“If you don’t have stamina, you can’t do anything. No matter what, you have to run more than the enemy and move more than they do.”
“Straighten your posture.”
“Don’t shake when you fire. You didn’t move even a centimeter, but at the target point, you’re off by more than ten meters.”
“Make sure you use concealment and cover properly. The moment your head comes out, it could get blown off. There’s a sniper waiting.”
“Understanding the situation is the most important thing. Check constantly where you are and where the other team members are.”
It had been a week since I started going to work as an instructor for the Congolese special forces.
I was tearing apart and rebuilding the entire Congolese curriculum.
What the hell had these bastards been teaching?
No wonder they all went out and got themselves killed.
Even during the Korean War, we probably didn’t teach things this badly.
For now, as urgently as possible,
I added the tactics and strategies needed for the tropical rainforest.
Then I trained the special forces soldiers according to those strategies.
I taught them to the best of my ability.
I truly taught those special forces soldiers with all my heart and soul.
Was it because I wanted to do my best at my mission?
A sense of duty as an instructor?
Or to create a powerful Congolese special forces unit?
None of that mattered.
I taught them with the thought that if I trained these bastards properly, they might kill even one more rebel bastard.
That they might take even one of them with them when they died.
There was one good thing about coming here.
When I was in Ubira, we had to gather the information ourselves and send it up.
But here, information came to me.
It was much easier to figure out how the rebels were moving and what they were doing.
.
.
.
“How’s school?”
“It’s unfamiliar, but it’s okay.”
“How are your studies?”
“It’s not as difficult as I thought.”
“That’s a relief. Then shall we begin?”
I found a house near the special forces base.
The base offered me accommodations,
but I refused and chose to commute instead.
The lodging provided by the base meant living inside the base.
But I couldn’t do that.
There were simply too many inconveniences.
Apart from training the soldiers, I had many other things to do.
I had to raise Poapi,
gather information,
and kill rebel bastards.
Staying on base would inevitably limit me.
So I moved outside.
The place we found was a single-story house near the base.
It was built of bricks,
and in Congo, the fact that it was made of brick was itself a symbol of wealth.
Poapi was astonished when he saw that it had running water and electricity,
but by my standards, the conditions were utterly abysmal.
No wonder
everyone kept dying of infectious diseases.
If I only killed the rebel bastards,
to be honest, I had no intention of killing all of them.
Derrick Meyer.
I only needed to kill that bastard.
The others could live or die for all I cared.
Even if left alone, they were the kind of bastards who would eventually die while squabbling among themselves.
I didn’t even want to waste thought on them.
But if anyone got in my way on the road to Derrick Meyer,
if even their shadow crossed that path, I would drive a knife into their throat without hesitation.
“This isn’t a technique for protecting yourself. It’s a technique for killing people. Remember only one thing. Once you decide to kill someone, don’t hesitate. The moment you hesitate, you die.”
“You’re still young. You’ve grown quite a bit, but you lack strength. Don’t try to win with strength. Use everything you can. A knife, a gun, and if those don’t work, a chair or broken glass. Cheating? What does cheating matter? There’s only living or dying. Being called a coward lasts for a moment, but once you’re dead, you can’t even hear the insults.”
I began passing my skills on to Poapi.
Poapi was an emaciated Black boy.
He was only twelve, yet he was already 170 centimeters tall.
I had been 170 centimeters even at eighteen.
He had fairly good athletic ability and a sharp mind.
Even though he had started school late,
he kept up with his classes without difficulty,
and he absorbed the techniques I taught him physically just as easily.
To be honest, I put Poapi through training that felt excessive for a twelve-year-old child,
but Poapi quietly followed along.
After training,
we had dinner.
Poapi studied,
and I went to a nearby bar to have a beer.
I hadn’t come merely for a beer.
I wanted to gather information,
and I also wanted to buy some firearms.
I had plenty of weapons taken from the rebels,
but I didn’t have a sniper rifle.
I needed a sniper rifle right now.
My head was filled with thoughts of revenge,
but I wasn’t reckless enough to charge in carrying nothing but a rifle.
I would become a coward.
I would hide and kill my enemies.
Point your fingers at me.
Condemn me.
Curse me.
No matter what you say,
just as our dead teammates will never return,
those bastards dying will not change.
They were as good as dead already.
I ordered a beer and subtly surveyed my surroundings.
“Damn, a Chinaman’s here. There goes the taste of the alcohol.”
“When did our bar turn into a monkey village?”
“Those monkey bastards came all the way here. Money really is great.”
“Did he climb the trees to get here?”
“I hear he’s going to pay for his beer with bananas.”
“Hahahahaha!”
“But what do you call that again? Ching chong? Is that right?”
“Who knows? What do I care? But is he even Chinese?”
“Who knows that either? Chinese or not, what does it matter? It just pisses me off that some squinty-eyed monkey bastard is here.”
Perhaps they thought I couldn’t understand them,
because they continued making racist remarks among themselves.
Let them.
As long as they didn’t pick a direct fight with me,
whatever they thought or said had nothing to do with me.
I would simply pretend not to understand.
And keep sipping my beer.
“But is it true that Okapi Sting is dead?”
“Who knows? But seeing how the rebels have become more active since then, I suppose it might be true.”
My thoughts changed.
Those filthy bastards had no right to speak the sacred words “Okapi Sting.”
The reason didn’t matter.
Whether it was affirmation, denial, praise, curiosity, or a question, it didn’t matter.
The name Okapi Sting must not be spoken.
I simply walked over,
smashed one man over the head with the beer bottle he had been drinking from,
then kicked the man on the other side as he tried to stand.
Taken by surprise, the men tried to fight back.
But the fists of brats like these were weaker than Poapi’s.
I dodged the man’s punch and drove a powerful straight into his jaw.
He crumpled to the floor just as he was, felled by the blow to his jaw.
Perhaps because he had seen his friend go down in a single hit,
the man’s attitude suddenly became timid.
He had acted as if he were about to kill me,
but in an instant, he became polite.
“No racism.”
He said only that.
These bastards had been beaten because of racism.
Not because of Okapi Sting.
If they had been beaten for speaking the name Okapi Sting, the proper ending would have been death, not unconsciousness.
So they should simply think it was because of racism.
The polite man’s hand moved behind his waist.
It looked like he was trying to draw a gun.
I reached for mine as well,
but the owner of the bar shook his head.
I put my gun away,
and the owner shouted at the men.
“Get out right now. What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
The man hurriedly tucked his gun away again, helped up his fallen friend, and went outside.
“I apologize. Let me buy you a drink.”
The owner held out a bottle of beer.
“Thank you. I’m sorry for causing a disturbance. If anything was damaged, I’ll compensate you.”
“It’s fine. Things like this happen often, so I keep things around that don’t break easily.”
“That’s wise of you.”
“I’d appreciate it if you thought of it less as wisdom and more as a means of survival.”
“My name is Jose.”
“I’m Inbae.”
The owner was a white man who looked to be in his fifties.
A small-framed, white-haired white man.
“I’d like to buy you a beer as well, if that’s all right.”
“Would anyone refuse an offer that increases sales?”
The white man casually opened another bottle and handed it to me,
and I lightly tapped my bottle against his.
Clink.
“I apologize once more for those men. They aren’t bad people, but they weren’t educated, so they act and speak however they please. Since you gave them a bit of an education, perhaps they learned something.”
“I certainly hope so.”
“But you’re someone I’ve never seen in this neighborhood before.”
“I was assigned to work nearby.”
“Assigned nearby? The only thing around here is the base… Assigned, you say… Huh? I heard there was a new instructor at the base…”
Jose replayed the conversation in his head,
and seemed to realize the situation.
There had been rumors all over the area that a member of Okapi Sting had come as an instructor.
Especially when you worked at a bar, you heard all sorts of useless rumors.
This man was definitely a member of Okapi Sting who had come as an instructor for the special forces.
“You’re… that…”
But Jose stopped speaking when he saw my expression.
With that kind of awareness,
it seemed he had managed to stay alive in Congo as a white man while running a bar.
“How did you come to live in Congo, Jose?”
“It’s a common story. I fell in love with a woman who came here to study. As it turned out, she was Congolese. By then I was completely infatuated with her, so her nationality didn’t matter to me at all, and I came to Congo with her… And before I knew it, I was still living here.”
“That’s a wonderful story. Would someone like you be called a romantic?”
“A romantic? Maybe I am. Even after my wife died, I’m still living in Congo, so perhaps I am a romantic after all.”
“How did she die?”
“Giving birth. The medical conditions here are the worst, you know. In the end, I lost both my wife and my child. Even so, I couldn’t bring myself to leave. So I make a living selling beer like this.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“About thirty years?”
“Do you happen to know anyone who can acquire things?”
“Things?”
“Yes. Things. Anything at all.”
“Hmm… I do a little retail dealing, but I’m not sure whether I can get what Inbae wants.”
“Can you take orders?”
“I can, but I can’t guarantee anything.”
“I’d like to acquire a sniper rifle. Is that possible?”
“That sort of thing is possible. Weapons are the easiest things to get around here.”
“Then I’d like to ask you to do it. I’ll give you half the payment up front.”
“We usually require full payment, but since this is our first transaction…”
A week later, when I stopped by the bar,
Jose handed me a sniper rifle.
.
.
.
“Inbae. I heard a rumor that the rebels have resumed their activities around Kinshasa.”
Poapi was proving himself a valuable informant not only in Ubira, but here in Kinshasa as well.
He must have already become friendly with the people here,
because he would tell me things that weren’t even in the UN reports.
The UN reports only said that the rebels’ movements were strange.
That they had changed.
They didn’t mention that they were around Kinshasa.
“I heard a rumor that they’re gathering especially around Kampoko.”
“Thanks. That should be very helpful.”
Once I heard a rumor, I had to confirm it.
I drove toward the area around Kampoko.
Kampoko was a notorious slum,
and tropical rainforest stretched out behind it.
That must be where they were, then.
I drove to Kampoko
and checked the surrounding area.
I could see rebels, but this didn’t seem to be their base.
There were only a few of them.
I took C4 out of my inventory and began making booby traps.
Following what was written in the reports,
I used the American method—though I wasn’t sure whether it was the Delta Force or the Green Berets.
But I made them a little crude.
I made the booby traps look as though the rebels themselves had made them.
I planted them along the routes the rebels used,
following their methods exactly.
Exactly as reported.
Using Derrick Meyer’s method.
I made booby traps and went around installing them throughout Kampoko.
As I was setting them up here and there, I heard heavy explosions in the distance, as if someone had already stepped on or triggered one of the traps.
It was still nowhere near enough.
It would be a long time before all the ones I had planted went off.
I was still installing booby traps.
These bastards would die from booby traps.
On the way back, after roughly finishing up,
I deliberately circled back toward the area where the traps had exploded.
As expected, the rebels were running around in confusion.
They seemed unable to figure out what to do as they looked at the injured
and the dead.
This was only the beginning.
Wait for me.