The sound of the typewriter gradually faded away, and the scene shifted to the abandoned warehouse at Argyle University, where the harsh crackling of electric arcs resounded.
Tesla was standing next to a huge coil, wearing a white shirt stiffened by insulating impregnating varnish.
His eyes were bloodshot, but his gaze was frighteningly bright.
"Power on, add the load!"
Tesla shouted at the assistant standing in the distance.
The assistant cautiously closed the thick copper knife switch.
"Hum..."
A low-frequency vibration sound echoed inside the warehouse.
The early Transformer prototype, wound from five thousand pounds of silicon steel sheets and two tons of high-purity copper wire, began frantically swallowing and spitting out current.
On a wooden table ten meters away from the Transformer, an iron rotor without any brush connections suddenly began to rotate slowly under the action of the Rotating Magnetic Field generated by the surrounding three sets of stator coils.
A few seconds later, the rotation speed became faster and faster, making a teeth-gritting friction sound.
"It's spinning! It's spinning!"
The assistant jumped up in excitement.
Tesla stared fixedly at the crazily spinning hunk of iron, waving his hands in mid-air as if an orchestra conductor had completed his greatest symphony.
"Did you see that? No commutator and no sparks! This is pure electromagnetic induction!" Tesla roared.
Just then, the iron door of the warehouse was pushed open from the outside.
Heinrich White, general manager of the General Electric Company, walked in angrily with a few helpless engineers. Following behind them was Principal Armand with tightly furrowed brows.
"Mr. Tesla, I must interrupt your great experiment."
General Manager White strode up to the Transformer, looking at those expensive materials and gritting his teeth in heartache.
"Cut off the power supply!"
White ordered the engineers behind him.
The knife switch was pulled open, and the suffocating humming sound in the warehouse finally stopped.
After spinning for dozens of turns under the action of inertia, the rotor slowly stopped.
Tesla turned around angrily.
"Mr. White! What are you doing? My Alternating Current motor has just completed its first successful no-load run! You've interrupted my data recording!"
"Data? Oh shit, let me talk to you about data!"
White pulled a thick stack of bills out of his briefcase and slammed them directly onto Tesla's experimental table.
"These are the material bills you requisitioned from the logistics department over the past half month! Two tons of high-purity copper wire, five thousand pounds of silicon steel sheets! I can endure all of these, after all, the boss has spoken to support you with all his might. But!"
White pointed to an item on the bill.
"Yesterday, you actually requested from the purchasing department that you must use the highest grade natural resin imported from India to concoct your insulating varnish. And you demanded that the shell of the Transformer must be made of seamless stamped pure copper plate! Do you know how much this will cause the cost of a single motor to skyrocket to? At least one thousand dollars! One thousand dollars for a single motor!"
White turned to Principal Armand, his tone revealing a businessman's pragmatism.
"Mr. Principal, General Electric is a company that needs to take products to the market to make money. If we manufacture the Alternating Current system according to Mr. Tesla's standards, the things we produce might only be affordable by royalty. This cannot be commercialized at all!"
Principal Armand rubbed his brow; this was not the first time he had handled this kind of conflict.
European scholars pursued perfection, while factories in America pursued ultimate cost control.
These two philosophies collided violently almost every day at Argyle University.
"General Manager White, please understand." Armand tried to smooth things over.
"Tesla's research is still in the prototype stage. To ensure absolute safety under extremely high voltage, using the best insulation materials is a necessary physical measure. If a short circuit occurs due to substandard materials, all the experimental data will be completely ruined."
"A prototype can use it, but he marked it the same way on the mass-production drawings submitted to the factory!" White did not yield at all.
"My engineers tried to change the pure copper shell to a cast iron shell, and change the India resin to ordinary industrial asphalt paint. As a result, Mr. Tesla ran into the workshop and cursed our engineers to pieces, saying we were desecrating his design!"
Tesla stiffened his neck and retorted loudly.
"The magnetic permeability of cast iron is completely different from pure copper, which will produce severe magnetic leakage! Ordinary asphalt paint will melt at high temperatures, causing insulation breakdown. Your so-called cost control is just manufacturing garbage!"
Just as the two sides were at a stalemate and the smell of gunpowder was growing stronger and stronger.
The warehouse door was pushed open again.
Felix leaned on his cane and walked into the gunpowder-laden scene accompanied by Frost.
"It seems I missed a wonderful debate." Felix's voice wasn't loud, but it instantly made everyone shut their mouths.
"Boss."
White and Principal Armand greeted him at the same time.
Felix walked to the experimental table, glanced at the rotor that had already stopped, and then picked up the bills and drawings on the table.
He looked directly at White.
"Heinrich, you are a qualified general manager. You've guarded General Electric's cost bottom line."
White breathed a sigh of relief. But Felix's next words made his heart hang in suspense again.
"But do not always use a businessman's brain to interfere with a scholar's laboratory."
He turned his head to look at Tesla, who was full of resentment.
"And Nikola, you are a genius. Your Rotating Magnetic Field theory will undoubtedly change the nights of this world."
Felix's tone was very calm, yet it exuded an unquestionable majesty.
"In this warehouse, even if you want to use pure gold to wind the coils, I will approve it. Because this is an ivory tower, and you need to use the most perfect conditions to verify the limits of truth."
A flash of emotion crossed Tesla's eyes, and just as he was about to open his mouth to thank him, Felix raised his hand to stop him.
"But!"
"When your drawings walk out of this warehouse and enter General Electric's assembly line, you must obey my rules, which is the rule of profit."
He threw the mass-production drawings onto the tabletop, pointing his cane at the material list on it.
"A factory is not used to enshrine works of art. If the cast iron shell will produce magnetic leakage, then go calculate whether this magnetic leakage is within an acceptable range! If the asphalt paint will melt, then go cooperate with Dr. Vogel from the chemistry department and let him formulate an artificial insulating varnish for you that is both cheap and high-temperature resistant!"
Walking up to Tesla, Felix's voice was low and full of oppression.
"A perfect machine that cannot be sold is just a pile of scrap iron. Being able to build a barely adequate machine at the lowest cost that can quickly capture the market—that is a great invention. I am a businessman; buying your brain is not only to watch it flash in the laboratory, but even more so to let it earn countless dollars for me. Do you understand?"
Tesla looked into Felix's dark eyes, and the haughtiness and paranoia of the European scholar wavered.
But he did not feel humiliated.
Because Felix had given him the most ample experimental funds, something no professor in Europe could provide.
"I understand, Mr. Argyle." Tesla lowered his head.
"I will modify the mass-production drawings with the engineering department and look for cheaper alternative materials."
"Good." Felix nodded with satisfaction.
"Principal Armand, do not let me coordinate similar matters in the future. The laboratory belongs to the laboratory, and the factory belongs to the factory. This is the ironclad rule of Argyle University. Once any patent is commercialized, it must obey commercial cost control as much as possible."
"Alright, Boss."
Principal Armand firmly engraved this rule in his heart.
Having resolved the academic friction in the university, Felix turned and walked out of the warehouse.
The engine of the New World had already begun to run-in and operate amidst the roar of this group of European brains.
And in the distant Southern Hemisphere, that pure killing machine had already arrived at its destination.
At the port of Buenos Aires, Argentina, the sea breeze was mixed with the nauseating stench of raw cowhide and the foul odor of untreated sewage.
It was even worse than New York ten years ago.
On the outskirts of this city known as the "Paris of South America", chaos and corruption were the true rulers.
Three black steam cargo ships flying the Union Jack slowly sailed into the deep-water channel of the Río de la Plata estuary in the early morning mist.
After a long and monotonous voyage, the three armed cargo ships of the Metropolitan Trading Company, the Pioneer, the Guard, and the Pathfinder, finally arrived in this land filled with the smoke of gunpowder.
On the bridge of the Pioneer, Rambo wore a canvas vest and held a glass of rum, squinting as he observed the distant dock through a telescope.
The dock appeared unusually deserted.
Rusty barbed wire had been strung around the unloading area originally rented by the Argyle Family.
Outside the barbed wire, dozens of Argentine soldiers wearing ragged military uniforms and holding old-fashioned muskets were sitting lazily on the ground smoking.
"Captain, something isn't quite right."
Gerrit walked up to Rambo with a furrowed brow.
"Normally, when a cargo ship this large docks, the pilot and dock handlers should have rowed small boats over to contact us long ago. But there is not even a ghost of these guys. The signal tower of the port authority is signaling 'Delay docking, wait for inspection'."
Rambo sneered and downed the rum in his cup in one gulp.
"Inspection? They are waiting for us to obediently stick our necks into the noose. It seems the pounds of Barings Bank have already fed the appetites of these port bureaucrats."
He turned around and gave an order to the first mate.
"Ignore those scrap metal signals. Keep moving forward! Force your way directly into the berth. If the port tugboats dare to block the way, ram straight through them!"
The first mate was a veteran who had been sailing in South America for years, and Rambo's words made him hesitate a bit.
"Captain Rambo, this is the main port of Argentina after all. If we ignore the port authority and dock by force, they have the right to use coastal defense guns. This will cause an international dispute."
"My orders are to build railways and kill people, not to engage in diplomacy. If they dare to fire, we will blow the entire port to the sky. Execute the order!"
Rambo's tone left no room for negotiation.
People had guns pointed at their heads, what the hell was there to negotiate!
The three three-thousand-ton steel behemoths showed no signs of slowing down. Like three unreasonable giant whales, they spewed thick black smoke and rudely cut into the channel.
A small port tugboat attempting to block them was directly overturned into the muddy river water by the huge bow wave of the Pioneer.
Accompanied by the harsh sound of metal friction and the crisp snapping of cables, the three ships forcibly docked beside the trestle pier.
Before the ships had even come to a complete stop, a group of Argentine port officials wearing respectable uniforms, surrounded by dozens of armed soldiers, aggressively rushed onto the trestle pier.
Leading them was a port inspector with a handlebar mustache named Diego. His fat face was full of anger, waving a document stamped with a large seal in his hand.
"Hey... shit, stop right there! You savage sailors. I am the customs inspector of the port of Buenos Aires!" Diego roared at the ship in stiff English.
"According to our country's latest safety decree, all construction machinery and heavy supplies transported to the interior must undergo up to thirty days of port quarantine and safety verification! Before obtaining my signature, you are not allowed to unload even a single iron nail. Get back to the anchorage immediately!"
This was the strategy of Barings Bank.
Dragging things to death with legal bureaucratic procedures, after all, the project had not yet been handed over.
Thirty days of port detention were enough for that warlord Vargas to completely destroy the railway foundation in the interior.
Accompanied by the turning sound of the winch, the heavy gangplank slammed heavily onto the trestle pier, kicking up a cloud of dust.
Treading on the gangplank, Rambo carried a Model 70 Pioneer repeating rifle and walked down leisurely. Behind him were dozens of expressionless Western security guards holding long guns.
"Thirty days? Mr. Inspector. In my hometown of Nevada, if a train is thirty minutes late, the stationmaster gets skinned alive."
Rambo walked up to Diego and looked down condescendingly at this bureaucrat smelling heavily of perfume.
Diego was forced to take half a step back by the strong smell of blood on Rambo, but relying on the soldiers behind him, he still put up a bold front.
"This is the law of Argentina! You Yankees must obey it! I suspect that those large iron boxes of unknown origin loaded on your ship contain contraband. Now I am going to take people aboard to inspect!"
Diego waved his hand, and the Argentine soldiers behind him immediately raised those old muzzle-loading guns, aiming at Rambo and the others.
Looking at those pitch-black gun barrels, Rambo suddenly let out a crude laugh.
"Inspection? Alright. If you want to see what is packed in the iron boxes, I will open them and show you right now."
Rambo turned his head and snapped his fingers toward the upper deck.
"Gerrit, show Mr. Inspector the 'construction machinery' of our Metropolitan Trading Company!"
"Clatter!"
Accompanied by a few crisp sounds of tarp tearing.
At three concealed embrasures on the second deck of the Pioneer, the bulletproof steel plates were quickly removed.
Three brass-crafted Gatling rotary machine guns were prominently revealed. The thick barrels flashed with a chilling metallic luster in the South American sunlight. Six strong gunners had already grasped the cranks, and long canvas ammunition belts hung down onto the deck like venomous snakes.
Not only that, at the bow of the ship, the gun cover of a twelve-pound breech-loading steel cannon was also torn off, and the pitch-black muzzle directly locked onto this group of Argentine soldiers on the trestle pier.
The trestle pier instantly plunged into a dead silence.
The faces of those Argentine soldiers instantly turned pale with fright; their muzzle-loading guns took time to reload with gunpowder and projectiles for every single shot.
As for those terrifying-looking machines overhead, although they had never seen them before, that pure aura of industrial slaughter already made their legs feel weak.
Inspector Diego's handlebar mustache trembled violently, and he could even hear the sound of his own teeth chattering.
"You... you are committing an act of war! You actually shipped cannons into the main port! Mr. Sterling of Barings Bank was right, you are a bunch of bandits!"
Diego shouted in panic, but accidentally leaked the name of his behind-the-scenes financial backer.
"Aha? It seems that your quarantine document is stained with pounds from London."
Rambo chambered a round in the rifle he held, producing a crisp "click" sound.
Then he pressed the barrel directly against Diego's fat stomach.
"Listen, fat pig. This is the steel of America. Now, get your men and roll out of this dock. If I see anyone wearing a uniform within my line of sight ten minutes from now—"
There was not a trace of human pity in Rambo's eyes.
"I guarantee that those things on the deck will grind you along with this rotten wooden trestle pier into mincemeat."
Feeling the cold barrel on his stomach and looking into Rambo's beast-like eyes, Diego softened.
Whatever pounds of the British Empire, whatever customs laws—they were all bullshit in the face of guns and cannons pointed at his head.
"Fall back! Fall back quickly! Leave the dock!"
Diego shouted to the soldiers.
Dozens of Argentine soldiers felt as if they had received a great amnesty; dropping the wooden horses used to set up roadblocks, they scrambled and fled out of the dock area.
Looking at the empty dock, Rambo put away his rifle.
"Tch~ Start unloading! Load all the cannons and machine guns onto flatbed carriages. Notify the early engineering personnel hiding in the warehouses to lead out all the cargo mules and horses."
Rambo looked at the distant Pampas grasslands, a bloodthirsty flame burning in his eyes.
"Break time is over. It's time to tell that warlord named Vargas that the debt-collecting fiend has come ashore."
In the heart of the Pampas Grassland, over a hundred miles outside of Buenos Aires.
This was originally the preliminary exploration camp set up by the Argyle Family after preparing to take over the railway project.
But now, those newly laid sections of rails had been blown into twisted deformations, and the railroad ties had been reduced to ashes.
Colonel Vargas, a former Argentina warlord with a thick beard and fierce eyes, was sitting inside a spacious military tent.
In front of him were sizzling roasted beef and a few bottles of French red wine obtained from a plundered caravan.
"Colonel, the informants over at the port just sent news."
The adjutant hurried into the tent with a somewhat panicked expression.
"The Americans' ships forced their way to dock. That good-for-nothing Diego couldn't even last half an hour before pissing his pants from a few machine guns. Now, those Americans are leading a large caravan and rushing in our direction along the dirt road."
Vargas used a dagger to cut off a piece of bloody beef, shoved it into his mouth, chewed it vigorously, and sneered indifferently.
"Diego was always just an idiot who only knew how to take black money. Those British bastards from Barings Bank paid us heaps of gold coins not for us to hide behind customs."
Vargas picked up a rag to wipe the grease off his hands, stood up, and walked out of the tent.
Looking out over his camp, more than eight hundred soldiers equipped with Enfield muzzle-loading rifles were making a ruckus.
On the outskirts of the camp, there were also more than three hundred gaucho cavalrymen wearing wide-brimmed hats and cloaks.
These nomads, raised on horseback, were tying knots in their lassos or wiping the long sabers in their hands.
This was the confidence with which Vargas looked down upon this grassland.
"Right, how many Americans came?" Vargas asked the adjutant.
"Probably around five hundred people. They brought many carriages covered with tarpaulins, so it's impossible to see what's loaded inside. Their marching speed is very slow."
"It's probably just another five hundred unblooded railway workers or dock guards." Vargas spat disdainfully.
"This Pampas Grassland is our territory, and the hooves of the gauchos will trample them into mud. Pass down my order!"
Vargas roared loudly.
"Have the gaucho cavalry set out immediately! Utilizing the cover of waist-high weeds, lay an ambush in that gourd-shaped valley ten miles away from our camp. Once those Americans enter the valley, the cavalry will directly scatter their caravan! The infantry regiment will then press forward, leaving not a single living soul. I want to hang the heads of these Yankees on the railroad tracks and let Mr. Sterling in London see our methods!"
Following the issuance of the order, more than three hundred gaucho cavalrymen let out beast-like howls, waved their sabers and lassos, and vaulted onto their horses.
The sound of horse hooves thundered like lightning, and billows of smoke swept toward the distant horizon.
Meanwhile, in front of that valley ten miles away, which Vargas regarded as an excellent ambush zone.
The Argyle Family's expedition caravan did not blindly push forward as Vargas had imagined.
This team, which had dealt with indians countless times in the Nevada desert, possessed a terrifying battlefield intuition.
Rambo sat on horseback, stopping at the entrance of the valley.
He glanced at the gentle slopes on both sides covered with dense thatch and raised his hand to instantly halt the entire caravan's advance.
"Grit."
Rambo sniffed the musky, foul odor of horses drifting in the air with the wind.
"There's the smell of horse manure in the wind, and the turf ahead has been trampled on a large scale. Those riding bastards should be lying in ambush behind the slope ahead."
Grit drew the revolver from his waist.
"Captain, should we charge right over and fight them?"
"Idiots. The boss spent so much money equipping us with heavy firepower not for us to go play bayonet fights with the natives." Rambo dismounted and coldly issued the command.
"The caravan will deploy defensive lines on the spot. Push all twelve breech-loading steel cannons to the very front of the formation, lined up abreast. Raise the muzzle height, targeting behind the gentle slopes on both sides. Deploy the gatling guns in the gaps between the artillery to form a crossfire network."
Rambo walked up to the artillery piece and patted the icy cold barrel.
"Let those unworldly South American country bumpkins hear what the thunder of the industrial age is called. Load shrapnel shells, fuse set for three-second airburst!"
The artillerists operated skillfully and extremely quickly.
Unlike European regular armies that cared about fancy formations, every single one of their actions was extremely deadly.
Open the screw breech, push in the brass fixed propellant charge and heavy shrapnel shell, and close the breechblock.
The whole process took less than twenty seconds.
At this moment, the gaucho cavalry leader hiding behind the gentle slope was lying in the grass, looking in confusion at the American caravan stopped motionlessly at the mouth of the valley.
"What are they doing? Are those iron pipes artillery pieces?" The leader frowned.
Before he could figure it out.
From the direction of the valley entrance, twelve extremely dazzling orange-red tongues of fire suddenly surged out.
"Boom! Boom! Boom!"
The deafening roar of the artillery instantly tore apart the silence of the Pampas Grassland, and the powerful recoil made the one-ton artillery pieces recoil violently backward in the mud.
Twelve shrapnel shells traced an extremely gentle arc in the air, precisely flying over the gentle slope.
"Bang! Bang!"
In the air a dozen meters above the ground, the fuses detonated precisely.
Twelve shrapnel shells exploded mid-air, and thousands of extremely sharp lead pellets and shrapnel fragments, driven by the massive kinetic energy of the gunpowder, poured like a terrifying metallic rainstorm in a fan shape, blanketing the densely packed ambush position of the gaucho cavalry with zero blind spots.
"Ah!!!"
The shrill screams instantly overwhelmed the sound of the artillery.
This terrifying area-of-effect weapon was simply a massacre for the light cavalry without any armored protection.
The bellies of the warhorses were easily torn open by shrapnel, spilling internal organs all over the ground.
The sabers and lassos that the gauchos took pride in became a complete joke in front of this metallic storm.
With just one volley, over a hundred cavalrymen together with their horses were blasted into minced meat.
"This is artillery, the devil's artillery! Charge! Charge out and get close to them!"
Although the cavalry leader was injured, his fierce and courageous nature led him to make the craziest decision.
He knew that if he continued to lie in place, he would only be blown to death by the next round of artillery fire.
Retreating was even more of an impossible option.
The remaining two hundred and more gaucho cavalrymen fell into a frenzy.
They kicked and whipped their frightened warhorses, howling as they charged up the gentle slope, attempting to use the speed of the warhorses to cross this short distance of several hundred meters and engage in hand-to-hand combat with those Americans.
When this group of bloodshot-eyed, saber-waving cavalrymen surged over the gentle slope like a tide and appeared directly in front of the caravan.
Rambo bit down on his cigar, his eyes devoid of the slightest fluctuation.
"Machine gunners, get ready to crank the handles, let them listen to America's music."
Once they entered range...
"Da da da da da da!!!"
Ten gatling guns opened fire simultaneously.
The meat grinder was operating at full capacity.
A firing rate of hundreds of rounds per minute intertwined into an airtight web of fire.
The thick.45-caliber bullets, carrying terrifying kinetic energy, swept across the charging cavalry formation like the Grim Reaper's sickle.
Warhorses fell row upon row amidst whimpers, and the gauchos riding on their backs were cut in half at the waist by bullets, with severed limbs flying through the air.
Fresh blood dyed the green grass of the grassland a glaring dark red.
The cavalry charging at the very front couldn't even get within fifty meters of the machine guns before being completely torn to pieces.
Massacre.
One-sided massacre.
In less than five minutes, the machine gun barrels had grown red-hot.
When Rambo raised his hand to signal a cease-fire.
On that grassland several hundred meters wide in front of the valley, there was no longer any living creature capable of standing.
The wind over the Pampas Grassland carried a heavy scent of blood, blowing across the valley plowed through by the gatling gun.
Three hundred Gaucho cavalrymen, along with their warhorses, paved a thick carpet of flesh and blood across this meadow less than a few hundred meters wide.
Cartridge cases piled up in the grass, and the brass reflected light under the dazzling sunlight.
Rambo stepped on the blood-stained mud and walked over to a breech-loading steel cannon.
The barrel emitted high heat from firing shrapnel, and the air above the muzzle slightly distorted.
"Alright, stop clearing the battlefield. You won't find anything valuable on those Gauchos besides cheap tobacco and rusted daggers."
Rambo shouted loudly toward the Western gunmen who were rummaging through the pile of corpses for loot.
He turned his head and looked at the artillerymen harnessing the draft horses to the cannons.
"Load the high-explosive shells onto the trailers, everyone mount up. According to intelligence, we are only ten miles away from Vargas's main camp. Those South American hicks have lost the cover of their cavalry and are now a flock of blind turkeys. We need to smash our shells into their tents before they can react."
"Understood, Captain!"
Grit waved the rifle in his hand and shouted loudly.
Five hundred gunmen quickly mounted their horses.
They completely ignored the severely wounded soldiers still groaning in pain on the ground; in this law of the wilderness where the strong preyed on the weak, delivering a finishing shot was just a waste of bullets.
The convoy was regrouped, and twelve breech-loading steel cannons were dragged by strong draft horses. The heavy iron-rimmed wheels rolled over the Gauchos' corpses, making a horrifying sound of bone-crushing, advancing at full speed toward Vargas's main camp.
Inside the warlord's camp ten miles away, the atmosphere grew increasingly oppressive.
Colonel Vargas stood outside his marching tent, holding a monocular telescope bought at a high price from a British merchant, staring intently in the direction of the valley.
More than an hour had already passed.
Judging by the charging speed of the Gaucho cavalry, even if they had run into a regular army infantry regiment, a messenger riding a fast horse should have come back to report the battle situation by now.
However, aside from the rustling sound of the wind blowing through the waist-high weeds, there was nothing at the end of the grassland.
There were no cheers of victory, nor were there any routed stragglers.
Three hundred rangers who ran rampant on this land seemed to have vanished completely, without even stirring up an echo.
"Colonel, something is wrong."
Adjutant Mateo walked over to Vargas, his forehead covered in fine beads of sweat. He had participated in numerous warlord melee conflicts and possessed a strong intuition for battlefield atmosphere.
"Just now when the wind direction changed, I faintly heard thunder coming from the valley. But there isn't a single dark cloud in the sky today. That definitely wasn't thunder; it should be the roaring of cannons. And it was very dense."
Vargas lowered his telescope, his thick eyebrows tightly knitted together.
"Cannons? Did you drink too much of that cheap rum last night? The informants at the port reported very clearly that those Americans only brought some iron boxes covered with tarpaulins, with no traditional horse-drawn field cannons whatsoever. And what kind of cannon could wipe out three hundred scattered charging Gaucho cavalrymen in such a short time?"
Obviously, their informants hadn't seen the scene where Rambo and the others confronted the customs at the very beginning.
Gritting his teeth, although Vargas was unwilling to admit it aloud, the anxiety in his heart was growing frantically.
The agent of Barings Bank had assured him that the arrivals were merely a group of commercial armed escorts protecting road-building machinery.
"Have all infantry line up in front of the camp!"
Vargas made a decisive choice, deciding not to wait any longer. He drew the officer's saber from his waist and roared loudly.
"Stack those sandbags filled with dirt in the front, load your bullets. No matter what method those Yankees used to wipe out the cavalry, as long as they dare to approach the camp, a salvo of eight hundred rifles will turn them into a hornet's nest!"
Accompanied by the piercing sound of brass bugles.
Eight hundred Argentine warlord soldiers wearing ragged uniforms crawled out of their respective tents.
They formed a traditional three-rank firing line formation, standing behind the makeshift trenches in front of the camp.
The weapons held in these soldiers' hands were Enfield muzzle-loading rifles phased out by the British during the Crimean War.
They skillfully bit open the tail of the paper cartridge, poured the black powder into the barrel, then stuffed the lead bullet inside, pulled out the ramrod from beneath the barrel, and forcefully tamped the projectile down.
The entire loading process was tedious and slow.
This was the true military level of the South American warlords at present.
They still lingered in the old era of line infantry firing squads, blindly believing that dense rifle arrays could stop any enemy.
Time ticked away second by second.
The midday sunlight became viciously hot, scorching the lined-up soldiers until their mouths were dry.
Suddenly, Mateo pointed at a slightly raised dirt mound two miles ahead.
"Colonel, they are here!"
Vargas immediately raised his telescope.
On the ridge of the dirt mound two miles away, a row of dark shadows appeared.
Those were a dozen heavy flatbed carts dragged by draft horses.
Those flatbed carts stopped at the highest point of the dirt mound. Immediately after, hundreds of men wearing various mixed-colored coats jumped off their horses and began skillfully unloading the items from the carts.
Through the telescope, Vargas finally saw clearly those iron monsters after the tarpaulins were removed.
Twelve thick breech-loading steel cannon barrels reflected a deadly blue light under the sunlight. The artillerymen were turning the cranks to adjust the elevation angle of the cannons.
"Two miles... Why are they setting up cannons two miles away?" Mateo stood aside, his face full of disbelief.
"Our muzzle-loaders have a maximum range of only a few hundred yards. At that distance, even if their cannons fire solid shot, it won't have any lethality by the time it rolls in front of us."
Vargas did not reply, but his heart suddenly felt as if it was tightly gripped by a cold, massive hand.
He had served in the regular army of Argentina and had heard that the European powers were developing a new type of artillery loaded from the rear, which not only had a long range but also extremely high accuracy.
"Take cover! Everyone get down in the trenches immediately!"
Vargas roared at the top of his lungs, not even caring about an officer's dignity, and directly tackled his adjutant to the ground.
But the order was given too late; those warlord soldiers accustomed to standing fire didn't react at all.
On the dirt mound two miles away.
Holding a binocular range-finding telescope, Rambo coldly looked at the neatly arranged Argentine infantry.
"A bunch of stupid pigs lining up to wait for death."
Rambo lowered his telescope and turned to look at the artillery commander.
"Distance three thousand five hundred yards. Wind direction southeast, wind speed level 3. High-explosive shells. All guns, three rounds rapid fire."
The artillery commander raised the red command flag.
"Target the enemy camp directly ahead, load!"
Twelve loaders nimbly pulled open the spiral breech blocks, pushed the brass cartridge cases and conical high-explosive shells with impact fuses into the chambers, and abruptly locked the closing mechanisms.
"Fire!"
The red flag swung down sharply.
"Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!..."
Twelve earth-shattering loud bangs erupted almost at the very same instant.
The muzzle blast uprooted the surrounding weeds, and the massive recoil caused the gun spades to plow deep trenches into the muddy ground.
For these breech-loading steel cannons adopting rifling design and cylindrical-conical projectiles, a distance of two miles was merely a flight time of a few short seconds.
Lying on the ground, Vargas only heard a sharp, shrill whistling sound overhead, like the Grim Reaper tearing through the air.
The next second...
His main camp turned into a living hell.
Twelve high-explosive shells loaded with high explosives accurately smashed into the dense infantry phalanx and the cluster of tents in the rear.
Accompanied by deafening explosions, massive orange-red fireballs rose into the air within the camp. The power of these high-explosive shells could simply not be compared to those old-fashioned muzzle-loading solid shots or black powder exploding shells.
The massive shockwave instantly overturned the makeshift trenches.
Those warlord soldiers standing dazed in place didn't even have time to scream before they were instantly torn to pieces by the high temperature generated by the explosions and the rampaging steel fragments.
Severed limbs and broken arms, shattered rifle parts, and blasted sandbags, mixed with mud all over the sky, showered down from mid-air like raindrops.
"First round of registration complete! No correction needed, continue firing!"
The artillery commander on the dirt mound looked at the impact points of the explosions and roared loudly.
Following closely were the second and third rounds of shells pouring down.
Thirty-six high-explosive shells thoroughly plowed through Vargas's painstakingly managed camp in less than two minutes.
The tents storing food and black powder were directly hit, triggering a horrific sympathetic detonation. The entire camp was completely engulfed by thick black smoke and soaring flames.
"My ears! I can't hear anything!"
"Ah... Help! My leg is broken!"
The warlord's infantry phalanx collapsed in the very first round of shelling. These soldiers risking their lives for pay had never seen this kind of cross-era, beyond-visual-range firepower strike.
The Enfield rifles in their hands couldn't even reach the shadow of the enemy, while the enemy's shells exploded overhead as if they had eyes.
Fear stems from the absolute generational gap in firepower.
The surviving soldiers threw away their heavy and useless muzzle-loaders in their hands, scurrying around like headless flies in the sea of fire, trampling on each other.
Vargas crawled out from under the bombed-out sandbags.
A large chunk of his military uniform was charred, and his face was covered in soot and blood. Adjutant Mateo was lying less than two meters away from him, half of his head shaved off by a shrapnel fragment, with red and white brain matter flowing all over the ground.
"No... This is impossible..."
"I cannot accept this kind of thing~"
Looking at the hellish scene before him, Vargas trembled uncontrollably.
His elite eight-hundred-man infantry regiment, without even seeing the face of the enemy, lost nearly half in these few minutes of shelling.
This wasn't a war at all; it was a one-sided slaughter.
He finally understood why none of the Gaucho cavalrymen came back to report.
On the dirt mound.
Through the telescope, Rambo watched the enemy troops scattering like ants below, a satisfied arc forming at the corners of his mouth.
"Artillery, cease fire, conserve ammunition."
He drew the Colt revolver from his waist and fired a shot into the air.
"Security team, advance in skirmish line. Load two gatling guns onto the wagons to follow behind and provide firepower suppression. Do not charge, maintain distance, pick them off with rifles. Drive them south like herding ducks."
Grit was somewhat puzzled: "Captain, why not charge down directly and slaughter them all?"
"Because I want that frightened warlord, covered in blood, to go knock on the door of the Barings Bank agent."
Rambo mounted his horse, his eyes revealing the calculation characteristic of capitalists.
"The boss said, this debt must be settled not only with the mongrel dogs, but even more so on the head of the person holding the leash."
Under the scorching sun of the Pampas Grassland, Colonel Vargas used his saber to cut down two deserters who tried to grab horses and escape, and finally managed to gather the remaining soldiers in the chaos.
"Do not run north! That's an open area, and you'll be made targets by their cannons!"
Vargas roared at the top of his lungs, his throat becoming somewhat hoarse from inhaling a large amount of gunpowder smoke.
"Retreat south! Fall back to Santa Rosa town. There are sturdy stone buildings there, as well as the governor's city defense army. Mr. Arthur, the agent of the British, is also there, and he must give us an explanation!"
Under the threat of death, the defeated soldiers burst out with astonishing survival instincts. They abandoned all heavy baggage, and even threw their extra bullet pouches into the sea of fire, taking only their self-defense muskets and fleeing wildly southward following Vargas's horses.
But they quickly discovered that this retreat had turned into an endless nightmare.
At a distance of about a mile behind them.
The five hundred Western gunmen led by Rambo did not charge and engage in close-quarters slashing like traditional cavalry.
They adopted the most vicious tactic used against Indian guerrilla warfare in North America: armed safari.
The five hundred men spread out into an extremely wide skirmish line.
Riding on horseback at a leisurely pace, they always kept the distance outside the effective range of the Argentina muzzle-loaders.
Once the fleeing soldiers ahead slowed down due to physical exhaustion.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
Crisp and dense gunfire would ring out from behind.
The Pioneer Model 70 repeating rifles held by the gunmen demonstrated terrifying sustained firepower.
The shooters didn't need to dismount to reload at all; they only needed to skillfully pull the trigger guard, and gleaming brass cartridges tumbled in the air as the next bullet was already pushed into the chamber.
An Argentina soldier running at the very back was shot in the thigh and fell screaming into the waist-high weeds.
He struggled to turn his head back, raised the muzzle-loader he hadn't the heart to throw away, and tried to aim at the black figures riding on horses in the distance.
But before he could pull the trigger, three rifle bullets from different directions accurately pierced his chest.
The corpse fell into the grass and was soon trampled over by the following hooves.
"Do not stop! Keep running!"
Vargas rode on horseback, constantly looking back, his eyes filled with fear and despair.
He watched helplessly as his own soldiers were precisely picked off one by one like rabbits chased by hounds.
Those Americans were like emotionless killing machines; they didn't roar or charge, but just coldly pulled the triggers, reaping the lives of the laggards.
If a dozen or so soldiers tried to stop and establish a temporary blocking line relying on the terrain.
The two flatbed wagons following behind the skirmish line would immediately stop. Lifting the tarp, the muzzles of two gatling guns aimed directly at the blocking position.
"Da da da da..."
It only took a dozen seconds of rotary-barrel strafing for the thick.45-caliber bullets to tear those resisting soldiers and the mounds they hid behind into minced meat.
This absolute generational gap in firepower caused this remnant warlord force to completely collapse.
"Colonel, we can't escape! The brothers have run six miles without even a sip of water, our lungs are about to burst!"
An officer followed behind Vargas's horse, crying out in despair as he ran.
"They are toying with us, waiting for us to exhaust our very last ounce of strength!"
"Shut up, run if you don't want to die. Santa Rosa town is right ahead!"
Vargas whipped his horse fiercely.
Of course he knew what those Americans were doing.
The opponent had artillery and cavalry; if they wanted to annihilate them completely, they could have done it right in the camp.
The reason they left this gap was precisely to drive them to Santa Rosa town.
But he had no choice.
Stopping in the wilderness meant death; escaping into the town might still allow them to use the British diplomatic status and the town's city defense army to win a glimmer of life.
"Barings Bank... Charles Sterling... You swindlers in suits!"
Vargas cursed wildly in his heart.
The British assured him that this was merely an intimidation operation targeting road construction workers.
But now, what he was facing was a force of professional soldiers equipped with heavy artillery and rotary-barrel machine guns, possessing extremely high tactical literacy.
The foundation he had worked so hard to build up over several years vanished into thin air in less than a day.
The sun gradually sank in the west, and the light on the Pampas Grassland began to grow dim.
After paying the price of nearly a hundred corpses.
Vargas and the remaining hundred-odd defeated soldiers finally saw the low stone buildings of Santa Rosa town on the horizon, as well as the white Catholic church spire in the center of the town.
"The town is here, we are saved!"
The defeated soldiers let out cheers of surviving a disaster and rushed frantically toward the direction of the town.
And behind them.
Rambo reined in his horse, and the five hundred gunmen behind him stopped in unison.
Grit rode up to Rambo, pushed open the cylinder of his revolver with his thumb, ejected a few sizzling hot empty cartridge cases, and reinserted new bullets.
"Captain, they've entered the town. There are roadblocks and sandbags ahead, and there's a city defense army on the city walls. Should we bring artillery and flatten it directly?"
Rambo pulled out a cigar from his pocket, struck a match on his saddle to light it, took a deep puff, and exhaled thick smoke.
"No rush, the prey has already crawled into the cage. Having run all afternoon, the brothers' horses are also tired."
Rambo held binoculars, observing the outer fortifications of Santa Rosa town.
"OK, camp right here. Line up the cannons, with the muzzles aimed at the town's church and City Hall. The gatling gun will block all roads leaving the town. Not even a single mouse can be allowed to escape."
Rambo's eyes appeared extremely cold and gloomy in the twilight.
"The boss's rule is to reason first. Tomorrow at dawn, send a Spanish-speaking captive in to deliver a message. If the people in the town don't tie up that warlord and the agent of Barings Bank and send them out, we will completely erase this town from the map of Argentina."
The Western gunmen dismounted one after another.
Skillfully using wagons to form a circular defensive position, they began to make a fire, opened the canned beef distributed by the Food Company, and boiled meat soup mixed with hard biscuits.
The artillery covers were put back on, but under the glow of the campfire, those twelve thick barrels still tightened like a noose around the neck of Santa Rosa town.
Night had enveloped the town of Santa Rosa.
This bustling town, originally serving as a transit station for nearby farmers and caravans, was now plunged into panic.
The bonfires lit on the outskirts of the town and the faintly visible outlines of heavy artillery made everyone in the town feel suffocated.
In the town center, inside a three-story building with sturdy red-brick exterior walls.
This was the temporary office of Barings Bank in Santa Rosa.
In the office on the second floor of the agency, the atmosphere was oppressive.
Arthur Pendleton, the senior agent dispatched by Barings Bank to South America, was sitting behind a large desk.
Although wearing an exquisite British high-collared shirt and velvet waistcoat, he was still holding expensive sherry in his hand.
But at this moment, his hands were shaking so much that the liquor even spilled onto the desktop.
Sitting in front of him was Lopez, the mayor and city defense commander of Santa Rosa town.
This plump Argentine local official was wiping the cold sweat on his forehead with a handkerchief unceasingly.
"Bang!"
The heavy wooden door of the office was rudely kicked open.
Colonel Vargas, covered in blood and mud, rushed in like a beast driven into a desperate situation.
The revolver in his hand was not even put back into the holster, and his eyes were bloodshot.
"Arthur! You damned Englishman!"
Vargas strode to the desk, swept the documents on the table to the ground with one wave, and aimed the muzzle directly at Arthur's head.
"You told me that the ones coming were a group of American security guards escorting road-repair machinery! You told me that as long as my cavalry made a charge, they could drive them into the sea!"
Vargas roared hoarsely, spitting saliva onto Arthur's pale face.
"They have twelve breech-loading steel cannons and ten Gatling machine guns! Their men use repeating rifles, and their marksmanship is even more accurate than the lone wolves on the grassland. My eight hundred men and my camp are all gone! Is this what you call security guards? This is a fucking regular army!"
Facing the pitch-black muzzle, Arthur forced himself to remain calm.
He put down his wine glass, held his hands flat in front of his chest, and made a soothing gesture.
"Colonel, calm down! Please calm down!"
Arthur's voice was a bit trembling, but his brain, baptized by the City of London, was working.
"This is definitely an accident! Our intelligence in New York shows that the ships of the Metropolitan Trading Company indeed carried road-building machinery. This batch of heavy firepower must have been temporarily transferred by that damned Argyle. They took advantage of our intelligence time difference!"
"I don't care about any intelligence time difference; I only know that my men are almost dead!"
Vargas grabbed Arthur by the collar and pulled him up from the chair.
"I did this dirty work for you Barings Bank, and now their cannons are set up outside the town! You immediately send a telegram to London and let your Royal Navy save me! In addition, give me the remaining balance of fifty thousand pounds you promised me right now!"
Arthur cursed the vulgar warlord in front of him frantically in his heart.
"Royal Navy?"
Are you kidding me.
Now the Prime Minister and Argyle are on the same side, how could the Royal Navy fire cannons in Argentina for a few mercenaries?
But he couldn't tell the truth.
Once Vargas knew that he was already an abandoned piece, this madman would definitely pull the trigger immediately.
"Colonel, money is not a problem. There is enough gold in the vault."
Arthur squeezed out an ugly smile, trying to stabilize the other party.
"But the most important thing right now is to save our lives. Although there are cannons outside the town, we still have sturdy buildings in our town."
Arthur turned his head and looked at Mayor Lopez, who had been shrinking in the corner of the sofa and trembling.
"Mayor Lopez! There are still more than two hundred men in your city defense army, plus the remaining men of Colonel Vargas. Relying on the town's fortifications, they will definitely not dare to easily attack. As long as we hold out for two days, I guarantee that the Governor over in Buenos Aires will definitely send a regular army to intervene. After all, this is the territory of Argentina, and the Americans do not dare to massacre the city here!"
Hearing this, Mayor Lopez was so frightened that he directly jumped up.
"Mr. Arthur, are you crazy!"
Lopez's fat body trembled.
"Those Americans even smashed Colonel Vargas's eight hundred elites into pieces, and you expect the two hundred security soldiers under me who can't even hold their guns steady to defend against cannons? No, no, no... I will never participate in this kind of suicidal resistance!"
Lopez looked at Vargas, his tone close to begging.
"Colonel, please take your men and leave the town. You are leading the flames of war to innocent civilians."
"Leave the town? Leaving the town means death for me!"
Vargas pushed Arthur away, turned the muzzle, and aimed at Lopez.
"Listen, you fat pig, now we are in this together. If you dare to order the city gate to be opened, I will blow your head off right now! Have your men go up to the city wall to defend immediately, and pile all the sandbags to the street corner."
Under the threat of death, Lopez yielded, crawling and rolling out of the office to convey the order.
The office quieted down again, leaving only Vargas's heavy breathing.
Arthur straightened his messed-up collar and sat back in the chair.
Then his gaze fell on the telegraph machine at the edge of the desk.
Before Vargas rushed in, he had just received a secret telegram sent by the London headquarters.
That was a telegram that made him feel despair.
The bond market in London was somewhat collapsing.
Under the frantic short-selling of mysterious funds, the bond price of Barings Bank regarding the South American railway had fallen below thirty percent of the issue price.
Charles Sterling flew into a rage in the telegram, ordering Arthur to resolve the military threat in South America within two days, otherwise the headquarters would cut off his financial support.
But Arthur knew clearly in his heart that the military threat could no longer be resolved.
The man named Argyle not only strangled them in the financial market, but also sent a group of demons on the physical level.
"Colonel, you go arrange the defense deployment. I am going to the vault to count the fifty thousand pounds of gold. If the situation is truly irreversible, we can evacuate from the tunnel behind the town taking advantage of the chaos tonight."
Arthur said to Vargas extremely sincerely.
Vargas glanced at Arthur and relaxed his vigilance slightly.
At this time, gold was his only hope.
"Better be like this, Englishman. If you dare to play tricks, the gun in my hand won't recognize anyone."
Vargas snorted coldly, turned around and walked out of the office.
Watching the retreating figure of the warlord, Arthur's "sincere" expression instantly vanished without a trace, replaced by calculation.
Evacuate?
Run away with this warlord covered in the smell of blood?
Not only would that become the primary target of pursuit by the Americans, but once back in London, he would be mercilessly abandoned by Sterling as a scapegoat for the failure of the entire plan.
Arthur stood up, walked to the safe in the corner of the office, and quickly turned the combination lock.
The safe door opened, and there was no fifty thousand pounds of gold inside, only a few thick stacks of Argentine peso cash and a black ledger.
Arthur stuffed the cash and ledger into a leather briefcase.
He walked to the window, lifted a corner of the curtain, and looked at the continuous bonfires on the outskirts of the town.
"Argyle's people should also be businessmen. As long as they are businessmen, they must have a price."
Arthur pondered silently in his heart.