Word comes that M23 is going to attack the ADF.
I received it in reports, heard it from Jose,
and heard it from Poapi as well.
The details differed,
but they all agreed that M23 was preparing a large-scale assault,
and that the ADF would be its target.
Good.
It didn’t matter who had started the fight,
or who was in the wrong.
What mattered was that the two sides were going to fight.
Now, all I had to do was watch the scene of their mutual slaughter,
and capture Derek Meyer.
I absolutely would not let him get away.
To capture Derek Meyer,
I volunteered for the assignment and returned to the Congo.
I had to kill that bastard
if I wanted to see my team—
my brothers—again.
I applied for leave for personal reasons and headed for Uvira.
Both M23’s and the ADF’s bases were near Uvira.
If they were going to wage war, this was the only place they could do it.
******
Near Uvira.
M23’s base.
I was lying in ambush on a hill overlooking M23’s base.
During the two years we spent carrying out deployment missions in Uvira,
we searched and patrolled the area around Uvira every day.
Of course, we didn’t know where their base was,
but judging from the range of their activities,
I had thought it would probably be somewhere around here.
And after a great deal of effort, I managed to find M23’s base.
The guards at the entrance were so strict
that I immediately realized this had to be the rebels’ headquarters.
But only the entrance was heavily guarded.
When I circled around to the back, there wasn’t a single person watching it.
Some might wonder why we hadn’t simply found them and beaten the rebels down.
As I’ve said before,
the UN peacekeeping force’s mission was to prevent the rebels and government forces from fighting.
We served as a net between them,
preventing either side from trespassing into the other’s territory.
Unless we caught them in the middle of an illegal arms deal,
or they fired on UN peacekeepers,
we avoided interfering whenever possible.
That was why we always moved only along our assigned routes,
and merely investigated anything that seemed suspicious a little more closely before calling it a day.
Our Okapi Sting unit simply operated within a somewhat broader range.
.
.
.
I dug into the ground and made a fighting hole.
When I dug through frozen ground in winter back in Korea, I thought I was going insane,
but the soil here was soft, making things much easier.
After a while, I had made a fairly decent fighting hole.
Now all I had to do was wait here.
While waiting, I took a bowl of naengmyeon out of my inventory and ate it.
Naengmyeon tasted especially delicious after hard labor.
For a moment, I considered opening a naengmyeon business in the Congo,
but after realizing how little these people earned, I gave up immediately.
Ah!
Some might wonder if I shouldn’t be at the ADF’s base when M23 attacked them.
But as I’ve repeatedly said,
I didn’t care in the slightest whether they fought among themselves or not.
However, M23 would probably have to make a large-scale movement to attack the ADF,
which meant that only a small number of men would likely remain to guard this base.
The question was whether Derek Meyer would follow the attacking force or stay behind.
If Derek Meyer followed the attacking force,
I would follow it as well.
And if Derek Meyer stayed behind?
I would remain here too and wait for my chance.
But there was a high probability that he would stay.
Judging from the way he made his booby traps, and his overall style,
Derek Meyer was probably an extremely rigid, unimaginative man.
He had no capacity for improvisation.
He had made the booby trap exactly as we had been taught during training.
If it were me, I would have adapted it a little and killed far more people.
In any case, judging from that kind of personality,
he was highly likely to act according to the manual.
According to the manual, instructors did not participate in combat.
For that reason, I thought he would remain behind.
If he followed them, I would follow him.
If neither option worked, I would wait for the next opportunity.
Either way, this operation would not end until Derek Meyer was dead.
Derek Meyer didn’t know it,
but while looking at M23’s base, I ate naengmyeon and sipped an iced Americano.
If only I’d pitched a tent, it would have been perfect camping. What a shame.
I even had a tent in my inventory.
So I drank my coffee and began keeping watch.
.
.
.
Yaaawn~~
This is boring.
I had been watching the place for an entire day.
To be exact, it had been twenty-eight hours.
M23’s base was extremely busy.
They ran back and forth carrying supplies,
loaded them into vehicles, then unloaded them again.
They were busy among themselves, but there was no visible result.
These bastards.
If they only went through combat readiness drills twenty times a week, they’d become sharp in no time.
What a shame. I couldn’t give them such valuable experience.
Even so, I was comfortable.
I took a hamburger out of my inventory and ate it by myself,
then made myself a cup of instant noodles.
Despite the disguise I was wearing,
they didn’t seem to have the slightest idea that I was here.
No, seriously, they didn’t notice me even though I was right here?
Weren’t they being a little too careless?
They had been so strict about guarding the entrance.
Was it because there was only one way in and out?
But were these bastards not going to attack after all?
They were acting as if they had not a care in the world.
This was becoming a problem.
I ran complicated calculations through my head.
I had to make a plan in case the attack never happened.
I needed to devise my next operation.
I had to kill Derek Meyer no matter what.
That was when it happened.
Someone climbed into the truck at the very front, and soon it began to move.
Countless vehicles followed behind the lead truck.
They were probably heading out to join up with the reinforcements.
Had they been waiting for the reinforcements until now?
It was 4:00 p.m.
By the time they reached the ADF’s base, it would probably be evening or night.
It looked like they were planning a nighttime raid.
Typical of rebels.
Even I, who had no interest in this pathetic little war, had grown bored waiting.
But from the ADF’s perspective, they had been waiting day after day, wondering,
Are they coming? Are they coming? Are they really not coming?
And then the enemy suddenly came crashing in.
A nighttime raid, no less.
That was something worth learning.
But where was Derek Meyer?
After watching for several days, I had seen only one Westerner.
That had to be Derek Meyer.
But Derek Meyer, who had gone into a container, never came back out.
That meant he had stayed behind.
I pressed the timer.
One hour from now, I would begin my attack.
I could attack right away,
but if I did, the force that had gone out might return.
It should take them at least an hour to come back.
I could spend that hour assessing the situation, then attack.
.
.
.
It looked like about thirty men remained.
That was quite a lot.
There had also been guards at the entrance, so that meant there were even more men in total.
Beep-beep-beep-beep. Beep-beep-beep-beep.
The alarm rang.
It was time to get moving.
I quietly rose and headed toward the only entrance.
There, I silently set up a booby trap.
Not one of Derek Meyer’s textbook, Derek Meyer-style booby traps.
A real Korean booby trap.
A booby trap designed not merely to injure the enemy, but to kill them.
What else could I have been doing while staying up all night?
I had spent the entire night thinking about how effective a booby trap would be here.
After quietly setting it up, I climbed into the mountains and took out my sniper rifle.
The TAC-50 Jose had obtained for me.
The most famous, most accurate anti-materiel sniper rifle there was.
I had far too many kinds of ammunition for it as well.
Armor-piercing, incendiary, tracer, armor-piercing incendiary, tungsten rounds, and so on.
But among them, I prepared the round with the lowest lethality.
The M33 standard round.
What if he died from a single shot?
That was why I had prepared the least lethal ammunition.
Even so, that round still had more than ten times the destructive power of a K2 rifle round.
So I had to use it carefully.
I had to make sure Derek Meyer didn’t die in one shot.
Everything was ready.
First, if Derek Meyer came out, I would shoot one of his legs with the sniper rifle.
Then I would go down, clean up the brats with my rifle,
and spit once in Derek Meyer’s ugly face.
What if Derek Meyer didn’t come out?
I would make him come out.
I aimed at the head of one of the rebel bastards wandering around near Derek Meyer.
He would come out when he heard the gunshot.
I steadied my breathing.
I was about to fire when the door of the barracks opened.
A man came out with both hands raised above his head,
and behind him, Derek Meyer slowly emerged with a gun aimed at his head.
Was that man in front Bakambu?
It was Bakambu~
So the two of them really didn’t get along, just as I’d heard.
Come to think of it, this was also Derek Meyer’s only chance to escape.
If he stayed, he would be killed anyway,
so with the base empty, this really was the best time to run.
Oh~~ Just like the manual said.
I paused my attack for a moment and watched the situation unfold.
They could solve their own problems.
I only needed to solve mine.
Derek Meyer was hiding behind Bakambu,
using him as a shield.
It looked like Derek Meyer was trying to move toward a vehicle with Bakambu.
Was he thinking that everything would somehow work out if he could just reach the car?
I had a sniper rifle, you know?
Derek Meyer began moving while hiding behind Bakambu.
He shouted something or other, but I couldn’t hear him clearly.
Then—
Bang. Bang-bang.
Gunshots rang out from somewhere.
It wasn’t me.
The rebels behind Derek Meyer had begun firing.
Wow~ They couldn’t have been more than fifty meters away, and they still missed? Is this for real?
At the sound of the gunfire, Derek Meyer didn’t hesitate.
He put a bullet straight through Bakambu’s head.
Bang-bang.
Then he immediately ran.
Toward somewhere he could take cover.
The remaining rebels began firing all at once at Derek.
Derek returned fire as well, but he was hopelessly outnumbered.
Ah! Fuck.
At this rate, I was going to lose Derek.
I immediately loaded another round.
I put a bullet into each of the rebels’ heads.
Every time I pulled the trigger, another enemy’s head burst apart.
Every time I held my breath, another enemy fell.
Wow~
I had received sniper training, but I couldn’t hit targets this well back then.
The TAC-50 really was a masterpiece.
So that was why the American Sniper had used this rifle.
The rebels seemed bewildered by the bullets suddenly flying in from nowhere.
They stopped their indiscriminate fire at Derek and took cover.
The moment the rain of bullets stopped,
Derek shot out like lightning.
But I had been waiting.
His right ankle.
It was difficult, but I had to hit it.
Bang!
Thud.
What a shame.
I missed the ankle and hit his shin instead.
But I had accomplished what I wanted by aiming for his ankle.
Not kill him, but make him unable to move.
And unable to drive.
With his right ankle practically blown away, Derek crawled toward the rear of a nearby vehicle.
That was the only place he could hide from the bullets.
So I eliminated the rebels who came to kill Derek as well.
I couldn’t let them take him from me.
Bang-bang-bang.
They must have finally realized where I was, because they began firing in my direction.
I had always told them not to shake while shooting,
that even if you moved less than a centimeter while firing, you could still miss the target by more than ten meters,
but they were still shaking.
Their breathing was unstable.
Which meant the bullets weren’t even coming close to me.
I hadn’t even been hiding that hard, but they still couldn’t seem to find me.
I continued taking out the rebels.
More of them kept appearing, one at a time, from somewhere.
Thank you.
It was better for them to come out now than to jump me from behind later.
I could hear the sound of vehicles in the distance as well.
The guards at the entrance must have heard the gunshots and been coming over.
You guys get a booby trap.
BOOM!!!!
The truck carrying the rebels hit the booby trap and exploded.
It overturned on the spot.
This was how you used a booby trap.
Now that the overturned truck and the wounded had to be dealt with, it would be difficult for additional troops to enter.
I had thought only thirty men remained,
but there were more than fifty.
After picking them off one by one with the sniper rifle, I grabbed my assault rifle and headed down.
The way I had organized my inventory according to purpose was paying off.
There were assault rifles, pistols, and grenades all right where they needed to be.
As I descended the hill,
I fired at anyone and everyone, whether they were standing or lying down.
Whenever I was unsure, I threw a grenade.
I didn’t have to worry about running out of weapons.
It wasn’t as if I had paid for them.
When else was I ever going to use them?
So I threw them without restraint.
They exploded one after another.
I kept pumping bullets into the men lying on the ground as well.
I never knew when a bullet might come flying at my back.
There was no harm in being careful.
And so I stood in front of Derek.
“Derek~~”
“Who are you?”
“Your guide.”
“My guide?”
“Yeah. The guide who’s going to escort you all the way to hell.”
“Oh, please. Fuck off!!”
Bang bang bang bang. Click click.
Derek fired at me, but
I was already in hiding,
and perhaps because the pain in his leg was so severe, even those shots were poorly aimed.
“Looks like you’re out of ammo. Don’t you have a spare magazine?”
“Fuck off.”
“Such foul language toward your guide. Keep that up and you might end up in the Avici Hell. Don’t know what Avici Hell is? It’s the highest level of hell.”
“Quit spouting useless crap and fuck off.”
“Come on~ You’re making me feel so unwelcome. I went through all this shit just to meet you. Can’t you at least greet me warmly?”
“What?”
“I taught those Congolese bastards how to catch you, set up booby traps, spread rumors, and I even spent the night here yesterday. I went through hell, I’m telling you. After all that trouble, I finally meet you, and you should at least greet me properly.”
“You’re that instructor?”
“Whoa, my reputation has reached all the way here? I’m honored.”
“You crazy fucking lunatic.”
Derek was still hiding behind the car.
Killing him would be easy, but subduing him was difficult.
He was out of bullets, but you never knew.
He might be hiding a handgun,
or he could have something like a grenade.
So I had to be careful.
I decided to coax him out.
“But are you going to stay there forever? You look badly hurt. Shouldn’t you go to a hospital?”
“Fuck off. I’ll take care of it myself.”
“If you stay right there, you really will die. You put a tourniquet on it, right?”
“Fuck. Why are you doing this to me~~”
Derek Mayer shouted through the pain, his right ankle blown off.
“You’re still talking, so I guess you did stop the bleeding. You’d already be dead if you hadn’t. But you know medical care in the Congo is the worst, right? If you don’t get proper treatment, you won’t just lose the use of your leg—you’ll die immediately. You can survive if we get to the Guardian Unit. So come out quickly. If you leave now, you can live.”
“......”
“If we drive from here, it’ll take a little over an hour to reach the Guardian Unit. I’ve got painkillers. I’ll give you a shot, and when you open your eyes, you’ll have been treated perfectly. Come out.”
“Really?”
“Of course~”
“I’m really coming out.”
“Yeah. Keep your hands up and come out slowly.”
Derek began emerging from behind the car with his hands raised, kneeling.
Without an ankle, he had no choice but to crawl on his knees.
“That’s right, slowly... slowly... Oh, good. Keep coming out.”
Only then did I get my first look at Derek.
Was he around thirty?
A white man with a thick beard emerged from behind the car.
His ankle had been staunched with a belt.
He wasn’t holding a gun.
He didn’t appear to have any other weapons either.
The moment I saw Derek, I thought of my brothers.
I wanted to put a bullet straight through his head, but I held myself back.
At the very least, this bastard had to know why he was dying.
I pulled out my handgun and immediately shot Derek in the shoulder.
Bang.
“Argh~ What the hell~ You broke your pro—”
Derek never got to finish.
I went over and punched him in the face.
I kept beating Derek.
With my fists, with my feet—I hit him with whatever I could.
Just as when I boxed, I didn’t even look at my opponent.
I didn’t need technique or anything else.
I just hit him.
With all my resentment.
I didn’t think my teammates,
my brothers,
would have wanted this from me.
But this was something I had to do.
How long did I beat him?
I pummeled Derek until even I was exhausted.
Derek’s face became a bloody mess.
But I didn’t stop.
I drew my knife.
“Argh!!! Why are you doing this? Just kill me~~”
“Fuck. You’re not going to die a clean death. You have to die eleven times.”
I plunged the knife deep into his left armpit.
“Argh!!”
A pitiful scream rang out.
The only part of him that could move was his left leg.
I made several stab wounds in his leg and abdomen as well.
I drove the knife deep into each of his joints.
“Why the hell are you doing this... You could just kill me.”
“Okapi Sting.”
“Okapi Sting???”
The expression on Derek’s battered face was stained with shock.
“Okapi Sting? They’re all dead.”
“There was one person who didn’t take part in that operation. I survived, and I went through all this shit to catch you.”
“I’m sorry. I said I’m sorry.”
“I’ll accept your apology.”
“Then you’re going to let me live?”
“That might be a little difficult.”
“I’m really sorry. But that was just a job. Business. You know that. Bakambu ordered me to do it, so I had no choice. Try to understand. You’re a soldier too.”
“I understand. That doesn’t mean I forgive you. I hope you’ll understand me as much as I understand you. This is an extremely personal business. Revenge.”
“Ah... No.”
“You’re not even fit to be a soldier. Did the Navy SEALs teach you to help rebels and lay traps?”
“I had no choice either. Okapi Sting was too—”
“Enough. It disgusts me to hear the words ‘Okapi Sting’ coming out of your mouth. I feel like throwing up. Let’s finish this now.”
I took an enormous amount of C4 explosives out of my inventory.
Then I laid them beneath Derek.
“Wh... wha... what are you doing?”
“You must leave nothing behind in this world. You’ll vanish without even a trace of ash.”
His body was already a wreck from the stab wounds.
None of his limbs could move.
He couldn’t resist even if he wanted to.
“When this explodes, even the trace that you ever existed in this world will disappear.”
“I’m going to connect this booby trap to the entrance. If someone enters this base, it’ll go off.”
“If no one comes in, you’ll live in this state forever.”
“Stay alive until then.”
“I’ve staunched your wounds properly. You won’t be able to move, but you won’t die either.”
“I tied you up just in case. It may be uncomfortable, but there’s nothing I can do. Endure it.”
“If Bakambu were here, I would have laid him beside you, but it’s a shame you already killed him.”
Finally, I shoved C4 into his mouth and wrapped it tightly with tape.
He tried to say something, but there was nothing more I wanted to hear.
“Then I’m leaving. Let’s not meet even in hell.”
With those final words, I turned around and left the rebels’ base.
By the time I had circled around to the opposite side of the rebels’ base and was making my way down,
I heard the sound of an explosion in the distance.
And so my revenge came to an end.