seven meters from the entrance — — two M18A1 directional mines, with the mine bodies fixed to the limestone walls on both sides of the passage, and the tripwire crossing the passage, only fifteen centimeters off the ground. When the bomb disposal expert cut the tripwire with hydraulic shears, sweat dripped from the lower edge of the mask onto the shear handle, making a very faint ticking sound.

After passing the first trap, the passage began to slope, with an incline of over twenty degrees. A faint blue light shone from ahead — — it was the cold light of a generator indicator lamp.

The command room was at the very bottom.

At the bottom of the cave was a naturally formed hall, nearly the size of a basketball court. In the center of the hall stood a portable tactical command console, the screen displaying the surrounding electronic map and the communication network already semi-paralyzed by Vega's interference. The generator leaned against one side of the rock wall, with the exhaust pipe leading to the outside of the mountain through a crack in the rock wall.

There were eleven other people in the hall. Six US Army special forces soldiers, three militants from the southern Philippines, and one wounded mercenary from Australia sitting against the wall, his leg wrapped in bandages. Another person was crouching in front of the communication console operating the encryption equipment, with a snake and dagger embroidered on the sleeve patch of his uniform — — that was the unit insignia of the US Navy SEAL Team Seven.

Lin Xiao-7 set up her optical sight at the end of the passage. In the center of the scope was the communication officer's forehead. Her index finger hooked onto the trigger, and her breathing paused for 0.5 seconds.

When the gun fired, a spray of blood from the communication officer's rear skull splattered onto the display screen. The blood splashed onto the keyboard of the encryption equipment, dyeing the asterisk key red. His fingers were still resting on the keyboard, and the half-typed extraction request remained on the screen — — [ WIDOWMAKER TO Barrett : AMMO 5% . NO EXFIL . LAST TRANSMISSION — — ]

The US special forces soldiers raised their guns almost simultaneously, but the Lin Xiao Special Forces members had already poured in from the passage entrance, bullets leading the way. Two assault rifles fired continuously in the cave, which was less than the size of a basketball court; shell casings bounced and collided on the floor, and some casings rolled onto the generator exhaust pipe, steamed by the hot air of the exhaust pipe, emitting thin smoke.

Lin Xiao-4 cut in from the left, her scope locked onto the Philippine militant attempting to pull out a grenade. The gun fired, the grenade fuse was shot, the grenade exploded in his palm, shrapnel flew everywhere, and another militant nearby was simultaneously pierced through the neck.

Half of the six US special forces soldiers fell within the first seven seconds of suppressive fire. The remaining ones used the overturned metal tabletop of the command console as cover to return fire. But there was no second exit in the cave, and the trajectory rebounded several times off the limestone walls; shotgun-like ricochets pierced the shoulder blade of the gunman on the left side of the cover.

In less than three minutes, all the US troops in the hall were down. The Australian mercenary with bandages on his leg raised his hands — — his sidearm slid out from between the layers of bandages and was kicked by Lin Xiao-7 into the generator exhaust pipe. The pistol scorched against the hot metal wall, emitting the acrid smell of burnt gun oil.

The encryption equipment was intact.

Lin Xiao-7 pulled the hard drive from the chair the communication officer had been sitting on and connected it to a portable decryption terminal. Files popped up line by line: all encrypted communication records between Barrett and Black, weapons transfer manifests, white phosphorus munition authorization forms, and operational orders for mercenaries and guerrillas. At the end of each document were the signatures of the relevant US military commander and Barrett.

One of the operational orders, titled "Operation Firestorm," listed the next action plan: "If necessary, detonate the high-energy explosives buried on the southwest slope of Mount Kinabalu to create a massive landslide, frame Myanmar, and bury alive over two thousand people in the three Kadazan villages at the foot of the slope."

Lin Xiao-7 stared at the text on the screen. She tapped her knuckles three times on the channel — — this was the designated signal for "major discovery." After tapping, she didn't speak, but wiped the edge of her goggles with her thumb.

She pulled out the hard drive and handed it to the accompanying technical Death Soldiers.

"Take a screenshot of this document. Send it directly to the UN Security Council."