The bright, boisterous atmosphere filled the meadow at the foot of the mountains. The men in neat brown uniforms laughed, embraced, and exchanged greetings with their families, whom they hadn’t seen in a long while.

Those who had retired from the Gurkhas could live as Nepal’s upper class, so countless young men gathered here. In Kathmandu, the capital ringed by Everest, expensive Gurkha prep academies flourished so much that they had become a social problem.

While the others savored the taste of their hard-won achievement, only Lee Wooshin did not loosen the tight knot between his brows.

Pressing his earpiece, he looked around at the rugged mountains hemming them in on all sides. His connection with Na Wonchang was nothing but static.

—...Team Leader! ...today... is the last...

The message, always overlaid with Seoryeong’s voice, never changed.

I will bring down God’s will like a thunderbolt.

“Instructor! Today’s the completion ceremony, but we don’t even know why we’re up here...!”

The whining of burly men spilled out here and there. Gathering the recruits on a slope, Wooshin regarded them with an indifferent gaze.

As always, he had brought in a box of shotguns, the ones he mainly used for target practice, and was making the trainees assemble them. Their eyes flickered with unease, but habit proved stronger—swiftly, they put the guns together.

“Instructor, you’re ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ not saying we’re training again today, are you?”

Asha, the fastest to load his weapon, raised his hand cautiously. The downturned mouths of the others pleaded in voices far too childish for their physiques.

“Ugh, Instructor. Today’s the graduation!”

“Please...! I want to go down and show off too!”

Without answering, Wooshin pulled out his portable detector and glanced up at the sky. Here in the high mountain range, the fog lay thick, with hardly any wind to clear it. The view was nothing but a blur.

“You all, from here—”

He broke off mid-sentence.

In a sharp motion, Wooshin yanked out his earpiece and stared into the sky. His tightly furrowed eyes searched the heavens like a predator locking onto prey.

From far away, a faint buzzing, like swarming bees, vibrated through the air. The eerie sound scraped at his eardrums, sending his heart hammering against his ribs.

But down in the meadow, the people were noisy. Maybe it was just a trick of the ears.

“...Wonchang.”

He shut his eyes tight, then opened them again.

Pressing the detector shaped like a pocket watch, he saw a green dot blinking. His portable device detected signals on the 2.4 GHz band. That was a drone’s transmission.

Fuck, so it’s come to this...!

His jaw hardened.

The single green dot soon multiplied into two, three, four, five, six... in the blink of an eye, seventeen.

At Seoryeong’s words about striking down God’s will like thunder, Wooshin had kept one possibility in mind all along.

A drone attack.

Drones were cheap, easy to pilot, and left little trace. Especially with plastic parts, detection and identification were difficult, making them perfect for terror strikes.

The Saudi oil facility bombing, the Yemeni air base strike, the assassination attempt on the Venezuelan president—all had proven how easily they could devastate with minimal cost.

He had prayed it wasn’t so.

If even one person died here, the consequences would spiral out of control. No one could ever know this was a drone strike. Wooshin clenched his teeth.

“Not on my watch.”

No casualties. No panic. No hint to anyone that this was an act of terror.

Every last one had to be destroyed.

His icy gaze swept the trainees. Seeing the terrifying rigidity on their instructor’s face, they straightened instinctively.

“Load—!”

Chambering his shotgun and aiming into the misty sky, Wooshin barked the order. The trainees, startled but conditioned, raised their weapons without thinking.

“Wait until they’re close.”

His eyes did not blink as he stared into the fog.

“Breathe and hold position.”

The low but firm voice held them fast, just as it had when they had run, rolled, and punched at his command. Like Pavlov’s dogs, their minds locked onto his words.

Swallowing dryly, they kept their sights trained, not daring to look away.

Then the wind came, sweeping the fog aside.

“From now on, you’ll fire your graduation salute with your instructor.”

The thick haze vanished. The once-blurred view cleared, and the approaching buzz resounded like an echo. They were swarming like wasps.

“Congratulations on your graduation.”

Bang—! Wooshin pulled the trigger first. A drone burst in midair, exploding in a flare.

The people gathered below clapped hands to their ears at the sudden boom, but thankfully the flash grenades scattered colorful smoke like fireworks.

The stunned recruits gaped, until the instructor’s bark jolted them.

“Salute fire—!”

“Don’t let a single one through! Shoot them all down!”

Bang, bang—! Each recoil brought blinding flashes. The scorching heat and acrid air overwhelmed the senses. Plastic debris rained like hail, while the sky filled with multicolored smoke.

Bang, bang—! Gunfire rang endlessly from all sides. Just as they had once hunted birds without pause, the recruits now hit target after target with unerring accuracy.

Boom—!

Some collapsed under the shaking air, but there was no time.

“Stay sharp!”

Wooshin shielded the panicked men with his arm, covering their heads from falling debris.

Checking the detector, he saw more than half had been dealt with. As long as there were no casualties, he could spin the rest. The Gurkha training center could be convinced to play along.

So long as not one person was hurt.

“Down, all of you!”

A crippled drone dove like a spear, crashing toward them. The trainees dropped flat in unison, while Wooshin grabbed a fallen man and rolled them both down a slope. Wreckage slammed into rock with a deafening blast.

“Ugh...!”

The shockwave hurled him aside. His skull throbbed as if pulverized, his vision bleaching white. His eyes burned as though seared.

Something was wrong—his instincts whispered cold at his nape. Yet he clenched his teeth, endured, and calmly fired more flash grenades into the sky.

He had to stay composed. No sign of injury, not even his own, could be allowed.

“On your feet! Don’t let a single one get past!”

Squinting one eye shut, Wooshin aimed. Two drones remained. His barrel did not waver.

He held his breath until one entered his sight. His heartbeat pounded as though it would burst through his chest. One miss, and it was over.

What were they targeting? The Gurkha training center—what did they want—

Then he saw it. A drone camera barreling straight toward him.

A blood-red laser fixed squarely between his brows. Kiya, that son of a bitch...!

Bang, bang—!

His shotgun tore down the last of them. A fireball blossomed in the sky.

Asha and Lal, catching on, fired off flash grenades, filling the air with bursts of yellow smoke.

Cheers rose from the graduates sheltering under tents, carried on the wind.

“Instructor Maksim, what on earth—!”

The other instructors rushed up, pale-faced. Wooshin ignored the burn in his eyes and stood straight.

Asha tried to support him, crying, “Instructor—!” But showing even a hint of injury was unthinkable. He shook off the hand and smiled coolly.

He told the shocked instructors it was merely his unit’s final test. With a smile, he added they should think of it as an airshow for the graduation ceremony.

Fuck. He swallowed back the curses, pressed his earpiece. Na Wonchang’s frantic voice burst out.

—...Sir! Are you alright!

“Yeah. Now I get it.”

A short laugh escaped Wooshin. At last, after three endless months of labyrinthine dead ends, he felt he could break through. Twisted though his face was, he smiled brightly and murmured:

“If I become the target of an assassination, I can find my wife.”

Kiya was Russia’s dog. The Sakhalin monastery was Russia’s cage.

Then instead of being dragged along, all he needed was legitimacy. A reason so strong Kiya—and Sonia—would have no choice but to approach him.

“...I’ll have to buy a house with a view of a lake.”

—Sir?

Once he withdrew his overdue inheritance from the Swiss bank, rumors would spread instantly.

He had thought never to dig up that stained past again.

But aside from the first name he had discarded without mercy, nothing remained. His last pride had crumbled; a lifetime of helpless wandering and running, he now accepted.

Only one person mattered. To find his wife, he would even drag his grandfather’s corpse back to market and sell it piece by piece.

“In the name of Solzhenitsyn.”

The Solzhenitsyn that had vanished in childhood, now returned.