Chapter 158: Spider Bomb

Su Cheng walked over to a middle-aged Middle Eastern man who had already lapsed into unconsciousness, removed his face veil, and compared his face to the image displayed on his wristwatch. Nodding, he said, "It's him. Take him away!"

Several men immediately slung their rifles behind their backs, hoisted the unconscious figure from the ground, and headed outside.

"Wait, don't move!"

Just as they were about to leave, a strange voice echoed.

"Take cover!"

Without a second thought, Su Cheng pressed his back against the wall.

Boom!

A deafening gunshot rang out, and a large chunk of the wall right beside the doorway was blasted away.

One of the men, who had already taken cover, turned instantly pale. Had his reflexes been just a fraction of a second slower, he would have been blown to pieces.

"Damn it! A large-caliber sniper rifle! Sniper, find that enemy and take him out!"

Su Cheng naturally saw the damage near the entrance.

"Captain, it's no use! The enemy is attacking from extreme range, outside our observation sector. Number Four has been hit, but it's not a fatal wound; he'll be fine for now!"

The sniper immediately poured out his frustration to Su Cheng.

"Who is the enemy?" Su Cheng asked directly. In his view, Xit would give him a satisfactory answer.

"Delta Force!"

True to form, Xit provided the answer immediately, though it was clearly not the one Su Cheng wanted to hear.

"Their target is us?"

"Affirmative. You have four minutes. The first batch of NATO coalition forces has arrived five kilometers out, and their helicopters will be here in four minutes!"

Xit's words caused Su Cheng to frown.

"I have already taken over the nano-flies. I'm uploading the enemy's coordinates right now!"

With that, Xit vanished.

Su Cheng was already thoroughly accustomed to Xit's sudden disappearances.

Glancing at his wristwatch and seeing the enemy's position pop up, Su Cheng smiled.

"Sniper, take out the one opposite us!"

"Leave it to me, Captain!"

Atop a distant building, amidst a rooftop devastated by explosives, Acni—clad in a ghastly camouflage suit—sneered and lowered his sniper rifle.

From the pack beside him, he retrieved a Barrett.

This was a heavily modified piece of equipment: its exterior was painted in desert camouflage, and its barrel was significantly lengthened compared to the standard model.

Acni pushed the barrel of the Barrett through a gap in the ruins.

Rapidly adjusting his scope, he finally locked onto his target inside a building fifteen hundred meters away.

"Got you!"

"Goodbye. Say hello to old man Satan for me!" With that, he pulled the trigger.

Boom!

The massive recoil slammed backward, but Acni had already braced himself securely.

Fifteen hundred meters away, a soldier sensed something was wrong, turned his head, and then plunged into an eternal slumber.

"No, no, no!" the spotter cried out in horror upon seeing the sniper killed.

"Damn it! Attack! Attack!" Seeing this turn of events and knowing they could wait no longer, the Delta Force leader immediately ordered an assault.

A storm of bullets suddenly erupted, hammering directly into the positions where Su Cheng's team was hiding.

"Damn it!"

The sheer volume of gunfire formed an oppressive barrage, pinning down the Delta team.

"You guys take the target and fall back first! Second squad, suppress the US special forces. Sniper, keep them disrupted! We have two minutes left!"

"Roger!"

Two hundred kilometers away, the NATO command center was in complete chaos. The Rafale fighters originally scheduled to provide air support for Delta Force had suddenly lost contact, and now the enemy was actually pinning down Delta itself.

"Order the second detachment to deploy immediately! They must not let those targets escape!"

In Damascus, gunfire erupted once more. The military stationed on the outskirts perceived the chaos within the city and immediately mobilized.

An armored detachment, being the closest to the city, received orders to enter and quell what headquarters assumed to be an uprising in Damascus.

Xit was hiding behind a building, flanked by several T-model robots leaning against the wall, remaining silent.

Although they were machines, they could still be destroyed if hit by heavy weaponry, such as missiles or main battle tank cannons.

A large military force was stationed on the outskirts of Damascus, including an entire tank regiment. Xit would not willingly engage them head-on unless strictly necessary.

However, the situation had changed. Allowing this armored detachment to enter the city would jeopardize Su Cheng's extraction, a fact Xit fully understood.

Therefore, they had to be stopped.

Xit did not need to issue verbal commands; his data-links were fully integrated with all the T-model robots.

Reaching to his waist, Xit detached a strange device resembling a stone. When placed on the ground, eight legs extended from it, making it look strikingly like a spider.

The other robots also retrieved similar spider mines.

The spider mines activated instantly, scurrying forward at high speed.

Tank crews certainly couldn't react in time, and likely wouldn't even detect the approach of the spider mines.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The spider mines dashed directly underneath the tanks and detonated. The explosives they carried were more than enough to destroy a tank.

A tank's most vulnerable point was its underbelly; once targeted there, it was virtually game over nine times out of ten.

Seeing the successful results, Xit said nothing and vanished with his men.

At several locations across Damascus, they launched successive strikes against several tank platoons and armored vehicle units, effectively derailing any plans to enter the city and suppress the area.

The spider mine was an intelligent weapon designed by the Red Queen, drawn from the Umbrella Corporation's armories. Its later evolution would become the spider nano-control robots seen in the late stages of the Resident Evil timeline.

This was the prototype spider mine, initially developed to bid for US special forces military equipment contracts, but it had ultimately failed. Umbrella later improved the design, but as research shifted toward viral weaponry, development was shelved. After taking control of Umbrella, the Red Queen ramped up research on the spider mines, transforming them into spider nano-control systems.

Many nations possessed similar devices: small, capable of carrying high-explosive charges beneath enemy armor to destroy armored forces or obliterate fuel depots at airbases.

However, due to limitations in artificial intelligence and production costs, devices of this type were rarely deployed, reserved only for high-value targets—much like smart-guided missiles, which were only fired at high-value assets.

Furthermore, existing devices worldwide were currently landmine-sized, and their lack of portability was the primary reason they could not be used in large numbers. Weighing over a dozen kilograms each, who would willingly carry such heavy equipment?

Even the spider mines manufactured by the Red Queen weighed six kilograms individually. Even for individuals like Xit and his team, a person could carry at most two, leaving the rest to be transported by vehicles.

Yet because they required no brute strength and allowed for rapid resupply, this gave them an unbeatable tactical advantage.

Precisely because of this, the spider mines caught the armored forces entering the city completely off-guard.

The following troops were forced to advance into the city accompanied by infantry because, up to that moment, they still had no idea what kind of weapon was attacking them, nor had they detected any incoming missile fire.

On the other side, Xit had used transport vehicles to reach a secondary location, pulling three Stinger anti-aircraft missiles from a vehicle and beginning to reload.

In the distant sky, three Puma helicopters were flying toward their position, escorted by two Black Hawks on the flanks.

Without a word, Xit hoisted an anti-aircraft missile and fired directly at the three Pumas.

The missile streaked toward the Pumas two kilometers away.

"Missile!"

The moment the missile left the ground, it was spotted by the Puma pilots, but it was traveling far too fast to evade.

However, the escorting Black Hawks reacted swiftly. The door-mounted machine guns began firing, weaving a dense wall of lead.

Boom!

One of the anti-aircraft missiles was struck by gunfire and detonated mid-air.

The remaining two, however, slammed directly into two of the Pumas.

Boom, boom, boom, boom!

Two massive fireballs blossomed across the sky.

Seeing this, the Black Hawk crews could only curse in frustration, but having located the launch site, they accelerated and charged forward.

Xit remained unruffled as he accepted another Stinger, hastily loading the missile tube.

Without even raising his arms to aim, he fired straight ahead.

Without lingering to watch the fate of the Black Hawks, Xit got into the vehicle and ordered an immediate departure.

Three new missiles came screaming in, forcing the Black Hawks into evasive maneuvers. Fortunately, they were already over the urban sprawl of Damascus; weaving between city skyscrapers allowed them to easily shake off the three missiles. When the Black Hawks circled back up into the air, however, the attacker had already vanished.

Meanwhile, the two squads led by Su Cheng had successfully suppressed Delta Force and begun their retreat toward the designated extraction point.

Two pickup trucks roared into view, mounted with heavy machine guns that immediately opened fire, blanketing the Delta Force's position with suppressing fire.

Possessing even denser and more overwhelming firepower than Su Cheng's team, the heavy machine guns pinned Delta Force down hard. In the face of heavy machine gun fire, individual combat prowess was painfully insignificant.

Seeing that Xit's reinforcement team had arrived, Su Cheng didn't waste words, signaling everyone to jump straight into the vehicles.

The pickup trucks sped away into the distance, the heavy machine guns mounted on the beds continuing their relentless fire as they retreated.

"Damn it!" The members of Delta Force could only watch helplessly as their targets withdrew, completely powerless to stop them.

Heavy machine guns? They could provide suppression for a moment, but could they suppress them forever?

In the past, they always had air support at a moment's notice, but now that it was gone, the Delta operatives found it bitterly ironic.

Yet they had to admit that this group's combat capabilities were definitely no inferior to their own.

Due to the deafening gunfire and explosions, very few people remained on the streets of Damascus. After picking up Su Cheng and his team, Xit retreated according to plan.

The route they used for their escape was separated by only a single wall from the external military forces pouring into Damascus to restore order.

Slipping out of Damascus completely unimpeded, they raced across the desert. After driving furiously for over a dozen kilometers, they arrived at a desolate mountain valley where an Mi-26 transport helicopter was already idling. Everyone boarded immediately, and the chopper roared into the sky. Moments after liftoff, the pickup trucks they had used spontaneously detonated, obliterating any evidence left behind by Xit's team.

The Mi-26 flew at an extremely low altitude to evade NATO radar sweeps. Instead of flying toward the coastline, it headed deep into the desert. There lay a base belonging to a resistance organization that had previously cooperated with Genting. Su Cheng had already negotiated with them for temporary shelter. The price of admission was a batch of weapons—simply a consignment of standard AK-47s and rocket launchers, costing at most two million dollars to settle. Xit raised no objections; if there had been any flaw in the plan, he would have pointed it out. With NATO blockading the airspace and sea, heading toward coastal cargo ships was impossible; flying deep into the desert was undeniably the best choice!