92: Chapter 92 The military's wait-and-see attitude leads to the complete failure of the plan.

Nevada, Indian Springs Air Force Base, underground tactical command center.

This command center, built sixty feet deep to the north of the base's main runway, with walls lined with electromagnetic shielding copper mesh and explosion-proof concrete layers, was a backup node built during the Cold War to maintain the aerial command chain after the outbreak of a nuclear war.

At this moment, on the holographic tactical table in the center of the operations room, a 3D topographic map of the area within a fifty-mile radius of Hoover Dam was displayed, with every fold of the river valley and every line of the abandoned spillway rendered in vivid detail by LiDAR scanning.

Major General William Stratton, commander of the 3rd Cavalry Regiment, stood on the left side of the tactical table, the two stars on his shoulders gleaming with a dull silver luster under the cold lights.

He was fifty-four years old, stocky, with the signature high-and-tight buzz cut of an Army man, his temples already graying, but the muscles on his neck still straining against the collar of his combat uniform.

Colonel Elliott Holloway, commander of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, sat opposite him, lean and sharp, his fingers quickly swiping across an encrypted tablet, the screen updating with real-time satellite imagery and meteorological data.

Colonel Raymond Castro, commander of the 75th Ranger Regiment, stood in the center of the tactical table with his arms crossed, staring silently at the target area marked in red on the 3D map.

"The 3rd Cavalry Regiment is responsible for perimeter blockade and ground advancement."

"The 75th Ranger Regiment will carry out a close-range flanking maneuver along both sides of the spillway."

"The 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment will provide air cover and ground suppression."

"This plan has been gamed out twice before, with no major adjustments."

Stratton drew an arc on the tactical map with a laser pointer,

"Right now, the fighting has already started over there; the private armed forces of the Hopkins, Remington, and Knox families have gone in, as have the FBI and CIA ground teams, and Musk and Warren are inside as well."

"We don't need to rush to be the first wave."

"Let them wear each other down; once they are both battered and exhausted, we will enter the field and finish things off cleanly."

Holloway placed the tablet on the table, his gaze sweeping over the colored markers representing the positions of various factions, his tone flat:

"Entering now is equivalent to acting as a meat shield for them."

"I agree with Major General Stratton; we wait."

"Wait until their ammunition and personnel are depleted below the critical threshold, and we will complete the clearing in one go."

Castro uncrossed his arms, placed one hand on the edge of the tactical table, and tilted his head to check his watch.

His Rangers had been waiting in the staging area for four hours,

everyone's adrenaline was on the verge of peaking,

but his words remained unhurried:

"The mission order says counter-terrorism exercise, but deploying all three of our elite units to the vicinity of an abandoned spillway—this scale is not counter-terrorism."

"Regardless of who is inside, whether it's the CIA, FBI, or the military-industrial families, once they are all battered, we will roll over them."

"One operation, no loose ends."

Just as the three had finished exchanging consensus and Stratton was preparing to have the staff distribute the final operation plan to the various battalion-level command nodes, the door to the operations room was violently kicked open from the outside.

Directly kicked open!

The door slammed against the side wall, emitting a dull, metallic boom,

which made the coffee cups of several operators at the tactical table jump simultaneously.

Lieutenant Ellis Winters, intelligence staff officer of the 3rd Cavalry Regiment, stumbled in,

his military cap askew on his forehead, his face as pale as if he had just crawled out of a morgue freezer, his lips trembling, his chest heaving violently, his fingers gripping the edge of the doorframe tightly.

In that instant, Stratton's brain automatically switched from the operational sequence to result review.

The two things he hated most:

First, intelligence errors before a mission.

Second, subordinates embarrassing him in front of other units.

He wouldn't be surprised if Winters' stumble involved either of these,

but with Holloway and Castro present, this matter had to be handled first.

He turned around, slapped the laser pointer onto the table, and said in a harsh, dry tone:

"Lieutenant Winters, are you being chased by ghosts or did you take the wrong medicine?"

"This is a command center, not a playground for your 100-meter sprints."

"Stand at attention and speak!"

Winters tried desperately to steady his voice, but every syllable he squeezed out of his throat was trembling:

"General, over... the Hoover Dam... there are a full two hundred thousand... two hundred thousand aerospace fleet..."

"They aren't ours... not any known aircraft on Earth..."

"They... they are not Earth technology..."

Stratton looked up at him, brows knitted together, not speaking immediately.

In that second, his brain did three things:

Filtered out the panic in Winters' tone;

Ruled out sensor false alarms caused by technical glitches;

Performed a quick psychological assessment of this young lieutenant, who had never made a mistake in his position as an intelligence staff officer.

Then he gave his judgment:

"Are you on drugs or did you just wake up?"

"Aerospace fleet? Two hundred thousand?"

"This is Indian Springs, not a Star Wars set!"

Winters shook his head desperately, his face deathly pale, his lips moving several times, unable to utter a single complete word.

Just as Stratton was about to follow military regulations, order him to hand over his sidearm, and report to the military doctor immediately, the door behind him opened again,

this time, pushed open from the outside by two bodies simultaneously.

Holloway's intelligence adjutant, Captain Frank Drear, stumbled and hit the wall next to Winters, his legs buckling from the knees up, unable to keep them steady,

Castro's operations staff officer, Lieutenant Irene Patel, tripped over the threshold and almost fell to her knees, her face turning cyan, her pupils fixed and staring, her entire arm shaking uncontrollably like it had been scalded as she pointed wildly outside.

"They're fighting! It's not us... not our planes..."

"Their technology... their technology is far superior to ours!!"

Drear's vocal cords seemed stuck halfway in his throat, every word popping out.

Patel, also shaking her right hand, said through gritted teeth in an uncontrolled voice she had never used in combat duty:

"General! That two-hundred-thousand-strong aerospace fleet has already started fighting to the south of us!!"

"Pulse beams, energy shields, battleships, and attack aircraft formations... this isn't any generation of fighter jet on Earth!!"

"Our Apaches are like primitive men throwing stones at tanks in front of them!!"

"If we go up there, it's suicide!!"

At that moment, Stratton, Holloway, and Castro almost simultaneously shifted their gazes from their respective staff officers' faces and exchanged glances with each other.

There was no verbal communication in this look,

but the three commanders, who had seen all kinds of emergencies on the battlefield, simultaneously read the same message in each other's eyes:

Their subordinates, breaking in independently from different directions and through different channels, were all reporting the same thing.

It was impossible for them all to be on drugs at the same time, impossible for them all to be hallucinating, impossible for them all to be crazy!

It had to be real!!