Chapter Eleven: Discovering the Enemy

  On May 24, 1999, our group of twelve had been trekking through the jungle for a day and a night. The three teams were spaced ten meters apart, communicating with each other via wireless earpieces. I was walking at the front with Tu Fu, Bak, and the captain, holding guns in our hands. The tension we felt when we first entered the jungle had eased somewhat after a day of marching, replaced by fatigue and heat that tested my body and willpower. Suddenly, the captain raised his left hand and then clenched it into a fist, slowly crouching down. Seeing the hand signal, we stopped advancing and gathered around him.

  "We've entered the enemy's haunt, be careful!" The captain said to us as he picked up a shell casing from the ground.

  "AK series," I muttered to myself. Then, I glanced around and found everyone staring at me. I nodded, indicating that I had heard them. It seemed like they were all afraid I would mess up, but if they didn't want me to make a mistake, then they shouldn't have let me come in the first place. I wasn't volunteering for this job, after all. If something went wrong, it wouldn't be my fault. I was a computer science major, and killing people was a million miles away from my field of study.

  As I cursed to myself, I continued walking forward with the group. After a while, the team leader signaled for us to stop advancing and take a break on the spot. He then opened his laptop to check the coordinates. I let out a sigh of relief, leaned against a tree, and pulled out my water bottle from my body. "Gulp, gulp," I took two big swigs of water.

  Just as I was tilting my head back to drink, I suddenly heard a rustling sound coming from the bushes behind me. It startled me so much that I dropped my water bottle and spun around with my gun pointed at the source of the noise, ready to pull the trigger. Just then, a hand reached out from behind me and grabbed my gun, pushing down on the safety catch.

  "Don't be excited, it's not human!" is a butcher.

  I turned my head and saw that others had also lowered their guns. I looked at the butcher in confusion.

  "The sound is the rustling of small animals against the roots of the grass, not the sound of human footsteps. Listen more and you'll be able to tell!" The butcher said as he parted the grass, revealing a yellow weasel with something in its mouth. The little creature saw us and turned around to run away. Just as I let out a sigh of relief, I sucked my breath back in when I saw what the weasel had dropped - a human hand!

  Everyone followed the blood trail, tracing back to where the little guy came from. After walking for a while, we smelled a strong stench, even I could smell it, it was the smell of rotting flesh. Everyone loaded their guns and cautiously moved forward in the direction of the smell. We pushed aside a clump of grass, and a nauseating scene appeared before us. On a small clearing stood eight tree stakes, with sixteen people tied to them, all beheaded. Next to the trees hung seven or eight "human sticks" that had been chopped off at the limbs. All the corpses were rotting, their military uniforms telling us they were once soldiers of Cambodia.

  The captain gave the vanguard a signal, and the vanguard turned around and slipped into the mountain forest. The others remained in place, smelling the pungent smell, waving their hands to drive away the flies beside them. I felt that my sense of smell was gradually losing, and the stench seemed to be rushing straight into my stomach, triggering a wave of nausea. "Wow", I vomited everything out of my belly, vomiting until nothing could be vomited out anymore, and my intestines were still convulsing in waves. Breaking out in cold sweat, what kind of person can do such a thing! It's too cruel!

  A vanguard voice came from the headphones: "There are still many corpses ahead, about 100 or more people, all of them soldiers, most of whom were killed by pitfalls, a small number were shot and killed, it is estimated that this is the captive! There is a footprint extending southeast, which should be left by the target! I've scouted around, there are many pitfalls!"

  "It seems this is why the Cambodian government hired us!" the captain said to me.

  "Alright. Now, Vanguard, you lead the way and the others follow behind, don't touch anything! Got it?" The captain gave the order.

  "Yes sir!" The vanguard received the order and moved forward.

  I stepped out of the bloody slaughterhouse and took a deep breath of fresh air, suppressing the nausea that still churned inside me. Suddenly, a pungent mosquito repellent smell invaded my nostrils, making me cough repeatedly. It was the squad leader, who smiled at me and said, "Don't feel like throwing up anymore?" I nodded. "Then let's go," he said, walking ahead. Bak patted me on the shoulder and followed him, while the others looked at me with a mixture of smiles and awkward expressions.

  "How humiliating!" I muttered to myself.

  "You know that too? Let's go!" The butcher pushed me from behind, I turned back and glared at him: "If you're capable, spend a night inside yourself!"

  "Haha, living in here for a year is no big deal! This scene really gets me excited!" The butcher's face was flushed with excitement, his eyes gleaming brightly, and he stuck out his tongue to lick his lips, looking just like a psychopathic killer from an American movie.

  "I finally know where your nickname comes from! People who do that kind of thing are perverts, and you're even more perverted than them!" I said to the butcher.

  "Heh heh, is it?" The butcher smiled mysteriously and didn't say another word.

  Because Vanguard cleared the trap ahead, our advance speed slowed down a lot! Everyone in the back was bored and on guard.

  The vanguard opened a tripwire, and the nail board that was tied to it fell down. However, suddenly something got caught on the nail board in mid-air, changing its original vertical trajectory and suddenly flying towards the vanguard. The team leader next to him immediately pushed him to the ground, and the nail board brushed past the ears of the two people. Everyone behind them dodged to the side to avoid the nail board, but at the same time, a sharpened wooden stake suddenly appeared above the cowboy's head. Just as he had barely avoided the nail board, he discovered the stake was already too close to dodge. As the stake was about to pierce his body, I didn't think twice and kicked out with one foot, kicking him away from the stake. The stake grazed against my inner thigh and stabbed into the ground.

  Everyone was stunned, staring at me as if I were a monster. Suddenly, a sharp pain shot through the inside of my thigh, and I couldn't help but sit down on the ground with a thud. Cowboy rushed over, ripped open my pants, and saw that a large piece of skin had been torn off my inner thigh, bleeding profusely. The doctor rushed over to stop the bleeding, applied medicine, and cowboy stood by silently watching me. After my wound was bandaged, Buck helped me up, and cowboy patted my shoulder, saying "I owe you one!" before walking away. Vanguard examined the area and said "There's a mastermind at work here, this is a linked trap pit, even the falling route after being triggered has been set with a linkage device, luckily it was just a wooden stick, you're really lucky!" Buck patted my shoulder again, looked at me with a smile, and gave a thumbs up saying "Well done!"

  The people around me came one by one and patted my shoulder, and Bak said: "They have begun to accept you, you saved their brother."

  "Really? Then would they be willing to send me home?" I covered the wireless phone tube and asked quietly, also using my eyes to steal a glance at the butcher. The butcher did not use his great strength to answer this question of mine, although just now I was not intentionally trying to save the cowboy.

  "It's even more impossible now, if you don't behave well, they might even drive you away. But now he owes you a favor, he must repay you on the battlefield, and it's even more impossible for him to let you go!" Baku's answer left me speechless.

  Is this okay? Will saving people also become an obstacle to freedom? Do these people know what gratitude is?

  My inner thigh was injured and it wasn't convenient to walk, so Buck and I fell behind the team. After walking for another hour, the team stopped, and we slowly made our way to the front of the team. Everyone was standing there, facing a village on the opposite mountain slope, with people coming and going inside. All the men were holding guns. The captain came up to Buck and me and said: "This is the target, Quick and Slow will provide cover for us as we move in. Xing Tian, you're injured and can't move easily, so stay here and act as a lookout and cover for Quick and Slow." After that, he led the team in a stealthy approach towards the mountain village.

  "Great, I've been given a light and easy job." I couldn't help but chuckle.

  "Don't be too happy, if the other side discovers us, we'll be the first to be attacked!" The sniper sat on a branch, adjusting the scope of his rifle while saying to me: "You know? In the past, when an army discovered there was a sniper around, they would usually call in artillery and flatten the area where the sniper might be hiding. Are you still happy?"

  "I know, it's a French story!" I said to him as I took out all the ammunition: "I don't think they'll have cannons either, mainly because I don't want to get close to people and set fire, just thinking about it is terrifying! It's safer from a distance!"

  "Huh? Is that so?" The slow machine chuckled and handed me a scope and an anemometer: "Mount it on the gun, there's a laser rangefinder on top. See that tree stump in the middle of the village? Read out the numbers."

  "Distance 450 meters! Wind direction southwest! Wind speed 7.9 m/s" I read out the data while adjusting my own equipment according to what I learned from Tian earlier.

  Just then, a group of people walked into the viewfinder's field of vision. Several soldiers dragged a family of three to the middle of the square and began beating them up, including a pregnant woman. The soldiers cursed and scolded as they tied the man to a tree stump, loudly asking him something. The man kept shaking his head, and one of the soldiers smashed the butt of his rifle into his face. From the viewfinder, it was clear that the man's eyeballs were knocked out of their sockets and hung outside. The man fainted immediately, and the soldier who had hit him took out a lighter and began burning the man's hanging eyeballs. The man woke up in pain, and they started questioning him again. The man shook his head again, and the soldier pointed his gun at his son's head and asked him once more. The man's crying and pleading voice suddenly came through my earpiece, and it seemed that the team leader had sneaked up on them. I couldn't understand what they were saying, but through the heartbreaking cries, I could feel the despair emanating from the man.

  "What did he say?" Big Bear asked over the radio, "He was begging them not to kill his wife and children." Bottom Fire replied "I told those soldiers!" Big Bear asked again "They asked him if he helped the government troops find them! Otherwise, why would everyone in the village disappear when the government troops arrived!" Bottom Fire translated what the soldiers said: "They accused them of opposing the Red Government and sentenced them to death!"

  While translating these few sentences, that soldier shot and killed the man's wife and son with one bullet each, before shooting the man dead.

  "Captain, what are we waiting for? Why aren't you saving that person?" I couldn't help but ask as such a tragic scene unfolded.

  "We are soldiers, not angels! Keep radio silence!" Captain shouted sternly.

  "Big Bear is in position!"

  "Get ready, cowboy!"

  "The devil is in position!"

  "The butcher takes his place!"

  "A string of responses came back in place."

  "First clear out the people in the house, sweep away the slow ones, and clean up the streets! Go!"

  At the captain's command, the MSG90's crisp clicking sound came from beside me. In the scope, the soldiers on the street burst out one by one with a cloud of blood in front of their chests and fell to the ground. At the same time, a muffled gunshot was heard in my earphones. After five or six people fell down, those guys realized there was a sniper and started shooting wildly towards our direction. Bullets hit the trees around us, making a "dang dang" sound. Two bullets hit the ground beside me, scaring me so much that I buried my head and didn't dare to lift it up.

  "Blind firing, they can't see us! Look at the frontline you idiot, you're covering me I'm not!" The slow machine cursed at me.

  He lifted his head with a start, and as soon as he glanced at the sight, he saw a guy carrying an RPG-7 rocket launcher jumping out from behind the wall, and the rocket flew over here with a long tail.

  "RPG!" I shouted loudly and dove back down to the ground.

  "Boom!" A loud noise, the rocket exploded in the mountains behind me, I could feel the earth shaking.

  "Damn it!" He brushed off the branches on his head, looked up at the tree and saw that he was still calmly taking out the rocket launcher thingy from earlier. He glanced at me and said "Safe enough? Hmm?" before raising his gun again.

  "Damn it, damn it, damn it!" I cursed as I pulled the bolt back and aimed at the slope below - there were a few people running towards us. Through the scope, I took aim at one of them, and could see the sweat on their face. As I looked at the person's face in the scope, my heart skipped a beat, and I was hesitating whether to fire or not. Just then, one of them spotted the machine gun in the tree and fired a burst of bullets that hit the tree, causing the machine gunner to shout: "Damn it, fire! Xing Tian, what are you doing?" as he fired back and took down one of them.

  Gritting my teeth, I pulled the trigger. With a loud bang, the head in the mirror exploded from the center of the eyebrows, and the entire skull was blown open. The red and white brain matter splattered backwards like overturned porridge, that guy was shot to the ground, tumbling and falling to the ground!

  This is the first time I've seen a shooting so clearly, and it was even fired by me!