Chapter 121: Reunion (1)

Vrrrrr...!

The drone shot upward fast.

It was not one of the industrial models the shelter usually used, but it was small, fast, and had a flight time of a little over forty minutes.

After climbing rapidly to high altitude, the drone hovered at around 220 meters and fixed its wide-angle camera lens in the direction the gunshots had come from.

“There.”

Junho’s eyes narrowed as he stared at the controller screen in his palm.

Between the scattered houses lining the field ridges, he could see people moving in lines like ants toward the ridgeline of a nearby hill.

From the irrigation channel where he and Park Deokcheol were hiding, it was about six hundred meters in a straight line.

The people were split into two groups of roughly ten each. They were moving from different positions, but heading in the same direction.

Junho increased the drone camera’s zoom to its maximum seven times.

The individual figures immediately sharpened into view.

“Daeseong syndicate....”

The moment he saw the Chinese-made suppressed submachine guns they had collected from Cheongsan Building, Junho recognized them at once as Daeseong syndicate gangsters.

The first group was climbing along a sloped path, while the second group, slightly higher up, was engaged in a fierce firefight using trees and rocks for cover.

Tatata...! Taang...!

“Holy crap. Are those gangsters insane? This village may be small, but there should still be plenty of zombies around here.”

Park Deokcheol spoke while tensely scanning the area.

But Junho kept his eyes on the controller screen and answered without looking away.

“They probably already cleared out all the zombies nearby.”

The village at the foot of the mountain could not have had more than three or four hundred people. A few dozen gangsters armed with guns would have had no trouble cleaning it out.

And the area around it was nothing but fields and large greenhouse complexes. Across the river was another stretch of greenhouse farms.

If they had only dealt with the zombies in the village, there would be nothing left nearby to come running at the sound of gunfire.

“...Huh?”

Junho’s eyes suddenly narrowed as he raised the drone higher and sent it that way.

He had thought there were only two groups, but a third unit of eight men was stealthily climbing through a narrow valley hidden in the mountain’s shadow.

'Are they using the firefight as a distraction while swinging around to hit the flank?'

Realizing what the gangsters were trying to do, Junho pushed the drone farther in that direction.

Then he saw the position they were attacking and the targets the gangsters were converging on in three separate groups.

“......!”

Junho’s eyes widened.

The distance was too great to make out faces, but for some reason, one hat looked familiar.

He raised the drone even higher to match the mountain’s elevation, then double-tapped the screen.

'Assistant Manager Yoon Seolhee.'

The high-resolution camera confirmed that his guess had been right.

Inside crude foxhole-like pits dug here and there near the summit, Yoon Seolhee—one of Kang Baekho’s bodyguards—was definitely there, firing a Chinese-made bullpup rifle.

And in pits twenty to thirty meters away from hers, two or three men at a time—apparently Kangho Resort employees—were hiding and firing as well.

“.......”

Seeing Yoon Seolhee in a place like this was unexpected enough to surprise him for a moment, but Junho’s expression remained calm as he stared at the screen.

First, he moved the drone around in several directions.

'Just as I thought.'

Two drones were circling above the mountain where Yoon Seolhee and her people were concealed, watching them.

He had thought it was odd that the men climbing through the valley were moving so boldly.

Apparently, someone was observing Kangho Resort’s positions and movements through drones and feeding the information back.

Yoon Seolhee, on the other hand, was not operating any drones, and Junho thought he knew why.

'She probably attached them to Assistant Manager Cheolwoo or Brother Baekho’s side.'

Or it was possible they had chosen not to launch them for fear of losing valuable drones to enemy fire.

Junho quickly redirected his drone away from the mountain where Yoon Seolhee and the Kangho Resort people were holding out and swept the nearby hills instead.

The ones controlling those two drones had to be somewhere close.

A moment later, he found them on the opposite mountain, around sixty to seventy percent of the way up the slope, flying the drones and relaying the situation over walkie-talkies.

All of their attention was focused on the mountain where the firefight was taking place, so they had no chance of noticing Junho’s drone scouting them from high above and behind.

After pinpointing their position exactly, Junho hurriedly recalled the drone.

“Deokcheol.”

“Yes sir?”

“You see this spot, right? Wait on the roof of this building.”

“Yes, sir.”

Park Deokcheol nodded as he looked at the drone controller screen Junho pointed at.

“You see the tree growing right beside the building too? Get up on the roof and hide under those branches. Then those bastards won’t spot you with their drones either. Stay hidden there, and if you see anybody come out along this path, shoot them.”

The rooftop Junho had selected gave him a good firing angle, and if he used the modified air rifle from there, no one would even know where the shots were coming from.

“Understood. What about you, boss?”

“There’s someone I know up on the mountain where the gunshots are coming from. She’s there with Kangho Resort staff....”

As he explained the situation, Junho quickly checked his weapons and gear.

“...Anyway, I’ll handle that side. You stay on the roof and just shoot anybody who comes out. Don’t push it. If it looks like you might get exposed, get down immediately and hide in the mountain.”

“Sir, yes sir.”

With a resolute expression, Park Deokcheol adjusted the modified air rifle on his shoulder.

“Then let’s move.”

Tatata...! Tatang...!

Hearing the gunfire still going without pause, the two men climbed out of the irrigation channel, hid their backpacks inside a nearby greenhouse, and came back out.

“Set your walkie-talkie to channel six.”

After switching to a channel that would hold a stable connection out to about one kilometer even in mountainous terrain, Junho and Park Deokcheol ran toward the village and hills, where the gunfire was growing fiercer by the second.

***

“That bitch is falling back. Yeah, she moved higher up toward the summit.”

“Brother Sik, not that side. Ten o’clock. Yeah, there. They’re firing from that direction.”

Lee Ujung, one of the Daeseong syndicate’s action leaders, looked on with satisfaction at the men flying drones and feeding updates over the radio.

“Should’ve done this from the start. How many men did we lose because of that bitch alone, fuck.”

Muttering under his breath, Lee Ujung stuck a cigarette between his lips and lit it.

He still did not know exactly who they were, but judging from where they had come from, the dozen or so people up there were presumed to be from Kangho Resort or Myeongseong Golf Club, a few mountains away.

And one of them—the bitch in the brown hat—was unbelievably vicious.

That one woman had already killed more than ten of his men. With an air rifle and a knife, no less.

Of course, today she was using the Chinese-made suppressed submachine guns taken from the men she had killed over the past few days.

“Well, we came prepared this time.”

Every one of the men climbing toward her position while keeping up suppressive fire was wearing body armor.

On top of that, they were tracking her position and movements through the drones, so they were not dropping helplessly to her gunfire the way they had before.

Taking into account the effective range of the guns she had seized from them, his men were keeping their distance meticulously.

They were just laying down threat fire—more a matter of if it hits, great, if not, fine.

But while the other side was basically just one woman, this side had seven or eight men firing one after another, all while knowing exactly where she was thanks to the drones, so it was obvious she was under real pressure.

“You’re done now, bitch. If we catch you alive, I’ll enjoy you real good.”

Grinning nastily, Lee Ujung keyed his radio and spoke with a deep scowl.

“Seokho, you little fuck. Why are you so damn slow? What are you, a baby turtle? She pulled back. Move your ass.”

“Yes, brother. Hah, hah. We’re climbing now. Hah....”

After pressing the men moving through the valley to attack the woman and the others from the side and rear, Lee Ujung exhaled a long stream of smoke and turned his head.

“Hey. You lot, stop loafing around and watch the area properly. Those bastards might try to slip out.”

“Yes, sir.”

At that, the three men in the security detail leaning against trees with air rifles made a show of watching the slope below.

That was when it happened.

Pahk...!

The moment Lee Ujung registered some oddly muffled sound from somewhere—

one of the sentries holding an air rifle jolted violently, then collapsed sideways to the ground.

“What the hell? What are you doing, you idiot?”

The situation had changed so abruptly that Lee Ujung could not tell what had just happened.

“Huh?”

Even the other sentry standing beside the fallen man only stared with his eyes wide open.

Pahk...!

Then that small, muffled sound came again.

Thud!

A heavy impact burst out, and the head of the underling who had been standing there wide-eyed exploded apart.

“Fuck! It’s a gun!”

Only then did Lee Ujung understand what was happening. He snatched out the Chinese-made pistol at his waist and tried to duck—

Sssing!

A bullet grazed the back of his head.

“Aaagh!”

A searing bolt of pain lit up his scalp, and he screamed as he dropped flat to the ground.

The last remaining sentry and the drone operators, badly rattled, also threw themselves down in a panic.

“The drones! Turn the drones this way, now! Down the slope on this mountain!”

“Y-yes, sir!”

Still sprawled on the ground, the drone operators frantically worked the controls.

The opposing hill was only a few hundred meters away in a straight line.

Veeeeeng!

The drones shot back almost instantly and flew at high speed toward the lower slope where the shots had come from.

Papang...! Paang...!

Then the muffled gunfire—slightly louder this time—cracked out in rapid succession.

Tang!

One of the drones, flying only a few dozen meters above the mountain, was shot down.

“Gah!? B-b-boss! The drone—”

“Keep your voice down, you fuck.”

“Y-yes, sir.”

The drone operator, who had shouted without thinking in his shock, hurriedly clamped both hands over his mouth.

In that moment, in less than the ten seconds it had taken the drones to return, Junho—who had sprinted all the way up to their position—suddenly appeared.

***

Keeping low behind a tree stump, Junho took one breath, then rose straight up over the ridgeline.

In that instant, he drew each target there into his mind in sequence.

The first was the sentry detail man lying beside a rock with an air rifle in his hands.

Paang!

The first shot cracked out, and the subsonic round buried itself cleanly in the man’s forehead.

Junho immediately twisted his upper body about thirty degrees and fired at the bandit-looking bastard crouched there with a pistol in hand, his mouth hanging open.

Paang!

“Gaaah!”

The bullet slammed into the man’s right shoulder, and he dropped hard onto his ass with a scream.

“Aah!?”

The two men flying the drones sprang to their feet in alarm at how fast it had all happened.

But using recoil control to suppress kick and muzzle rise, Junho restored his sight picture in an instant and pulled the trigger twice in succession.

Paang! Paang!

A double tap delivered in half a second punched holes through one man’s neck and the other’s chest.

“Khurk!”

“Khhk, khrrk....”

Without even having time to try anything, the two drone operators collapsed, clutching their throats and chests.

That neutralized all four gangsters, but Junho did not let his guard down for even a second. Without taking his finger off the trigger, he alternated his aim between the fallen men and advanced quickly toward them.

“You motherf—!”

At that moment, the bandit-looking bastard rolled over and stretched out his left hand toward the pistol that had fallen to the ground.

Paang!

“Huuuuaaaang...!”

Just before he could grab it, bone and shredded tissue blew off the back of his hand, and the man—whose hand had literally burst apart—bellowed like an ox.

“.......”

Having completely wiped out the drone team that had been the greatest threat to Yoon Seolhee and the Kangho Resort staff, Junho then—

“Huhng, huuuh... ughk!”

Thud!

“Quit bawling. You’re not a fucking child.”

After kicking the gangster in the head and knocking him unconscious for crying like a kid, Junho quickly bound him with cable ties.

Then he found a suitable position, lay prone, and first checked the wind direction and speed with a portable weather meter.

Wind speed: 0.7 meters per second. A light southwesterly was blowing.

“Hoo, hoo....”

Breathing slowly and steadily, Junho adjusted the scope to maximum magnification, then aimed at the gangsters who had finished climbing the valley and were now moving to the flank in the direction Yoon Seolhee had fallen back.

Roughly 270 meters. A difficult distance for a hit with subsonic rounds.

But thankfully, there was almost no wind.

“Hoo.”

After completely settling his breathing, Junho called up the ballistic data he had already memorized, calculated the distance and the arc of the subsonic round’s trajectory—

then placed the reticle slightly above the target, about thirty centimeters above head level, and pulled the trigger.