Spy game? Stop guessing, I really am an undercover agent!

Chapter 136 Burn, Ejin Maru!
Naval mines are generally classified into moored mines, drifting mines, and sinking mines.
A drifting mine is a mine that floats on the surface of the water, while a sinking mine is a mine that sinks to the bottom of the water.

Anchored mines are naval mines with anchor chains that are specifically fixed in a certain area of ​​water.

In places like Niugutan, the currents are rapid and there are many hidden reefs, so neither drifting mines nor sinking mines are suitable. Only anchored mines can be used to fix the location and carry out directional blasting.

As soon as Tiezhen finished speaking, the group disappeared into the reeds. A short while later, one of them emerged dragging an anchor mine.

"Get to work," Iron Anvil ordered. The three men, with daggers clenched in their teeth, dragged the anchor mines and plunged into the swift-flowing river.

At this time, there were no professional diving suits, but the group of people, like catfish, quickly dived into the water and found a suitable position to drag the anchor mine to the bottom.

Three heavy anchor mines were carefully secured in the crevices of the rocks at the bottom of the river. The long triggering fuses, like the forked tongue of a venomous snake, extended upwards, their ends connected to a cold, electrically operated ignition device hidden on the shore.

The black wires, like the umbilical cord of fate, extended from the device, disappeared into the murky river water.

Everything was ready; all that remained was for the transport fleet to step into this deadly trap.

Waiting is the sharpest dull knife in a spy's career.

Time crawled forward second by second amidst the sweltering heat and the buzzing of mosquitoes, each second jagged and gnawing at the taut nerves.

The sun slowly moved westward, stretching the shadows of the reeds longer and longer. The light on the river began to become murky, carrying an ambiguous feeling of approaching dusk.

As darkness slowly fell, Tiezhen would occasionally raise his wrist to glance at the time on the screen. After some time, several fireworks appeared on the distant shore.

The anvil instantly perked up, a signal from the titmouse that everything was proceeding according to plan.

The fireworks subsided, and then came another long wait.

Midnight...

"Team leader, they're here."

The rivet in charge of maintaining order kept his voice extremely low, like a gust of air brushing against reeds, yet it exploded like thunder next to the anvil.

Downstream, at a bend in the river, two blurry black shadows appeared on the surface, one in front and one behind.

The shadowy figure gradually came into focus, outlining the low silhouette of the transport ship.

Thick black soot billowed from the chimney, resembling an ominous banner beckoning to the dead in the night.

The ship had a deep draft, and the heavy munitions weighed it down, making it stagger as it broke through the murky river water with a dull "whoosh".

At the bow, a glaring Japanese flag hung limply under the navigation lights.

The anvil's heart slammed violently against the ribs.

He quickly picked up the binoculars, and through the lenses, the outlines of the two transport ships gradually became clear.

The massive Jiangjin Maru slowly entered the Niugutan waters, its engine roar swallowed by the deafening crash of the water against the rocks.

The swift river current pushed against the hull, causing it to rock slightly.

Koji Matsumoto, standing on the bridge, seemed to sense something was wrong. He suddenly raised his right hand and made a resolute gesture.

Immediately afterwards, a short and piercing whistle tore through the dullness of the beach!
"Woo, woo,"

"Stop the ship! Hard to port! Stop the ship!" Koji Matsumoto's command blared through the loudspeaker, carrying an unquestionable severity.

The massive ship struggled clumsily and slowed down in the turbulent current, its bow stirring up murky waves.

It slowly veered off course from the planned narrow, deep-water channel close to the north bank, tilting towards the center of the river. Finally, it came to a complete stop a hundred meters or so from the core of the pre-set minefield, its massive body lying across the river like a stranded whale.

The bow of the ship was only inches away from the waters where deadly steel and explosives lay buried beneath the surface, yet it felt like an insurmountable chasm.

The Ejin Maru ahead braked suddenly, and the Tsuwa behind also stopped.

This was followed by a series of complaints.

"Baka! Has Captain Matsumoto had too much to drink again?"

"Why are you suddenly asking us to stop at this point?"

"When I get back this time, I will definitely complain to Lieutenant Colonel Saito. He is giving orders in a chaotic manner."

The ship's helmsman and sailors were dissatisfied with Matsumoto Koji's haphazard commands, but they dared not disobey.

If this were the army, the subordinates might have already come up with weapons to argue with Matsumoto, but this is the navy, and even if they have some grievances, they still respect their superiors' decisions.

As Koji Matsumoto gazed at the river under the night sky, a sense of foreboding lingered in his mind—perhaps a soldier's intuition. He always felt that something extremely dangerous lurked in this place.
"Team leader, what should we do?" The wrench's voice, trembling slightly, came from deep within the reeds, like the buzzing of a taut bowstring.

The anvil did not respond; its gaze was fixed through the binoculars on the figure in the white officer's uniform in the darkness.

Matsumoto, his face flushed, leaned out halfway and carefully scanned the desolate reeds swaying gently in the wind on the north bank with his binoculars.

“He’s looking this way…” “Hammer” lowered his voice even further, carrying the chilling feeling of prey being watched by a predator.

The knuckles of the anvil turned white from the force applied.

His mind flashed back to the expressionless face of the titmouse and the cold command before departure: "At all costs, the Jiangjin Maru and the Jinhe must be sunk at Niugutan!"

cost…

Iron Anvil's gaze swept over the dense reeds behind him, over the positions where his brothers lay in ambush. Their lives were also part of the "price."

Koji Matsumoto put down his binoculars and hurriedly gave orders to the people next to him.

Soon, a small boat was lowered to the side of the ship, and several Japanese sailors wearing life jackets and carrying rifles jumped in.

The small boat cut through the murky river surface and began to cautiously approach the minefield upstream along the north bank.

We can't wait any longer! Every second of delay is fatal.

If the small boats discover any underwater anomalies, or if the fleet completely abandons the north bank route and chooses to force its way into the more dangerous reef area in the middle of the river, all the plans will be in vain.

He handed the device to Hammer and said to the men behind him, "We'll draw enemy fire. Hammer, you're in charge of detonating it. Everyone get ready."

Everyone instinctively gripped their guns tighter.

Iron Anvil took a deep breath, like a leopard that had been poised for a long time, and sprang up from its crouching position without the slightest hesitation!

"Action!" The two words burst from his clenched teeth, short and clear, carrying a resolute determination to burn one's bridges.

He stopped trying to hide himself and instead suddenly pushed aside the dense reeds in front of him, exposing half of his body to the open space on the riverbank.

He grabbed the old Hanyang rifle that he always kept by his side, braced the butt of the rifle against his shoulder, and moved with lightning speed.

"boom!"

Gunshots rang out on the silent beach, sharp as tearing fabric!

The bullet, whistling sharply, grazed the top of the bridge of the "Etsu Maru" and struck the smokestack behind it, sending up a trail of sparks and metal filings.

This marksmanship, for an experienced Kuomintang demolition team leader, was deliberately poor.

His sole purpose was to attract and provoke!

"Baka! North bank! Enemy attack!"

In an instant, cries of alarm, the metallic scraping of bolts being pulled back, and the stern reprimands of officers mingled together on the Ejin Maru.

All the searchlights, like the eyes of a ferocious beast awakened, suddenly blazed on, huge, pale beams of light carrying a buzzing electrical sound, fiercely sweeping towards the source of the gunshot—the patch of reeds where the anvil had just been exposed.
The beam of light, like a giant white broom, swept wildly through the reeds, revealing every detail of the withered yellow reeds in its wake.

The anvil's figure flashed past the edge of the pillar of light, then pounced like a ghost, rolling into the deeper shadow beside it.

"There they are, Chinese soldiers, killing us!" The ship's heavy machine guns opened fire first, spitting out thick tongues of fire.

"Rat-a-tat-tat-tat—!" A dense hail of bullets, like scorching hail, rained down on the reeds.

Broken reeds, shattered leaves, and wet mud flew everywhere, making muffled "plop plop plop" sounds.

The massive hull of the "Jiangjin Maru," illuminated by searchlights and machine gun fire, resembled a steel behemoth awakening.

The bow suddenly turned to the right, clumsy yet with an overwhelming momentum, charging straight toward the deadly minefield in the deep waters of the north bank.

The anvil rolled and crawled through the mud and flying reed fragments, bullets whizzed past its scalp and body, the scorching ballistic air currents burning its skin.

He wasn't blindly fleeing; with each roll, he precisely calculated the distance, leading the raging steel behemoth step by step into the pre-set death trap!
While dodging the deadly hail of bullets, he mustered all his strength and roared towards the detonation point deep within the reeds: "Ready, detonate..."

"boom"

A deafening roar, so deep and muffled it seemed to be the howl of a demon from the depths of the earth, suddenly exploded from the riverbed.
The sound was not a crisp explosion, but a muffled roar as tens of thousands of tons of river water were instantly torn apart and then squeezed and rammed by violent force.
Beneath the massive hull of the "Etsu Maru," an unimaginable ball of orange-red flame, accompanied by thick black smoke and countless tons of murky river water, shot skyward like a volcanic eruption.
A massive column of water shot dozens of meters into the air in an instant, appearing like a towering black pillar under the ghastly white light of the searchlights, its top wreathed in hellfire.
At the top of the water column were twisted steel fragments, pieces of wood, and blurry human tissue that had instantly vaporized and been thrown away.
At a speed visible to the naked eye, a huge, grotesque rift was torn open in the center of the ship by the violent force emanating from underwater.
The ear-piercing shriek of steel twisting and breaking even briefly drowned out the roar of the explosion.
Like a prehistoric beast finding its outlet, the river water surged wildly in.
You think that's the end? Wrong. On the contrary, this is just the beginning. A huge bombing sound came from below the Tsuwa behind the Ejin Maru, followed by another thunderous explosion.

In just a few seconds, three anchor mines arranged in a triangle exploded one after another, tearing the two transport ships apart simultaneously by the enormous explosive force of the mines.

The wrecked ship sank deeper and deeper as the river water rushed in, and the Japanese soldiers on board screamed as they jumped into the water.
(End of this chapter)