George Bush’S Great America [EN]: Chapter 284

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Deafening explosion, blinding flash.

“What in the world is going on!”

I rushed out of the courtroom and looked out the courthouse window, only to see a massive mushroom cloud billowing into the sky. It was rising in the distance. The tip of an SAS [Special Air Service, a British special forces unit] soldier’s boot, inadvertently slipping on the window ledge due to the explosion’s vibration, was visible. But such a trivial detail was overshadowed by the mushroom cloud’s imposing size and the light it cast.

From the beginning, what did the mushroom cloud symbolize? Once engrossed in that question, who could pay attention to anything else? However, that preoccupation didn’t last long, because I quickly realized that the explosion wasn’t caused by a nuclear blast.

“Thank God, it’s not a nuke. I was starting to think the EU had finally lost it.”

Colonel Abbas let out a relieved sigh.

‘If it were a nuke, we’d all be dead already. Judging by the location, it seems to be the Third Armory.’

The Third Armory wasn’t a specific, officially designated armory. It was a clandestine one, created to evade EU surveillance. They had managed to accumulate a significant stockpile of weapons and ammunition within the EU’s loosely monitored network, which led the EU to underestimate the actual strength of forces in western Iraq.

‘Is the armory that just exploded the one belonging to the Missile Command? This is troublesome. I was planning to use those missiles to deter their advance if things got too difficult.’

The Colonel clicked his tongue in annoyance. It seemed enemy special forces had infiltrated their ranks.

‘To operate this stealthily without even a single report… I don’t know which country’s special forces they are, but their operational capabilities are beyond anything I imagined.’

It was true that the Third Armory belonging to the Missile Command had exploded without any prior warning, but the perceived stealthiness was a complete misunderstanding. In reality, it had been spectacularly blown up by a group of what amounted to bandits armed with broken guns and knives, and they were crushed before they even had a chance to send a proper report.

“It’s war. If we move according to plan, nothing could be better, but reality is never so simple. Only a few ballistic missiles have been destroyed. There’s no major disruption to the existing strategy.”

However, the Colonel had no way of knowing the truth, and logically, his assessment was correct.

“What are your orders, sir?”

“The sentence must be carried out.”

Originally, the prisoner should have been transferred to the execution ground after the verdict, but given the current situation, that was out of the question. The Colonel nodded to signal his intention, and his subordinates forced the President to kneel.

“Do you have any last words?”

Although the Colonel claimed it was a fair trial, there was nothing fair about it. The President was still dizzy and disoriented from the torture and beatings he had endured.

Perhaps he could only bring himself to speak these words because his mind was wavering.

In a fleeting moment, his life flashed before his eyes like a panorama. The days when he was driven from his hometown and desperately sought employment in foreign lands. The days when he joined a secret society-like organization dedicated to fighting against the dictatorship. And then, the revolution itself. Barely surviving and competing in the election against Amer, who had once been his comrade.

And finally, becoming President.

“Tell Senator Amer and the nameless old man with a broken back… that Hoshyar did his best.”

He didn’t truly believe his message would be delivered. It was simply that these kinds of last words had a way of spreading on their own. Then they would listen carefully on their own.

The moment had arrived. The special forces he had been half-expecting were either delayed, or they had encountered unforeseen dangers and been annihilated or scattered.

He stared into the bottomless, dark hole of the gun barrel. But soon, it would be filled with light and power.

‘Where have I seen it before? I’ve definitely seen it somewhere.’

He quietly examined the instrument that would end his long and arduous life, and suddenly, realization dawned.

‘Ah! That’s it! That’s the Colonel’s eye!’

Back when Western Iraq was still part of Iraq, the eyes of the revolutionaries he had seen were deep and profound. Even if they seemed shallow, each of them held a spark burning deep inside. It was only natural. Social movements were driven by at least a glimmer of conviction.

Of course, except for the truly dedicated, most were focused on the benefits or scraps that came with it, rather than grand ideals. But at least the ‘will sold for profit’ existed, motivating them to participate in or try to achieve social change.

Independence, revolution, and other social movements were ‘profitable.’ However, the President wasn’t trying to criticize reality. This was simply human nature and their true colors. If you didn’t understand this, you could never rise to the top, and you shouldn’t even try. So, what the President wanted to say was…

“It’s a gun barrel! Your eyes are a gun barrel!”

“Is that also your last words?”

It was a gun barrel. Yes, it was a gun barrel. Now he seemed to understand a little better. He could finally recognize the emotion he had felt when he saw the Colonel’s eyes back then. Surprisingly, it wasn’t much different from the emotions he had felt until now.

Within him, the Colonel was still the villain who disrupted the peace of Western Iraq, and the worst kind of tyrant trying to reinstate a military dictatorship. Yes, it was a regression. He had only seen those eyes once before.

He had only realized one thing.

“Hey! Colonel, do you really think this is a ‘revolution’?”

Upon hearing those words, the Colonel’s eyes twitched, and he gestured to temporarily halt the execution.

“Oh! It can’t be. No way. What you want can’t be a revolution. You, more cunning than the devil!”

There was no way that what he was aiming for was just a revolution. The Colonel’s desire to help the people must be genuine. The only problem was his definition of the ‘qualification of the people.’

He couldn’t be ignorant of this. There was no way he couldn’t know. Why did Hoshyar try to achieve a revolution? It was because the people did not fully possess the qualities of true citizens. Under the Hussein regime, the people were treated like machines for extracting taxes, oppressed, suppressed, tortured, and left to die.

“Hmm.”

Yes. Those were the eyes. The eyes he had seen in Saddam Hussein. The eyes that did not treat the people as people. The eyes that defined the people only as his own bodyguards.

Even while undergoing all kinds of cruel torture and a one-sided trial, he remained strangely calm and docile, not because he was mentally broken. It was because he still believed that the Colonel was working for the people, even if they had some differences in opinion.

“Are you going to use the people like slaves again! Didn’t you talk about the people being exploited in foreign factories? At least eating the crumbs of their own people instead of foreigners is that…!”

“There seems to be a slight misunderstanding between us, Former President.”

“What?”

“I think of them as people too. It’s just that there should be some differentiation. It’s just making the differentiation that those Westerners have a little clearer by law.”

Even human lives have value. And that value is different for everyone. The law states that everyone is equal, but even in counter-terrorism operations, VIPs are treated separately. What determines this is capital and power. Furthermore, it can be said to be the ability that a person possesses.

In other words, the value of a person is distinguished by direct and indirect abilities. Most modern countries were estimating that value within a mostly tacit framework or legally.

“In other words, you’re saying you’re going to create a better society. In fact, there’s a little more to that story. That factory worker was a very clever man. He graduated from Baghdad University and was clever enough to improve the efficiency of the factory with just a few words. But he was being mistreated just because he was out of favor with the factory manager. He knew how to handle tools, but he didn’t know how to do politics.”

He put a cigarette in his mouth, exhaled smoke, and sighed.

“No, well… He struggled with the disconnect from reality and pushed forward, but in the end, he was fired from the factory and hanged himself. Isn’t that absurd?”

“Is that worker your brother or something?”

“Of course not, I’m an only child. When the military is in charge of security instead of the police, you get to know a lot of stories. That’s right. If you follow the Western style that you believe in so much, I’d be an elitist.”

“Elitism? More like a superiority complex.”

“That’s right. All I’ve learned is how to shoot, and I’m too ignorant to know the detailed distinctions.”

Again, beyond the window, the sight of a second mushroom cloud ascending into the sky from another Third Armory could be seen. It was smaller than before, but the impact was still significant. That place was the third largest Third Armory, where all kinds of infantry equipment were stored. That exhausted the Colonel’s patience.

“No need to listen anymore.”

The Colonel raised his hand to signal the execution.

“Tango down!”

However, what fell was not the Colonel’s hand but the Colonel himself. It was unclear where the shot came from, but he was clearly hit in the head and collapsed helplessly to the floor.

“Breach! Breach! Breach!”

It would have been understandable if they were flustered, since not just a squad leader or company commander, but the leader himself had fallen. But the Colonel was not so careless as to entrust the security of the courthouse to mediocre people.

Since the Colonel had selected the elite among the elite and had anticipated that this would happen, they immediately predicted and responded, turning several SAS soldiers who had forcibly carried out the operation into honeycombs before they could even fully enter the courthouse.

This was also the case with the operation. A low-ranking Colonel, who was treated as a unit commander, held a radio and issued orders in place of a dazed signalman.

“Issuing orders to all troops. A situation has occurred. As of this time, the 12th and 37th Divisions will carry out the operation as planned.”

However, SAS was SAS. Even if they had been filtered out in Iraq, it was clearly not enough to face the best of the best selected from the world’s best special forces.

Most of those holding guns in the courthouse lobby became guests of no return, and in the meantime, the main objective of the SAS, the President of Western Iraq, fell into their hands. Air support had become impossible to dream of, and they tried to succeed in the mission by taking advantage of the unexpected massive explosion.

In the process, a ground escape was chosen as the secondary escape route. Specifically, using the Leopard 2 tank that was guarding the entrance. It was a very short time, but still, they were the best special forces. They secretly captured the tank and moved it near the lobby while everyone was distracted by the explosion.

Only 20 seconds after the President fell into the hands of the SAS, the President, who had been furious with the Colonel, was thrown into the tank against his will before his anger had even subsided, and the tank was moving even before he was fully inside.

The remaining SAS soldiers had to find their own way to survive, but it was not difficult to move secretly in a war zone on an individual basis. Moreover, the rendezvous point was not that far away.

They had paralyzed the enemy’s leadership and rescued the hostage. They had not yet escaped, so it was not a complete victory, but at least it was half a success. Even if they failed to rescue the President, they had killed the enemy leader, so that alone was a great achievement.

“Sir, I have something to report.”

For now, they assumed he was dead, but they had failed to ‘confirm the kill’ due to the overlapping of the second explosion and the rapidly changing situation.

“No! I’ll hear the report later. Maggot! Step on it! We’re being chased from behind!”

The report that the soldier had to make was buried in the sound of the reactive armor exploding due to the enemy tank’s shelling.

Of course, even if they had realized that they had failed to confirm the kill, there was nothing they could do about it.