El Maestro (13)
I pushed forward through the shuddering truck body. The driver's seat and passenger seat erupted in chaos as they sensed my approach. What do we do? What the fuck do we do?! I don't know, you bastard! Their frantic back-and-forth, gasping for breath, made them look like the fleeting victims in a cheap horror movie trailer.
The truck swerved left and right as if trying to throw me off, jolting the gut-shot gunner from his turret seat. Slither, thud. He'd been clutching the hole in his stomach, ragged breaths heaving since earlier—a spare corpse in waiting. Foam bubbled from his mouth. His eyes, on the brink of death, rolled slowly toward me. His limbs flopped like water-filled leather sacks.
I crushed the tattooed neck of the gunner underfoot with a crunching grind, then levitated two grenades with telekinesis, pulling their pins. A clear ting rang out as the metal pins sprang free. The safety levers still hung loose in my grip.
Clang— "Die, you monster!"
From the narrow steel sliding window of the driver's side, thick .45 ACP rounds poured out like a preemptive barrage. I blocked the short burst from the submachine gun, then hurled the two grenades in a crossing arc during their reload. The pair slipped through the tight window, bounced off the front armor plating, and tumbled to the feet of the two sicarios.
"Gah!" Concise last words.
As the passenger-side sicario flailed to grab them, the twin blasts engulfed both seats. Their faces and limbs shredded apart, while the external observation monitor sparked and died. Even so, the foot on the accelerator—still jammed by a corpse—sent the truck rampaging onward.
The mana field around the driver's compartment was gone now. Instead of braking, I remotely spun the wheel to swing the truck around, then kicked open the rear hatch and leaped onto the road.
Vroooom—
The narco tank, accelerating into its turn, charged the armored foes who had been sporadically firing at my men. It plowed through three vans in sequence, a massive protruding assault. To the heavy-armored sicarios crawling on all fours while eating bullets, it was pure catastrophe.
Boom, thud! Heavy sprints crushing heavy men like startled deer. Three heavy-armored sicarios became monster truck fodder.
"My legs, my leeeegs!"
The one crushed by the truck's ram and then run over twice by its massive wheels survived thanks to his full-plate armor—but his lower body was twisted beyond use, joints shattered. One more sank like a stone without a chance to thrash, and another spewed blood and died on impact.
The truck barreled on, smashing a moored yacht before plunging into the water and vanishing.
Bang! A rifle casing ejected from the chamber. The legless cripple slumped, blood streaming from his eye socket.
I turned from the shot to see the last two survivors of the plaza elites—their crotches soaked—drop their weapons and kneel side by side. Like the ones in the narco tank, these Awakened had sensed my presence long ago. Given the slaughtered sicarios around them, it was a miracle they'd resisted this long. Not out of real fight in them, just numb brains mindlessly pulling triggers. Happens when shock sets in.
"Ha, we surrender, Jefe! Spare our lives!"
Crack! A metallic spark flew from the head of the one who dared call me Jefe on his own. Small gunshots echoed crisply along the wave-crashing pier.
"Who said you could surrender? Fight, you fucking worms!"
The shrill scream—eight parts terror, one part rage, one part venom—came from the woman clutching a golden pistol. She'd wasted rounds uselessly on the backs and torsos of the steel-clad pair, then shakily reloaded and swung her barrel toward me. This was real fight.
"Die!"
Bang! Her head exploded with the single shot. Long hair trailed off like scattered straw in the sea breeze. Whether she knew it or not, she was an Ability User too—her circuit open, if faintly.
"Kuh…!"
The cartel regional lord, stemming blood from his through-and-through calf wound, squeezed his eyes shut against the sight of his lover's head bursting.
From the roadside brush and wrecked storefront ambush points, Kyung-tae and the combat team emerged. The prior sniper shot had been his. He dropped the still-hot rifle and bowed to me.
"You really went through hell, hyungnim!"
"You lot did the real work. This was nothing compared to the earlier fights."
The difference between battles where I hid my mage nature and those where I didn't was night and day. If the narco tank had Brits with comms gear aboard, it wouldn't have been this easy. Would be nice if I could magically jam signals. Nah, they'd just triangulate and track me down.
I shook off the stray thought and put rifle rounds through the eye sockets of the surrendered pair, one after the other. Drained of fight, they died like stockyard cattle. Their bodies thudded heavily to the ground.
"Bring the keys. All three."
"Yes, sir."
Kyung-tae nodded to two nearby subordinates and jerked his head toward El Fuego. They moved fast: one pressed a barrel to El Fuego's head, the other disarmed him and fished yacht keys from his pocket. Other men retrieved two more from the dead executives' bodies—Collaco and Guayo, if memory served—and brought them to me.
The weapon taken from the subordinate was a matching golden pistol to the dead woman's. A classic M1911, over a century old and still in demand. I held out my hand and took it. Should weigh about 1.3 kilos loaded, but the excess gold made it heftier.
"Who the hell are you guys?"
El Fuego eyed our balaclavas, asking in heavily accented, clumsy English.
"You ain't Brits, no matter how you slice it… Chinks? Triad fuckers?"
His face pale, body trembling in fear, but his mouth stayed cocky. He'd overheard our English chatter and was rolling his eyes, guessing at our identity. Thinking there was a reason we kept him alive, cunning sparked back in his gaze.
Tough luck.
"On your feet."
"Sir, look at my leg… Huh?!"
No mana field meant no basic buffer against outside magic. Soul erosion aside, puppeteering flesh with telekinesis was child's play. El Fuego yelped as his body jerked upright.
"What the—?!"
I ignored him and turned to Kyung-tae.
"Handle this one. The rest is yours."
"Got it. Mind if I use some of their dope? Make it look like his men bolted with it."
"That works."
I led the way to the docked yacht, forcing the limply dangling puppet to follow. Bloody footprints trailed long across the pier and gangway—anyone seeing them would picture a one-legged limp.
"Wh-what the fuck is this…?"
El Fuego's crotch dampened further. Boarding the yacht meant for forward escort, he watched a brick of cocaine float from a large chest of drugs and gold right into my hand. My cursed eyes rendered even its fresh warmth as visual data.
Inside the cabin, I sliced the drug's packaging. A knife from the table rose like it was possessed, slashing the plastic lengthwise. Chunks tumbled to the floor.
"H-hey, look."
El Fuego trembled, addressing me far more politely.
"What do you want from me? You… you even human?"
I ignored the questions, levitating the plaza boss's wallet and extracting a single bill. Atop the cabin table, I lined up a rail of finely crushed high-purity coke. The 1,000-peso note with Miguel Hidalgo's face curled in midair into a snorting tool.
"Please… say something…"
Thud.
I slammed El Fuego into a chair, forcing a knife into one hand and the rolled bill into the other. Trembling fingers gripped them against his will. Fingerprints now on the hilt—but breathing was beyond my control.
"Do it."
I nodded and released his upper body's freedom. El Fuego stiffened, swallowing hard, until I pressed the golden pistol to his forehead. Then he bent forward.
Snort!
The powder vanished up the rolled bill. He snorted a few times, fighting to school his face. Then he spoke again.
"Listen, sir? Jefe? You seem set on killing me, but if you're human, let's negotiate. There's a white card in my wallet—Virgin Islands—"
"Secret account card at a bank there, right."
"…Yes."
"Not interested."
Anonymous accounts queried by client number only were popularly tied to Swiss banks, but places like the Queen's crown dependencies, Monaco, Luxembourg, Singapore, Ireland, Hong Kong offered them competitively. Switzerland had actually banned them by law. Banks needed real client IDs. And a duty to verify funds weren't illicit—at least on paper.
El Fuego's Virgin Islands bank—a Queen's territory and global tax haven—funneled the world's dirty money. The Queen routinely trampled national interest for royal gain.
As I slotted the right key and turned the wheel, the clinging El Fuego murmured temptations.
"There's five hundred… five seventy million dollars in there…"
Not interested. Banks varied wildly. Ones that pocketed clientless funds often hid their true nature behind facades—especially those dealing with criminals. I didn't recognize El Fuego's card format. Unfamiliar banks weren't trustworthy.
My men's busy footsteps echoed on the gangway. El Fuego shook his head. Pupils massively dilated. Time to kill.
Too quick, and bloodflow stops before the drug peaks. I'd waited. I set the pistol on the table and exited. The door shut and locked on its own.
Alone in the sealed cabin, El Fuego screamed at his hand seizing the golden pistol's grip against his will.
"No, no, no!"
Death foreseen, the cartel lord wailed desperately. His brain lit with frantic neural colors; muscles strained against the force. Futile resistance—his index finger slipped into the trigger guard, muzzle kissing his temple.
"Spare me!"
Bang!
Bone-mixed brains and fluid sprayed from the exit wound. A perfect locked-room suicide—no evidence to suspect otherwise. The even magical force left no pressure marks.
I wrecked the yacht's engine to wrap up. All hunting in this port done.
Body weary, mind foggy, hunger gnawing hard. Sleep first, or food? I stared blankly at the cocaine chunks scattered pier-side.
Meanwhile, chain explosions rocked the shopping district near the southern naval base. Early dawn's underbelly flushed red with shaking light.