86: Chapter 86: Artillery fire ravaged the land, leaving dead and wounded everywhere.

Kevin Mosby took a step forward from behind, his gun still pointed ahead, but the sight had instinctively dipped slightly lower.

He didn't speak into the comms, keeping the field channel open, and turned his head directly to look at Heinlein, his voice pressed extremely low but urgent:

"Director."

"Our previous pre-action analysis and the threat rating set for the liquid zero might have a fundamental deviation."

"The thing they were laughing at has nothing to do with the liquid zero itself..."

Heinlein raised a hand to stop him from continuing, his gaze shifting back and forth between Edward and Musk, silent for a moment.

When he spoke, his tone was no longer the execution-style coldness that came with an authorized warrant, but rather the cautious suspicion that only appears when a head of an intelligence agency discovers they are navigating an entire armed tactical team with the wrong map:

"You... you just said there are factions within the Deep State."

"One of those factions has chosen you, so what is your current identity?"

Musk lowered the back of the hand he had just used to wipe his tears, took a deep breath to calm his laughter, and then looked Heinlein straight in the eye:

"You heard me right. I am already a probationary employee of the Deep State's Tech Faction."

"Although I haven't passed the probation period yet, at least Joshua came personally to give me an assignment. That's much better than following that puppet president who only knows how to drool and soil his pants."

He tilted his head into the door frame, lifted his left hand—which had already been regenerated once with liquid zero—and shook it.

"You want liquid zero? If you want it, just tell me, and I can give you a bottle for free."

He put his hand back into the side pocket of his leather jacket, his tone as casual as if he were handing a neighbor an extra screwdriver.

The sound of Kevin Mosby's breathing behind Heinlein suddenly became very heavy at that moment.

He slowly lowered his pistol until the sight drew a circle on the ground at his feet, pointing back at the floor.

As the Deputy Director of the Operations Division, he knew an unwritten iron law in every intelligence system:

The harder you try to distinguish something you think belongs on The Pentagon or Congressional threat list, the more likely you are to turn yourself into the only outsider left in the dark.

They had traveled thousands of miles to mobilize a special cleanup team from Langley, signing a mission order targeting the liquid zero.

And now, Musk was willing to give them the liquid zero for free.

All CIA personnel present, including the senior field agents in the front row of the tactical cleanup team still crouching behind cover, all realized a chilling fact at the same time:

In the eyes of the people opposite them, the force they had deployed tonight was neither an authority nor a threat, but merely an outside force that had stumbled into the wrong place, unaware of even the mission objective.

And the President's order to obtain the liquid zero, in the coordinate system of the Deep State, was stealing from the people of the Deep State's Tech Faction.

The fate of those who dare to steal from the Deep State goes without saying.

They were not the hunters; they were merely the prey.

The real hunters, the Longevity Faction, had not yet arrived.

Three minutes ago, the CIA tactical team was still holding their guns, aiming at the people inside the door frame.

Three minutes later,

Heinlein had already removed his encrypted communication terminal from his tactical vest and was huddled around the same alloy tabletop with Moran, Musk, and Edward.

The single remaining emergency light above the four of them flickered, casting distinct outlines on the hand-drawn base structure sketch on the table and several scattered liquid zero injection tubes.

Facing the upcoming silencing operation by the Longevity Faction, all past grievances became irrelevant.

When an earthquake or landslide happens, the rabbit will sit on the tiger's back to run together; the tiger won't eat the rabbit at that moment because "if the skin is gone, the hair has nowhere to grow."

Heinlein laid the command of the CIA special cleanup team directly on the table.

Moran marked the deployment positions of the remaining FBI agents on the sketch.

Musk divided all the liquid zero he brought into four equal portions:

One portion for his own special forces, one for the Warren Family's Retainers, one pushed to Moran's FBI agents, and the last pushed to Heinlein's CIA tactical team.

No one haggled, no one set conditions, no one brought up old scores.

The Warren Family Retainers, directed by Edward, occupied key support pillar positions around the atrium of Warehouse 18, fixing directional demolition explosives at the structural weak points at the junction of the bedrock and concrete according to the predetermined angles.

Musk's retired special forces built a circular defensive line in the center of the atrium using mobile blast shields and quick-setting foam barriers. Brick crouched behind the floor mat of the first line of defense, calibrating his helmet's night vision.

On the opposite side, FBI agents Lewis, Rivera, and Owens were responsible for the crossfire point at the east wing corridor entrance.

The CIA tactical team arranged their M4 carbines and light machine guns alternately behind cover on both sides of the west wing ventilation duct exit.

The circular defensive line was only halfway built when the first row of shells came crashing down.

They didn't come from the door; they came from above.

From the top of Warehouse 18, from that bedrock ceiling that had been cut smooth and flat, they tore through an unknown number of layers of rock and concrete, ripping through the air with a dull, approaching whistle.

The moment the first shell hit the center of the atrium, the entire warehouse shuddered violently from floor to ceiling;

Immediately followed by the second, the third, the tenth, hundreds...

Dense as a rainstorm hitting a tin roof,

Blast shields were shattered and blown away,

Isolation barriers were torn into burning fragments by the shockwaves, ejecting in all directions,

Mutilated bodies, severed limbs, and broken gun parts were lifted into mid-air from behind the cover.

The first round of shelling lasted only a few seconds, but the ground was already covered with a layer of shredded corpses, charred combat uniforms, and blood-soaked fragments of ceramic bulletproof plates.

During the first wave of shock from the explosions, Musk was tackled and pinned down by two special forces soldiers.

His right ear was ringing from the blast, his left face was smeared with splashed sand and blood, but his limbs were intact.

Edward was dragged by three Retainers into a blast-proof recess behind a support pillar.

Those Retainers used their bodies to form a human wall, blocking all the shockwaves and shrapnel outside the recess.

Edward knelt halfway in the pile of rubble, his right shoulder cut open by a piece of flying concrete, his jacket torn, and dark red blood seeping through his shirt.

Heinlein and Moran were each pinned behind the wreckage of their own cover by their subordinates, dusty but still alive.

A brief gap.

Before anyone could catch their breath, the second round of shelling arrived.

There were at least a thousand shells, with a density and intensity far exceeding the first round.

The entire atrium was covered by continuous explosions.

Stone fragments, shell casings, gun wreckage, and body parts on the ground were repeatedly lifted and slammed down by the shockwaves.

The entire earth heaved violently under the hammer of the explosions.

The concrete floor shattered, several support pillars were blown apart,

And on the rock walls, dense, spiderweb-like cracks began to appear, extending from the base all the way to the ceiling.

The sound of the explosions was no longer individual blasts, but a continuous, low-frequency roar, like a wound being torn open in the earth's crust that would never heal.

By the time the last shell landed and exploded, and the echoes gradually dissipated in the bedrock cracks, Warehouse 18 had turned into a meat grinder.

More than a dozen craters of varying depths had been blasted into the ground, the largest over twelve feet in diameter, with dark red blood seeping into the bottom.

The walls were covered in cracks carved out by shrapnel, and a section of the ceiling had collapsed, revealing a patch of exposed, shattered rock.

The air was thick with the pungent, sweet, charred smell of gunpowder, burnt fat, and viscera scorched by high heat.

Severed limbs and visceral fragments were scattered everywhere.

Some hung from broken concrete rebar,

Some were pushed into wall cracks by the shockwaves, indistinguishable as to whose they were.

There were those of the Warren Family Retainers, special forces, FBI agents, and the CIA tactical team, all mixed together.

When Diana Hopkins, Sterling Remington, and Augustus Knox walked down the rubble slope from the main entrance of the warehouse,

This was the scene they saw.

Behind them followed a large group of heavily armed private elites, their footsteps making a dense crunching sound on the layers of broken Bricks.

Sterling covered his nose and mouth with a handkerchief to avoid the smoke, stood at the edge of a crater, and looked inside.

It was filled with corpse fragments, and blood seeped from the cracks in the ground into the bedrock fissures.

Then he turned his head to look at Augustus, the corners of his mouth curling up, his tone leisurely and unhurried, carrying the composed certainty unique to an arms aristocracy:

"Dead."

"They're all dead."

"After being raked over by thousands of artillery shells, even the Hulk couldn't walk out of such a sea of fire."

"The eyeball is still at the Starship Base. Just send someone to retrieve it."

Augustus released his hands from his waist, took two steps forward, his boot crushing the edge of a charred bone. He looked down for a moment, his tone flat and certain:

"After tonight, the map of the Starship Base will be nothing more than a checklist in our hands."

"Once the eyeball is in hand, there will be nothing to hesitate about regarding the Longevity Faction. Our three families will become official members of the Longevity Faction."

"We will become the true inner core of the Deep State!"

Diana stood between them without saying much.

She stood on the ruins that were still emitting thick smoke, facing the cold wind blowing in from the hole in the ceiling, looking at the fragments of the dead all over the ground. The stone that had been hanging in her heart since the Hongmen Banquet in San Antonio finally fell.

Musk was dead, Edward was dead, and the eyeball would soon be back in her hands.

The task assigned by Lord Zhang Long was complete; the Hopkins Family would no longer be just an outside role relying on shining shoes.

She raised her head to look at the bone fragments embedded in the wall across the crater, and the corners of her mouth moved slightly.

It was not a smile; it was a silent satisfaction belonging to a victor.

Then, a piece of flesh on the ruins moved.

It was not a slide caused by the aftershocks of the earthquake, nor was it a displacement caused by rolling rubble.

That piece of flesh moved on its own.