Chapter 68 What Has to Come Will Come

"Tsk tsk..."

Grey Wolf lowered his head to look at the empty basin in his hands, then glanced at Umarov, who was still burying his face in voraciously devouring roasted mutton chops and lamb legs, his eyebrows twitching involuntarily a few times.

"Xiang, look at him... The mutton in our freezer has been eaten clean by him in just two days. He started early this morning with ten pounds of mutton; he eats even more than a polar bear..."

Song Heping saw it too, and he could not help but shake his head with a bitter smile.

This Jinx was simply too much of a bottomless pit when it came to food.

On the very first day he arrived, his first meal consisted of fifteen pounds of lamb legs and three large loaves of *dalia* bread.

At first, the cook thought it was due to his own exceptional marinating skills.

Later on, he realized it was just because Jinx possessed a bottomless appetite.

The man was practically a starving ghost reincarnated.

Fifteen pounds of mutton per meal, without fail.

And he would not eat any other kind of meat.

He would not even deign to glance at beef.

The freezer could hold a hundred pounds of mutton, which previously used to last five people a whole week with some to spare.

Ever since Jinx arrived, it had only been three days, and the bottom was already in sight.

Fortunately, the Private Military Company currently had some cash padding their accounts; otherwise, they truly would not have been able to afford catering to this guy's meals.

Song Heping checked his watch; it was 7:30 in the morning.

They were two hours away from setting off for the Hassan Oilfield.

The preparations over the past few days had worked everyone to the bone.

Buying firearms everywhere, purchasing vehicles everywhere.

By today, everything was finally procured.

In addition to that, they had to process transit passes and relevant firearm possession permits for the sixty newly recruited local Iraqi mercenaries.

Because the Green Zone was considered a relatively sensitive security area, it was divided into several zones, with different security clearance levels required for each.

For safety reasons, carrying firearms in Iraq also required official documentation; otherwise, if one encountered coalition checkpoints or mobile patrols on the road while armed and failed to present the relevant documents, those trigger-happy soldiers could simply ventilate you on the spot without bearing any responsibility whatsoever.

Song Heping now felt that the cook hiring Ferrari to join the team at a monthly salary of twenty thousand US dollars was definitely worth it. If not for his connections within the Coalition-Internal Security Committee, he doubted everything could have been settled so quickly.

Out of Saif's five million dollar bounty, each of the five participants in the operation received a cut of six hundred thousand, leaving two million US dollars as circulating capital. Coupled with the ninety thousand dollar monthly security fee from Wood Energy Company, with twenty percent paid upfront as a deposit, they currently faced no financial pressure.

When formulating the combat plan earlier, Song Heping had reviewed the attack timings and local security situation analysis reports for that region over the past three months, realizing that Wood Company's ninety thousand dollar security fee was truly hard-earned money.

There were two most critical oilfield zones in the northern region: the slightly smaller Hassan Oilfield Zone, and a larger oilfield zone. This time, Wood Company had secured the five-year operational rights for both.

It sounded like a great deal, but when Song Heping saw the security situation and armed forces analysis report, his CPU instantly overheated.

Aside from the interim government and the coalition forces, there were three major factions of insurgents in that area.

One was the Kurdish armed forces supported by Turkey.

One consisted of suicide squads from Saddam's former regime army.

The third, and most complex, was the Autonomous Coalition Forces.

The reason the last faction was the most complex in composition was that it contained over a dozen internal sub-factions. Some of them neither supported Saddam nor liked the coalition forces; some sub-factions were influenced by Persian powers; and others were local tribal militias purely focused on protecting their own turf after Saddam's downfall, with very few political ambitions.

Another part of them was the most headache-inducing: the extremist faction. They possessed the most formidable combat effectiveness, the most extreme ideology, and loved playing with IEDs and car bombs, believing that ascending to heaven would grant them virgins.

This faction looked down upon any other local armed groups in Iraq, considering them to be traitors. Therefore, basically anyone who fell into their hands would be killed, without exception, and their methods of execution were the most brutal—direct video decapitation.

In such a war-torn land, even if one were to bury gold there, probably very few people could dig it out and claim it.

Relying solely on the sixty men at hand would make it extremely difficult to go toe-to-toe with these armed factions numbering in the hundreds, and even if they managed to hold their ground, they would pay a heavy price.

The good news was that Wood Company had hired two mercenary groups this time to provide security services for them.

The Hassan and Cook oilfields were not far apart. If trouble broke out at either oilfield, the other could dispatch a mobile force to reinforce them.

Beyond that, they could directly call upon the coalition forces stationed in Tikrit, about 100 kilometers away from the oilfields, for reinforcement, and could even call in the military's A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft or even AC-130 gunships for support.

As long as the two mercenary groups could hold out for about an hour, air support would definitely arrive.

Under conditions of absolute air supremacy, once the coalition aircraft arrived, those militants would undoubtedly flee in disarray.

The bad news was that the other mercenary group stationed in the Cook Oilfield Zone was their old nemesis: the British "Mad Dog" Private Military Company led by "Mad Dog" Rice.

By nine o'clock, just as they were preparing to depart, Song Heping's cell phone received an overseas call.

Glancing at the number, his brow immediately furrowed.

It was an unfamiliar phone number, and judging by the area code, it belonged to the county where his younger sister lived.

Due to financial constraints, communication between the siblings was always initiated by Song Heping calling back home. Because international long-distance calls were expensive, his habitually frugal sister would never take the initiative to call him.

Since she had called, something must have happened, and a major event at that.

He quickly found an empty corner and answered the call.

From the other end came his sister's slightly nervous voice.

"Brother, last night some police officers came to look for me and asked about you."

"What?"

Although Song Heping was completely baffled, he vaguely sensed something was wrong. An intuition told him this was definitely related to the incident where he captured Saif and made it into the newspapers.

In fact, Song Heping had always carried a sense of unease regarding that matter, precisely for this reason.

You must know that being a mercenary was a legal gray area domestically, and regulations concerning this aspect had a blurred line: if one joined and practiced the mercenary profession through formal procedures in a country where mercenary work was legalized, without involving criminal acts, criminal liability could be exempted.

Yet, what exactly constituted being legal, and what crossed into illegality?

That was the gray area.

He had killed so many people during his previous operations.

Was that legal or illegal?

He had no bottom line in his heart.

"What did they ask?"

"They didn't ask too much, just whether you were working abroad, and tried to understand some of your circumstances. I said you were doing business abroad, but their expressions didn't seem to believe me... Also, Second Brother called me too, saying someone went to his school to look for him, asking the exact same questions..."

"Xiang! We're moving out!"

The cook shouted from beside the vehicle, tapping his wrist watch with his hand.

Song Heping glanced at the time; it was indeed time to leave.

He quickly urged his sister: "If they ask again next time, just say I am indeed abroad, but you are unclear about what kind of work I do. Understand?"

He was unwilling to drag his sister down. Even if trouble befell him, he needed to sever ties with his younger brother and sister.

"Call your Second Brother later and tell him to say the same thing if anyone looks for him. Alright, I won't talk to you anymore; I have to go deliver goods. I'll call you when I'm free, and don't call my number anymore. Besides, I'll wire a sum of money to you; use it to pay off all the debts our family owes."

"Brother..."

Before his sister could ask further, he cut off the connection, turned off his phone, and ran toward the cook and the others.

"Alright, I'm coming!"

Fourth Chapter!