Chapter 449

Chapter 449: Old Russian’s Triple Strike

“Received, ‘Avanti,’ we will begin evacuation in 30 minutes. Old Pan, start the countdown for us.”

Soon, Squadron Leader Chen Renkai’s response came through the radio channel.

“Okay, ‘Bamboo Dragonfly,’ connect all terminals, and begin the 30-minute countdown alert.”

Old Pan, still on the ground-effect vehicle, directed the Aircrew Group members to operate the battlefield information platform, providing tactical functional support for everyone. The tactical armor of each Dragon Guard, including Lin Mo’s Dragon General, displayed a countdown of 30 minutes down to the seconds on their visor displays.

They had to enforce a mandatory retreat 10 minutes before the missile attack, allowing some buffer time to guard against the Russians suddenly turning hostile. Officially, everything appeared calm, but they all feared that behind the scenes, the Russians might not be trustworthy. It was wise to be cautious.

According to the military confidentiality memorandum between the two countries, the Russians only allowed the Night warriors one hour for their operations. Whether they could break into the base within that hour or not, a powerful missile would fly in to destroy the base at the one-hour mark, leaving nothing behind.

How China allocated their attacking and searching time during that hour, and what gains they could achieve, depended entirely on their own capabilities. This was the Russians’ territory, after all—the Old Russians had the final say.

Perhaps through optical satellites, the Russians noticed the surprising efficiency with which the Chinese entered the North Koreans’ underground base. The Old Russians immediately set up a little trap, advancing the missile launch time by 10 minutes, clearly not wishing for the Chinese to gain too much from the base.

This underground base housed over a hundred North Koreans and stored a large quantity of supplies, secretly replenished every quarter. Despite some awareness, the Russians hadn’t fully intervened, perhaps hoping to "go long to catch a big fish," and were instead keeping it under surveillance.

With a strained North Korean economy, this military spending turned the base into a bottomless pit consuming North Korean resources. Now, as harvest season arrived, the Chinese were helping the Russians eliminate this cancer for free, and the Russians welcomed it.

Half an hour was more than enough for the nimble Night teams. Besides the personnel stationed outside for security, everyone else entered the underground base to carry out a raid.

Time is life!

The spoils filled over twenty large boxes originally used for canned goods. Outside, the familiar Siberian cold surged through, with swirling snowflakes falling heavily, and the forest surrounding them was pitch black—so dark you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.

The night vision system on their tactical armor ensured that the Night warriors could operate in such an environment. The timing of this batch of tactical armor arriving couldn’t have been better.

Amber-colored night vision light flickered as they moved through the woods, following the most stable path with little difficulty.

Two people lifted a large box, treading through the gradually accumulating thin snow, leaving the underground base with deep and shallow steps. Everyone quickened their pace, even using electrical energy to activate the exoskeleton augmentation system, doubling their movement strength. Though it could only last 15 minutes, that was enough to escape the Russians’ missile strike radius.

“Hurry, the missiles are coming, don’t lag behind!”

“Watch your steps, activate the assistance system, or you’ll tire too easily. Move quickly and remember to change your batteries.”

The two squad leaders constantly urged everyone to pick up the pace, with the helmet visor displays showing everyone’s triangular markers indicating their body orientations.

God knows if the Old Russians’ error range would catch them.

Not long after leaving the North Koreans’ base, Lin Mo heard Old Pan’s voice in his headset.

“Attention, the Old Russians are launching missiles. They’re Iskanders, three in total. Judging by their trajectory, they should hit directly. You all need to hurry! The Russians are clearing outdated stock.”

The radar system on Old Pan’s ground-effect vehicle, Bamboo Dragonfly, detected the missiles. The equipment supplied to the Night was developed by domestic military manufacturers, using the best technologies, materials, and processing technologies, ensuring that the Special Forces always received the most advanced gear first after official configuration.

The Iskander missile, made from special composite materials, features a unique structure. It resembles a cone and sheds its protruding surface quickly after launch to create a more rounded shape, reducing its radar wave reflection area and making it harder to detect.

The Russian military claims that the Iskander missile’s penetration ability rivals that of the "Topol”-M, capable of breaching any missile defense system in the world; Israel has also acknowledged that its jointly developed Arrow missile defense system with the United States cannot counter the multi-warhead Iskander missiles.

If the Old Russians knew that the Chinese radar system could detect and track their Iskanders, they might face a whole lot of trouble.

On the visor display, a semi-transparent map indicated their current position, the moving dot of the missile, and the location of the North Koreans’ underground base.

They had already run over 2 kilometers away. The further they were, the safer they would be. Before the final lock-on, the missiles still had a chance to change course.

The Russians’ fireworks were still very lethal, and getting too close could cost them their lives.

The SS-26 Iskander tactical ballistic missile is a single-stage, solid-fuel, fully guided missile, measuring 7.2 meters in length and weighing 3.8 tons at launch, with an effective payload of 380 kg. It’s road-mobile and can strike targets up to 480 kilometers away, capable of carrying various warheads, including cluster munitions (54 sub-munitions), high explosives, penetrating sub-munitions, bunker-busting bombs, air-burst munitions, and electromagnetic pulse bombs, allowing it to hit diverse targets effectively.

Its damage capacity is 2 to 3 times that of the American Army’s Tactical Missile System, so when the Russians flaunted their ground-to-ground missile capability in front of the Night warriors, they were also issuing a warning to Chinese missile forces.

While military strength requires confidentiality, revealing it appropriately is also crucial for asserting presence and deterrence.

“Here they come, here they come! Look to the sky, to the east.”

Someone shouted, startling everyone as they slowed their steps and looked up. Despite the countless snowflakes swirling, a small bright spot appeared in the sky, seemingly descending from above the clouds. After a moment, a second bright spot jumped out from the clouds, followed by a third, almost at the same interval.

The three bright spots moved quickly, heading straight for the North Koreans’ base.

The Russians were audacious; they dispatched three Iskander missiles to deal with a battered underground base. They probably believed this base was buried too deeply underground and needed sheer numbers to penetrate and utterly destroy it.

But they didn’t know that within this underground base lay over ten tons of TNT explosives. Just two bunker-busting missiles might turn the depths of the base into a magnificent volcanic spectacle.

Seeing the Russian missiles, the two squads quickly stopped, scooping up some snow and piling it up, stacking wooden boxes on top to cushion against the impending shockwave.

In the distance, a flash of white light erupted, and a crimson flame illuminated half the sky—as if a milky-white dome had broadened from the explosion in a split second before vanishing into the air, with even the falling snow unable to obscure it.

Six seconds later, a heavy muffled explosion echoed from afar, like a giant hammer pounding the chest and causing a feeling of tightness.

Immediately after, a thunderous blast erupted, as if the explosion had happened right beside them, the ground shaking violently like an earthquake.

Although their tactical armor provided protection, they still felt a tingling sensation throughout their bodies.

As the monstrous noise from the explosion began to fade, the strong shockwave rushed outwards from the fiery point, sweeping past the two squads’ position like a fierce wind, clearing all the snowflakes in an instant.

The wooden crates stacked on the snow were jolted into it by the shock from below. Without the soft cushion of snow, they might have bounced back up, and while paper documents would be fine, the hard drives would likely suffer.

The trees in the forest leaned violently in one direction, their branches shaking furiously, sending pine needles, dead leaves, snow, and moss swirling through the air. The entire forest turned into a white world, every inch filled with snowflakes and branches.

It was as if a level 11 typhoon swept through, and they felt the force of such a massive explosion. If they hadn’t discovered the detonator the North Koreans had left behind, they might have met the same fate as the base, obliterated without exception—even the Dragon Knights would not be spared.

In such an explosion, even the gold giant dragon’s essence wouldn’t dare to claim safety.

Even the largest steel structure might not remain intact.

They were still too close to the explosion site. Though they had exited the kill radius and the hilly terrain softened the shockwave, the might produced by 10 tons of TNT and the three consecutively hitting SS-26 Iskander tactical missiles still yielded an enormous impact.