Mercenary I am the king

Chapter 1031 Deadly Intelligence
The night in Jebuty Harbor was torn apart by the searchlights of the U.S. naval base.

The salty sea breeze, carrying the moisture of the Mediterranean, swept across the anchorage.

The massive bulk carrier "Marlin" lay quietly on its private dock, like a stranded steel whale.

The ship's deep waterline silently testifies to the heavy load inside that could change the course of a war—thousands of tons of deadly munitions from the United States.

Around the dock, barbed wire gleamed coldly under searchlights, and sandbag fortifications were jagged and interlocking.

U.S. Marines in desert digital camouflage moved cautiously at the boundary between shadow and bright light.

The muzzle of the M4A1 assault rifle slowly swept across every suspicious corner as my gaze passed over it, while the night vision lens occasionally skimmed across the water's surface, capturing any unusual ripples.

An armored Humvee was parked at a key intersection, with an M2 heavy machine gun mounted on its roof, ready to strike.

This is one of America's most fortified strongholds in the Horn of Africa, where an air of unyielding resolve permeates the atmosphere.

Less than a kilometer from the outer edge of the port's restricted area, in a shadowy area made up of dilapidated containers and abandoned fishing boats, another force lurks in the darkness.

The smells here are mixed—fishy, ​​rusty, diesel, sweaty, and a faint hint of nitrate.

There were no lights, only moonlight outlining the silhouettes of several crouching figures, like hyenas sharpening their claws in the night.

The man in the lead wore a dirty checkered headscarf, revealing only a pair of deep-set eyes that burned with fanaticism and greed, like will-o'-the-wisps leaping from two dry wells.

He is Ias, an extremist leader nicknamed "Sword of the Desert".

This is the real deal, not some fake terrorist leader like Song Heping who was framed and falsely accused.

At this point, 1.5 billion US dollars—

The bounty on the dark web, enough to buy an entire kingdom, burned like the most potent poison at his nerve endings.

"see it?"

Ias's voice was dry and hoarse, like sandpaper rubbing, as he pointed to the brightly lit and heavily guarded Marlin in the distance.

"Do those infidel lackeys think they can protect their filthy 'gifts' by guarding the iron barrel? God is great! God's wrath will ignite from the most unexpected place!"

His masked henchmen around him breathed heavily, their eyes twisted with fanatical faith and a thirst for wealth.

Ias's gaze swept over an unusually silent young face beside him—Samini, whose eyes were empty, with only a martyr-like stillness.

Ias patted Samini's shoulder with his withered hand; the touch was cold and heavy.

“Samini, and all of you—”

He turned his head and glanced at the others, lowering his voice even further, with a hypnotic, seductive quality.

"God is watching. Your actions will cause those infidels to vanish! Our names will be sung in the Psalms of the SZ! Your families will be bathed in the glory of wealth and forever freed from the shackles of poverty! And you—will gain the opportunity to ascend to Paradise through your loyalty to God! It is a Paradise flowing with honey!"

He clenched his fist tightly. "Tonight! Let those arrogant Americans hear the roar of the 'Sword of the Desert'!"

The plan had already been conceived and matured in the darkness.

Yesterday, as soon as the Marlin docked, Ias's spies were already keeping a close eye on it.

The giant ship needed supplies: fresh water, vegetables, meat...

The lifeblood that keeps these massive steel structures running must be supplied from the shore.

The U.S. military's guards covered every inch of the deck leading to the ammunition depot, but they could not, and were powerless to, monitor every cabbage and every box of potatoes that were loaded onto the ship.

The dockworkers are a mixed bag, and local contractors, driven by profit, have always turned a blind eye to verifying the identities of temporary workers.

This is the crevice that Ias carefully selected.

An hour later, several old, muddy mini-trucks with dim headlights creaked and rattled toward the foot of the Marlin's gangway.

The vehicle bore a blurry logo of a local fruit and vegetable company. Inside the driver's seat, Ias's trusted driver stood guard, his fingers nervously tapping the steering wheel.

The carriage was piled high with baskets of potatoes, onions, carrots, and several large baskets of fresh, plump cabbages.

Samini and three other assassins from the "Desert Sword" were huddled among the pile of vegetables that smelled of earth.

They changed into the greasy blue overalls of dockworkers, deliberately smeared dirt on their faces, but their eyes were tense and focused, like venomous snakes about to pounce on their prey.

The truck stopped at the gangway.

Two fully armed Marines stepped forward, their flashlight beams sweeping roughly across the carriage and the driver's tired face.

The questioning was done in a routine manner, tinged with condescending impatience.

The driver handed over a crumpled delivery note and explained in broken French, his voice filled with a fawning humility.

A Marine casually rummaged through several baskets of potatoes and onions on the top shelf, his rough hands rummaging through the vegetables and splashing some mud.

His companion yawned, his gun barrel slightly lowered, his gaze sweeping across the calm sea in the distance.

The weariness of the night and their inherent trust in this "safe" harbor area numbed their senses.

The arrival of the Marlin disrupted their schedule. They were informed that the Marlin needed to resupply overnight and prepare in the shortest possible time, as orders might suddenly be issued the next day to allow them to leave port for Leviathan.

The dock has been busy since this evening.

Various supplies kept arriving, which the Marines had gotten used to.

But no one noticed the few "workers" huddled together next to cabbage baskets deep inside the carriage, their bodies stiff as stone sculptures.

No one bothered to examine the cabbages closely—some of the particularly large ones had their tightly wrapped hearts cleverly hollowed out and filled with sealed C4 plastic explosives and miniature electric detonators, weighing exactly five hundred grams in total.

The destructive core, powerful enough to tear open the gates of hell, now exudes the fresh scent of vegetables.

"Let go!"

The Marine who was conducting the inspection waved his hand, his tone full of impatience.

The truck engine roared like a cough as it slowly drove up the gangway and disappeared into the massive shadow of the Marlin.

In the darkness, Ias watched the truck disappear behind the ship, his cracked lips parting silently to reveal a sinister smile.

Almost at the same time the truck drove into the massive shadow of the Marlin, hundreds of kilometers away, in the brightly lit and air-conditioned intelligence center of the CIA's Africa Station in Morocco, a silent storm was brewing.

Intelligence analyst Jenkins stared intently at the encrypted message window that had just popped up on the screen, his bloodshot eyes gleaming.

The information came from an informant codenamed "Gerberus," deeply embedded on the fringes of Djibouti's underworld.

The content is extremely brief, yet every word is like a knife:

[Gerberus]: Urgent! Port, marlin, vegetable truck, hiding a "scorpion".

Target: The center of the ship.

Time: Before dawn.

Origin: Desert Blade.

"Scorpion" is the code name for the operation, and "Ship's Heart" points to the deadly core—the ammunition compartment. "Desert Blade"—is precisely the secret code name of the "Desert Sword" organization in the area!
Jenkins felt a chill instantly rise from the soles of his feet to the top of his head, and his scalp tingled.

He slammed his hand on the internal encrypted phone: "Urgent! Top priority! Target 'Marlin,' port, terrorists have infiltrated! Source 'Germain,' pointing to 'Desert Blade'! Repeat, top priority!"

His voice sounded unusually sharp in the empty analysis room.

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(End of this chapter)