Volume 9: Molten Mine Chapter 425: "Iron Coffin"
At this moment, a security agent in charge of flank alert suddenly shouted in the team channel: "Team leader! Mr. Ke Lan! At 11 o'clock, about 140 meters away, there seems to be a vehicle from our side!"
"Our vehicles?!"
The agent's voice immediately attracted everyone's attention. Ke Lan looked in the direction he said, and there was indeed a tracked armored vehicle parked there, but a huge rock that rolled down from a high place pressed on the body of the vehicle, causing the entire body of the vehicle to be severely deformed.
There were no signs that the top hood and the rear door had ever been opened - the twisted and deformed external armor and the huge rocks pressing on it had completely blocked the escape exits for the people inside the car. Ke Lan had basically given up hope as to whether there were any survivors among the passengers.
But even so, they couldn't just ignore the armored vehicle. Ke Lan immediately called out to his teammates, "Valentina will be responsible for moving the boulder pressing down on the vehicle, Layton will be responsible for cutting open the deformed door, Ivan, you must be prepared to rescue the wounded... uh, prepare for the autopsy as well. After we open the carriage, the body won't be able to be preserved in this environment for long."
Those who were assigned the task quickly got down to work, while the others raised their weapons and stood guard around .
This is a "Rhino MkⅢ" all-terrain armored patrol vehicle. The garrison base logo printed on the side armor of the vehicle body has already explained its origin, but Ke Lan has no idea why this patrol vehicle appears here.
This place is not part of the daily patrol area of the garrison base, and there are no valuable relics or mines nearby. Logically, no one would come here, let alone a patrol car from the base.
Valentina operated the mecha to move the stone that was pressing on the armored vehicle, but the top hood and the compartment on one side sank and could not be opened in a normal way, and the life detection equipment could not detect any heartbeat in the compartment.
"Even though there are no survivors, you still have to be careful. I don't want to have to do an autopsy with a pile of minced meat." Ivan said to Layton, holding a medical tool box in his hand.
"Don't worry, this is a small thing that I can handle." The latter gave him a thumbs up, then switched the welding gun in the robotic arm to cutting torch mode, and cut open the stuck carriage door little by little.
"We found three bodies." Layton looked inside the open carriage. "Do you want me to drag the bodies out?"
"Forget it, I'll go in. With the environment outside, these bodies will probably be destroyed beyond recognition in a few minutes." Ivan shook his head and got into the car with the tools.
In less than fifteen minutes, Ivan came out again, looking a little ugly.
"One of them should have died from the impact. His skull was shattered and his ribs were broken in many places. It seems that he died on the spot." Ivan said, "But compared to the other two, he was the luckiest."
"Best luck? What does that mean?" the hound couldn't help asking.
"The air conditioner in the armored vehicle was broken, and the remaining two people were suffocated to death by the dual torture of lack of oxygen and high temperature... There were no external injuries on their bodies, but the nails on their ten fingers had been bent and fallen off, and there were blood marks everywhere on the walls of the carriage. I think they must have endured tremendous pain before they died."
"Indeed... all three of them have turned into mummies, and all the moisture in their bodies has been dried up." Leighton, another man who had seen the corpses with his own eyes, nodded.
"In fact, you just need to imagine this armored vehicle as an airtight oven. The despair of being trapped inside, with the oxygen gradually decreasing and the temperature gradually rising... Alas." Ivan sighed deeply.
After hearing his description, the faces of the others suddenly became paler.
This kind of death, just thinking about it, makes people feel suffocated.
"If I were trapped in this iron coffin, I would rather shoot myself in the temple. At least I won't feel pain when dying this way." The Hound whispered.
"Perhaps they still hold out a glimmer of hope that they can be found by the search and rescue team... Unfortunately, we are too late," Ivan said.
"Although their experience is unfortunate, we have more important things to do." Ke Lan walked to the open car door and said, "Ivan, did you find any valuable clues on these bodies? At least, we have to figure out why they drove the armored patrol car to this place."
"Yes... these three people are not all garrison troops stationed at the base. Only the driver is wearing a field service uniform. The man who died in the collision, judging by his attire, should be a hunter like us. As for the last man, he was only wearing a set of underwear and was barefoot... It was like he just crawled out of bed."
"It looks like someone who fled from the base in a panic." Hound subconsciously reached out his hand to rub the stubble on his chin, but when the sound of metal knocking was heard, he realized that he was still wearing a huge helmet.
"I think so." Ke Lan had half of his body inside the car. "They don't have heat-resistant protective clothing, oxygen cylinders or oxygen generators. Otherwise, they could hold on for a while longer, and maybe they could really wait for our rescue."
"It seems that these three people really escaped from the base, and the situation at that time must have been very urgent, otherwise, they would not have left behind these essential survival items in the mining area." Aya said , "By the way, are the communication equipment and recording instruments in the car damaged? If we can retrieve the data inside, we should be able to know what happened in the garrison base."
"You don't have to tell me. I've already copied the data." Layton shook the plug in his hand with some pride. "It's being decoded. You'll be able to see it soon."
Just as Layton said, in less than 20 seconds, the mission record document in the patrol car was decoded. However, to everyone's disappointment, apart from the dozens of patrol reports with similar contents, the only valuable record was an "Emergency Evacuation Notice" received a few days ago, and the content of this notice was only two words: "Run!"
"The evacuation notice was sent from the central control tower of the garrison base. That means these people are not deserters, but are 'ordered to evacuate'... Damn it, the person who sent this notice is so negligent. He didn't explain the cause and effect clearly, and only said 'escape quickly'. God knows what happened!" muttered the Hound.
