Chapter 14: Continue the Operation

TL: LittlePeach

Gunfire, out of nowhere.

And inside a hotel guarded by Dandong's Public Security, no less?

My little escape from reality didn't last long.

"Kyaaaaah!"

"Wh-where are we supposed to run!"

"Please stay calm! This will be handled shortly!"

"Everyone, get under your tables!"

The guests who had been elegantly enjoying their meals screamed and scrambled under the tables.

The restaurant staff, stiff with fear, forced themselves into motion and began hurrying about.

"Comrade Bureau Director! We are under fire! Keep your head down!"

"Boss! You need to evacuate, now!"

The instant the shots rang out, the State Security Department soldiers stationed around So Se-hyok reflexively raised their rifles and closed ranks around him, layer upon layer.

Not to be outdone, the Kowloon Society men posted throughout the restaurant drew their pistols as one and gathered at Yang Mi-ryeong's side.

While So Se-hyok cowered, shrinking into himself, Yang Mi-ryeong dropped her business smile, her eyes flashing cold.

"Get down to the first floor and find out what's happening, now!"

At her shrill command, the gangsters moved with practiced precision.

Just as one of them started for the stairs, someone came pounding up to the third-floor restaurant entrance, gasping for breath.

It was a Kowloon Society member, drenched in blood from head to toe.

"B-Boss! The Chongqing Society is attacking! The lobby's been completely overrun!"

"The Chongqing Society? Those lunatics stormed in here with guns? And where the hell is Public Security in all this!"

Yang Mi-ryeong shrieked in disbelief.

Spraying automatic rifle fire in the middle of downtown Dandong, and at a hotel frequented by senior Public Security officials no less, defied all common sense.

"I-I don't know! No matter how hard we look outside, there isn't a single cop in sight, and they're not answering the radio!"

"Those crazy sons of bitches...."

While the situation tangled itself into a complete mess, I went slurp.

'This wine is really sweet.'

I'd had the presence of mind to bring my wine along, and I sipped at it while calmly watching things unfold.

Why was Public Security nowhere to be found?

'Obvious, really.'

Word was, if the right palms got greased, Public Security wouldn't arrest a man for gunning someone down in the street in broad daylight; that was how they made their money.

Just as they'd taken a payoff from NIS headquarters to leave the Yalu River Bridge unguarded, someone must have paid them handsomely this time to step aside for a while.

And the ones footing that bill were most likely the Chongqing Society, the very people carrying out the raid.

'So the Chongqing Society is after the Kowloon Society and Yang Mi-ryeong?'

Judging by the furious way she was chewing her lip, Yang Mi-ryeong seemed to have grasped the situation just as quickly.

Which meant, circumstantially, a bizarre battle line had been drawn, with the Kowloon Society and North Korea's State Security Department on one side and the Chongqing Society and Dandong Public Security on the other.

Not that Public Security would actually join in the shooting themselves, of course.

Rat-tat-tat-tat!

Crash!

"Any word on the casino?"

"Just got the radio call! They dropped the emergency steel shutters the moment the shooting started, so it's secure!"

"Small mercies!"

A pistol had appeared in Yang Mi-ryeong's hand, produced from God knows where in or under that dress, and she checked that it was loaded.

While she grabbed her hair out of her face and tied it back, rat-tat-tat-tat!

"Aaaargh!"

"Get away from the windows!"

Blind rounds fired up from below shattered the third-floor restaurant's thick plate-glass windows and came pouring in.

Yang Mi-ryeong scowled at the cascade of falling glass.

"Build barricades! Block the entrance and the windows!"

At her sharp command, the Kowloon Society men began flipping the massive oak tables over to use as barricades.

The State Security soldiers guarding So Se-hyok, left with no other way to stay alive, had no choice but to join in.

The two groups joined forces, everyone leveling their muzzles toward the entrance in unison and settling into firing positions.

The moment a united front between the Kowloon Society and North Korea's State Security Department was born.

Bang! Ba-bang!

The handful of Chongqing Society men who crept in through the restaurant entrance were shredded to rags and sent sprawling.

"Do not give ground! Fire! Shoot them all down!"

Ratta-tat! Ta-tat!

A panicked So Se-hyok was barking orders as well, his rough Northern dialect thickening by the second.

Bullets rained from every direction, and the place became a pandemonium of screams and shouts tangled together.

Meanwhile, I knocked back the rest of my wine and polished off the salad plate too.

'This salad is really good. Do they serve it at breakfast tomorrow?'

Bang! Ba-da-bang!

Ratatatatatat!

The standoff was fierce.

A desperate siege fought across the restaurant's single narrow entrance.

Normally, the defenders would have the advantage.

The problem was that the attack had come completely out of nowhere, leaving the Kowloon Society and the State Security Department hopelessly short on firepower.

The Chongqing Society, on the other hand, had come in loaded for bear, and their fire showed no sign of slackening. In the end, it was only a matter of time.

'Someone needs to run a diversionary operation from the rear, or they'll never catch a breath.'

As I was mulling over how to break the deadlock, my eyes happened to land on the shattered plate-glass window.

Beyond it, a keen night wind came whistling in.

'...Could it work?'

The thought was quick. The action was quicker.

While everyone was too absorbed in the raging firefight to pay me any mind, I hopped lightly up onto the broken window frame.

Maybe because this was a hotel, the ground looked dizzyingly farther away than any ordinary apartment's third floor.

"Eh, might as well give it a shot."

A laugh slipped out of me again, unbidden.

And how could it not? By any sane standard, diving bare-bodied onto asphalt from this height was certifiably insane.

But my body had left sane standards behind a long time ago.

"Hup."

A light, easy leap.

With the thin whistle of wind slicing past, my body plummeted three stories.

I counted the seconds in my head, and it took longer than I'd expected.

My cheeks quivered at the fast-approaching ground. And then.

Whump.

"Hup!"

A textbook superhero landing.

The moment the landing stuck, I took a beat to catch my breath, then pressed off the ground and rose lightly to my feet.

Without thinking, I glanced up at the third-floor restaurant window I'd just jumped from.

"Wow. That actually worked?"

I cracked my neck side to side a couple of times and stretched my arms and legs this way and that. Not a single problem.

Next time, a high-altitude insertion without a parachute might be worth a try.

"Heh heh."

I laughed off the ridiculous fantasy and got moving.

With the escape routes sealed tight and me now on the first floor, there was only one thing left to do.

Heading deeper into the lobby, I found men who looked like Chongqing Society gangsters gripping automatic rifles and keeping watch.

Before they even spotted me, bang!

"Guh!"

"Wh-what the!"

Bang, bang!

I'd drawn the Glock 19 hidden inside my jacket and pulled the trigger.

Three gangsters flopped to the floor with bullets buried in their chests.

Looking around, there were an awful lot of corpses.

But what I was searching for was something else.

"There we go."

The ten North Korean soldiers who had been guarding the elevator lay dead, still oozing blood.

I picked out the uniform least soaked in blood, stripped it off its owner, and started changing into it.

Bang! Ba-bang!

"Go croak, you son of a bitch!"

One of the Chongqing men, drawn down by the gunfire in the lobby, opened up on me the moment he laid eyes on me.

Aside from one of the incoming rounds grazing my shoulder, no problems whatsoever.

At the sight of me standing there perfectly fine after taking a bullet, his eyes went saucer-wide.

Bang!

"Gurk!"

I casually put a round through his heart and went back to changing.

I rummaged through the pants I'd shed like a snakeskin and pulled out the phone tucked inside.

I pressed and held the 1 key, and the line began ringing almost at once.

Brrring, click.

"Hello?"

- Hey. What in the hell is going on inside that hotel right now?

Before the line could ring more than a couple of times, Crane No. 13 demanded a situation report without so much as a greeting.

He must have been on pins and needles outside after watching a horde of gangsters swarm into the Kowloon Hotel.

"An outfit called the Chongqing Society just hit the Kowloon Hotel. Yang Mi-ryeong and So Se-hyok are holed up in the third-floor restaurant with their forces, and the Chongqing Society is pushing through the lobby toward the third floor as we speak."

- And where are you right now?

"I'm out in the lobby. Position secured."

Any further explanation would only drag this out for no reason.

"Have a car standing by across from the hotel's main entrance."

- You exfiltrating alone?

"No. I'm going to continue the operation solo, so plan around that for now."

- ...Understood. Stay safe.

Beep.

I'd skipped the small talk, delivered only the essentials, and ended the call.

Once I'd changed head to toe into a North Korean uniform and taken up a Type 88 rifle to go with it, my preparations were complete.

'Am I secretly cut out to be a North Korean soldier?'

After changing into one several times these past few days, the North Korean uniform was starting to feel downright familiar.

Fully outfitted, I headed straight back up the stairs the Chongqing man had come down.

Ratta-tat! Bang!

The gunfire drew closer with every floor I climbed, the roar hammering mercilessly at my eardrums.

"What the!"

"It's a North Korean!"

The Chongqing men guarding the stairs swung their muzzles toward me the instant they spotted me.

But my trigger was far faster than theirs.

Bang! Ratta-tat!

"Grgh!"

"Enemy! North Korean troops coming u.... Gack!"

One bullet grazed my cheek.

It couldn't punch through me, though; it just glanced off.

With no need to duck behind cover, I took the stairs all the faster.

Bounding up two and three steps at a time, I reached the entrance to the third-floor restaurant level in no time. And then.

"Push through! We wipe out every last one of those Kowloon bastards today!"

"They're dug in behind the barricades, it's tough going!"

"The resistance is heavier than we expected!"

"Fuck, then pump every head that pokes out full of holes!"

Some twenty Chongqing Society men were packed together in one spot in the corridor.

Formed up in ranks, reloading over and over, they were busy pouring rifle fire like madmen into the barricade of restaurant tables.

Their backs, jolting with every kick of recoil, were laid out in plain view.

"Any word from the guys who went up to the penthouse?"

"They say they're still sweeping the place for So Se-hyok!"

"Dammit. Get Public Security on the line. Confirm whether So Se-hyok is actually in this hotel!"

"But those guys glued to the Kowloon crew in there, don't they look like North Koreans to you?"

"Are you telling me So Se-hyok is in there right now?"

Listening in, it seemed the Chongqing Society's real objective was something else entirely.

At first it had looked like the goal was a surprise attack on the Kowloon Society, but in truth, they were after So Se-hyok.

And for some reason, they were doing it hand in hand with Dandong Public Security.

"Reload, reload! Fire! Keep pouring it on!"

"Hey, those Public Security bastards can only look the other way for so long! Hurry up and storm the place!"

"Fuck it, break through! Blow the doors off and punch through, no matter what!"

As I quietly watched them, I suddenly remembered something else I'd packed besides the phone.

I dug through my pocket, and a jet-black grenade settled snugly into my palm as if it had been waiting for me.

The just-in-case item I'd grabbed from the NIS Rabbit Hole had tagged along all the way here.

Ping, clink.

I lightly flicked off the safety clip, pulled the pin to arm the grenade, and slowly counted the numbers in my head.

I waited, cutting it razor-thin, until the fuse delay had almost run its course.

Plunk, rolllll.

The lump of steel tumbled across the floor and stopped precisely at their feet.

"...Huh? What the, fuck, is th...."

Ka-boooom!

*****

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