Siheyuan, Shazhu: I have both parents in this life

Chapter 273 Trip to California

Two hours later, at New York LaGuardia Airport, domestic departure terminal.

After applying makeup, He Yuzhu used a Chinese-American passport under the name "Robert Zhang" to purchase a one-way economy class ticket to Los Angeles.

Security check, waiting, boarding – the process was uneventful.

He sat by the window, closing his eyes to rest, but his brain was working at high speed, repeatedly analyzing the goals of the trip, the obstacles he might encounter, and various contingency plans.

The weasel factory is not so easy to enter. The security level of the factory is probably the highest of all his operations. As for which agencies are involved, it is hard to say at the moment. We will only know after we go and see it.

He knew the trajectory of history; the F-117 project should have been initiated, though its current status was unknown. Its revolutionary stealth capabilities would be unmatched for some time to come.

This is more important than acquiring those technologies because they have different applications.

Of course, the risks are enormous.

The plane landed at Los Angeles International Airport.

He Yuzhu followed the flow of people out of the terminal. Instead of going to the car rental shop, he went straight to the airport bus station and bought a long-distance bus ticket to Burbank.

The bus swayed and rattled as it drove away from the airport, heading east along Highway 105. Outside the window were California's distinctive, almost whitish sunlight and low-lying palm trees.

Instead of going directly to downtown Burbank, he got off the bus in Glendale, a city more than ten miles away from Burbank.

I found a motel and paid for a week's stay in cash.

The room was simple but fairly clean. He put down his backpack, took out a smaller waist pouch, and tied it around his waist. Inside were cash, a dagger, lock-picking tools, and most importantly, a map.

Then he went out and bought a detailed map of Burbank city, a backpack, a baseball cap, a pair of cheap sunglasses, and some snacks at the corner store.

In the days that followed, he wandered around Burbank like a shadow.

Sometimes it was unemployed workers carrying canvas bags, their weary eyes scanning the high walls and barbed wire; sometimes it was tourists wearing sun hats, holding cheap cameras, the lenses always inadvertently pointed at that heavily guarded area. He rode his clanging secondhand bicycle, taking countless routes, spying from every angle.

At the top of the towering wall, sharp barbed wire gleamed coldly in the sunlight, and there was more than one layer.

Outside the wall was an open field with no cover, so open that even a stray cat could run past without being seen.

Armed guards, accompanied by fierce wolfhounds, patrolled routes so densely that there were almost no blind spots.

The beams of searchlight, like cold tentacles, swept across every inch of the land after nightfall.

What made He Yuzhu's heart sink even more was that in some inconspicuous corners and at the base of the wall, he discovered inconspicuous, half-buried disc-shaped devices—vibration or pressure sensors, any touch of which would instantly wake up the guards.

The sentries on the watchtower were like eagles, their vision covering the entire factory area and its perimeter.

The only gate was surrounded by multiple checkpoints, and vehicles and personnel had to undergo several rounds of checks to enter and exit, creating an atmosphere of tension.

The ground is a dead end.

Any thought of trying to approach or even touch the wall is tantamount to suicide.

He returned to his cramped hotel room in Glendale, leaned against the cold wall, and used his consciousness to explore the space to see if there was anything he could use. Then he saw the UH-1 "Huey" helicopter that had been captured from the Monkey Kingdom.

"Parachute? But is it safe in the air?" He Yuzhu fell into deep thought.

After thinking for a moment, He Yuzhu felt that this might be the only possibility, but he wanted to test it because he had never driven this thing before, even though he had the skills to pilot an airplane.

He hasn't driven it because he hasn't had the chance. Driving it in Hong Kong would scare people, so it's even less likely to happen in New York.

And he never did a skydive.

He needed a place, a place that was secluded enough and open enough, where he could turn his piloting skills into muscle memory.

The map was spread out on the table.

His finger moved along the northern coast of Los Angeles, across the San Gabriel Mountains, and finally stopped in a vast, sparsely populated, brownish-yellow area—the Mojave Desert.

The area features vast, dried-up lakebeds and rolling barren mountains, making it a natural flight training ground. More importantly, it is far from major cities and flight routes, resulting in relatively sparse radar surveillance.

action!

He quickly packed his simple backpack, leaving only the necessary cash, baseball cap, and sunglasses.

The motel key was left on the table in the room, a silent farewell to this temporary refuge.

The long-distance bus traveled north, and the scenery outside the window gradually transitioned from the edge of the city to the monotonous, yellowish-brown Gobi Desert.

The air became dry and scorching. A few hours later, he got off the bus in a desert town called Barstow.

It's more like a road trip stop, filled with motels, gas stations, and fast food restaurants, with few residents.

He walked into a slightly run-down outdoor equipment store.

The shop owner was an old man with tanned skin, who was wiping a hunting rifle while smoking a pipe.

"What do you need, buddy?" the old man asked without looking up.

"Rent a sturdy pickup truck, one that can handle rough roads." He Yuzhu handed over a wad of cash.

The old man glanced at the thickness of the banknotes, put down his shotgun, and pulled a bunch of keys from under the counter. "In the back parking lot, there's a blue Ford F-150 with a full tank of gas. The deposit is no longer needed; it'll be included in the rental fee. Just don't crash it; towing is expensive in the desert."

He Yuzhu took the keys: "Where nearby can I find a place that's spacious enough, where no one's around? Big enough to run a sports car, um... or do something a little more noisy?"

The old man squinted his cloudy eyes, looked him up and down, and exhaled a smoke ring. "Go east, along Highway 58, past the Cramer intersection and keep going east. You'll see a dirt road leading south, left by an old prospecting team. Drive in for about twenty miles, and you'll find a large, dried-up lakebed called 'Devil's Plate.' For miles around, it's all sand and rocks, nothing to be seen. No matter how much noise you make, as long as you don't throw away a big BOM (Bill of Materials), nobody will care." He paused. "But kid, the desert isn't fun. Bring enough water, don't let the car get stuck, it gets freezing cold at night."

"Thanks." He Yuzhu nodded, picked up the keys, and turned to leave.

A blue Ford pickup truck roared out of the town of Bastow, kicking up a cloud of yellow dust as it drove into the heart of the seemingly endless Mojave Desert.

The scorching wind, carrying sand and gravel, lashed against the car windows, and the distant horizon distorted and swayed in the heatwave.

Following the old man's directions, he found the dirt road leading south, almost buried in sand.

The pickup truck lurched forward, its body groaning under the strain.

The monotonous scenery seemed frozen in time, with only the numbers on the odometer slowly ticking away.

Finally, a vast, flat, barren, grayish-white hard lakebed appeared at the edge of the view, like a giant millstone embedded among the reddish-brown hills.

"The Devil's Plate"—it truly lives up to its name.

He Yuzhu parked the pickup truck behind a rock sheltered from the wind at the edge of the lakebed.

Looking around, there was only a deathly silence, except for the howling of the wind sweeping across the dunes.

It is here.

The days that followed became a relentless, almost brutal training regimen.

First, we piloted a helicopter. As evening fell, the heat of the desert began to dissipate, but then a cold wind swept in.

At this moment, the UH-1 "Huey's" massive rotors began to churn the cold desert air.

He Yuzhu sat in the cockpit, referring to the manual, familiarizing himself with every instrument and switch.

On its first attempt to take off, the helicopter swayed violently like a drunken giant, nearly flipping over. He gripped the control stick tightly, using his extraordinary reflexes and strength to forcibly stabilize it. The roar of the engine carried far across the vast desert, but he paid no heed to that.

The key is to maximize the potential of the price increase.

Suddenly, Hughie's massive fuselage lifted its head from its extremely low altitude! The roar of the engines instantly soared to a heart-stopping peak, the rotors frantically cutting through the air, the dust swirling up like a tornado, enveloping the fuselage before being thrown back down in an instant. The immense G-force pressed him firmly into the seat like an invisible giant hand, the seatbelt digging deep into his shoulders, the skin on his cheeks drooping downwards.

He clung to the target altitude, his eyes scanning the frantically spinning rate of ascent and altimeter. His hands and feet danced precisely within the cockpit, which vibrated as if it were about to fall apart—main rotor pitch! Collective pitch! Tail rotor! Every fine adjustment was crucial to whether the heavy aircraft could break free from the clutches of the earth before the fragile metal reached its limit.

Night training is the most dangerous. Without moonlight, the darkness of the desert is so thick that it cannot be dispelled, and only the instrument panel emits a faint green light.

He turned off the navigation lights and pulled up sharply.

The moment of weightlessness made my stomach churn, and the darkness receded wildly from the windshield like a viscous liquid, as if trying to drag the fragile machine that had just been lifted back down.

The altimeter was the only anchor point, and the pointer climbed rapidly upwards amidst violent vibrations.

Every second of ascent was accompanied by the groaning tremors of the machine's structure, and by his extreme mental focus—that critical point torn apart by the darkness and gravity, where one wrong step would mean the exhaustion of kinetic energy, engine shuddering, or the irreversible disintegration of the machine.

Once he had mastered the helicopter's controls, an even more insane step began—parachuting.

Without a co-pilot or a parachute commander, he had to rely entirely on himself, and he also had to retract the helicopter before jumping.

The first attempt was absolutely thrilling.

The UH-1 hovered at an altitude of 1,500 meters. The strong winds whipped up by the rotor almost knocked people over. He Yuzhu took a deep breath, opened the hatch, and a powerful airflow rushed in instantly.

Following the instructions in the manual, he crouched, kicked, and leaped out! The moment his body left the cabin, the massive UH-1 vanished into thin air and was stored in his spatial storage.

The downward wind suddenly stopped, and the feeling of weightlessness from freefall assaulted me; all I could hear was the whistling of the wind in my ears.

He tried to adjust his posture, but his movements remained stiff and clumsy.

The main umbrella opened with a "bang," and the enormous pulling force yanked him upwards, as if his internal organs had shifted.

The landing was even more chaotic. The huge impact upon landing caused him to roll several times before finally coming to a stop on the hard lakebed, his bones feeling like they were falling apart.

Once, twice, three times... every time I jumped out of the cabin, every time I retracted the helicopter, every time I opened the parachute, it was accompanied by enormous risks.

From day to night, from awkward to smooth.

He constantly adjusted the parachute opening height, controlled the landing point, and adapted to drifting under different wind speeds.

The window for ultra-low altitude (300 meters) skydiving is extremely short, requiring precise judgment of altitude and time down to the second.

Nighttime ultra-low altitude skydiving raises the difficulty level to hell, relying entirely on senses and the faint light from the altimeter.

Sweat, bruises, and abrasions became commonplace.

The pickup truck became his temporary home. At night, he would wrap himself in a blanket in his sleeping bag to ward off the biting cold, and during the day, he would catch up on sleep under the scorching sun.

The harshness of the desert tested the limits of his will. He felt as if he had returned to the peninsula, except that there was extreme cold there, while here it was a constant cycle of hot and cold.

Finally, after what seemed like the umpteenth time, He Yuzhu landed steadily in the designated area from the cold night sky, exhausted, and sat down on the sand, looking up at the boundless starry sky.

Although his body ached, his eyes were as sharp as an eagle's. He could feel his muscles forming a memory, his nerve responses becoming incredibly acute, and his perception of height, speed, and space reaching an unprecedented clarity.

This sense of control, honed on the brink of life and death, convinced him that it was time.

A few days later, a dusty blue Ford F-150 pickup truck roared out of the Mojave Desert and headed towards the town of Bastow.

The vehicle was covered in a thick layer of sand and dust, like it was wearing a layer of brownish-yellow armor.

He Yuzhu parked his car in front of the dilapidated outdoor equipment store.

The shop door opened, and an old man with a pipe peeked out, a hint of surprise flashing in his cloudy eyes: "Holy shit! Kid, you're still alive? I thought you'd been carried off by a rattlesnake or gotten stuck in quicksand!"

"I was lucky." He Yuzhu's voice was a little hoarse, but it conveyed a sense of calm after completing the challenge.

He handed over the keys and a stack of banknotes far exceeding the rental fee, saying, "The car is in decent condition, but the gas tank is empty."

The old man took the money, weighed it in his hand, grinned, revealing a mouthful of yellow teeth: "Tsk tsk, you're really rich, kid. When will you come next time? I'll give you a discount."

"There might be a chance, but I have to go now."

"Hehe, be careful on the road."

He Yuzhu nodded, slung the badly worn backpack over his shoulder, turned and walked out of the town. In a secluded spot, he took out a Jeep from his spatial storage and drove towards Burbank.

The cold moonlight was obscured by thick clouds, and only the howling wind could be heard in the desert outside Burbank.

He Yuzhu had already lurked somewhere near the ICBC. When the hands of his watch passed 2 o'clock, He Yuzhu released the UH-1 "Huey".

The engine started, and the strong downwash airflow whipped up by the propeller plowed shallow furrows in the sandy ground.

He turned off all external lights and operated the instrument system solely by the dim fluorescent light and altimeter readings.

Suddenly, he pulled hard on the control stick with both hands, coordinated his feet to pedal the rudder, and pushed the throttle to its maximum! The UH-1's engine roared, and the massive aircraft seemed to be lifted up by an invisible giant hand, surging upwards in a near-vertical posture!
Almost at the same moment, a faint dot of light suddenly appeared on a radar screen outside the base, getting closer and closer, and strangely, its altitude was increasing.

The operator frowned, trying to amplify the signal to examine it more closely—but just as the signal was amplified, a slight interference noise, followed by a "zzzz" sound, caused the light spot to disappear instantly, as if erased by an eraser.

"Damn it! What the hell is that?" the operator cursed, quickly switching radar modes and adjusting the gain.

Brief signal loss is not uncommon in noisy electronic backgrounds, especially at low altitudes and near complex terrain, where birds and atmospheric disturbances can cause false echoes.

He stared at the screen, trying to recapture the suspicious signal, but all that remained on the screen was a stable ground echo.

The moment the radar signal disappeared, the UH-1 had already completed that thrilling climb, soaring to a height of nearly 300 meters.

Inside the cabin, He Yuzhu did not hesitate at all, and did not even look at the altimeter for a final confirmation—muscle memory was ingrained in his bones.

He flung open the right-side hatch, and a strong gust of cold air rushed in. He bent his knees, kicked off, and his body leaped into the dark night sky like an arrow released from a bow!
The instant his body left the cockpit, the massive fuselage of the UH-1 vanished like a phantom, instantly absorbed into his spatial storage. The feeling of weightlessness during the descent immediately enveloped his entire body, the wind whistling in his ears.

Silently count! 1…2…3…My heartbeats are the stopwatch.

At the critical point when his body reached the equilibrium of the falling speed, he pulled the main parachute lines without hesitation!
"Bang—!" A muffled explosion rang out, though not loud, in the quiet night sky.

A tremendous resistance suddenly came, pulling him up sharply.

He gripped the control strap tightly, his gaze fixed on the massive roof ventilation system covered with thick metal grilles below!

This was the optimal landing point he had identified after observing the surrounding area for several days; it connected to the massive air handling unit below the core area of ​​the factory.

The parachute precisely controlled his direction, and he drifted silently toward his target like a leaf manipulated by the wind.

The soles of the boots made a faint "click" sound, almost drowned out by the wind, as they touched the cold metal grille.

He deftly bent his knees and rolled over to dissipate the force, his movements swift and silent.

After landing, he quickly untied the parachute cords, and then the huge parachute disappeared into thin air.

Without pausing, he pulled out specially made hydraulic shears and a crowbar from the storage space.

The latches on the access grille couldn't stop the powerful gripping of the hydraulic shears. The heavy metal grille was gently lifted by the pry bar, revealing a dark ventilation shaft about one meter in diameter below. Cold air, heavy with the smell of engine oil and metal, rushed out.

He peeked out, then silently entered and slid down the shaft.

At the bottom of the shaft is a huge air handling unit room.

Several massive industrial fans continuously emitted a low, steady hum, the enormous background noise perfectly masking all subtle sounds.

The computer room is a maze of pipes, thick cables like vines, and huge filters and condensers forming a steel jungle.

He Yuzhu quickly determined the direction and then followed the pipe markings, moving rapidly into the deeper, more central area.

At the end of the passage, a heavy, explosion-proof airtight door marked "R&D Department - Highest Security Level" came into view.

On the side of the door is a dual verification panel that flashes red light, displaying both a password and an ID card.

He Yuzhu did not attempt to crack the electronic lock, which was almost impossible to break through in a short time.

His target was an inconspicuous access panel on the ceiling above the door—the entrance to the ventilation duct.

He stepped onto the large pipe support next to him, carefully pried open the clips on the edge of the cover plate with a crowbar, and silently moved the cover plate to reveal a pipe opening that was only wide enough for one person to squeeze through.

A stronger odor, a mixture of electronic components and chemical solvents, wafted out.

The ventilation ducts were narrow and covered in dust, so he had to crawl forward, judging his location by the direction of the ducts and the faint light coming through from below.

After crawling for about twenty meters, clear conversations and the ticking of instruments could be heard below.

He stopped, carefully moved aside a louvered air vent grille, and peered down through the gap.

This is a huge model room and design discussion space, far from an ordinary factory workshop.

In the center of the room was a huge display stand covered with blue velvet, on which sat a scaled-down, bizarrely shaped airplane model.

Its entire body is made of dark gray composite material with sharp edges and corners, as if it were pieced together from countless diamond facets, completely different from the sleek shape of any currently serving fighter jet.

Scattered around the model are numerous drawings, slide rules, and set squares. The walls are covered with hand-drawn airflow analysis diagrams and radar cross section (RCS) simulated thermal maps. The distorted contour lines and glaring peak areas all point to a core concept: low detectability.

F-117! Although it didn't have this official designation at the time, its unique polyhedral configuration was the prototype of the future "Nighthawk"!

He Yuzhu breathed a sigh of relief, realizing he had found the right place. Otherwise, taking such a big risk would have been too much of a waste!
It was already past 3 a.m., but the model room was not empty.

Two technicians in overalls and wearing thick glasses were sitting at a drafting table in the corner, arguing quietly about something while looking at the spread-out drawings, with half-finished coffee next to them.

Their expressions were focused yet exhausted, clearly indicating they were on night shift or rushing to finish a project.

At the other end of the room, near a heavy blast door, a guard in a security uniform with a gun at his waist sat in a chair, nodding off, completely ignoring the technicians' argument.

He Yuzhu gently moved the louvered grille of the vent, his movements as slow as a slow-motion film, without making a single metallic scraping sound.

The grille was completely removed, creating storage space.

He slid out of the narrow duct opening and landed on the huge ventilation duct support at the top of the room, seven or eight meters above the ground.

The three people below were completely unaware.

He observed the positions of the three people below: two technicians with their backs to him, focused on the blueprints; a guard diagonally opposite, head bowed.

He needs to solve three problems at the same time, and he can't make too much noise.

Then three military daggers appeared in his hand, "Thud!"

A soft sound rang out.

The guard's body suddenly lurched forward, his head slamming heavily against the table in front of him with a dull thud, before he collapsed.

The noise startled the technician in the corner!

One of them looked up in confusion, adjusted his glasses, and instinctively glanced in the direction of the guard: "Hey, Hank? Are you alright...?"

The words have not yet been spoken!

"Pfft! Pfft!"

Two more soft sounds, almost overlapping each other.

The technician, who had a military dagger stuck in his neck, leaned back and knocked over a chair.

The man next to him didn't even have time to turn his head completely before a burst of blood mist exploded on his temple, and he slumped onto the drawing table, the pencil in his hand rolling to the ground.

The whole process took less than three seconds.

The only sounds in the room were the low hum of the instruments and the faint red light from the coffee machine's heat lamp.

He Yuzhu leaped lightly from the support and landed silently.

He quickly collected the three bodies and strode towards the display stand in the center of the room.

The enormous polyhedral model gleamed with a cold, metallic sheen in the dim light.

He quickly scanned the scattered blueprints around the model stand, which were covered with dense formulas, annotations, and radar frequency data—all top secrets.

Without hesitation, he swept his hands across the surface, and the huge model, along with the velvet covering it, as well as all the scattered drawings, documents, and even the blackboard with formulas written on it, were completely absorbed into the space.

But that's not enough! Models are for verification, drawings are for the process, what's needed is final, complete, and reproducible design data!
His gaze was fixed on the other end of the room, on the heavy, explosion-proof door marked "Document and Archives - Top Secret".

He searched through the three corpses in the space and found three employee badges. He first tried the technician's card, and to his surprise, the door opened with a "click".

This surprised him for a moment. Then he looked at the name tag in his hand that read "Design Supervisor" and couldn't help but chuckle. He was quite lucky.

Upon entering the archives, he went straight to the filing cabinets labeled "Project FX" (an early internal codename for the F-117).

The cabinet door was locked, but that didn't stop him. He took the entire cabinet, leaving nothing behind. He didn't have time to see what was inside. Even if he couldn't ultimately study it, he would slow down the research progress here by a few years.

After collecting all the "FX projects," he started sweeping up other items, not wanting to keep a single scrap of paper.

In less than five minutes, the archives were empty.

He Yuzhu turned and left the archives room, then exited the laboratory through the main entrance and headed towards the pipe shaft from which he had come.

(End of this chapter)