Under the hail of shrapnel, several armed militants who had intended to crawl across the street and dive into the bushes were instantly torn to shreds.
Though shrapnel doesn't necessarily claim lives,
it certainly hurts.
Screams pierced the night sky, sending chills down one's spine.
"Said!"
Upon seeing this, a member of the militants' reconnaissance squad let out a mournful roar and, disregarding his safety, stood up from across the street's bushes and wildly sprayed bullets towards Song Heping's position with his assault rifle.
But all was in vain.
Song Heping didn't even poke out his head.
The grenade had been thrown in a high arc over an obstacle, from the top of a pile of equipment.
So the opponent fired in loneliness, unable to inflict any harm on him.
The team leader quickly paid the price for his rashness.
Hunter up in the tower used a single bullet to bring him down.
"Surrender!"
Song Heping wanted to capture a living prisoner.
"If you want to live, surrender!"
He yelled from behind the equipment pile.
"You don't stand a ghost of a chance at resistance! Don't wait for your cars to come and pick you up—they're all dead, they've been taken out too!"
Song Heping wasn't bluffing.
Just moments ago, news had come from White Bear and his wife, as well as from Grey Wolf.
Several off-road vehicles had just started, trying to reach the work area for a rendezvous, but were shot dead next to their vehicles, without even a chance to get in.
The scene fell silent.
Song Heping checked his watch.
"You only have thirty seconds—if you don't surrender, you'll only meet death!"
He wasn't posturing.
He was merely stating a fact.
Apart from the few armed militants still lying on the ground wailing, the reconnaissance soldiers hiding in the bushes across the street really didn't have a sliver of a chance of successfully resisting.
Although Song Heping and Cook were numerically inferior, having control of the buildings at both ends of the residential and work areas, they had the enemy firmly trapped in that open space.
Putting up a stubborn resistance was meaningless.
Grass can't stop bullets.
Hiding in the bushes didn't mean escaping Cook and Disaster Star's PKM machine gun fire.
What's more, Hunter was lying in wait at a distant tower.
Retreating back to the work area was impossible.
The moment anyone stood up, they'd be sent straight to meet God.
"Song! Just kill them all! Why bother persuading them to surrender? A couple of bursts of fire and they'll all be dead!"
Cook was growing impatient on the communication channel.
"You know shit!"
Song Heping retorted to Cook.
"Just listen to me; you won't be wrong!"
He couldn't be bothered to explain so much and had no time to waste arguing with Cook here.
Wanting to take prisoners was not because Song Heping was soft-hearted.
In combat, of course,
the primary goal was to kill the enemy.
But that's a means,
not the end!
What's the end?
For Song Heping,
the end was to make money!
What's the most important thing for a mercenary company?
Profit!
What he had studied in tactics was to achieve the highest objective at the lowest cost—this is the highest art of war.
Having dealt with Cook for a while, he'd found that the guy was extreme in two ways.
His relationship management was top-notch, his genteel demeanor was a breath of fresh air.
Yet when he picked up a gun, it was all about killing, totally heedless of life or death, treating neither others' lives nor his own as worth anything.
The few militants trapped here were clearly well-trained reconnaissance soldiers, definitely of higher military value than regular infantry, and certainly among the elite of the armed organization.
Such people not only held certain intelligence but also had significant intrinsic value.
It's not an easy task to secure this oil region,
By stopping tonight's attack, what about tomorrow?
The armed factions nestled in the north of Illiguo were as numerous as cow hairs, and the number of military organizations with armed forces was even more countless.
To stand firm here, the US Army couldn't achieve it in the past few months, let alone a small company of dozens of people?
Therefore, Song Heping decided to round them up tonight.
How many fish they could catch was another matter, but at least they wanted to figure out the armed organizations interested in the Hassan Oil Field and their ultimate goals.
Thirty seconds hadn't passed when the other side indeed surrendered.
And the leader could even speak English.
This made Song Heping even more certain that this was an elite armed reconnaissance squad with no simple origin.
"Don't shoot! We surrender!"
Finally, someone stood up from the bushes, holding an automatic rifle with both hands raised, a standard surrender posture.
"Have all your people come out, put all the guns together, and then lie down to the side!"
Song Heping made his demands.
The other side did as they were told.
It seemed they truly didn't want to lose their lives here.
"My people need medical treatment!"
The leading man who had stood up to surrender shouted.
"Don't worry; surrender first, we're not assassins!"
Song Heping remembered the psychological warfare skills he had learned and reassured the other side.
"If you want to save your brothers, surrender quickly!"
With that, the other side indeed sped up significantly.
Soon, they piled the weapons to one side and lay down on the road beside them, neatly in a row.
It has to be said, they surrendered with discipline.
Song Heping ordered in the channel: "Hunter, Disaster Star, control the scene. Cook, you come over from the other side, I'll approach from here, you cover me, I'll search them. Samir, send 10 men and two medics with first aid supplies over here, the rest continue setting up perimeter sentries."
"Understood."
"Okay."
"Aye, boss."
Two people appeared from both sides of the street, their guns pointed at the captives on the road, while Hunter's scope swept back and forth over each enemy in the distance.
Disaster Star held a PKM machine gun and stood twenty meters away, aiming at the wailing scouts, ready to shoot anyone who tried to cause trouble.
Song Heping checked them over to make sure these people were not dangerous, and then he let Cook come over to help tie them up.
As soon as they were bound, the medics and the 10 men sent by Samir had already driven up.
This time when recruiting local mercenaries, Song Heping had emphasized the need to recruit at least four combat medics.
These medics served as corpsmen, all former government army medics who became unemployed after the fall of Sadam and the dissolution of the original government army.
Seeing Song Heping keeping his promise and administering first aid to his people, the team leader thanked him with a "thank you" before being lifted and taken away, passing by Song Heping.
The next morning, bright and early.
Hassan Oil Field's chief engineer Sanchez brought the workers back to the oil field.
He hadn't slept well last night.
In the middle of the night, he was awakened by a phone call; it was the supervisor from the Cook Oil Field Area telling him they had been attacked by armed elements, with two workers injured, asking if Sanchez had been attacked as well.
Sanchez truthfully informed the caller that he wasn't staying overnight at Hassan Oil Field, so of course, he hadn't been attacked.
After hanging up the phone, Sanchez sat beside his sleeping bag, deep in thought, and cold sweat poured down.
Just yesterday, he had doubts about Song Heping's decision, feeling that the young man from the security company was messing around.
Looking at it today...
Good heavens!
Luckily, he came back last night.
Otherwise, who knows who might have been the unlucky one to catch a bullet.
He dialed Song Heping's number.
But no one answered.
So he came to the oil field with his people early.
He wanted to thank Song Heping, but as soon as he entered the living area, he saw a group of armed elements, tied up with ropes like stringing grasshoppers, under the corner of a prefab house.
Although they had been disarmed and were weaponless, one could tell they were from an armed organization.
Sanchez gasped and counted them.
There were 11 people.
He quickly asked the guard, "Are these men prisoners?"
The local mercenary guard nodded, "Yes, the boss caught them last night."
Sanchez's eyes bulged, "So many in one go?"
The guard proudly put up three fingers and emphasized, "Three times. We were attacked three times last night!"
Sanchez nearly choked on his own spit, "Three times?!"
The guard said, "Yes, all three attacks were repulsed, and it's not just these, there are six injured ones in the warehouse."
Upon hearing this, Sanchez's scalp went numb on the spot.