Mercenary Black Mamba

"A hundred meters ahead, there is a hyena underground," announced Black Mamba.

Ombuti cocked his head.

The hyena that Wakil had caught was most likely the dominant animal of the territory. The spotted hyena, unlike the striped ones in the Savannah, does not travel in herds. The alpha males invariably travel alone.

"Wakil, the spotted alpha male hyena would never have allowed another hyena to come into its territory. There is a strong chance it is a warthog."

"Warthog? Are you talking about the black pig that lives in the Nigerian Savannah?"

Black Mamba revealed his lack of knowledge regarding the habitats of animals.

"They live south of the Sahara also."

"That's good to hear. A wild pig would be a hundred times better than a hyena. In Korea, we use pig's blood to cook a delicious soup."

"Ew!"

Ombuti threw up.

"That's right, sorry about that."

Muslims are highly sensitive about food ingredients.

Even on the brink of starvation, they will not touch food that is not kosher. A pig is an unclean animal. Blood is also deemed as unclean. So it was understandable that Ombuti might vomit upon hearing that pig blood soup was delicious.

He, of course, respected Ombuti's religion but that didn't mean he had to practice it. Koreans, to this day, still eat coagulated blood soup in vast quantities. They live just fine doing that.

"Let me know the exact location. I will lure it out."

"A hundred meters ahead in the direction two o'clock, there is a thick bush. To the left, towards the back, about five meters in, you'll find it."

Black Mamba called over Jang Shin.

"Get ready to receive some wild pig blood this time."

"Wild pig? There are wild pigs in the desert?"

"You'll see it soon enough."

Black Mamba directed Ombuti who began climbing up the dune.

"Ahh!" Boom-

Ombuti screamed and stomped his feet. Oink! The pig squealed from inside the ground and a black beast scrambled out.

"Wow! Are you a magician?" Jang Shin joked.

A magician pulling a dove out of a hat was easy. Pengyou pulled a large wild pig out of the ground. A pig that size in this desolate wasteland? Nature sure was amazing.

With tusks as long as a man's fingers, short, fat legs, shoulder muscles like boulders, and eyes full of anger, its presence was intense. Even a puma would want to avoid a warthog that is angrily charging at it in a trail of dust.

"Haha, my blood soup is being delivered on a plate."

Black Mamba pulled out his kukri. He had to save all the bullets he could.

Oink… The wild pig who had been charging toward Black Mamba suddenly changed direction and headed toward Jang Shin. The animal's instinct must have been sensitive enough to pick up on the fact that the opponent he had originally aimed for was stronger than itself.

'Are wild pigs smarter than hyenas?'

Black Mamba was lost in useless thought but Jang Shin had trouble on his hands.

"Ah! Go away! What did I do?"

Jang Shin had been getting ready to cut its throat to collect the blood but pretended otherwise.

It wouldn't be called charging if it was meant to stop when ordered to stop. Jang Shin, surprised by the sudden attack, pulled out his Glock.

"No, don't use that. We need to get the blood. Figure it out with Kung Fu."

Belman yelled.

"Ah, fuck! What the heck do you want me to do."

The warthog looked like it weighed a ton. If Jang Shin used his martial arts moves, there was a good chance he would get crushed.

Panicking, Jang Shin abandoned the water bottle and ran for it.

"Go to Black, go to Black!"

The warthog ignored Jang Shin's screaming pleas.

The mercenaries were all waiting to see how Black Mamba would take care of the warthog. The unexpected spectacle had distracted them and they were now grabbing their stomachs laughing at the site of the warthog chasing Jang Shin.

"Jang Shin, you're gonna get caught. Run faster!"

The mercenaries clapped and cheered Jang Shin on.

Jang Shin was going crazy. He wanted to turn his Glock on his snickering comrades. Behind his back, he could feel the warthog's breath.

"Black, stop him. Do something!"

"Not for nothing."

Emil screamed.

"Shut up, you mixed mulatto!"

"Jang Shin, he's catching up with you!"

" Black, if you open it up, I'll give you a year's worth of food."

"That sounds good."

Swish… The kukri left his hand.

The knife flew like the wind and landed in the back of the warthog's head with a crack. The warthog was stopped dead in its tracks. The weight and speed of the kukri were easily able to penetrate the skull. The beast didn't even have time to let out a scream and fell. The wild pig had been unlucky to have come in contact with him.

The ending had been simple compared with all the chaos that had gone before.

Pieff and Valboir's eyes widened in amazement.

"How… how is it possible?" Pieff yelled.

He had lost miserably to Kikali, but he wasn't bad with a blade. Black Mamba had taken out the immense Kikali in one strike.

However, close contact fighting was a lot different from throwing skills.

It is almost impossible to hit a moving target like a charging warthog with accuracy. A human's dynamic visual acuity is not that good. On average, say it is about 24 frames per second, that would mean that if you could increase it to over 24 frames per second, you would get a smooth transition of rolling video. The vision of a bird of prey, on average, would be 200 frames per second. Due to their superior visual acuity, they were able to spot and catch their moving prey.

Taking into account the changes in direction and the lack of dynamic visual acuity, a human being could not fix on a target moving at 40 Kilometers per hour, and it wasn't even with a speeding bullet but a throwing weapon. It would only be possible with the dynamic visual acuity of a bird of prey, the power of a bear, or the agility of a tiger.

"To put it simply, he is one scary dude."

Even without Valboir's obvious comment, he was already pretty awesome.

"Hoo, he's scary. I can't even think about how I would take out the peditu kenarung."

"The fact that our commander hasn't been able to let that prospect go is even scarier."

Pieff shuddered.

"No, I've forgotten all about it. I don't want to die with my head split open like a pig."

" Now I can see how it will end for those fools who stabbed us in the back."

"If you pulled the tail of a tiger, you must be ready for the consequences. That guy is a fox with the hands and feet of a tiger. I can't figure out how to deal with him."

The DGSE's shady plans did not match with the macho thinking mercenaries. Pieff, like the other officers of Légion étrangère, did not like the DGSE. He secretly hoped that Black Mamba would go in and wipe them out.

"They aren't even surprised."

Valboir clapped his hands as he pointed at Belman, Emil, and Mike.

"They have probably got used to it."

"Who do you think raised that monster?"

"Haha, you already know. I taught him how to use a blade,"

Even in their current predicament, Pieff was still trying to show off.

'Yea right! If showing him a few moves is teaching him then Black Mamba is my master.'

Valboir decided to stop talking.

"You d*mned punk, I'm just a pushover, am I?"

Jang Shin kicked the warthog, severed its artery and collected the blood. Then he quickly skinned it and removed its organs and innards. When he had finished he muttered a couple more insults to the wild pig's carcass.

"Hey! Attack knowing your opponent, you mulatto."

He glared at Emil viciously.

"Even that mixed mulatto is being racist!"

Mike stared at Black Mamba.

"Emil is altogether mixed race. Spain's ancestors are of Celtic-Iberian decent. The Celtic-Iberians are a mix of Iberians, who were the natives, and Celts, who came from France."

"Damn, this shitty world where you can't even say anything if you're dumb."

Mike knew nothing about European ancestry or history. Having no way to argue, he muttered to himself.

"That is why I respect you Wakil."

Ombuti wiped the blood off the kukri and handed it back to Black Mamba. The kukri had penetrated through the hard skull but its blade remained sharp.

Three liters of blood were collected from the large warthog.

Belman fed the poor warthog's blood to Centienne and Maxim. Blood was excellent for replenishing water, minerals, and any vitamins that had been lost.

The remaining blood was shared amongst the other mercenaries. Ombuti frowned. Blood was not kosher. It was unimaginable for a Muslim to drink blood.

Black Mamba gave the blood, that was reserved for him, to Emil. Emil's biorhythm was starting to waver. He was in the first stages of heatstroke. Ombuti, not realizing what was happening, cheered up.

According to the Koran, the pig was an unclean animal. Those who eat pork were deemed to have sinned. Pig's blood was even worse.

The reason Muslims started to look down on pigs was that they had originally been nomads. Cows, sheep, and camels were animals suitable for nomad life.

A pig is an omnivore and doesn't eat grass. They eat grain or fruit just like humans. They competed for the food supply. Cows, sheep, and goats produce milk but pigs do not. To the nomads, an animal's milk was an important nutritional source. Pigs were inconvenient for nomads to herd around with them and they were not suited to survive in high temperatures.

A nomad's life was poor.

Pigs ate food that the people needed and weren't even able to provide them with milk. Unable to endure high temperatures, they died easily during travel. They were also not used to moving in herds so it was hard to keep them under control during travel.

In the eyes of the Arabs, pigs were seen more and more as useless animals. They eventually became an animal they avoided altogether. There is always a cause and an effect. The Koran's teachings reflected the history and culture of the nomads who wrote it.

Jang Shin cooked a wild pig barbecue, the like of which they hadn't had for a long time. The hungry mercenaries gorged through the meat until only a stack of bones remained.

Centienne and Maxim were able to get up as if nothing had happened and joined the barbecue party. It was thanks to filling their stomachs with pigs' blood and getting adequate rest.

Ombuti was smiling to himself. His master spoke to him harshly but he was weak when it came to his attachments.

The main reason for Chad's civil war was because of the fight to retain the territory of Aouzou. Aouzou was located north of Tibesti between Libya and Chad.

Aouzou, which was shaped like a battle drum, was 110,000 kilometers square and bigger than Korea. Other than the oases of the Bedouin, the land of the Sahara desert was pretty much useless to those living there.

When uranium was found in Aouzou, the story changed for this forgotten land. Libya created a rebel army and took over Aouzou. From that point on, the civil war in Chad became more intense.

As Habib had predicted, Goukouni had another plan in mind.

Goukouni was a person as much in tune with politics as the president was.

He didn't see Makumbo's secession as a simple betrayal and realized that it was a plot to join forces with the FROLINAT army. In reality, FROLINAT did not have the manpower to push out the Habre government which had France helping them. He decided he needed an alliance and pulled in Gaddafi.

Contrary to what Habib predicted, Goukouni's negotiations with Gaddafi succeeded. The alliance had just switched from FROLINAT to Goukouni.

The price for receiving more men was to give up Aouzou. It was a betrayal to the country but Goukouni had a dream to build an empire of his own.

Goukouni planned to combine the provinces of Boruku and Kanem and make it his own. He decided to move his troops from the Libyan border of Zaura in Kanem Province to Cortaro.

The Ratel team had been the ones to block Goukouni's dream.

Because the Ratel team had been sweeping across the Sahel, they had sapped the power of the FAP icon Goukouni. The way the natives thought about FAP was changing. Sensing the dangers of an oncoming changing tide, Goukouni folded up his sleeves and took matters into his own hands.

Goukouni's 1st FAP troop was a complete brigade controlled by FROLINAT. Goukouni had put out all his manpower here to follow the Ratel team. And so the Ratel team had come to meet their greatest adversary.

Kerki is an oasis 24 kilometers north-west of the Tanga oasis. This was the last place that had groundwater coming up from the Barelgazal groundwater canal. From here to the north-west in the direction of Djourab Erg, there is not a place for hundreds of kilometers where they could see a drop of water. This was the reason that the Ratel team had faced such hardships to get here.

At the wadi, there were hundreds of men in brown uniforms and ganduras busily moving between the lines of tents. There were 480 men within Goukouni's 1st troop.

In the far west, in a personal barrack, a small individual had his hands on top of a portable table and was looking down at a map. He was an Asian in his early 40s, wearing a gandura and sirwal, with a turban wrapped around his head.