About thirty minutes after Song Heping and his team had left, a group of exhausted Revolutionary Brigade soldiers stumbled into the area where they had just been resting.
"Wait!"
The leading scout raised his hand, signaling everyone to stop.
He went to where Song Heping and the others had just been staying, looked around, turned on his flashlight, and shone it on the ground.
Then, he saw a large area of the sandy ground had been wiped clean of something.
The scout squatted down, sweeping the flashlight back and forth across the ground.
He had followed the footprints all the way here and then noticed a patch of grass flattened ahead, realizing someone had stopped here.
However, in such a place, it could also be one of their own.
After a careful inspection, he concluded that those who had stopped here were not their own people but the two Americans and the traitor Rabbani.
Because the footprints were different.
Such traces couldn't fool the highland scouts skilled in tracking.
"Boss, they stopped here."
The scout stood up and shouted to the people behind him.
Soon, a guy with a floating gait and a face full of stubble came forward.
He was sweating profusely, his robe soaked through at the back, dripping water.
He looked like someone who had run himself ragged, lips turned white.
"They... they rested here?"
Even though he had stopped for a while, Sandeik, the little leader, still hadn't recovered to a normal heart rate, still a bit out of breath.
"That's right, I can't be wrong."
The scout pointed in another direction, "They've headed that way now."
Following where the scout pointed, Sandeik frowned.
He really didn't want to keep running.
It was too tiring.
Those guys were like highland hares, running devilishly fast.
They just couldn't be caught...
This annoyed Sandeik considerably.
No.
More precisely, it annoyed all the Revolutionary Brigade soldiers and leaders on the highland.
Especially the captain of the Revolutionary Brigade's assault team, Azhar's confidant Kawasi, who was furious, cursing fools repeatedly.
But what use was cursing?
Those guys never engaged the main force directly.
Whenever they were encountered, they'd take a couple of sneaky shots and then immediately take to their heels.
The main force did give chase.
Alas, the main force chasing a small squad had no advantage at all.
Chasing wasn't like fighting; it was all about the legs, all about endurance.
Sandeik saw for the first time someone who could run like this.
The radios were in chaos, calls coming through the channels, one moment they found the other side, the next moment they were gone again, now heading north, then south...
So much so that now Sandeik himself was a bit confused.
In the end, where did those guys want to run to?
"This is west, are you sure they ran west?"
Suddenly, Sandeik remembered that these people had run west before.
And then he heard from another search team that they had gone north...
What now?
Have they switched back to west again?
Sandeik had to be clear about it because reporting a sighting meant he had to notify Kawasi, and he felt that Kawasi would definitely curse him out when he heard the news.
No one would run like this.
It was just aimless running!
"That's right, judging from the footprints, they ran westward, right there—"
The scout was very confident, pointing westward.
The expression on Sandeik's face immediately turned bitterer than a bitter gourd.