American comic book: I, with my abundant martial virtue, love to do good to others.

Chapter 754 Either stay and fight, or retreat

Sanchez rubbed his trouser seam again. "The hospital's security system needs an upgrade. The emergency room's security cameras have been broken for two months. The pharmacy's security doors also need replacing. We've applied for headquarters' budget several times, but it hasn't been approved yet. If you have any suggestions, perhaps headquarters will pay more attention to this matter."

Lynn understood.

"You kept our gunshot wound a secret, so I'm writing you a thank-you letter praising your professional and timely handling of the situation and your positive contribution to US-Mexico law enforcement cooperation." He looked Sanchez into the eyes. "Send this letter to your headquarters, and they'll approve your budget."

77

A small, almost imperceptible smile appeared on Sanchez's face. He neither admitted nor denied it, but simply lowered his head slightly and took a half-step back.

"The injured need a quiet environment. We have a single room on the third floor, ready to be used. Your people can take turns going up to rest." He finished speaking and turned to leave. His leather shoes clicked rhythmically on the tiles of the corridor, fading into the distance.

Miles walked over from the wall and stood next to Lynn, watching Sanchez disappear around the corner at the end of the corridor.

"He's extorting money," Miles said in a low voice.

"He's just trying to survive," Lynn said. "The country's public hospital budgets probably haven't been in place for months. He might get a thank-you note from us and then buy a couple more monitors. We haven't lost anything."

77

Miles frowned but did not refute.

Lynn stuffed the business card into his pocket, turned to the others in the hallway, and said, "Bates and Yang go up and keep an eye on Russell. Chen and Miles, come with me to take this call."

"What call?" Miles asked.

Before she could finish speaking, Lynn's phone vibrated.

It wasn't a text message, it was a call. The screen displayed an encrypted number, not Drake's usual line, but a higher-level line that was only activated in emergencies.

Lynn answered the call.

"This is Drake." The voice on the other end of the phone was deeper and slower than usual, as if he were chewing on something he couldn't chew. "We received the package."

"What is that?"

"Randomization letter".

7

Lynn's grip on her phone tightened. "Where was it sent?"

"The Wayne Group's public email address. Not the dark web, not an encrypted channel, just the public customer service email address that anyone can send emails to. It came in at 5:11 PM today. Ms. Hall, the Wayne Group's security director, didn't see it until 7 PM because the customer service department thought it was spam."

"What about the content?"

"Video. Thirty-eight seconds. Wayne is sitting in front of a gray wall, with no identifiable landmarks in the background. He reads a message saying he's still alive and demanding that the Wayne Group deposit $50 million worth of Bitcoin into a designated address within 72 hours. If it's not received by the deadline, they'll start—" Drake paused, "they'll start sending his fingers."

Someone was crying in the hallway. Not on their floor, but upstairs, the faint sound of a child crying, intermittent, like a radio with a poor signal. The crying bounced back and forth between the white walls and ceiling of the hallway a few times, finally fading away into the hum of the fluorescent lights.

"Has the video been technically analyzed?" Lynn asked.

"It was done. The federal technical team performed spectral analysis on the background gray wall and found that the reflectivity of the wall material closely matched that of a specific type of industrial concrete. That type of concrete was only used in a specific factory at a specific time."

Which factory?

"A chemical plant in the eastern suburbs of Reynosa went bankrupt seven years ago. The factory has been vacant ever since. The technical team calculated the angle of light and the direction of shadows in the video, and combined this with the orientation of the buildings to pinpoint the location of that factory. The exact location has been marked. The address is approximately..." The sound of keyboard clicks came from the other end of the phone, followed by a two-second pause, "...twenty-five minutes by car."

Lynn took her phone out of her pocket a little and glanced at the time. 9:51 PM.

Send me the address.

"It's been sent. There's one more thing: headquarters has approved the warrant for use of force. It's not limited to self-defense; you can use all necessary means to rescue the hostages. This is a very high level of authorization; you can decide for yourself."

"What are you grasping?"

"Be careful not to kill them. We need them alive."

9

The call ended. My phone vibrated; Drake's address had arrived. Lynn forwarded the address to Miles and Chen, then looked up.

"Let's go," he said.

"Now?" Miles glanced at the closed door of the treatment room. "Russell is still here on an IV drip."

"Bates and Young stay. The two of them are enough. Sanchez is watching over the hospital; he won't let any officials in. Russell's safety is not a concern."

99

“I mean,” Myerston paused, “we only have four of us now. Four of us going to a hideout that might have at least three mutants, and they’re armed.”

Lynn looked at him. "Wayne is still alive. But you haven't seen his expression when he said those words in the video. I saw the transcript Drake sent me; Wayne's lips were trembling, not from fear, but because the effects of his medication were wearing off, and his heart was sending him signals. If he doesn't get his medication or professional medical support within 72 hours, he might not make it to the day the ransom is paid. But 72 hours is calculated from when he was kidnapped. Almost two days have passed now. Our window isn't 72 hours, it's about 30 hours. Maybe less."

Miles took off his glasses, wiped the lenses, and put them back on.

"I just wanted to make sure we had any other options," he said.

"no."

Lynn turned and walked toward the emergency room door. His leather shoes stomped on the corridor tiles, the sound deeper and heavier than Sanchez's, each thud like nails being hammered into the floor.

The four of them stepped out of the hospital, and the night wind rushed towards them. The wind was stronger than before, making the national flag on the flagpole at the emergency room entrance flap loudly. Below the flagpole stood a neatly trimmed palm tree, its crown swaying violently in the wind, like a person desperately shaking their head.

Parked at the entrance was the dark gray SUV they had driven across the border in. A thin layer of dust covered the car, there were dried water streaks on the windshield, and dried mud clung to the tires. Chen opened the driver's side door, got in, and started the car. The engine sounded louder at night than during the day, rumbling like someone still half asleep coughing.

Lynn got into the passenger seat. Miles and another agent, O'Brien, who was two years younger than Miles, had short blond hair and freckles, and looked like a kid who had just graduated from college and started working, got into the back seat.

Chen drove the car out of the hospital parking lot. The street outside the gate was quieter than when he had arrived; all the shops were closed, except for a few roadside food stalls with their lights on. One stall owner was slowly folding up tables and chairs, stacking plastic stools one by one on his cart, as if waiting for someone to come.

"Drakefa's address is in the east of the city, near the ring road." Chen glanced at the navigation on his phone. "Go this way, through the city center, and then east. You'll pass through a few areas with bad security, but there's less traffic at night, so it's actually safer."

"Don't go through the city center," Lynn said. "Take the ring road instead. It'll take five more minutes, but you won't get stuck in the narrow alleys."

Chen nodded, turned the steering wheel, and turned onto a wider road.

Outside the car window, the night in Reynosa seemed more alive than during the day. The closed shops were like shut eyes, the lit windows like open eyes; the whole city breathed in the darkness, each breath carrying an air of danger. Stray dogs rummaged for food beside trash cans, raising their heads at the sound of a car, their eyes reflecting the green light of the headlights, before lowering their heads again to continue rummaging.

Lynn looked at the address Drake had sent him again. He hadn't heard of the chemical plant, but he had looked at a map of Reynosa on the plane. There was indeed a large area marked "Industrial Zone" in the east of the city, with well-organized roads, all laid out in a grid pattern, like an unfinished chessboard. The chemical plant was at the easternmost edge of the industrial zone, near a river. The east bank of the river was covered with farmland, and further east was the highway leading to the southern part of Mexico.

"This is a good location." Miles leaned out of the back seat, looking at the map on Lynn's phone. "To the east is a river, with only two bridges to cross it. To the west is a large open area with no residents. To the south are farmlands, and to the north is the ring road. They have at least four directions to retreat from, and if one is blocked, they can switch to another."

"So we need to block the retreat route before we get there," Lynn said.

There are only four of us.

7

"So it's not about blocking them, it's about forcing them to choose the path we want them to choose."

Miles looked at him and waited.

Lynn drew a line on the map with his finger. "We'll approach the building from the west. If their men have lookouts, they'll see our car first. They'll figure out if we're police or something else. When they see only one car..."

Four people, they will make one of two choices—either stay and fight, or retreat.

"Which one will they choose?" O'Brien asked from the back seat.

Lynn put his phone away. "It depends on whether they have something more important than Wayne. If not, they'll retreat. If they do, they'll stay behind to buy time for others to escape first. Either way, we need to split ourselves into two groups before we arrive. One group will enter from the front to draw attention. The other group will circle around to the southeast side of the building, which is the direction they're most likely to retreat from, and set up an ambush along their escape route."

Chen glanced at him in the rearview mirror.

"Are you asking me to choose between the front or the flank?"

"You drive," Lynn said. "Go in from the front, lights on, make as much noise as possible. When they see a car coming from the west, they'll assume we're law enforcement from the city, but they won't be sure if it's federal or local police. That uncertainty will make them hesitate. Every second they hesitate is a gain for us."

"And you?"

"I walked. I went around through the farmland to the south."

Miles shifted in the back seat. "Alone?"

"Two people," Lynn said, glancing at Miles in the rearview mirror. "You and me."

Miles opened his mouth as if to say something, but then swallowed it back. He pushed his glasses up his nose and sat up straight, like a student being called on to answer a question.

After driving for about twenty minutes, the road became wider, the buildings shorter, and the streetlights fewer. The streetlights on the ring road were orange sodium lamps, their yellowish and dim light casting a thin layer of rust on the road surface. There were no more houses on either side of the road, only vast expanses of empty land overgrown with withered yellow weeds, swaying in the wind like seas without water.

Chen turned off the headlights, leaving only the fog lights on. The fog lights cast a lower, more diffused light, making the car less visible from a distance.

"Turn right at the next intersection." Lynn looked at the GPS on his phone. "After turning, drive straight for about two kilometers, and you'll reach the west entrance of the chemical plant. Park the car on the side of the road there, keep the engine running, and wait for my call."

"Which way do you go around?" Chen asked.

Lynn pointed south out the car window. Nothing could be seen in the darkness, only a narrow road lined with weeds taller than a person. There were tire tracks on the road, indicating that someone had passed through.

"There's a drainage ditch at the end of this road. Follow the ditch and you'll reach the south side of the factory. There's a gap in the factory wall over there; you can see it on satellite images." Lynn opened the car door, and a blast of cold air rushed in, causing the interior lights to flicker.

Miles got out of the car with him. O'Brien leaned out from the back seat.

"And me?" he said.

"Stay with Chen. When drawing fire head-on, at least two people need to look like a whole squad. You and Chen stay in the car, don't let anyone see that there are only two of you."

O'Brien nodded. His face looked younger in the warm light of the car interior lamps, his freckles like sesame seeds scattered on the bridge of his nose. But his eyes were not young; they were deep and steady, like a stone that had been washed by water for a long time but had not yet been smoothed out.

Lynn closed the car door.

The wind outside was stronger than it had been in the hospital, blowing from the east, carrying the smell of river water and a faint acidic odor of some chemicals. The drainage ditch lay between two rows of tall weeds, its bottom dried up, revealing only a layer of damp silt and withered leaves.

When Lynn jumped down, his foot sank into the mud, and when he pulled it out, it made a popping sound like a bottle cap being opened.

Miles jumped down behind him, but lost his footing and ended up bracing himself against the canal wall, getting his hand covered in mud.

"How long has it been since anyone walked on this road?" he whispered.

"The longer the better," Lynn said.

They walked eastward along the drainage ditch. The ditch walls were taller than a person, and weeds on both sides hung down from the top, swaying in the wind like countless thin fingers beckoning. The moon was behind the clouds, and the light was dim, but Lynn's eyes had already adjusted to the darkness. He could see about fifty meters ahead, where the drainage ditch ended, and the wall there was lower than elsewhere, as if a section had been deliberately knocked away.