Mercenary Black Mamba

Entering and leaving was a problem but being an eraser was not. Consuming was easier than producing, and destroying was easier than creating. There was always a way. It was only a matter of skills. He didn't act like a calculative person, either! The lack of something didn't measure up to an abundance of something.

The rash Explosives Devil took out the remaining four sets of 2,000 grams C-4's from his backpack. He had to blow up the power plant, but the dam wouldn't budge with a bunch of C-4's. He'd probably only blow up some fishes. He could blow up the power plant with 30 grenades or drown it with his strength.

He attached one set of explosives to the four piles of missiles and shoved in a detonator.

What do I set the lap time to?

He couldn't predict the explosive strength or range, since he had skimmed through explosives lessons while in the Deuxieme Rep. He could only predict its unpredictability.

If he increased the lap time, the explosives were more likely to be detected. All the missiles, which had been standing tall like a forest on the gantry load, disappeared. He'd gotten rid of all the guards, but it was only a matter of time before he got caught. After much deliberation, he set the timer to 100 seconds. 100 seconds would give him enough time to move 600 to 700 meters away from the explosion.

His third attempt at playing with fire entered its last phase. After following a productive schedule, the Explosives Devil jumped over the barbed-wire fences and fled.

Rumble—

He heard the water burbling deeper inside the valley. The dam blocked the upstream, but water flowed like waterfalls from both sides of the valley. Black Mamba's eyes widened as he approached the waterfalls.

"Huh, look at these b*stards."

There was a hidden road behind the missile camp. Without a trailer, they would've required a Hercules aircraft to move the heavy objects. The operation would have gotten more difficult too. There was no way to avoid the DGSE's radar if they frequently operated transport aircraft.

Building a road on the rough mountain terrains must have used up a large sum of their money. Assad's government had invested most of their efforts into Kaparja Valley.

"He's going to suffer, but that isn't my problem."

Black Mamba abandoned the road and climbed up the valley. His last target was the power plant. The terrain got rougher as the valley became narrower.

C-4 was most well-known among explosive composition groups, which included type A, B, C, and H. Composition B types were a mixture of RDX and TNT, often used for large-caliber artillery and missile warheads. It had a combined ratio of 63 percent RDX, 36 percent TNT, and one percent wax. Aluminum powder, which was a plasticizer, would be added when necessary. It was 135 percent more powerful than a TNT. The explosives in the Berkut warheads were made up of composition B2 and an additional aluminum component.

100 seconds could be considered long or short, depending on the urgency.

Click—

Click—

The clock stopped.

Flash—

A flash brightened up the night sky.

Baa-ang—

A powerful explosion shook the entire valley.

The explosive velocity of a composition B2 was 8,500 meters per second. 70,000,000,000 joules of force moved at a speed of eight kilometers per second across the vast land, pushing away everything in its path. The gantry load and yo-yo bands flew away like pieces of paper.

Whoosh—

Debris and firestorms swept over everything within a radius of 300 meters, including the missile site, radar site, air defense camps, other facilities, and trees.

Several man-made machines and structures were crushed by the flying debris and melted because of the pressure waves. Humans went through the same thing. Their bones and flesh dissolved without a trace.

Lieutenant general Wahid Latif, who had been anxiously waiting in his office for the reconnaissance force's report, covered his eyes from the blinding light. The building walls were demolished instantly. The flames swept through the office. Lieutenant general Wahid Latif spent his final moments feeling the hot steam on his skin and was crushed as though he had been in the grinder. He hadn't even heard the explosion.

Outer guard Ahmed ran for his life as soon he saw the flash. His experience from when Assad had dropped the napalm bombs over Hama prepared him to instinctively run.

Hama city had descended into chaos the moment light flashed in the air. There were people frantically rolling around as they attempted to put out the fire on their bodies, people fighting each other as they raced to the nearest fountain, and people holding onto their necks as they struggled to breathe. There had been no other hell. Ahmed was so surprised that he dropped his binoculars.

As a member of the post-processing team, he had witnessed hell that day. Corpses scattered across the road were burned to the point that their gender was unidentifiable. Buildings melted while trees turned into ashes. It was a re-enactment of that day. He had supported Assad's utilitarianism and nationalism. However, on the day when a bolt of lightning had destroyed Hama, he regretted being a member of the Ba'ath Party.

Oooooo—

Expanded air rushed after him at a fearsome speed.

"Oh, Allah! Is this retribution!"

A solid barbed-wire fence blocked his path. Ahmed's ability was useless against the fence, which was seven meters wide and five meters tall. Ahmed's heart raced ahead of him. In reality, he barely managed to take two steps.

The pressure waves, which moved 22 times faster than the speed of sound, swallowed Ahmed whole and spread to the outer facilities. The weapons and storage room and the guards' living quarters were torn to pieces and blown into the air.

Oooooo—

Large clouds in the shape of a mushroom drifted endlessly into the sky.

The Northern Strategic Air Defense Force, which Assad had invested in, was tragically crushed in 0.3 seconds. Only a vague outline of the concrete buildings, which was located on the outskirts, remained. Only 170 out of 1,720 personnel survived, which consisted of 1,420 air defense force members, 260 guards, and 40 civil engineers. Even the survivors weren't in good shape. Half of them suffered from severe burns because of the radiant heat.

"Ugh!"

Beeeeeeeep—

It didn't feel like a part of his body was immobilized. His entire body vibrated.

"F***, I'm going to die!"

Black Mamba sprinted as though death was on his heels. It was the biggest threat weighing down on his brain since he gained his supernatural senses. He pushed his fearless steps to the extreme and rushed deep into the valley like a madman.

Fla-ash—

A flash of light brightened up the entire valley. A heat burst, enough to roast his skin, pushed its way in. His clothes burned in yellow, but he didn't have time to look back. He leaned his body against the wind's force and exerted his legs even more.

Bang—

Crash—

Crack—

Missile fragments and all kinds of debris poured down like rain.

Ting—

Something, perhaps a fragment, had hit his helmet. His head buzzed.

Splat—

Something heavy struck his backpack.

"Agh!"

Black Mamba, who was pushed from the back, rolled onto the floor. It was an impact that twisted his insides. The moment he leaped to his feet, a strong wind swept over. His back bent backward in a sway.

Fragments that had grazed his side crushed the fig tree behind him.

Whoosh—

This time, it was his head. His head snapped back to the point that it cracked.

Bang—

The rock before his eyes shattered.

"F****** hell, f*** a 100 seconds!"

There was no time to avoid all the debris that was pouring down like rain, despite knowing its trajectory. Smart people hid while stupid people ran about.

He'd overestimated the power of the 120 missile warheads. He blamed his fingers for setting the timer to 100 seconds, but it was a matter of the past. He activated and spread his dimensional sight like a large net to avoid the incoming debris.

A large bedrock entered his sight while he sprinted around like a b****. He dived behind the bedrock.

Bang bang bang—

The bedrock suffered the debris' painful hit.

"Ugh, I'd rather die than be sick."

He barely caught his breath. There were at least 10 holes on his backpack. Although the backpack was made of bulletproof material, his back would have suffered if they hadn't placed a titanium plate in the backrest. It was surprising how the debris managed to fly 1,000 meters away.

"I'm going to learn the art of explosives even if I have to pay the Explosives Devil lesson fees," Black Mamba resolutely decided as metal pieces continuously hit the bedrock.

The explosion in Kaparja Valley was immediately reported to the concerning parties—the perpetrator and interested foreigners. Langley's Operations Division was the first to receive the situation's report. Like how the KGB was called Lubyanka, the CIA was called Langley after the location of its headquarters.

The Operations Division, alongside the Intelligence Division, was the core of the CIA. They carried out secret missions, intelligence gathering, counterintelligence, and most overseas agents fell under its division.

Movies often portrayed the CIA as an incompetent organization with a large budget. They often appeared as the villain who poked around using large amounts of money before ending the entire operation with no gains. The CIA would turn an ordinary news reporter or a police officer who lacked presence into a hero.

Movies were movies for a reason. The CIA was often talked about because of their unsuccessful overseas missions, but on the other hand, large-scale overseas missions were made possible because of them. Korea's NIS couldn't even dream of it.

The CIA wasn't an easy organization. They were the world's best intelligence agency with the smartest brains, modern equipment, and astronomical budgets. There was no reason for the U.S., which valued rationality, to invest 1,000,000,000s of dollars on a useless intelligence agency.

22 kilometers above Syria's northern air, a long-nose-cone aircraft circled around Aleppo and Kaparja Valley. It was a U-2 reconnaissance aircraft that had departed from Saudi Arabia's Riyadh Air Base. Information from the ASARS-2's synthetic-aperture radar was transmitted to Langley in real-time through the Milius Aegis cruise, which was anchored in the Strait of Hormuz.

In the Operations Head office, Louis Adam's face contorted. There were 100 clear developed photos on his table. It was photos of the biological and chemical storage facility's high-pressure explosion, the Hind's fall and explosion, and the missile camp's explosion. His bushy eyebrows lifted, and his flipped lips twitched.

"Explain."

Adam's orders were always simple. He didn't treat women well just because they were beautiful. Of course, Samanda Matilda wasn't a cheap woman who expected greasy comments from tasteless middle-aged men.

"It's exact to the pictures, director."

"Oi, there are no intruders. Did Aloadin set itself on fire while roasting coffee?"

"Look through the rest of the images. These are optical images from the KeyHole (KH-11, CRYSTAL, KENNEN reconnaissance satellite)," Matilda replied coldly.

The U.S. reconnaissance satellites photographed the Earth using the KeyHole series Big Bird (KH-9)'s panorama film. A separate aircraft attached to the satellite would send back the films. When the film canisters were full, the reentry vehicle would leave the orbit and descend on Earth using a parachute. Transport aircraft C-119 would snatch the falling reentry vehicle from the air and retrieve the films. In 1980, electro-optical cameras with CCD sensors were attached to the KH-11 satellites, and the retrieval of films was no longer an inconvenience.

"Damn, did the KeyHole break or something?"

Adam slammed the file of photos back on the desk. The satellite had photographed Kaparja Valley in intervals of 10 seconds. No intruders were found anywhere in the photos. There were just flames and mushroom-shaped clouds.

"What do you think?"

"We lost contact with Shire and Dyson, who were dispatched to Kaparja Valley. We shoved in a Dragon Lady (nickname for U-2) since the KeyHole's resolution was low. Unfortunately, the heavy rain hindered it from taking a clear picture. According to the Investigation Division's report, the ANO's headquarters, ammunition storage, and Assad's s*** were blown away. We've unfortunately lost our cuckoo nest."

The CIA had commenced a plan to take over France's northern oil fields in exchange for overlooking Assad's possession of biological and chemical weapons. Assad's s*** was a code name for his biological and chemical weapons, while the cuckoo's nest was a code name for Kaparja Valley. The operations director, Adam, knew Kaparja Valley like the back of his hands.

"Ah, I know that. What's the point of touching a dead man's possession? My interest lies in the eraser. Whether they are the b*stards from the Muslim Brotherhood or the Milli[1], we must take appropriate actions accordingly. I'm suspicious of Turkey. The Muslim Brotherhood doesn't have the resources to blow up the cuckoo's nest."

Matilda shook her head.

"It's not the Muslim Brotherhood or the Milli. There's only one intruder. The Investigation Division gave the intruder a code name, Abaddon."

Black Mamba was finally recognized by the CIA as a ruthless terrorist named Abaddon. Adam's drooping eyelids lifted.

"One? Matilda, I don't like jokes. The ANO is Assad's special forces. You're saying that a single person wiped out 1,000 terrorists ghosts? Rambo will cry. Stop joking. That damned aftershock hindered our expensive equipment from capturing the intruders, that's all. If you're going to write a novel, move out from your desk and head to Area 51."

When Adam denied it, Matilda snickered.

"Hm, Rambo won't be able to maintain his reputation against Abbadon of the Apocalypse. You might not believe it, but there was only one intruder. If I'm wrong, I'll gladly move to Area 51. Of course, there might have been a rear fire support group. A week ago, an unidentifiable vehicle was attacked by the Dvina in Rajo Mountain, north of Aleppo. They must have dispatched an air force. We tracked the vehicle's movements, and apparently, it departed from France."

"Hm, France! The airborne regiment fired from behind, while Abaddon invaded in his lonesome and blew up Aloadin?"

Adam groaned. The cuckoo's nest was a plan to clear the French rice scoopers that were stuck like chewing gum to the Middle East. If they could place a foot on Syria's northern regions, Iraq's oil transportation would be easier too. The plan needed to succeed in order to live up to Reagan's high expectations. He was turning hysterical because of an unknown b*stard who had messed up the plan.

"We can't be sure, but Abaddon is most likely France's masterpiece."

Adam's eyes flashed at Matilda's words.

[1] MIT, Turkey's National Intelligence Agency.