Sam Fisher- DPRK Anthem Distraction

  “Music,” noted his companion. “Is it coming from one of the speakers? It sounds wrong.”

  Of course, they both recognized the tune immediately – it was “Onwards Toward the Final Victory”, one of the state’s most favored anthems, brimming with juche sentiment and patriotic imagery. The men had heard it countless times, the lyrics drummed into them as children and reinforced with every repetition on Military Foundation Day, and other annual celebrations.

  But the sound was weak and wavering, not braying loudly like they would have expected. The two men approached the source of the music until they could see something odd flickering on the wall at head height.

  There, fixed into place with strips of duct tape, was a digital music player with a broken screen, sporadic bursts of color flashing across its damaged surface. The song was playing from the device’s tinny little speaker, juddering and re-starting over and over again.

  “Is this a joke?” One of them looked around, as if expecting a comrade to appear and laugh at their confusion.

  “I don’t know what it is,” said the other, pushing back his rifle on its sling so he could reach up and grab the player with both hands. It came away with a single pull, the song still repeating. He smacked it against his palm and it went quiet. With the music silenced, an odd buzzing noise came to his ears from the deep shadows along the length of the wall. He strained to listen. “Something else here.”

  The guard was turning back toward his companion when the shadows rippled and a man rose out of them, coming up to stab him through the belly with a broad-bladed knife. The gray-clad figure with the red-eyed mask dragged the man to him, using the guard as a human shield, his other hand rising with a clumsy-looking pistol gripped in it.

  The guard’s companion reacted, grabbing for his slung rifle, but two shots coughed, rounds rattling through an improvised silencer, striking him in the chest. He went down into the rain-churned mud with a splash, as the assassin from the shadows finished the work of killing the other man.

  Fisher used the trench knife to do the work on the guard who had found the player, putting it into his chest in a brutal death blow. As the man exhaled his last, he let him drop and strode across to the second guard, alive, trembling as he tried to pull his fallen rifle to him.

  Another round from the Tokarev ended the other man, the rain hissing off the end of the oil filter casing around the pistol’s muzzle. Fisher frowned. He estimated he could only put one, maybe two more shots through it before the jury-rigged suppressor was rendered useless.

- Dragonfire, Chapter 17