1101: Chapter 1042: Crisis!

Bold Enough!

1101: Chapter 1042: Crisis!

Bold Enough!

The night was boundless.

The airplane, with its lights flashing, continued to ascend.

The humming of the engines were especially piercing inside the cabin.

Military transport planes prioritize safety, reliability, simplicity and carrying capacity.

Comfort?

It’s utterly nonexistent.

Only commercial airliners would carefully design for passenger comfort, choose materials, and try to minimize cabin noise as much as possible.

But for military transport planes, it’s all about cutting corners—saving a kilogram here allows for an extra kilogram of cargo, which is more beneficial for carrying out diverse missions.

At the moment, this War Statistics Institute’s special aircraft was essentially the same.

Noise and poor environmental conditions aside, the second-level passenger cabin couldn’t remotely be described as comfortable.

The seats arranged along both sides of the cabin wall were plastic benches, chosen to save weight.

If not for safety considerations, they probably wouldn’t even have seatbelts.

As the transport plane continued to climb, occasionally encountering turbulence, clanking noises came from the vehicles in the cargo hold below.

Although the seven vehicles were secured, the rocking still made it easy for noise to transmit.

However…

No matter how harsh the riding environment, it couldn’t distract Tang Xiao.

The situation at hand was delicate.

Twelve ferocious mercenaries sat inside three battered armed Humvees and hadn’t come out.

Did they realize they were on the wrong plane?

This plane had no outward anomalies.

To maintain concealment during missions, the War Statistics Institute hadn’t painted any obvious national insignias on the airplane.

The serial number and transponder codes were registered under the name of a cargo airline company.

But the four parked vehicles below were clearly modified armed off-road vehicles.

Anyone in the know could tell at a glance that the modifications weren’t cheap and included various enhancements and protections.

An anonymous aircraft, meticulously modified vehicles…

For these battle-hardened mercenaries, it was certain that they would sense something was off.

Mercenaries who spent their years on the battlefield inherently had a keener sense for danger and vigilance than ordinary people.

Just…

Why hadn’t they left their vehicles after driving onto the plane?

Did they think hiding in the vehicles they wouldn’t be detected?

Was this a case of ‘burying their heads in the sand’?

Or did they know they’d been discovered but feared being swiftly taken down if they showed their faces?

Tang Xiao had trouble understanding.

Her brows slightly furrowed, her eyes grew colder, her hand always on her gun, lightly tapping the trigger with her index finger.

The plane was still gaining altitude, making it inconvenient to take the initiative to strike.

Because at any moment, the plane might encounter high-altitude turbulence, resulting in sudden bumps.

However, this didn’t mean nothing could be done.

On this special aircraft of the War Statistics Institute, which often flew abroad, the flight crew included two pilots and two mechanics.

The mechanics, seemingly with simple duties, ensured the boarding and disembarkation of passengers and the loading and unloading of goods.

But when the plane landed at unfamiliar airports, they took on logistical support roles, maintaining and repairing the plane and refueling, hence they also carried a variety of equipment with them.

Thus, Zhang Ren had them bring along X-ray detection devices.

This equipment, normally used for aircraft maintenance, could detect if the wings, landing gear, and other parts suffered from fatigue damage, possessing a straightforward ‘X-ray’ scanning imaging function.

Just like going through a security scanner at a train station or airport, special X-ray scanning allows for ‘seeing through’ what’s inside a suitcase.

At this moment.

Zhang Ren had the two mechanics perform a remote inspection on the three Humvees below from the second-floor passenger cabin.

Because of the distance, the detection results were amusingly vague, very blurry.

Turning the power to maximum and also using the infrared thermal imaging equipment, combining the two, they could vaguely ‘see’ the simple situation inside the vehicles.

Three Humvees, just enough for the two squads of mercenaries totaling twelve men.

And two conical nuclear warheads were placed on the first two vehicles.

But it seemed something was strapped onto the warheads, bulging suspiciously—perhaps explosive devices.

By causing a violent explosion, forcefully rupturing the warhead shell, it could trigger the leak of nuclear material, resulting in serious radiation damage to everyone nearby.

Such a setup clearly indicated they were prepared for the worst scenario—perishing together with their adversaries.

The harmfulness of nuclear radiation is no less dangerous than direct explosive damage.

Once, a nuclear power plant of a certain country experienced a leak.

To investigate the accumulating debris in the reactor containment, they sent in the strongest radiation-resistant robot, but what happened?

It broke down instantly.

If a person had gone instead, one could easily imagine the outcome.

Nuclear radiation has its pros and cons.

Low doses of nuclear radiation, scientifically controlled, are already widely applied in many industries.

Like hospitals use CT scans and X-rays for diagnostics, radiation therapy to kill cancer cells for cancer treatment, archaeologists use radiometric dating to determine the age of artifacts, agriculture uses radioactive sources to cultivate new seeds…

Low doses of nuclear radiation are not scary, like how occasionally getting a CT scan doesn’t cause much harm to the body.

But when the dose of nuclear radiation increases and exceeds a certain threshold, the dangers become significant.

There was a safety incident at a nuclear plant in a certain country where a worker was less than a meter away from enriched uranium, receiving a radiation dose of about 20 Gy.

At the time, the hospital observed only darkened skin and local swelling.

However, in the instant of radiation exposure, the worker’s DNA chromosomes were blasted apart by the radiation.

There were no immediate signs, but without normal chromosomes, cells cannot properly multiply and divide.