Farming Life Starting in Africa

The rebels' firing was immediately suppressed; no one dared to raise their heads.

The pickup truck sped forward, and Rosen glanced back. The north gate of the military camp was getting smaller and smaller in his field of vision. Just as it was about to disappear from sight, a jeep rushed out of the gate and followed them from a distance, like a hungry wolf.

Rosen turned his gun to fire, but the jeep was very agile. It swerved and drove close to the side of the military camp, blocking Rosen's blind spot. Rosen was so angry that he cursed.

He patted the roof of the car and shouted, "Hurry up, hurry up! There's a tail behind us, it'll be trouble if we can't shake it off!"

"Should we go back to the garbage dump?" Leng Feng's voice came from the driver's cab, tinged with hesitation. "They have tanks! What if they follow us in?"

The car suddenly accelerated, the engine humming loudly. Rosen glanced around; the yellow sand stretched endlessly, there wasn't even anywhere to hide. "Go back! What's there to be afraid of with a tank? I have one too. Can you drive one?"

Leng Feng paused for two seconds, presumably to process the information, and his voice changed: "Holy crap? You have this too? I trained in this when I was in the army, my skills were alright! But which generation is yours?"

Rosen glanced back; the vehicle was still far behind, clinging to him like glue. "That's good enough. Hurry up, we probably can't shake it off. Let's drive straight into the inner courtyard. Mine is a German Leopard 2A6, a third-generation tank."

"Awesome!" Leng Feng blurted out, his tone full of admiration. It was the first time he'd ever seen a junk collector's house have a tank. Leng Feng immediately wondered, "Is this world too magical, or is he too serious?"

Upon reaching the courtyard gate, Leng Feng didn't slow down much before slamming on the brakes and jerking the steering wheel. The high-chassis monster nearly flipped over, and Rosen, startled, quickly ducked and clutched the crank arm to his chest.

Fortunately, the car didn't flip over, but Leng Feng's driving style resembled drifting, with the tires leaving a black mark on the ground and dust flying everywhere.

Upon entering the inner courtyard, Rosen's legs were still a little weak when he jumped out of the truck bed; the earlier incident had been terrifying. Without even catching his breath, he ran to the far end of the garage and pulled down a huge camouflage canvas.

The canvas cascaded down, revealing the more than ten-meter-long Leopard 2A6 tank beneath it to the sunlight. The camouflage body, the metal ridges, and the 120mm smoothbore gun barrel were a sight to behold, enough to get anyone's blood pumping.

Rosen ran to the back seat of the pickup truck, picked up a huge hiking backpack, then jumped onto the tank and shouted back to Leng Feng, "You drive, I'll fire the cannon. This vehicle has a fully automatic fire control system; the two of us are enough."

"Alright!" Leng Feng didn't waste any more words and climbed up after him.

The two crawled inside the tank, and Rosen pulled out two tank helmets from under the seat, tossing one to Leng Feng.

The interior space wasn't large, and the car was scorching hot. There were dashboards and buttons everywhere, and a smell of engine oil and metal.

Rosen briefly explained the basic operation buttons to him and then pressed the start motor button for him.

A loud roar erupted as the diesel engine roared to life, causing the entire tank to tremble slightly. Rosen immediately turned on the tank's air conditioning; otherwise, the two of them would have suffered heatstroke inside the tank.

Leng Feng put on his helmet and slowly drove the tank out of its parking space. The tank was equipped with a monitoring television screen, providing a clear view of the surrounding environment, which was much more convenient than relying on a periscope.

Rosen wasn't idle either; he turned around and performed a self-check on the power and fire control systems. A row of indicator lights on the instrument panel lit up, flashing red and yellow lights. In less than thirty seconds, a series of green lights illuminated, indicating that the system was functioning normally.

The thermal imager's cooling system is still running, but they don't need it for now—in the awful daytime weather in Africa, the thermal imager is basically useless.

Just as the tank was about to leave the garbage dump, Rosen stopped Leng Feng, "Wait a minute, let me check what's going on outside."

He lifted the hood, and a little of the hot air inside the car seemed to escape. He launched a drone, controlling it to zoom out, and the image on the screen slowly became clear. The vehicles that had been following them had stopped about two hundred meters from the garbage station.

As the drone continued to ascend, a trail of dust appeared to the north, billowing and looking quite imposing. Two tan tanks followed in the dust, one in front of the other, their tracks kicking up clouds of dust that rose high into the air.

"Two tanks are coming," Rosen said, staring at the screen. "Let's see what kind they are. If they're third-generation tanks, we'll circle around the junkyard and keep some distance." He paused, then pointed to the outside of the wall on the screen. "I planted ten anti-tank mines 150 meters outside the wall, so don't go too far. With the drones around, we can play hide-and-seek with them."

After speaking, he piloted the drone directly towards the tank two kilometers away. Upon closer inspection, it appeared to be an American tank; there was no model number on the hull, only a line of English lettering—"Grizzly." Rosen frowned; he had never seen this thing before. "What kind of tank is this? What generation is it?"

Leng Feng leaned closer to the screen and glanced at it, a slow smile creeping onto his face. "If those two tanks haven't been flooded with water, we can go straight in at the main gate. These are M60A3s, an improved version of the US Patton tank, second-generation tanks. Your Leopard 2A6's performance completely overwhelms them; it'll be a piece of cake."

Rosen chuckled upon hearing this, rubbing his hands together. "Haha, my tank's armor is definitely not a problem; it's factory-made, only stronger, not weaker. Shall we go head-to-head then?"

Leng Feng thought for a moment, then hesitated before nodding. After pondering for a while, he said, "Let's go out and take care of those tails that were following us, then we'll deal with the tanks. How far can your fire control system reach?"

"An armor-piercing round can penetrate more than 600 millimeters of armor at a range of 2,000 meters, and can hit targets up to 5 kilometers away, with a six-second reaction time. I can fire ten rounds per minute when stationary," Rosen said, unable to hide his pride.

Leng Feng smiled, revealing two rows of white teeth. "Alright, let's do it that way."

Rosen returned to the gunner's position, took a high-explosive shell from the ammunition rack, shoved it into the breech, and locked it with a click. Leng Feng depressed the clutch, shifted gears, released the handbrake, and stepped on the accelerator. The tank slowly drove out of the yard, its tracks making a dull creak as they rolled across the ground.

Inside the car following them, a fat, dark-skinned man was on the phone reporting: "Big Dad, I followed that car to a garbage dump on the west side. They've hidden in the yard. Number Three and Number Four are behind me and will be there soon."

A cold voice came from the other end of the phone, sounding like ice rubbing against ice: "Very well, I'll be right there."

Before the chubby man could hang up the phone, he suddenly saw a thick iron pipe protruding from the gate of the wall, its dark muzzle pointed in their direction. Immediately afterward, a tank drove out from inside the wall, its camouflage paint barely visible in the sunlight.