A1 ROAD, CENTRAL DISTRICT, BOTSWANA

The trip continues at full speed through the African plain, the engines continue to sound, the wheels spinning, the kilometers passing by. Midnight has already passed but the convoy hasn't stopped, only the driver has changed, now the driver of the car I'm in is Blitz, which I swapped with Wolf so he could ride in the back and get some sleep, we are not driving with the lights on, instead we are using night vision goggles to see, which will make us at least a little more difficult to find in a flat place like this, with this equipment we have a very big advantage over what a local guerrilla could have.

We had already passed the town of Pelapye, at this point we were heading to Fransistown and then to the border post with Zimbabwe, for the moment nothing bad had happened, which didn't really confuse anyone, I was pretty sure that someone would try something, so I wanted to be one step ahead of the rebels. It was clear that they would not attack at Plumtree, as it was obvious that at the border post there would be a security station that could provide reinforcements, so they would have to attack before we were anywhere near there, but at the same time they had to attack us late so that they could find us "tired and unprepared" and have as much time as possible to gather their forces, so the best bet was to attack close to the border, but not too close, which would be close before Fransistown, where we were headed. The best way to stay ahead of the game was simple, do something unpredictable, something idiotic that would leave everyone wondering what the fuck. I asked Wolf that instead of following the road north, we should head northwest through the savannah and then later correct course for the border, the leader seemed to agree with me so I radioed the others to follow us into the wilderness.

Our vehicles were, as expected from an MRAP, excellent on poor terrain, but the place was so flat that even the president's toyota had no trouble keeping up. For several minutes the old man continued without major setbacks outside a herd of gazelles that we stumbled upon by surprise, probably scared of the metal gigangs that were approaching at full speed. The nature and the local animals were a majestic sight, if only I had the time to stop and contemplate it.

Things came to a head when at one point I turned to look in my rearview mirror to monitor how the other vehicles were progressing when I noticed something really troubling. A thin thread of light was coming from a tree and was impacting the third vehicle in the convoy. It wasn't lethal, yet, for the next 2 seconds at least, it was a laser sight mark, which was probably attached to a weapon, it could only mean one thing, enemies.

image [https://i.imgur.com/oUaAb0n.png]

"Alert, laser mark, 300 meters Northeast, at 70, unknown" I borrow radio to shout the warning.

Wolf immediately jumped when he heard those words and took the binoculars to observe, Blitz stepped on the ground and the machine began to approach at full speed, the others followed him immediately. Hawk radioed that they were two men, probably an enemy reconnaissance team, while I tried to get a better look to verify that it was real, I saw how the glass just a few centimeters from my face appeared in an instant a large white spider web. The bulletproof glass had managed to stop a bullet, a large round seeing the damage it left, I did not want to damage the number of caliber. Wolf took from a box on the roof a screen and a video game controller, it was the command station of the machine gun turret on the roof, he immediately started to shoot back, the other Fenrir cars followed him shooting towards the same place, so that if they could not hit directly, at least he would force them to stay in cover until we were far enough away for them to do anything.

"Vehicles to the northeast, 200 meters, 40, five pick ups, unknown."

"Each one carrying about 10 people in the trunk, I'm sure as fuck those are rebels." Hawk said over the radio, concerned.

I looked in the direction they had indicated, he was right, several cars were approaching at full speed through the plain of the savannah. They were civilian cars, with a flag that I could not distinguish well, but in each of them, there were a lot of people, from far away you could see the classic silhouette of the Ak-47, the weapon of choice of the rebels in the world. They were driving as if they were escaping from the devil himself, without any concern for their lives, the people in the back were holding on to the cars as best they could to avoid falling to the ground and getting caught in the middle of the savannah or falling victim to the lions. When they got close enough to our vehicle they started firing their weapons, Fenrir and the BDF responded in the same way, they shattered two of the vehicles, with one of them exploding and throwing all its occupants into the air, three of them were unlucky enough to be crushed by the remains of the burning vehicle. The remaining three, however, did not stop and continued their attack.

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Paying attention to what was happening, some things were quite curious, the main one was that they were not attacking the old toyota owned by the president, but instead, they were focusing on ours and Fenrir's second MRAP, where the president was precisely. The other is that there was no other way to see it, the attack had been lucky, maybe too lucky. There were only two possible reasons, either these rebels had a tactical genius among them capable of being two steps ahead of me, or these guys had received very good help, the expensive kind. It is impossible to spot a convoy traveling at full speed in the middle of nowhere and in the middle of the night without advanced technology, how advanced? like putting expensive planes with a lot of computers, or having a satellite in space, both of which are far from the wallet of a rebel group that can barely pay for bullets. In addition to the direction from which they came, they were in the east, where we would have passed through originally, and they managed to realize in a short time because even with the recognition team, the warning would not have arrived so quickly, these guys had received foreign aid, one from a really wealthy country, I had no proof but no doubts either.

"More Tecnicals, 100 meters, Northeast, Shit I think they have RPGs!" Said a soldier over the radio.

"Quick, spread out, circular formation!"

"Concentrate on the new cars!"

"Don't let them get near the trucks!"

"If they hit one of the explosives truckers, we're all screwed!" Wolf advice to all units.

Quickly all the vehicles began to separate in coordination, and among them all took the shape of a circle, where in the center was the car that was transporting President Masisi. To his left were the two trucks with explosives and the old Toyota, while to the right were all the combat vehicles. Our car ended up being the closest to the rebels.

"What do we do boss?"

"Do we stay and shoot until the threat is cleared?"

"No!"

"We're close enough to the border"

"The best thing to do would now be to keep going until we reach the border post."

"If we radio them what is happening we can set up a defensive barricade and catch the rebels chasing us by surprise."

"It's more likely to survive at the border!" I reply back to the Blitz

"Either way, it's fine with me."

"It's your decision Chief"

"I think the same as the girl"

"We're more likely to get out of this by getting to the border than to stay and fight."

"We still don't know if these are the only rebel vehicles or if more will join them."

"The safest thing to do right now is to get to Zimbabwe as fast as we can," said Viktor.

"Consider it done, Mr. Wolf."

Shortly after one of the new rebel vehicles was hit by several shots from one of ours, almost immediately exploded, it seemed that it was one of the cars carrying missile launchers, one of its tires flew through the air and hit a poor rebel in the head which fell alone from the vehicle, what bad luck, if somehow survived the blow and the fall will still be in the middle of nowhere for days wounded, in any case now there was one less enemy.

Wolf radioed to inform the outpost of our arrival in minutes and about the rebels that were chasing us, the local commander assured us that he would have his forces ready by then. Our convoy had managed to resist the attack with relative ease, no doubt the equipment Fenrir had brought with him had been a great advantage, Hammer had even retaliated by using one of his rocket launchers against another of the rebel cars that appeared. It seemed that the team was in good spirits when a couple of jokes came over the radio from another of the cars.

It didn't take us much longer to finally see the border lights, which when they saw us approaching at full speed they threw flares into the sky to illuminate the area even more. After letting us pass, they quickly closed the walls waiting for the enemy, which did not take long to appear. What at the beginning had been 5 cars had multiplied to almost twenty that had been following us a little further behind. And since we were all together we took the opportunity to shoot everything in their direction.

The result of the defense was a complete defeat for the Kalahari Crusaders, when they lost more than 15 cars right there at the border, the remaining cars seeing the inebitable defeat decided to flee the place into the darkness of the savannah. Both the BDF and the Zimbabwean army had helped us to get the enemy off our backs for which we were grateful, President Masisi even went so far as to congratulate his men. But we could not stay long if we wanted to maintain our current advantage, so after checking the damage to the vehicles and determining that they were in good condition we got back on the road again to head for the capital of Harare.