Song Heping dove to the ground and saw the damned Mk VII jump around in the sandpit, splitting into two. Twenty grams of black explosive had already soaked into a dark red color—like the nosebleed that sprayed at this moment, sizzling on the scorching sand.
"Dud?"
Jiang Feng slumped in the sandpit, with half a fuse plate still stuck to the sole of his boot, his calves trembling uncontrollably.
Getting this frightened would scare the soul out of anyone.
It was truly dangerous just now.
If the landmine had uncontrollably exploded, the two wouldn't have survived either.
Song Heping spat out the sand in his mouth and, with trembling fingers, picked up the blackened detonator.
The Roman numeral "VII" inside the copper shell was oxidizing and peeling, revealing the smaller German inscription "Zünder 43" beneath—this was a dual-trap modified by the German Army in North Africa in 1943; the second fuse would activate after the first disarming attempt failed.
In other words, this fuse had already been disarmed once by the German Army engineers and was now in a failed state.
Cold sweat trickled down Song Heping's forehead.
This was more thrilling than any bomb defusal he had done before.
"They're coming!"
Antonov, who was on lookout duty, issued a warning.
Song Heping pulled Jiang Feng up, then returned beside Sara and carried her on his back, leading toward the building cluster ahead.
Night had fallen, and Yager finally led his remaining assault team to the vicinity of the riverbed.
From afar, the few dilapidated buildings piled with rocks were connected, appearing blurry in the twilight.
The weathered sandstone gleamed pale under the moonlight. Major Yager's military boots trampled over a metal nameplate inscribed with German characters, the strange sensation from under his foot freezing this battle-hardened Israeli soldier instantly.
Behind him, twelve Mossad assault members fanned out, the night vision goggles on their desert camouflage uniforms glowing a ghostly green.
"Halt!"
Yager's voice exploded in the tactical headphones, but it was already too late.
The first S-type jump mine shot up to two meters high just as young Private Kohen was adjusting his goggles.
This top graduate from the Tel Aviv Military Academy never understood why a seventy-year-old German-made Scraapnellmine could still precisely grab his throat.
The horizontal kill zone formed by 5mm steel balls swept like the Grim Reaper's scythe, three bodies simultaneously spraying blood mist.
"Scatter! Find cover!"
Yager's roar was drowned in the series of explosions.
The dried riverbed suddenly came to life, flying iron fragments with barbs dancing in the sand waves kicked up by TNT explosives. A team member's tactical vest clips fell jingling at his feet—that was a severed finger wearing a wedding ring.
Song Heping pressed his cheek to the crack in the ancient castle's arrow slit, staring unblinkingly outside. A hundred meters away, a death symphony was unfolding.
He could clearly see a Mossad assault member stepping on a trip mine, the moment the man's left leg vanished as if chewed off by an invisible giant beast, yet his body continued to charge forward by inertia, dragging a five-meter-long blood trail in the sand.
"So satisfying! I suddenly started to like the British." Antonov's face, full of smiles, looked much like a clumsy Siberian brown bear. This former Russian Air Force pilot had just left a hidden path in the minefield—a zigzagging trail marked by camel thorns lying quietly under the moonlight.
But those Mossad assault members hadn't noticed this detail.
Every time they deviated from the camel thorn path toward death, Antonov hid behind a wall showing a sneaky smile, watching them march to their demise.
The outside quieted down.
The Mossad assault members stunned by mines had indeed fallen into bad luck.
The helicopter crashed, most were dead.
They thought it would be easy to eliminate the unarmed Song Heping this time, leaving his corpse to rot in this desolate desert.
However, it seemed that first to rot would be themselves and their companions.
"Nobody move, there are mines here..."
In the moonlight, Yager's eyes scanned the surroundings.
Soon he despaired.
Everywhere looked the same in the sandy terrain, it was impossible to tell where was safe and where was not.
Of course, some areas were safe, those were the little zones where his comrades had already been blown up.
But relying solely on these zones, it was impossible to approach the buildings.
They were still a hundred meters away from the buildings.
Though it didn't sound far.
Just a small margin could mean life or death.
Even retreating now, firing at Song Heping and his group from a hundred meters away or launching grenades wouldn't work.
Though those old and rundown ancient buildings seemed about to fall apart on the surface, they were actually piles of stones—surviving hundreds of years of sandstorms, undoubtedly solid and durable.
"I want to go out." Song Heping picked up the old British bayonet, suddenly making up his mind: "You guys stay here, I want to bring back some supplies."
"Go out?" Antonov was quite surprised.
"Go out for what?"