The Middle East: From War Correspondent to Middle Eastern Influencer

Muhammad swallowed hard and tentatively called out the name.

He felt he must be hallucinating. When did that Chinese student become so powerful?

Wu Hen stood up, wiped the blood off the bayonet on the thug's clothes, and put it back into the scabbard on his outside thigh.

He turned his head and looked at Muhammad.

"I thought I'd never see you again," Wu Hen said with a smile. "Are you even able to walk?"

Upon hearing Wu Hen's answer, Muhammad's eyes instantly reddened. After immense despair came overwhelming joy, which made even a man who had seen many storms unable to hold back his tears.

He opened his mouth, as if to ask Wu Hen how he escaped from Tripoli.

But Wu Hen interrupted him directly.

"Now is not the time for reminiscing and crying," Wu Hen bent down to pick up the AK-47 from the ground and tossed it to Muhammad. "The situation outside is chaotic. The gunfire here will soon attract other people. Get up and help me drag the body inside. We need to clean up the scene immediately and set up defenses."

Muhammad took the gun, snapping out of his euphoria. He quickly stood up, bracing himself against the wall, and frantically helped Wu Hen drag the three bodies into the first floor of the house.

Wu Hen first looted the magazines and several grenades from the body, gave some to Muhammad, and stuffed the rest into his backpack. Then, holding his gun, he carefully searched every room of the two-story house. After confirming that Lao Liu was not there, he returned to the first floor.

The two worked together to move some heavy solid wood furniture and several sandbags, and built a simple defensive shelter under the stairs on the first floor.

After finishing all this, Wu Hen leaned against the sandbag and let out a long breath.

He took the bottle of water out of the side pocket of his tactical backpack and tossed it to Muhammad, who was sitting opposite him.

Muhammad took the water bottle, tilted his head back, and gulped down half of it. His parched throat was moistened, and his pale face regained a little color.

"What exactly happened?" Wu Hen lit a Marlboro cigarette he had seized from the militants. Although he didn't like the smell of raw smoke, he still took a deep drag to ease his tense nerves. "Why did you come here alone? Where's the equipment? Where are the driver and the photographer?"

Muhammad gave a bitter smile, a hint of sorrow flashing in his eyes.

"They're all dead," he wiped the water off his face. "We had just escaped Tripoli's Green Zone when our interview vehicle was hit by a shell. The driver died instantly, and the photographer's leg was blown off. I had no choice but to steal a car and run for my life."

"Later I tried to contact headquarters in Dubai, but I didn't have a satellite phone with me, so I fled all the way to Benghazi."

"Wu, the situation here is completely out of control!" Muhammad lowered his voice and quickly explained the true distribution of power in Benghazi to Wu Hen.

As a local, he was well aware of the undercurrents in this land.

"Besides the government forces' probing attacks on the outskirts of Benghazi, the opposition within the city has long since split into dozens of factions of varying sizes. There are tribal armed groups that want to restore royal rule, former officers who have defected from Colonel Gaddafi's army, and jihadist guerrillas composed of extremist religious elements! They are fighting even more fiercely than the government forces in their struggle for territory, weapons, and NATO supplies!"

Muhammad pointed outside the door: "The neighborhood we're in now is a lawless gray area. Those three bastards were stragglers from a nearby tribe called Raven. They rob civilians during the day under the guise of the opposition, and at night they sell weapons on the black market. I was targeted because I was wearing a reporter's bulletproof vest, and they chased me all the way here. If it weren't for you..."

At this point, Muhammad paused for a moment.

He raised his head, his gaze fixed on the young man before him with a complex expression.

From a rookie intern in Tripoli to his savior, Mohammed didn't know what Wu Hen had gone through, but he knew that following this young man might be his only hope for survival.

"Wu, you saved my life. As long as you can keep me alive, my life is yours!"

Wu Hen looked at Muhammad in front of him and said, "Survival is our common goal."

He stubbed out his cigarette; this Marlboro was really not good to smoke.

In the brief silence, a low-frequency vibration, without warning, traveled along the street and reached the soles of their feet.

That was the distinctive sound of mechanical tracks crushing gravel and human bones, accompanied by the heavy roar of a diesel engine.

"It's an infantry fighting vehicle," Wu Hen said in a low voice.

Muhammad's face, which had just regained a sliver of color, turned pale again. He gripped his AK-47 tightly: "Government troops! They've broken into this block! We're doomed, we're caught in the middle!"

The BMP-1, this steel behemoth from the Soviet Union during the Cold War, may be as thin as paper in the face of modern anti-tank weapons, but in the kind of street fighting in civilian neighborhoods where there is no heavy firepower, its 73mm 2A28 smoothbore cannon on the roof and its coaxial 7.62mm PKT machine gun are absolute grim reapers.

A single high-explosive grenade would be enough to completely destroy the two-story house where they were currently hiding, turning them and their sandbag bunkers into construction debris.

"Don't make a sound!" Wu Hen pressed Muhammad down, while he himself pressed against the wall and slowly moved to the edge of the window, peering out through the crack.

At the end of the street, amidst billowing smoke, a BMP-1 painted in desert camouflage stopped at the intersection less than sixty meters from their house.

The dark, gaping cannon barrel was slowly sweeping across the buildings on both sides.

Immediately afterwards, the two troop transport hatches at the rear of the tank were kicked open from the inside.

"Bang! Bang!"

Three fully armed government infantrymen, each carrying an AKM assault rifle, leaped out of the hatch.

The leading sergeant gave a hand signal, and the three immediately dispersed, sticking close to the walls on both sides of the street, and began to clear out each house one by one.

"They're checking out the firing positions and they're coming this way."

"What should we do then?"

Run away? Don't be ridiculous.

Fight? The two of them only had two AK-47s, a military bayonet, and a few fragmentation grenades. On the other side were three well-trained regular soldiers with armored vehicle fire support.

Wu Hen's gaze swept quickly across the dimly lit first floor, searching for any glimmer of hope.

His gaze swept over the collapsed support pillars and the dusty, dilapidated sofa, finally landing on the corner below the stairs where they had used to build a sandbag bunker.

The ground in this area is unusually uneven; not only is the moisture barrier mat thicker than in other areas, but there is also a musty smell in the air.

In the Middle East, many slightly wealthier families dig cellars at the base of their houses to store supplies or escape the fighting.

"Move the sandbags away! Quickly!"

Although Muhammad was terrified, his strong will to survive unleashed his potential.

The two of them used their hands and feet to push away the heavy sandbags that had just been piled up as quickly as possible.

The sandbags were moved aside, and the worn-out moisture-proof mat was lifted, revealing a heavy wooden hidden door with iron rings!

"Clang!"

Heavy military boots pounded on the gate, signaling that the government army's clearing squad had entered the front yard!

"Go in!" Wu Hen pulled open the hidden door, and a musty smell hit him, but he couldn't care less about that now.

He roughly pushed Muhammad down, and then quickly rolled into the cave himself.

Before closing the hidden door, he grabbed a tattered rug from the side and covered it with it.

"Creak!"

The two had just gained their footing in the dark, narrow cellar when a sound came from the floor above them.

Government troops entered the house.