Mercenary Black Mamba

Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans may have shared some of the same traits, but their exuding atmospheres were different. It was hard to pinpoint, but the difference could be told with a little observance.

There was no way he could feel giddy at killing one of his own ethnicity. Even if the other man had been carrying a weapon, it wasn't something to die for. He had broken into the house, so he couldn't say anything about their retaliation either. He felt uncomfortable at the idea of killing someone innocent.

"Damn, what was there for you to gain here that was worth crawling all the way over?"

When he took off the man's gandourah while grumbling, a yellow uniform was revealed.

A sparkling badge attached to the left pocket of the uniform garnered his attention. There was a photo of Kim Il Sung in the middle of the badge with a red background. It was a second lieutenant's Kim Il Sung badge. He had only heard of it, but this was his first time seeing it.

"Ha, a Kim Il Sung badge? He's one of those red ones."

His uncomfortable mood promptly vanished.

The rumours of North Korea sending their torture squad over to Africa had been true. He took off the badge and placed it in his belt. He rummaged over the corpse, but there wasn't much aside from a poisonous dart, a knife, and a few dollars.

It was the same for the other corpses. Aside from a few dollars, francs, and weapons, they had nothing on them. They didn't even have condoms. It was a visible trait of stereotypical spies.

Africa's many sex-related diseases came from poverty, hygiene, and misperceptions, but there was a large European influence, too. Europeans shoveled syphilis, gonorrhea, and trichomonas into Africa until the early 20th century. Those Europeans who carried around condoms in fear of the diseases they had spread were similarly pitiful.

"Don't these b*stards have registration numbers at least? They're some mixed b*stards."

The handguns in their possession were the same. There was a Pistolet Makarova, with a brown handle and a star embedded in the middle. Makarov wasn't some cheap deal like the Tokarev.

The Makarov was Tokarev's sub-model. Copied from Germany's Walter PPK, the Makarov was good to carry and handle. Spies from the Soviet and near the Eastern hemisphere used Tokarevs. It would be enough to use in the place of registration numbers.

With two Africans, two whites, and one Korean gathered as though it was a race exhibition, it was hard to tell their purpose. It was highly probable that they were Soviet spies considering the fact that they had used silenced Makarovs. Being an enemy state's spy wasn't a death crime, but it allowed him to shake off the guilt of killing his supposed own kind.

Black Mamba took the objects and Makarovs in the briefcase he found in the living room. He also gathered all the unknown documents on the table. He could simply give them to someone who could read them.

He had eliminated five healthy men by appearing in the middle of the night like a ghost. Both sides had used silencers, but he had broken down the door and crashed through the wall.

The neighboring house's lights came on at the sounds.

A black shadow flew over the house's fence like a ghost.

The captain had forgotten Libya's presence behind the FROLINAT.

Chad's northern government was controlled by Libya's large influence. There wasn't a place where Libya's hands didn't reach.

The five people that Black Mamba had killed were Libya's informants. They were the headquarters of an attack operation against team Ratel who were staying in the hotel. No one knew that the head of the operation had been cut off, not even Black Mamba. Although he had gotten rid of the immediate threat by coincidence, he couldn't imagine the threat that was approaching.

The captain wasn't an idiot.

He had predicted a breach from FROLINAT within the hotel as a possibility but had still risked the threat. The only place with a phone connection from Chad's northern Sahel to N'Djamena was the Le Marien hotel.

Chad's social infrastructure was poor to the point of being devastating.

It didn't have a railway network, not to mention its lack of road networks. Even this insufficient road network was lost during rainy seasons. Electricity was provided only to the nearest N'Djamena regions and spots within large cities.

There was no way its communications lines would be stable. The long-distance lines between cities were from the stone ages. They had, in fact, decreased in quality since the French colonization, due to its civil war. If anything improved, it was the amount of money in the high officials' back pockets.

The captain glared at the back of the fat communicator's head over the barrier. He'd had to open communications and call for air reinforcements in order to save his subordinates. The communicator sweated under such a savage glare.

He chased his sleep away by pinching at his thighs. His body sunk like soaked cotton, and his chin lowered automatically. Communication was more important than rest, but there was no promise he would reach them. His heart raced to the point that his hand wished to jump out of his throat, but there was nothing to do but wait.

The lines managed to connect after an hour.

- Alpha, this is Bravo.

- Bravo, this is Alpha.

- Alpha, this is...

"Arrrghhh, f*cking hell!"

The captain roared out. The weak lines ignored his heart. The connection had ended the moment they barely introduced themselves.

The captain cursed the weak social infrastructure in Chad.

He moved mountains to maintain his composure and not shatter the cheap phone in his hand.

He had to wait for another connection in despair. Chad's connection lines were as dry as the desert's water strains. There was no promise in waiting.

To locate their location through the transmission in N'Djamena was impossible. That was something possible only in countries with organized communication lines. Chad, with its ruined lines, made it impossible to find the origin of the connection from the receiving end.

France had been more concentrated in harvesting the natural resources in Chad than the development of it as a colony. It was the same for all the other European countries. And so, a century passed with no improvement.

Since an already deprived thing had been robbed, all it had left was bones. Chad's current situation was actually no different from Korea's past immediately after liberation. The captain couldn't have imagined the cause of Chad's poor connections was France's responsibility.

Black Mamba climbed up the wall and slipped into the room without a sound upon returning to the hotel. The veranda's window rattled at Emil's snoring. This was the backlash of traveling across Sahel without sleeping for a month.

He took off all of his clothes and entered the bath.

When he turned on the tap, clean water poured out. Paya had plenty of water despite being a desert city due to its underground water supplies.

"It's magic!"

He was moved to tears. The provided soap was brittle, but it washed away the thickened sweat and dust and blood quite well.

Any normal person had to wash. The fact that one could wash to their own desire was a source of great happiness. Washing was what made a human a human. A human was a 'Homo Lavares (Latin for washing)', someone who washed. Anyone who wandered the Sahel for a month would have agreed.

He hadn't even guessed how valuable the clear water that flowed down Mount Chung Saeng's river like purified water was back then. Humans were definitely imperfect existences who only learned from experience and understood through emotions.

Emil had fallen into a deep sleep spread across the bed, still in his Sirwal. Black Mamba knew he was tired but was angered that his partner had forgotten the basics.

"You idiot, Emil!"

At the quiet call, Emil opened his eyes. He felt underneath his pillow. His senses, which had been trained on many battlefields, were on edge.

"Put on your clothes and keep your pistol near."

"Oops, when did I fall asleep?"

Emil slapped his own face. He had made a big mistake, because he had let his guard down during a long rest. He took the Glock his partner was handing him with a guilty face.

Aside from the captain who was gritting his teeth in the hotel's communication room, all of the other team members were in a similar situation to Emil's. Black Mamba hadn't thought of that.

"Don't snore. I will shove a bullet up your nose."

Black Mamba plastered his back to the bed after muttering such a scary warning.

'I need to rest when I can.'

Sleep overwhelmed him the moment he laid back, despite its hard and dirty condition. No one had rested well since the moment they were sent on the mission a month before.

His body was full of energy, but his brain was unable to stand the fatigue. Fatigue overwhelmed him like a tidal wave. Mu Ssang slept as though he was dead.

It was a two-story wooden building with blue roof tiles.

The mansion's planks were fitted head to head around the center pond, creating a flat front garden in the Japanese hiraniwa style. A sudden rush of wind blew the fallen leaves into a pile.

They were blown up high into the second-floor window. The man standing by the window closed it. A brown leaf slid down the closed window slowly. The man gazed at the leaf sliding gown the window with emotionless eyes.

The leaves that were blown up by the wind fluttered around the air, lost, until they lost their force and fell back onto the ground. The leaves landed on the pond or on the ground, swaying and scattering chaotically. The man's gaze didn't stay on the leaves for long. They followed a part of his life he had lost.

The colorful leaves that pleased his eyes were just a moment in time. The leaves that swayed everywhere, following the early winter breeze, were but dried, dirty nuisances. The leaves that left the tree were no longer called leaves, but trash.

He was the very leaf that fluttered around without a purpose. He was the leaf that was lost from its tree, like a phrase from a very old story, like duckweed without its roots. He suddenly found his fate pitiful.

"Flowers are blooming, and leaves are in season."

An exclamation that a 70-year-old man would have said came out of Mu Ssang's mouth. Feeling his heart seizing, Mu Ssang closed his eyes and shook his head.

Red lips pressed against his as though they had been waiting. Warmth, as though a brand had been marked on him, washed down his nerves.

"Love you!"

A heavenly sound like an angel's voice tickled against his ear.

It was a meaningful phrase that many women said with their souls injected in the words, or soullessly. Of course, that referred to someone else, not him.

Long, white fingers unbuttoned his shirt and slid over his chest.

"Oh, if only it was just a little softer."

Her soft hands, which seemed to lack any bones, slid across his iron-hard chest.

"Oh, your nipples are already on fire. Let me check there, too."

The hand that escaped his chest slid down his pant zipper and burrowed in. The lips that were on his forehead licked down his face and opened to teeth, digging in as though returning home.

"Huh!" the man cried in a strange voice. His young body burned as hot as the firecrackers in his urban community school neighborhood.

Whether he was in his mother's arms, or his Aunt's house, or the largest room on Chun Sung temple, or the overnight house in Bijin county, he couldn't tell. It was fine, wherever he was. He didn't care as long as Hae Young was in his arms. Hae Young was still a novice. Of course, he rushed into it, too. They kissed and loved each other hesitantly. Their teeth clacked against each other's and left red marks all over the place.

Hae Young dragged his hand into her underwear. He could feel course hair on his fingertips.

Her care was precise. It was always neat as though it had been brushed. He once asked whether she brushed down there when she brushed her hair and was punished with no sex for a week.

That had been the day before. He held back a laugh. Hae Young, as expected, couldn't stand a day. She attached herself to him like a washing board. She swallowed his center like an anaconda. He fell into the peak of pleasure as though he was falling from a great height.

Clack—

A small sound from reality sent a signal through his brain, connecting him back to the real world. Several possibilities swept through his mind in a single moment like a panorama. Legion Etranger, Chad's special forces, a sniper, guerrillas with exploding heads. Huh! Guerrillas?

His awakened senses created and sent several signals. His consciousness sparked awake, as though someone had poured cold water over him.

He recognized the sound of clacking as the door lock being opened.

If he had been in a normal state, he would have felt the intruder climbing up the stairs, but Hae Young always lowered his guard. He was more angered over his interrupted dream than the intruder's presence. How many years had he suffered from the tent in his pants!

"That f*cking b*stard, I'll dice him into pieces."