At the moment, Hamid's base deep in the Syrian mountains is a tense and busy place.
All the soldiers are preparing for the coming war as fast as they can under the rising sun.
All of Hamid's few helicopter gunships have taken off and are urgently moving some of the more important equipment and supplies from inside the base to the anti-slope pit halfway up the mountain.
Soldiers also began to enter the pit in an orderly manner under the command of officers of all ranks, while those construction teams and soldiers from the engineering battalion, who had just been working on the project, began to settle all the equipment as quickly as possible.
Meanwhile, the scouts on the front line sent back word that the other side was not moving very fast.
Although the armoured vehicles were able to manoeuvre quickly, the few thousand soldiers, for the most part, had to rely on foot.
Moreover, the lorries were already loaded with a large amount of supplies and towed towed artillery behind them, so in these winding mountain roads, the movement was not much faster than running.
This made Hamid even more relieved.
They were coming hard, but they were also coming quite slowly.
It was also possible that in their eyes he was already meat on their lips, so they were in no hurry at all.
And they were not afraid of his escape, because their aim was to destroy his base and his forces as far as possible, not to kill him.
For an opposition force like Hamid, the base is everything to them, they have a base to live on, once they lose it, they will be like a dog in a box, passive and beaten.
And if they wiped out Hamid's soldiers, there would be no chance for Hamid to turn around, and he would have to hide and run for his life, and would not be able to launch any counter-attack or pose any threat.
So this crusading force was in no hurry, and they knew that Hamid had found himself out, but they simply didn't care.
But what they didn't know was that the Hamid now was not the same Hamid as before.
The Hamid now had the strength to resist them!
The arrogance of the other side gave Hamid more than an hour to catch its breath.
After an hour or so, everyone in this base, all of them, withdrew into the backslope pit.
All the houses inside the base, became decorative and everything that was valuable and useful inside, was taken away.
Some of the large power generation equipment that could not be dismantled in time was lifted by helicopters and taken into the backslope in an orderly manner, and a few pieces of engineering equipment that could not fit in the backslope were flown north by helicopter.
Hamid's soldiers were now in the backslope, checking their guns and ammunition in an orderly manner, ready to take on the battle.
Everything was ready when the front-line scouts sent back the latest information that the opposing army had come to a halt on a gentle strip of land 20 kilometres away in a straight line, and that their 30-odd towed artillery pieces had begun to deploy in place.
It was clear to Hamid that this was the artillery position chosen by the other side and that the first barrage would begin once they had deployed their guns and prepared for the barrage.
While the artillery was being deployed, the enemy left 2,000 soldiers to defend the artillery positions, and the remaining 5,000 infantry, with armoured vehicles in tow, immediately moved on towards Hamid's base!
When Hamid heard the news, his heart gave a jolt and he thought to himself, "The infantry is really moving towards me! They must be preparing to shell me with artillery first, and when the shelling is over, the 5,000-odd infantry will charge when they are under the city! This should be the infantry and artillery synergy tactic that old brother Ye Chen is talking about... Good, let's see how I'll beat your infantry back then!"