A Mercenary's War

Chapter 41: Easily Done

Translated by: kevin1782

Edited by: Isalee

The door that Gao Yang kicked open didn"t have any lock on it. He kicked and the emptiness he felt due to the dearth of obstacle almost sent him tottering, but fortunately, he managed to stabilize his body.

Bursting into the room abruptly in a hustle, what first entered Gao Yang’s line of sight was a few people looking at him stunned. Gao Yang didn’t see clearly how many, but immediately fired at the man nearest to him. It was almost facing to face. One shot and that person"s head immediately became a rotten watermelon that was split open.

Gao Yang just saw a few people. Then he also saw them hurry for their guns. There were a few AK-47s lying askew on the bedroom bed. Gao Yang simply couldn’t count the number of people in time as he just shot at any moving object from time to time.

In desperation, Gao Yang fired the pump-action shotgun at a fully automatic firing rate. There were loud bangs followed by a ka-ta! in every shot. Gao Yang gave everyone a shot each.

A few seconds after, Gao Yang slaughtered all the people in the room red-eyed. They were all blood silhouettes. When he couldn’t find any moving thing, he panted and stopped shooting. It was at this moment that he only noticed the RPD’s (Russian light machine gun) unique gunshots roaring away.

Hearing RPD’s sounds and not the M4’s, Gao Yang’s heart pounded for a second. He turned and ran out of the room. When he reached outside in a flash, he saw Grolev hugging the machine gun and shooting fiercely at Fedor’s bedroom. Although the door had a big hole, it was still closed.

Grolev stopped only when he was done unloading a drum. Gao Yang took that opportunity while Grolev was reloading. He rushed forward and kicked open the bottom half of the door. Almost at the same instant, Hare pushed the upper half of the door open. The two advanced one after another into Fedor’s room.

There were two people lying p.r.o.ne on the bed and were punctured all over, looking like human dice. The wall behind them was filled with blood and bits of meat. They couldn’t be any more dead already. A man curled his body up at the corner where the bullets couldn’t reach. His hands were cupping his head and he was screaming hysterically.

Gao Yang shouted “Clear!” to Grolev. He was still changing drums. Gao Yang went before the delirious man and shouted with a voice louder than the man’s: "Shut up and get up, or I’ll kill you."

It was all in vain, that person still refused to shut up. Tribo pulled Gao Yang back and shouted a few Arabic words. The guy at the corner immediately fell to the ground and stretched out both hands, he didn’t dare to move again.

Gao Yang breathed a few mouthfuls of air and loudly said, "Hare, ask him what’s going on. Gro, you stay on high alert, I’m gonna check next door."

After that, Gao Yang went into another room. It was only then that he was free to check it.

Gao Yang had just killed four people and there were big b.l.o.o.d.y craters on every person. Blood flowed everywhere.

There were nine shotgun pellets in a buckshot sh.e.l.l. The firepower of each round was equivalent to 9mm Parabellum bullets. A shot was equivalent to nine times of 9mm Para bullets. It’d only be weird if they weren’t dead.

Confirming that everyone was totally dead, Gao Yang immediately reloaded his gun. Only then did he look at the four cadavers in the room, all of whom looked like locals but after observing their clothing, it seemed that they were different from the locals. However, Gao Yang couldn’t distinguish what exactly was different. He had zero understanding of the traditions and culture here.

Gao Yang exited the room and spoke to Grolev who was at the banisters, "What happened just now? Why did you directly fire outside the door?"

Grolev burst into a chuckle and lowered his voice. "Your friend kicked twice but didn’t manage to open the door so I pulled him aside and fired directly into the room."

Gao Yang froze, surprised momentarily. He didn’t say anything, but after smiling at Grolev, he turned into the room and spoke to Tribo who was vociferating loudly in Arabic, "How’s it? Asked something outta him? Did they do it?"

Tribo shook his head and said, "This dude said they didn’t do it, I’m still asking the rest."

The guy who was captured was currently kneeling on the floor with a face full of mucous and tears. He looked like he was only twenty years old and was scared witless. He began to say a whole bunch of sentences after seeing Gao Yang enter.

"What did he say?"

"What else? Just things like please don’t kill him and he doesn’t wanna die yet."

Gao Yang nodded and looked at the distressed man. Gao Yang’s face suddenly turned vicious and cruel, before saying, "Hare, ask him who did it. Tell him that if he’s not tellin’, we’re gonna put this son of a b*tch down. Immediately."

With a scary and devilish face, Tribo found the answer they were looking for very quickly after asking a few sentences in Arabic. An organization that marked the nearby streets as their territory had done it. They planned and implemented the killing operation. The purpose of killing Fedor and Malik was none other than money to fund their organization.

Most of the people in that organization were local. Many of them were even people from the streets nearby. Hence they didn’t touch the local shops much. They didn’t kill or murder anyone notwithstanding the extortions made. And since both Malik and Fedor were foreigners, they were chosen as the ‘chickens’ to be slaughtered to warn the other ‘monkeys’ [1].

The head of the organization, Salim, killed Fedor and Malik. There were more than a hundred of them in the organization. They were a.s.sembling themselves in a place two streets away. The young man who was captured explained the reason why he was in Fedor"s shop: he had to take care of the livelihoods of several people next door.

After discovering the reason for killing Fedor, Gao Yang fiercely held back his fury and said to Tribo, "Ask him how many people were next door. I have a bad feeling about this, but I couldn’t tell where this was wrong."

Tribo asked a few words and looked really weird. "Bro Yang, the guys next door are Taliban people, those four wanted to make a bomb here. A dozen other Taliban people were also with this organization. The Resistance actually colluded with the Taliban, Ci Ao! Bro Yang, looks like we got lots to do man!"

Gao Yang was astounded. No wonder he had a feeling that the four dead people next door weren’t dressed up like a local. They were really foreigners and turned out to be the infamous Taliban.

Gao Yang thought for a while and his voice sank before saying, "Ask him where those people are. I think we can’t procrastinate on this any longer. You’ve already seen the Resistance’s fighting ability already. They’re just garbage, but the Taliban aren’t the same. I think those who are here are forces to be reckoned with. We’ve got the advantage if we do a night a.s.sault. Let’s try to get them all tonight with one go.”

Tribo nodded his head and clearly got the location. He then took out a pistol and fired four times in front of the prisoner-of-war’s (POW) frightened eyes and screams.

Seeing that Tribo actually killed the POW, Gao Yang was astonished to the point of speechlessness. Gao Yang said, "I Ci Ao, Hare are you crazy? What are you doing?”

Tribo’s face was tranquil, and after holstering his pistol, he calmly said, "I saw Malik and Fedor’s bodies and didn’t want to leave anyone alive. He also saw our faces so he’d be the root of troubles. Don’t forget, I’ve been working here for almost two years. I don’t want people to know that I did all this. The last reason was that I wanted to experience the P226’s recoil and firepower.”

Hearing Tribo’s words, Gao Yang had nothing to respond back with. He dazedly digested Tribo’s words for a moment before laughing bitterly, "You are right actually, you did the right thing. Since we’re putting our lives on the line in this, we can’t leave trouble lying around. It’s war now, benevolence and compa.s.sion are fatal. However, how can you feel so calm? You don’t feel anything when you kill somebody? "

Tribo shrugged and pointed at his head, replying, "I am almost dying from fear really, my hands are shivering, my legs trembling too, but sooner or later I gotta adapt, right? So I should switch myself to the military mode now. No, it should be the special forces mode that kills without even half a blink. We call it role-playing."

Gao Yang burst into laughter and said, "Come on, role-playing my a*s, that’s a Korean joke [2], your movements are too noisy. Don’t attract the enemy. There are a few AK-47s in the other room. There are many bullets too. You go to the first floor and be on alert, Grolev and I will take the bullets and we will quickly withdraw afterward.”

Tribo patted his M4 and said with a look of disdain, "We have this, what do we need the AK for?"

"Baloney. Useless to you and obsolete to me, but Grolev’s got a use for it! Additional ammo!"

After Tribo went down to secure the first floor, Gao Yang waved to Grolev and soon Grolev entered Malik"s room with him.  He pointed at the few AK-47s and ammunition packs and said, "There are a lot of bullets here, I think you can resupply a little. Oh yes, is your leg fine? Would it affect you if you take the ammo?”

Grolev just shook his head to indicate that his leg was alright. He then took a bullet from the ammunition bag on the bed. Grolev dropped the bullet after a glance, however.

"Forget it, this isn’t made in Russia. I don’t need to know which country made it after reading Arabic on it. As long as the bullets are printed with this text, they’re all rubbish. They all have one thing in common. The bullet sh.e.l.ls are uneven in thickness. When you shoot, the sh.e.l.l may burst and crack, and may even open a hole in it. In short, your gun’s chamber will either explode or get jammed, so if you don’t want this bullet to give you a fake sense of confidence, leave these alone. Further the better. Compared with this type of bullet, the Russian iron sh.e.l.ls made in the 1950s were top quality."

What Grolev said was a lot of invaluable experience. These experiences must have been gained through a ma.s.sive amount of deaths. Gao Yang picked up a bullet and remembered how untouchable bullets like these looked like. He then asked, "So what type of bullets is good?"

Translator’s note(s):