Abandoned Pawn

The newly reinforced American forces, led by Kirk's team and the Sea Emperor Group, immediately chose to attack the Japanese Army's Mountain Fortress!

The mountains across Beliu Island were riddled with karst caves and tunnels. After occupying the island, Kunio Nakagawa had devised an ingenious construction plan. He ordered the Japanese sappers to work with the terrain, tunneling through the entire mountain range and connecting the passages into a Cave Tunnel several kilometers long, linking all the island's Defense Bunkers.

His Defense Command Post was also located in a karst cave in the Central Mountain Range. The nearly three thousand remaining Japanese troops were like a pack of rats, scurrying through the mountain caves across the island and attacking the Americans from the various bunkers.

"If we want to finish taking the entire island within the remaining month, we can't keep playing hide-and-seek and Cat and Mouse Game with the Japanese!" Kirk said icily. "We have to enter their caves and drag Kunio Nakagawa and the forester team out!"

"Doing that carries a huge risk," Wang Han objected. "The Conqueror has a Mental Power Specialty. Once we enter caves we know nothing about, the maze of branching tunnels could disorient us or force us to split up. And with Mental Misdirection, we might end up surrounded on all sides."

Chekhov firmly supported Kirk's idea. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained. The forester team specializes in Ranged Combat. If we storm their lair and fight them in the narrow caves, that's still better than anxiously searching for bunkers while they're underground, ready to Focus Fire on us, isn't it?"

Both team leaders supported the risky decision. The tactics were settled.

The newly arrived 81st Division had brought something new: the Japanese Army's nightmare on the Pacific battlefield—the Flamethrower!

With an explosion, the engineers