Chapter 263.2: Just You Wait! (2)
After finishing his cigarette, Kang Chan climbed down from the truck’s roof.
Gerard, who had just finished his conversation on the radio, walked over to him. “Captain! The soldiers in the helicopters said they’re bringing the wounded and the deceased to Mogadishu!”
Kang Chan nodded in response. He saw no problem in moving the critically wounded to the American and French military bases near Mogadishu.
Gérard immediately relayed his approval to those in the helicopter.
“We have neutralized all hostiles, sir!” Blanchet reported afterward.
“Blanchet! Help move our wounded and fallen to the vehicles. It’s time to wrap things up,” Kang Chan ordered.
“Yes, sir.”
Unaware of the inside story that had given Kang Chan such authority, the Russian, British, and American special forces stared at him with puzzled expressions as he issued commands.
Ignoring their confused gazes, Kang Chan just kept barking orders. “Everyone, return to base!”
Click! Clank! Clank!
The soldiers, covered in blood, split into groups and got in the two Humvees and the truck.
Vroom! Vroom! Vrrooom!
Smoke was still rising into the sky from the battlefield, seemingly watching over Kang Chan as he walked away.
They had won.
Not only had they claimed victory, but they had taken down every last one of their six hundred enemies despite being only sixty soldiers strong.
Nevertheless, the vehicles were enveloped by an atmosphere so heavy that it seemed as though they were covered in lead. They couldn’t forget about their fallen or wounded brothers who were on their way to other bases.
Rattle! Vroom!
Kang Chan stared at the horizon in the distance. He felt no different from his men. Only now did he finally get the time to vividly remember the South Korean special forces soldiers the French rookie who were killed during their hard-fought battle.
Despite everything that happened, the rookie never once removed the bandana that Kang Chan had given him during the operation in Mongolia. In Afghanistan and even here in Africa, he always smiled sheepishly after running over to Kang Chan as soon as he saw him.
How nice would it have been if they could all return together and snicker as they smoked?
Even though Gérard was trying hard to not make it obvious, he also seemed to be starting to feel a sense of loss for losing his men.
They were only on the road for forty minutes, but it felt like four hours. When they finally reached the base, the soldiers waited for Kang Chan’s orders. They were visibly tired, but he couldn’t tell them to get some rest yet.
“I want each team to assign three people to inspect their respective barracks first. Be especially careful of boobytraps!” Kang Chan ordered. “I’m leaving this to you, Seok Kang-Ho. Take Cha Dong-Gyun and Kwak Cheol-Ho with you.”
“All right!” Seok Kang-Ho answered.
The soldiers’ rifles clunked as they followed Kang Chan’s command.
Kang Chan continued, “Blanchet! Assign people to guard our perimeter, then send some to investigate the UN command center! Once we’ve determined it’s safe, let’s use it as a temporary infirmary!”
“Oui!” Blanchet answered fiercely, then walked toward the Foreign Legion soldiers.
Kang Chan stood at the center of the base, looking at each of the buildings.
Five minutes had passed when Andrei walked back to him. “Our barracks is clear!”
“Spetsnaz—go to your barracks,” Kang Chan ordered in Korean.
Click! Clank! Clank!
The Spetsnaz couldn’t understand what Kang Chan said, but they did get the meaning behind Kang Chan’s nod toward their barracks.
Following his command, the Russian soldiers walked toward the building assigned to them.
“There’s nothing wrong with ours either!” Tyler reported.
Not long after, the SBS soldiers also headed toward their barracks.
“Everything’s in order, Cap!” Seok Kang-Ho reported as he exited one of the buildings.
Not long after, Gérard and Robert—the commander of the Green Berets—walked out at almost the same time and approached Kang Chan.
“Our barracks is safe,” Gérard reported.
Unlike the others, Robert looked devastated as he reported the situation in the Green Berets’ barracks.
“They decapitated all five of our wounded that stayed behind.”
“Do you need help?” Kang Chan asked.
“Please.”
Kang Chan nodded. He then called Blanchet again.
“There are five decapitated men in the Green Berets’ barracks. Move them to the UN command center and make plans to transfer them.”
“The medical team’s rescue helicopter is on its way. I’ll have them transport the dead.”
Perhaps Blanchet found all of this to be bothersome, but he never once stopped looking dependable.
“Any of you got any smoke?” Robert asked.
Gérard took out cigarettes and a lighter. Kang Chan, Gérard, and Seok Kang-Ho—who just stayed silent since he couldn’t understand what they were saying—all smoked with him.
Chk chk! Chk!
“Hoo!” Robert let out a long exhale, blowing out cigarette smoke.
The five wounded soldiers likely couldn’t even fight back as they were decapitated. This could be the worst moment for Robert since becoming the commander of the Green Berets.
“Do you know why the Quds attacked us?” he asked Kang Chan.
“I wish I did, but I’m just as clueless and curious as you are.”
Robert nodded. He then dropped his cigarette and stepped on it.
“Thank you for commanding and helping us today,” Robert said. He then turned around and headed to their barracks.
Traces of a gunfight were all over their barracks, but they weren’t damaged enough for the soldiers to have trouble using them.
“I’ll go take care of my kids as well,” Gérard told Kang Chan. He stood up and walked away.
Not long after, Kang Chan made his way to the South Korean team’s barracks.
“Choi Jong-Il! Bring me the satellite phone!” he ordered as soon as he arrived.
A moment later, Choi Jong-Il handed him the phone. Kang Chan immediately called Kim Hyung-Jung.
The dial tone rang twice before the call was answered.
- Kim Hyung-Jung speaking.
“This is Africa. I can’t go into details due to security reasons, but we have just returned from a battle that started yesterday and ended two hours ago in local time. We don’t know who’s behind the ambush, but eleven of my men are dead. Six are in critical condition, and one of them is Colonel Park Chul-Su.”
Silence dawned over their conversation. A moment later, Kim Hyung-Jung finally broke it.
- Please repeat that one more time.
Kang Chan did as requested.
“We don’t have the UN to command us over here anymore, so we’re having trouble taking any action or returning him. If the UN command center still doesn’t return to normal by tomorrow, then I’ll have a discussion with the other teams about what to do. I’ll inform you about our decision if we ever come to that.”
- Thank you for your service. Things must have been hard for you. Um... Please contact me again if anything else comes up.
Kim Hyung-Jung was about to say something but decided against it, having remembered Kang Chan’s comment earlier about not being able to say much due to reasons involving security.
“Will do. I’ll talk to you later.”
Kang Chan dropped the call.
Thwup thwup thwup thwup thwup.
As dawn broke, they began to hear fast-approaching helicopter noises.
The loud rotor blades blew rough winds all around them. When the helicopter finally landed, the medical team got out and began moving the corpses of the Green Berets.
Before meeting up with them, Kang Chan headed further into their barracks and washed up. Murky water and blood flowed down onto the floor. As the water ran past his wounds, he burned up so much he felt as if oil had been poured over him and he had been set on fire.
Kang Chan put on shorts and a cotton t-shirt, left the bathroom, and headed to the temporary infirmary.
The medical team removed the bandages that Seok Kang-Ho had wrapped around Kang Chan during the fight. They then disinfected his wounds as if they were bathing him in antiseptic.
The members of the medical team frowned even deeper than Kang Chan did. Kang Chan could bear the pain right now, but he knew that the moment he relaxed and fell asleep, he would feel like hell as soon as he woke up.
“Ugh!”
Despite enduring the pain, he still couldn’t help but groan. To disinfect his wounds, one of the medical team dug into his skin with an antiseptic-soaked cotton boll held between a pair of tweezers.
He felt as if he was being tortured. If they had continued for a little longer, he believed he would have at least confessed that his father was Kang Dae-Kyung, and his mother was Yoo Hye-Sook.
After pushing through the horrible disinfecting process, the open wounds all over his body were stitched up. They then wrapped so many bandages around him that barely any of his bare skin was left visible.
The awful and tedious treatment was finally done.
Kang Chan left the temporary infirmary and walked over to the bench in front of the barracks, finding Gérard sitting on it and smoking a cigarette. He was wearing the same clothes as Kang Chan and also had bandages wrapped around him.
The anguish and pain that commanders had to cope with were visibly evident in his eyes and the scar on his cheek.
“Go get some sleep,” Kang Chan told Gérard.
“Are you going to contact the UN?”
“It’s best to keep information from the UN for now. Just report to the higher-ups.”
“Blanchet already did. What about you? Have you contacted the South Korean government yet?”
“I have. I gave them a call a while ago,” Kang Chan responded.
Kang Chan thought about calling Lanok as well since he had already given Kim Hyung-Jung a call anyway. However, he decided to postpone it when he remembered Lanok saying that he couldn’t even freely talk about what he would have for dinner.
He would wait for how the UN would react before making a decision, believing that, of all people, they would know what was going on here best.
‘What are you all going to do now?’
Kang Chan couldn’t help but be curious about how the UN would respond.
No matter what anyone said, it would never make any sense for a war to break out here before anyone had even shown their faces. Hence, Kang Chan was at least willing to wait for about a day to listen to what they had to say.
If the UN didn’t show up, then they would essentially be confessing that they were on the same side as those who sent six hundred Quds to ambush them. In that situation, Kang Chan would simply have them over their bill and make sure they paid for every single atrocity they had done to him and his men.
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