Gift (5)
It was a dusky evening.
I left the company building for my appointment with the Minister of Science and Technology. One bodyguard drove the lead car ahead of us, while I rode with Manager Jang in the second vehicle. We had not gone far before traffic ground to a halt.
“Looks like a jam?”
“Yes. But we left early, so we should still make the meeting without trouble.”
It was still a narrow side road; I wondered if something had happened up ahead. Then the radio crackled.
Beep-beep.
“Contact accident.”
“Wha—?”
“We’re under attack!”
“What?”
Attack. The word from the lead car. Attack? What on earth did that mean?
The bodyguard at the wheel yanked the steering wheel hard.
“CEO, turning us around!”
Thud!
“Ugh!”
In that same instant someone rammed us from behind. The radio call of an attack, followed immediately by a collision. This was no ordinary accident.
“CEO! Hold on tight!”
“R-right!”
I double-checked my seatbelt and clamped both hands around the overhead grip.
Vrrrooooom!
The bodyguard floored the accelerator. The car leapt forward and my body slammed into the seat. It was an expensive company vehicle with serious performance, but more than that, the driver’s technique was fearless—hard acceleration, sharper turns.
Vrrrooooom!
“Uwaaah…!”
A groan slipped out under the crushing G-force. In the passenger seat Manager Jang fumbled with trembling fingers for his phone and dialed 112.
“Police? We’re under attack right now! Our lead security car has been ambushed and our own vehicle just got rear-ended! I’m serious! Dispatch units immediately!”
Manager Jang barked our location. Yet the voice on the other end remained oddly mild.
“Yes, yes. Under attack, you say? We’ll send someone. But to dispatch we need your location. We can track you… do you consent to location tracking?”
Calm, almost leisurely—completely at odds with the chaos inside the car.
“I consent! I consent! This is not a joke! The CEO of JH is in this car! You need to get here now!”
“Understood. Please stay calm. The dispatch order has already gone out.”
They claimed units were rolling, yet their tone lacked any real urgency. Fair enough—vehicle ambush in the middle of South Korea was the kind of story even police would struggle to believe.
Vrrrooom!
At that moment a black sedan shot out from the side and smashed into our flank.
Thud!
The chassis rocked hard; the seatbelt bit into my chest.
Thud!
Another impact twisted the car, nearly sending us into the guardrail. The bodyguard clenched his teeth and shouted,
“Braking!”
Screeeeech—!
He locked the brakes and wrenched the wheel at the same time.
“U-turning!”
Vwaaaang!
“Left turn!”
The car slid through the turn. Tires shredded asphalt; the stench of burning rubber stabbed my nose. The bodyguard flicked a glance at the rearview mirror and ground his teeth.
“Damn… three vehicles on our tail.”
Black cars clung to us like shadows, headlights flaring. The road had become a battlefield.
The bodyguard gave a low chuckle and murmured,
“CEO, don’t worry. I’ve got an F1 license.”
Vrrrooooooom!!!
Under the hands of an F1-qualified driver the car exploded forward like a storm. The three pursuit vehicles tangled after us, and a white-knuckle road race erupted.
Right. He had said he was confident behind the wheel. Our car was an automatic, yet in his hands it became something else entirely.
Chunk. Chunk.
The gear lever snapped through successive shifts. I never knew an automatic’s manual mode could be used like this.
Vrrrooooom!
Hard acceleration, hard braking, drift. The vehicle knifed through the streets as if it had transformed into a race machine, every shift alive.
Screeeeech!
Even through it all Manager Jang never stopped working the phone.
“Minister! We’re under attack right now! Please help us!”
Our destination had been a meeting with the Minister of Science and Technology. We had already called the police, but police were still civil servants. One word from the minister could move them far faster.
A moment later Manager Jang was back on the line, shouting,
“Police? You received the minister’s call, correct? Yes! Our vehicle is heading toward you right now!”
He spun toward me.
“CEO! Just hold on five more minutes! The police will be here any second!”
So the minister’s name had weight after all. Five minutes. That was all we needed.
Skreeeek!
Thud!!
In the middle of a sharp left turn a car lunged from the right and slammed our side with brutal force.
“Huh…?”
My vision rotated ninety degrees.
Sssssssk.
The car tipped and came to rest on its side.
“Gyaaaah!”
The bodyguard still gripping the wheel let out a roar. Desperate driving. The car raced on two wheels, balancing like a circus act as it tore down the street. My heart tried to leap out of my throat.
Thud!
After a few heart-stopping seconds the vehicle crashed back down onto all four wheels with a deafening clang.
“Ahh…”
I thought we had made it. Then—
Screeeeech!
Thud! Thud! Thud!
“Ugh!”
All three pursuit cars slammed into us at once—front, rear, both sides.
“Damn it!”
Vwaaaang!
The bodyguard floored the accelerator, but the car could no longer move. We were boxed in.
Doors opened on the other side; black silhouettes dropped out one after another. Our bodyguard was first out of the driver’s seat, shouting,
“Lock the doors!”
“Be careful!”
Click.
The instant he was clear, Manager Jang scrambled to lock every door. The air inside the car turned heavy and still.
Through the glass the bodyguard faced the group. He flicked a collapsible baton open from his belt with practiced ease. In his other hand a black pistol appeared.
“A gun…?”
My eyes went wide. Manager Jang murmured beside me,
“CEO. It’s a taser. Non-lethal.”
Ah. That made sense. Even so, the sight alone carried crushing intimidation. When our man leveled both baton and taser, the throng opposite him hesitated for a beat. Momentum was ours.
Go get them!
A flicker of hope. Then the enemy drew weapons of their own. Gleaming black pistols came into view.
Pssh!
“Urgh…!”
The bodyguard staggered backward. The sound of knees hitting pavement. The clatter of metal skittering across asphalt.
Wait.
“That… that looks like a real gun.”
My heart plummeted. Not a taser—live rounds. Enemy footsteps closed in.
Click.
They yanked the driver’s-side handle. The door stayed locked from inside.
Pssh! Pssh! Pssh!
Gunfire hammered the window.
“Aaack!”
Crack!
The glass beside the driver’s seat exploded into glittering shards. One of them thrust an arm through the shattered opening and unlocked the door from inside.
Click.
The door swung open. He waggled the muzzle and spoke in a low voice.
“Out.”
Manager Jang was dragged from the passenger seat first.
Thud!
A heavy blow to the back of the head dropped him limply to the ground.
“Manager Jang!”
My shout changed nothing. I was a double amputee. Even a former special-forces bodyguard armed with weapons had gone down; resistance in this body was impossible.
Click.
My door was wrenched open. Our eyes met. I swallowed dryly, then slowly raised both hands—the universal sign of surrender. With a quiet look I indicated my legs, a silent message that even if I wanted to get out, I could not move easily in this condition. He glanced down at them.
The men clustered together for a brief, muttered conference. Black silhouettes huddling close. An idea struck me. It might work. The odds were good enough.
When the man approached again I pointed to my pocket, then drew out a single semiconductor wafer.
“This is what you want, right?”
Their eyes lit up. The one in front curled his lips into a grin; a gold tooth flashed under the streetlights. They crowded around me, excited.
“Heh-heh-heh.”
“Kk-kk-kk.”
A dozen of them packed into the narrow space, laughing and chattering among themselves. The sight was almost pleasant.
Except that was no ordinary semiconductor. It was not even a wafer.
It was a magic circle.
I murmured quietly,
“Rodriguez.”
X7.
The man known only by the codename X7 was an industrial spy who had crossed from China into Korea. His primary mission was the theft of advanced Korean technology. Not long ago a report had arrived: a semiconductor research institute capable of shaking the global balance of power had appeared in Korea. As always, a tech-extraction operation was launched.
Phase one was infiltration. A spy embedded himself at JH Research, yet he came away with nothing. JH Research occupied a clean ten-story building, but its entire staff numbered barely twenty.
X7 questioned the inside man.
“Nothing at all?”
“Nothing. Truly. No research, no core technology.”
“Does that make sense?”
“Of course it doesn’t. There has to be a secret facility somewhere.”
“Where?”
“I can’t find it. From what I’ve confirmed, the only person who knows the location is CEO Kim Jiho himself.”
“And the rest of the staff?”
“They just organize the technology the CEO brings in. They know nothing else.”
“Alternative?”
“We have no choice but to abduct Kim Jiho. Drug him after the grab and force a confession. That’s the surest route.”
“Fine. Do it.”
The operation had looked easy. The inside man had already mapped the CEO’s movements, and security was laughably thin. Any organization holding world-class technology normally traveled with dozens of guards and layered convoy vehicles. JH Research’s CEO moved with absurd simplicity: two cars, two bodyguards, one aide. The vehicles were not even armored.
With that level of complacency, the job should have been as easy as twisting a child’s wrist. The two bodyguards and the aide went down together—unconscious, not dead. Murder in Korea was noisy business. Knock the guards out cleanly, extract the information from Kim Jiho with drugs, then release him, and even the newspapers would barely notice. That was how it always went, so long as no one died.
Yet before the abduction was even complete, the JH CEO simply handed over a semiconductor.
Heh. Could it really be this easy? They had not even reached the stage of torture or chemical injection, and the physical chip was already in hand. Still, the job had to be finished.
X7 smiled as he gazed at the wafer resting on his palm. So this was the item worth at least a hundred million dollars? Satisfaction warmed him.
He was still savoring the success of the operation when someone spoke.
“My Lord Constellation. Knight Commander Carlton reporting.”
Fwoosh!
X7 snapped into a combat stance. He had not registered the approach until the man spoke. Instinct told him at once that this opponent was no ordinary man. Years of training took over.
Whoosh.
He launched his body, drew, and fired—
Pssh, pssh, pssh.
—all in three-tenths of a second. Then he looked at his target.
“Hah.”
A man in full armor, long beard streaming. The stranger wore a look of pure delight.
Pssh, pssh, pssh, click, click.
X7 emptied the magazine. The man still smiled, having dodged every round. Could a human outrun bullets? Impossible. Yet the stranger had simply stepped out of the line of fire the moment the muzzle pointed his way. This was a warrior who had walked through death dozens of times—the highest caliber of fighter.
“Raaah!”
X7 drew a combat knife and charged. He knew the duel would be hard. In a handful of seconds he slashed dozens of times. The man avoided every cut by a single millimeter, long white beard swaying, face still wreathed in that same pleasant smile.
“My thanks.”
What was that supposed to mean? The expression held no hostility. X7 quickly backed away and scanned his surroundings, catching his breath once the man did not pursue.
A wide grassland. Stone ramparts. Knights in medieval plate and people in unfamiliar dress… a strange place indeed. JH’s secret research facility? The thought crossed his mind.
Yet while the armored knight had avoided every one of X7’s attacks, the people facing his colleagues had not always been so fortunate.
Thud-thud-thud.
One opponent had taken dozens of knife thrusts from X7’s men. The clothing was a little odd, but the plump cheeks looked like those of an ordinary office worker. The man who had been cut to ribbons looked at the attackers and said,
“I am Administrator Bruce. From the bottom of my heart… thank you.”
Hearing that answer, X7 felt his skin crawl.
JH.
This place was no research institute. It was starting to look like a fanatical religious cult.