Pickup trucks, off-road vehicles, horses, a few hundred men and a few hundred guns were mobilised on the dirt roads, just to go after two people. A woman was right in the lead of the pursuers - Dayetia. She was, undoubtedly, the most anxious out of all these hundreds of pursuers since Szlamy had taken her horse. The horse was actually not important - what was important was that the sword of Attila was among the luggage her horse was carrying!
It looked like a case of trying to gain an advantage and ending up worse off for Dayetia. She would like nothing more than to chop Szlamy’s head off!
Xia Lei and Szlamy had a few minutes’ headstart so they were able to maintain a distance of about one kilometre between themselves and their pursuers.
“Nicely done. I was going to tell you to take Dayetia’s horse but you did it without me reminding you.” Xia Lei spoke loudly as they galloped.
Szlamy chuckled. “I’ve always been smart!”
Xia Lei felt like this was rather embarra.s.sing for her to say so.
“Uphill!” Szlamy directed her horse off the dirt roads and onto the small paths between poppy fields to a section of mountain peaks.
Xia Lei followed her off the dirt road. Horses were slower than those off-road vehicles and pickup trucks on flat ground, and their pursuers would catch up to them if they stayed on that road. Szlamy choice to go off the dirt road made her seem like she was more than a brainless H-cup woman.
Rat-tat-tat…
A machine gunner on a pickup truck fired in their direction.
A heavy machine gun had a longer shooting range than an ordinary sniper rifle* and it was just blind shooting but the amount of bullets flying their way was terrifying. Dust bloomed up like flowers on the ground next to Xia Lei and Szlamy, and bullets whistled past their heads; they were in an extremely dangerous situation.
Xia Lei twisted sideways on horseback and lifted his gun. He aimed, squeezed the trigger, and BANG. The machine gunner over a thousand metres away lost half his head.
His gunmans.h.i.+p put quite a bit of pressure on the Ika tribesmen but it also drew some of their bloodl.u.s.t. They let out strange whoops and cries. An armed Ika tribesman moved from horseback to the pickup truck and shoved the corpse of the previous machine gunner aside, prepared to keep shooting.
Szzt! A bullet flew over and the replacement machine gunner flew off the pickup truck. An off-road vehicle smashed into him. However, he was unable to feel pain any longer because a sniper bullet had pierced his heart when he had flown from the pickup truck, killing him instantly.
n.o.body else dared to jump on that pickup truck to act as gunner anymore.
The vehicle-worthy road stretched on but their targets had gone off into side-paths. The pickup trucks and off-road vehicles could go no further and at least half of the hundreds of pursers came to a stop. Those who could still follow were the warriors on horseback, and the one leading these pursuers was Dayetia.
Dayetia dared not sit tall. She hugged her horse’s back closely as she knew Xia Lei’s gunmans.h.i.+p. What she did not know was that Xia Lei had already set his sights on her and needed two bullets at most to kill her.
“Dayetia’s caught up. Want me to kill her?” asked Xia Lei.
“No! Leave her for me!” Szlamy’s face was a mask of anger. “She wanted to kill me and also gave permission for that old pervert Abutulu to dishonour me. I’ll fight her! She always says ‘it’s for the tribe’, right? She believes herself right as chieftain, so I am going to take everything away from her. I AM CHIEFTAIN!”
“Okay, I’ll leave her to you.” A smile appeared in the corners of Xia Lei’s mouth.
Dayetia’s dishonesty and betrayal was a terrible thing for him, forcing him to be pa.s.sive. The hostages were still in the White Hun Tribe, and the thing he needed to excavate was also in the White Hun Tribe. The hostages would be killed and he would have no chance of excavating the ruins if he killed Dayetia. In a situation like this, he had gone with an unorthodox solution, and that was to pander to Szlamy and let her know Dayetia’s true colours, then support Szlamy in her uprising and have her replace Dayetia as chieftain!
The White Hun Tribe was almost primitive in nature and their way of deciding leaders.h.i.+p was definitely not through voting. It was a fight between the most promising.
He had helped the White Hun Tribe get the sword of Attila back and this sword which represented absolute rulers.h.i.+p was now in Szlamy’s hands. Her prestige and influence was self-evident. She had the right to challenge Dayetia for her position with the sword of Attila!
Once Szlamy became the chieftain of the White Hun Tribe, he would be able to rescue the hostages and excavate the ruins. What was one day of excavation? Xia Lei could dig with a front-loader, no problem, and Szlamy would be fine with it - she would even help him clean the machine.
This was Xia Lei’s plan, and it was going smoothly so far.
The bare mountains were right in front of them. Rock was all around them and trees were spa.r.s.e. Xia Lei was most satisfied with this terrain since it was so open and it would be easy for him to kill one person with each shot. He just needed a vantage point to camp in and he could kill anyone who dared charge up at him.
Xia Lei and Szlamy unloaded the luggage and chased their horses away when they got to the foot of the mountain. They took their bags with them and climbed up. Dayetia and the rest of their pursuers got to the foot of the mountain when they had gotten about 350 metres up. Xia Lei had already chosen a vantage point by that time. Szlamy also had a rifle equipped with a grenade launcher in her hands. This gun was one which Bureau 101 had prepared for Xia Lei. They had more than this gun; they also had several powerful advanced weapons in their luggage.
The armed Ika tribesmen begun their charge. In their perspective, Xia Lei and Szlamy were skilled but they were just two people. They had the advantage of numbers and capturing or killing those two were just a matter of time.
Bang! A shot rang out on the mountain. An energetic young man who’d rushed forward first had his head explode, and brain matter and blood splattered on the ground.
Rat-tat-tat…
Bang bang bang…
The armed Ika tribesmen fired in response but the guns in their hands were not much of a threat to Xia Lei and Szlamy at a distance of over 350 metres.
“Use rockets to blast them!” ordered one of the leaders.
A middle-aged rocket launcher operator hefted a Soviet-made 105mm rocket launcher but a bullet came from above before he could launch it and a fist-sized crater appeared in his forehead.
“s.h.i.+t! Who is that guy?” The armed tribesmen leader was scared but angry at the same time.
A tribesmen went to retrieve the rocket launcher and he’d just picked it up when a grenade dropped from the sky. Boom! A great roar could be heard as shards of rock and shrapnel flew in all directions, flipping several people over on the spot. This was just the beginning of despair. The rocket exploded in under a second and a flash of fire appeared at the foot of the mountain. People in the radius of over twenty metres were affected, either killed or injured by the shrapnel.
The one who had shot the rocket was Szlamy. She was the White Hun Tribe marks-woman, and their best warrior, so she couldn’t let Xia Lei be the only one fighting in this scenario. The grenade launcher she had did not have a range of over 300 metres but she was on higher ground and she just had to tilt the grenade launcher to fire it over their heads.
Only a few minutes had pa.s.sed since the battle begun but the Ika Tribe had already suffered huge losses. However, they did not retreat. They used the rocks to climb up and shorten the distance between them and their targets. Their snipers also worked at the same time to attack Xia Lei with their sniping.
Xia Lei and Szlamy fired and they moved backwards, heading to higher ground and shooting at targets which were threats to them. The snipers of the Ika Tribe naturally became Xia Lei’s prime targets, and they were sniped themselves once their locations were known. They fell one after another.
The battle went on. Over a hundred people were not able to bring two people down - a scene like this could only be seen in a Hollywood movie and was almost impossible in real life. Xia Lei was like Rambo in ‘First Blood’, like James Bond in ‘007’, Jason Statham in ‘The Transporter’ - he was totally like the solitary hero in Hollywood movies. Undefeatable!
Abutulu finally came with reinforcements. His eyes spat flame when he saw the corpses strewn about the mountainside but the subject of his ire was not Xia Lei and Szlamy - it was Dayetia. He roared at Dayetia, “What did you hide from me? Who the h.e.l.l is that Chinese man?”
“A Chinese special agent! I told you,” said Dayetia. She was under pressure.
“b.i.t.c.h! You didn’t tell me that he was so strong!” Abutulu screamed at Dayetia, “We’ve suffered so much loss because of you! How are you going to resolve this? I want that 200,000 US dollars, now!”
“I…” Dayetia couldn’t say more. She had promised Abutulu 200,000 because she was sure she could get even more from the Americans, but Xia Lei was hopping about the mountainside right now. The bounty from the Americans was just a possibility, so where was she to get that 200,000 from to pay Abutulu?
Abutulu raged. “No money? Then YOU go up there and capture those two!”
Dozens of Ika tribesmen aimed the muzzles of their guns at Dayetia.
“You cannot treat me like this, Chieftain Abutulu.” Dayetia panicked. “They’re trapped on this mountain. They will run out of ammunition sooner or later. We can capture them then. I guarantee that I will not pay you a cent less than promised... No, I’ll give you 300,000 US dollars!”
“f.u.c.k your 300,000 US dollars! Where’s the money?” Abutulu lost it. “Get up there! Or I’ll kill you!”
Bang bang! Someone fired at the ground next to Dayetia’s feet to urge her to go up the mountain.
“You’ll regret this!” Dayetia spat viciously on the ground. “I will bring my warriors and may you pay!”
“Hah!” Abutulu snorted. He did not believe that Dayetia would return to the White Hun Tribe alive.
Dayetia carried an AK47 in her hands as she climbed up the mountain, moderately, carefully.