Chapter 130: Busy, Busy

TL: LittlePeach

The RPG backblast inside the enclosed space was beyond anything I'd imagined.

Tumble, tumble, tumble, tumble!

I got caught in it too and was hurled into a corner of the prefab building, just like the other gang members.

'What the hell?'

Only, things weren't going the way I'd expected.

For starters, I hadn't heard the warhead explode.

'Right. There was another safety mechanism, wasn't there?'

Come to think of it, a genuine RPG had something called an arming distance.

The warhead had its own built-in safety mechanism, so it wouldn't detonate if it hit something within five meters.

That changed things quite a bit from my original plan.

"Urgh! Ghh...."

"W-what the hell is going on?!"

Crackle!

'Oh.'

I glanced up at the ceiling and saw that the sheet-metal roof caught in the backblast had been torn apart like paper.

One of the flying metal fragments must have hit the electrical wiring, because sparks suddenly erupted from the ceiling.

Crackle!

Then all the lights in the building went out at once, plunging the place into darkness.

"L-lights! Lights!"

"Doesn't anyone have a flashlight?"

"No, more importantly, what the hell is going on?!"

The moment everything went dark, everyone froze where they stood in awkward half-crouches.

Not that it mattered.

Whoooooosh!

Torrential rain poured through the gaping hole in the roof like a waterfall.

In a matter of seconds, the Irobuchi-kai's base was turning into a lake.

'Okay. Change of plan.'

I adjusted the operation to fit the situation.

Everything was moving at breakneck speed.

'Fuck. Busy, busy.'

Amid the chaos of screams and shouting, I scanned my surroundings with eyes that had finally adjusted to the darkness.

Then I grabbed the launcher rolling across the floor and loaded a second RPG warhead.

Clack, clack!

Only this time, I turned the launcher around.

That way, the backblast would blast straight toward the gang members instead.

Just then, some gang members switched on their flashlights and spotted me.

"There he is!"

"Th-that! Who the hell is that?!"

Clack.

Fwoooosh!

The backblast erupted again, flinging me and the gang members around me in opposite directions.

"Aaargh!"

"Fuck! What the hell is thiiiiis?!"

"Aaaaaaah!"

Once again, I was hurled into a corner of the prefab building.

The gang members caught in the backblast were sprawled across the flooded floor, twitching and practically unconscious.

'This thing covers more area than a shotgun.'

Splash, splash.

I crossed the waterlogged floor and reached a wall not far away.

As I groped around in the darkness, the people around me were losing their minds.

"What the hell is happening right now?!"

"I-I don't know! I think I saw some lunatic firing an RPG backward...."

"Who the hell?!"

That was when I heard Shinichi's voice from farther away.

Grab.

'Found it.'

The moment I found a power strip hanging from the wall, I wrapped the cord around my fist and swung it like a whip.

Crunch!

The power strip's plastic housing shattered, exposing the wires inside.

Crackle, crackle!

"...What was that sound?"

Without a moment's hesitation, I tossed it into the puddle on the floor.

Bzzzzzzzt!

"Nnngggghhh!"

"Nnnggghhhh...."

"Ghhhuuuh?"

Dozens of gang members standing ankle-deep in the rising water suddenly began trembling violently where they stood.

The AK rifles and RPG warheads scattered around them were completely useless now.

"Ggggggggh!"

"Aghghghghghgh!"

The prefab building was divided into two main sections.

One side, where I'd smashed apart the roof and rainwater was pouring in, and the other, where the roof was still intact.

"I-it's electrified! Watch out! Stay out of the water!"

"Run this way!"

The gang members stampeded toward the section where the roof was still intact, desperate to survive.

'Busy, busy.'

Not that I cared. I calmly let the rain soak me as I loaded a third warhead into the launcher.

Clack, clack!

"Somebody, please turn the lights on!"

"Then you turn them on!"

"Who dares talk back to me?!"

This time, my target was the roof farther inside the prefab building, where Shinichi and Tariq were hiding.

Clack.

Fwoooosh!

Craaaash!

There was still no explosion, but now the roofs over both halves of the prefab building had been completely blown away.

"Mooooom!"

"Aaaaaaaah!"

Everyone screamed in the darkness, having no idea what was going on.

Before long, the merciless rain was pouring into every corner of the building.

Thanks to that, the blue-white current flowing across the floor finally reached the inner room where Shinichi and Tariq were.

"Gggggggk!"

"Nnnggggg...."

Busy, busy.

I had a mountain of work to do.

***

Eventually, the rain clouds that had been dumping water over the area began to drift away.

The prisoners who had been crouching beneath the eaves of the prefab buildings or inside their cells started crawling outside one by one.

Whup-whup-whup....

"What's that?"

"What's a helicopter doing here...."

The prisoners looked up at the sky in confusion at the sound of rotors approaching from the distance.

It was extremely rare for a helicopter to fly over this area at all.

"H-huh?"

"Fuck? Why are those coming down here?"

They weren't merely passing overhead.

Four helicopters rapidly closed in and came to a hover above the prison.

"R-run!"

"Aaargh!"

The terrified prisoners fled in every direction, and even the prison guards in the watchtowers joined them.

Clack.

Thick rappel ropes dropped from the open doors on both sides of the helicopters.

Fwish!

Then an air assault began right in the middle of the prison.

Special operators covered head to toe in tactical gear slid smoothly down the ropes and landed on the ground in unison.

Thud, tap.

"Bravo Team, in position."

"Charlie Team, in position."

"Delta Team, in position."

The instant their boots touched the ground, they shouldered their rifles and established all-around security.

Maybe it was the adrenaline coursing through them, but every one of their eyes gleamed sharply as they covered the surrounding area.

"Alpha Team, making entry."

Before long, the team assigned to enter the building was ready.

They moved into the prefab building in perfect coordination.

"Ah, welcome. You got here fast."

"...?"

"It's me. You remember, right? The guy who asked that question during the operation briefing."

"...."

The tense steps of the special operators stopped dead.

Their tightly focused gazes suddenly seemed to lose all sense of where they were supposed to look.

"See those guns I piled up in the corner? I figured it'd be dangerous if a firefight broke out, so I had no choice but to lend a hand first."

They had every reason to react that way.

The cartel members were already sprawled defenseless across the soaked floor.

"Nng, nnghh."

"Ghh, ngh...."

They weren't corpses. Every one of them was twitching all over like a zombie.

It was a horrifying sight none of them had ever imagined seeing in their lives.

"...."

Jacob, the team leader at the front of the assault force, stared in disbelief.

His gaze settled on two men lying among the others who seemed to have been deliberately separated from the rest.

One Japanese man and one Middle Eastern man.

"Ah, these two are mine. I already called dibs on them. Ptoo, ptoo."

"...."

"You're one step too late."

The special operators, their brains seemingly frozen by the sight before them, glanced at one another.

The grim resolve they'd worked themselves up into moments earlier had vanished without a trace, leaving them looking like they'd all turned stupid at once.

Everything in front of them felt like some kind of nightmare.

"By the way, is there any room left on one of the helicopters?"

"...."

Whup-whup-whup.

In the awkward silence, the helicopter rotors suddenly sounded absurdly loud.

***

Whup-whup-whup-whup!

With four helicopters vibrating roughly around us, we tore through rain clouds still shedding the last of their droplets and crossed the skies above the Philippines.

Beyond the rain-soaked tropical rainforest, downtown Manila looked tiny enough to be a toy.

'Now that's more like it.'

This was why helicopters were every man's dream.

"Ugh, uhhh...."

That was when it happened.

Shinichi, bound with rope and sprawled in a corner of the helicopter floor, groaned and stirred.

I nudged the headset microphone away from my chin and walked over to him.

"Shinichi-san, coming around?"

"Wh-what the hell is...."

"Don't you remember? Shinichi-san, you were surrounded by those Samgor bastards and almost killed a little while ago. They even brought helicopters and mercilessly attacked our prefab building."

"O-oh.... R-really?"

Maybe the electrocution had lightly fried his brain, because Shinichi stared blankly ahead and muttered nonsense with a vacant expression.

As lies flowed effortlessly from my mouth, he seemed incapable of telling whether any of them were true or false.

"Then right now...."

"Right now, we've been kidnapped by Samgor, and they're taking us away."

"Samgor.... My dream, the second Samgor...."

"What are you talking about? That was all a dream. Hurry up and pull yourself together."

"My, my dream, my dream...."

His electrically fried brain would probably need a few days of proper rest before it returned to normal.

I smirked, returned to my seat, and lowered the headset microphone back to my mouth.

"Something you want to say?"

-....

Across from me, Team Leader Jacob remained completely silent over the headset.

Ever since I'd boarded the helicopter, he had been staring at me with an indescribably complicated look in his eyes.

Come to think of it, he was in a pretty pitiful position too.

He was supposed to be the overall commander of this air assault operation, only to have Branch Chief Morgan, crazed for results, swoop in and steal all the credit.

His tightly pressed lips moved for a moment.

Bzzzt.

His voice came through amid a burst of static.

-Mr. Kang, have you ever considered transferring to our DEA Asia-Pacific Headquarters?

"Oh."

It was a recruitment offer I hadn't expected at all.

One look at his expression was enough to tell me he wasn't joking. He was completely serious.

-Your abilities could be put to excellent use by the United States. The DEA would only be the beginning. I'm certain you could work your way steadily up to far greater heights.

I grinned at the praise, which was far more generous than I'd expected.

It was an offer I genuinely appreciated, but I lightly shook my head.

"Thank you, but there's still a lot I need to do back home, in my own country."

-Hmm. Patriotism. I understand.

It wasn't quite patriotism.

It felt closer to inertia.

Some time passed after that.

Whup-whup-whup-whup!

After a little over twenty minutes in the air, the helicopters touched down smoothly at the landing zone at Basa Air Base.

Clack, clack!

A support unit that had been waiting in advance rushed onto the landing zone pushing a dozen or so gurneys, then carted away the cartel members we'd abducted one by one.

I removed my headset, climbed out of the helicopter, and stepped onto solid ground.

Team Leader Jacob reached out and offered me a handshake.

"I have a feeling we'll meet again someday."

"Do you?"

"And when that happens, I'll formally request your cooperation in advance so something this absurd doesn't happen again."

It sounded like he was saying that he'd lost this time, but next time we should fight together.

I'd thought he was a little cocky at first, but apparently he took his work surprisingly seriously.

I smiled and clasped his hand in return.

"Anytime. See you again."

"Yes. Until next time."

After that, Team Leader Jacob turned away and quietly walked off with his men.

Beyond the special operators disappearing into the distance.

"Mr. Kang! What in the world happened here?!"

Branch Chief Morgan came running toward me from afar with both arms spread wide.

He looked ready to plant kisses all over my cheeks, so I quietly took a step backward.

Team Leader Kim Do-hyeon was following close beside him.

"Do you know who it is you just brought in?!"

"Yamamoto Shinichi?"

"No, Tariq! The man beside him!"

When I tilted my head in confusion, Branch Chief Morgan broke into a huge grin.

"That man is one of the leaders of al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent!"

"Oh."

Al-Qaeda, huh.

Wasn't that the worst terrorist organization in the world, the one the Thousand-Trillion Nation hated with a passion?

I'd thought he was just the boss of some Pakistani drug gang. Who would have guessed there was something that enormous behind him?

"It seems they were planning to use New Bilibid Prison as a forward base to expand their influence out of Pakistan and into Southeast Asia!"

Branch Chief Morgan could barely contain his excitement, rattling on so enthusiastically that he was practically spraying spit.

"They were planning to stage an uprising inside the prison soon, advance on the nearby air base where U.S. forces are stationed, and carry out a terrorist attack!"

"Oh...."

"Thanks to you capturing Tariq alive, we've managed to stop this horrific terrorist plot together! This is an absolutely enormous achievement!"

Regardless of me merely blinking at the unexpected explanation, Branch Chief Morgan's rapid-fire barrage showed no sign of ending.

"You've pulled off something enormous for us!"

"Yeah, well. Thanks."

"You don't look particularly happy for someone saying that...."

"Well, my original goal was just to bring back Yamamoto Shinichi from the Irobuchi-kai."

"Uh-huh-huh, hahahaha!"

Protecting U.S. national security was certainly a good thing, but honestly, I wasn't all that excited.

For some reason, Branch Chief Morgan's shoulders kept shaking with laughter at my flat response.

After I blinked blankly at him for a moment, he patted me on the shoulder.

"I suppose it makes sense you'd react that way when you don't understand the true value of what you've done."

"The true value?"

"Congratulations. The U.S. State Department just confirmed that Tariq had a bounty of no less than five million dollars."

"Oh?"

Five million dollars.

The ransom on Shinichi, the man I'd originally been supposed to abduct, was two million dollars.

That meant Tariq's bounty was worth a full 2.5 Shinichis.

"Now there's some color in your face."

"Hahaha. Thank you for the good news, Branch Chief."

Before I knew it, my shoulders were happily bouncing right along with Branch Chief Morgan's.

"I'm the one who should be thanking you. Doesn't my decision to send you into New Bilibid seem pretty damn impressive in hindsight?"

"Absolutely."

I was so thrilled that I could happily humor him no matter how much he praised himself.

There was just one thing I couldn't figure out.

'But why the hell had that guy been acting so chummy with me?'

That, I truly had no idea about.

*****

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