George Bush’S Great America [EN]: Chapter 99

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Even though it was the heart of the city, the back alley, resembling a slum with no skyscrapers in sight, possessed an atmosphere that felt like another world. It was there that the DDS [Davao Death Squad, a vigilante group known for its harsh methods], who would arrest even crying children if they were suspected dissidents, arrived. Soon, an explosion ripped through the building’s exterior wall. They didn’t bother with the front door; they simply blasted their way in.

“Fire! Kill them all!”

It’s not as if the DDS just starts shooting indiscriminately. Even for an extrajudicial organization, they weren’t psychopaths who enjoyed massacring civilians without evidence or reason.

However, if they happened to raid a ‘warehouse full of drugs’ and a ‘drug manufacturing site’ and became convinced that the suspects were the criminals, there would be no one more ruthless than them.

“What the hell! This isn’t your territory!”

In any normally functioning country, administrative districts are everywhere, annoyingly enough. If an administrative district is on a border, police officers often bicker over whose jurisdiction it is. Or, if a pursued criminal crosses into another administrative district, it could be considered an overreach of authority.

In short, this wasn’t the DDS’s jurisdiction. As the name DDS (Davao Death Squad) suggests, their jurisdiction was only the small city of Davao. However, with the cooperation of the state government, there was no reason they couldn’t get involved.

“Breach, breach, breach! Wipe them all out!”

From dozens of gun barrels, hundreds, even thousands of bullets flew towards their targets without hesitation. They were considered an elite unit, so they were given good equipment. It was just an M-4 without any accessories, but that was enough to kill people.

The problem was that the opponents were tough enough to be difficult to suppress with just personal firearms.

“R! P! G!”

A DDS member, witnessing the insane situation of someone trying to fire an RPG-7 [Rocket-Propelled Grenade] from inside the building during the suppression, screamed at the top of his lungs.

“Argh! What the hell is that!”

Who would think that someone would use an anti-tank weapon inside a building, but there were people who actually did. There was nothing the DDS hadn’t faced. Homemade armored vehicles with heavy machine guns, grenade launchers, anti-tank weapons, and even rockets.

Just by looking at them, it was hard to tell if they were rebels from a local strongman hoarding weapons for war or just drug addicts with a high level of armament.

The most absurd thing was the armament. Wait, wasn’t I just talking about the level of armament? This time, I’m talking about something different. The identity of the armament I just mentioned.

“What the hell is that!”

There was something that couldn’t be understood with common sense. For example, setting up a barricade in an alley was fine, but a weapon that had never been seen before appeared. Literally, a weapon that had never been seen before.

“A shotgun machine gun! What the hell is this!”

It was an automatic shotgun using a belt-fed system, and although I couldn’t be sure, it was definitely homemade. Furthermore, judging by the spread of the shot, it was definitely a crude piece of equipment without a choke. However, the psychological pressure the DDS members were under was indescribable, and no one dared to advance.

“Grenade!”

But what fortress in the world has no way to be captured? A grenade thrown from the building rolled into the barricade, and everything inside exploded. Those who were curious about what it looked like could only be disappointed.

“What the hell is that again!?”

I could at least understand the automatic shotgun, but there was something else that I couldn’t understand how it could be here.

“What the hell! What is that!?”

What they witnessed was not a handmade weapon, but an American M61 Vulcan [a six-barreled, Gatling-style 20mm autocannon]. A Vulcan that uses 20mm rounds and can fire 6,600 rounds of lead per minute! Is this really the Philippines? I would rather believe that the people they are fighting are rebels, but how can mere drug dealers have something like that?

“Damn it! They clearly said it was a normal drug supplier! Why is there something like that!?”

I’ve heard countless times that concrete is pierced like cheese or tofu, but this was the first time I’d witnessed it directly. The concrete disappeared with a bang where the lead had passed, and it wasn’t just disappearing; a hole that two fingers could fit into was created. 110 of those holes were created per second, and the problem was that they weren’t just appearing in the building but also in people’s bodies.

“Shit! Shit! Shit!”

As the Philippine Army’s attack helicopter, dispatched at the request of the DDS who realized the difference in firepower, was shot down by the Vulcan, they realized that things were going very wrong.

“Where the hell did they get a Vulcan!?”

“Damn it! Maybe they took it off a scrapped F-4 or something?”

That could be the case, or it might not be. All sorts of things come out of the black market, but even so, I’ve never seen a Vulcan. A Vulcan. Still, judging by the sound of the engine grinding and the bullets stopping mid-flight, it was practically junk. Except for the core components, most of it was junk made with added iron plates.

“We need to pull back!”

However, even if it was junk, the performance of the bullets wasn’t diminished, so the surrounding situation was utterly devastating. First of all, the surrounding buildings were so tattered that they looked like they would collapse soon, and in fact, some buildings had collapsed, leaving only evidence that buildings had once stood there, turning into ruins.

In fact, it was a situation that no one could do anything about. No matter how high the DDS’s reputation was, they were just an infantry unit with autonomy. If the difference in firepower was this great, they were nothing more than leaves in the wind.

Due to an impossible situation and weapons that shouldn’t exist, the DDS, which had been notorious in many ways, was halved in an instant. Half was a generous estimate; in reality, it was just remnants.

“This is ridiculous!”

The deputy mayor was furious. What nonsense is this? The DDS was halved! However, the more he heard the report, the more he worried whether they had set fire to the drug warehouse and were hallucinating as a group or had raided an army military base. The only thing he could hear were absurd stories.

Most of all, he was worried about how Mayor Duterte, who had a fiery temper, would react. The deputy mayor prayed that today wouldn’t be the day Duterte got angry, picked up a gun, and started shooting randomly, only to be killed by a stray bullet.

“It doesn’t matter.”

But surprisingly, that was the answer he received, so can anyone imagine how bewildered the deputy mayor was? How absurd is it that a man whom even the deputy mayor internally calls a crazy bastard is acting so calmly?

“Excuse me?”

“I said it doesn’t matter. So what if the DDS is gone! We can just rebuild it and increase its size!”

That was exactly what he meant. If classified, they were considered elite, but not so much that they couldn’t be replaced.

“Let’s double the budget with this opportunity!”

If this doesn’t work, we can just pour in twice as much! No, rather, this opportunity could be used to increase the size of the DDS and gain public support through even more aggressive responses and showmanship.

“At least we drove the drug addicts out of their place, right?”

At first, when he heard that there was a large-scale drug factory in a neighboring city, he wondered what that was all about. According to an anonymous informant, he had told the police in the neighboring city several times, but as is the case in the Philippines, it was ignored.

‘So that’s why this information came to me.’

In fact, when this incident was reported, the DDS was hailed as martyrs or heroes who protected citizens from drugs, and Duterte’s popularity was soaring endlessly. Originally, in a world where public safety is unstable, people like Duterte are praised.

‘Crisis is an opportunity.’

In times of turmoil, a tyrant was needed more than a wise ruler.

‘Still, this is painful. How I raised those guys.’

He said, ‘We can just replenish them!’ but that wasn’t really the case. However, a person who must stand at the highest point must be cold at crucial moments.

‘I’ll pray for their souls with the heads of drug addicts and terrorists.’

He covered his head as if praying.

Coincidentally, on the other side of the world, in the United States, a man was also covering his head.

“Wow, amazing! Did this happen because I was away for a week?”

He was another madman.

I was really curious about what had to happen for a pile of documents as tall as a person to be created, but if I looked at them one by one, I wouldn’t care about that.

“This is not something that can be finished in a day?”

“Mr. President. This is the best we could do.”

This was the result of the Chief of Staff doing his best to reduce it. It had long surpassed the level that the Chief of Staff could handle. This was not because the Chief of Staff’s abilities were lacking, but because Bush had made a small mistake.

Bush enjoyed receiving reports on even small matters, but the problem was that during the week that Bush was absent, regular reports, as always, poured into the White House. No matter how hard the Vice President and the Chief of Staff tried, how could they discard what the President wanted to see directly?

Thanks to reviewing them one by one, he was able to eliminate duplicate reports or things that were too trivial, but even so, so many reports piled up that they could almost reach the height of a person.

“I’m going to die again as soon as I recover from vacation.”

No matter how much Bush said that, it was his own fault anyway. Bush decided to reduce the number of reports coming up this time. Even an iron man gets tired if he keeps running, and I don’t know if this body was a little younger, but I can’t bear everything at this age.

“I’ve put them in order of importance.”

Even if he had classified them, it wouldn’t have been easy, so Bush praised the Chief of Staff in his heart. If he hadn’t been there, Bush wouldn’t have been able to get through this. This position is difficult to defend with one’s own strength.

“Let’s see, is there a war in the Philippines or something?”

“A local war is taking place.”

“This is closer to a guerrilla war than a local war. The guerrilla war that our United States hates the most. It even looks similar.”

“The method itself is closer to the Middle East than the Viet Cong.”

At first, they attacked a drug factory, but Al-Qaeda began to spring up like mushrooms, using the name Al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda itself has been around for a long time, but I couldn’t understand why they were using the name Al-Qaeda as it is now.

Anyway, I don’t know where that organization got its weapons, but it had strange junk weapons. The problem is that the level is not limited to personal firearms, but starts with Vulcan and even has old-fashioned tank turrets mounted on fishing boats, so I don’t know what’s going on, and the Philippine government is mobilizing all its administrative power to investigate.

“Terrorism in major cities is serious. The scale of the explosions has decreased, but they are occurring sporadically. We have already issued a travel ban, and all foreign investors are gradually withdrawing their capital.”

‘Who is this bastard?’

Who is this son of a bitch trying to undermine ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] when we are trying to unite ASEAN into one?

“Chief of Staff.”

“Yes.”

“Start supporting the Philippines with weapons.”