I Have Returned, but I Cannot Lay down My Gun

Chapter 697

"... Shark 1-1. Arrived at Sandy Point Bird Sanctuary in West Haven. Confirmed DPD drop. I will ride the submarine after receiving it."

- Confirmed. Where is the target?

"Bearing 10, distance 3.3 mic, target Romeo. Break. Bearing 0, distance 3.2 mic. Target Charlie. Drone reconnaissance results report no enemy movement within 100m of the target. Over."

- Confirmed. Submarine acquisition codes are Hammer 1 and Hammer 2, and Hammer Down when all are captured. Missile launch code is OC 045523. I hope you don't forget. Begin the operation.

12:30 AM, West Haven, approximately 4.6km south-southwest of New Haven.

Five people approach a box that cuts through the dark sky and falls very slowly onto the beach, and rip it off with brute force. Inside was a DPD (Dropper Device) about the size of an average pillow, and four pieces of DPD gear.

Everyone except one started to put on their gear - flippers, small closed-circuit submersibles, oxygen tanks, etc. The DPD didn't have any TFT displays, but that didn't matter. The Icarus Gear did the job.

While the others were putting on their gear, Laurentina was testing the gear's anti-corrosion and organic matter decomposition functions. It wasn't a problem to have seawater enter the gun itself, but it was a problem to leave it like that.

While they were checking the drone screen to see how many enemies were around them until the very end, Logan added with a shaky expression.

"...You, really don't have to wear any gear?"

"It's more of a hindrance. Don't worry. Let's figure out how to get in when the time comes. There are five of us now... Logan and I as Romeo, Owens and the other two as Charlie. No problem?"

"The problem is that we only sent five people for this large-scale operation. It's going to be crazy... Anyway, let's go. It seems that the north has already made contact with Hoffman."

"Okay. Shall we start?"

Swish, square.

With the sound of sand sloshing underfoot, they began to enter the sea one by one. It was mid-May, and the latitude was not much different from New York, so the water temperature was cool and comfortable, and since it was near the coast, the water depth gradually deepened.

As they walked, a subtle nostalgia or a tiring memory of the past was felt. For them, the sea was a place where only the memories of terrible training remained.

And today, they plunged into the seawater again, and the depth began to deepen.

From waist-deep to deep enough to easily swallow the heights of those with an average height of over 175cm. And so, the five operators disappeared beneath the surface one by one.

At that moment, they were reminded of exactly what kind of animal Laurentina was.

- I told you, right?

- This crazy guy, it was real… .

The shape of the gills that could be seen from the tip of her neck.

She was a great white shark. Breathing underwater was no different for her than breathing outside. She had to be compressed to human size, her increased body weight, and her reduced buoyancy to the point where swimming was impossible.

But no one cared about that fact. There was no need to worry about such a physical error when a person’s gender changed in an instant. They were just relieved that the operation was smoother than before.

And there was something more important.

- It’s a mine.

- Those crazy guys, they’re determined to make it their home. The moment you touch it, they’ll hold a funeral here. No one will find the body.

- It splits. Have a good time with the seals, Logan.

- Be careful. If I die there, I'll cry.

- I want to see the vice-captain who doesn't listen to me cry, but if I make any more jokes like this, he'll probably kill me, so I'll have to keep my mouth shut. Let's meet later.

Large mines are placed at regular intervals throughout New Haven Bay.

Logan and Laurentina leisurely avoided them and moved toward their target, a Yasen-class submarine named after the first letters of Russia, Romeo. It was incredibly quiet underwater, but today, it was the same outside.

How much time had passed? Logan and Laurentina began to slowly rise from 50m above the surface. However, their speed was not that slow.

The nanomachines that the Icarus Gear was continuously producing helped transform parts of their bodies, regulate the nitrogen concentration in their blood, prevent the bubbles from circulating and blocking their blood vessels, and help them to discharge smoothly through separate passages.

Less than a minute later, two mutants surfaced.

The strangely shaped attachments taken out of the multipurpose pouch clashed with each other, making a very small creaking sound, and Laurentina firmly secured them to the fuselage.

It was like a platform that existed in a climbing facility. And it was not much different. The two stepped on the platform and began to climb up, and soon they reached the very top of the hull.

It was truly ironic that a strategic weapon, a submarine, had surfaced and docked at this point.

"...No enemy forces in the vicinity. Hull scan."

"Target Romeo, remaining troops...25. That's more than I thought. Have you come to your senses a little?"

"Let's ask after we take the important people hostage later... Shark 1-1. We have arrived at Target Romeo. We will proceed with the entry procedure as of now. Have you sensed it, Shark 2?"

"Currently climbing the hull. Standby."

Of course, that didn't mean to just stand by.

Laurentina checked the hatch near the stern of the submarine and placed her left hand on it. The Icarus gear scanned the hatch sensor's location and began emitting pulses, and the hatch's open/closed sensor immediately failed.

However, the depth-sensing part did not fail, and the submarine's complex system detected that the submarine was currently surfaced and immediately began opening the aft hatch.

With a swoosh-sound of opening, Laurentina smiled slightly.

"It's always fun when the operation goes as planned."

"... Are you some kind of Hannibal?"

"Oh. I saw A-Team as a movie, not a drama. It was fun. Anyway, let's get ready to go in. It's time to kick these idiots' butts."

"Okay. Since the other side has signaled an entry… Let's go and take a look at the inside of the latest Russian submarine."

The two mutants laughed heartily.

Just a few months ago, this would have been completely impossible. What kind of stupid country's navy would have left a nuclear submarine, considered the most valuable of strategic weapons, so defenselessly on the enemy's coast?

If the operations officer of the past had heard this, he would have been cursed at with a thousand words like, "Are you planning an operation based on wishful thinking instead of intel?" and his operator evaluation rating would have plummeted in an instant, but the reality was even colder and more bizarre.

It was relatively common for wars to be decided by "who does less stupid things more often," but the world was even more ironic than that.

Aside from that, if the other party did something stupid, it was right to take it out on them immediately.

The two of them activated the pulse to check the location of the crew inside the submarine, and they grabbed the ladder side rail under the hatch and went down.

The musty smell of the submarine. No matter how much power was used to remove the moisture inside, it was an unpleasant smell that could not be helped. Logan went ahead, and Laurentina held the MP7A2 that she had brought with her.

A combination of a silencer and subsonic bullets. The purpose of these two was to quickly cut off the submarine's communications and crush the enemies remaining inside the ship.

It was the beginning.

???Thud!

"Keep on…!"

"Maybe it's because there are only 25 crew members, but it's really hard to find people. Are they all sleeping soundly?"

"That's highly likely. They'd only carry lighters and cigarettes, not weapons. They brought machine guns in preparation for fierce combat, but they ended up capturing unarmed troops."

"That's… fortunate."

Logan, standing in front, held a pistol and a tactical knife. He held a dagger in his left hand, ready to stab at any time, and a silenced pistol on his left wrist.

The rest was simple. Those who met him at a corner, literally close enough to grab his collar, were killed with a dagger, and if the situation was a little more ambiguous, he would blow his head off.

That was the end of it.

It didn't take long for the two mutants to rush to the firmly locked bridge door, and only then did Logan and Laurentina add with a surprised expression.

"We've only come this far to put up a proper resistance.

"Juhada, should I call this surprising?"

"You don't have to worry about it. Just lock the bulkhead doors that were there at every intersection you came from. The Breaching Charges I brought with me won't be useless."

"Good."

The iron door was firmly blocked by keypads, keycards, and fingerprint scanners.

Laurentina quietly attached a large amount of Breaching Charges to the top of the door, and then attached long cylindrical charges to both sides of the door. In the meantime, Logan completely locked the doors that existed at every entrance he came from.

Breaching Charges were activated and then they charged in. The very basic skills of a special force that they barely managed to meet 30 minutes after arriving in New Haven.

The two mutants stood on both sides of the door and sent an electric signal to the detonator.

The next thing that happened was a deafening noise and a corresponding explosion that blew away the entire bridge door, which was a lump of metal.

???Kwaaaaang!

"Wh, what!"

"Waaaaaaah-!"

"Get your hands off the device, you punks!"

"Kkeuggeuggeuk… !"

Ping, ping, ping!

The intense reaction that followed as the paralyzing shock bullets loaded into the pistol magazine flew at a tremendous speed, striking the bodies of the crew members who were not even wearing proper weapons and bulletproof vests.

About ten of the duty personnel fell to the floor like puppets with their strings cut. While Logan turned off all the communication equipment, Laurentina identified the highest-ranking personnel and approached him.

The next moment, as if they had been waiting, the crew members who had heard the explosion got up and called the bridge, and Laurentina added in very fluent Russian while turning her dagger.

"Tell them that nothing is wrong. Right now."

The duty captain complied in the face of the unstoppable violence, picked up the phone with trembling hands, added, and immediately put it back the way it was.

Laurentina smiled brightly.

"... There seems to be a problem with the boiler pipe. I'm going to call the crew members who are outside. Back to sleep."

"Very well done. Now, shall we call Captain Sergei Zalov's location?"

He shut his eyes tightly.

Seeing that, Laurentina changed the communication channel and added.

"Shark 1-1, Hammer 1. Repeat, Hammer 1."

Laurentina C. Brenner.

She became the legendary merchant who purchased a Yasen-class nuclear submarine with a single dagger.

- Inform the previous operator in operation. Hammer down, repeat. Hammer down.

"Damn, Hammer down, Nabal, if you've taken the submarine, hand it over to the first-in-line crew and help clean it up! There are only four or five of us here fighting over a hundred guys!"

- It's expected to take some time until the handover. I'll relay the request to Shark 1 and 2.

"These damn guys… ."

Doo doo doo doo!

One shot, two shots, three shots. Metal shells ricocheted through the air, and the fired bullets slashed through the air, tearing through the bodies of the enemies. But that was only for a moment. As soon as they killed one, another appeared.

In addition, the Russian soldiers staying at Southern Connecticut State University were high on drugs, no matter where they got them - most likely the Rykers supplied them.

The existence of people who survived a direct hit with a .277 Fury bullet and then fired their pistols and boarded the express train to hell was proof of the difficult situation the Eagle team was facing.

Of course, that wasn't the end of it.

"Fuck, damn it! Don't move! If you move, this bitch dies- bang!"

"… Do you think this kid would care about that now?"

Hostage crisis.

It was an enemy-like action, raiding a civilian community that was still alive, taking people and then ordering them to do all sorts of things, but the mutant's overwhelming reaction speed made all of that useless.

The one who led all of that and at the same time, the one who was handling it first and foremost was Olivia, an eagle owl mutant with exceptionally good eyesight among mutants.

The combination of her reaction speed and overwhelming eyesight blew off the index finger and trigger of the enemy soldier who was pointing a gun at the civilians. It was not luck or fortune, but an average result.

Hoffman, who was blankly staring at the ridiculous scene, added.

"If I had known this would happen, I should have called the first wave of agents struggling in New Haven a little earlier."

"It's already in the past. There's no need to regret it now, but because they issued the hammer down so smoothly... Ah, Hammer Down is the mission completion code. It means that we have captured two submarines."

"... That's a scary execution."

"We think so too."

Thinking that, Olivia checked the right side of the interface that appeared in front of her eyes.

Her kill count was 12, and her total kill count was 45. She had wiped out less than half of the enemy forces stationed within the university, and was currently transporting the captured Lt. Col. Andrei Borodin and Senior Researcher Dexter Northmoor to the LZ.

By now, the three members of Eagle Team that had come with Olivia should have been leading the two hostages toward the escape point.

Lt. Col. Borodin gave up everything and accepted the handcuffs quietly, but that Dexter guy...

"Damn, if that damned son of a bitch Dexter hadn't done anything weird, we wouldn't have been delayed here..."

"I didn't expect that part either. "I don't think there was any partial modification to the body… ."

"If it wasn't a dagger, but a tomahawk, I would've cut off the whole weird arm… Well, it's in the past, so there's nothing I can do."

Click.

Olivia muttered and took something out of her multi-purpose pouch - a tracking mine. The moment the oddly shaped, circular mine was thrown to the floor, an ominous squeak echoed through the hallway.

In an instant, it crossed the hallway so quickly that it was invisible, splitting into several pieces at once and exploding under the feet of the enemy climbing up the stairwell.

Olivia rubbed her neck as the deafening noise repeatedly hit the hall and shattered into small pieces. And Hoffman shook his head in shock at the sight.

"… Is that one of the Icarus Operator's weapons? It's like… It looks like a weapon that was born as a result of long development, assuming this situation."

"It's a safety device created by sacrificing two or three lame duck presidents and distrust of Congress. Anyway, thanks to the guys who ate the entire submarine down there, it's fortunate that Russia and China won't know that we called in air power. It was good that we called in in advance."

"You called in in advance?"

"I didn't think the operation would fail."

Doo doo doo doo doo!

Even as he said that, the turret installed in the hallway was still spitting out bullets while making a loud noise, and Olivia checked the air power deployment map on her wrist tablet even in the midst of the fighting.

Looking at it, Hoffman suddenly felt afraid - but on the other hand, he could understand it.

'... If it's not like this, we won't be able to pull out the United States, which is stuck headfirst in the swamp.'

Far beyond the level of audacity, a madman's operational plan, and the overwhelming force and precise timing calculations to actually implement it in reality.

Something more than a cliche like having multiple lives.

In the meantime, the inside of the university was being 'cleaned' steadily, and Olivia turned off the tablet on her wrist and exchanged magazines.

"Let's go. There's still a lot to do to wait for those guys who are killing us in the submarine."

"...Yes, of course."

He had a lot to say, but he kept his mouth shut.

Gunshots were still erupting in New Haven.