The driver was a hot-tempered Frenchman with a close-cropped haircut, dark brown skin, and a Hawaiian-style short-sleeved shirt and shorts.
The passenger, with blond hair parted to one side and a somewhat youthful face, was Investigator-in-training Leon.
As for his clothing and gear, Leon wore a lightweight black tactical jacket manufactured by his family's military industry over a matching short-sleeved shirt. His belt was loaded with tool pouches and magazine pouches, while he wore dark green multi-pocket cargo pants, a thigh holster, and combat boots. A black backpack sat in the back seat.
There was no deliberate effort to hide their identities because the African country they had infiltrated—Congo—was simply too chaotic.
Territorial disputes between tribes, huge numbers of refugees and deserters sheltered by anti-government forces, riots, mutinies, and slaughter—such things were commonplace throughout Congo.
Despite possessing vast reserves of gold, copper, and iron ore, along with some of the world's largest natural gas reserves, it was somehow "begging with a golden bowl in hand," one of the poorest countries in the world. Its GDP in 1993 was merely 4.2 billion dollars.
Its air defense was practically nonexistent, not to mention that Congo had not even established an air force. Compared to Atlas, which spent nearly two billion dollars annually to maintain its military, the difference was like heaven and earth.
Combined with Leon's skin tone and hair color, he was obviously an outsider at a glance, so there was no need to conceal anything. After all, mercenaries and criminal organizations operating within Congo were too numerous to count.
One day earlier.
Head Instructor Krauser had announced the contents of their "graduation exam": head to Congo, conduct an investigation, attempt to locate anomalous phenomena, and survive.
It would last fourteen days.
During that time, the company would not proactively provide them with any support. They would have to rely entirely on themselves.
Of course, if they unfortunately found themselves in a life-threatening situation and could not escape by any means on their own, the company would still dispatch an ARS company to carry out an all-out rescue operation.
But for an Investigator, luck was also a kind of invisible, intangible strength. If they could not get themselves out of trouble, it would severely affect their final score on this "graduation exam."
However, before Leon and the others selected their equipment, stocked up on supplies, and prepared to board the aircraft, Krauser gave them one final instruction: "Stay alive. Don't force yourselves to endure hardship just because of the exam."
Because even if their overall results were unsatisfactory, trainees who had undergone half a year of training would still be assigned to the most suitable positions according to their records. If they were surrounded by thugs but chose to fight head-on for the sake of their grades and lost their lives...
The spirit of refusing to yield even in death was worthy of praise, but excessive stubbornness and an inability to adapt were not.
July 16th, 00:34.
The ARS Air Wing provided a "service" from the Kenya base to the skies above Congo. Afterward, Leon and his classmates jumped from the aircraft one by one, using the cover of night to land in their respective assigned investigation areas.
02:20.
Leon successfully reached the ground.
After folding up and retrieving his parachute, he used his personal computer's positioning system to determine that he was in central Congo. The straight-line distance to Luojia, the town he was assigned to investigate, was still thirty kilometers.
Perhaps the wind speed had affected him, or perhaps the transport aircraft had encountered turbulence and become extremely unstable when he jumped. Either way, the deviation was truly rather large.
Walking to the target location was unrealistic. A vast stretch of primeval rainforest lay between them, so after a brief rest and analysis, Leon chose to first head for the nearest town, Longa.
Perhaps fortune had begun favoring him again, but after walking for three hours, Leon discovered that this town of fewer than forty thousand people actually had an overseas outpost run by a French logging company.
This meant quite a few Frenchmen were active in Longa. There was even a twenty-four-hour bar serving highly authentic French cuisine.
Anyone willing to travel across the world and disregard the unstable environment to come here was surely looking to make a fortune through some "big business." Intelligence trading and mercenary brokerage needed a fixed location where such dealings could be gathered.
Where there was demand, there was a market. The bar called Romanee-Conti was such a place.
Out of caution, Leon did not order food or alcohol after entering the bar. He merely rested at Romanee-Conti for a while and asked the bartender whether anything unusual had happened nearby.
At first, all he received was the reply, "I think so? I don't know. I'm just a bartender."
Although this was Leon's first mission, that did not mean he failed to understand the meaning behind those words. So, after paying a two-hundred-dollar "tip," he received the information: "Luojia will be occupied by anti-government rebels before long. In the next few days, probably. Kid, if I were you, I definitely wouldn't go there. Your life matters, you know."
An unexpected gain?
Leon was not sure whether two hundred dollars was the market price for that intelligence, but he felt it was probably worth it... maybe.
If he had not learned about the rebels' plans in advance, he would certainly have been caught completely off guard, placing his safety under serious threat.
After all, African rebels and thugs frequently committed atrocities so abhorrent that calling them beasts would be an insult to beasts.
Then, after resting briefly at the bar, Leon negotiated a price with a man who had just awakened from a drunken stupor and called himself a "Frenchie." The man drove him toward Luojia, which was still over twenty kilometers away.
And then, time arrived at the present.
"."
Looking at the terrified pedestrians outside the window and smelling the pungent alcohol in the car, Leon somewhat regretted getting into the Frenchman's vehicle.
And something even Leon himself had not noticed was that Krauser had once written in his file: "Seems to have an affinity with traffic accidents."
After all, during past training, whenever an exercise involved vehicles, if Leon was on a team, the chances of engine failure, tire blowouts, loss of control, and similar malfunctions were much higher than for other teams.
Krauser was not worried that Leon would overthink it because, unless necessary, Leon could neither access nor had the authority to review his own file.
"Beep! Beep!"
"Merde!"
"Fiche le camp!"
After hearing who knew how many honks and shouted curses, Leon finally saw a large number of thatched huts gathered along the edge of the town ahead. That meant he would soon reach his destination and no longer have to endure the driver's madness.
Screech—!!
The vehicle braked sharply.
Clang! Clang!
The sounds of the car door being violently opened and shut echoed out as well.
Vroooom—!!!
Something was wrong with the exhaust pipe or elsewhere, causing the engine to produce an ear-splitting roar.
Leon, now wearing his backpack again, stood by the roadside and watched the direction where a huge cloud of dust was rising. Then he heard the Frenchman shout once more:
"Adieu, l'Américain. Merci pour tes trois billets de Benjamin Franklin~!"
"."
Leon merely frowned and stopped paying attention to the Frenchman. Instead, he looked around and conducted a simple survey of the area.
It was not much different from most places in Africa. Sheet-metal shacks could be seen everywhere, while houses made with cement and steel reinforcement were pitifully scarce. There was not a single real road, and the environment was filthy and chaotic.
If there was anything unusual, it was that his skin color and clothing made him the most conspicuous person here.
When he noticed several nearby residents seemingly approaching him out of "curiosity," Leon immediately moved away.
But as he walked and observed, he discovered that those residents staggered along with vacant expressions. Most importantly, blood was continuously flowing from their mouths and noses...
Blood?
(End of Chapter)
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