TL: EKID
I had taken enough photos of the drug deal in action.
I also captured images of the men who stepped out of the vehicles. While I was looking down to check the photos I had taken, suddenly I heard the sound of gunfire.
-Bang bang bang
-Rat-a-tat Rat-a-tat
As soon as the first shots rang out, two Chinese men collapsed. Immediately, the Chinese men who had gotten out of the van fired back with automatic rifles.
“What the hell is going on.”
I held my breath and watched the gunfight.
The shootout between the four North Korean men and the seven Chinese men who got out of the van unfolded in utter chaos. Gunfire and cursing filled the air.
-Rat-a-tat Rat-a-tat
-Bang bang bang bang
In the end, everyone at the scene collapsed except for one North Korean man. Even the guy wearing the flight jacket with an eagle emblem was lying on the ground bleeding. Since bullets from automatic rifles had flown everywhere, those who fell must have died instantly.
Once the shootout ended, silence settled over the gas station.
The sign that lit up with the words “Peace Gas Station” looked strangely out of place.
The surviving North Korean man seemed disoriented. Sitting on the ground, he was sobbing as he wiped his bloodied face with his hands.
-Bang
With the sound of a gunshot, a bullet flew in from somewhere and the only surviving North Korean man fell.
Moments later, a man holding a Type 81 rifle emerged from the gas station.
I took photos of the man who came out of the gas station.
-Click click
The man opened the lid of the drug crate and checked its contents.
At that moment.
-Clack
The North Korean man, who had seemed dead, fired an automatic rifle. The bullet fired by the North Korean man hit the man who came out of the gas station squarely in the head.
Through the telephoto lens, I saw blood spurt from the gas station man’s head as he was bending down to check the drug crate. He collapsed right there, still bent over. It was obviously an instant death.
“What the hell is going on.”
I didn’t move from my spot for ten minutes.
The North Korean man who fired the shot didn’t move either. He had likely squeezed out his last strength to fire the automatic rifle just before dying. Still, I waited ten more minutes, unsure whether another unknown person would appear.
Looking at my watch, it was 10:10 p.m.
“Damn, what should I do?”
My mission was over. I had taken enough pictures and could now return to the Suit Shop, hand in the camera, and collect my pay. But I couldn’t bring myself to leave.
The money bag and the drug crate caught my eye.
I didn’t know what caused the deal to fall through, but both sides had turned their guns on each other, and everyone had died. In front of my eyes, only the money bag and the drug crate were left behind.
If the money was for a drug deal, it would definitely be in US dollars. I wondered whether I should walk away and leave that huge amount of money or take it.
While debating in the reeds, I stood up. Then I started walking toward the gas station.
Torn between leaving and taking the drug crate and the money bag, I chose the latter.
I’m the kind of person who nonchalantly picks up dropped money on the street and puts it in my pocket. For someone like me to walk away from an unclaimed money bag? That’s something I could never imagine. Such a thing would be an act of stupidity I could never allow in my life.
As I walked, I took a mask out of my pocket and put it on, then pulled the hood of my hoodie over my head.
Rustle rustle
The sound of my footsteps trampling through the silver grass field echoed unusually loud.
“I need to stay calm.”
I took a deep breath.
Holding the Glock Pistol that was tucked in the back of my waistband, I moved through the silver grass and stepped out onto the road.
Upon arriving at the gas station and checking the scene, there were no survivors. It seemed clear the North Korean man had used the last of his strength to pull the trigger before dying. The floor of the gas station was soaked in blood.
I examined the man wearing the flight jacket with the eagle emblem. He was clearly dead. There were three bullet wounds on his body.
I entered the gas station office with the Glock Pistol in my hand. The office was empty. I opened the casing of the PC that stored the CCTV footage. Then I took out the hard disk and put it in the pocket of my hoodie. To avoid leaving any trace of my presence here, I had to delete the CCTV footage first. Then I stepped out of the gas station office.
I went back to the scene of the shootout and opened the money bag. As expected, it was full of 100-dollar bills wrapped in plastic. Only one bundle had the plastic torn off. It was probably opened to check whether the money was counterfeit. I pulled out one 100-dollar bill and put it in my pocket.
“Was the deal ruined because the money was counterfeit? I need to check.”
I opened the crate that had come from Pyeongbuk 90-330. It was filled with drugs. It looked like over 20 kilograms.
I placed the money bag on top of the drug crate and carried the crate back into the field of silver grass. It was so heavy that I had to set it down on the ground and rest twice on the way back.
“Damn heavy. Ugh, this is hard.”
When I returned to the spot where I had been staking out, I buried the money bag and the drug crate in the ground. Fortunately, the soil wasn’t hard, so digging with a knife wasn’t too difficult.
After burying the crate, I stood up and looked around. I felt confident I’d be able to find this place again.
I headed back to where I had parked the Voge 300ACX motorcycle.
***
In front of the Suit Shop in Zhenxing District of Dandong City, a group of Chinese public security officers had gathered.
The Suit Shop, surrounded by police lines, had its show window shattered, and a mannequin dressed in a suit was toppled over with its head sticking out of the broken window.
I parked my motorcycle on the roadside.
“What happened there?”
It looked like something had gone wrong at the Suit Shop after I left.
I called Old-man Choi. The call only rang and wasn’t answered.
One of the public security officers seemed to be looking at me suspiciously.
To avoid raising suspicion, I went over to a street vendor that was still selling jianbing late at night and took a seat. It was a street stall run by an elderly lady.
“What would you like?”
“One jianbing, please. Grandma, do you know what happened over there?”
“Ah, the world’s so dangerous these days. A robber broke into the Suit Shop and two people were shot dead.”
“Who died?”
“They say it was the Suit Shop owner and one customer.”
“Oh no, when did it happen?”
“Around 8 p.m., when the shop was closing.”
What the hell is going on? Things kept getting more complicated.
The Suit Shop closes at 8 p.m. That’s when I was staking out in the silver grass field in Hwanggeumpyong.
“If it’s the Suit Shop owner, then you must know him well, right, grandma?”
“Only by face. He’s never once bought my jianbing.”
The Suit Shop is a base for The Company. If the Suit Shop was attacked, doesn’t that mean the base has been exposed? This is bad, especially since Old-man Choi is connected to the Suit Shop.
“Are you taking it to go or eating here?”
“To go, please.”
The elderly woman put the jianbing into a plastic bag. I handed her 10 yuan and went back to where my motorcycle was, then placed the plastic bag with the jianbing into the trunk box on the rear seat.
I started up the motorcycle and quickly took off. Since the main base had been attacked, I had to hurry and check what had happened to my hideout.
***
Since it was past midnight, the shopping district alley was deserted and quiet.
I parked the motorcycle at the far end of the alley, well away from the commercial building, and walked to the building. If someone was inside my ops room, they might hear the motorcycle and know I was coming.
From the outside, the commercial building didn’t look unusual. There was no one on the street, and the alley was dark. The fourth floor, where my ops room was, had frosted windows, so it was impossible to tell from outside whether the lights were on or off.
I entered the building and drew my Glock Pistol. I quieted my footsteps and climbed the dark stairwell to the fourth floor. On the way up, I constantly turned my head side to side to check my surroundings.
The three strands of hair I had placed in the door crack were still there. There was no sign that anyone had opened the door. I pressed my ear against the steel door. I could hear a dog barking from inside. No other sounds.
I carefully turned the key.
Click. First stage unlocked.
Then I pressed the password on the keypad at the entrance.
Beep beep beep. Second stage unlocked.
I opened the door slightly and peeked into the ops room. As the door opened, the entrance light turned on. I could faintly hear the barking alarm sound and the whir of the fan cooling the 24-hour server unit. The inside of the ops room looked just as it always did.
I entered the ops room and turned on the light. With my pistol aimed forward, I checked every corner of the room including the bathroom and wardrobe. During this time, the sound of the dog barking continued.
-Woof woof
After confirming that no one was in the ops room, I went to the monitor on the work desk and turned off the alarm.
I sat down in the chair and let out a sigh. I felt a sense of relief knowing that no one had trespassed into the ops room.
I typed on the keyboard and replayed the CCTV footage recorded while I was away. I checked each clip that detected movement one by one. No one had come up to the fourth floor during my absence.
Leaning back in my chair, I put a cigarette in my mouth. It was a Chinese brand cigarette, Zhongnanhai, that Old-man Choi had brought.
Click
I lit the cigarette and took a deep drag. Seeing the smoke rise in front of my eyes helped me relax a little.
“I told that old man so many times to buy Raison…”
Chinese cigarettes are so strong I don’t want to take more than three puffs. I stubbed out the cigarette in the tin ashtray.
I called Old-man Choi again. As before, it just rang without an answer.
“Old man, you’re okay, right?”
I retraced the events of the day in my mind.
1. My mission and the part-time job are separate.
2. A shootout occurred at the Suit Shop before I left the gas station. That means the shootout likely wasn’t about the money bag and drugs. But since the operation had been in progress for two months, the possibility that a drug organization attacked the Suit Shop can’t be ruled out.
3. If the customer who died at the Suit Shop was Old-man Choi, then I need to activate the emergency contact network. According to Company regulations, if there is no contact with a senior handler for more than 24 hours, the base must be immediately shut down and evacuation to a safehouse must begin. However, I still don’t know who the customer that died at the Suit Shop was.
After thinking it through to this point, the answer became clear. I had no choice but to wait for contact from Old-man Choi within the next 24 hours.
Just in case, I searched for news articles on my phone. But there was no news about a shooting.
“Guess it won’t be reported until tomorrow morning.”
I took the hard disk out of my backpack. It contained the CCTV footage from the gas station.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep easily tonight, so I decided to review why the shootout occurred at the gas station.
I connected the hard disk to the PC in the ops room and played the footage.
As expected, the first person to open fire was a man who had gotten out of the North Korean truck. One odd thing was that the other North Korean men seemed surprised when he fired, as if they hadn’t expected him to shoot, and they were shown saying something in confusion. Then the gunfight between the two sides broke out.
The CCTV footage didn’t have audio, so I couldn’t tell what they were saying.
The footage continued, and then I saw myself entering the gas station after the shootout ended. I paused the video. Then I deleted the segment where I appeared. I saved only the section showing the shootout onto a USB drive.
If there’s no contact from Old-man Choi by tomorrow, I will have to evacuate the ops room. I looked around the room. I began sorting what to take and what to incinerate. Since I don’t keep much stuff, the sorting didn’t take long.
I packed scraps of paper like memos and used sheets, along with about ten external hard drives containing past footage, into a box and took it up to the rooftop. I put everything into the incineration drum and set it all on fire. The CCTV hard disk from the gas station was burned along with it. The traces of the past vanished with the flames.
Then I brought the motorcycle parked at the end of the alley into the storage room.
Now all that’s left is to wait for contact from Old-man Choi.