A Mercenary's War

熟人

Chapter 91: Familiar Acquaintance

Translated by: kevin1782

Edited by: Isalee

Green Mamba"s men were more widespread, from the time when the order was given to retreat until the rally was complete, it took ten minutes. Using that time, Gao Yang and the rest of them had already finished their preparations for combat. Green Mamba also used the shortest amount of time to plan the retreat route.

The retreat route was planned to avoid the district under Opposition control as best as they could. Basically, the route was through government-controlled regions, but Green Mamba’s intel was already outdated. The original government-controlled territories might not be in anyone’s hands, but this was already the most suitable route in the shortest time possible for Green Mamba. 

Coleman Company had around fifty people left. Green Mamba split them into three groups. The first ten would be the reconnaissance troop, in charge of scouting and opening up the way. Thirty would be in the middle and ten would be responsible for the rear. They"d each distance themselves out by a hundred meters lest guerrilla attacks destroyed them all.  

The four followed the middle troop’s movement; if the front or the back got attacked, they"d provide support and reinforcements with the middle troop.

After setting off, Gao Yang only walked some distance before he felt pain in his back. He now carried on his back around twenty-five kilograms of ma.s.s, so the pain and the weight stumped his movements.

Apart from Gao Yang and Tribo, the whole troop didn"t suffer any casualties. This was because Coleman"s policy was to send their members out of the battlefield at once when they were injured. As for the battle just now, the French who snuck up on them didn"t leave any survivors.

Gao Yang and the rest had rather uneventful encounters at the beginning. They faced a few shootings that were rather sporadic, causing a man from Coleman"s to suffer light injuries. That wasn’t really counted as much of a threat. The front troop stopped for the first time after twenty minutes of walking.

“There are people battling in front, our path is blocked, do we go with the original route or turn about the bush?”

Hearing the front troop’s report, Green Mamba didn’t hesitate. “Beat around them and raise white flags at the same time to show that we’ve exited battle already. If anybody stops us we shoot. We pa.s.s quickly if no one does. Not our duty now to provide any reinforcements for anyone.”

Gao Yang stood just a small distance from Green Mamba and felt something strange stirring in his heart after hearing Green Mamba’s commands. Waving white flags as they had quit the battle would be really disturbing. But Gao Yang wouldn’t raise any objections towards his actions. They were earning money from the war. If they could leave peacefully then they wouldn’t take additional troubles along with them. What’s more, white flags meant truce and not surrendering for real, it was nothing to be ashamed of.

The reconnaissance troop completed their defense preparation on the route and waited for the troop that Gao Yang was in to pa.s.s quickly. They were at an intersection and the intersection was only six to seven hundred meters away from crossfire-area.

Gao Yang and the rest were going to turn left at the junction to beat around the battlefield. Just as they were getting around the corners of the streets as fast as they could, Tribo used his binoculars to look at both sides of the crossfire during this busy period of time.

After just raising his binoculars to have a look or two, Tribo’s slow steps completely abated. He used the binoculars to look at the two sides and unexpectedly stopped in his tracks.

Seeing Tribo stop completely, Gao Yang was getting anxious. He admonished, “Hare! What the h.e.l.l are you dreaming about?! Get going, quick!”

Tribo put down his binoculars and with a look of astonishment, he eyed Gao Yang. “Bro Yang, how come the people I see over there were a little familiar? It seems like the Somalia people from last time, Ali something. How about you take a look?”

Gao Yang was also somewhat stunned. Though he didn’t believe that things would really be so coincidental, he still walked to Tribo’s side and took the binoculars to have a look.

On one side, the people in the current battle were stationed at the roundabout in the intersection while all the roads from all four sides were taken by the Opposition. However, he couldn’t estimate how many people there were.

Stone fences environed the circular roundabout, and there seemed to be a monument in the middle. When a black person stood up to shoot, Gao Yang saw a seemingly familiar face, but although it looked somewhat familiar, every black looked about the same in Gao Yang’s eyes[1]. Hence, he couldn’t confirm if that person was Ali who had saved them in Benghazi.

Ali invited Gao Yang before for operation but Gao Yang, Tribo, and Grolev got off halfway and didn’t see them ever. And Gao Yang heard that Ali was saying they were gonna continue to fight in Gaddafi’s mercenary troop, making it very likely for them to appear in Misurata.

Grolev and Jin saw that Tribo and Gao Yang had stopped. They stopped too and stood at the side to cover them. Gao Yang waved at Grolev at this time and spoke. “Still remember Ali who saved us in Benghazi? Come and have a look, somebody here looks very much like him.”

Grolev took over the binoculars and said, “Can’t confidently confirm that — wasn’t I unconscious at the time? Didn’t have too deep of an impression of that Ali, but I’ll still have a look.”

He took just a glance or two and Grolev put down his binoculars. He solemnly said, “Didn’t see the Ali y’all were talking about, but I saw Soma, the doctor who examined my wounds. I saw him.”

Gao Yang and Tribo looked at one another and Gao Yang sighed, “That’s right, it’s them for sure, what do we do?”

Tribo hesitantly said, “Rescue? Since they rescued us before, we can’t just watch them burn, man.”

Grolev shrugged, “You’re the corp head, we’ll follow your orders. But my personal input would be to help them.”

Jin also shrugged, “They saved y’all before. If we ignore them, can we even consider ourselves humans?”

Gao Yang immediately spoke, “Okay, consensus reached. Rescue them!”

Just as Gao Yang was talking, Green Mamba who had walked past, stopped and spoke to Gao Yang anxiously. “Hey, what are y’all dilly-dallying for, why not hurry up and get going?”

Gao Yang waved at Green Mamba and said, “Bro, we gotta stay now. The people over there are our friends. We can’t just leave them there, y’all go ahead man.”

Green Mamba took a glimpse and replied anxiously, “Are you crazy? There are at least a hundred people there, what can just the four of you do? I really admire your att.i.tude towards friends, but that’s giving your lives away.”    

Gao Yang laughed bitterly and said, “No choice, gotta try first before knowing if I can do it. If we just run away like that we can’t let our consciences rest easy. No need to say no more, go quickly.”    

Green Mamba sighed and shook his head. “Ram, sorry, sorry brothers, I have got to be responsible for my brothers. Very sorry that I can’t help y’all, all the best, really sorry about this.”   

Gao Yang didn’t have time to bid farewell. He just waved and said, “I feel you bro, you’re shouldering the burden of a couple dozen lives. Alright, go quickly.”

Green Mamba’s face was gloomy as he turned and chased his troop that had left already. Gao Yang on the other hand gestured and waved. “Let’s go!” 

After the order, Gao Yang and the other three pulled out ten meters of distance between each other and moved swiftly forward along the side of the big road.

The Opposition that was still exchanging fires found Gao Yang and his group. Somebody immediately started firing at them. Jin, who was at the front, raised his fist and the four scuttled to the nearest covers.  

Suppressed by firepower without the ability to advance, Gao Yang was burning with anxiety. He immediately raised his gun and fired at a man after aiming. But after the shot rang out the target was still alive and kicking.   

Gao Yang grabbed a handful of dust from the cover he was in and threw it into the air. He saw the dirt get swept away and was disseminated by the wind in a circular motion. The speed was very fast.

The wind speed was very high and thus greatly hindered the advantage far-distance shooting. Especially in the city, where a great amount of infrastructures affected the wind direction. Hence it would become a troublesome, shifting whirlwind for snipers. Or in layman terms, it would be direction-shifting wind. And it had a high velocity.    

Gao Yang shouted straightaway, “Hare, distance proximity! Wind speed!” 

Gao Yang’s marksmanship was better than Tribo’s, but Tribo was faster and more accurate at gauging the distance and reading the wind. Tribo was mainly researching this and all the calculations were almost instinctive reactions.   

Tribo almost gave an answer immediately and shouted, “Five hundred meters, wind speed —around eleven meters per second, considered a strong wind!”   

After obtaining the wind speed, Gao Yang instantly readjusted his aim and fired again. The GPMG gunner suddenly fell to the floor but he didn’t die. He flipped two times on the floor and started crawling. Two people then dragged him and left.

He aimed at his second target and fired again. But this shot didn’t hammer a kill. He was very sure his aim didn’t have any problems, the only reason why it didn’t hit was because the wind changed direction again.   

After trying the third shot and it still didn’t hit the target, Gao Yang cried, “Nope, the wind’s too turbulent and messy. Hare, you stay and cover us. Toad, Big Dog, we three will advance with cover. We’ll fight when we’re closer.”

At this moment the difference between Gao Yang and Tribo could be seen. Though both used precision shooting as the main method of killing and injuring people, Gao Yang was more inclined to shoot precisely and work behind a team. Tribo on the other hand was leaning more towards being a pure sniper who more was inclined to complete the missions alone.

Though Tribo’s current marksmanship still had shortcomings, snipers weren’t defined by accurate shooting. The main missions included surveillance, reconnaissance, sniping important targets, and even anti-material missions. Currently, Gao Yang was stronger than Tribo by a lot, but he couldn’t be like Tribo. Tribo could stay in a spot for a very long period of time without moving at all — until the lethal shot was made.   

Letting Tribo stay was also a helpless decision: Tribo now had almost no battle ability in close-range and hence could only stay far away to provide firepower support that would work sparingly.

Translator’s note(s):