Mercenary's War

Chapter 2433 - 2409: Wait, and Wait Again

Why did Gao Yang voluntarily request to go to the northwest border, with Najran as the primary reconnaissance target? There is naturally a reason for this.Najran is a border city of Saudi Arabia, located only about ten kilometers from the Saudi-Yemen border. In Najran, Saudi Arabia has placed heavy troops, so if Saudi Arabia decides to deploy ground forces, the troops stationed in Najran would definitely be the first to act.

The entire western side of the Arabian Peninsula, from north to south along the eastern shore of the Red Sea, is mountainous. Most of Saudi’s territory is desert, and its population and cities are mainly concentrated in the western mountainous and hilly regions, as these areas have a small amount of vegetation and rainfall.

The western part of Yemen is also mountainous, and there are many Saudi towns from Jizan on the Red Sea coast to Najran at the juncture of mountains and desert in the northwest border area adjoining the southwest part of Saudi Arabia. Since the massive troop buildup began, these two cities have been the most important gathering points.

On the border line in the mid-east of Saudi Arabia, there are almost no troops present because it is a vast desert. Maintaining a large army in the desert is a huge challenge just for survival, with the arduous task of water supply alone being burdensome enough. Beyond the border line on Yemen’s side, it is also desolate, so there’s no point in stationing troops there.

Saudi Arabia has assembled 150,000 troops, displaying a formidable thunderous stance. In Najran alone, around 30,000 troops have gathered, clearly indicating that once the ground battle starts, Najran is bound to be the main direction of attack.

The reason why Gao Yang chose to go to the most dangerous area, which is closest to the enemy, is because it is near to the Shah people.

If, and it’s only a possibility, if Saudi Arabia remains inactive and the Houthis Armed Forces also remain silent, Gao Yang might provoke them by shelling a few dozen artillery rounds towards Najran. With only ten kilometers in distance, launching a few dozen shells would certainly lead to a response from the highly tense and heavily deployed Najran garrison, possibly igniting ground warfare.

For this reason, Gao Yang did not choose Jizan. Although the natural conditions there are better and it is also a main gathering point for Saudi Arabia, Jizan is too far from the national border, out of artillery range for Satan’s guns.

Preparations begin with intelligence before the troops move.

Information continuously flows into Gao Yang’s hands from Justin’s intelligence, derived from analyzing publicly available information and collected by intelligence officers, focusing on the mobilization of the Saudi army and the movements of the Saudi top brass, all continuously sent to Gao Yang.

There is a lot of intelligence, but the busiest person is not Gao Yang, but Yake.

Intelligence work isn’t as simple as receiving a note telling you what will happen. The most common task in intelligence work is to eliminate useless and irrelevant information from a large pile of incoming intelligence to find truly useful things.

Although Justin has initially filtered out most of the useless information when sending intelligence, he couldn’t possibly know all of Satan’s intentions, so he just sends everything potentially useful in one go.

Without clear operational objectives, naturally, there’s no highly relevant intelligence. Right now, it’s a stage of intelligence aggregation, gathering enough information to know oneself and the enemy. If one must wait for a crucial piece of intelligence to act, it wouldn’t mean intelligence work is a failure, but it certainly wouldn’t count as a success.

The intelligence is too abundant and complex. Yake is overwhelmed and even if the entire Satan team pools their manpower, it’s still inadequate.

Fortunately, three people including Tarta were pressed into service to assist Yake, which barely allows the intelligence work to continue.

"Enough! Notify Justin to only send garrison intelligence from the direction of Najran, and high-level information from the Ministry of Defense, but no more other information!"

Yake finally couldn’t take it anymore. He slammed the table and shouted, "If this keeps up, we’ll be worked to death!"

Vasily scribbled a few lines on a piece of paper, tore it out from a notepad, and shouted, "Orders from the Saudi Army, front-line troops entering secondary combat readiness status!"

Yake took the note, stuck it on a whiteboard, and shouted, "Are you sure it’s secondary readiness? Just secondary readiness? You can’t be wrong, can you?"

Vasily angrily replied, "Shut up, Brit! You’re in no position to question my work, secondary readiness!"

Yake didn’t argue with Vasily. He just addressed the whiteboard full of notes and loudly asked, "Guys, I think it’s unlikely Saudi Arabia will deploy ground forces in the short term. What do you think?"

Tarta impatiently replied, "It’s obvious, do you even need to ask."

Yake ran his hand through his hair and said with a conflicted expression, "I need air force intelligence, are there any air force intelligence reports coming in?"

Hammer angrily flipped through emails on the computer and said, "These damn people didn’t categorize anything. These idiots, at least mark the operational intelligence, or at least distinguish it by military branch. I have 117 unread emails here, and I can barely use a computer! Damn it!"

Tarta impatiently said, "We received only six pieces of Saudi Air Force intelligence today. Five were Saudi Air Force’s public announcements after combat operations ended, and the only piece that could be called intelligence was a military aircraft relocation report. And it’s an information about fighter jets, not bombers. Don’t you get it? The Saudi Army is just in readiness, but the Air Force is already in a state of war, with a strict information blockade, and Justin’s men can’t obtain any Air Force intelligence!"

Gao Yang, who had been holding his breath on the side, coughed lightly and said, "The air raid was quite sudden; Justin’s personnel are still being mobilized. Intelligence may not be timely now, but the situation will improve in time."

Tarta impatiently said, "These tasks should have been done at least a month ago, and critical intelligence should at least have come in a week ago!"

Gao Yang helplessly said, "Buddy, we’re just a mercenary group; just a company. Don’t compare us to a country, okay? We’re doing well, really quite well now."

Yake leaned back in his chair and loudly said, "Boss, no, I don’t think we can relocate now. It’s too dangerous."

Gao Yang cautiously said, "It’s just moving from Sana’a to Kitaf, and at night. Is that not possible?"

Yake shook his head and said, "No, too dangerous, too dangerous, unless you are prepared for an air raid, my suggestion is to wait, wait!"