The next day, Xiao Luo continued moving toward the City of Brule at first light. He expected to reach in an hour.
Brule, like Stantine City, did not escape the ravages of war. However, it was not a primary node within its transportation hub, and therefore it was not occupied by Libyan rebel fighters or the government army troops.
"Is the woman found?"
In an abandoned warehouse in the City of Brule, a middle-aged man, some forty-five or forty-six, looked at a map of the city that hung on the wall with his hands behind his back. He was wearing a black Chinese tunic suit and a pair of glasses. He was as tall as a pine tree and burly like a bear. He had the naturally imposing bearing of a leader when he spoke.
Two young foreigners were standing beside him, both clad in camouflage fatigues–one of them had a beard, and the other was clean-shaven. They were of similar build and had bright, piercing eyes. Their sleeves were rolled up, revealing tattoos on their arms. One of them had a tattoo of a bipedal winged dragon, bearing its fangs and ready to tear its prey into pieces, and the other man had a skull tattoo that looked eerily ferocious, like a monster that came from hell.
The bearded man straightened up respectfully when he spoke. "No, Boss, not yet. One can very easily find a place to hide in this city; it takes time to canvass the area," he said.
The other man pitched in and said, "Yes, the woman has gone into hiding like a rat, but she will not escape. We have released a dozen bloodhounds, and I believe we will soon get news of her."
"Hmm."
The middle-aged man turned around, and his response was almost like a sigh.
"Boss, what should we do with the woman's bodyguards?"
The bearded man pointed at four burly men, each of them tied to a pillar in the warehouse.
They were all severely tortured. One of them had his nails pulled out, leaving all his fingers bloodied; one of them had the flesh on his arms sliced off, exposing his bones; one of them had his nose cut off, and the last man had three or four stab wounds in his body.
Sarah Michelle had ten bodyguards who were all military veterans. Most of them died protecting Sarah Michelle, but the four surviving bodyguards were severely tortured and interrogated to determine Sarah Michelle's whereabouts.
When the four of them heard what would happen to them, they stared at the middle-aged man blankly like an accused who stood in the courtroom helplessly waiting for the court's judgment at the end of a criminal trial.
The middle-aged man glanced at the four men casually with his sharp eyes. "They no longer have any value. Why even bother to keep them alive?" he said.
"Yes, sir."
The bearded man nodded in acknowledgment and then gestured to his subordinates. After getting the green light, his four men took out a short knife each and approached the four men ominously, fixing them with murderous looks in their eyes.
The four men knew that they would soon be dead and were about to meet their creator, and one of them yelled hysterically at the middle-aged man. "Khun Sa, the Michelle family will not let you get away with it. You will soon face the wrath of the Michelle family!"
"Good, I'll be waiting."
Khun Sa gently massaged his wrinkled forehead and replied casually.
The four mercenaries, holding short knives at the ready, stood in front of the four bodyguards. Without warning, they grabbed the bodyguards' hair with their left hands, exposing their throats completely, and slashed their throats with the short knives using their right hands as if they were slaughtering chickens and ducks. The four bodyguards of the Michelle family tried to struggle, but they died a slow death in pain and despair.
"Boss, according to the information we obtained from the Libyan rebel fighters, an NSA soldier was sent by the Hua Nation to protect our target/ The soldier's name is Mie, and the Red Scorpion and Cobra teams were both killed by him. I cannot wait to meet him and kill him!" The bearded man expressed his hatred without even looking at the four dying bodyguards.
The clean-shaven man who had a pale face said, "Let's not finish that b*stard off too quickly. We'll give him a slow, painful death!"
Khun Sa looked at his men with a solemn expression on his face. "I want him dead more than any of you, but you gotta do things step by step," he said, "Dragon, Skull, you have to remember the lesson learned from Red Scorpion and Cobra. They failed their mission mainly because they underestimated the enemy. This time you should not, under any circumstances, let your guard down. Treat that damn b*stard as your strongest enemy. Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes, Boss!"
The two men straightened up stiffly and answered respectfully.
***
When Xiao Luo pulled up one kilometer away from the City of Brule, he parked his vehicle at a quiet corner out of sight from searching eyes. He carried firearms with him, dived into the river that encircled the city, and swam unnoticed underwater across to the City of Brule. He knew that the enemy he would face here was not the Libyan rebel fighters, but one he made in Jiangcheng–Khun Sa.
Compared to the Libyan rebel fighters, the mercenaries were highly trained and competent killers, and they would undoubtedly have snipers within their ranks. It was likely one hidden sniper was already assigned to every entrance of the City of Brule. It was extremely dangerous for Xiao Luo to march into the city without taking precautions. That was the reason he chose to swim across the river and enter Brule City covertly.
Walking on the streets in the City of Brule, desolation was everywhere, and the degree of destruction was no less than Stantine City.
To Xiao Luo, the mission came second. The most important thing was to find and kill Khun Sa, even at the risk of compromising his mission. He had already decided the death sentence on Khun Sa when the latter sent mercenaries to assassinate his family. He could still forgive Khun Sa for only trying to kill him, but he would personally send whoever was trying to hurt them to hell when it came to his family. He would do it even if it was the Jade Emperor, not to mention a mere leader of a band of mercenaries.
But the problem now was whether Khun Sa and his associates were still here in the city.
As Xiao Luo moved further into the heart of Brule City, he observed the surroundings very closely. Anything that happened within a hundred-meter radius around him could not escape his attention.
Suddenly, a woman stuck half of her head out from a garbage container in a dump somewhere in the city. She looked from left to right, and when she ascertained that the coast was clear, she lifted the lid and climbed out. She gagged and coughed, choking for fresh air.
The area was filled with garbage bags of all kinds of colors, and there was rotting matter everywhere, attracting swarms of flies.
The woman's clothes were in terrible condition and covered in filth, but it was apparent that she was wearing a camouflage smock. She had shoulder-lengthed blonde hair, her face was relatively clean, and greyish blue eyes. She had panic and horror written all over her face.
WOOF! WOOF! WOOF!
Before she could even catch her breath, she heard dogs barking from a distance. In shock and desperation, she hurriedly climbed back into the garbage container filled with buzzing flies. The moment she pulled the cover down, the stink of the rotting garbage overwhelmed her senses.
*****
The pungent stink of the garbage was as bad as the smell of rotten fish!
The flies in the garbage bin were crawling all over the woman's body. She felt like she had fallen into a manure pit. Every inch of her body was covered with putrifying waste, and flies crawled all over her body like maggots. She felt like puking and wanted so badly to get out of the garbage container, but she couldn't because she would be dead the moment she showed herself.
She was Sarah Michelle. Earlier, her bodyguards helped her escape from the clutches of Khun Sa Mercenary Corps that were after her. Some of them were killed, while the others were captured. She knew that the men in the Khun Sa Mercenary Corps were cruel, and if she got caught, she would be as good as dead.
WOOF! WOOF! WOOF!
The dogs' barking was getting closer and closer, and she estimated that they were about ten meters away from her. She could even hear the mercenaries' footsteps. She did not even dare to breathe, and all that she could do was close her eyes and pray to God for help.
"Pooh, it's f*cking smelly! Even the dogs are losing their sense of smell–do you think the woman would be hiding here?"
Sarah shuddered when she heard a man's husky voice from a short distance away, and it made the hair on her body stand on ends.
"Stop bullsh*tting, that's impossible! Even men like us can't stand the smell, so do you think the Michelle family's darling daughter could? This would be worse than killing her."
"Haha, haha ... You're right, let's go then and check elsewhere."
When Sarah Michelle heard that, it took the weight off her mind. The barking and the footsteps were moving further away, and soon she couldn't hear them anymore. Only then did she push the garbage container lid open very carefully and stuck half of her head out like a mole. She looked left and right, and once she was sure that the danger was gone, she quickly climbed out.
She climbed out of the container, and although the air outside was not the freshest and still reeked of garbage, it was much better than being in the garbage bin. But she could not stop vomiting, and she almost puked her guts out.
"Why, if it isn't the beautiful Miss Sarah who has just climbed out of a manure pit!"
Sarah was startled and froze when she heard the voice coming from behind her. It sounded like that of the devil, and when Sarah looked up, her eyes opened wide in shock. Two mercenaries, clad in camouflage uniforms, were standing nearby, looking at her with smirks on their faces, and one of them was holding on to a huge hound on a leash.
They did not leave?
They must have said that on purpose to deceive her!
Sarah was like a spooked rabbit, and she quickly got up, turned around, and ran.
BANG!
A bullet whistled past her ear at high velocity as it tore through the air. It made her skin crawl. Her survival instincts told her to stand still, and she did not dare to move.
One of the men held a smoking gun in front of his chest, and a smile formed on his face. "Oh shit, I missed! Miss Sarah, go on, run, let's see if the second bullet will hit you, haha, haha," he sneered.
The other man was pacifying the bloodhound, and he was also laughing scornfully as he glared at her.
Sarah broke into a cold sweat, and she slowly turned around. She knew that the monster missed her on purpose. These mercenaries certainly could kill her with only one shot at such a short distance.
She forced herself to calm down and tried to negotiate her way out. "How much did the Libyan rebel fighters give you? I ... I can give you twice as much ... You mercenaries are guns for hire, right?"
"Haha, haha... Why, this is becoming interesting!"
The two men exchanged looks and stepped closer toward Sarah.
The huge hound growled, baring its teeth, as it sniffed her all over, barking from time to time. Sarah was so scared that she froze, worried that a bite from those powerful jaws and sharp teeth would kill her.
Her voice trembling, she said, "You guys will get twice as much money, I ... I can also make sure that my family will not go after you, t-this is killing two birds with one stone..."
"Haha, haha..."
The two men burst out in mock laughter after they heard what she had to say.
The man who took the shot earlier put his gun away and said, "We are indeed guns for hire, but Miss Sarah, what you may not know is that mercenaries have principles too–how can the target be the employer? And, do you know what the Libyan rebel fighters promised us? The ownership of an island. After we kill you and after the rebel fighters get sovereignty over Libya, we will have an island that belongs to us forever, and that will be our haven."
Sarah was flabergasted, for she did not expect that the Libyan rebels would be willing to give Khun Sa a reward of such scale. Coming from a renowned and affluent family, she was much more composed than ordinary women, and she tried to instill doubts in their minds. "Aren't you worried that the Libyan rebels will double-cross you? I mean, once they finish off ... Finish off Bai family's soldiers, they would go back on their word and attack you guys instead!"
"You don't have to worry about that. Just hand over the thing!"
"What thing?"
THUMP!
The man punched Sarah in the stomach, so forceful that she doubled over and her body almost went into spasms. Her face was distorted from the pain.
"I thought you were a smart woman. Who would've thought that you'd be this stupid!"
The man sneered and gestured to his partner to body search Sarah thoroughly, but what they found was only a small video camera. The SD card that contained the Libyan rebels' acts of violence and cruelty was missing.
"Where is the card?"
The man pulled Sarah by her hair forcefully and questioned her, glaring at her with glowering eyes filled with fury.
The hound sensed its master's anger and started to bark incessantly.
Ss the man pulled harder at Sarah's hair, she felt like her scalp was almost tearing off, and she cried out in pain. "Let me go ... Let me go,"
she shrieked.
She struggled with all her might. Even a rabbit would bite when it was cornered, and Sarah was that rabbit. She grabbed the man's wrist and bit on it with all her might.
"Arghh!"
The bite was so painful that he shouted out, "Sh*t!"
He immediately gave her a kick in the stomach.
There was a sickening thud, and Sarah was sent flying back like a kite on a broken string. She landed heavily on the garbage-filled ground, and there was a trace of blood from the corner of her mouth.
Furious, the man looked at the bite mark on his wrist, and finally, he showed his true colors.
"You f*cking bitch, you wanna die?"
He rolled up his sleeves, strode toward Sarah, then he started to kick her repeatedly.
As a mercenary, he was well-built and robust. In a fit of rage, he could not control the strength of his kicks. A desperate woman's cries of pain and anguish rang out across the dumpsite.
The hound was barking furiously, but the other man merely smiled and tried to calm it down as he observed the beating like he watching a show. At the same time, he took out his walkie-talkie and reported the situation to his superior. "Captain Dragon, Captain Skull, Sarah Michelle has been caught," he said.
"Location?"
"The garbage dump beside Huijin Plaza!"
"Keep an eye on her; we'll be right there."
"Roger that."
He released the talk switch on the walkie-talkie and continued calming the hound, oblivious to his partner beating Sarah Michelle.