The Middle East: From War Correspondent to Middle Eastern Influencer

This voice sounds so familiar.

Wu Hen immediately pictured an Arab face with a checkered headscarf and a thick beard in his mind.

Muhammad!

Jian, a reporter from Al Arabiya's Libyan bureau, was also Wu Hen's nominal mentor.

Wu Hen originally thought that the two of them would never see each other again in this lifetime.

He was even mentally prepared that Muhammad was dead, but he never expected to hear that familiar voice again in Benghazi, 800 kilometers away!

And judging from his desperate cries for help, he was clearly in deep trouble.

Wu Hen did not act immediately.

He leaned out the window, carefully observing the street below. This street was a dead zone of intersecting firepower. Three hundred meters to the left were government troops' barricades, and to the right were the positions of the opposition forces. Bullets were flying everywhere, whistling through the air.

He closed his eyes and listened carefully.

"Three, two, one! Now!"

Taking advantage of the brief lull in firepower during the simultaneous reloading of ammunition belts on both sides, Wu Hen immediately jumped out of the second-floor window. With his legs slightly bent, he used a sandbag bunker for cushioning before plunging headfirst into the thick smoke billowing from the street.

The road beneath his feet was full of potholes, and Wu Hen even stepped on some indescribable limbs, causing blood to splatter everywhere.

But Wu Hen did not slow down at all. He held the AK-47 tightly to his chest and ran along the ground. Bullets hit the wrecked cars around him, sending up a series of sparks, but he ignored them. In less than ten seconds, he successfully crossed the dead zone and plunged into the row of houses on the opposite side.

Wu Hen was panting heavily. He didn't bother to rest and quietly made his way to the backyard of a house along the collapsed half of the brick wall.

Through the crack of a half-open, dilapidated wooden door, he finally saw the situation in the courtyard.

It really was Muhammad!

But at this moment, he looked extremely disheveled.

His checkered headscarf was nowhere to be found, and his once neatly combed beard was now covered in dust and blood. There was a two-inch-long gash on his forehead, and blood was streaming down his cheek, staining half of his collar red. The photographer who always followed him was nowhere to be seen either.

Muhammad was huddled in the corner of a dilapidated low wall, clutching a half-broken iron pipe tightly in his hand, his body trembling uncontrollably, like a sheep cornered by a pack of wolves.

He was surrounded by three fully armed men.

Judging from their attire, these three men did not appear to be regular soldiers, but rather armed thugs taking advantage of the chaos to loot.

They wore all sorts of camouflage uniforms, some even in ripped jeans, with dirty headscarves wrapped around their heads, but they all carried AK-47s in fairly good condition.

"Stop struggling, you old man!" The leader of the armed men jabbed Muhammad hard in the shoulder with the barrel of his gun. "Hand over all the dollars you're hiding! I know you media lackeys are all rich!"

"I really have nothing left! My wallet and all my devices were stolen on the street! Please, please let me go!"

"No money? Then pay with your life!" Another, slightly shorter thug grinned, pulled back the bolt, and pressed the dark muzzle against Muhammad's forehead. "Since we can't squeeze any more out of you, keeping you around is a waste."

Wu Hen, standing outside the door, assessed the situation before him.

Three men, three automatic rifles, about fifteen meters away from him.

It was an awkward distance. If he just pushed open the door and yelled "Put down your weapons!", those three thugs would definitely turn around and beat him to a pulp.

If he were to hide behind the door and fire directly, given the recoil and spread of his AK-47, he could at most kill two of them in a short time.

The remaining one, whether acting out of instinct or for other reasons, would become a corpse the moment Muhammad was caught completely out of cover.

He didn't want Muhammad to die.

He glanced down at the AK-47 in his hand. Having mastered the basic firearms knowledge skills, he was now very familiar with the gun's performance. He flicked the fire selector on the right side of the gun with his thumb, switching it down one notch from burst fire mode to single fire mode.

He then took a deep breath, adjusted his breathing, and fixed his gaze on the crack in the door.

He needed an opportunity, an opportunity when the attention of all three people was simultaneously diverted.

Just then, a loud bang came from the main road in the distance, and a mortar shell that had missed its target exploded two hundred meters away.

The three armed men in the courtyard instinctively shrank back, their eyes turning towards the direction of the explosion.

It's now!

Wu Hen kicked open the already rickety, dilapidated wooden door.

Almost at the same moment the wooden door fell, Wu Hen's body had already rushed into the backyard. He then performed a tactical roll to the left, opening up the firing angle.

"Bang! Bang!"

Two crisp gunshots rang out in the courtyard!

The moment Wu Hen rolled to his feet, the butt of his AK-47 was already against his right shoulder, and the crosshair was steadily aimed at the short thug who was pointing a gun at Muhammad's head. The first bullet accurately shattered his forehead, and red and white liquid gushed out from the back of his head!

Without any pause, the gun barrel moved smoothly to the right, and Wu Hen's finger pulled the trigger again.

The second bullet pierced the throat of the leader of the thugs. The man clutched his bleeding neck and fell backward without even letting out a scream.

In less than two seconds, two of the three militants had already fallen!

All of this happened so fast that the third thug standing on the far right had no time to react.

As he turned his head in terror, trying to raise his rifle to find the attacker, Wu Hen slammed his AK-47 into his face.

"Snapped!"

The heavy butt of the gun slammed solidly into the thug's nose, the sound of bones breaking rang out, the thug screamed, and staggered backward.

Wu Hen gave him no chance to catch his breath. Using the momentum of his charge, he reached out with his right hand to the outside of his thigh and pulled out his M9 multi-functional military bayonet.

He tackled the thug to the ground, forcefully covering the man's forehead with his left hand, while the bayonet in his right hand mercilessly plunged into the man's left rib space, piercing his heart!

"Pfft!"

The thug's body convulsed violently twice, his eyes fixed on Wu Hen, who was straddling him, his pupils rapidly dilating, and he completely lost his life.

Do not look down.

Clean, efficient, and completed in one go.

The backyard fell silent, save for the distant sounds of gunfire and the rapidly spreading stench of blood.

Muhammad leaned against the corner of the wall, staring blankly at the three corpses before him, his mind a complete blank.

After a long while, his gaze slowly moved to the half-squatting figure.

The figure carried a huge tactical backpack and held a still-dripping military bayonet in his hand.

"Wu...Wu Hen?"