WeTried Translations
Translator: Coughing Baby
Editor: Coughing Baby
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 376: Each One's Homeland (10)
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The Quarantine War Expo was a battleground where countless defense contractors competed for government contracts. In other words, the Walter E. Washington Convention Center was packed with new products that had been brought in ahead of time for display. At the smaller end, there were field gear and personal firearms. At the larger end, there were tanks, armored vehicles, other transport vehicles, and attack helicopters.
“Damn it! Can display items be used in actual combat?”
Corporal Sanchez’s sour remark was answered by Sergeant Cochrane.
“If they prepared fuel and ammunition, then yes!”
It would not have been easy for the rebels to bring ammunition into D.C., but even so, this was more effective than preparing armored vehicles themselves. It was sudden, too. Gyeoul felt his blood heating with tension, as if molten iron were flowing through his veins. His mindset had changed. He could no longer remain detached from the danger of losing this world.
‘Who would have imagined...’
The White House would have tried to prepare responses to every conceivable variable, but there was no such thing as a perfect plan. In preparing for a coup, they also would not have been able to make full use of other agencies’ resources. Everyone had to be suspected and verified.
And at this very moment, that overlooked weakness was right in front of them.
Gyeoul asked Cochrane.
“Has it been reported?”
“Already done!”
“What is the White House doing?”
“Nearby agents and police personnel are responding, but there are nowhere near enough of them! A lot of units have been bogged down by protests or riots, too!”
Judging by the map, the military units controlled by the White House were mostly positioned on the outskirts of the city to block suspicious units from entering.
The problem was the convention center’s location.
‘It’s only one kilometer to the White House. Even if they go to the Capitol, it’s only two kilometers.’
If they used proper armored vehicles, even crushing obstructing cars on the way, it would take them less than ten minutes. Where would they strike? Either target would be deadly. Since the air route was considered blocked, many senators and representatives had gathered at the Capitol. It was true that the Capitol was a less important target than the White House, but the enemy might use that exact assumption to catch them off guard.
With time running short, Gyeoul used 「Insight」 and forced his aching thoughts onward.
If the situation dragged on, Congress might actually be the higher-value target. With the federal government paralyzed, if each state began acting on its own, rebuilding Congress would become a distant dream. Governors might refuse to appoint senators, House elections could be delayed, and in the end, the federation itself might even break apart.
Clarissa Chadwick had pretended she had no intention of bringing down her homeland, but how could anyone take that at face value? She might still be on the side of her old comrades.
The toxin was another variable.
Sergeant Cochrane relayed a new message.
“Uh, the order is not to touch the jamming devices until the bombs are disarmed!”
“...”
If they removed the jamming, even at the cost of civilian lives, the armored vehicles the traitors were trying to seize would not be a problem at all. Fire would rain down from the sky.
But as things stood, they had a very difficult fight ahead of them. Even if they somehow received air support, with the jamming still active, friend-or-foe identification would be impossible. Gyeoul would not be safe from friendly fire by allied aircraft, either.
In the end, sacrifice was unavoidable one way or another. That was Clarissa Chadwick’s message. If she had heard that order just now, she would probably say the president was still soft.
“Can you bring up the situation around the convention center?”
At Gyeoul’s request, Cochrane searched for surveillance assets near the location. Soon, several traffic cameras connected. These cameras were deaf things that transmitted only video. So the battle on the screen was silent. Soundless gunfire and soundless deaths.
The enemy situation had been confirmed. A late decision could be more dangerous than a wrong one. He pushed aside the worry that this might be a diversion. Diversion or not, if they were pushed back here, there would be no next step. After letting out a single sigh, Gyeoul made up his mind.
“We’re going too. Dump any equipment that isn’t essential.”
None of the agents argued. They had nearly four kilometers to run, and they had to do it while getting past obstacles. No matter how elite they were, just arriving on time would leave them exhausted. With one foot on the window frame, Gyeoul looked back at the agents.
“Anyone who falls behind, rejoin on your own.”
Then he jumped.
Thud. A heavy shock crawled up his ankles. Gyeoul had not lightened his combat load. The combat zone would be full of people who had dropped weight to save time. That meant they would also be seriously short on ammunition, so someone had to bring extra. How many others could do that besides Gyeoul?
‘I need to get anti-tank weapons.’
For now, all he could think was that if he held the enemy back, additional support would come. There was also a way to use the bombs while accepting the risk. He would have to be very lucky, though.
He took off his gas mask for the moment. The wind clung to his skin. As his run picked up speed, the scenery to either side began sliding backward in streaks. The residential district looked the same no matter how far he went, making him feel as if he were trapped in a maze where the same section repeated over and over. On the way, his IFF module vibrated several times. It was a signal that other agents were nearby. Gyeoul briefly glanced at a man vomiting by the roadside.
Once the distance he had covered passed four hundred meters, then eight hundred, even Gyeoul’s breath rose to his throat. Full sprinting made breath control difficult, which only made it worse. It hurt, but he did not adjust his senses. Every second, he forced his body forward with everything he had. His sweat was beaded heat. As he maintained that speed, there were moments when his field of view opened wide. After passing through Lincoln Park and Stanton Park, Gyeoul slowed down in front of Union Station. Not because he was tired, but because it was the perfect choke point for an enemy ambush meant to block friendly reinforcements. Unlike the two parks from earlier, there was also enough distance here for a skilled sniper to deceive Gyeoul’s senses.
Puk!
The ground right in front of him burst as if struck by a hammer. A bullet. Gyeoul had already thrown himself aside. His rolling body hit an abandoned police car. The radio spat out shouts and screams from several people as if it were broken. He had entered the jamming area again.
Tang! Tang tang tang!
Holes punched through the hood, and the vehicle windows shattered. Shards of tempered glass rained down over Gyeoul’s head. He did not need to look at the line-of-fire warning. Five designated marksman rifles were hammering him with semi-automatic fire. The traitors were using suppressors. The screams of the protesters scattering across the plaza swallowed the enemy gunfire.
‘Are there no other agents?’
There probably were, but cooperation was difficult with the radio dead.
The enemy fire stopped all at once. They had an effective means of communication.
The line-of-fire warning, a mixture of 「Combat Sense」 and 「Survival Instinct」, was fainter than ever. That transparency grew worse the closer it came to the source. Gyeoul took his time reading the sensation. Even with senses that had entered the realm of geniuses and superhumans, it took more than ten seconds to pinpoint the enemy positions.
He quietly lowered his combat load.
The preparations were complete.
Hoo. He steadied his breathing out of habit, pulled the pin on a smoke grenade, counted to two in his head, then rolled it forward. The smoke grenade clanged as it rolled, then popped and began spewing thick smoke. In that instant, when the enemy’s attention must have shifted, if only for a moment, toward that swelling opacity, Gyeoul burst out to the opposite side and took a firing stance against the vehicle body.
Bang! Bang bang!
A battle measured in tenths of a second. Gyeoul overwhelmed three enemies with pure reaction speed and covered his whole body again. Then he felt along his side with one hand. Even though he had been exposed for less than a second, his clothes had been torn open. The two remaining enemies fired as if venting their anger.
Gyeoul’s enhanced vision left afterimages of snipers whose foreheads had shattered. All three he had killed had been shot through the face, without exception. Body armor and helmets had not saved them.
‘They’re wearing U.S. military combat uniforms...’
The thought that he might have shot friendlies flashed through his mind, but the fact that they had been lying in ambush at that position was clear evidence of treason. Whether they were actually military personnel or not did not matter.
Metallic sparks and ricochets kept flying over his head. With a pshhk, the vehicle body he was leaning against sagged. The enemy fire continued because they had lost all judgment. Was it anger? Fear? Either way, it was unexpected. Compared to their level of training, they seemed to have little actual combat experience. At the very least, it felt like they had never been in a fight where their comrades were dying around them.
Still, they would not fall for the same trick twice.
Listening to the metallic sound of bullets striking, Gyeoul estimated their power. The moment the duet turned into a solo, he shouldered his rifle firmly and snapped upright. Puk puk!
“Ugh-!”
Two enemy bullets. Heavy impacts struck his chest and abdomen. He suppressed the jolt, aimed, and fired. The gunshot rang out, and the enemy shadow inside the window fell backward. The last one hurried to reload and dropped the magazine. Bang! Gyeoul finished them, whoever they were.
Ting-
A stray round ricocheted away. Just as he thought this area was clear, fresh killing intent pressed in. They were probably enemies who had been holding back other friendlies from a different direction. But the lines of fire came rushing in without order, and the disorganized attack was less threatening than the one before it. While their frantic shots struck the nearby sidewalk, vehicles, and street trees, Gyeoul wiped them out with just two seconds of return fire. One shot per person. Several lines of fresh blood ran down the old ivory-colored stone building.
Feeling a dull pain, Gyeoul felt inside his body armor. Fortunately, there was no bleeding. He only had bruises where the enemy bullets had hit. Even so, it was a little surprising. Judging by how the armor plates that perfectly blocked ordinary rifle rounds had caved in, the enemy had clearly used special ammunition.
A drop of sweat fell from beneath his chin. It was hot and cold at once. The front held the body heat of battle, and the back held the temperature of death that had brushed past Gyeoul. His heartbeat had risen so high it was almost bewildering, and it showed no sign of calming.
Even though he was pressed for time, Gyeoul leaned against the car body, which had grown lukewarm under the autumn sunlight, and brought his rough breathing under control. His fingertips throbbed with his heated pulse.
‘It’s hard to stay calm like before.’
If he wanted to be happy, he had to fear loss. This was a change that had come very slowly. When had it started? Looking back, his meeting with Star Child had been the beginning, and it seemed to have surfaced on the day he confessed to Anne that he hoped he could come to love her. Even to Gyeoul, that had been something unlike him. At least, compared to his past before then.
The afterlife he wished for now had to be this world, or nothing.
Even so, he had to regain his usual breathing. He needed that coldness that had been like a disease. Because in a world nearing its end, death came closer the more he tried to keep it away, and grew stronger the more he feared it.
“Wow.”
A dazed voice from a little distance away pulled Gyeoul’s worn attention back. It was an approach that had not registered with 「Survival Instinct」. The person was a civilian man who had practically crawled over, even though the gunfire had stopped. He seemed to be one of the crowd that had spilled out onto the street. Thickly built, he was wearing a Prince of Doom T-shirt with a skull on it.
“...”
“...”
A strange silence passed as they faced each other. Gunshots and explosions still sounded in the distance, and yet... Gyeoul saw overwhelming emotion filling the man’s eyes. After a moment, the man spoke first. For some reason, he pressed his head to the ground as he did.
“It is an honor to meet you, Lieutenant Colonel. Thank you always for your service.”
“Ah, yes... Thank you for your support.”
Thank you for your service. Since it was a greeting he received often, his answer came out mechanically. Gyeoul felt his nerves loosen, if only slightly. He almost let out a hollow laugh. As Gyeoul shouldered his combat load and stood, stepping on spent casings, the man asked,
“If it isn’t rude, may I take one photo?”
“...Go ahead.”
Click. The flash went off from his smartphone. Click click click click.
“...”
“I’m sorry. It was in burst mode.”
“No, it’s fine. Please evacuate to a safe place with the people you came with. There are terrorists around here.”
He had no choice but to say that, even though he did not know where the bomb might be.
The man prayed in God’s name for Gyeoul’s safe return and left.
Four minutes later, Gyeoul finally arrived at the combat zone by the convention center.
Footnotes:
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