Chapter 71: Le Wei and Zhang Chen

TL: LittlePeach

For the Hongmen Society, it was the kind of thing that sent a chill down the spine.

They had come to deliver a simple warning, only for the other side to dig in behind their fortress and mount a full defense, as if they'd been preparing for war all along.

One careless step forward and they'd be turned into a hive of bullet holes; but slinking away with their tails between their legs would be an unbearable loss of face.

"Those crazy fucking bastards! They dare bring out an RPG?"

"Why the hell aren't the Cambodian police here yet?"

"Those Hongmen assholes are in bed with the Cambodian government. Fat chance the cops show up!"

The Shanyuan Society's reaction was much the same.

They'd been lounging around shooting the breeze among themselves when the Hongmen Society suddenly came storming in, rockets blazing, and they had no choice but to scramble into a defensive line.

Of course, terrified that Hongmen might push through, all they did was pour out bullets like madmen. Nobody dared actually step outside.

"Fire! Open fire!"

"Kill every last one of those Hongmen fucks!"

"There! Concentrate fire over there!"

"Yes, sir!"

Kaboom!

Rat-tat, bang! Bang!

And yet for all the sparks flying, the war itself had an oddly hesitant, foot-dragging quality to it.

The moment the rockets paused, Shanyuan would poke their heads out and spray bullets; the moment the bullets ran dry, Hongmen would answer with another rocket.

'You come at us.'

'No, you come at us.'

Back and forth, dithering all the way.

It was one long war of attrition, both sides teetering along the perilous tightrope of all-out war.

Neither dared cross that line first, and the stalemate stretched taut.

Which made it precisely the moment for a superman on a white horse to take the field.

VROOOOM!

"Huh? Hey! M-move! Get clear!"

"Who the hell is that crazy bastard?!"

With a deafening engine roar, a beat-up old pickup truck came barreling in, kicking up a storm of dust.

The Hongmen mobsters camped near the apartment complex entrance shrieked and split apart to either side.

As everyone gawked wide-eyed in alarm, the man himself stuck his head out the driver's-side window.

"I am Zhang Chen of the Hongmen Society!"

"Wh-what? Zhang Chen?"

A blood-stirring lion's roar if ever there was one.

The Hongmen men flattened against the ground could only stare blankly at one another.

"Zh-Zhang Chen? Do we even have a guy by that name?"

"N-no idea. A mercenary, maybe?"

Bewildered or not, the man wrenched the steering wheel hard around.

Straight toward the complex's steel gate, already dented ugly from eating a few Hongmen rockets.

"I will sacrifice this body of mine! Brothers, follow me!"

VRRROOOOM!

With the accelerator mashed flat, the engine's RPM surged to its limit.

The moment he released the brake, the truck shot forward at full speed.

The Shanyuan side went white and unleashed a furious barrage.

"Fire, fire! He's coming in!"

"Shoot, damn it!"

Bang! Ba-bang!

Rat-tat-tat-tat!

But no matter how many bullets they fired, the truck never slowed, and it slammed head-on into the complex's front gate.

KRA-SMASH-CLANG-CLATTER!

"Gyaaaaah!"

"Hurk!"

Under the massive truck's impact, the firmly shut steel gate split down the middle and shattered apart.

The crumpled gate riding on its brow, the truck plowed on inside without pause.

"S-stop hiiim!"

Screams or no screams, it barreled through the Shanyuan men waiting beyond the entrance, smashing them aside with its bumper.

The sheer, overwhelming breach left the Hongmen mobsters slack-jawed.

"Holy shit...."

Had that blood-boiling spectacle sent their adrenaline surging?

Staring at the apartment complex's now wide-open interior, the Hongmen men's eyes flipped over in an instant.

"The gate's breached! Go! Push inside!"

"Don't leave that brave brother in there alone!"

"Rip those Shanyuan bastards a new assholeee!"

"Aaaaaargh! Follow Zhang Chennnn!"

The skittish hesitation of moments ago vanished without a trace.

As if deeply moved by the selfless sacrifice of this unknown comrade called Zhang Chen, the Hongmen mobsters piled into their pickup trucks and floored it, howling like madmen.

"Stop them! Stop theeem!"

"Pour out everything you've got!"

"Avenge Chief Yang Zhenghu!"

"Raaaaaah!"

Shanyuan gave as good as they got.

With the assault now in deadly earnest, they saw red and started pulling triggers with grinding teeth.

"Crush every last one of those Shanyuan sons of bitches!"

"Shoot those Hongmen fucks dead, all of them, now!"

Who would survive, Shanyuan or Hongmen?

As the battlefield finally spread inside the complex, the true war of annihilation raised its curtain.

*****

The open ground inside the complex was fairly spacious.

Four apartment buildings boxed it in on all sides, north, south, east, and west, so no matter which way I went, I was surrounded by Shanyuan gun barrels.

Rat-tat-tat-tat!

"Kill all the Hongmen assholes!"

"Raaaaaah!"

"Shoot them all deaaad!"

I steered my hideously crumpled truck in lazy circles around the central plaza.

While I carved up the plaza, Shanyuan's automatic rifles spat fire from balconies and railings all around.

Dozens of rounds shredded my truck's hood and windshield in seconds.

"Out! Everybody out!"

"Blow all the Shanyuan bastards to pieces!"

"Raaaaagh!"

While I played bullet sponge for them, Hongmen vehicles soon came flooding in through my rearview mirror.

The Hongmen men who'd stormed inside leapt out of their vehicles and began raining rockets on the complex without restraint.

Fwoosh!

Kaboom!

"Aaaaargh!"

"Fuuuuuck!"

Screams and explosions poured in from every direction as a scene straight out of hell unfolded.

And then, in that moment.

Kaboom!

"Guh."

Unable to endure the blind hail of machine-gun fire any longer, my truck went up in a massive blast.

Crimson flames shot up on all sides, and the truck spun around and buried itself in a nearby flowerbed.

"Fuck! Avenge our brother!"

"Raaaaah!"

Driven berserk by the sight, the Hongmen boys swore they'd take my revenge for me and fired their rockets with even more gusto.

Meanwhile, I quietly crawled out through the driver's-side window and slipped away.

I rolled on the ground to put out the flames clinging to me, then slid smoothly into the flowerbed brush.

"Die! Kill theeem!"

"Fuuuck!"

While everyone's attention was fixed high and low, I vaulted through a window right beside the flowerbed.

Into the east apartment building, quick and quiet.

Infiltration successful.

"Let's see...."

Now that the real melee had begun, Shanyuan and Hongmen were far too busy killing each other to notice anything else.

They hardly needed me lending a hand.

While they fought their war of annihilation, I planned to hunt down the Irobuchi-kai men hiding somewhere inside these buildings.

'The drug production equipment itself has probably all been moved in by now.'

I started up the stairs, methodically sweeping the building's interior as I went.

Twelve units per floor and ten floors, making 120 households per building.

In Korea, a place this size would get called a chicken coop.

"What the hell is going on?"

"They say the Hongmen bastards have breached the complex!"

"Fuck! Hey, split the men in half! One team watches the outside, the other covers the interior!"

"Yes, sir!"

The Shanyuan men who'd been blasting away at the building's perimeter came scrambling into the corridor, shouting over each other.

Leaving them free to fight each other to their hearts' content, I crept up the stairs, combing the building floor by floor.

"Hmm...."

But the east building looked like a total bust.

Nothing but mobsters aiming guns in and out of the building; not a whiff of that telltale chemical smell.

I opened a few doors, but inside there was only pale dust and leftover construction materials strewn about.

"Guess it's not here."

After sweeping everything up to the tenth-floor rooftop, hop.

I threw myself over the railing without a backward glance.

That weightless feeling that sends a shiver down the spine.

Then came the sense of the ground rushing up to meet me.

Thud!

"A-aaaaargh!"

"Oh."

The sight of me sprawled in the flowerbed scared the life out of a Hongmen mobster standing nearby.

An awkward beat of eye contact.

Cool as could be, I contorted my face and launched into my agonized-expression routine.

"A-avenge... me...."

"Ah, ahhh...."

"Avenge... me... plea... gurk...."

When I let my head drop in feigned death, the Hongmen kid's eyes began to tremble.

As if he were living out a scene from a war movie, the kid promptly snapped, eyes rolling over, and charged headlong into the building.

"Ah, ahhh.... Shanyuan, you assholeeees!"

"Follow Wei Bo!"

"Aaaaargh!"

On the heels of that brave soul, still more mobsters swarmed into the building after him.

Bang! Ba-bang!

Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat!

Naturally, small skirmishes began breaking out in and around the building.

A moment to feel truly rewarded by my superb acting.

"Alley-oop."

I sprang to my feet and scurried off toward the west building.

I'd just slipped in through a window and was about to cross the first-floor corridor.

"This building is ours now!"

"Seal it all off, starting with the entrance!"

"Oh."

As luck would have it, I ran smack into a pack of Hongmen men storming in through the first-floor lobby at that very moment.

No need to spell out whose bad luck it was.

"A Shanyuan bastard?!"

The moment they spotted me, they flinched and snapped their muzzles up.

At that point, there was only one thing to do.

"That's right, I am Le Wei of the Shanyuan Society! I've come back from hell to kill you all!"

I drew the knife from my waist and charged straight at them.

Bang!

Ba-bang! Bang!

"Croak, you son of a bitch!"

"F-fuck! Shoot him, quick!"

Bullets thudding into my body or not, I grabbed one of them and raked my knife across the meat of his shoulder.

"Gyaaaaah!"

His rifle sling sliced clean through, and his automatic rifle slid snug into my hand as if drawn there.

An HK416, from the German firm Heckler & Koch.

A masterpiece of a rifle I'd put to good use plenty of times back in my PMC days.

Brrrrrt!

"Aaaargh!"

"Shoot, shoot him!"

"Why won't he croaaak?!"

One light sweep of the trigger across my front, and they went down screaming, one after another.

By the time I'd breezed through a full magazine, not even a groan was left.

And just as I finished mopping up that Hongmen squad.

"There! The west building!"

"Get in there! After him!"

More Hongmen men, drawn by the commotion, came sprinting in through the entrance.

I swapped in a fresh magazine and pounded up the stairs, with them hot on my heels.

"Gunfire from downstairs, sir!"

"Get down there and fight! Tear those Hongmen sons of bitches apart!"

"Raaaaaah!"

At the same time, a clamor of footsteps came thundering down from above.

Hongmen from below, Shanyuan from above, both closing in around me.

There was only one way out.

"Hup."

Hop!

I hurled myself out the window once again.

Whoosh.

Thud!

"Hurk!"

And there, guarding their trucks outside, was another Hongmen mobster, locking eyes with me.

He panicked at the sight of me sprawled out and whipped his gun up, so.

"Gurk."

I promptly let my tongue loll out and played dead.

It was the moment my acting ascended to the divine.

"F-fuck.... Scared the hell out of me."

Completely taken in by my performance, he dropped his guard and lowered his muzzle. And right then.

Bang!

"Guh? F... fuck."

A bullet slammed into the chest of the kid standing there in a daze.

Not from me; courtesy of some passing Shanyuan mobster.

"Yikes."

That's how terrifying a melee can be.

Anyway, since things had turned out this way, I belly-crawled over to his sprawled body.

He was carrying all sorts of gear I'd had my eye on anyway.

"Ooh. Every last one of these guys carries nothing but top-shelf stuff."

This one was a VP9, another German pistol made by Heckler & Koch.

A Glock competitor, and it looked the part, too.

After neatly collecting the pistol, magazines, and even the holster, I glanced back at the building I'd just hurled myself out of.

Bang!

Ba-bang!

"Die!"

"Croak, you assholes!"

Thanks to me, the two gangs' men had run into each other in the middle of the stairwell and opened fire on one another.

Fights kept breaking out on their own without me even raising a gun. Convenient.

'Stirring the pot really is easy work.'

For now, most of the men running around out here were Hongmen.

So I figured I'd disguise myself as Hongmen, too.

Kaboom!

Clatter-clatter-clatter.

While I stripped a fallen Hongmen mobster of his suit jacket and armband and changed into them, chunks of concrete from the blasted apartment wall rained down over my head like hail.

Thunk, thud.

Whump.

The corpses of Shanyuan men caught in the blast came tumbling down along with them.

"Ooh."

I spotted a few spare magazines on the freshly fallen corpse.

I scooped those up too, slotted them into the holster, and with that, all my preparations were complete.

I headed straight into the south building.

"Fuck! It's a Hongmen bastard!"

And of all the luck, I walked right into the Shanyuan men standing watch from the stairwell.

Before they could scramble their guns up, I beat them to the punch.

"That's right! I am Zhang Chen of the Hongmen Society! Die, all of you!"

The Hongmen disguise was already paying off.

*****

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