A Sentry Takedown? I Know This Job!

The team continued through the forest, but the atmosphere had changed completely.

Though they had been a team before, they had ultimately been thrown together on short notice, and there had been some distance between them.

But after the ambush and counterattack just now, they looked at Chu Hang as though he were some rare treasure.

This counted as recognition, Chu Hang thought happily. Sure enough, no matter what world he was in, recognition earned through strength was always the most solid and reliable.

The team walked for another half hour or so. The snow beneath their feet grew thinner and thinner, while the fresh scent of the forest gradually faded from the air, replaced by the cold smell of industrial exhaust and metal.

Steve, walking at the front, suddenly raised a hand. The entire team immediately seemed to have hit pause. Everyone stopped at once, silently crouching at the edge of the woods and blending into the darkness.

Chu Hang followed Steve's gaze, and the next second, he felt like his breathing had stopped.

Good Lord.

Ahead of the woods lay a vast expanse of snow-covered open ground, almost extravagantly wide.

At the far end of that snowfield stood an enormous steel fortress, crouching on the horizon like a savage prehistoric beast sleeping in the darkness.

This was Hydra's factory?

Chu Hang had traveled to plenty of places in his previous life and seen several large industrial parks, but none of them could compare to the monster before him. What kind of factory was this? It was clearly a military fortress built for war!

Thick walls dozens of meters high were covered in layers of crisscrossed barbed wire, which wailed mournfully in the freezing wind. Less than every fifty meters stood a towering concrete watchtower. Atop each tower, huge searchlights swept back and forth at a fixed rhythm like the emotionless eyes of demons, illuminating every inch of the pale snowfield around the factory as brightly as day.

Under those blinding beams, Chu Hang could even clearly make out the standard German machine guns mounted on the watchtowers with his enhanced vision.

Those dark muzzles looked ready at any moment to spew tongues of death and tear apart any living thing that dared approach.

Teams of heavily armed Hydra soldiers in black uniforms patrolled beneath the walls along fixed routes without pause, each leading vicious military dogs as sturdy as calves.

"Looks like Schmidt threw every last bit of Hydra's resources into this place." Dugan had somehow lit another cigar. He ground the butt fiercely into the ground, his face graver than ever. "Trying to get in from the front would be no different from lining up to meet God."

Everyone fell silent. The pressure brought by the fortress before them was overwhelming. It was like an invisible but very real wall pressing down on everyone's heart. Forget their dozen-odd men—even if they brought in a full regiment, they would probably still smash themselves bloody against this defense line of steel, concrete, and death.

For a moment, everyone's gaze unconsciously turned to Chu Hang once again.

Their eyes held anticipation, tension, and the last shred of hope.

Chu Hang immediately felt tremendous pressure. He knew what they were thinking. Since he could hear footsteps three hundred meters away on the other side of a ridge, perhaps he could find the slightest flaw in this seemingly impregnable fortress.

"I... I'll try."

Chu Hang took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down, then slowly closed his eyes.

At that moment, he focused all of his attention on his hearing and sight. The Super-Soldier Serum in his body made every cell come alive, pushing the enhancement of his senses to the limit.

All the sounds around him seemed to be filtered. The rustling of wind through the treetops, his teammates' tense breathing, their heartbeats... all became distant and blurred.

Only the massive factory ahead remained in his world.

Countless sounds surged into his ears like floodwaters bursting through a dam.

The faint squeak of searchlight bearings turning without enough oil...

The subtle differences in patrolmen's footsteps on various surfaces: the crunch of snow, the clack of stone paving...

The low growls from the military dogs' throats, along with the scraping swish of their claws raking over frozen earth...

He could even hear the extremely faint hum of the barbed wire atop the walls vibrating in the air from the high voltage running through it...

To ordinary people, these sounds would have been nothing but chaotic noise. But in Chu Hang's mind, they were rapidly analyzed, organized, and classified, then pieced together bit by bit into an incredibly clear and precise three-dimensional sound map.

"The west side..." Chu Hang paused, seeming to distinguish something carefully. "There's a blind spot in the searchlight coverage on the west side. In the gap where the two beams cross, near the corner, there's a dark patch that appears for about three seconds every minute and twenty seconds."

Several team members' eyes lit up at that, but Chu Hang's next words immediately poured cold water over them.

"But the barbed wire there carries the highest voltage. The electrical current is louder there than anywhere else. And... beneath that patch of snow, I can hear the extremely faint clicking of many metal firing pins frozen in place. There are... landmines buried below."

The team fell into dead silence.

Was there really no way in?

Steve's brows knitted tightly together like two drawn swords. He looked at Chu Hang's face, pale from intense concentration, and was about to tell him to rest and not push himself too hard when Chu Hang suddenly opened his eyes.

"The north side!"

His eyes shone with almost manic excitement, like a traveler who had crossed the desert for three days and nights before finally spotting an oasis.

"The north side! Near the riverbank! There's a drainage channel there!"

He pointed toward the riverbank north of the factory, shrouded in darkness. Excitement made him speak faster. "I heard dripping water! Very regular, one drop at a time. It isn't natural. The sound is coming from a huge pipe—it should be the factory's drainage outlet! There are the fewest guards there, probably because the smell is too awful. I heard the patrols instinctively hold their breath and quicken their pace every time they pass it!"

He took a breath and continued, "Most importantly! I heard the iron grate at the pipe entrance rattling slightly—clang... clang... It sounds like the water has been washing over it for years, and the bolts holding it in place have already come loose!"

A drainage channel!

Those three words were like lightning tearing across the sky, instantly illuminating the gloom called despair in everyone's heart.

Steve's eyes immediately lit up, as if stars were burning within those blue irises.

"Good work, Chu Hang!" Unable to contain his excitement any longer, he slammed a fist onto Chu Hang's shoulder. The blow was so heavy that the old Chu Hang would probably have dropped on the spot, but now he only felt a slight numbness in his shoulder. The heaviness vanished from Steve's face, replaced by blazing fighting spirit. "That's our way in!"

Logan came over as well. His beastlike nose twitched hard before he bared his teeth in a feral grin. "The kid's right. With the wind blowing this way, I think I can already smell that nasty stench. It's strong enough, all right."

Now that they had found a breakthrough, everything that followed became much easier.

Steve immediately gathered everyone together. He spread out a crude map confiscated from a Hydra soldier and began assigning tasks beneath the faint moonlight. His voice was quiet, yet steady and powerful, like a pillar holding back the sea, making everyone who heard it feel utterly reassured.

"Here's the plan." He traced across the map with the tip of his knife. "Chu Hang, Logan, and I will form the first assault team. The three of us will infiltrate the factory through the drainage channel. Our first priority is to find the factory's electrical room and cut power to the outer barbed wire. Then we'll find a way to open a side gate from inside, creating an entry point for the main force."

He looked up, his gaze sharp as lightning as it swept across the remaining team members.

"Dugan, you'll lead the others as the second team. Your task is to circle around and conceal yourselves outside the mined area on the west side of the factory. Once we cut the power, I'll notify you through the communicator. At that point, you'll break in through the western gate we open and head straight for the prisoner camp marked on the map to rescue our brothers. Remember, keep things quiet. Avoid firefights as much as possible before the rescue is complete."

"Understood, Captain!" Dugan nodded heavily.

"Once we're inside, we'll use this to contact you." Steve took a confiscated Hydra communicator from his pocket and handed it to Dugan. "Remember, three short signals are the code. The moment you hear them, move immediately. If... if we haven't sent the signal within an hour, then it means we've failed."

His voice paused there and turned incomparably grave. "When that happens, retreat immediately. Take Gabe and get out of here. Do not hesitate! That's an order!"

"Captain..." Dugan's lips moved as though he wanted to say something, but seeing the unquestionable look in Steve's eyes, he ultimately said nothing. He merely gripped the communicator tightly and nodded. "You three... be careful."

Steve smiled, patted his shoulder, then turned toward Chu Hang and Logan.

"Ready?"

Logan licked his cracked lips and clenched his finger joints until they popped. His deep-set eyes were filled with bloodthirsty excitement, like a beast about to be released from its cage.

Chu Hang took a deep breath as well and nodded hard.

Honestly, he was still a little nervous. The thought of following Captain America and Wolverine into a foul-smelling sewer to raid a heavily guarded Hydra base made the whole thing feel absurdly surreal.

Just a few months ago, he had been an office drone sitting in a cubicle every day, losing hair over KPIs and his boss's moods. Now he was about to do something that only happened in Hollywood blockbusters.

Life really was more thrilling than the movies.

"Move out!"

With Steve's low command, the three-man team slipped away from the main force like three ghosts merging into the darkness. Under cover of night, they moved like three sharp daggers straight toward the foul-smelling riverbank.

The night wind carried a bone-chilling cold as it swept through the reeds along the riverbank.

The three quickly found the enormous drainage outlet, half-hidden beneath dense weeds and thick sludge. Before they could even get close, an indescribable stench mixed with cold dampness rushed at them from the pitch-black pipe. It smelled like rotting garbage, industrial waste, and some creature's excrement fermented together for months—so pungent it seemed to pierce straight through them.

Logan's face instantly turned green, and he could not help muttering a curse in his hometown dialect.

Steve instinctively frowned as well, but he did not hesitate. He stepped forward first and gripped the massive rusted iron grate. The muscles in his arms bulged at once, veins standing out as, with a harsh screech of metal, he forcibly pulled open a gap wide enough for one person to squeeze through sideways in the grate that weighed hundreds of pounds.

An even thicker, fouler stench mixed with icy sewage surged out of the pipe.

Steve glanced back at the other two. He said nothing, merely gestured with his eyes before bending down and entering the bottomless, foul-smelling darkness without hesitation.

Looking at the pitch-black entrance, Chu Hang felt his stomach churn violently. He nearly threw up the compressed biscuits he had eaten for dinner.

He glanced at Logan beside him, who wore the same constipated expression, sighed, and followed with the resignation of a man accepting his fate.

Fine. A sewer was a sewer.

After all, this was a sewer he was crawling through with Captain America and Wolverine. If he made it back alive, that story alone would be enough for him to brag about at the bar for the rest of his life.