In the vast night, a solitary off-road vehicle moved alone.
Only Song Heping was in the car.
He stared at the GPS device hanging on the dashboard, constantly correcting his direction.
He was no stranger to this sense of solitude.
He thrived in the darkness even more so.
The road was tough to navigate, and due to unfamiliar terrain, Song Heping had to stop several times to find a passage for his off-road vehicle.
However, with his rich experience in wilderness survival, Song Heping still arrived at the designated meeting place early.
After stopping the car, he didn't immediately get out but instead used night vision gear and a telescope to observe his surroundings from inside the vehicle.
It was obvious he had arrived early.
Naxin hadn't come yet.
He suddenly noticed something slowly approaching his feet.
Looking down, it was a scorpion from the desert.
Song Heping stepped on it, crushing it into a pulp.
This creature was common in the desert.
But you always had to deal with it when you saw one.
Because you never knew when it would climb up your pant leg and give you a bite.
Some scorpions aren't deadly, but some are.
Like the ones here, they're lethal.
Back when he was doing business in the Green Zone, he'd seen American soldiers rushed back by helicopter, claiming they were bitten by a scorpion and needed urgent care, or they'd die.
"Too bad I can't light a fire..."
Song Heping felt a bit regretful.
Scorpions are a good source of protein.
A survival delicacy.
In the past, if he caught one in the wild, he would definitely kill it, roast it, and eat it. Crunchy and delicious.
Just as Song Heping was lamenting over the scorpion, he suddenly heard a strange noise.
The sound was coming from the sky.
Looking up.
What the hell!
He was startled.
A dark silhouette appeared in the distance.
Under the moonlight, it was clearly a helicopter.
"Whose helicopter!?"
Out of instinct, Song Heping immediately ran and hid behind a nearby sand dune.
The helicopter drew closer.
He finally saw clearly that it wasn't a US Army helicopter.
Americans usually have Black Hawk Helicopters or Chinooks.
Or the armed Apache.
This one was definitely none of the three.
Song Heping had thought to just hide until it flew past, but to his surprise, the helicopter began to hover near his off-road vehicle and slowly descended.
"This is bad..."
Only then did Song Heping remember that his off-road vehicle was a huge object that hadn't been camouflaged.
Who would have thought a helicopter would appear in such a remote place?
This location was only less than five kilometers away from the mountain area.
Past those mountains, it was Persia.
The inner conflicts of Illiguo had turned it into chaos, and the borders were long unguarded.
Especially in the northern mountainous region here, it's the area where various armed organizations and Kurd people operate.
The focus of the US Army was on major cities like Mosul, Tikrit, and Haditha, leaving them no resources to patrol this place.
The helicopter landed on the ground.
A person came down from the machine.
Song Heping looked and breathed a sigh of relief.