Chapter 534: The City of Brule
The next day, Xiao Luo continued moving toward the City of Brule at first light. He expected to reach in an hour.
Brule, like Stantine City, did not escape the ravages of war. However, it was not a primary node within its transportation hub, and therefore it was not occupied by Libyan rebel fighters or the government army troops.
“Is the woman found?”
In an abandoned warehouse in the City of Brule, a middle-aged man, some forty-five or forty-six, looked at a map of the city that hung on the wall with his hands behind his back. He was wearing a black Chinese tunic suit and a pair of gla.s.ses. He was as tall as a pine tree and burly like a bear. He had the naturally imposing bearing of a leader when he spoke.
Two young foreigners were standing beside him, both clad in camouflage fatigues–one of them had a beard, and the other was clean-shaven. They were of similar build and had bright, piercing eyes. Their sleeves were rolled up, revealing tattoos on their arms. One of them had a tattoo of a bipedal winged dragon, bearing its fangs and ready to tear its prey into pieces, and the other man had a skull tattoo that looked eerily ferocious, like a monster that came from h.e.l.l.
The bearded man straightened up respectfully when he spoke. “No, Boss, not yet. One can very easily find a place to hide in this city; it takes time to canva.s.s the area,” he said.
The other man pitched in and said, “Yes, the woman has gone into hiding like a rat, but she will not escape. We have released a dozen bloodhounds, and I believe we will soon get news of her.”
“Hmm.”
The middle-aged man turned around, and his response was almost like a sigh.
“Boss, what should we do with the woman’s bodyguards?”
The bearded man pointed at four burly men, each of them tied to a pillar in the warehouse.
They were all severely tortured. One of them had his nails pulled out, leaving all his fingers bloodied; one of them had the flesh on his arms sliced off, exposing his bones; one of them had his nose cut off, and the last man had three or four stab wounds in his body.
Sarah Mich.e.l.le had ten bodyguards who were all military veterans. Most of them died protecting Sarah Mich.e.l.le, but the four surviving bodyguards were severely tortured and interrogated to determine Sarah Mich.e.l.le’s whereabouts.
When the four of them heard what would happen to them, they stared at the middle-aged man blankly like an accused who stood in the courtroom helplessly waiting for the court’s judgment at the end of a criminal trial.
The middle-aged man glanced at the four men casually with his sharp eyes. “They no longer have any value. Why even bother to keep them alive?” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
The bearded man nodded in acknowledgment and then gestured to his subordinates. After getting the green light, his four men took out a short knife each and approached the four men ominously, fixing them with murderous looks in their eyes.
The four men knew that they would soon be dead and were about to meet their creator, and one of them yelled hysterically at the middle-aged man. “Khun Sa, the Mich.e.l.le family will not let you get away with it. You will soon face the wrath of the Mich.e.l.le family!”
“Good, I’ll be waiting.”
Khun Sa gently ma.s.saged his wrinkled forehead and replied casually.
The four mercenaries, holding short knives at the ready, stood in front of the four bodyguards. Without warning, they grabbed the bodyguards’ hair with their left hands, exposing their throats completely, and slashed their throats with the short knives using their right hands as if they were slaughtering chickens and ducks. The four bodyguards of the Mich.e.l.le family tried to struggle, but they died a slow death in pain and despair.
“Boss, according to the information we obtained from the Libyan rebel fighters, an NSA soldier was sent by the Hua Nation to protect our target/ The soldier’s name is Mie, and the Red Scorpion and Cobra teams were both killed by him. I cannot wait to meet him and kill him!” The bearded man expressed his hatred without even looking at the four dying bodyguards.
The clean-shaven man who had a pale face said, “Let’s not finish that b*stard off too quickly. We’ll give him a slow, painful death!”
Khun Sa looked at his men with a solemn expression on his face. “I want him dead more than any of you, but you gotta do things step by step,” he said, “Dragon, Skull, you have to remember the lesson learned from Red Scorpion and Cobra. They failed their mission mainly because they underestimated the enemy. This time you should not, under any circ.u.mstances, let your guard down. Treat that d.a.m.n b*stard as your strongest enemy. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Boss!”
The two men straightened up stiffly and answered respectfully.
***
When Xiao Luo pulled up one kilometer away from the City of Brule, he parked his vehicle at a quiet corner out of sight from searching eyes. He carried firearms with him, dived into the river that encircled the city, and swam unnoticed underwater across to the City of Brule. He knew that the enemy he would face here was not the Libyan rebel fighters, but one he made in Jiangcheng–Khun Sa.
Compared to the Libyan rebel fighters, the mercenaries were highly trained and competent killers, and they would undoubtedly have snipers within their ranks. It was likely one hidden sniper was already a.s.signed to every entrance of the City of Brule. It was extremely dangerous for Xiao Luo to march into the city without taking precautions. That was the reason he chose to swim across the river and enter Brule City covertly.
Walking on the streets in the City of Brule, desolation was everywhere, and the degree of destruction was no less than Stantine City.
To Xiao Luo, the mission came second. The most important thing was to find and kill Khun Sa, even at the risk of compromising his mission. He had already decided the death sentence on Khun Sa when the latter sent mercenaries to a.s.sa.s.sinate his family. He could still forgive Khun Sa for only trying to kill him, but he would personally send whoever was trying to hurt them to h.e.l.l when it came to his family. He would do it even if it was the Jade Emperor, not to mention a mere leader of a band of mercenaries.
But the problem now was whether Khun Sa and his a.s.sociates were still here in the city.
As Xiao Luo moved further into the heart of Brule City, he observed the surroundings very closely. Anything that happened within a hundred-meter radius around him could not escape his attention.
Suddenly, a woman stuck half of her head out from a garbage container in a dump somewhere in the city. She looked from left to right, and when she ascertained that the coast was clear, she lifted the lid and climbed out. She gagged and coughed, choking for fresh air.
The area was filled with garbage bags of all kinds of colors, and there was rotting matter everywhere, attracting swarms of flies.
The woman’s clothes were in terrible condition and covered in filth, but it was apparent that she was wearing a camouflage smock. She had shoulder-lengthed blonde hair, her face was relatively clean, and greyish blue eyes. She had panic and horror written all over her face.
WOOF! WOOF! WOOF!
Before she could even catch her breath, she heard dogs barking from a distance. In shock and desperation, she hurriedly climbed back into the garbage container filled with buzzing flies. The moment she pulled the cover down, the stink of the rotting garbage overwhelmed her senses.