Mercenary I am the king

Chapter 926 Reason and Fury
The cold rubber goggles of the telescope were gripped tightly by Song Heping's fingers, making a faint creaking sound as he struggled to keep up with the weight.

Sweat soaked through the rubber edges, sticking stickily around my eyes, yet my vision was unusually clear, so clear it was suffocating.

This open space on the outskirts of Deir ez-Zor has now become a primitive slaughterhouse.

At the edge of the field of vision, the 1515 leader, with his arms bulging with muscles, held a machete high above his head.

Under the blade, a woman dressed in a tattered black robe was pinned down on the scorching, rough ground by two armed men, dust covering her face, which was contorted with fear.

A non-human, sandpaper-like scream squeezed from her throat, tearing through the air in despair.

The sound pierced through the lenses of the telescope, through the thin bone membrane of the eardrum, and mingled with Jiang Feng's suppressed, heavy breathing over the communicator, and even more so with the dying cries of that mother on the streets of Islamabad that echoed in Song Heping's memory countless nights...

In an instant, it converged into a violent current, resonating and exploding wildly on his taut nerves!
"Do not--!"

A shrill, distorted cry, like the mournful wail of a dying young animal, suddenly rang out from the side.

The boy, whose hands were always tied behind his back and who was curled up in the dust, looked no more than fourteen years old, yet his body was bursting with astonishing power.

Like a cannonball fired in despair, he smashed through the armed men holding him down and rushed towards the butcher's knife hanging over his mother's head.

Its small body arched, trying to use its thin back to catch the impending destruction.

"court death!"

The leader with the knife grinned maliciously, revealing jagged, yellow teeth.

With an incredibly nimble twist of his wrist, the blade flashed high into the air, tracing a cruel yet precise tiny arc.

The target instantly shifted from the woman's vulnerable neck to the head of the boy who lunged forward, completely exposed!

Time seemed to suddenly lose its normal flow in Song Heping's eyes.

The boy's leaping figure, the twitching of the leader's jaw muscles as he grinned, the gleaming blade of the machete stained with thick, dark red blood...

Every tiny detail was stretched, distorted, and magnified infinitely, like the cruelest slow motion, frame by frame, with the grating noise of metal rubbing together, carving itself deep into his mind.

Anger surged like a torrent of magma from the earth, roaring as it was about to erupt and burn everything in its path.

But the last vestige of cold rationality, like a steel cable soaked in icy water, tightly constricted his body and throat, which were on the verge of losing control.

There was nothing he could do.

Distance, mission, the cost of exposure...

Countless cold weights pressed heavily on the scales of anger.

"Jiang Feng, retreat."

The four words were almost crushed and squeezed out one by one from between clenched teeth.

Each syllable carried a rusty, bloody smell.

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the communicator, followed by a suppressed, muffled breath, like that of a wounded wild animal.

"……it is good."

Jiang Feng's voice was low and hoarse, like sand and gravel rolling and rubbing in a rough pipe.

Song Heping could even sense his extreme anger through his heavy breathing.

This horrific tactic, commonly used by the 1515 armed group, involved the public execution of civilians, especially women and children, in occupied territories to sow the seeds of fear.

Song Heping had heard about this method more than a year ago.

But the impact of hearing about it is vastly different from witnessing it firsthand, or being on screen in the midst of the bloody scene.

Over the past two years, the 1515 armed group has been conquering and seizing territory in the vast desert towns of western Iligor and in the eastern border region of Syria, which is mired in civil war and whose government control is fragmented. Its power has expanded rapidly like a snowball.

Their core "secret" lies in this ability to transform terror itself into the most effective weapon—they are adept at using humanity's most primal fear to undermine the will to resist and subdue the enemy without a fight. As a soldier who served for many years in a disciplined army, even now, having taken off his uniform and donned the gray cloak of an international defense contractor, walking in the gray area between war and politics, he no longer dares to call himself a champion of justice. However, the bottom line and instinct of a soldier in Song Heping's bones still make him feel physiologically nauseous and uncontrollably disgusted by this naked atrocity against innocent civilians, especially women and children.

This is not war, it is massacre.

Those who do such things have transcended the realm of humanity; they are beasts in human skin, a concentrated outburst of anti-human genes.

"Don't bother looking, we can't help you."

A deep, rough voice rang in my ears, carrying a strong Slavic accent.

Utkin had somehow gotten close to them.

His weathered face held an almost numb understanding.

"You get used to this awful place, the Middle East. These kinds of things happen every day, everywhere, the only difference is whether we know it or not."

He exhaled heavily, as if trying to blow away the invisible smell of blood from his nostrils.

Song Heping did not respond; his throat felt as if it were blocked by scalding sand.

His gaze was fixed on the telescope's eyepiece, as if drawn by a magnet.

In my field of vision, the body lying in a pool of blood had a nauseatingly jagged cross-section at the point where the neck was severed.

"Deir ez-Zor is completely surrounded, like an iron barrel."

Utkin's voice rang out again, deep and pragmatic, forcefully pulling the topic back from the suffocating bloodshed to the cold reality.

"Should we... still go into the city?"

His gaze turned to Song Heping, with a questioning look and a hint of barely perceptible worry.

Venturing deep into this besieged, dead city, the danger level increases exponentially.

Song Heping abruptly closed his eyes and shook his head violently, as if trying to shake off the hellish scene on his retina.

But more images flashed uncontrollably through my mind: headless corpses carelessly discarded on the streets of Isriyah, charred little hands reaching out from under houses reduced to rubble...

The flames of anger ignited again in his chest, scorching his internal organs.

But he forcefully suppressed it, like covering a volcano about to erupt with a massive boulder.

His Adam's apple bobbed up and down with difficulty, and when he opened his eyes again, there was only an almost cold determination in them.

"No." His voice was resolute and exceptionally clear. "The target is the cook; that's the highest priority. We're not here to be the government troops' fire brigade."

He reiterated the core objective, as if trying to convince himself.

"but……"

He abruptly changed the subject, a cold glint flashing in his eyes.

“We can ‘help them out’ and cause some trouble for those scumbags from 1515.”

He pulled the heavy military satellite phone from the side pocket of his tactical vest, his movements carrying a suppressed fierceness, and his fingers quickly and steadily dialed a number.

After a brief pause, the call was connected.

A man's voice, thick with an Iligo accent and tinged with fatigue and anxiety, immediately came through the receiver: "Boss? Thank goodness, it's you!"

“Samir,” Song Heping’s voice was as cold and hard as a rock, without any pleasantries, “How are your preparations going? Are you fully staffed?”

He cut straight to the point, each word as sharp as a steel nail that had been tempered.

(End of this chapter)