The portly white officer, looking thoroughly relaxed, fixed his gaze on the frightened young subordinate before him, and his expression darkened. He was furious that his impulsive underling had interrupted his action movie and caused him such unnecessary anxiety. Immediately, he scowled and shouted at the young man.
"What big deal could possibly happen in Africa?!" he demanded, glaring.
"Did an alien spacecraft land there?"
The young man quickly shook his head.
"Does that mean the aliens have already occupied Africa?" the white officer asked, leaning forward with his hands planted firmly on the desk. His tall, portly frame and round face, now flushed with anger, seemed to bear down heavily on the young subordinate. The young man shook his head again under his superior's harsh questioning.
The young officer's seemingly foolish responses only stoked the white officer's fury to a boiling point. He pointed a finger at the young man's nose and began to shout curses.
"If it's none of that, then tell me! What frightened you so much that you barged into my office without even knocking? Don't tell me it was because two petty warlords were fighting again!"
The young CIA civilian officer remained unmoved by the rebuke, his expression still tinged with panic.
"Sir! It wasn't a fight! It was a killing!"
The white officer looked astonished, then regarded his young subordinate with disappointment, shaking his head slowly.
"That's even less of a big deal. Without direct, large-scale conflict, the impact is much smaller. You're this panicked over such a trivial matter? I guess I really do need to reconsider my assessment of you!"
"No! Sir!"
Seeing that his superior had not given him a chance to explain for so long, the young man interrupted the white officer's monologue and shouted out.
"Not just one warlord! Many! Since last night, hundreds of warlords have been killed across Africa!"
The white officer, who had just sat back down, suddenly jumped up from his chair and stared at his subordinate in shock.
"What?!"
Intelligence agencies around the world quickly received news of the near-simultaneous assassinations of numerous African warlords. Before they could even fully process this, more and more reports of additional deaths trickled in like falling snowflakes.
Almost everyone realized that something major was happening!
Orders were rapidly disseminated, and countless intelligence agents already lurking in Africa were mobilized, with even more en route. Their mission was identical: to uncover the truth behind this mass assassination of warlords!
More detailed intelligence soon reached the heads of various agencies. The methods used to kill these hundreds of warlords were remarkably consistent: nearly all were beheaded or stabbed through the heart—primitive, yet brutally effective methods.
Forensic examination suggested the weapons used were likely cold weapons, such as long knives or spears, but the wound marks indicated blades sharper than any known alloy.
The faint blue halo that had been spotted fading in the sky led many to speculate about alien spacecraft. At the very least, no known aircraft could produce such an effect.
They appeared silently. After the crews infiltrated and completed their assassinations, they lifted off and evacuated just as quietly. Neither helicopters nor vertical takeoff and landing fighters could accomplish this.
They were not only incredibly maneuverable, but the noise generated by conventional aircraft during flight and hovering was impossible to conceal from guards, who would have been alerted long before their approach. Their
primitive weapons and methods, combined with their advanced stealth aircraft, seemed to point to only one explanation: aliens.
Even as the investigations continued, new reports of warlords being killed kept arriving. It was clear the enemy's goal was likely the elimination of all warlords in Africa. Anticipating this, agencies quickly dispatched personnel to the surviving warlords, lying in wait, hoping for a closer encounter. Over the course of
the night, most well-informed warlords had learned of the situation and drastically tightened their security. When their own men couldn't penetrate these compounds, they secretly established surveillance in the surrounding areas.
For some of their close collaborators, or even their direct proxies, they simply dispatched elite special forces, laying a tight net, waiting for these mysterious enemies to take the bait.
Unfortunately, they were doomed to disappointment. Wakanda, with its vibranium-powered technology, was far ahead of them. Wakandan fighters possessed exceptional stealth capabilities, remaining difficult to detect with the naked eye even at close range.
The only time a fighter became visible was briefly after completing an assassination mission. As the craft took off, the cloaking device required a few seconds to reactivate and fully engage. During this window, the blue flames from the fighters' thrusters could not be completely hidden, creating the same blue halo witnesses had seen, which then quickly faded into the clouds.
Beyond their stealth, the fighters were equipped with highly advanced sensors, capable of projecting a building's interior layout onto a 3D holographic sand table, completely revealing the situation inside. The carefully laid traps and heavily armed ambushes were fully exposed, leaving the would-be ambushers completely vulnerable to the Wakandan warriors.
Without the element of surprise, these elite special forces and intelligence personnel from various nations were no match for the powerful and superbly equipped Wakandan warriors.
However, to complete their mission and eliminate their targets while surrounded would inevitably mean engaging in a firefight with these special forces. This would lead to heavy casualties, escalate the situation dramatically, and fully implicate the foreign powers, thus defeating their original purpose.
Therefore, when the Wakanda fighter pilots discovered the traps laid below, they did not land. Instead, they hovered high in the sky and quickly reported the situation back to Wakanda.
This scenario was not an isolated one. Among the remaining hundreds of warlords, more than a dozen had deep cooperation with various nations, some being little more than proxies for foreign powers in Africa.
Traps had been set in the headquarters of these particular warlords, with large numbers of special forces from various countries lying in ambush around the targets, on high alert and ready to attack any intruders at a moment's notice.
Chen Mo was not too surprised to receive simultaneous situation reports from more than a dozen teams at the operations command center located within the Wakanda Palace.