Unidentified Attack

Chapter 45: Unidentified Attack

Because he had carried out a search mission at dawn, Coulson had been catching up on sleep after returning to the base. He did not wake until noon the next day. He had planned to wash up and enjoy a nice lunch, only to be interrupted by a rapid knock at the door.

Coulson checked the time in confusion and found that it was not yet time for his next mission. As the S.H.I.E.L.D. officer specifically assigned to search for Tony Stark, he was not responsible for the base's other affairs. But since someone had come looking for him in such a hurry, something major must have happened. He hurried over and opened the door.

Standing outside was the base commander's messenger. Upon seeing Coulson, the messenger ignored his exhausted appearance and merely gave a routine salute. "Agent Coulson, please come with me to the command center immediately!"

Hearing the urgency in his voice, Coulson had a bad feeling. Yet as he put on his coat, he still prayed that it was good news—that they had found Tony Stark, and not his body.

Once he was properly dressed, Coulson followed the messenger to the base command center. He found it packed with people, all busy at work. Some operated computers, some adjusted radios, and others kept explaining something over the phones. The place was a deafening mess.

There, Coulson met the base's highest-ranking commander, Colonel Hark. He was a burly, bald, middle-aged white man, directing everyone and constantly issuing orders. Coulson stepped forward and asked, "Colonel, you called for me. Is something urgent?"

Colonel Hark turned around, revealing a grim expression. Coulson said quietly, "Looks like it isn't good news."

"Agent Coulson, a major incident has occurred here. I think S.H.I.E.L.D. should be informed." Coulson had been assigned by S.H.I.E.L.D., not the US government, so the military higher-ups were more accustomed to calling him an agent.

"What happened?" Coulson sensed the heaviness in Hark's voice and did not dare take it lightly. If S.H.I.E.L.D. needed to know, it was clearly no ordinary terrorist attack.

"While you were resting, we lost contact with a ground search team." Hark explained the situation to Coulson.

"What? Were their communications jammed?" Coulson asked. Hark shook his head with an ugly expression. Then they had been attacked. Coulson was deeply shocked.

After Tony Stark had been kidnapped despite being escorted by the US Army, the local military had strengthened the search teams. Each team consisted of twenty highly experienced special forces soldiers rather than ordinary Army troops. They carried standard combat weapons and rode in four military Humvees mounted with machine guns. Taking out a squad like that was not something ordinary terrorists could accomplish.

"Based on their last transmission, we can confirm that they were attacked." As Hark spoke, he pulled out a remote and pressed a button. The command center began playing the recording of the missing team's final communication.

"Five targets approaching five hundred meters to the convoy's left. All units, stay alert."

"Stop and submit to inspection, or we will use lethal force. I repeat, stop and submit to inspection, or we will use lethal force."

"Oh, what is that thing? Stop! I said stop! Damn it, open fire! Open fire, now!"

What followed was a barrage of gunfire and explosions.

"Ah, God! What kind of monster is that? Retreat! Retreat now! Ahhh—"

A scream echoed throughout the command center.

Hark switched off the recording and said, "We suspect they were attacked by an unknown enemy. The attackers may even... not be human."

Hark himself could hardly believe it. If they were not human, what else could they be? Lizards mutated by nuclear radiation? But he had clearly heard the soldiers call those things monsters. No matter how ferocious the enemy was, surely these battle-hardened special forces soldiers would not be unable to tell whether they were humans or monsters.

"What do you think, Agent Coulson?" Colonel Hark asked.

"Did you notice something, Colonel?" Coulson seemed to have caught something suspicious after listening to the recording. "From beginning to end, I never heard anyone mention RPGs or grenades. And I only heard M4A1s and M2 machine guns."

Hark's eyes narrowed. After Coulson pointed it out, he too realized the problem. A convoy with twenty special forces soldiers and five machine-gun-mounted military Humvees could not be taken down with automatic rifles alone. And there had only been five targets. They would have needed anti-armor weapons like RPGs to destroy the convoy, or at the very least cluster bombs made from grenades. Yet nowhere in the recording had anyone warned the others to watch out for such things. It was far too abnormal. Could those special forces soldiers really have failed to notice the enemy using such weapons?

And what did it mean that the recording contained only the sounds of M4A1s and M2 machine guns? That the enemy had been too far away for their gunfire to carry over? Impossible. The urgent shouts ordering them to stop indicated that they had been less than a hundred meters from the convoy at most. How could their gunfire not have been heard? Then did the enemy use the same weapons as the convoy? Don't make him laugh. Did they know how much an M4A1 cost? One could buy at least ten AK-47s for that price. They were difficult to maintain and might not even work as well as AK-47s in the desert. What terrorist group could afford to be that extravagant?

"So the enemy did not use firearms, or any weapon we know of," Coulson said. "They might really be monsters."

Coulson felt that the people who had attacked the US Army search team were very likely Mutants. After all, human mutation was not limited to the United States; there could also be Mutants in the Middle East. And because the situation in the Middle East was so chaotic, Mutants there were even harder to detect. They were also targets for recruitment by terrorist organizations, which believed they were messengers sent by God to help them.

Colonel Hark, meanwhile, believed that the Persians had likely dumped waste from secret nuclear tests here. The nuclear radiation had then mutated the local lizards, allowing them to grow enormous, reproduce asexually, live on land and in water, and fire kinetic light waves from their mouths.

"Sir!" At that moment, a civilian staffer in the command center suddenly rose from his seat. "We've picked up the signal of a special forces unit. They claim to be survivors of the attacked search team."

I drank too much again, so there's only one update today. I'll make it up tomorrow—four updates tomorrow!!!