Methods of Attacking Blackwater

“Whew.” Shellcase exhaled a long breath, his heart pounding so hard it nearly leapt from his chest. He glanced nervously at the bullet holes in the rear compartment and the small flames flickering inside, barely able to believe his luck.

At the same moment, Hou Rui atop the armored vehicle didn’t even have a second to catch his breath. When the shell struck Vehicle 1, the impact nearly flung him from the roof; it was all he could do to keep his balance.

No matter! There was nothing for it but to try. Clutching the roof hatch with one hand and gripping his pistol with the other, Hou Rui stared unblinking at the recurve blade. In a final, desperate effort, he hurled his pistol directly at it.

With a ringing clang, the pistol struck the recurve blade dead on. The blade, knocked askew, slipped from the machine gun rail and tumbled from the roof of Vehicle 1.

Hou Rui, his task complete, clenched his fist triumphantly. But as he was about to dive back into the compartment, a thought seized him: the 14.5mm anti-aircraft gun was certainly powerful—capable of bringing down a helicopter from twelve kilometers away—but could it really take on the thick armor of a T-72? If it couldn’t, and the T-72 fired again, ducking inside the compartment would be pointless.

No way! He couldn’t stake his life on a slim chance. The T-72 would need about twenty seconds to reload; he had to gamble everything now.

“Head straight for the T-72!” Hou Rui, clutching a grenade, was pushing himself to the limit. He banged the grenade against the roof and shouted loudly, hoping Shellcase would quickly understand his intent.

“Are you sure?” Shellcase, with so little information, couldn’t possibly guess what Hou Rui was planning.

“Trust me—I don’t want to die either.” Hou Rui’s words were genuinely convincing; after all, no sane person would risk his life without cause.

“God, how did I end up with someone crazier than me?” Shellcase muttered as he spun the steering wheel. Suddenly, instead of dodging as before, Vehicle 1 wheeled around and charged straight toward the T-72, as if ready to ram it, come what may.

But unfortunately, anyone with basic military knowledge could see that a thirteen-ton Vehicle 1, even at full speed, could do nothing against a forty-one-ton T-72. Worse, the T-72’s 125mm smoothbore cannon was already aimed at Vehicle 1’s front; once reloaded, it would end this suicidal charge with a single shot.

The two vehicles were now two hundred meters apart; the T-72’s reload countdown: twelve seconds. Still crouched on the roof, Hou Rui curled himself into as small a target as possible, holding his breath and never taking his eyes off the T-72.

At one hundred meters, eight seconds left. Hou Rui wished he could squeeze into a welded seam of the armor itself. His arms were scraped and bleeding, but miraculously he had avoided a fatal hit.

At fifty meters, five seconds left.

By now, the violet smoke from Ironman’s homemade smoke grenades had nearly dissipated, visibility on the battlefield surged, and bullets whistled toward Hou Rui in even greater numbers. More urgently, he saw large groups of Libyan soldiers rushing to the camp’s gate. But for the T-72 blocking the way, the armored vehicle would have been completely surrounded, and Hou Rui would have been stomped into paste.

With only five meters to go and two seconds left, Hou Rui was shaking uncontrollably. Staring down the 125mm cannon, whose barrel seemed wider than his own face, he felt a pressure beyond description. He couldn’t help imagining: if the T-72 fired first, would he be shattered into a hundred pieces or a hundred and eight?

But his hands never hesitated. He bit down on the grenade’s safety ring and yanked it free, letting the safety lever fly off. Drawing on all his strength, he bellowed, “Get closer!”

Shellcase, waiting for this cue, yanked the steering wheel. Vehicle 1, mid-charge, swerved in a tight ninety-degree turn, the centrifugal force so great that the outside wheels lifted off the ground. Hou Rui, clinging to the hatch, was nearly flung from the roof, hanging on by one hand.

As his body swung through the air, at the precise moment he came closest to the T-72’s cannon, Hou Rui endured an agony as if his arm would be torn off—but he roared through the pain, “Take this!” and stuffed the grenade straight into the T-72’s barrel.

Vehicle 1 had barely covered twenty-three meters in the turn, its wheels still airborne, when the T-72’s barrel exploded with a thunderous bang. In the same instant, the entire turret detonated, tongues of flame jetting from every seam.

“Yes!” Hou Rui shouted, ducked his head, and tumbled into the compartment.

With the T-72, the greatest obstacle, destroyed, everything else became simple. Vehicle 1 quickly shook off the pursuing infantry, speeding away onto a deserted side road. Inside the compartment, Hou Rui was so exhilarated he could barely sit still—adrenaline coursed through him like a drug. First, he tossed out all the corpses of the soldiers, then familiarized himself with the anti-aircraft gun’s controls. As he began tinkering with the electronics, Shellcase, who was driving, finally couldn’t take it anymore.

“Can you calm down for a minute?”

Only then did Hou Rui plop into the seat beside the gun mount, flushed with excitement. “Are we heading straight to link up with the Elf?”

“Of course. We lost too much time at the camp. If we delay the attack plan, we’re finished.”

“Heh, I have a feeling our next mission will go just as smoothly.” Having taken out the T-72 in such a daring fashion, Hou Rui’s confidence was now dangerously inflated, his words dripping with pride.

Suddenly, Shellcase slammed the brakes, sending Hou Rui’s head crashing into the compartment wall. The impact was so brutal that it split his forehead open, smashing his arrogance to pieces along with it.

“Are you insane? What the hell was that for?” Furious, Hou Rui clutched his bleeding head and glared at Shellcase—if Shellcase hadn’t been driving, Hou Rui might have punched him.

“Just making sure the cocky mutt sobers up.” Shellcase’s tone was as calm as ever, but the glance he shot Hou Rui sent a chill down his spine, instantly cooling his hot-headed confidence. He remembered just how terrifying this small man beside him could be.

After an awkward silence, Shellcase finally spoke. “Next time, risk your own neck if you have to, don’t drag others into it.”

“I got it.” Crestfallen, Hou Rui dug out a medical kit, wrapped his head with a bandage, and tended to the wounds on his body and arms.

“Get ready. In ten minutes, we’ll reach the Blackwater camp. Continuous combat is where mistakes are made—don’t expect me to clean up your mess.” With that, Shellcase fell silent, and Hou Rui gradually returned to his usual quiet self, sitting wordlessly in the passenger seat.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the city, the Diriven Oil Company office block was also the headquarters of Blackwater’s Seventy-Seventh Advisory Group.

The massive compound, covering about five thousand square meters, was arranged in a neat triangle of three four-story buildings: Building 1 for offices, Building 2 for staff quarters, and Building 3 for the Blackwater advisors. While chaos reigned elsewhere in the city, here all was calm, the only movement a sentry on the rooftop keeping close watch.

A kilometer beyond the compound’s outer wall, the Elf, shrouded in camouflage, quietly raised her binoculars from a thick tree, surveying the grounds in detail. After a while, she slid down the trunk, crept behind a low wall in the residential district, and slipped into a run-down house where the rest of the team waited in silence.

“What’s the situation?” Wildhair asked first.

“There are three exits. Besides Blackwater’s thirty-four men, about fifty local armed guards are on duty. I counted twelve Hummers, three Grizzly armored vehicles, and a Little Bird helicopter. At Main Gate One—the primary exit—Blackwater has two armored vehicles and two Hummers stationed. Each of the other exits has two Hummers and sandbagged machine gun nests. The remaining vehicles are parked by the dormitory, with roving sentries at every parking point.” As she spoke, the Elf drew a rough map on the floor with her knife.

“Let’s infiltrate and launch the attack from inside,” Mark suggested, pointing to a long line representing the wall. “That side faces the residential area; it must be a defensive priority. If we break through here, it’s just over a hundred meters across the yard to the main building.”

“But that hundred meters is open ground. We’d be cut down by the rooftop machine guns halfway across,” Wildhair objected, not keen on a close-quarters brawl.

“But they have too many vehicles. If we don’t get close, the Hummers and Grizzlies will wipe us out before we can do anything. Only by mixing in and getting inside can we neutralize their mounted weapons.”

“No,” the Elf replied. “Diriven Oil has about two hundred thirty employees here, most trained with small arms. If we spark a melee, there’s no way to guarantee our target doesn’t slip away. Besides, if we take Blackwater head-on in a building assault, we’re outnumbered and outgunned.”