Chapter 57 - The Missing Mole
“The head of the northern army is Habib. Now that Wakil has beaten Ahmud and Musta, my only remaining enemy is him.”
Ombuti didn’t know that Colonel Ahmud had managed to avoid the angel of death like a cockroach.
“Habib is staying low at Paya, isn’t he? That is not our assigned region.”
At Mouris’ words, Ombuti gritted his teeth.
“That bastard is the enemy of all citizens who live in the northern three states of Chad. I plan on begging on my knees in front of Wakil. He will not be able to avoid the touch of Azrael.”
Mouris was a faithful Muslim but found it difficult to understand Ombuti’s logic. Habib was a large fish. Besides being a hard target, there was no assurance that Black Mamba would kill him. Where was that boundless trust coming from?
Mouris started to feel playful.
“Why would Black Mamba go through such troubles? He has nothing against Habib personally.”
“Azrael is someone who exists anywhere between this world and the underworld. If he wishes to erase a name, Habib has no choice but to die.”
“Let’s say that Black Mamba did manage to get rid of Habib. Then how would you repay this debt?”
“The finest respect a warrior of the Tuareg can show is accepting someone’s strength and becoming their slave. I am Wakil’s slave. The owner has a responsibility to avenge the slave’s enemy.”
“Oh, my god!” Mouris gripped the back of his head at Ombuti’s forceful opinion.
He, too, was from a small tribe of Algeria, but he still found the Tuareg’s culture difficult to understand.
“It’s the town hall.” Ombuti pointed at the wooden house in the center.
“It smells like blood.”
Mouris shoved Ombuti’s shoulder with him, pressing their bodies into the ground.
An eerie silence came from inside the village.
Not a head of a dog or goat could be seen.
“S***, did he go off again?”
Mouris kicked his way towards the building in a low sniping position.
He barged into the hall, breaking down the door made of reeds, and immediately flinched in surprise.
“Ombuti! Come look at this,” Mouris shouted.
Within the 70 meter hall, there was a sight of an unspeakable scene spread out in blood.
“Ah!” Ombuti’s eyes widened.
Around thirty or more corpses lay entangled in each other. They were all women and children. It was the scene of the holocaust within a small cage.
Even the mercenaries who entered the village by Mouris’ call couldn’t hold back their surprise.
“What is this?”
At Black Mamba’s question, Ombuti answered, “It’s the doing of those FAP. There’s nothing different to be said about the government’s army, but they use a different method. This is the signature of the northern army. They scare people, just to shoot at their back, or gather them in one place to massacre.”
“And the reason?”
“To train new soldiers.”
“Um, any survivors?”
“Shouldn’t be. As you can see, there are none around the age of ten. They’ve kidnapped them and shot the others. They use the boys as receivers of bullets, and the girls as receivers of semen.”
“Receivers of semen? F****** bastards!”
He grit his teeth.
Black Mamba detested rapists the most within humankind. It had been left as a deep wound through his concerns into his mother’s disappearance, and as a crime unjustly blamed on him. Black Mamba hated rapists more than murderers.
This was another world of animals. Black Mamba’s shock after witnessing the sight of a killing field, something he had only heard of, was huge. He had heard of the villagers’ slaughter scenes until his ears bled, but there was a difference between hearing and seeing. They were not human.
The purpose of the FAP was driving out foreigners.
The problem was that there were other tribes intermingled with the recruits for the forces against outsiders. To them, everyone else instead of their own tribe members were outsiders.
Other tribes didn’t have the sense of nationality, either. They created a holocaust without hesitation. It was, to a point, their tribe and no other people. It was the greatest tragedy of Chad and a common problem of the new African nations in general.
A purpose cannot validate the method. They were those who had thrown the least of their humanity to the wind. Despite the differences in culture and logic, destroying Kant’s moral obligations in the process wasn’t a probable notion.
He could scoff at the idea of such people preaching about the teachings of Allah. This was the type of trash that smelled the worst amongst others. Trash had to be cleaned out fast in order to avoid contamination.
Northern Chad was the land of savages. It was the world of animals in the guise of humans, where the strongest survived.
“If you bastards are the animals, I’d have a fiercer one tear you into pieces.”
The base instinct of a Paranthropus, a desire to destroy greater enemies, reared its head within him.
“Bell Man, tell me how much time has passed.”
At the Captain’s words, Bell Man shoved his hand into a surgical glove.
He began to put his hand inside the stomach’s bullet injury without hesitation and poked around. The smell reeked, but nothing leaked out of the wound.
Bell Man took his hand out of the stomach.
Between his thumb and forefinger, a white something wriggled about. It was a maggot, 3mm or less in length.
“It’s the larva of the Gold Fly of Algeria. When one breeds in a corpse, the eggs are broken in ten hours. This hatched just now.”
“So you’re saying ten hours have passed?”
At the Captain’s question, Bell Man poked around the outside of the wound and fished up several more maggots.
“It’s the larva of flesh flies. Gold flies lay eggs inside the corpse, but flesh flies birth as if they were landing bombs on corpses as they pass. According to the growth of this larva, it’s in the Flash Stage, before the manifestation. In my opinion, they’ve been killed three days ago.”
Bell Man picked out the dates of their murder like the battle doctor he was, after graduating in forensic science.
“Three days!” Burimer grunted.
Three days was when Black Mamba destroyed Coromunga’s FAP 3rd battalion.
‘They vented their anger on innocent villagers.’
With his careful personality, Burimer didn’t voice his theory. He didn’t want to burden Black Mamba.
The mercenaries glanced at the Captain. They weren’t tempted to clean the corpses, which numbered over a hundred. They didn’t have the strength, nor the time.
“Let’s leave this to nature.”
At the Captain’s decision, they all breathed a relieved sigh. They had been worried that he would decide on burying them all.
“Captain!”
Sergeant Mouris, who had been investigating the individual houses with Miguel, came running.
Mouris lifted his hand.
All eyes fell on his palm.
“Hm, a Ruger bullet!” The Captain said as he inspected the bullet.
Burimer, who was handed the bullet, also felt his eyes widen.
The bullet in his palm had a yellow tinge and was 19mm in length and 10mm in diameter. It wasn’t a common bullet. The average Ruger Parabellum was 9mm.
“There’s no mistake. It’s a HK54F.”
The HK54 was developed by Heckler and Koch, a different version of a MP5. It was a name given according to the classification system of the maker. MP5 was the bestseller of each nation’s special forces as a loved sub-machine gun. Frace requested a more destructive MP5. The result of such a request was the HK54. The HK54 used a unique 10 mm bullet instead of a 9 mm one.
The Legion Etranger didn’t use the sub-machine gun. There were mercenaries who bought the weapon for their personal use but most favored the Pamus, which had a higher damage rate. HK54’s shooting range was within 200 meters. It was useless to snipers. There was no one within Deuxieme Rep’s 4th company who used a MP5. It was expensive and useless.
“Mouris, where did you find this?”
“There’s a slightly larger house inside the village. It was on the ground there.”
“Let’s go check.”
The Captain made Mouris lead them into the village.
A detailed investigation began. The house Mouris had pointed out was three times larger than the average houses. But even with such a size, it was only 50 square meters.
The mercenaries began to rip out the wallpapers and rummaged around the floor made of reeds. It was as if they were looking for a needle in a haystack.
Black Mamba’s eyes glinted. It was the smell of a corpse.
If they couldn’t see it, it was in the ground. Eyes that saw eight times sharper than any other human searched the entire house. The color of the soil underneath the chicken coop varied from the others. An average human wouldn’t have been able to see such a difference, but he was not average.
“Black, what is it?”
“Jang, Emil!”
Black Mamba didn’t reply to the Captain’s question and called Jang Shin and Emil instead. When the two ran over, he pointed towards the chicken coop.
“Dig.”
Jang Shin was his comrade, and Emil was his partner. As a 2nd class private, they were the two he could treat comfortably. The two would have believed a hyena as a lion if Black Mamba said so.
Black Mamba marked the digging point. Jang Shin and Emil, who found their shovels respectively, began to dig. Within a short time, a corpse appeared in the hole.
“So deep. It stinks. A really disgusting smell.” Captain mumbled.
His usually stoic face had turned red.
The clothes on the corpse weren’t different from what the Ratel team was wearing. It was the traditional Arab garment of gandourah, with Litam covering the entire face. Mouris ripped the clothes with his KA-BAR knife.
The teammates’ eyes grew large. A worn uniform was inside the gandourah. A rich yellow color, it was the uniform of the northern army. There was a Soviet gun on his belt. It was a thick Tokarev gun.
“Wait, Bell Man, leave everything on camera as a record.”
The Captain’s voice came out leaden.
After Bell Man took a few shots, Mouris began to dig around the corpse’s chest with his knife.
Ting- The tip of his knife shot out a piece of leaded gold. Soon after, he found another bullet.
The cause of death was those two bullets in the man’s chest.
Burimer took up the bullets and glared ferociously.
“Right, it is a 10 mm HK54F bullet.”
The Captain’s face crumpled instantly.
The HK54F’s 10 mm bullet was used in France exclusively. A hyena would have laughed if anyone said the beggars of FROLINAT used a HK.
“Hm, GIGN!” The Captain whispered.
GIGN was a unit terrorist team with hostage rescue as a priority. The most efficient and compatible team for the raccoon rescue was the GIGN.
Only the GIGN used a HK54F.
The HK54F’s bullet and the Arab’s uniform said everything there was to know.
“Jang Shin, check the bullet and bullet shell.”
“Oui!”
Jang Shin pulled out his magnifying glass and observed the shell and bullet’s merged parts.
The bullet was coiled around the core like armor.
The way a coiled shell was wrapped around the core was called a Full Metal Jacket. Most of the recent sub-machine guns used a Full Metal Jacket.
The shell was made of lead and wrought iron, combined.
A high-speed bullet was a shape that tightly clamped over the shell of the bullet made of soft brass.
When the bullet received its impact through the gas explosion and left its cover, a minimal scratch mark was left on the connected part of the cover and core. A professional was capable of recognising the scratch mark and figuring out the whereabouts of both the cover and core. If Bell Man was a corpse professional, Jang Shin was a firearm professional.
“Bingo!”
historical
He found the matching scratch marks of a bullet cover and its bullet.
“Da ge, lend me your toothpick.”
“Toothpick?”
Black Mamba took out his dart from his pouch with a strange expression. It was his most loved precise, and thin dart.
“Should I pick your teeth, too?”
Black Mamba poked the bullet case of the explosive bullets. The case, around a half-inch thick, was riddled with holes easily.
“Hehe, I didn’t say anything.”
Jang Shin, who conceded defeat immediately, marked the shell and core with the tip of the dart and gave them to the Captain.
“Captain, I marked the place where the scratches match.”
Jang Shin handed over both shell and core with a point. The Captain nodded. He had already predicted the result.
“Bell Man, protect the bullet and film. We’re canceling the search for that raccoon. Return to camp immediately.”
The team members weren’t stupid. Their faces hardened.
Team Ratel immediately extracted themselves from the Ongur Oasis.
The team members who had their fill with the C-ration gathered without the Captain’s orders. Everyone was filled with tired and gloomy expressions.
“Burimer, what do you think?”
“Can I be honest?”
The Captain didn’t reply but looked encouragingly at Burimer with tired eyes.
“They’re flaunting,” Sergeant Burimer concluded.
“This mission itself, scouring the entire Sahel with a few pick-ups, doesn’t make sense. The raccoon has already fled. Our team’s just a chicken thrown into the alligator breeding cage at this point,” Mike said.
Despite Sergeant Mike’s harsh words, the Captain only frowned.
“Mike, don’t speak too rashly.” Burimer stopped Mike.
“What, did I say something wrong?”
Black Mamba, who had been spacing out, glared.
‘Damn it, I’m tired whenever I see that human glare.’