"Keep heading northwest from here, and in another half hour, we'll be inside Afghanistan. We'll be safe then."
After driving for over an hour, Hawkeye stopped to check their direction and double-checked the GPS as he spoke.
"Looks like we..."
Boom!!!!
Black Widow was cut off by an explosion.
A violent blast erupted less than three meters to the left of the SUV.
The explosion hurled a mass of yellow sand into the sky.
"On the left!"
Hawkeye jerked the wheel as he spoke.
Black Widow immediately picked up a pair of binoculars and looked to the left.
"Go! Go! Hurry! Damn it!"
Black Widow's expression changed dramatically as she urged Hawkeye on.
Hawkeye wasted no words. He slammed on the accelerator, and the engine let out a piercing roar.
No longer caring about their direction, he sped off to the right.
With his sharp eyesight, Qin Xiao could make out a figure in the distance holding an iron tube.
It was probably a shoulder-fired rocket launcher. That was where the explosion had come from.
One rocket launcher was hardly a threat to this group. What was frightening was what lay behind the man holding it.
More than a dozen SUVs came up from behind the dune, one after another.
"Damn it, how did they get here so fast, and with so many people? Hold on tight! Insurance won't cover you if you fall out now!"
The pursuing vehicles were all open-top SUVs, and in almost every one, a terrorist stood with a rocket launcher on his shoulder.
They began bombarding their vehicle.
Hawkeye cranked the wheel all the way left, then all the way right an instant later.
The vehicle twisted like a snake, bouncing through the desert.
With explosions going off around them from time to time and yellow sand filling the sky,
Qin Xiao suddenly felt that this was starting to look a little like a spy movie.
"They came from the north! The Afghan border isn't safe. Contact our people and tell the military to deal with them. Hurry!"
Hawkeye shouted at Black Widow as he drove.
"I'm already calling, damn it!"
Black Widow held the phone in one hand just as gunfire sounded behind them.
A bullet practically grazed her arm and shattered the vehicle's side mirror.
Ratatatat!
Whether they had run out of rockets or the launchers were simply too inaccurate,
they all mounted machine guns on their jeeps.
The gunfire kept everyone in the vehicle from even raising their heads.
The clanging of bullets striking the vehicle never stopped.
The enemy was using heavy machine guns. Even a bulletproof vehicle could not withstand that kind of fire.
As he drove, Hawkeye found a moment to glance back at Qin Xiao, Tony, and Yinsen.
He sighed and said to Black Widow,
"You drive. We have to return fire!"
Without waiting for Black Widow's response, he stood and jumped into the space between the two front seats.
Almost as soon as Hawkeye began speaking, Natasha grabbed the wheel and sprang over into the driver's seat.
"Now it's our turn, bastards!"
Hawkeye drew his bow and nocked an arrow. No matter how the vehicle bounced,
his upper body remained almost perfectly still.
Whoosh!
An arrow flew!
Qin Xiao saw a huge burst of fire erupt from the vehicle nearest them.
Hawkeye had taken out an entire vehicle with a single explosive arrowhead.
The rear window had already been shot into a spiderweb of cracks.
"Get down!"
Qin Xiao shouted to Tony and Yinsen, then punched out the glass.
He brought up a rifle, aimed behind them, and began firing.
Qin Xiao's marksmanship was average. Under these conditions, hitting a target was even harder.
But he was not afraid of wasting ammunition. He switched straight to automatic and sprayed magazine after magazine.
He did disrupt quite a few of their machine gunners. At least they no longer dared to stand there firing so openly.
Whoosh!
After aiming for a moment, Hawkeye loosed another arrow.
Another vehicle became a fireball.
Whoosh!
And another.
"Yes! Nice work, buddy!"
Seeing Hawkeye sit down after firing his arrow, Qin Xiao found a moment to praise him.
With Qin Xiao keeping them distracted and Hawkeye taking out three vehicles with three arrows,
the enemy vehicles began keeping their distance, no longer daring to press so close.
The pressure on them immediately eased considerably.
"They've dropped back a little. Hey, keep going, Cupid. Do that a few more times. There are only five or six vehicles left."
Qin Xiao spoke as he looked at Hawkeye, who had sat down.
"I'd like to, but I'm out of explosive arrowheads. And I'm Hawkeye, not Cupid, rookie!"
"What do you mean, you're out of explosive arrowheads? Those are terrorists back there! We came here to fight a war. Couldn't you have brought more equipment?"
Qin Xiao exclaimed.
"We came to rescue people, not fight a war, rookie!"
Hawkeye spoke as he checked his quiver.
"I know you came to rescue me, but could you give me a gun too, Mongolian warrior? Taking a beating without fighting back isn't my style!"
Tony suddenly cut in.
"Damn it! My fucking name is Hawkeye! Stop making up names for people. Besides, who said I couldn't do anything without explosive arrowheads?"
As soon as he finished, Hawkeye sprang up and took brief aim.
He actually fired two arrows in succession. One struck a machine gunner square in the head, while the other went straight through the windshield and killed the driver.
The vehicle swerved sharply and rolled over onto the desert sand.
"See that, rookie? And you, millionaire. Leave the professional work to the professionals."
Qin Xiao and Tony exchanged a glance, and Qin Xiao shrugged.
"You're right. When you shoot that well, whatever you say goes. But why didn't you use those two arrows to kill two drivers? Then they would've rolled two vehicles."
Tony said, "I think Qin's right!"
Yinsen said, "Exactly!"
Hawkeye said, "..."
After all that, only two enemy SUVs remained, and there was barely any pressure on them anymore.
Everyone relaxed, simply waiting for Hawkeye to stand up and take them out with one arrow each.
Hawkeye did not disappoint. He stood and cleanly took out another vehicle.
When he stood up again,
Bang!
Almost the instant he rose, Hawkeye dropped back down.
A bullet was firmly embedded in the right side of his bulletproof vest, over his chest.
"Damn it! There are more!"
Hawkeye's words seemed to sound the horn for the enemy's attack.
Nearly twenty SUVs suddenly appeared on the dunes ahead and to the left.
In an instant, gunfire merged into a continuous barrage.
A mass of bullets kicked up bursts of yellow sand to the left of the vehicle and ahead of it.
They almost formed several deadly lines of fire.
If the vehicle had not happened to climb a dune and evade them, that single barrage would have shot it to pieces.
"We can't keep this up. Can you get the military to come straight here?"
Tony asked while the dune blocked the enemy's view.
"Now we're in trouble. Even if they come straight here, we'll have a hard time holding out that long. Luckily, there are plenty of dunes ahead. We'll cross them one by one and see if we get a chance to lose them."
Hawkeye pointed at the dunes ahead as he spoke.
Qin Xiao glanced at the rolling dunes ahead. With so many pursuers behind them, there was no way they could shake them off using just these few dunes.
There definitely was not enough time to wait for reinforcements.
"I remember there are still two big ones in the vehicle. I have a plan!"
Qin Xiao said quietly.