Chapter 39: 39

“Enough, the operation will continue.”

Ten sets of eyes turned towards the captain.

“Captain, did you gather the information?”

At Burimer’s question, the captain nodded his head.

“I did. We are waiting for contact with the Raccoon from the town of Olong.”

His team looked at him with suspicious eyes.

“Don’t think about anything else. We are mercenaries,” the captain reiterated.

Ombuti opened a map.

“Olong is a town below the Bodélé lowlands near the Niger republic. It is 210 kilometers from Cortaro.”

Burimer grabbed his head.

“Ugh, we ran to the east like crazy, and now we have to go back to the west?”

“This is ridiculous, are all the DGSE punks blind?”

The usually quiet Mouris shouted.

Each of the mercenary’s faces stiffened.

The captain couldn’t understand it either.

A week ago, Makumbo’s army went through Kanem to get toward N’Djamena. After hearing the explanation of DGSE’s diversion tactic, they were not persuaded. It didn’t feel right to them. It felt like there were bigger powers at work here.

There was no reason that a raccoon-like Makumbo would risk his safety to loiter around Borkou.

Makombo was obsessed with power. He would never use himself as bait for the safety of humans.

Whoever uttered such nonsense deserved to get his mouth ripped open.

Chad was several times larger than France. Without intel, finding the Raccoon would be like trying to find a grain of barley in a pile of flour. Even if it didn’t feel right, they had no choice but to do as intel directed.

The captain’s state of mind was a complicated mess like the sand winds of the Sahara.

FROLINAT was in disarray.

It was because Team Ratel had to suddenly change their direction.

Team Ratel prepared to attack by staking out three places near Tanga and Chicha. Where the two places bottlenecked, the guards around it were a bit lax. As a result, Team Ratel did not have to waste their energy engaging in a fight.

Luckily, they had avoided a battle, but the danger increased.

The FROLINAT forces were greatly surprised by the battle at Uldi Hamal. They assumed that the main French army had invaded the Sahel.

The FROLINAT army had been forced to Bodélé into Kanem, Tibesti, and Ennedy. As a consequence, Nedeli and Hajare, below Bodélé, were not empty.

The DGSE’s Colonel Boniface called out in delight.

“Miguel, isn’t it incredible?”

“It is incredible. Team Ratel has made a cloister for Nedeli.”

Miguel, the Head of African operations, exclaimed.

Their backdoor operation had worked perfectly. The mercenary team had done their part much more phenomenally than they had hoped for.

“The Racoon hasn’t moved, has he?”

“He’s lying in wait in Nedeli.”

Nedeli was a small city 120 kilometers south of Bodélé. The Racoon was lying in wait here at the moment.

“Is GIGN ready?”

“We have two armies on standby at N’Djamena.”

“Start the operation.”

“Yes, but—”

“Is there a problem?”

When Miguel hesitated, Boniface glared at him with fierce eyes.

“Don’t you think we’ll have problems with Legion Etranger?”

“This is for the country. This is the reason we created a mercenary army. They should pay their dues.”

Boniface was cool-headed. The reason they trained a mercenary army was so that they could be used in conflict areas. They held guns to kill the enemy and had to come to terms that they, too, could die. Mercenaries lived for death.

“Isn’t it a waste to use Black Mamba as a disposable card?”

Black Mamba was one of the few who had received a call name from the French army. It felt like a waste to only use him once.

“If we get Makombo, we can get Chad. If we want to catch the big fish, we have to use the little ones as bait. As long as they have Black Mamba, the mercenary team will not fall easily. Their job is to fight battles, and it is our job to bring in the Raccoon. Black Mamba will be the first Korean to receive the Légion d’honneur Chevalier Award. Of course, it will be a posthumous honor. Haha!”

Miguel got the creeps.

There was a good reason they called Boniface “snake-like.” His nickname was “Serpent.”

“Look here Miguel, they are our DGSE. Men are no different than bullets. After you lodge a bullet into the enemy’s chest, do you feel like you wasted the bullet?”

Miguel shook his head. It was a one-dimensional argument but still persuasive.

The colonel’s words were not wrong, but Miguel felt uneasy.

The strongest killer is Black Mamba if Black Mamba stays alive? Something bothered him greatly about the possibility.

Would Black Mamba remain a mere sardine? Upon leaving the colonel’s office, Miguel shook his head in disbelief.

The two GIGN forces trekked on land to invade Nedeli.

Nobody else knew about the new tactic that had been placed into operation. Even the commander of Legion Etranger had been excluded. Only the DGSE head, Colonel Boniface, knew the truth. To fool the enemy, you must fool your troops. The strategic colonel was succeeding fantastically on both sides.

Team Ratel, unable to know what Boniface was up to, received the DGSE intel and diligently went to Olong.

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If the group gets tracked and followed by the lions, then you must abandon one of them. You must make the abandoned one go an entirely different direction and have them divert the lion away from the main group. Team Ratel was chosen to be the bait.

Once they got close to Bilma, the scenery changed to desert scenery. It was hard to see green, and the swamps and wadis were now dry. Fewer and fewer animals came into view.

“Damn, we have to fill our stomachs with these cans again. Black’s all washed up, too. He’s not even bringing us a lizard.”

Jang Shin muttered. For two days, they were not given meat. Unable to cook, a pleasant pastime for him, he was starting to get stressed.

The desert, like the arctic, was a place that was inhospitable for animals to survive. It was because life’s base, vegetation, was highly limited in such areas.

The vegetation that does survive adapts to the harsh environment accordingly. Like the cacti, saltbush, and creosote Bush, it can be surrounded by thorns, or like the adenium, be poisonous. It was obvious why such few animals existed here.

An animal’s growth is dependent on its ability to gather surplus energy. All animals store surplus energy as fat. In an environment where it is hard to store additional energy, it is a natural progression to evolve towards a smaller build.

In the desert, they had to endure high heat, and so a bigger body would cause them to lose more energy as heat. To maintain a good balance to cool the body, enough water must be consumed.

However, in the desert, water is severely limited. High temperatures and limited water made it difficult for creatures to survive here. Based on natural selection and evolution, the few animals that have survived here had a couple of specific characteristics.

First, their bodies were small.

Because the desert required high energy usage, very few large animals existed there.

Regardless of whether it was mammals, reptiles, or insects, they were all small. With limitations on available food, a large body would be difficult to maintain for survival. Even a motorcycle fuel can wouldn’t last long before melting.

Second, there were few species and few that traveled in groups. Because there were so few opportunities to catch prey, it was impossible to support a group system. Unlike the Savanna hyenas, the desert hyenas did not travel in packs.

Third, the animals had traits that would give them an advantage.

The desert had few living things in it. Because there were so few opportunities to catch food, when the opportunity did present itself, the prey must be caught. Hence, there were a lot of poisonous creatures such as scorpions, rattlesnakes, and the horned desert viper.

Fourth, there were no herbivores. Other than the fact that there was little vegetation in the desert, the habitat itself requires heavy energy usage. It was hard to obtain high energy with only the consumption of vegetation.

The tiger eats over 10 kilograms of food per day. For the tiger to gain the same amount of energy from vegetation as it gets from 10 kilograms of meat, it would have to consume 100 kilograms of vegetation.

In other words, in the desert, it would be impossible to ever feel satiated. Only because he was Black Mamba, was he able to hunt. They had rations available, so why must they eat scorpions and bugs?

“Nimi jotto!”

Emil shouted out Korean curse words of which he didn’t even know the meaning.

The small grains of sand blew in the Sahara wind and suffocated them. Emil had become a fan of Black Mamba and started to repeat Korean curse words.

“At ease!”

The captain raised his hands.

Emil massaged his aching shoulders. He had driven six hours straight through the night.

It was early in the morning, and all his comrades were fast asleep. Black Mamba crept out slowly from his sleeping bag. The chilly Sahel morning crept upon him. He sat on top of a boulder and sat cross-legged so that he could feel the wrath of the hyenas that had broken the team’s morale.

“Damn, do we need a meteor shower?”

It was hard to catch the tail of something you’ve already missed once. Giving up on meditation, Black Mamba grabbed his gun and walked on.

“Bonjour!”

“Oops, Black, make some noise when you walk.”

Mouris, who had been waiting between boulders, jumped in surprise, then put his raised gun back down. Black Mamba always seemed to appear out of nowhere like an illusion. It scared the life out of him several times.

“Excusez-Moi!”

“Just forget it.”

Mouris shook his head as Black Mamba apologized. This guy was not a sniper but an assassin.

Black Mamba waved his hand toward a small figure 30 meters away.

“Burimer, ohhu buahhu (Burimer, you’ve gone through a lot of trouble.)”

Tap— tap— Burimer tapped his code to relay his hello back.

“How do you know the location of Burimer?”

Mouris asked with a confused expression.

His spatial recognition skills far surpassed that of other regular snipers. Mouris, who had little interaction with Black Mamba previously, was highly surprised. He was more impressed by his observational skills than his amazing fighting skills.

“I just know.”

“Damn, he’s not even human.”

When Black Mamba threw him the flask, Mouris smiled.

Mouris enrolled in the 13th foreign army under the firearms platoon. He doubted many times whether Black Mamba was the same human that he was.

Dawn had already come. In three hours, their task would be over. After drinking wine on an empty stomach, his rigid, cold body was able to relax.

“I think I’ll at least go catch a hyena, today. I want to eat fresh meat.”

Black Mamba waved from behind his head as he headed into a forested area. The quiet Mouris broke into a smile. It was a relief that he was a comrade. What if he had been the enemy? He didn’t even want to think about it.

When they got out from underneath the boulder’s shadow, shrubs and herbs started to appear. Whether grass or trees, their roots were covered in the Saharan sand. At the rate the Sahel desert expanded, it seemed that the entire world would soon be covered in sand.

Kyang—

A desert fox popped out of the shrub. The quickly escaping fox slowed as he made eye contact with the humans and glanced up at them. The meat of a fox was a hundred times better than the smelly meat of hyenas.

Black Mamba hesitated as he pulled out his kukri. Two baby foxes popped out behind their mother. The babies ran away with their mother practically rolling. He smiled bitterly. Mouris had requested meat, but he didn’t want to kill a mother fox with babies.

“Huh, what is this? Isn’t it a watermelon?”

Black Mamba shouted in glee. He saw a fruit half-eaten by a desert fox. Although smaller, its green skin with black stripes looked like that of a watermelon.

“Batikh.” Black Mamba would have never known about it, but it was a wild watermelon that grew in southern Africa. When they broke the wild watermelon, its red insides appeared. It was not too sweet and had a lot of water. It was a bit salty even. It was no comparison to the sweet and delicate watermelons he had eaten with his father by the bridge.

“It is interesting, even if it doesn’t taste good.”

Black Mamba lifted the batikh and stared at it curiously like a child.

“If you think about it, it isn’t all that interesting, either.”

Watermelons originated in southern African. During the Chosun dynasty, African watermelons had been first introduced to Korea after being imported to China.

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