The Last War: Chapter 70, Part 3 and 4

"They're coming! All quiet in the streets!"

The buzz of chatter throughout the Egyptian city stopped almost instantly. Qahira was glad most of the populace had evacuated. It would have been trying on the nerves for vendors to be hawking in the middle of an invasion. Still, the Egyptian government ran out of Cairo. Important leaders were there despite the evacuation, making it key on the mercenaries' targets.

The governmental buildings were the only ones which were not gridded on Qahira's map. All the remaining citizens of Cairo were crowded into the governmental buildings. Only soldiers were in the streets. There was a very important reason for that.

"They're coming from the east!" someone whispered.

"What?"

Qahira looked in that direction. It was insane for the mercenaries to come from the east. The sun was setting. Military convention held it that you always attacked with the sun at your back, so the enemy would be blinded looking at you. All of Qahira's defenders had been instructed to look out for them to come from the west.

"Damnation!" Qahira said.

He pulled his shaded goggles away from his eyes and let them rest above the brim of his hat. He wouldn't be needing them. It was very unsettling to be attacked from the east.

"Grid 8A!" someone yelled.

The yell was repeated several times. Ras judged his timing just right. If he was too early, he would catch some of his own men. If he was too late he wouldn't catch enough of the mercs. He went by intuition ans pushed the button marked 8A on his control panel at just the right instant.

A mushroom cloud of dust erupted into the sky.

***

"What the hell was that! A good bit of our force was taken out!"

Mossad al-Xyz looked through his field lenses at the smoldering crater in the ground.

"They blew up a block of Cairo."

Qajar looked through his own lenses.

"Bismillah, why? They've rigged their own city to detonate? They wait for us to enter a part of it and then blow it up? Won't that kill their own people?"

Al-Xyz didn't answer a single one of Qajar's questions. As he was speaking, the mercenaries entered another block of Cairo. It exploded into oblivion.

"We should wait in the blocks they've already blown up. They won't blow us up again if we don't move."

"Are you insane, al-Xyz? You can't conduct a siege without moving. Sure, they won't blow us up, but how will we kill any of them? They won't come to us."

"We'll wait."