Radio chatter came through the headset in my ear.
“Report personnel and damage status.”
“Demolitions, no issues.”
“Weapons, no issues.”
“Medical, no issues.”
“Communications, no issues.”
“Intel/Ops, no issues.”
“That’s a relief. Comms, request support from the unit. We’re taking that bastard down. Permission to engage.”
“Roger.”
Keeping our bodies low,
we slowly searched through the grass.
“Do not, under any circumstances, rush in. If anything looks suspicious, put a round into it first and then start from there.”
“Roger.”
We advanced slowly in search formation, gradually driving them toward the riverside.
If anything seemed even slightly suspicious, we fired a shot into it.
The enemy had attacked first.
And even after we began searching, they stayed hidden and refused to come out?
They were definitely not innocent Congolese civilians.
If it had been a mistake,
if they had fired by accident, then they should have at least made the excuse that it was an accident,
been investigated, and then released.
But this bastard didn’t do that.
The fact that he fired first meant there was a very high chance he was a rebel.
And yet, after a single gunshot, he vanished as if he had never existed.
It was strange.
There was no next move.
No return fire, either.
We slowly pushed through the grass, moving forward and forward.
Bang, bang.
If we felt uneasy, we fired first.
I had gone through this kind of training dozens of times, but I was tense.
Real combat was different.
The anxiety of not knowing where a bullet might come flying from made my body stiff.
Even so, we carried out the operation slowly, step by step.
And after moving one step at a time like that, we had somehow reached Lake Tanganyika.
????????
There was nothing.
No one was there.
They had definitely fired at us, hadn’t they?
We heard the gunshot, but they were gone.
It seemed I wasn’t the only one shocked.
The faces of my teammates searching nearby were filled with bewilderment too.
“End the search and gather for a moment.”
We checked the surroundings for anything dangerous, then went over to the team leader.
As soon as we got there, the medic looked at me and was startled.
“Hey!!! Blood!!!!”
“Yes? What blood?”
“You’re bleeding.”
“Me?”
In an instant, everyone’s eyes focused on me.
Blood was coming from my left ear.
It was dripping down.
The medic hurriedly pulled out a hemostatic agent.
“Sit. Sit down. Plant your ass and get comfortable.”
When I sat down, he pressed the hemostatic agent tightly against my ear and began stopping the bleeding.
“You didn’t know you were bleeding?”
“No, I didn’t. I did hear the bullet by my ear, but I didn’t know I was bleeding.”
“It’s a ghost hit.”
The company commander spoke.
“A ghost hit?”
“Even if a bullet doesn’t hit you directly, if it passes right beside you, the air pressure can still wound you. Especially if it’s the ear—it’s weak, so it tears more easily.”
“Then does that mean the bullet passed right next to Inbae?”
“That’s how we should see it.”
What?
A bullet passed right next to my ear?
Back then, I had been about to send a radio transmission.
If I hadn’t turned my body at that moment, I might have died.
A sudden chill ran down my spine.
I had lived thinking it wouldn’t matter much if I died at any time.
But dying like this had not been in my plans.
Fuck, I almost became a person of national merit on the first day of the operation.
The company commander spoke in a voice full of anger.
“Fuck, that bastard aimed and fired. To buy time to escape. If Inbae had gone down, we would have focused on him instead of searching.”
“That’s right. They tried to kill someone just so they could run?”
“Let’s find these bastards and beat them down.”
“Of course. They messed with our team? We’ll chase them all the way to hell.”
“Don’t get worked up. Wait a moment. Comms, when is support coming?”
“They said it would take about twenty minutes earlier, so they should be arriving soon.”
The medic, who had been stopping the bleeding from my ear, touched my ear a few more times and then said,
“The bleeding’s stopped.”
“I think it really is a ghost hit. But for a ghost hit, the wound is a little deep, which is strange.”
“The wound is deep?”
“Yes.”
The company commander’s face flushed red with rage.
“Those fucking bastards, what kind of gun did they fire? If it’s that bad, was it an anti-materiel rifle?”
“I think so.”
“We’re finding that bastard today no matter what. Rookie.”
“Sergeant Gong. In. Bae.”
“You go rest in the vehicle for a bit.”
“No, sir. It’s nothing. The bleeding’s stopped, and I can still do this.”
“No. Go rest. That’s an order.”
Just then, Team 2, which had been carrying out an operation elsewhere, arrived after receiving the call.
They had come because it was a support request,
but when they heard that the rookie had been shot, the team members got angrier than I did.
“I’m going to catch these bastards and chew them alive.”
“I’m going to dig out their guts and eat them too.”
“We’re not letting this slide.”
Even if they did catch those bastards, they probably wouldn’t actually chew them up,
but for some reason, it made me feel good.
It felt like I had dependable older brothers now.
Was this what it felt like to be protected?
Was this what it felt like when someone got angry on your behalf?
I had always thought I would only ever be driven to the edge of a cliff.
Even if I fell off, there had been no one who cared.
But even just hearing them say things like that felt good.
It was reassuring.
“Jong-o.”
“Yes, Team Leader.”
“You take Inbae and stay with him in the armored vehicle. That bastard won’t go alone.”
“Understood.”
“We’ll take a short break, and when the support team arrives, we’ll resume the search.”
“Yes.”
I moved to the armored vehicle with Staff Sergeant Kwon Jong-o, Medic 1,
and in the meantime, the support team from headquarters arrived as well.
We explained the situation to the support team, then entered the armored vehicle.
Looking outside, I saw them reorganize the team and begin searching again.
“Were you scared?”
“No, sir.”
“You’re impressive. How do you manage to get shot from the very first day of the operation? I haven’t even been shot once yet.”
Staff Sergeant Kwon Jong-o spoke playfully.
“It’s not like I was really hit, sir. It didn’t even graze me, sir.”
“That’s why guns are dangerous. It didn’t even graze you, but you still got wounded. You must be tense, so get some rest. The people outside will handle the search, so leave it to them.”
“Yes. Understood.”
But I still couldn’t rest.
I told you, didn’t I? In the military, you have to do the opposite of what you’re told.
If you rest just because they tell you to rest, you’ll never get to rest for the rest of your life.
So I just looked around outside from inside the armored vehicle.
I couldn’t participate in the search directly, but I wanted my heart to be with them.
So from the vehicle, I diligently joined the search with my eyes.
I had been staring hard toward the bushes, but when my eyes grew tired and I turned my head toward the village,
I saw someone walking with a gun.
But... that gun.
Isn’t that an anti-materiel rifle?
They said the gun that fired at me earlier was an anti-materiel rifle.
But how did he get from the hiding spot earlier all the way to the village at once?
The order went Lake Tanganyika, the grassy area, the shabby house, then the road.
We heard the gunshot when we were moving from the shabby house into the grassy area.
From there, we searched all the way to Lake Tanganyika, but couldn’t find anyone.
And now those people suddenly appear near the road?
Something was very strange.
Just in case, I asked Staff Sergeant Kwon Jong-o beside me.
“Staff Sergeant, isn’t that gun over there an anti-materiel rifle?”
When I asked while pointing with my finger, Staff Sergeant Kwon looked closely and said,
“You’re right. Let’s report it to the team leader.”
“Yes.”
“Team Leader. We have spotted personnel carrying an anti-materiel rifle at a residence near the road. I repeat, we have spotted personnel carrying an anti-materiel rifle at a residence near the road. It’s the brick house beside the utility pole. Please confirm.”
“Okay, confirmed. All personnel, stop searching and move to the road.”
The personnel searching in the grass began moving stealthily toward the road.
I watched the scene from inside the vehicle.
The team, moving covertly, checked for hazards around the brick house, then entered it in an instant.
Bang, bang.
Bang, bang.
Along with several gunshots, radio chatter came through.
“First floor clear.”
“Second floor clear.”
“Operation complete.”
“Seven captured alive. Three wounded. Request ambulance support.”
The operation ended in an instant.
They stormed in through the front and back doors simultaneously,
and since the enemy was completely unprepared, they were able to suppress them in moments.
Even so, there were wounded
because our team did not let the man holding the anti-materiel rifle off easy.
They aimed precisely at his knees and shot.
Both of his knees were shattered.
He would probably have a hard time walking for the rest of his life.
After tying up the captured men with cable ties, the team members came outside and smoked cigarettes.
The support team that had come out was guarding the captured men.
“What the hell is this on the first day?”
“Exactly, sir.”
“Maybe Congo just doesn’t suit us.”
“Hey, if it didn’t suit us, we’d all be dead. Would we still be alive like this?”
“Just think of it as getting the bad luck out of the way. Aside from Inbae being hurt a little, no one got injured, and the operation was handled well. Isn’t that a good thing?”
I came out of the armored vehicle and went over to them.
“Team Leader. Good work.”
“Good work, my ass. This much isn’t even enough for a warm-up. We’re skilled, after all. Haha.”
Maybe because the operation had ended safely, the team leader’s handsome face had returned.
“But Team Leader. Could I... take another look through the grass?”
“The grass? Why the grass?”
“Because no matter how much I think about it, it’s strange.”
“What’s strange?”
“The place they fired at us from was definitely the grass, but they were found here. And we were between those two places. Isn’t that strange?”
“It is strange, but...”
“If you give me just twenty minutes, I’ll take one look and come back.”
“Hmm......”
“Uwon.”
“Yes, Team Leader.”
“Take Deoksu, Jaebeom, and Inbae and go with him for a bit.”
“Understood.”
At the company commander’s order,
the deputy company commander became the leader, and the four of us—Demolitions 1, Communications 2, me, and him—headed into the grass.
The place I suspected was where I thought they had disappeared.
We pushed through the grass with our guns and tapped the ground with our feet as we went, but there was nothing unusual.
Maybe I was just overreacting.
“There’s nothing, right? Should we head back?”
“Let’s head back, sir.”
“Inbae, let’s go.”
“Yes.”
We were about to turn back when I finally noticed the piles of trash.
By the lake, trash thrown away here and there would wash up and form piles.
But one pile of trash looked a little strange.
“Deputy Commander, may I take a quick look at that pile of trash?”
“Well... sure, go take a look. But I’m not going. Not into that trash.”
“It’ll be enough if I go alone.”
“Go ahead. We’ll be watching.”
I was grateful enough that they had listened to my opinion, given me time, and followed me all the way here.
Asking them to dig through trash too would have been shameless.
I was only doing this because I hated the uneasy feeling.
With my teammates watching from behind, I went toward the pile of trash.
I hadn’t even reached the trash pile yet, but the stench stabbed my nose.
Plastic bottles, plastic bags, snack wrappers, drink bottles, glass, and so on.
All sorts of trash were spread out widely.
I picked up a stick nearby and went forward, tapping and poking with it.
Was this pointless?
As I thought that and kept poking,
suddenly, there was a spot where it sank right in.
I nearly fell over.
Barely managing to keep my balance, I looked at the place where the stick had gone in.
It looked like ordinary ground.
But when I looked closely, it wasn’t ground.
They had smeared mud over thick cloth to make it look like earth.
Following the seam carefully, I found something that looked like a handle and lifted it.
Fuck, what the hell is this now?
The moment I saw it, a curse came out of my mouth.
What I had found was a tunnel.
.
.
.
The incident grew bigger.
Additional support teams arrived from our unit,
and UN peacekeepers stationed nearby came as well.
Government troops, police, and even local politicians appeared.
They checked whether there were any booby traps inside the tunnel,
but the tunnel was clean.
Instead, a large number of weapons were found.
It seemed to be a tunnel used for smuggling.
They said weapons had likely been brought in through Lake Tanganyika, moved through the tunnel, and then gradually transported elsewhere.
The tunnel was connected to the shabby house,
but rather than saying it was connected to the shabby house, it seemed more like they had built the tunnel first and disguised it as a house to hide it.
The incident had grown larger, but there was nothing more for our team to do here.
Cleaning up the site and handling the smuggled goods were matters for the people remaining here to deal with.
We could just return as we were.
And so, we left the scene behind and returned to base.
It had been a long, exhausting first day of operations in Congo, filled with far too many incidents.