0135 Investigating the Truth

At the very instant the assassination began, Hou Rui had already sensed the chaos that was about to erupt. He quickly slipped into a small corner in front of the stage, avoiding the crowd as people shoved and jostled one another.

Unlike the other panicked Alliance soldiers, Hou Rui was thinking about something entirely different.

Who would come to assassinate General Garcia at a time like this? The most likely answer was a member of the Organization. Before they had set out, Uncle Yang had told Hou Rui that for a large-scale search-and-destruction mission, the Organization would never send only one person. Moreover, the members assigned to the same mission were engaged in an unspoken rivalry and were effectively enemies competing against one another.

But none of that was the most important matter now. The most urgent question facing Hou Rui was whether General Garcia was alive or dead. Only after determining whether that shot had been fatal could he decide what to do next.

If General Garcia was already dead, then there was nothing more to say. Hou Rui would leave immediately and report directly to the combat unit.

But if the shot had merely wounded General Garcia, Hou Rui was prepared to repeat his old trick: strike again in the military hospital, kill the general, and then immediately leave this damned place.

The moment Hou Rui made up his mind, the general’s adjutant was already shouting himself hoarse.

“Where’s the stretcher? We need a stretcher here! We have to get the general to the hospital at once!”

“I’ll help too!”

An idea flashed through Hou Rui’s mind. He shouted and sprang to his feet, forcefully shoving aside a bodyguard who tried to block him. In two or three strides, he reached the curtain at the back of the cinema stage. Then he leaped up, grabbed the curtain, and tore down a large section of it.

Carrying the piece of fabric, Hou Rui ran to the general’s adjutant.

“Use this. We can place the general on it and carry him out. What do you think?”

“Good. We’ll do that!”

The adjutant immediately took action. Together with several other officers from the guard unit, he lifted the unconscious General Garcia and placed him on the section of curtain Hou Rui had torn down. The men then raised the makeshift stretcher and hurried toward the cinema exit.

Hou Rui was positioned on the right side of General Garcia’s body. While helping carry the general to the hospital, he found an opportunity to quietly touch the man’s wrist.

There was no heartbeat.

General Garcia was dead. That shot had apparently pierced his heart with absolute precision.

It was over.

Everything was over.

When Hou Rui finally emerged from the military hospital, he looked utterly dejected. He had remained there for half an hour before returning despairingly to his quarters. Just as he began pessimistically imagining what his fate would be in the combat unit, he looked up and saw Judy, Little Camel, Little Sheep, and Stone gathered together, all four of them wearing excited expressions as they enthusiastically discussed something.

“Yes, yes! Hahaha, I’m really lucky!”

“Mm. I never imagined the general would look so imposing.”

“It’s a shame the guards were watching so closely. Otherwise, I would have tried to get closer.”

The general? What general? Wasn’t General Garcia already dead?

Feeling puzzled, Hou Rui immediately walked over and asked, “What are you talking about? Is there something worth being so happy about?”

“What else could it be? Lieutenant, we all saw the great General Garcia today!” Little Sheep blurted out, her eyes sparkling with admiration.

“What? You all saw him?”

Hou Rui was genuinely bewildered. How could one person appear in three places at the same time? But if it was not the same man, would the Liberator Alliance really risk deceiving so many of its own soldiers? What exactly were these people up to?

Could General Garcia, who was supposedly a tribal shaman, truly possess some extraordinary power? But no matter how powerful he was, it should be useless now. Hou Rui had watched him breathe his last. It was not as though the man knew how to resurrect himself.

“You’re absolutely certain it was General Garcia?” Hou Rui asked again, his thoughts already in turmoil.

“Lieutenant, what’s wrong with you? General Garcia received hundreds and thousands of Alliance officers at the Citizens’ Square at the same time. Every one of us can testify to it!” Little Camel and Little Sheep answered in unison.

“You’ve been acting very strangely today, Lieutenant. Look, Stone and I secretly took a picture of General Garcia at the shopping mall. Surely you’ll believe us now!”

Judy produced even stronger evidence: a photograph secretly taken with her 3800 camera.

Still unable to believe it, Hou Rui snatched the camera from her and quickly searched through the memory card. A few seconds later, he found a photograph Judy had taken beneath the shopping mall’s enormous canopy. General Garcia was standing beside Colonel Dillon. The photograph was not particularly skillful, but it was clear enough. The face and figure of General Garcia were exactly the same as those Hou Rui had seen in the cinema.

Impossible.

It was absolutely impossible.

The certainty Hou Rui had clung to finally began to waver before the ironclad evidence. He could refuse to believe the Alliance officers. He could refuse to believe Little Sheep and Judy. But could he really refuse to believe his own eyes?

The man in the photograph and the man Hou Rui had seen were undeniably the same person.

Everything was a complete mess.

Hou Rui, whose mind had turned to mush, lowered the camera helplessly. No matter how he thought about it, he could not grasp the key to the matter. Could this truly be one of Africa’s unsolved mysteries? If General Garcia of the Liberator Alliance really possessed the ability to duplicate himself, then who could possibly kill him?

While Hou Rui was caught between impossible choices, two miles outside Kismayo, a fifteen-man squad led by Blue Eyes had just finished an ambush.

Two pickup trucks and a ten-man Alliance patrol were traveling along the road when bursts of muted gunfire suddenly erupted from both sides, accompanied by the faint sounds of bullets entering flesh. Under the sudden, violent assault, the Alliance soldiers did not even manage to fire a single shot before being wiped out by the 164s fitted with silencers. The two armed pickups were riddled with bullet holes from end to end.

Blue Eyes quickly ordered his men to drag away the bodies. They then pushed the wrecked pickups off the road. In moments, the area had returned to silence, as though nothing had happened.

The man carrying the 24 sniper rifle swayed over to Blue Eyes and quietly tugged at his sleeve.

“Boss, we’re very close now. If we go any farther, we’ll run straight into the Alliance soldiers. Should we wait for the men behind us before making a move?”

“All right. Everyone rest here for twenty minutes. Carrier Pigeon, contact the main force and find out where they are. We must launch the attack before eleven tonight. If everything goes smoothly, the Liberator Alliance’s ruling power will no longer exist by tomorrow morning.”

Blue Eyes gazed toward the distant lights of Kismayo.

Hou Rui remained completely unaware of the enormous danger descending upon him. He had already paced around the living room more than a hundred times, yet he still could not understand how General Garcia could have been in several places at once.

At last, having reached a dead end, Hou Rui decided to use the simplest method. He would personally examine General Garcia’s corpse. Perhaps he could find some clue concerning this supposed duplication ability.

“Don’t go outside tonight. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

After hurriedly saying this to Judy and the others, Hou Rui grabbed his military cap and rushed out of the house.

Half an hour later, Hou Rui was standing in the shadows of a building opposite the military hospital. As Alliance officers moved in and out of the hospital, he pondered how to infiltrate the building.

Suddenly, an Alliance sergeant carrying a 47 approached the corner where Hou Rui was hiding. An idea immediately occurred to him. He took two small steps backward, drew the 29 from his belt, and, as the unfortunate sergeant passed him, swung the weapon viciously into the man’s head.

With a groan, the sergeant collapsed, his scalp split and blood streaming down his face. Hou Rui seized the opportunity to emerge from the shadows and catch the limp body.

Two minutes later, Hou Rui was supporting the unconscious sergeant as they entered the hospital. After handing the man over to a nurse, he quietly backed away. The instant no one was paying attention, he turned and slipped through a door.

He hid in a storage room until nearly midnight. By then, the traffic throughout the hospital had gradually diminished, leaving only the guards and the nurses on duty. Hou Rui finally slipped out of the storage room and cautiously made his way toward the rear courtyard.

According to the information he had gathered during this period, the morgue where the bodies were temporarily stored should be located inside the large warehouse behind the hospital.

Using the darkness as cover, Hou Rui successfully bypassed two patrols. But when he reached the warehouse door and pressed himself against it, he heard voices coming from inside.

Though he could not understand the words, he had the impression that two men were engaged in a heated argument in the local dialect. Since he did not know what was happening, Hou Rui decided to wait and see whether they would leave the warehouse once their quarrel was over.

One minute passed.

Then three.

Then five.

When Hou Rui’s patience had been completely exhausted, the two men inside were still arguing without pause. Hou Rui decided not to wait any longer. He circled around the outside wall of the warehouse, searching for another way to get inside.