In the afternoon, the sun is dazzling.

In the Gulf of Aden, on the outskirts of Djibouti, the capital of French Somalia, a railway that starts from the port of Djibouti and runs westward through the Gobi Desert Hills is dotted with hundreds of motor vehicles: full-track armored combat vehicles, half-track armored personnel carriers, four-wheeled and six-wheeled armored vehicles, and more four-wheeled half-ton "sweat horses" tactical off-road trucks and one-ton "pony" light carrier trucks, with some two-wheeled "cunning" motorcycles scattered in between.

"It's too messy, can't it be neat?"

On a hill overlooking this temporary parking lot, next to a "sweat horse" off-road vehicle with a standard load of half a ton, leaning against the door and speaking, a sturdy man in his thirties is none other than Major General Li Ruishi, commander of the army's 99th task force.

The young major next to Li Ruishi, whose name was Shangguan Huaiyuan, was originally the most junior errand staff officer in the Northern Front Command, but at this time he was already the chief staff officer of Li Ruishi's elite task force.

In the face of Li Ruishi's pickiness, Shangguan Huaiyuan said confidently: "Report to the commander, we will not stay here for a long time, although this arrangement does not look neat enough, and it is not conducive to preventing a sudden attack by the enemy, but it can be converted into a marching state in the shortest possible time." ”

Li Ruishi snorted, and inspected the mounds with his hands under the sun, only to see three "sweat horse" off-road vehicles and two "hare" motorcycles coming in the dust one after another, each pulling a long dust belt around the front of the mound, and rushing up from both sides of the relatively gentle mound.

The two-wheeled "hare" motorcycle that rushed to Li Ruishi first had not stopped steadily, and the rider on the car had already leaped down, holding the front of the car with one hand and pulling up the goggles with the other, which immediately showed his delicate appearance and resolute eyes.

"The commander of the armored reconnaissance company, Captain Qiu Yipeng, is here to report!"

Immediately afterwards, the black man who jumped from the "sweat horse" car saluted impatiently to Li Ruishi: "The commander of the artillery group, Lieutenant Colonel Liang Tian, has come to report. ”

The tall and thin man who got down from the second "sweat horse" car looked calmer: "The commander of the armored group - Colonel Li Xiuping came to report. ”

As for the little white face wearing small glasses on the third "sweat horse" car, I saw him holding the car door with one hand and holding the saber at his waist with the other, and staggered out of the car without danger: "The commander of the motorized infantry group - Lieutenant Colonel Gu Dao came to report. ”

The "cunning rabbit" motorcycle at the back of the last was slowly stopped smelling of Li Ruishi's sweaty carriage. The sturdy little man on the bike turned off the engine in order, put his pedals down, and took off his goggles, revealing his young and heroic face.

"Support the group commander - Major Ding Qian is here to report."

Li Ruishi nodded to the subordinates who came to report one by one.

He expects that these people will be his comrades.

He craves. These people will be the fuel of his ambitions.

He fantasized that these people might be the ones he could start his new career......

"Commander, I have calculated that we only have enough gasoline to run three hundred kilometers now, and the farthest can only go to Darewa, which is still five hundred and fifty kilometers from Addis Ababa."

Ding Qian interrupted Li Ruishi's daydream inconsiderately, but he didn't expect Colonel Li Xiuping beside him to also follow the dream: "Dareva." The land of decisive battle, the land of death, the land of regret......"

"The regret that has been haunting us for eight years." Lieutenant Colonel Gu Dao behind Ding Qian also had a bitter and bitter face.

"Let's make a break today."

In an instant, Li Ruishi's eyes flashed with a resolute and resolute murderous aura, and the emotions that had been accumulated for eight years were certainly not understandable to outsiders.

Eight years ago, to the west, on a piece of land called "Abyssinia". Li Ruishi, Li Xiuping and Gu Dao, who were members of the China Affairs Advisory Group, joined a vigorous war against Western colonial aggression together with the Abyssinian soldiers they participated in the training. Bloody, born and dead, witnessed one glorious moment after another, but also witnessed how this feudal era, the most relegated indigenous empire in black Africa, was beaten to death by new and old colonial robbers in isolation.

Just before the decisive battle began, Li Ruishi and others bid farewell to this admirable commander with endless regrets, and flew to the Gulf of Aden on the last few planes that could still be launched. Flew to the single "Chinese" cruiser surrounded by more than a dozen warships of Britain, France, Germany, and Italy......

They later learned that Menelik II, who had carried too much glory, had been martyred in the last battle, as he himself had hoped, and that what little "new army" he had left was completely overwhelmed by an absolutely superior enemy. Soon, the heavy leather boots of European soldiers set foot on Addis Ababa, the "city of fresh huā" that he had painstakingly built.

However, the invading armies of the four countries stationed in Abyssinia soon fell into endless quarrels and dangerous confrontations over how to divide the spoils "fairly", and the descendants of the royal family and the feudal lords who refused to give in took the opportunity to raise the banner of rebellion in various places, vowing to bury the foreign invading army "all among the flat-topped mountains of Abyssinia".

In the face of a common threat, the European invaders finally "reached a civilized compromise": the son of one of Menelik II's half-sisters, Eyassus V, was put on the throne, and on behalf of the Abyssinian Empire, he signed the Treaty of Addis Ababa with the invading British, French, German, and Italian powers, ceding more than eighty percent of the territory to the four countries, and leaving the rest of the area around the capital under the "joint garrison supervision" of the four countries.

Under the strategy of divide and rule and use soil to make land, the Abyssinian lords, who had always had a tradition of feudal separation, gave up their hopeless resistance one after another and turned to their new foreign masters, and the royal princes who led the resistance were either killed in battle or betrayed, and this land full of blood finally calmed down.

The desperate Li Ruishi and his entourage continued to bury their regrets deep in the ground until three years ago, under the arrangement of the Intelligence Department of the General Staff, they met the illegitimate daughter of Menelik II, the self-proclaimed "Queen of Kings" Zoditto, and the young "Regent" Tafari Maconnan next to her, the son of the hero of the Anti-Japanese War, Duke Maconnan, and also the nephew of Menelik II.

Headed by these two people, a small court in exile, known as "the only legitimate government of Abyssinia", under the protection of the Chinese side, carefully and low-key haunted the neon lights of Shanghai Tang, and from time to time attracted bullets and gold bars in the dark.

Since then, the deeply buried ideal fire of Li Ruishi and his party has been rekindled, and the name of Abyssinian has taken control of their spiritual world, making them irrepressible to want to return there. Make up for the scarred and bloody regrets.

But they could only continue to wait, watching the history of Abyssinia turn page after page: in the summer of 1914, the war in Europe broke out, and in the autumn of that year. The German garrison around Addis Ababa was expelled by the local British and French garrisons.

In the spring of the following year, Italy entered the war, and the British, French, and Italian colonial forces of the whole of East Africa united to attack the three colonies of German East Africa, German Somalia, and German Abyssinia.

Just when the British were gearing up, raising troops, and preparing to settle Germany's most reluctant overseas colonies in one fell swoop. The Battle of the Bay of Bengal, which shocked the whole world, came to an end, the huge Allied Combined Fleet was defeated, and the entire Indian Ocean opened its doors to the royal winds of East Asia.

This hot wind of iron and blood, Tao and righteousness, covered the Indian subcontinent, swept across the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Peninsula, and finally returned to the Gulf of Aden, returned to the African continent, and was about to follow the steel army driven by the internal combustion engine in front of Li Ruishi. Blowing the "city of fresh huā" full of the fragrance of *brown again......

However, the start did not go well: Two days ago, the dock landing ship "Yongxing" on which Li Ruishi was riding was sunk by a torpedo fired by an enemy submarine, and all the equipment of the task force headquarters and the air defense company, combat defense artillery company, and communications company directly under the task force were sunk along with the ship. In order to be in a hurry, Li Ruishi, who was fished up by the destroyer, took off his soaked tweed general's uniform, changed into a navy canvas overalls, and transferred to a shipboard motorboat, so that he landed on the African coast before sunset.

After going ashore, what made Li Ruishi laugh and cry was that the other units of the task force were unscathed: 50 combat vehicles, 100 armored vehicles, and 6 self-propelled guns of the armored group did not break a single track, and the 600 trucks and motorcycles of the infantry group, artillery group, and support group did not burst a single tire. As for the more than 5,000 officers and men, none of them even broke their feet during the beach, so Li Ruishi had no choice but to temporarily requisition several "sweat horse" tactical off-road vehicles of the armored group and the motorized infantry group for the use of his small headquarters, which had been reduced to a minimum.

After solving the command problem, Li Ruishi led his troops overnight towards the train shunting yard in the western suburbs of Djibouti. Supported by a salvo of searchlights and chariot guns, a battalion of armored infantry dismounted from the vehicle for combat took the shunting yard where an infantry battalion and an artillery company of the French army were stationed with a single charge.

After dawn the next day, the French counterattacked with three battalions, which were easily repulsed by the task force with vehicle-mounted machine-gun fire.

In the afternoon of the same day, with the support of the 2nd Marine Corps Armoured Corps, the task force advanced to the coast west of the port of Djibouti and completed the encirclement of the city of Djibouti.

That night, in order to advance to Addis Ababa as soon as possible, Li Ruishi directly asked the Red Sea Front Headquarters for instructions, and then led his troops to rush into the camp of the 2nd Marine Corps Armored Army, draining the fuel tanks of hundreds of vehicles of the army, and then swaggering and carrying the "trophies" westward along the Kyrgyzstan Railway overnight, and arrived at the temporary parking lot in front of Li Ruishi before dawn that day......

The fragments of memories flashed by, and the breath of dreams and sadness dissipated in the effort of two puffs of cigarettes, Li Ruishi first recovered his commander's spirit, stretched out his hand and patted the hood of the "Khan" car: "Staff Officer Shangguan, put the map here." ”

Li Xiuping and Gu Dao looked at each other and smiled, and consciously gathered in front of the hood.

Ding Qian over there was still at a loss, glanced at Qiu Yipeng and Liang Tian, who were also outsiders, lowered his head and kicked a piece of dried dung from an unknown animal, exhaled lightly, and followed everyone to Li Ruishi's "sweat horse" car...... Walk towards the damn "Big Brother Li" who did everything he could to trick them from a ghost place where birds don't shit to another where birds don't shit