New Beginning (7)
Ten hours later, I returned to the village where I'd met the trio brothers. When I approached them with open arms, happy to see them again, I got joint-locked instead. Damn it.
The next day, I went hunting with the trio brothers in the mountains behind the village. When I asked what we were after, they told me there was a crocodile habitat back there. Mexican crocodile hides fetched a good price and were one of the village's specialties. But I had a feeling we weren't supposed to be hunting them freely. Denny winked at me. Poaching, then. He made it clear: don't aim for the head. Anything else and we'd be back to square one in a week. Hides were valuable. "Si." (Yes.)
To hunt in the wild, you had to become the apex predator. Assuming you had a gun, the first step was finding water. Animals needed to drink on a regular cycle, so the theory was they'd come to water within that window. We searched for ponds, reservoirs, and valleys to find the crocodiles. Johnny said the nearby spots had already been cleaned out, so we'd have to go farther. We decided to check anyway in case any stragglers remained. Of course, there were none.
We walked another thirty minutes or so before I nearly threw up. In the past, I would have. A body was hanging from a tree. It was the first time I'd seen a human corpse. The bluish skin, the unfocused eyes, the limp limbs. The atmosphere in front of us felt wrong. Suddenly the trio brothers took off running. What the hell, guys? They reached the body and Denny scrambled up the tree in one fluid motion to cut it down. He jumped back to the ground, cradled the corpse, and wept. I'd never seen anyone cry so bitterly. I patted his back. Poor Denny. She must have been someone close to him. Who could have done this?
The leader calmed Johnny and Denny, then suggested we recover the body. Denny shouted something heated, but the leader just listened quietly. Five minutes later, Denny hoisted the body onto his back and started the walk back to the village.
White smoke rose into the air. It was the village's unique funeral custom. They built a fire with dry wood, then added green wood to create the white smoke as a prayer for the deceased's peaceful rest. Though it only lasted a few hours, every villager came out to pray with solemn faces.
Afterward, the leader called me over. "She was my fiancée." ...No way. "Will you help me? I heard you run a big business in Korea." I listened without interrupting, wondering what I could possibly do. "Could you front the fifty thousand dollars in remaining payment you promised?" Who, me? I hadn't made any such promise, so I was caught off guard, but fifty thousand dollars seemed manageable. The leader had probably already paid the deposit for my study abroad. After negotiating with the police officer last time, the remaining amount was exactly that figure. At this point, with less than a month left in the promised six months, it was fair to consider the deal complete. But the money was in Korea. When I said as much, he told me to send it through Skylight to Gonzales. He wrote down the ID—surprisingly straightforward. Using his real name like that. heygonzales
I quickly contacted Korea and found Ha-mo hyung. I asked him to go to the hideout, open the safe, take out the dollars inside, and deposit them into the bank app. Fortunately, there was no transfer fee. Then I told him to send it to the Gonzales I specified. I'd have to change the password and move the safe later. I said I'd help if I could. The leader grabbed my hand and thanked me profusely.
The next day, I was shocked to see a five-ton wing-body truck rolling into the village. These people moved as fast as Koreans. Rifles and sniper rifles I'd fired before, grenades, even RPGs they jokingly called magic wands—pretty much everything needed for infantry combat seemed to be there. And with that, my Mexican training came to an end. When I told the leader, he said to stay one more week, then change the schedule and return to Korea. I passed the updated schedule to the leader and began preparing to leave.
Three days later, I watched the village vigilante group—the one I called the army—depart. Including pickup trucks, about ten vehicles moved out. The scale was impressive; roughly thirty men. I wanted to tell them not to go... but how do you stop brothers whose eyes have gone wild? Boom. I reflexively grabbed the AK47 left nearby—the surplus gear the vigilantes had distributed to those remaining in the village—and took up a perimeter watch. I put on the plate armor (bulletproof vest) and stepped into the hallway. From the window, I saw flames rising outside. Sirens wailed as a blackout began. I moved carefully to the veranda as I'd been taught, crawling on my stomach to assess the situation below. Luckily, no one was there. When I looked toward the fire, I saw half-naked men carrying guns entering the village. They were split across three pickup trucks, maybe ten in total. I took the shot without thinking. Headshot! Did I just kill someone? My hands started shaking violently. The invaders in the trucks scrambled for cover, startled. While I gripped my trembling right hand with my left to steady it, the image of the body I'd seen earlier flashed through my mind. The thought that I might end up the same way suddenly calmed my right hand. I fired again, steady and deliberate, just like in training. Thud! The invaders hadn't been trained. Exposing themselves in open ground only increased the risk of being sniped, yet they kept doing it. Thud! By the time they reached the square in front of the village hall, I'd taken down three. Only then did the man who seemed to be their leader shout for everyone to take cover. They fired suppressing shots at random. Soon their ammunition ran out, and silence fell over the village. Thud! I spotted movement at one of my observation points and fired—another hit, I thought. Whether lucky or unlucky, my position had probably been spotted. I faintly heard someone pointing at the building next to the village hall where I was and ordering an assault. Damn it. I retreated to my room, grabbed the hand axe and Glock 17 I'd brought from the uninhabited island along with extra magazines, and descended to the ground floor via the stairwell at the end of the hallway. As I turned toward the village hall, an explosion blew away the second floor I'd just left. Sparks and smoke billowed upward. Hiding behind the village hall, I saw three men approaching the building I'd been in. I circled around to the back, climbed through a window, and hid behind the front door. I could barely breathe, terrified of being discovered. The front door slowly creaked open. I waited, steadying my breathing as I'd learned in urban combat training, for two of them to enter. One, two, three! Bang! I kicked the door to separate them, then drove the axe into the first man's head, putting him out of the fight. I finished the second with a three-round burst as he followed, then emptied the rest of the magazine into the last man still behind the door. I swapped magazines, confirmed each kill with a single shot as trained, then escaped through the window and entered the village hall building. The moment I stepped inside, the first floor exploded too. Those crazy bastards. From the pickup truck, their leader ordered his men to set the place on fire like arsonists. They lit makeshift Molotov cocktails from the truck bed, threw them at the building, then drove back toward the village entrance. Seeing the village hall catch fire, I left without hesitation and sprinted for the shooting range—the valley where they'd taught me to shoot. After running the route a few times, I knew the way. I spent the night in front of the container. When morning came and no one appeared, I broke the padlock. After restocking on ammunition, I closed the door and headed back to the village, taking a zigzag route in case of ambushes. I might have been overestimating the enemy, but as the old saying goes, it's better to tap the stone bridge before crossing. When I returned, the village was in mourning. The expedition force had come back, but the empty spaces were obvious, and the survivors couldn't bring themselves to smile at the state of the village. More white smoke rose. I approached the makeshift tent and found the leader. Thankfully, he didn't appear injured. "You did well." "That was you, wasn't it? The entrance and the first floor of the lodging." "Yes." "Good work. First time?" "Yes." Suddenly my hands started shaking again as I listened to him. Seeing this, the leader gently took my hand. "I believe you'll get through this. I contacted Gonzales, so head to Cancun and wait there." You too? That afternoon, I drove the battered Pride back into downtown Cancun. For three days, my chronic aversion to people flared up. I hung a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door and stayed holed up in my room. But human instincts were terrifying. Hunger eventually drove me out. I went down to the restaurant in front of the hotel and ate a burrito. It tasted good. A chuckle slipped out. Maybe it was because the first meal we'd shared during training had been burritos.