As the nuclear technician had said, the distance from the intersection to the control room was not far.
But they could not arrive immediately. The enemy’s resistance was fiercer than expected.
A steel door had descended midway down the passage, blocking their way, and behind it the soldiers guarding the control room put up a violent resistance.
“Demolition team, breach the door!”
Following the unit commander’s order, the operators blew apart the steel door with plastic explosives and showered the resisting guards with bullets and grenades.
Tutatatat! Kwaang! Kwaang!
The guards fought hard as well, but they could not stop the special forces.
Of course, if their goal had been to buy time, one could say they had succeeded, but during the time they bought with their lives, no comrades came to help them.
Instead, a scorching heat approached from behind the Americans.
“Ah, that’s hot. What’s with this heat?”
The nuclear technician, who had been following at the rear, was startled by the heat he felt and looked back.
Flames were surging from the back of the passage.
That had clearly been where the intersection was, but now it was buried in fire, and the passage could no longer be seen.
The flames had not been there just moments ago.
“What on earth is going on?”
As the nuclear technician muttered, the engineer beside him shook his head and said,
“Maybe the magician did something again?”
It sounded like something said at random, and though he wanted to refute it, the nuclear technician could not think of anything to say.
Watching the surging flames, the unit commander frowned and shouted to his subordinates.
“Hurry! Seize the control room as quickly as possible!”
Just as his subordinate had said, the flames were certainly the work of the man who had called himself a magician.
With those flames there, it seemed they would not have to worry about their rear, but he became even more uneasy.
They had received a great deal of help, but this Mr. Hyeon was ultimately an outsider.
Moreover, he was a human who used unbelievable power.
No, it was not even certain whether he was human.
They could not continue to be led around by someone like that.
To prevent that, they had to finish the operation quickly.
They pushed forward while pouring out all the firepower they had, and before long they reached the entrance to the control room.
In front of the control room door, a thick steel wall had come down.
It was the final gate protecting the control room.
The operators were troubled by the steel wall, which was thicker than expected, but they could not retreat here.
“To break through that steel wall, I think we’ll have to use the explosives we were saving for the retreat.”
The explosives the engineer spoke of were the plastic explosives they had prepared to collapse the passage during their withdrawal.
If they used those explosives here, it might create problems later when sealing off the base, but that did not mean they could avoid using them.
“The passage won’t collapse, will it?”
“If we adjust the direction of the blast, the passage should be fine.”
“Then proceed.”
The engineer set the explosives on the steel wall.
He plastered several plastic explosives all over the steel wall, then retreated a good distance back with the unit members.
After the unit members had withdrawn behind the breached steel door, the engineer detonated the explosives he had set.
Kwaaaaaang!
Along with a tremendous explosion, vibrations reached all the way to where the operators were.
Dust and stone powder flew up with the flames, briefly obscuring their vision, but they were soon able to see the result.
Fortunately, the steel wall could not withstand the force of the plastic explosives.
A hole large enough for a person to pass through had been made in the center of the steel wall.
Once they passed through the steel wall, there was nothing difficult left.
There were officers and soldiers managing the control room inside as well, but they had never experienced real combat.
“All clear! No survivors!”
The special forces operators were able to deal with them without taking any casualties.
After the battle ended, the nuclear technician entered the control room and, seeing the bodies of the soldiers lying on the floor, wore a gloomy expression.
It was the first expression of its kind he had made since entering the facility.
When the engineer beside him looked at him in puzzlement, he explained the reason as if making an excuse.
“The soldiers who managed the control room were people I’d known for a long time.”
At his words, the Americans silently moved to find their own tasks.
The combat troops cleared the bodies and checked whether there were any other entrances, while the engineer set up the EMP bomb with the soldiers who had carried it in.
Finally, the unit commander checked the screens at the front of the control room.
It seemed the soldiers who had been here had destroyed all the control devices, but they had not touched the screens.
By looking at the screens, they could see the entire situation of the base.
They could see soldiers on the surface running around in confusion at the sound of the siren, and the guns of the armored vehicles that had gone outside were also aimed at the base entrance.
On the screens showing the lower underground levels, heavily armed soldiers could be seen running toward the stairs.
The screens for the other floors were all intact like that, but many of the screens showing the floor where the control room was located had gone dark.
On the screens that had not gone dark, there were still soldiers engulfed in flames or burned to death.
They were the soldiers who had been swallowed by the flames he had seen a short while ago.
The unit commander scanned those screens indifferently, then frowned when he saw a group of darkened screens off to one side.
Below the darkened screens was written “TEL 儲藏庫.”
He did not know what the Chinese characters behind it meant, but he immediately understood the English.
TEL meant Transporter Erector Launcher.
That meant the place shown on the darkened screens was where the nuclear missiles were being stored.
As the unit commander checked the screens, he found one screen that had not yet gone dark.
On that screen, nuclear missile vehicles filled the view.
The unit commander let out a sigh of relief.
For some reason, the feed had gone out, but there was no problem with the missiles.
However, strangely, no people could be seen on the screen.
An empty storage bay where only missile vehicles remained.
On one side of that screen, the figure of a person briefly appeared.
That person was clearly someone the unit commander knew.
‘The magician?’
Even for the unit commander, the title came to mind on its own the moment he saw him.
At that moment, the man on the screen looked at the screen.
Puk!
The next instant, the screen turned black.
Glaring at the darkened screen, the unit commander shouted to his subordinates.
“How’s the EMP preparation going?”
“It’s almost finished.”
“Hurry! Detonate it immediately!”
“Ah, yes, sir!”
At the unit commander’s shout, his face hardened, the subordinates moved frantically.
The EMP bomb was a delicate explosive, so there was much to prepare, but they omitted all the intermediate steps and immediately set the bomb’s timer.
Time remaining: one minute.
After setting the timer, the operators immediately left the control room.
“We’re going straight to the nuclear missile storage bay. If anyone blocks our way, whoever they are, regard them as an enemy and eliminate them!”
At the unit commander’s words as he ran down the passage, the operators looked at him with startled eyes.
That was because there was only one person in this base who might be considered an enemy.
And as they raced down the passage and entered the intersection, the EMP bomb went off.
Kwaaaaaang!
Perhaps because it was an EMP bomb, the power of the explosion itself was not great.
But the effect was certain.
Pupupupuk!
All the lights in the passage went out, and all the electronic devices the operators had were ruined.
The operators, who knew the effects of an EMP bomb, took out glow sticks in place of their broken flashlights and snapped them in half.
Light sprang from the broken sticks and illuminated the surroundings.
Because the walls had been covered in flames, they had looked unpleasant even when it had been bright, but under the light of the glow sticks, the passage walls looked extremely eerie.
But the unit commander paid no attention to those walls and urged the operators on.
“Hurry! Move out again!”
At the commander’s words, the operators began running down the passage toward the storage bay.
***
Flaaash!
A bright light bloomed from the tip of the spear.
The pitch-black storage warehouse grew bright again.
I looked around the illuminated warehouse and said to Sopeu,
“They detonated the bomb faster than I expected. If it had been even a little later, things could have gotten troublesome.”
The bomb had gone off far sooner than I had anticipated.
Either the control room’s defenses had been weak, or the special forces were more capable than I had thought.
As always, Sopeu took issue with my words.
[If you hadn’t wasted time turning off the surveillance devices, there would have been no need to worry about being late.]
It was not wrong, but I could not simply leave the CCTVs intact.
“But I couldn’t leave magic on the footage.”
It might have been erased by the EMP bomb, but the backup location for the footage could have been outside the bomb’s range.
The United States had agreed to turn a blind eye to me taking the nuclear missiles, but having it remain on video was a completely different matter.
[You know such things well, at least.]
“I heard it from my brother.”
By the light flowing from the spear tip, I checked the nuclear missile vehicles around me.
As expected, the nuclear missiles and vehicles I had chosen were completely fine despite the EMP pulse.
The reason those nuclear missiles were intact was because of the shield spread out around me right now.
This shield was one that Sopeu had modified.
Sopeu had further modified the shield, which he had altered to block electromagnetic waves, so that it could even block an EMP pulse.
There were dozens of nuclear missile vehicles in the vast storage bay, but only six vehicles were inside the shield.
It was not a large number, but this was enough.
That was because these six nuclear missiles were all the hydrogen bombs in this place.
Since the EMP pulse had passed, there was no need to maintain the shield.
I removed the shield and took a box out of my backpack.
A huge hole formed above the box, and I began putting the vehicles into the hole.
The American soldiers entered the storage bay several minutes after that.
The operators, who rushed into the storage bay in a state of tension, aimed their guns at me as I leaned against the wall beside the door.
It was a puzzling reaction, but I raised both hands to show that I had no intention of fighting.
They were opponents I could easily subdue, but since things had ended well, there was no reason to do so.
The operators wore troubled expressions, but they did not lower the muzzles pointed at me.
After the soldiers had entered and taken positions, the unit commander and the nuclear technician entered the storage bay.
The unit commander looked at me with my hands raised and at my glowing spear, then surveyed the inside of the storage bay.
After confirming the dozens of nuclear vehicles stopped dead by the EMP pulse, as well as the empty space off to one side, he asked the Chinese nuclear technician,
“Are there any problems with the nuclear missiles?”
Since the EMP had gone off, he had to confirm it with a person.
At the unit commander’s words, the nuclear technician also checked the storage bay.
As he looked around the storage bay, his gaze stopped on the empty space, and then he glanced at me.
With my heightened senses, I could feel his expression change several times.
It seemed he had realized the nuclear missiles were gone.
‘This is a little troublesome.’
I had intended to insist I had not seen anything, but if he knew the hydrogen bombs had disappeared, it could only become annoying.
While I was wondering what to do, the nuclear technician Chen Ming spoke.
“There are no problems. The number of nuclear missiles is unchanged.”
At his words, the unit commander let out a great sigh.
Then he apologized to me.
“I’m sorry. I saw you on the storage bay screen, so I suspected you.”
[You were late breaking the CCTV.]
Ignoring Sopeu’s criticism as always, I accepted the unit commander’s apology.
Then I looked at the nuclear technician who had lied.
He was now checking the stopped nuclear missiles with the engineers.
Before returning, I would have to find out why he had told that lie.
In any case, in order to use the hydrogen bombs, I needed to have a talk with him.
Only now, it seemed I would have to make that conversation a little more cordial.
Nuclear Base (4)