Late at night, inside a shabby canvas tent.
Under the dim light from an oil lamp, the leader of the ‘Jihadist National Liberation Army’, Muha McGee, suppressed the weird laughter leaking from between his teeth and carefully took out a small metal suitcase with a secret code lock. He opened it every night as long as he had time. Otherwise, he would not even be able to sleep well.
This suitcase was old and tattered, with paint peeling off and numerous scratches, signifying the rain and storms that it had gone through. And its edges and corners had been rubbed countless times and were glossy.
Almost every time he opened the suitcase, Muha McGee grinned widely, revealing uneven yellow teeth. He smiled and took out a stack of thick US dollars, as well as gold bars and gems.
He would absolutely not let his men see them easily. Otherwise, it would definitely attract greedy eyes and troubles. This was the precious wealth he inherited from the previous leader. During an operation, the unlucky leader had been hit by an artillery shell and died. Almost half of his head was blown off. Without that, Muha McGee would not have discovered the so-called down-and-out Jihadist National Liberation Army had such wealth.
Compared with the people and equipment outside the tent, these things were his real family members. As long as he was willing, he could pull up the entire group and become even more powerful.
There was only desolation, poverty, and ignorance among the various tribes in the wilderness. As long as there was hard currency, it was easy to gather the tribes who were desperate to have food and beautiful women to play with. Just give them guns and whip them, and all of them could become a good shooter.
The Jihadist National Liberation Army was merely a cover for Muha McGee. What jihad, what nationalist? These were all naked interests. In fact, he was not willing to use such a name. Didn’t ‘Guerilla Muha’ sound bad? However, someone needed to hang up such a sign.
It was the so-called ‘agents’ who somehow found means to send guns and money to him, probably with ulterior motives.
But Muha McGee knew that they were just making use of one another. ‘They’ needed him to do shady things that could not be exposed to light, while he needed money and more money. The people and guns outside were just his tools to make more money.
Muha McGee had just finished a big deal and was contemplating whether he should do away with the broken guns and old rifles, give them to the poor nomads in the mountains, then purchase some grenades and whatnot, and get a few women to please his subordinates.
Only when the group grew could he earn more money. He was not like some short-sighted and greedy guys who only cared about immediate interests.
…
Fifteen kilometers away, at an altitude of eleven kilometers.
The navigation coordinates showed that the Chengdu J-10 was close to the target, and it quickly descended from the clouds. It was dark below. Clouds covered the sky, and no glimmer of light was visible. The J-10 was flying at an even speed in the most fuel-efficient state.
The ground was dark. If not for the satellites verifying the coordinates, Lin Mo would have thought that he had not arrived or missed it. Even in the other world, night air missions were rare. After all, there were no particularly effective night vision means.
Lin Mo used the light mirror spell. After trying a dozen times, he barely managed to open a mirror that was less than the size of his palm and could vaguely see the situation being transmitted from the ground. When he was flying above the clouds, he had begun collecting light elements. In any case, moonlight was also light, just that it was reflected light from the sun. Even though it was weaker than daylight, it was better than nothing.
Lin Mo peeled open two bars of military chocolate and stuffed them into his mouth for pre-battle physical maintenance. Flying a jet fighter was a very tiring task. The bitterness of high-purity cocoa and the added ginsenoside ingredients slipped into his esophagus and were quickly absorbed, making Lin Mo feel energetic.
“The communication chain secret code verification has passed. Combat information chain docking completed!” Lin Mo listened to the combat computer’s answer in the headset. At this moment, he felt that the J-10 he was piloting came to life as a real weapon.
“Operation begins!” From the headset, Lin Mo heard the murderous and cold sound of the hoarse-voiced man, sounding like a steel wire ball wiping glass. It seemed that the ground troops were already in place and waiting for Lin Mo’s J-10 to come and fire the first shot.
Lin Mo turned on the fire control system!
The dimly-lit monitor showed that there were more than thirty tents of various sizes fifteen kilometers away. There were also eleven large trucks and several off-road jeeps. The entire camp was dark, with only four militants wearing robes and carrying guns, roaming around the camp. They seemed to be sentries. There were a lot of cattle and sheep as well. The light mirror spell moved and showed more than sixty well-trained armed men in black clothes, forming a half-moon-shaped skirmish line to surround the camp with their bodies low. When he approached closer, he saw two squads with machine guns set up in the west and north.
These people should be the Chinese military’s special forces. They should know that the Chengdu J-10 had entered the combat area and had not made a move yet. But they did not know that their every move had already entered Lin Mo’s eyes.
When the time came, Lin Mo quickly accelerated. With a bang, the J-10 broke through the sound barrier.
The speedometer showed Mach 1.7! The powerful overload not only did not make Lin Mo feel any discomfort but instead a sense of excitement.
Lin Mo wanted to surprise attack the target before the roar of the engine arrived. The J-10’s black hood-like aircraft nose aimed at the camp as it accelerated and dived. The left and right rocket nests flashed blazingly, and twelve rockets slammed down with bright tail flames in one breath.
“What is that sound?!” Muha McGee, who was still in his tent and holding his US dollars, suddenly straightened his back and pricked his ears.
Faint thunder came from the sky, and dots of light suddenly appeared in the sky. The sentries of the camp raised their heads and looked at the sky. Before they could react, the twelve rockets had already plunged into the camp. The fireballs raged and exploded, and the flashing white blast waves overturned nearly half the tents.
Hoarse shouts followed the explosion of the rockets and filled the entire camp. The chaotic gunshots sounded like fried beans. At this time, the belated sound of the jet fighter engine echoed like thunder.
Lin Mo tapped on the fire button of the cannon, and the fuselage vibrated. Four light spots shot out from the belly of the J-10. From an overturned tent, a militant stepped halfway out of it before immediately being torn apart by the 23mm cannon rounds together with the people in the tent. The blood mist that burst out was clearly visible under the light of the fire.
A 12.7mm anti-materiel rifle cartridge could tear people apart when it hit them, not to mention the 23mm cannon bullets. Lin Mo did not dare to fire at will. With a total of 200 rounds in the ammunition chain, it could become empty with a few shots. Could a jet fighter without ammunition be called a jet fighter? Would it kill people with sonic booms? It was probably worse than a paper tiger.
The leader of the Jihadist National Liberation Army, Muha McGee, quickly put all the money scattered on the sheepskin blanket into the metal suitcase, picked up a gun, and looked out of the tent. He almost lost his soul with that glance.
It was a massacre!
The camp was turned upside down as explosions continued as the loud roar from the jet fighter flying in the sky reverabated. The booming sound of the cannon was like a reaper harvesting lives. There was blood everywhere, and all the sounds in the camp interwove into a sonata of death.
“Damn it!” Muha McGee could not care less about gathering his men. He quickly went back into the tent, picked up the metal suitcase without anything else, and dashed out under the shadows of the fires.
It was over, all over. The painstakingly-built Jihadist National Liberation Army would be wiped out tonight. Without even intending to find a confidant, Muha McGee gave up all of his people resolutely and quietly took advantage of the darkness of the night to flee.
One was in the sky, and the other on the ground. Just relying on the automatic rifles and small firearms, they were no match for that jet fighter. They were not equal opponents at all. Even bullets might not be able to catch up with it, so how could they fight? They would only be waiting to be destroyed.
The camp became even more chaotic. Just now, Lin Mo was surprised that the super firepower attack almost made the camp explode. But more armed militants rushed out and fired automatic rifles randomly into the sky. Lin Mo piloted the Chengdu J-10 left and right to dodge, easily avoiding the firepower from the ground. Without an anti-aircraft machine gun and just relying on the kinetic energy of small caliber guns, they would only cause blips on the fuselage at most, causing a few shallow pits and not even breaking the surface.
The J-10 quickly pulled into an Immelmann turn, climbed to an altitude of three thousand meters, and leveled again. Even when attacking the ground, Lin Mo was very careful. Only with his physical abilities could he withstand any difficult, high-G movements. Even if the plane were to fall apart, he would not feel any discomfort. Compared to the Giant Dragon mount, the jet fighter was very comfortable, and it was no different from the soft-seated carriages of noble ladies.
At this moment, a beam of light shot directly into the camp from the outside, forming a large spot of light on a large truck full of supplies. It was extremely conspicuous in this dark night. Lin Mo was startled. A ground special forces soldier had used laser guidance. He quickly entered an arc and then rolled away while throwing out a Thunder LT-2 laser-guided bomb at the same time.
The domestically-made Thunder LT-2 laser-guided bomb was a copycat product of the Russian KAB-500L and had a charge of 500kg. After the J-10 ejected it, it automatically adjusted its tail to lock onto the laser illuminating the position on the ground.
The Chengdu J-10 threw out the bomb at a low altitude, and a black shadow descended from the sky. Immediately afterward, the landslide-like explosion caused a white blast wave that swept across a radius of one hundred meters. The shock it caused within a five-kilometer radius was something even the bombing power of heavy howitzers with a caliber above 150 could not compare to.