Chapter 309
2-IN-1 chapter
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"What exactly do you want? What are your demands? If all you want is to get out of Tijuana alive and extort some money from me, I can agree to that—but only after you hand over my son's ashes."
"Afterwards? I'm afraid if I really did that, what I'd receive wouldn't be your money, but the hitmen you'd send instead, Mr. Hector. You say you're not as brutal as people say—I believe that."
Leo extended a finger and wagged it twice. "But you're definitely not some benevolent gentleman either."
Hector's face flushed red with anger as he shouted, "There's no way I'll transfer the money first. I can't trust someone who desecrates the dead."
Leo sighed, his expression filled with apparent regret.
"Is that so? Then I guess we're at a deadlock. What a shame."
Hector's temples throbbed.
He'd already cursed Leo a thousand, no—a million times in his heart.
But the worst part was, he couldn't do anything to Leo.
Maybe someone like Jesse James could say something like, "We're brothers—your father's my father. If you're gonna roast him, just save me a plate."
But Hector? He could never say something like that.
Because Jesse James knew his rival valued loyalty and brotherhood—he was just bluffing.
But Hector didn't know Leo at all. He didn't dare gamble on what Leo might actually do with his son's ashes.
"Fine. Fine! We'll do it like this—cash for ashes, simultaneous exchange. You choose the time and place."
What Hector didn't realize was that this plan—his "own" brilliant idea—was exactly what Leo had led him to suggest.
If Leo had proposed it directly, Hector would have suspected a trap. After all, the suggestion came from the enemy—how could it be trusted?
But if it was Hector's own idea? Then there was no problem.
Because people never question themselves.
"Tomorrow at 2 a.m. Meet at the Salamanca Cartel's cemetery."
Hector nearly coughed up blood.
In the middle of the night. At a cemetery. Seriously?
You really thought that up.
But despite his ruthless nature and background, Hector was a staunch atheist. He believed ghosts didn't exist—only rogue AIs or cyberpsychos.
The time and place didn't matter to him.
But Leo's next condition threw Hector off.
"You come alone."
"Impossible!" Hector refused immediately.
While he had undergone a fair amount of cybernetic augmentation, had basic combat training, could shoot, and had killed people himself—it was still absolutely impossible for him to go alone.
He wasn't some Hollywood action hero. What if Leo shot him the moment he showed up?
At least with bodyguards, someone could take a bullet for him.
"If it were you, would you go alone?"
"Fine. Bring people—but no more than three. If more than three show up, then you can go fish your son's ashes out of a septic tank."
With that, the call was abruptly cut off.
"Bastard!" Hector's eyes were bloodshot as he roared in fury and flipped the table.
"I'll kill you! I'll tear you all to pieces!"
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After the call ended, V, who had listened in the entire time, asked, "Do you think he'll really come with only three people?"
To her surprise, Leo shook his head firmly. "Trust me. No way."
"No way?" V's eyes widened. "Then everything he said on the video call—that was all an act?"
Leo shook his head again. "Not quite. He does genuinely grieve for his son. But his hatred for us outweighs his love."
"More importantly, he'll take this opportunity to try and catch us. Even grabbing just one of us would give him leverage for negotiation."
V curled her lips. "So that's his angle… Then why don't we just wait a few hundred meters away and I snipe him the moment he shows? Send him straight to join his son."
She mimed pulling a sniper trigger.
"I don't doubt your skills, but the cemetery is on a bare hillside. No buildings, barely any trees—no cover to hide in."
"And a cartel as large as Salamanca definitely has recon drones. Before they even arrive, they'll scan the area from the air."
"Like I said, the ground is completely exposed. If three people are lying in ambush, those drones will spot them immediately."
Lucy, listening, looked thoughtful. "Then I guess we could set laser trip mines inside the cemetery?"
But before Leo could object, V beat him to it.
"That won't work either. Laser trip mines are trigger-based. Hector would never be the first to walk in—he'd send his men to scout ahead."
"And those lasers? Way too visible. Whether it's through cybernetic eyes or drones, they'd spot them in seconds."
"Even if we used old-school mines or booby traps made from grenades, they're still trigger-based. We wouldn't be able to guarantee they'd hit Hector. Even timed explosives wouldn't help—we wouldn't be there to control the exact moment."
Lucy didn't seem annoyed by V's objections, but instead stared directly at Leo.
"If he proposed a cemetery meeting and you agreed, that means you already have a plan, right? Enough teasing—what are we doing?"
"It's not even that complicated," Leo replied, smiling. "Remember back in Night City, when I told you two to leave ahead of me? I made a stop at Afterlife. Bought a weapon from Rogue."
He pulled the unopened case he had carried this whole time in front of them, placed it on the table, and flipped it open.
Both V and Lucy's eyes went wide.
In that instant, they understood why Leo had agreed to a deal at the cemetery.
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*Late night, above the cemetery.*
The pitch-black sky was pierced by a faint shimmering outline.
It was a recon drone in optical camouflage.
As the drone's lens rotated, Hector—controlling it personally from over a thousand meters away—wore an increasingly grim expression.
"Not a single person? That's impossible."
He didn't trust anyone else—so he was piloting the drone himself.
But no matter how many times he scanned, the results didn't change.
There were only their three hundred men in the area.
Yes. To catch the bastard who dared to defile his son's ashes, Hector had mobilized every one of his elite gunners.
They were already positioned across the entire area, locking it down tight.
If the enemy was already inside, there would be no escape.
But when Hector observed from above using a recon drone, he was stunned to find not a single suspicious figure in sight.
This was not only baffling to him—it also ignited a deep sense of humiliation and rage.
The humiliation came from having been played.
And the rage… also came from having been played.
But anger didn't solve anything.
So Hector forced himself to calm down.
Maybe they were just late?
He decided to wait a little longer.
And so, Hector stood in the cold and darkness for a full two hours.
More than an hour had passed since the agreed-upon time. No matter how late someone was, this was too much. There was no storm, no disaster—no excuse for this kind of delay.
Finally unable to bear it any longer, Hector called Leo.
He had expected the coward to dodge the call—but to his surprise, Leo picked up immediately.
"I'm already at the location, you liar! When are you coming? Or are you too scared to meet me face-to-face?"
"No, Mr. Hector. I'm already here."
Hector's first reaction was a cold sweat.
Then came disbelief.
He had already scanned the cemetery inside and out with his recon drone—there was no one hiding.
Unless Leo and his people had dug foxholes like Imperial soldiers on the Pacific front and buried themselves underground.
But if that were the case, all the better—they had the cemetery surrounded. Like fish in a barrel. The outcome wouldn't change.
"If you're not a liar, then prove it. I brought the money. We'll do this clean: the money for the ashes."
"I don't think that's necessary."
"You really are a fraud! You're not even here!"
"No, Mr. Hector, you misunderstood me. I meant—you'll be joining your son in heaven."
As Leo finished speaking, a section of the night sky that had appeared empty suddenly shimmered, revealing a massive armed drone, far larger than any recon model.
Its matte-black frame bristled with rocket pods and aircraft-grade autocannons. The first volley of rockets targeted elite shooters carrying tech weapons—the only possible threats to the drone at that altitude in the absence of anti-air systems.
But those shooters didn't even have time to react. They were torn apart—along with their weapons—in the blast of the rockets.
The flames of the explosion lit up Hector's stunned face. He had never imagined things would end like this.
One of his personal bodyguards, always alert and quick on the draw, tackled him to the ground, and the rest began to raise their weapons and return fire.
Gunshots rang out. Bullets scythed through the night.
But it was useless.
Firing standard kinetic weapons at an armed drone was like shooting at a main battle tank with a handgun—it couldn't even dent the armor.
But when drones fired on infantry, it was easier than harvesting wheat.
Even the darkness of night didn't impair the drone's systems. It had already tagged and locked every target in Hector's group.
This wasn't random fire. It was precision saturation.
Anyone hit by the aircraft-grade autocannons didn't even have time to scream—most were shredded instantly upon impact.
They were dead before they could feel any pain.
Two autocannons swept the ground. The result wasn't wounded—it was thirty fresh corpses.
Then came another round of rocket blasts—boom, boom, boom—ripping into the earth below.
After several volleys, three hundred men were completely wiped out.
Even those who sensed something was wrong and tried to flee by vehicle were spotted by Leo.
One burst from the autocannon shredded both the vehicle and everyone inside.
No one would ever be able to escape.
The firefight ended even faster than Leo had anticipated. The drone still had ammo left, but there was no one alive left to shoot.
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A few days later, at a small-town diner outside Night City.
After eliminating Hector, Leo and the team immediately drove out of Tijuana. It took a few days, but they successfully regrouped with Jackie in a town outside Night City.
After reuniting, they weren't in any rush to drive back into the city. Instead, they decided to sit down, eat, and relax at the diner.
"Come on, tell me—how'd you take out that old bastard Hector?" Jackie asked.
He understood why he wasn't brought along to Tijuana and didn't take offense, but he still felt a tinge of regret.
"Jackie, you wouldn't believe what went down. Hell isn't even an exaggeration," V said.
She proceeded to recount how they had tracked down Hector's location, lured him out, and eventually wiped out his entire squad in one move.
Jackie's eyes widened more with every detail.
"Combat drone? So that's what you went to Rogue for?" he asked Leo.
Back at Konpeki Plaza, after Dante González had handed over the job, Leo had told the others to head to the airport while he went his own way. He met back up with them several hours later, carrying a case—but no one knew what was inside.
Jackie had been curious. "How'd you know we'd need something like a combat drone for this op?"
"I didn't," Leo replied. "But I figured we'd better have a trump card ready, just in case. So I went to Rogue and rented that beast."
"No wonder they're banned," Jackie said in amazement. "The firepower on that thing—insane. No number of people could hold up against it."
Leo just gave a modest wave of the hand. "We were lucky. If even one of those three hundred had an anti-air missile, the result would've been completely different."
That was precisely why, when Hector was holed up in his estate, Leo didn't just send the drone in. The estate had anti-air missiles and sensors. Even with optical camouflage, the drone could still be detected and targeted. If the enemy had anti-air weapons, it wouldn't be a massacre anymore—it'd be an even fight.
Combat drones came with countermeasures, sure, but the estate probably had more than one launcher. The success rate wouldn't be high—so Leo had opted to lure Hector out.
Jackie thought for a moment. "Man, if it's that good, hey—how much did you pay Rogue to rent it? Think she'd cut me a deal if I wanted one?"
Padre didn't have access to combat drones. Surveillance drones maybe—but not armed models. Even for Padre, that was beyond reach.
This was a whole other tier, like comparing NCPD exosuits to full military tech. Exosuits were big, obvious, and grounded. Combat drones however were smaller targets, airborne, fast, and cloaked—basically invisible. Outside of anti-air systems or another drone, they had no real counter.
This was the ugly truth of modern warfare: one side gets a tech advantage, and if the other can't match it, they're wiped out—no exceptions.
Leo shrugged. "You've got Rogue's number, don't you? Just ask her yourself. Padre's loaded—this shouldn't be out of reach."
"But I'll warn you—don't use it recklessly, especially not inside the city. Night City's not Tijuana."
Deploying something like that inside city limits would draw immediate heat, and once the authorities started digging, they'd eventually find everything.
But out in the Badlands? No problem.
While the group talked, the diner door suddenly opened. A man in a cowboy hat, sunglasses, and with a sidearm on his hip walked in.
His nose looked slightly crooked, like it had once been broken.
He glanced around the room cautiously, his eyes lingering on Leo and the others. Once he saw their clothes and demeanor, the tension faded a little.
He went to the bar, ordered a drink, and sat down by himself.
This guy was the town's sheriff. The others didn't recognize him—but Leo and Jackie did.
After all, the first time they'd met, this town had been their agreed rendezvous point.
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