The battle lasted for exactly two hours.
Just as Song Heping had anticipated.
After Kundi's death, the pirate fighters' command fell into paralysis.
Without command, all the pirates turned into scattered ants, each fighting on their own.
Routing soldiers are the easiest to deal with.
Originally at a disadvantage, Nura quickly repelled the pirates with Song Heping's two-man team supporting her.
When the retreating pirates ran to the sea intending to board their ships to escape, they found that their leader Abdul had long since abandoned them and sailed away.
With no retreat path left, those pirates surrounded at the beach could only surrender and all became prisoners in the end.
When Song Heping brought Jiang Feng to the beach, Nura was leading the surviving villagers in cutting off the pirates' fingers with fish knives—a way for the Bedouins to count their combat harvest.
"Leave one alive, ask them who ordered this."
Song Heping knew that now it made no sense for Nura to wipe them all out.
No matter who, these pirates were not going to be left alive.
Their only way out was death.
"I will," Nura's voice sounded unusually calm, but within that calmness held endless murderous intent: "But I will kill them."
Two simple sentences conveyed the woman's burning hatred.
Song Heping lost any interest in interrogating the captives.
Because he clearly understood who was behind this.
So-called interrogation was just a formality to verify the truth.
He left the beach and slowly walked toward the village.
Now he had to immediately find Sara, to see if she survived.
After the pirates' frenzied assault, the small fishing village was already in ruins. As of now, the number of casualties was unknown and required counting.
As soon as he entered the village, his combat boots sank into the half-congealed blood mud, each step bringing up sticky strings.
Song Heping took off his night vision goggles, suddenly noticing that the edge of the eyepiece of this pair he had snatched from the pirates was still stuck with half a fingernail—he didn't even know whose it was, which corpse had it sprung from and attached.
The burnt frame of the lookout tower had collapsed, leaning against the coconut tree beside it. Looking up, Song Heping saw a charred corpse hanging at the top of the tower.
The central village water reservoir had been bombed, freshwater was spilling everywhere, and over a dozen children's bodies lay in a bizarre arc in the mud. The youngest girl clutched a plastic doll with only half its body—Buntland pirates had stabbed the doll open with a bayonet.
Song Heping recognized the girl.
She was the one who had rushed to welcome Nura and got carried by her all the way when they first entered the village...
"All American-made weapons, and some standard Daishe Bird military equipment..."
Jiang Feng squatted down, prying open a pirate's tactical vest with a dagger, revealing the magazine inside.
The village's self-dug water pond had become a natural morgue.
Over thirty bodies lay on the water's surface, lightly colliding with each ripple. An elderly couple with their ankles tied by burned nylon ropes, gunshot wounds on their backs in standard NATO 5.56mm bullet spread—they had been mercilessly executed by the pirates using the American-made M4A1 they had snatched for "live target practice."
Song Heping's Adam's apple moved, his chest feeling a hard-to-describe knot.
Dog barking sounded from not far away; he looked in its direction and saw six ghastly bloated wild dogs tearing at a mass of charred remains.
Song Heping raised his P226 pistol and shot one of the wild dogs, the beast jumped high, landed, whimpered, struggled a few times, and stopped moving.
The remaining wild dogs immediately scattered and fled.
"Song!"
A shout came from behind.
The voice was rough and very recognizable.
It was Antonov's voice.
"Antonov."
Song Heping turned and saw this Da Maozi.
He was supporting a weak-faced Sara beside him.
"Are you alright?"
Song Heping was most concerned about Sara's injuries.
"Alright, when the gunfight started, the villagers hid me in their cellar, but they..."
Sara's expression darkened, her face full of sorrow.
Song Heping nodded.
He was unwilling to delve too deeply into these matters.
Sometimes excessive sadness was not good for a professional PMC leader.
Because dealing with death was frequent in this line of work.