Chapter 42: Operation Wrathful Dragon (Part VII)

"Who goes there?" Less than a hundred meters away from the water plant, a voice suddenly rang out by the main gate, followed instantly by two blindingly bright beams from powerful searchlights.

Lei Dong instinctively used his left hand to shield his face from the dazzling glare while making a hand signal behind his back with his right, instructing Bei Shiliang to get ready. He then reverse-gripped the P9 pistol hidden behind him, his index finger gently resting on the trigger and his thumb flicking off the safety.

"Bastard! Turn off that damn light!" Lei Dong cursed loudly, suddenly accelerating his pace and striding forward.

"Halt! Who are you? Identify yourselves, or we will open fire without warning!" Seeing that the two men not only failed to stop but were instead walking faster, the guards on the opposite side shouted with increasing urgency.

Ignoring them completely, Lei Dong took a few quick strides forward and yelled angrily, "Are you blind, you damn fool? Can't you see my uniform? I'm a police officer, ordered to reinforce your defense!"

"Police?" The guards hesitated for a moment. The searchlight swept across Lei Dong again, and a guard asked suspiciously, "Ordered? Whose orders? Why didn't we receive any notice? ... Stop right there, or we'll shoot! Which precinct are you from anyway?"

With a sharp *clack*, the sound of a round being chambered echoed from across the way.

By now, the distance between them and the two guards was less than thirty meters. Lei Dong dropped the hand he had been using to shield his eyes, a ferocious grin spreading across his face. "I'm from the Hell Precinct!"

"Ambush—"

The guard shrieked in terror, instantly raising the muzzle of his Smith & Wesson Model 637 long-barreled revolver. But before their fingers could touch the triggers, a sharp pain pierced their glabella, their vision went completely dark, and strength drained from their limbs. Fired from over a dozen meters away, the 9mm P9 bullets punched neat black holes through their foreheads as blood spurted out. With two dull thuds, both bodies collapsed to the ground, lifeless.

Even as Lei Dong fired the two shots to eliminate the guards, a faint flash flickered from the muzzle of Bei Shiliang's Type 32 assault rifle. With two crisp *clangs*, both searchlights went dark almost simultaneously.

Immediately afterward, Lei Dong raised his pistol and fired a single shot, cleanly severing the telephone cable hanging from the corner of the high wall. The taut wire snapped instantly, whipping against the ground with a few sharp snaps.

"Move!" Lei Dong shouted into his radio transmitter, charging directly toward the towering wall of the water treatment plant.

From his earpiece came Wu Yun's prompt response: "Moving in!" Followed immediately by a series of explosions and a rattle of gunfire resembling popping beans!

Although the firearms used by Lei Dong and Bei Shiliang were equipped with sound and flash suppressors, the guard's shrill warning and the flurry of noise at the front gate had already alerted the defenders inside the high wall.

"Enemy attack—"

"Hurry! Take your positions!"

"Return fire! Return fire!"

Amidst chaotic shouts and hurried footsteps, gunfire suddenly erupted inside the high wall.

"Damn, they react fast enough, but they're too damn clumsy!" A cold sneer formed on Lei Dong's lips. They hadn't even caught a glimpse of the enemy, yet these people were blindly firing into the sky. Weren't they afraid of ricochets hitting their own men?

Furthermore, the moment the gunfire started, years of rigorous training allowed Lei Dong to instantly distinguish that the weapons held by the police inside were mostly Model 637 revolvers with an effective range of only fifty meters. Their bullet velocity was shockingly weak, their deterrent value far outweighing their lethality. Only a Remington shotgun and a single P9 posed any real threat.

Suddenly, Lei Dong paused slightly. A figure flickered atop the highest water tower, followed by a sharp crack of gunfire. As he charged toward the high wall, Lei Dong instinctively threw himself into a tiger roll onto the ground. Before he could spring back up, three successive shots—*bang, bang, bang*—grazed his body and slammed into the earth, kicking up a blinding cloud of dust.

A Remington 400 sniper rifle!

Evading the three rounds, Lei Dong quickly calculated the trajectory and unleashed a short, rapid burst toward the estimated location. With a harrowing, spine-chilling scream, the sniper pitched forward off the water tower. The body slammed heavily onto the ground with a heavy thud, twitched its limbs a few times, and went completely still.

At that exact moment, a Minia-type grenade soared into the air, spinning over the high wall toward Bei Shiliang. Bei Shiliang's Type 32 assault rifle barked a crisp three-round burst; the grenade detonated mid-air just as it cleared the top of the wall, and the flying shrapnel burst outward with a loud explosion, immediately eliciting several agonized screams from behind the barrier.

"Flashbang!" Lei Dong bellowed, squeezing his eyes tightly shut as he flicked his wrist. A miniature sun of blinding white light pierced the night sky, followed by a chorus of shrieks from within the compound.

Opening their eyes, Lei Dong and Bei Shiliang rushed forward in long strides. Bei Shiliang leaped up, using both hands and feet to scale the wall ladder in a flash, instantly vaulting onto the top of the wall.

Meanwhile, a dozen meters away, Lei Dong raised a heavy boot and kicked fiercely at the brick wall. With a booming crash and a billow of dust, the sturdy wall was literally kicked open, revealing a massive hole. Two grenades were casually tossed through the breach into the courtyard.

Inside, the police had already set up a ballistic shield. Three officers cowered behind it, blindly firing toward the entrance with their eyes squeezed shut in a desperate attempt to seal off the gate. Pistol rounds clattered haphazardly against the metal doors.

Just then, a massive gap suddenly ruptured in the perimeter wall beside them. The two grenades bypassed the ballistic shield entirely, spinning as they landed right in the middle of the three officers.

*Boom!*

*Boom!*

The grenades detonated almost simultaneously. The shockwaves blasted the three policemen high into the air, and their bodies were instantly riddled like sieves, collapsing to the ground amid continuous, agonizing screams.

Up on the high wall, Bei Shiliang closed his eyes for a moment to silently mourn the policemen who had been shredded into tattered rags. *"Damn, the boss is getting more violent by the day!"*

Thinking thus, his hands did not stop for a second. The Type 32 automatic rifle steadily maintained rhythmic three-round bursts—*tat-tat-tat, tat-tat-tat, tat-tat-tat*—pinning the remaining police officers down with a relentless wall of lead.

By this time, the courtyard of the water plant was in utter chaos. Some officers were firing wildly in all directions, while others cowered as they scrambled for cover.

Taking advantage of the momentary lapse in the enemy's firepower, Lei Dong flicked his wrist, and the P9 miraculously vanished, replaced in his grip by a modified 50-caliber heavy sniper rifle. With an increased firing rate and a reinforced 200-round drum magazine, the heavy rifle let out a deep, chest-thumping roar. Every time the terrifying weapon boomed, another police officer was viciously pierced by a 12.7mm heavy round. Some heads exploded like watermelons, spraying crimson blood and white matter in all directions; others took hits to the torso, their entire bodies lifted into the air by the sheer kinetic energy before slamming heavily back down onto the ground, spilling trails of ruptured entrails.

This hellish scene shattered the police officers' morale. Screaming in absolute terror, they began retreating toward the pressurizing facility in the rear.

*Bang!* The heavy doors of the pressurizing workshop slammed shut, but in that brief span of dozens of meters, the defending water plant police left behind three more corpses.