Chapter 51: The Great Shanyuan Society Hideout Explosion

TL: LittlePeach

BOOOOM!

The sudden shock made me blink, and in that instant.

"Oh."

My body was already soaring high into the sky.

High enough to look down on the lodge's rooftop.

Whoosh.

"Wow."

This sudden rush of weightlessness.

I spread my arms wide without thinking.

Even as the shockwave of some unknown explosion sent me flying, I couldn't hold back a grin.

I could see a missile's smoke trail stretching from somewhere not far off, ending at a corner of the second-floor balcony.

'An RPG? Aren't they a little too seriously armed?'

The brief taste of freedom didn't last.

Crash!

"Guh."

My airborne body slammed into the lodge's rooftop and tumbled.

The waterproof urethane roof hadn't been cleaned in ages, and dust billowed up in clouds.

"Ptooey."

I coughed and brushed off my clothes.

Or rather, there was no need to brush anything off.

"Ah."

My pants were gone, leaving nothing but my thick belt.

Boing.

My little friend, naturally and proudly announcing its presence.

The one cold comfort was that my shirt, tattered as it was, had survived.

"My grenades...."

The shopping bag I'd stuffed full of grenades had evaporated too.

Looking out over the edge of the roof, the spot where I'd been standing was scorched black; the grenades must have cooked off in a chain when the missile exploded.

'So that's how I got launched all the way up to the roof.'

The regret didn't last long.

I reached straight for the holster at the small of my back and drew my Glock 19.

Click.

The belt holding the holster was half shredded, but the gun itself was mercifully intact; my body must have shielded it from the blast.

"Let's see."

The radio I'd taken earlier had vanished somewhere too, so I had no way to eavesdrop on the enemy's situation.

Which left me exactly one option.

Creak.

I opened the rooftop door and walked into the lodge.

A security camera mounted in a corner of the ceiling caught my eye immediately.

Bang!

I aimed and pulled the trigger, and the noisy response came right back.

"Upstairs!"

"They're attacking from above!"

At the sudden gunshot, the Shanyuan Society men downstairs came scrambling up in a commotion.

Me, I strolled at a leisurely pace right down the middle of the lodge's hallway.

Then, at some point, we came face to face.

"...What the."

"The fu..."

The men who'd rushed up the stairs froze in their tracks the moment they laid eyes on me.

Boing.

A half-naked man standing smack in the middle of the hallway; I suppose that was a fair reaction.

Whether they came charging or not.

Bang, bang!

My pistol shattered the security camera's lens in a shower of sparks.

With that, the fourth-floor camera was cleared.

"Croak!"

"Diiie!"

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

Rat-tat-tat-tat!

A hail of automatic rifle fire came flying at my body.

Thud, thud-thud.

Head and chest, stomach and shoulders.

The tight groupings told me these men had put plenty of rounds into human beings before.

I took very careful aim at their hearts.

Bang!

"Gurk!"

"F-fuck! What the hell is...."

Bang!

"Hngk!"

Just like that, two of them went sprawling against the edge of the hallway.

And with that, the fourth-floor hallway was cleared.

"Hmm."

I worked my way through the rooms on each floor one by one at a comfortable pace, finished the fourth floor, and had just reached the third.

There was another security camera in about the same spot.

Bang! Bang!

"Hm?"

Around the time I reached the middle of the hallway, someone came charging up the stairs.

The moment he saw me, he bared his clenched teeth.

"See! I told you there was more than one!"

Wondering what he was on about, I just stared at him; there was a launcher resting on his shoulder.

"Oh."

This had to be the guy who'd fired the missile at me outside.

An odd wave of fondness hit me, and I couldn't help smiling.

That must have sent a chill through him; he shuddered and gritted his teeth.

"You fuck! Are you a Hongmen Society hitman?!"

The Hongmen Society?

I'd never heard the name, but by the sound of it, they were another Triad outfit.

Just like the Chongqing Society and the Kowloon Society, the Shanyuan Society apparently had a sworn rival of its own.

When I didn't answer, the man ground his teeth, his face twisting.

"...."

"...."

I studied the RPG launcher on his shoulder and thought it over for a moment.

'There's no dodging that missile anyway.'

So, plunk.

I dropped the Glock I was holding onto the floor, well out of reach.

He must have read that as surrender.

A triumphant grin spread across his twisted face.

"Croak!"

Fwoosh!

Backblast erupted from the rear of the launcher, and a thunderous roar swallowed the hallway.

KABOOM!

The warhead detonated, and every window in the lodge's hallway shattered at once.

Crack!

The blast hurled me to the far end of the hallway, and I felt the wall behind me split halfway open from the impact of my body.

It felt like being a living, breathing artillery shell.

Pale smoke filled the hallway.

"Cough, cough. Whew. Whoever he was, in the end he was nowhere near the level of yours truly, the Shanyuan Society's finest killer...."

From across the murky smoke, the man ran his mouth in a smug, sneering voice.

While he prattled on, all pleased with himself, I had long since risen without a sound and started moving.

Quietly, wordlessly, I fished the Glock I'd tossed aside out of the shimmering smoke, and the moment I picked it up.

Bang!

"Gaah!"

The bullet buried itself in his thigh.

He collapsed with a shocked scream.

When I walked out of the pale smoke, his jaw dropped.

He looked so stunned he'd forgotten even the pain.

"Wh-why are you naked...."

"...."

Boing.

Because my formerly half-naked body was now well and truly stark naked.

Naked or not, the man's lips trembled like he was about to lose his mind.

"H-how many of you twin killers are there...."

Men with the same face kept popping up without dying, so apparently that was how he'd made sense of the situation.

Come to think of it, that was a more plausible reality than a man whose body simply refused to break.

'That's right. I am legion.'

There was no need to correct his misunderstanding.

Just as I raised the muzzle for the confirmation kill.

Ring-ring-ring.

"...."

"...."

A cheerful ringtone chimed from the pocket of the man slumped on the floor.

He just listened to it for a moment, sneaking glances at me.

Keeping the gun trained on him, I dug through his pocket and pulled out the phone.

[Boss Zhang Hai]

I checked the number on the screen, then hit the call button and raised it to my ear.

- Hey, Le Wei, it's me. Did the North Korean defectors come in yet?

A man's breezy voice came through the receiver.

From the sound of things, he was the man in overall charge of this defector-acquisition operation.

And Le Wei was presumably the name of the man I was currently holding at gunpoint.

"Aye. I've come in."

Any half-baked attempt to fake it would fall apart in seconds.

So I decided to brazen it out.

- ...What the. You're not Le Wei. Who is this?

"Not Le Wei, no. This here's Zhang Chen. You know who I am, do you?"

My answer, laced with a Yanbian accent, drew a brief silence from the other end.

- What the.... What did you do with Le Wei?

"I paid good money to be sent to South Korea, came all this way, and you lot went and tried to sell me off to some backwater in Southeast Asia. So I just wiped the whole place clean, that's what."

That was when it happened.

"Boss! Don't be fooled!"

Le Wei, who'd been groveling at my feet and watching for his chance, screamed at the top of his lungs, veins bulging.

His voice carried straight through the receiver.

"This man is a Hongmen Society assassin, I'm certain of it! I don't know how many of them stormed the place, but right now they're...."

Bang!

He might keep flapping his mouth and start describing my face, so I pulled the trigger first.

A hole punched through his heart, Le Wei slid limply to the floor.

- ....

"...."

A long, long silence followed.

Before long, the sound of grinding teeth came vividly through the phone.

- The Hongmen Society? Hong Wen'gang, that asshole....

Click.

With that rough curse as the last word, the call cut off from his end.

I shrugged at the blacked-out phone screen.

Tsk.

'From now on, I'd better go around confessing I'm Zhang Chen of the Hongmen Society.'

Any outfit that a group like the Shanyuan Society hated with gritted teeth was bound to be cut from the same cloth, just another garbage criminal syndicate.

Since things had turned out this way, I'd effectively gained a handy alt persona for identity laundering.

'If I ever need to raise hell in Cambodia someday, this'll come in useful.'

Anyway.

"Anyone else still breathing?"

I crossed the hallway, giving my surroundings a light once-over.

Maybe because I'd generously lobbed grenades in through the windows before entering the building, the inside of the lodge was as quiet as the aftermath of a storm.

Only the occasional crackle of embers sounded from beneath the piles of broken debris.

"...."

There might still be more men hiding somewhere with bated breath, so I began sweeping the building inside and out in earnest.

But first, I helped myself to the pants off Le Wei's corpse and changed into them.

I was in the middle of combing the lodge's second floor.

"This is...."

There was one room whose flimsy steel door had been bent like warm taffy.

Stepping inside, I found what looked like the control room handling security for the entire lodge.

The room had been completely wrecked, probably caught in the blast of one of the grenades I'd tossed in.

"If I'd known, I wouldn't have bothered shooting out every single camera."

Black smoke seeped from the server rack, and current sparked among the shattered fragments of the monitors.

No need to check the footage, then. I was about to turn my back and head out.

"Oh?"

My feet stopped on their own.

They must have been using the security room as an armory too; a handful of weapons had spilled out from under a cabinet in the corner and been left lying there.

Rifles, magazines, and machetes were a given, but something else entirely caught my eye.

"Ohh."

Plump and tempting, like well-boiled Gangwon-do waxy corn.

RPG-7 high-explosive rounds.

"Wow.... It's been ages since I've seen these."

Several long warheads lay neatly stacked in a wooden crate, tempting me.

I drifted toward them like iron to a magnet.

"The Russian boys and I used to practice juggling with these."

What can I say?

Among lunatic Russian mercenaries with vodka flowing through their veins instead of blood, we'd once put on a whole circus with these warheads over a bet on who played the most dangerous games.

Maybe it was the old memories, bubbling warmly back up?

I plucked three warheads from the crate and scooped them into my hands.

Then, with a few light tosses into the air, I started my first circus juggling act in ages.

"Oh. Ohh."

Memories carved into the body never really leave you.

The three warheads began to dance smoothly through the air, round and round.

It was a little rusty at first, but the familiar rhythm came right back.

There was just one difference from back then.

[MADE IN CHINA]

These warheads weren't genuine Russian; they were Chinese-made.

"Huh...."

The moment I finally noticed the country of origin and felt my chest swell with awe despite myself.

Slip.

"Huh?"

In that instant of distraction, one warhead slid right through my fingers.

It plummeted straight down toward its brother warheads.

My foot shot out before I could think.

"Oh, wai..."

Tap.

The instant my toe touched the fuze, my eyes squeezed shut on their own.

Why is it that bad feelings are never wrong?

KABOOOOM!

There was no need to comb the building for Shanyuan Society stragglers anymore.

Boom! Ba-boom!

KRAKA-BOOOOM!

Bang, ka-bang!

Because the simultaneous chain of explosions blew the entire building sky-high.

*****

It was late, the dead of night.

Ring-ring, ring-ring-ring.

Click.

- Hello?

"Yes, Agent. It's me, Sparrow."

- Oh, Sparrow. What's up?

"Sorry to call so late. Do you have a moment?"

- Yeah, sure.

The first call I made was to Crane No. 12.

At this point, he was the only person I could ask a favor like this.

- Did you figure out who the broker is?

"That's related to why I'm calling, but... I'm in a place called Pingcheng right now."

- What? Pingcheng? Why there?

"One thing led to another."

Without bothering to explain further, I dropped the next item of business.

"The thing is, I was hoping you could come pick me up."

- Huh? Pick you up...? What on earth are you doing there?

"The Shanyuan Society's hideout was around here."

- ...Whaaat!

"Anyway, come quick. I'll explain later. It's the Guiji Convenience Store in Pingcheng."

- H-hey, kid! W-wait....

"Hanging up now."

Click.

This was why it paid to know a guy with a car.

*****

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