The two-story farmhouse chosen by Takahashi Minami is located on a plantation just over 100 meters east of the city of Santo Domingo, and was originally used as a barn and storehouse for storing farm tools. However, after the arrival of the Haihan army two days ago, all the plantation laborers fled back to the city, abandoning the area. Although it was indeed within range of the city's anti-aircraft guns, the defenders did not open fire on the Haihan soldiers who had sporadically entered the area to carry out search operations due to their limited ammunition reserves, so it was relatively smooth for the special operations battalion to take over the area without much difficulty.

From the second floor of the farmhouse, the eastern side of the city wall is viewed only slightly lower than the wall, and the wall is already more clearly visible, and its appearance is not easy to attract the attention of the defenders, making it an excellent observation point for the battle. Other farmhouses with two-storey attics are significantly farther away from the eastern wall.

Under the eaves of this farmhouse, a red lantern with a diameter of more than two feet hangs, and its presence can be clearly seen even from a hundred meters away. According to the agreement between Delgado and the Haihan Army the day before, as long as he saw this red lantern hanging out, it meant that everything was ready, and after the target was in place, a killing move would be launched outside the city.

Although he didn't have full confidence in Minami Takahashi's alleged killer move, at this point, Delgado couldn't help but regret it. He calmed down a little, turned to López, and said, "Captain, I think the Haihan officer has already entered the farmhouse before dawn. ”

"How do you know?" López immediately approached the battlement and looked out, "Which farmhouse are you talking about?"

"The villain has seen them make the agreed signal outside the farmhouse, and the villain happened to hear this passage yesterday when he eavesdropped on their conversation......"

Before Delgado could finish his sentence, López, who had already taken the bait, interrupted him impatiently: "Which one is it?"

"Your Excellency, look at the one to the east...... Delgado stepped back so that López could get a better view from the battlement.

Seeing López anxiously move to the battlement to look outside, Delgado took a deep breath and quietly moved to the side, completely hiding his body behind the city wall, silently praying in his heart that the plan would be carried out smoothly and that nothing would happen to him.

Qian Tiandun's special operations battalion was recruited and selected from the local military sources in Annam during the formation period, and nearly ninety percent of the veterans were of Annamite origin. The remaining 10% of the Han soldiers are basically subordinate to special arms that only the Sanya headquarters has the conditions for training, such as artillery, communication troops, and so on. These Han soldiers were arranged and assigned by the Military Commission only after the special operations battalion was formed, and they can be regarded as a relatively special existence in this unit.

Tang Zixing is one of these few Han soldiers, the branch he belongs to is an absolutely scarce resource in the army, the entire special operations battalion has more than 1,000 troops, but his branch is only one squad. There is no other reason, because the sniper is a branch of the army that has extremely high requirements for individual military quality, and the long training cycle and the cost of training far exceed that of ordinary soldiers, so that it cannot expand the scale of training. Even though the various departments of the militia regiment send hundreds of military elites to participate in the special training of the Sanya Army Base every year, there are still very few trainees who can complete the training period of nearly half a year and pass the rigorous final assessment.

Even if it is compared with the sniper establishment in the entire militia system, Tang Zixing is still the best among them. When Morgan led the formation of the sniper training system, he was one of the first batch of trainees, and he was also one of the very few elites who were led by Morgan throughout the training process. A considerable number of the snipers who enlisted in the army at the same time as him have changed careers to become instructors, so as to cultivate more elites for the rapidly expanding Haihan militia. And Morgan, because he has a position in the medical system in addition to the military, it is difficult for him to have enough time to personally lead the trainees. Only old students like Tang Zixing still have the opportunity to be tutored by Morgan during the annual refresher course.

The early weapon used by the Haihan militia snipers was the imitation M1857 Whitworth rifle hand-picked by Morgan, this strange rifle with a hexagonal chamber had the highest shooting accuracy of any long-range weapon of its time, and the impact point at a distance of 500 yards was only 0.37 feet, which is equivalent to a distance of nearly a mile, this rifle can accurately hit a life-size chest target through the scope and other aids. The Whitworth rifle had a number of kills of more than 1,000 yards in the American Civil War, and the actual combat effect was quite good.

Of course, its shortcomings are also very obvious, breech rifle plus the strange hexagonal spiral rifling, the technical difficulty of processing and manufacturing is larger, because it is a special firearm, its demand is not high, which leads to the high cost, in addition to loading ammunition is very troublesome, the firing speed is slower than the gun, and the thick and long barrel makes the gun body very heavy, and it is not convenient to carry and maintain.

Beginning in the second half of 1631, at the request of the Military Commission, the military industry began to improve its structure, changing the original breech loading to a breech, and the hexagonal chamber was also changed to an advanced structure of circular breech and spiral rifling. However, since the materials and processing technology are still far from being comparable to those of the era before the time, the barrel life of this new rifle is not too long, and the shooting accuracy gradually decreases with the wear and tear of the rifling.

The production capacity of the Trinity sniper rifle has not increased much compared to the previous model, and it still only maintains the production of about five to ten units per month. With the quadruple scope specially developed for this sniper rifle by the military industry, the shooting accuracy within 500 meters after adjustment is still quite impressive. Morgan believes that the Trinity will be able to last for several years before the industrial capabilities of the Haihan can make rifles like the Mosin Nagant, Springfield M1903, and Mauser K98.

The new sniper rifle was distributed to the units in early 1632 to replace the old model used by the snipers. Tang Zixing was also the first batch of ace snipers in the army to start using the Trinity sniper rifle, as an extension of the performance test of the gun, Tang Zixing received ample training ammunition and spare parts, and in this year, there were as many as seven barrels that were replaced due to rifling wear and tear, which also allowed him to master the performance of this new gun more comprehensively.

Although there is currently a squad of snipers in the special operations battalion, the others, including Tang Zixing's partner, are all "novices" who have been assigned in the past two years, and their experience in actual combat is definitely not as good as Tang Zixing's. As the leader of this special squad, Tang Zixing often has to assume the most critical responsibilities when carrying out combat missions.

This mission is no exception, Tang Zixing only received an order from Takahashi Minami last night, asking the sniper squad to enter the preset firing point in the early hours of this morning, preparing to kill the enemy commander who appeared on the city wall. In order to ensure that nothing went wrong, Tang Zixing also arranged for two other groups of people to act together with him. Unable to communicate in a timely manner due to the lack of more advanced communication tools, they could only enter the same firing point and lay in ambush in order to be able to seize the opportunity to shoot at the same time.

They were also in a small two-story attic of a farmhouse, and the west-facing side had been furnished overnight, with a row of tiles uncovered horizontally on the roof. Since the location of this farmhouse was farther away from the city wall than the fake lurking position preset by Takahashi South, it was unlikely that the people at the head of the castle could observe with the naked eye that a row of tiles was missing from the roof of a certain farmhouse two hundred meters away, which was already within the range of a sniper wielding a Trinity rifle.

If measured by Morgan's requirements, this distance must be able to match the chest target with eight out of ten shots to be considered a qualified sniper. In order to be able to seize the fleeting shooting opportunity, Tang Zixing also prepared three rifles that were loaded in advance, and placed them next to the three shooting positions for the second round of supplementary firing.

For a sniper, the weather conditions today can only be described as excellent, with neither fog nor dazzling sunlight appearing that affects the visible distance, and the occasional breeze in the air does not affect the trajectory too much. If there is any shortcoming, it is that in order to avoid startling the snake, snipers cannot calibrate the target in advance through test firing, which may slightly affect the snipers' feel and confidence.

Although it was possible to roughly delineate the range of the target, the actual situation could not be predicted, so Tang Zixing could only arrange three sniper teams to aim at different battlements, while the three observers with binoculars were responsible for finding the target, giving prompts, communicating and directing the three snipers to attack. This kind of combat method of concentrating fire to attack the same target in a group is actually a compulsory subject in sniper training, but it is the first time that these three teams have cooperated together in actual combat, and even Tang Zixing himself is not fully sure of the effect.

About an hour after entering the combat position, the observer finally saw the target appear on the city wall - Delgado and a middle-aged officer surrounded by guards behind him. Tang Zixing saw the officer's burnt yellow beard and military uniform from the scope, and he was already able to confirm his identity.

"Prepare to shoot!" Tang Zixing fell silent after giving this short order, he had to concentrate all his attention on the next tactical move, and the command was automatically handed over to the observer partner next to him.

Perhaps Delgado had done too well in the previous night's foreshadowing, or seeing the silence of the enemy positions outside the city, López was not too wary of what Delgado had said, and after he finished his role, he really leaned over to the battlement that Delgado had signaled, poked his head out and looked out, unaware that he had become a prey in the eyes of some people.

López wasn't actually afraid of any assassination arrangements outside the city, at least he didn't see the other party's soldiers moving as far as he could see, and even if someone told him that there were muskets outside the city at this time, he would probably just scoff at it - the hit rate from thirty meters away depends on the weapon of the face, so he can be nervous?

But at this time, López felt a pain in his chest, and then he heard a gunshot in his ear, and he slowly lowered his head to see blood gushing out of the hole in his right chest. He looked out of the city a little blankly, but he couldn't see a single figure as far as his eyes could see, and he didn't know where the black guns were firing. At this moment, the second and third gunshots reached the city, one of which hit López's right shoulder and the other missed.

The guards standing behind López realized that something was wrong, and quickly reached out to support his slowly falling body, but the shooting outside the city did not stop, and two or three bullets hit the wall near the battlement, causing slag and stone chips to fly.

"Fire, fire!" shouted the captain of the guards, but he didn't really know where the enemy was or where to shoot, he was just a knee-jerk reaction.

"Retreat!" At the same time, Tang Zixing, who had succeeded in one blow, also gave an order to his companions. Just now, observers have confirmed the results from the telescope, and at least two bullets hit the target directly. After the target's figure disappeared, Tang Zixing also knew that there would be no more chance to continue the pursuit, and the top priority was to retreat to a safe area as soon as possible, because he couldn't confirm whether the enemy troops on the city had discovered this hiding point where he was, and if they aimed at this place for a round of shelling, then the risk they needed to bear was still quite large.

Delgado was standing less than a meter next to López at the time of the incident, and it was only three to five seconds from the time López's body was exposed to the battlement and the time he was shot and fell. Delgado originally thought that Takahashi's plan would not be easy to implement, because it would be too difficult for the rifle to accurately hit the target at a long distance, and he had even thought about the follow-up plan for the failure of this plan, how to try to create a chaos in the city to disrupt the city's defenses, but the Haihan people really did what Takahashi Minami said. Seeing López fall in a pool of blood, Delgado suddenly felt a burst of happiness, if he didn't change his position in time and join Haihan, but followed the Spaniards to defend here, it would probably end up like this, right?

The guards scrambled López away from the walls, and then a group of gunners rushed in, ready to open fire on targets they didn't know about outside the city. Delgado remembered Minami Takahashi's instruction to guide the defenders to shell that false lurking point if necessary, and he exclaimed: "The enemy is in that house with red lanterns, I see them, fire there!"