Chapter 106: 106

Ssssst—

Would even a devil’s cry be as horrible as this?

The sandstorm covered their world.

“Pull the tarp over you and burrow underneath the camel’s belly!” Ombuti’s shout was carried away by the wind.

Black Mamba, who recalled the way he had been overrun by grasshoppers, immediately borrowed the camel’s protection.

Woooooo— Woooo—

The sound of the wind and the weight of the sand pressing upon him forced him to recall the moment he was attacked by pebbles for an hour in a bout of deja vu.

Sssssss—

The storm was as fast as it was fierce and ended quickly.

Sand-covered men began to wriggle out from underneath the camels.

“F*cking hell.”

Gargling and sputtering, Emil began to spit out the rough sand without a thought.

“Metallic elements are mixed into the northern Sahara’s sands. Your hair condition will become worse with an increase of testosterone, didn’t you know?”

“What, I’ll become bald?” Surprised at what Bell Man had said, Jang Shin took out his comb.

“There’s nothing that leads to a human’s worthlessness more!”

All Black Mamba could feel after climbing out of the sand was emptiness. Humans were nothing but creatures who hid underneath the sand, even when acting out, with a single sign of a sandstorm.

The huge amount of sand began to thin. The stars were revealed as though a curtain had been drawn. Soon, the skies were filled with stars once more. It was the scene of stars which reached from horizon to horizon. The endless scene was brief, but something that engraved itself into the network of neurons in their brains. How minor was the humans’ fight, when they were as small as dust and unable to live beyond a hundred! Black Mamba’s resonance wavered automatically.

The fake camel caravan arrived in Paya after two in the morning. They had wasted six hours trying to cross 118 miles due to the four inexperienced riders who fought with their camels the entire way.

They were chilly to the point that their shaking looked pitiful. When night fell in a desert, the temperature decreased exponentially. The Sahara’s winds, which were below 50 degrees, stole their body heat away continuously. While Black Mamba enjoyed the Sahel night atmosphere, the mercenaries who had fought against the cold with bitterness took a turn for the worse. Humans definitely had to be talented in order to do anything.

Ombuti led the group to a large brick storage house at the edge of Paya. It was a proper building made of red bricks. One side of the wall had collapsed, but it was large enough for ten camels and more. It was also free from outsiders’ eyes, as it was built far from the other locals’ houses.

“You have an amazing place.”

“It was thanks to my Ummah friends. This is a date palm warehouse that was built in the colonial era.”

Chad was riddled with outside influences ever since it declared its independence in 1960. It didn’t have the money, time, or skills to construct new buildings, so all the buildings that remained standing in Paya were from the colonial times. Only the poor regions multiplied after its independence. In that perspective, Korea was an amazing country.

“Jang Shin, I need hot soup.”

At Mike’s urging, Jang Shin moved his frozen body. Jang Shin had been given the cook’s position, although it wasn’t his specialty. It was because of the common misconception that Chinese people were all cooks.

Jang Shin began to boil the soup for his frozen comrades. Whether it was fortunate or not was up in the air, but Jang Shin was a creative cook.

He sliced the camel meat in pieces and added several other preserved foods to make the soup. A lizard’s head and leaves floated around in it, while a caterpillar revealed its flaky form.

“Ha, I finally feel like I’m alive again. Thanks, Jang Shin.” The captain raised his thumb as he blew on the hot soup.

“There aren’t any explosives in there, right? Hehehe!” Emil joked as he chewed on the caterpillar.

Jang Shin was perhaps the most indispensable member of the mercenaries who were abandoned in the Sahel. He never threw away the plastic packs and plastic spoons that came with their supplies. He didn’t even throw away the bullet boxes.

He often grabbed plants, insects, and reptiles and even stored smelly caterpillars and herbs in the containers. Like the southern Chinese man he was, he fried, steamed, and cooked dishes using insects and reptiles as ingredients without reservations.

No one complained about the scorpion stir-fry, lizard meat, fried beetles, or ant stir-fries that Jang Shin handed out. They were just glad that Jang Shin didn’t hand out worm pastes or fried flies. Even Ombuti raised both hands in a surrender at Jang Shin’s creative and provoking ingredients. Even the wild cook of the bridge, Mu Ssang, lowered his head before the true master.

Their roles had also increased with the loss of more members.

Mike took care of the supplies, while Bell Man acted as the captain’s advisor. Emil and Jang Shin took care of the spare work and cooking, respectively. Black Mamba was in an entirely different category of his own.

Around four in the morning, Ombuti returned from his meeting with the Ummah.

There were many people from several levels of society in the Ummah he was involved in. The information he gained was immense.

Ombuti began his explanation while drawing with a stick on the ground.

“Habib’s mansion is located in Ecole Mosque. It’s a 30-minute walk from here. The mansion’s lands are over 15,000 square feet. Its main house is a white two-story Romanesque building. There’s a large open corridor near the front of the two-floor building. The second from the right is Habib’s office and bedroom.

“There are two other buildings opposite the main building.

“One of the single-story buildings is used as the living space for subordinates and guards, while the smaller one is used as housing for the house managers. There are guards living on the first floor of the main house, too. There’s a swimming pool and shooting range inside the mansion. The walls surrounding the mansion, made of red brick, are ten feet high. The front gate is made of 0.7-inch iron plates. The sentries make rounds every 15 minutes. There’s a 690-foot-wide grass field from the outer wall to the mansion. These aren’t good conditions for an invasion.”

“What an amazing mansion. That field of grass is going to be a problem.”

“We just need to get all the guards first,” Mike shot down Bell Man’s worries.

“What’s the number of guards?”

“There’s 70 guards living there and around ten guard dogs. There’s a machine-gun post on the roof of the main building and another at the front of their driveway.”

“Wow, there’s no other fortress like it,” Jang Shin exclaimed.

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“He’s an evil man, so he cares much about his own safety. Habib is a confirmed racist. He thinks of anyone other than Arabs as slaves.”

The captain analyzed the ‘combat powers’ of the Ratel team and Habib’s side. Combat power was a theory that the German-invading forces came up with during WWII. It measured the amount of compatibility the invading forces had with the mission.

It decided the compatibility in consideration with all of the following components: region, natural occurrences, time and place, capability of close-range invasions, and more.

A battlefield combat power analysis attempted to establish an optimal operation plan by comparing the allied combat power and the enemy’s combat power by considering the terrain and natural conditions. In conclusion, the combat power analysis was made to obtain the maximum effect at the lowest cost.

The captain had made his name at the officer school and become a veteran through many Deuxieme Rep lessons and battles. He was someone who had achieved the height of analyzing combat powers.

He had suffered through several crises due to his straightforward nature, but he was a talented commander. The Ratel team’s survival had been thanks to Black Mamba’s combat ability and the captain’s cold-blooded battlefield analysis.

There were many strategists who could use the surrounding nature in a better method and alter the time and place to one’s advantage to lead a disadvantageous battle to victory. One such representative battle was general Yi Sun Shin’s Battle of Myeongnyang and Zhuge Liang’s Battle of Red Cliffs.

Yi Sun Shin and Zhuge Liang were both talented combat power analysists.

On the other hand, the Gyeongsang army’s left commander, Huwan, and right commander, Minyoung, who had died in the Battle of Ssang Ryeong, were the worst commanders and sucked at battlefield analysis. The Battle of Ssang Ryeong was a good example of a blind battle, where the invader had no knowledge of the enemy, ally, terrain, or weather.

The captain clapped his hands.

“Attention. We’ve already killed enemies in the hundreds. These 70 scarecrows aren’t a problem. Their reinforcements are the problem. How much time do you think we’d have until the reinforcements move?”

“The Tibesti Region is under Tombye’s authority. Tombye, who’s the chairman of the dovish faction of the National Liberation Front, resides in his mansion at Paya Largo. There’s a second command post near the outer airfield. It’ll take thirty minutes for their reinforcements to move out after making contact.”

Ombuti’s answer made the captain’s face brighter.

“That would be enough. How’s the security around here?”

“If you’re talking about the FAP’s control, it’s good. There’s no one who acts out under their rule, after all. There’s not a single person out on the streets after sunset,” Ombuti said snidely.

“That’s the desired situation.”

“Captain, let’s make a plan. Too many words cause too many dreams, and too many dreams make a plan go to ruin.” Mike hurried.

“Yes. But we should first decide whether we should shatter them in a grand gesture or just take out Habib.”

“Since we’re doing this to divert their attention, we should break as much as we can. We should shatter it so that they come to their senses,” Jang Shin said, befitting his nickname as the Explosions Devil.

“Those who agree with Jang Shin’s plan?”

Everyone nodded.

Black Mamba smiled secretively and didn’t open his mouth.

The captain had purposefully led the team’s consensus to causing a ruckus. In a logical plan, he would have silently assassinated Habib by himself and sent a box of grenades as a gift.

But he understood the captain’s intentions.

Habib was a great sacrificial gift. The captain was attempting to relieve the grudges of their team members who had died.

Their cause may have been too weak for this to be called revenge.

While the Ratel team had suffered five losses, the enemy had suffered over a thousand deaths. Humans were emotional creatures as much as they were logical. One’s own swelling finger was more painful than another’s chest pain. Numbers were just numbers. That was why wars never ended in the human world.

“Great, let’s smash things up. Jang Shin, how much extra support fire do we have?”

“We have six rounds of 3.3-inch M2CGs, 20 grenades, and 40 rifle grenades.”

“And a Soviet grenade launcher?”

“We’re out of those grenades.”

“Hm!” At Mike’s answer, the captain turned to look at Black Mamba, who was smiling.

Black Mamba was someone who understood his thoughts like a mind-reader.

Their supporting firearms had turned into a burden thanks to their vehicles breaking down. Since they couldn’t throw them away, they could bury them all in there and recover the back-up weapons they’d hidden at Tanga.

“That’s enough. We’ll bury everything and run to Tanga. Jang Shin and Bell Man will be Alpha. Jang Shin, you’ll break the main building and guard posts with a recoilless cannon and break the front gate. Bell Man, you’ll cover Jang Shin with a machine gun. Bravo will be me and Mike. Mike and I will throw grenades at the guards’ blocks. Gamma will be Black Mamba and Emil. Black Mamba, you’ll focus on long range shooting. Emil will wipe out the escaping guards with your Minimi. We’ll all pour in with the cannon’s front gate gunning as our signal. Black Mamba, you should clear the machine gun front first. Any questions?”

“Do we enter the mansion?” Mike asked with an agreeable air.

“No entry. We’re snipers, not stealth agents. Black Mamba will snipe while we support, so everything will be wiped out cleanly without the need to enter.”

Ombuti spoke up suddenly. “Captain, I want to participate, too.”

Surprised gazes swung onto Ombuti.

“The b*stards who wiped out my village are Habib and Musta. The b*stard who raped and killed my wife and daughter was that Habib. I’ve been dreaming about killing those b*stards for the past five years. Musta was killed by Wakil in Uldi Hamarl. Today, with Habib’s death, my wife and daughter will be able to go to Allah’s side in peace. Please.”

“No. If something happens to you, we’ll all lose our way across the desert and shrivel up to die. And, as I said last time, Ombuti, you’ll only be a distraction on the battlefield.”

The captain cut off his plea without a second thought.

Ombuti’s head lowered in disappointment. He also found his intention to join the battlefield quite improbable. It would be like a jackal entering a lion’s herd.

Black Mamba spoke up. “Ombuti, I understand your wish to kill your enemy yourself. I will drag Habib to you.”

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