Chapter 1030: Villa Raid

Several German helicopters, using the terrain to fly nap-of-the-earth, had arrived at a nearby field airfield days ago and had lain in wait. The commander of this airfield was a trusted subordinate of the pro-German General Garibaldi.

This small-scale special forces unit had been ordered to carry out a mission codenamed “Project Colle,” and they had rehearsed the specifics of this mission countless times. Today, they had received the order to move out and execute, and so they had immediately begun their operation.

In the hands of the mission’s frontline commander was a map of a building’s layout. It detailed the furnishings inside the house, the direction of the corridors, and even marked the purpose of some of the rooms. This map, at a glance, had been drawn by someone who had been inside the house, and it recorded everything he had seen in great detail.

“I will repeat the mission: Group 1 will enter from the windows. We need to immediately seal off their escape route from the second floor. Group 2 will assault the main entrance. After eliminating all resistance, secure all captured enemies! The helicopters will suppress all enemy fire from outside. Understood?” the team leader asked loudly over the noisy helicopter’s intercom, his hand on his throat mic.

“Understood, sir!” everyone replied in unison. They leaned back in the vibrating, jolting helicopter, feeling the airflow on their faces. These German soldiers, kitted out in special equipment, had stories written in their deep-set eyes. This day, they were destined to become famous, because the number of special forces deployed by the German army today was the largest in history.

“Target sighted!” the pilot of the lead helicopter shouted, alerting the helicopters behind him. As he gave the warning, he had already squeezed the firing trigger on his control stick. The two 20mm cannons under the nose of the aircraft suddenly spat fire, and the helicopter shuddered even more violently.

Rat-tat! Rat-tat! Shell casings were ejected from the bottom of the helicopter’s fuselage. The warheads drew a straight line and swept over the pitiful sandbags outside the villa, and over the Italian guards who were scrambling for cover. In an instant, the area was filled with smoke and fire. In an instant, those men were torn to bloody pieces.

The two heavy machine guns that had been set up to deal with a ground approach, under the suppression of the cannon fire, had no chance to even return fire before they were completely crushed into a pile of scrap iron. After the German helicopters had fanned out, their dense cannon fire had left no gaps for the Italian guards outside.

“Fast-rope! Fast-rope!” With one command after another, ropes were thrown from the helicopters. The special forces soldiers, with their special rappelling equipment, slid down the ropes from both sides of the helicopters one after another. The moment they hit the ground, they raised the weapons that were fixed to their chests. For a moment, the sound of gunfire was a chaotic mess.

Crack! Crack! The snipers, who had descended from the last aircraft, began their work the moment they landed, holding their scoped G43 semi-automatic rifles. These expert snipers, who had been hand-picked from the army, used their new semi-automatic sniper rifles to directly take out their Italian counterparts who were hiding on the roof.

“Continue suppressive fire! Everyone, don’t stop, keep moving!” Grabbing the mobile radio from the back of the signals soldier, the commander, after contacting the helicopter unit, waved his hand at his men, who were warily covering all directions. And so these soldiers began to advance, covering each other. In their path of advance, one after another of the Italian soldiers fell.

Two helicopters, carrying a squad of special forces, did not stop. They hovered over the roof of this country villa, their side-mounted machine guns suppressing the Italian guards who were fleeing in all directions. These Italian soldiers, who were in charge of defending this place, were by no means non-elite. But under the attack of the German special forces, they didn’t even have the ability to assemble and mount a defense.

Down the ropes dropped from these two helicopters, the first squad of German soldiers landed on the roof. They crushed the tiles on the villa’s roof as they landed, making a heavy, clattering sound. They then fixed their ropes to the chimneys and the ridge of the roof, quickly rappelled down to the side of the second-floor windows, and after throwing in grenades and smoke bombs, and hearing the explosions, they charged into the second-floor rooms through the windows they had smashed.

“Red smoke! Group 1 has completed its mission! Group 2, begin the breach!” Seeing the red smoke billowing from the second floor, the German commander loudly ordered his men to launch a new round of attacks.

These German soldiers, who had already taken the front door, held their MP-44 assault rifles and fired a dense hail of bullets at the lock. Then two soldiers forcefully kicked open the thick door. The covering team, following close behind them, immediately aimed their half-dozen dark muzzles at every corner inside the door.

Rat-tat! Rat-tat! Crack! Crack! Before the Italian soldiers inside could even react, these muzzles had spat dazzling tongues of fire. And so the Italian soldiers inside, who were in a state of chaos and had not even known how to set up a defensive system, were cut down in swathes.

Crack! In the chaos, a German soldier was hit in the shoulder by a bullet. Blood immediately gushed out, and he was thrown backward by the immense force, landing in a dangerous position in the doorway.

Two German soldiers, with quick hands and sharp eyes, immediately grabbed the shoulder straps of his tactical vest and forcefully dragged him from the doorway. They saw the wounded man groaning in pain and knew the wound was not too fatal, so they shouted to the medic who was leaning against the wall, “Medic! Jaen! We have a man wounded! Help, quick!”

And just as the medic, named Jaen, was approaching the doorway, preparing to treat the rescued wounded man, two German soldiers had, at the same time, thrown hand grenades and smoke bombs into the interior of the villa, which was filled with the sound of gunfire. As the explosions sounded, two German soldiers with new-model grenade launchers under their MP-44 assault rifles, stuck the grenade launchers into the doorway and pulled the triggers.

With two not-so-loud “Thump! Thump!” sounds, two 30mm grenades were fired into the interior of the house, relatively far. The Italian soldiers there were still firing at the doorway. The result was that they saw two things that looked like cannon shells land at their feet.

BOOM! BOOM! The two explosions made the entire villa tremble, and the resistance of the Italian guards inside also weakened. After all, this feeling of being suppressed was not good, and these Italian soldiers, who had been ordered to protect this villa, although they were elite, clearly did not have the spirit and morale to fight to the death.

“Hey! Don’t shoot! We surrender!” In the room, an officer in charge of these Italian troops, his face covered in grime from the grenade dust, shouted, waving his hand in front of him as he yelled at the doorway.

The German special forces had, at this time, already poured in through the main entrance. They had already spread out in the room, and their firepower superiority was on full display. Most of these German soldiers on this mission were equipped with MP-44 assault rifles. Their sustained fire was far, far stronger than these Italian regular troops, who were mostly holding rifles.

“Drop your weapons!” a young German soldier shouted in Italian, holding his assault rifle. And so the Italian soldiers in the room all threw their weapons out of their rooms. As if it were contagious, the sound of dense gunfire in the entire villa soon ceased. These Italian troops were very good at judging the situation. Hearing the German call for surrender, they had immediately given what they considered to be the most correct response.

“Do you recognize this person?” The German commander walked around the pile of Italian soldiers’ bodies by the door and, in front of the Italian officer who was squatting in a corner with his hands on his head, waiting to be dealt with, he pointed to the people in a few photos and asked.

The young translator beside him immediately translated in fluent Italian. The Italian officer, without a hint of defiance, immediately pointed to the floor above him. “I know them! They are up there!”

At this moment, one of the German special forces soldiers from Group 1, which had entered the villa from the second floor, came down the stairs. Behind him, someone was escorting a young man in a suit, pushing and shoving him down as well.

“Sir! When we entered, several of them had committed suicide by taking poison. Only this one didn’t die, so we brought him down,” the commander of Group 1 reported to the overall commander of the operation.

“Are you saying the target personnel are all dead?” the frontline supreme commander frowned. He then looked at the young man in front of him, who had not had the courage to swallow the cyanide. He glanced at the photo in his hand and then smiled. “Although the American special envoy and several other important representatives have committed suicide, we have still caught a big fish… wouldn’t you say, Mr. Intelligence Analyst from the American legation?”

He tilted his head and ordered his men, “Take him to the plane. The rest, after they have been disarmed, have them assemble in the open space in front of the house and line up. Thirty seconds from now, we’re leaving! Move!”

“Yes, sir!” Several German soldiers carried the half-destroyed American codebooks and radio to the plane. Two soldiers, holding the still-slightly-struggling American intelligence officer, also got into the helicopter, which was parked in the open space with its engine still running. After confirming that the Italian prisoners on the ground were no threat, the last batch of German soldiers turned and left. The entire villa had returned to its former quiet.

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