Chapter 103: Southeast Asia Team Leader

TL: LittlePeach

"I'll be right back, so could you wait here?"

Not even five minutes had passed since I'd said that.

Splat.

"There. Brought him."

"...."

I hauled Wei Hong, Samgor's mid-level enforcer, over and laid him out right in front of Oliver.

Every so often the man flopped his whole body around, as if trying to prove to himself that he was still alive.

Flop!

"Eek."

Oliver was busy pulling his head down into his shoulders again at the grotesque sight, but I scanned our surroundings and pressed him.

"We don't have much time. Once the rain clouds break, the inmates are going to spot this in no time. Wouldn't it be safer to move him out while nobody's looking, like now?"

"R, r-r-right. Got it."

Coming back to his senses, Oliver hurriedly placed a call to someone.

Moments later, the other Secret Intelligence Service agents running undercover infiltration inside New Bilibid came scrambling toward us.

"It's, it's really Wei Hong."

"How did he do it this fast...."

They all stood there slack-jawed for a moment, then quickly gathered Wei Hong up and started moving.

"Good work."

"It was nothing. Oh, and watch out for the utility poles. You could get electrocuted."

"Utility poles? Ah, understood."

As they made their way off through the rain, Oliver kept glancing back at me.

I gave him a light wave and saw the Secret Intelligence Service agents off.

Anyway.

"Just got lucky."

If the rain hadn't come down right when it did, the job wouldn't have wrapped up this cleanly.

Even if I'd scrounged up some gas cylinders somewhere and set them off, the inmates and prison guards would have come running at the noise, and the whole thing would have gotten ten times harder, wouldn't it?

"Oh, right."

The job was finished, which meant it was time to call Frank.

I picked up my phone again and dialed straight back to the number I'd just hung up on.

Brrrrrring.

Click.

Frank picked up at once, as if he'd been waiting by the phone.

-Yes, Sunny Kick. I was just waiting to hear from you. Did you make contact with Oliver?

Somehow his reactions always seem to run half a beat behind.

"Yes. I just finished kidnapping Wei Hong and handing him over to Oliver."

-...What?

Maybe the heavy rain around me was messing with the connection.

I cleared my throat and said it again.

"I said I just kidnapped Wei Hong and handed him over to Oliver-ssi."

-....

"I'll text you the account number, so send the money there."

I checked afterward and realized it had only been twenty minutes since my earlier call with him.

1.5 billion won, earned in twenty minutes flat.

'This is why I love Southeast Asia.'

There was no deeper reason it was my spiritual home.

*****

When the pounding downpour cut off as suddenly as if it had never happened, the inmates who'd been sheltering under the temporary structures crawled out one by one.

Muddy water pooled everywhere was being sluiced away, breakers were being thrown in the blacked-out sectors, and the messy cleanup was in full swing.

"Tch. Talk about rotten luck.... Of all the places for a snapped line to fall, it had to be that puddle."

"Still, nobody died. That's something, isn't it?"

"Heh heh. Fair enough."

News of the freak accident had the inmates murmuring and drifting over to gawk.

Who could have guessed that a thick cable torn loose from a utility pole would land smack in the middle of the Samgor crew's turf and cause a mass electrocution?

Luckily there was a modern hospital facility attached to the prison not far off, so all thirty of the crew members were carted away on stretchers soon enough.

Samgor's block, an electrocution site overnight, was left completely deserted.

"Don't go anywhere near there for a while. We could get zapped right along with them."

"Are you nuts? The place is cursed.... I don't even want to walk past it."

Uneasy about the whole thing, the prisoners avoided the area entirely, just in case.

While everyone clicked their tongues and called it cursed with bad luck, not a single person noticed that one Samgor member had vanished without a trace.

Even after all that uproar, daily life in New Bilibid hadn't changed much.

The same went for me.

Slurrrrrp.

"Juice tastes extra sweet today."

Maybe because I'd made 1.5 billion won in one shot?

It was another day of leisurely sucking down the free mango juice that came up as tribute.

"Team leader-nim. I'm back."

"Mm?"

"Your personal business is all wrapped up now, I take it?"

I immediately turned toward the familiar voice and found Sparrow No. 10 standing there.

Despite this being the first time I had seen him in five days since entering the prison, he approached with a bright smile as though we had met just the day before.

Behind him stood two visibly intimidated men.

"Don't tell me, those two are...."

Slurp.

Unlike me, draining the last of my mango juice, they stood frozen stiff, filthy and bedraggled.

"That's correct. The two behind me are Owl No. 12 and Owl No. 13, the senior agents who went missing."

"Oh, really? How on earth did you...."

New Bilibid Prison, a human chicken coop packed with twenty-seven thousand inmates.

It would take the Gocheok Sky Dome filled to the very last seat to come close to that number.

Finding two black agents hiding in a swarm that size, from scratch with nothing to go on, had honestly struck me as unrealistic.

'And he's already done it?'

Sparrow No. 10 scratched his nose, looking sheepish.

“Actually, I found these two on our third day inside. Apparently, right after they came in, a bunch of nasty prisoners surrounded them and took their phones and everything else they had. They went straight into hiding in a secluded corner and were barely managing to catch their breath.”

"Is that so? Still, you managed to dig them up."

"Just got lucky. The inmates in my cell did the legwork for me."

He kept calling it luck, but either way it was more than I'd expected of him.

But then, hold on.

'Three days in would mean the day before yesterday.'

I found myself tilting my head.

"So why didn't you get in touch?"

"Ah, well.... You seemed to be enjoying prison life quite a lot, Team leader-nim, so I just watched from a distance and let you finish enjoying it."

"Ah."

Day three inside. Back then I'd been busy shooting a live-action Tekken against brawlers who lined up by the hour.

"We were in Zone A the whole time, but you were so busy you never noticed us at all. So we deliberately didn't say anything and rested up nearby, just the three of us."

"I see...."

So all that time, Sparrow No. 10 had gone and collected the senior agents on his own, kept them safe, and waited quietly until I'd had my fill.

When the rain was coming down in sheets he wouldn't have been able to see a foot in front of him, so it seemed he hadn't caught my little side job.

"Ahem. I see. Well, good work, all of you. The two behind you as well. Nobody's hurt?"

"Y-yes, sir...."

But something about the two agents' reaction was odd.

We were all NIS, yet they couldn’t even look me in the face and kept furtively averting their eyes.

Sparrow No. 10 offered an explanation.

"Right as we were coming over into Zone A, you happened to be folding a two-meter giant in half, Team leader-nim."

"Ah."

"They've been like that ever since...."

"Ahem, ahem."

It felt like being caught goofing off instead of doing the job I'd been sent to do, and I got needlessly embarrassed.

Well, whatever the process.

Everyone had been rescued with all their limbs intact, so all's well that ends well, right?

Slurrrrrp.

"Good. Now let's all get out of here."

Anyway.

With the agents all assembled, I contacted the broker right away.

-Finished your business? As it happens, the hospital's crawling with visitors today. I'll get you out through the hospital before the day's over.

Getting out of New Bilibid went as smoothly as getting in.

Guided by a prison guard who'd taken a bribe, we spent that night in a hospital ward.

"Nnghh."

"Uuurgh...."

We passed the hours mixed in with the Samgor men huddled together and groaning in the ward, and before long, at dawn, the prison guard led us out to the New Bilibid hospital parking lot.

Disguised as patients being transferred out for treatment, we climbed straight into an ambulance and rode it safely out.

Who knew a prison break could be this easy.

'Southeast Asia never disappoints.'

Not long after we stepped down from the ambulance, a big Bongo van was waiting outside.

"Thank you. I had a nice rest, thanks to you."

"Goo'bye. Korea man good man. Tank you."

I shoved a wad of local bills, collected as protection money, into the guard's pocket, and he grinned and walked away.

In the passenger seat of the Bongo van we transferred to sat the broker I'd met before, the boss of Vanilla Guide.

“Heh heh. Looks like you had a pretty comfortable time in there. Your complexion somehow looks even healthier than when you went in.”

“Yes. Thanks to you, I had a good time.”

“Then make sure you use our travel agency again next time.”

“Of course. I’ll contact you anytime.”

He dropped us off near the downtown area where his office was.

While the Southeast Asia Team agents took deep, emotional lungfuls of outside air, I turned to Sparrow No. 10 and asked,

“Any instructions from headquarters?”

"Yes. For now the order is for each of us to return to our original stations. After a day's rest I head to Cambodia, and the two agents move to Vietnam."

"I see."

"What about you, Team leader-nim?"

No orders had come down for me.

But there was one destination that came to mind right away.

"I think I'll head back to Korea for now."

My brief holiday at New Bilibid Prison was over, and it was about time I started missing the clear skies of the Republic of Korea.

*****

It was exactly a month ago that my work in Dandong and Russia was recognized and I pinned on the Team 5 leader nameplate.

After that came Cambodia, Taiwan, Italy, and now the Philippines.

An awful lot had happened in under a single month.

And at the end of that long, grueling journey, I came back to Korea.

“Good grief.”

NIS headquarters, where I'd stopped in to report, was in complete chaos.

From the lobby all the way down the corridors, every agent I passed was rushing about with a face drained white.

It was understandable.

The defection of a minister, a member of North Korea’s core elite.

It was an unprecedented incident in the history of the Republic.

"Welcome back, Team 5 leader."

"It's been a while, group director-nim."

"Yes, yes. Good to see your face. But why's your complexion so pale? Like you spent your whole time in Southeast Asia indoors."

"Ha ha. My skin's just naturally thick."

The Overseas Intelligence Bureau, on the other hand, looked relatively peaceful.

After picking up the ticking bomb that was a North Korean minister in Italy and safely bringing him into the country, the matter had completely left our hands.

While everyone sat back with popcorn to watch the fire from across the river, the crown of Group Director Oh Dong-cheol’s head seemed to shine even brighter than usual.

I sat across from him and accepted a cup of instant coffee mix.

"Did you happen to know about that North Korean minister's defection?"

"Yes, well. I was deployed on the ground operation myself."

"Good grief.... Feels like the whole geopolitical situation starts rocking wherever you set foot."

I gave Group Director Oh Dong-cheol a verbal report at headquarters, spinning out what had happened in the field like a casual story over drinks.

Minister Ri Jong-il's defection, of course, and the North Korean secretary in Italy trafficking drugs with the local mafia, and then crossing over to the Philippines and confirming the link between the Irobuchi-kai and Samgor, the drug cartel coiled up inside New Bilibid Prison.

The part where I took a contract from the Australian Secret Intelligence Service and kidnapped Wei Hong, naturally, I left out entirely.

"Samgor? The DEA's been scouring everywhere for a trace of them, so this is perfect timing."

"The DEA is American, isn't it? Why are they hunting Samgor?"

"Word is that lately they've joined hands with the Australian and Canadian mobs on top of Southeast Asia."

"I see."

"Those bastards at the DEA's Korea branch office have their noses so far in the air. Thanks to you we've got a reason to throw our weight around. Excellent work again."

Group Director Oh Dong-cheol, who'd been listening quietly to my briefing, clapped me on the shoulder.

He wore a pleased look for a while, then seemed to remember something and added,

“Oh, right. There’s something else you should know. The Southeast Asia Team 4 leader who caused that mess in New Bilibid is scheduled to be relieved of his post today.”

“Oh, really?”

Oh Dong-cheol snorted sharply before spitting out the words.

The news he dropped so abruptly had my eyes going round as well.

“The deciding factor was him rushing two of his team members in without any proper investigation or backup. There had already been a lot of complaints lately about him pushing his agents too hard because he was obsessed with his own personal record.”

It had been obvious the first time I met him in Cambodia. By my standards, Team Leader Choi Woo-seok had never been team leader material to begin with.

He was the kind of man who, blinded by his own record, dealt in shallow office politics and drove innocent field agents into the jaws of death.

I'd known he'd cause a major incident sooner or later, and sure enough, New Bilibid had blown him up nice and clean.

"Now that you mention it, the broker I met in the Philippines said something about that. That Team Leader Choi Woo-seok called him over this business and screamed his head off, made a real scene of it."

Since the bomb had gone off anyway, I decided to pour a little more fuel on the fire.

In the course of an operation, the people who have to be handled as carefully as field agents are the local assets.

Team Leader Choi Woo-seok, who treated even his own subordinates as tools for his numbers, naturally hadn't observed even that basic courtesy with a local asset.

"Is that so? He phoned the broker directly? Good God, this Choi Woo-seok, really.... The man's completely unusable. We may as well take this chance to strip him of office outright, or else banish him to a dead-end post."

Group Director Oh Dong-cheol let out a heavy sigh.

Then, for some reason, his eyes settled on me with a deep, meaningful look.

"Which brings me to this. How would you like to take the vacant Team 4 leader post officially?"

"Me?"

"That's right. From Cambodia to the Philippines, how many major cases have you closed with your own hands? I've watched carefully, and there's nobody better suited."

As it happened, I'd been thinking along those same lines myself.

That I really did seem to love Southeast Asia.

'I'm built for Southeast Asia.'

Compared to Italy, where paperwork and procedure meant even buying a single used car took a week, what was Southeast Asia like?

A place where blowing up a building with a Bongo van packed full of gas cylinders, or storming an apartment and letting rip with an RPG, was all perfectly acceptable.

My spiritual home.

“The Bureau Director asked me to put together a list of candidates for the next team leader. If you’re interested, I’ll put your name right at the top.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“I like that decisiveness. Good. You’re my first choice. Keep that in mind.”

Group Director Oh Dong-cheol gave my shoulder a couple of pats.

I grinned back at him.

“The higher-ups have quite a lot to deal with for the time being. We probably won’t have a result until after this week, so take some leave until the personnel assignment order is finalized.”

"Understood."

*****

After finishing my report, I stayed at Bomunsa from that day onward, as naturally as ever.

Back at the temple with its faint drift of incense, it finally sank in that I was resting.

"Seunim. Anything you need me to do?"

"Hae-chan, you're here? The Korean melons are nice and ripe, come have some."

“Okaaay.”

Crunch, crunch.

Leaning against a pillar in the corner of the wooden porch, chewing melon and staring at nothing, that was most of my daily routine.

Some days I climbed up onto the roof and scrubbed the dried bird droppings off the tiles, some days I trailed after the seunim to the market and carried her shopping basket for her, and some days I sprawled facedown on the floorboards and napped.

It was during one of those languid, peaceful days, as if washing the caked reek of blood off my body, that it happened.

Brrrrrring.

"...What now?"

My phone was ringing.

An unknown number, as always.

Click.

"Yes. Speaking."

-It's Yang Ui-jin.

It was Bureau Director Yang Ui-jin, the same man who'd called me back in Italy.

I straightened my posture without thinking.

Only three days had passed since I went on leave, so I wondered if the decision on the team leader appointment had already been made.

-Sorry to bother you while you're resting. Could we meet for a moment?

"Yes, sir. Shall I report to headquarters tomorrow morning?"

-No. I mean right now.

I found myself glancing out past the porch.

The sun had gone down, and a quiet night sky had settled over everything.

A dumbfounded response slipped out of my mouth.

"Now?"

-As it happens, I'm already near your residence.

"Ah."

A man no less than an NIS bureau director, already arrived somewhere near my home.

-Let's have a drink.

I had no idea what this was about, but it was obviously nothing ordinary.

*****

For 20 advance chapters, you can check out my Patreon here -->

If you enjoy this novel, please review and rate it at Novelupdates. Thanks! 😊