"Bomb! There's a bomb on him!!!"
At the moment of heightened tension for Manstein and the rest, a piercing scream erupted.
A woman holding a child pointed at a nearby Tamil policeman, retreating in terror. She stumbled and fell to the ground, tossing the child to the side. But in the next moment, she snatched the child by the collar and bolted in a flash.
Her movements were so practiced it stung to watch.
The Tamil policeman cursed, tugged at his shirt, revealing a bomb with a flashing red light beneath. He started yelling something in Sinhala at the top of his lungs, incomprehensible to most.
But it clearly came with an ungodly amount of profanity.
"Target him, take the shot!"
The Fourth Battalion soldiers were hardened veterans, unphased by anything. They had their security formations layered thick, inside and out. When they saw the Tamil policeman charging toward them, the soldiers in the inner ring, stationed atop the Humvees, opened fire with heavy machine guns.
