372: Chapter 372 Annihilation in Twenty Minutes: The Burial of Cardamom Mountain Pass

"Understood." The combat engineer battalion commander's voice crackled over the radio—electromagnetic interference had started to appear, but it hadn't reached the point of complete jamming yet.

"Tank battalion—establish a blocking position at the exit of the pass. Dig hull-down positions for all vehicles, with only the turrets exposed. Remember, their tanks can penetrate our frontal armor from three thousand yards away. Our only advantage is the terrain—the pass is narrow, and their armored forces cannot deploy."

"Air defense company—deploy shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles to the hillsides on both sides. Do not turn on the radar; wait until you hear the sound of helicopters before firing. Once you turn on the radar, their anti-radiation missiles will be coming."

He issued orders one by one. The deployment itself was impeccable—Konsol was the only general in the Cambodia Army who had studied in the Command Department of the National Defense University of the Dragon Kingdom, and his graduation thesis was titled 《Blocking Tactics of Inferior Forces Against Superior Armored Forces in Mountain Defensive Operations》.

But he made a mistake. A mistake he was unaware of—a fatal one.

Every time his radio issued a command, another locatable signal source appeared on the electromagnetic spectrum. Vehicle radios, the IFF systems of the shoulder-fired missiles, the tactical terminals of the combat engineer platoons—each was transmitting signals that could be precisely intercepted and triangulated by the Vega system. And at this moment, at an altitude of 12,000 meters, two Hummingbird high-altitude long-endurance reconnaissance drones, painted with Thai Army insignia but actually assets of the "Sky Dome" system, were circling above the clouds.

Their synthetic aperture radar penetrated the rainstorm, the tree canopy, and the thin armor of the BMP-1 tops, marking the location of every vehicle, every soldier, and every crate of ammunition of the 70th Brigade on a 3D holographic map.

On the north side of the Dangrek Mountains, in the command vehicle of the Thai Army's "Thor" Long-Range Firepower Brigade.

Colonel Pakapon, the brigade commander, watched the red convoy trajectory crawling toward Cardamom Pass on the screen. He had been waiting for two whole hours—from the moment Hun Sen hung up the phone with Peterson, the encrypted communications intercepted by the Vega system had been automatically translated and pushed to his tactical terminal. He knew the 70th Brigade's departure time, march route, and scheduled arrival time. He even knew the title of Konsol's graduation thesis from the National Defense University.

"Target cluster," he spoke into the microphone, "has entered the preset A4 kill zone."

On the screen, the last Cambodia military truck drove into the entrance of Cardamom Valley. The entire 70th Brigade, 4,700 men and over 300 vehicles of various types, were all crammed into that narrow canyon only eight kilometers long.

"All battalions," Pakapon's voice was steady, "fire."

Fifty-two guardian-2d long-range rocket launchers roared simultaneously from their firing positions. Each launcher poured out eight 300mm rockets within twelve seconds—a total of 416. The flight trajectories of these rockets were corrected in real-time by the "Sky Dome" system, using BeiDou satellite guidance at the terminal phase, compressing the circular error probable to within five meters.

The flight time for the first wave of rockets to reach Cardamom Pass was 112 seconds.

At the 110th second, Konsol heard the sound coming from the sky.

It wasn't the screech of artillery shells. It was a dense—like thousands of locusts flapping their wings simultaneously—low, overwhelming hum. He looked up and saw the final scene of his life.

The exhaust flames of over 400 rockets burned through the cumulonimbus clouds. In the blaze of light, the warheads poured down like a torrential rain.

The exit and entrance at both ends of the canyon were collapsed simultaneously. Then, the firepower began to cut evenly along the length of the canyon. The first round, thermobaric warheads—fuel-air clouds filled the entire valley, and after the secondary detonation, the temperature inside the valley soared to 2,000 degrees, and the oxygen content plummeted to three percent. The second round, anti-armor cluster munitions—the warheads exploded above the tree canopy, releasing thousands of shaped-charge anti-armor bomblets, like high-speed nail hammers, punching through the thin tops of the BMP-1s, turning the people inside into molecular states. The third round, high-explosive fragmentation shells—specifically targeting the infantry who jumped out of the vehicles trying to climb up the hillsides.

Konsol did not live to see the third round of impacts. His BMP-1 was flipped over entirely in the fuel cloud of the first thermobaric round, and the turret flew thirty meters away. His training cap was caught on a charred rubber tree branch, and a line of Khmer script was embroidered on the brim—the translation was: "Defend the Motherland."

The entire bombardment lasted for twenty minutes.

When the last rocket landed, the canyon of Cardamom Pass had been leveled down by one meter. The trees on the hillsides on both sides were all burned into charcoal, and the road had turned into black lava mixed with molten asphalt, twisted steel, and charred bones. The 70th Brigade—the ace of the Cambodia Army—4,700 men, 320 vehicles, had turned into a long string of burning wreckage pinned to the bottom of the canyon within twenty minutes. There were no organized survivors. No counterattack. No anti-aircraft missiles rose from the hillside. Because the operators of the shoulder-fired missiles had suffocated in the first detonation of the thermobaric rounds; their fingers were still on the firing triggers, but their lungs had already been burned into charcoal.

Pakapon watched the damage assessment returned by the satellite—on the screen, the entire canyon was marked as a uniform red high-temperature zone by thermal imaging. He turned off the screen and wrote a line in the tactical log: "12:35, A4 kill zone execution complete, target completely destroyed. 416 rockets consumed. Remaining resistance: Zero."

Phnom Penh, Peace Palace bunker.

Hun Sen watched Tea Banh's complexion turn deathly gray after he finished the call.

"The 70th Brigade—" Tea Banh's lips trembled, and it took him three tries to finish the word, "annihilated. Cardamom Pass."

Hun Sen did not throw anything. He did not roar. He just slowly sat back in his chair, hands flat on the table, like a man who had suddenly aged twenty years.

"The stock market?" he asked.

"Dropped by thirty-six percent, triggering a circuit breaker. The Riel to US dollar exchange rate has fallen through 10,000. The central bank's foreign exchange reserves—"

"Enough." Hun Sen closed his eyes.

Outside the window, on the streets of Phnom Penh, cars and motorcycles packed with luggage were surging eastward. Panic, like a tipped-over basin of water, was silently spreading through this city of two million people.

Naypyidaw, Presidential Palace Strategic Command Center.

Zhang Cheng stood in front of the situational map, holding his fourth cup of coffee, which had gone cold. The blue arrows on the screen had crossed Pursat Province; one branch extended toward Sihanoukville Port, and the other pointed straight at Phnom Penh. The red defensive line markers of Cambodia were reduced to a few scattered remnants, most having already turned gray.

Old K pushed a newly intercepted encrypted communication to the corner of the main screen—an urgent cable from the US Ambassador to Cambodia, Peterson, to Washington, titled "Cambodia Situation Assessment and Response Recommendations," with a core conclusion of only one sentence: "It is no longer possible to save the Hun Sen regime militarily; it is recommended to initiate the political asylum plan."

Zhang Cheng took a glance and finished his coffee.

"Speed it up." He said, picking up a pencil and tapping the location of Phnom Penh on the screen, "Don't give the US any window to react."