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Page 95
Just as the three men were fighting to the death, a gunshot rang out, startling everyone!
Taylor and Philip stopped when they saw the thugs slowly retreating. Garcia, looking exhausted, used a fire axe to support himself and knelt on the ground, staring at the red-banded man pointing a revolver into the air on the wreckage of the police car ahead.
"Are you tired of living, you bunch of pigs?" The man in the red headscarf pointed with his chin at the wounded and dead scattered on the ground, his words filled with malice. "Look at what you've done! It was just a duel, why make such a fuss?"
"Oh? Your little bastards started it, and you're blaming me?" Taylor scoffed.
“Good idea, sir.” At this moment, “Poison Shadow” stood up as he spoke. He and the three henchmen next to Red Headband suddenly pulled out submachine guns. The thugs also rushed to both sides, seemingly to make way for the gun muzzles!
"The reputation of 'Tokyo Death Head' wasn't built by thugs, sir. I ask you to understand that first. If what came before was just an appetizer, then now, let me see how you lawbreakers will race against bullets, shall we?"
"I'll count to three, and if you don't put down your weapons..."
"One!" the man in the red headscarf shouted, pointing his pistol at the soldier.
The air froze instantly...
"two!"
Taylor and Philip, left with no other option, threw the items to the ground. As for Garcia? He was already slumped on the ground, but his hand on the axe remained firmly in his grasp.
"Hey! Kid! Stop playing dead!" Red Bandana pointed the gun at Garcia. "Let go! You hear me!"
Garcia remained completely still, which displeased Red Hood. He gave a signal with his eyes, and the three henchmen also prepared to bring their guns to the soldier's head.
"Two and a half! Let go of the axe right now! Or I'll..."
"What are you doing!"
The woman in the red headscarf was startled by the voice, which came from Davis!
……
What happened next became an eternal psychological trauma for the thugs who witnessed it all...
Davis's eyes suddenly widened, and with lightning speed, he reached behind his back and pulled Clark's pistol from its holster. Just as Red Headscarf and the three armed henchmen witnessed this, four sharp gunshots rang out in the open space between the buildings. When the thugs turned to look, they saw that Red Headscarf and the three men clutching submachine guns each had a crimson flower tattooed on their heads or necks…
"This..." The woman in the red headscarf uttered a single word before collapsing to the ground along with the other three, lifeless.
"No no no no no no no..." This time, "Poison Shadow" was stunned. Before he could even take a step, Davis had already pointed his pistol at him.
"You're not worth me waiting until noon!"
The gunshot rang out and the man fell. Davis left these words as his eulogy for "Drug Addict".
The boss was taken down by a sharpshooter! The thugs were thrown into chaos, but two of them, in a fit of rage, charged towards Davis's side!
"Snap! Snap!" Davis didn't even turn his head much, he just moved his eyes and spotted the one who had stuck out.
No one dared to move, so he put down his gun and slowly walked toward one of the thugs next to him. Everyone else retreated as Davis approached, but he froze, and a puddle of urine-smelling water had appeared on the ground directly below him.
Davis took the thug's cowboy hat off and put it on his own head, then pulled the cigarette out of his mouth and took a deep drag.
"ah!--"
Just as the thug was about to rush down and give Davis a good beating, the soldier turned his head and glared at him fiercely!
He was startled and immediately stopped in his tracks, but Davis didn't kill him. He just took the cigarette out of his mouth, spat on the ground, and then stuffed the cigarette butt into the thug's nostril.
"Next time, find a better cigarette, you piece of junk!"
"Alright! Now! Is there anyone else who disagrees?"
Davis waved his pistol around, and the thugs wisely dropped their weapons and raised their hands.
Just then, the pile of debris blocking the entrance was suddenly pushed aside.
"Huh?" The soldiers looked at the civilian-dressed woman who had suddenly appeared in front of them. "Major?"
Indeed, the person who appeared here was Major Leffer, who was supposed to be tracking them.
"Why are you here?"
"Huh? I..." The major paused, "I was driving by when I heard gunshots, so I rushed in. What? What's going on here?"
Lefel certainly couldn't say that he was ordered to follow them, nor could he reveal that he had lost them on his way to follow them.
“We caught a group of troublemakers who were just fighting with us. Look, the people lying on the ground are all the result of their own actions.”
"Oh, oh..." the major nodded. "Come on, three of you take them to a safe place, and the other two go inside and check if there's anything else that can be used as evidence."
"Ok!"
……
Before long, the thugs who had been fighting earlier were huddled together in a group, surrounded by the soldiers and the major. It was a truly pitiful scene. There were probably thirty of them who had been surrounding the five soldiers before, but now there were less than ten of them who were still whole and without missing any limbs.
"Just because these five people sneaked in, you're going to kill them?" The major said arrogantly, stepping on a thug lying on the ground.
"Yes, yes... this is our boss's order..."
"Hmph, you really don't know what's good for you, so you..."
At that moment, Davis and Taylor, who were standing next to the major, suddenly noticed that Clark and Garcia had emerged from the house they had just searched!
Clark put a finger to his lips to signal the soldiers to be quiet, then gripped an iron rod tightly and crept up behind Lefel...
"Hey?"
The thugs, unaware of what was happening, cried out. When Lefel realized something was wrong and turned around, a stick swung down, and with a muffled thud, the major fell to the ground unconscious.
“You…” Davis exclaimed in surprise, “What did you do, Clark!”
Clark didn't say much. After checking whether Lefel had really fainted, he slowly stood up and looked at Davis intently.
"May I take command, sir? I think I have a good plan..."
Chapter 90, Section 141: The Bald Eagle Emerges from its Cage
The peaceful atmosphere of the Tokyo concession was shattered by a plume of thick black smoke rising between the buildings.
On an overpass, a truck with hot dogs painted on its side was squeezed into the slowly moving traffic, inching forward—ahead of it was a roadblock guarded by soldiers and police, indicating that something serious had happened.
Traffic began to move again, while on another elevated road leading in the direction they had come from, two fire trucks sped past with their sirens blaring.
"Hey! Stop!" The man in front of the truck had just driven through the roadblock when the police stopped him.
"What's going on, sir?" the truck driver asked the policeman who had stopped him, sticking his head out of the truck.
"Look behind you." The policeman looked at the man who looked like a thug and pointed to the thick smoke rising into the sky in the distance. "There's a big fire over there. The road ahead needs to be cleared for government vehicles, so traffic needs to be restricted."
"Is that so?" The driver smiled.
"Huh? Who is this?" The police car suddenly noticed a man in the passenger seat of the truck whose face was wrapped in bandages and gauze, with only his nose and mouth showing.
"Oh? This is my younger brother. He was slightly injured and needs to be bandaged like this."
"Really? Okay, okay, you can let them through now! Hurry up!"
Just as the truck started moving, two more infantry fighting vehicles drove up onto the elevated road opposite...
……
The infantry fighting vehicle came to a stop on the street outside the burning building, squeezed between police cars, ambulances, and fire trucks. The rear door opened, and Lieutenant Colonel Caronville and a group of guards hurriedly got out of the vehicle.
"How is the situation, sir?" the lieutenant colonel asked anxiously, calling over a sheriff.
"The civilians in the surrounding area have been evacuated. Firefighters have found a large amount of flammable and explosive materials in the fire scene. There is a risk of secondary disaster at any time. Please wait here, officer."
“Listen carefully, sir,” Caronville said, his tone unusually agitated. “Have you found five soldiers in white uniforms and a blonde woman? If not, let me tell you, they are my men. If anything happens to them because of your negligence, you better understand what will happen!”
Just then, cries for help came from the alley leading to the fire.
"Hurry, hurry, hurry!" The lieutenant colonel led his soldiers, along with the police and firefighters around him, and rushed over. When they got inside, they saw several firefighters crammed together with a group of people, stumbling and falling as they came out.
Huh? Aren't those American soldiers? Philip and Garcia, covered in dust, helped each other up, while Taylor followed behind Davis, who was holding a woman in civilian clothes who was unconscious in his arms.
"Major Lefel!" Caronville rushed to the group of soldiers covered in soot and made them put the major down.
"Where's the doctor! Where's the doctor?!"
"They're here! They're here!" The guys next to the ambulance had been waiting for a long time.
"Is anyone injured?" Caronville asked. "Why are there only four of you? Wasn't there another one, the little guy with the prosthetic leg?"
The four remained silent. Just then, a deafening explosion erupted from the fire. An orange-red mushroom cloud, swirling with thick black smoke, shot up into the sky above the Tokyo Concession like a monstrous dragon, blotting out the sun.
"Where did one of your men go?" the lieutenant colonel asked again, raising his voice.
Davis's face was expressionless as he slowly looked back. Philip, standing beside him, also stared at the rising smoke, lowered his head, and made the sign of the cross on his chest.
"Clark..."
……
As the sun drew ever closer to the afternoon horizon, Caronville remained seated in his office at his unit's base, staring irritably at the pile of things on his desk. An officer sat beside him, holding a sandwich.
"Lieutenant Colonel, you haven't eaten all day..."
"Wait a minute, wait a minute..."
What was the lieutenant colonel looking at? Among the pile of things on the table were some that the firefighters had salvaged from the fire, things that were valuable to him: there was a charred remnant of a white military uniform, a somewhat deformed prosthetic limb part, and a blackened six-pointed star identification tag, its golden metallic sheen faded considerably.
The painting above reads: Alan Clark, Tokyo Concession Armed Security Corps.
That's right, firefighters found this item, which likely belonged to Clark, or rather, was a personal keepsake, in the fire scene...
Then there was a letter nearby, a handwritten letter from the fire department, written by a fire captain. It mentioned that when the firefighters inspected the fire scene, all the bodies were charred beyond recognition—Clark was very likely one of them, though there was no way to verify it.
Just then, there was a knock on the office door, and a soldier appeared.
"Sir, these four men have been brought as you requested."
After he finished speaking, the four American soldiers, still dressed in white, squeezed into the office one by one.
"You all go out, I'll talk to the four of them slowly..."
……
"OK, Sergeant Davis, I'm going to ask you a question now. Answer truthfully."
Davis nodded.
"When you used Major Lefair's communication device to call the fire truck and the military police for help, what caused the major to fall into a coma?"
"Sir, before the major was knocked down, two of our men who went inside to search for evidence, Garcia and Clark, were ambushed by the thugs hiding there. Then they quietly came out and knocked the major unconscious before we could react. Then the thugs outside swarmed in and started fighting us, and then..."
"And what happened after you called for help?"
"The thugs tried to escape through the indoor alley, so we gave chase. Turns out they had a lot of explosives, and we got trapped in the fire and almost couldn't get out. But Clark… so I'd like to know, Lieutenant Colonel, how is Major's situation?"
"The doctor said she has a concussion and needs to rest in the hospital..." Caronville covered his face, his voice quite low, "Do you know, soldier, do you know what it feels like to have one of your best men teetering on the brink of death?"
“I know this is hard to accept, sir, but…”
"Since you know this, why were you unmoved when your brothers died tragically in the fire?" the lieutenant colonel questioned angrily.
“Sir…” Davis curled his lip, “I hope you remember what I told you about our world history. Back when we were fighting Nazi Germany, if our fallen comrades could be reborn in the underworld, they could form several army groups… Clark is just one of them now, just one of a series of numbers. We’ve long since become numb to it…”
Caronville looked at Davis with a skeptical eye, narrowed his eyes, and then took out the fire chief's letter:
"When we found these soldiers, they were less than ten meters from the fire, huddled around the female major, seemingly checking if she was conscious. The soldiers were covered in blood and black ash, looking as if they had just escaped danger; one even had half of his sleeve burned off..."
The lieutenant colonel remained silent, sighed, and placed the letter back on the table.
"In that case, I offer my condolences on the passing of your former brother, Private Allen Clark..."
“Thank you, Lieutenant Colonel…” Davis’s face was relatively calm, and the three people next to him also looked dejected, except for Taylor, whose lips seemed to be partly smiling and partly annoyed.
"Well then, since we're all in a bad mood today, and I have other commitments to attend to tonight, I'll give you all the day off: the confinement order I gave you is lifted, and you're allowed to leave the barracks this afternoon to have some fun outside. As for expenses, I'll have someone cover them for you, so try to be frugal..."
"Oh, of course, there's a price to pay." The lieutenant colonel paused. "If you don't return to the barracks by 8 p.m. tonight, I will issue an arrest warrant for you. From now on, if you are found, you will be executed on the spot, understand?"
"Your decision."
……
At six o'clock in the afternoon, just as the birds finished chirping at the clock in a bar, four soldiers in white uniforms walked in.
"Hey! Bartender! Two bottles of wine, something reasonably priced!"
The soldiers took two bottles of liquor and four glasses and sat down in a relatively secluded spot in the bar—there were other soldiers sitting inside, and the four of them couldn't be too conspicuous.
"Come on! Cheers!" The four glasses clinked together, and then everyone drank, the joyful sounds of drinking merrily spreading throughout this corner.