You're a US police officer, what are you thinking about going back to the East for?

Chapter 235 Ensuring the Safety of Jailsites (6k)

7:42 PM.

There wasn't a single star in the sky above the suburban junkyard; the clouds hung low. Piles of scrapped car frames lay stacked in the shadows on the north side of the site. Three red shipping containers were stacked in two layers, the paint on the top layer mostly peeled off, revealing rusted steel plates underneath.

About fifty meters away from the container, a white van with "Quick Pipeline Dredging" printed on its side was parked in the shadow of the pile of scrap cars.

The car was covered in mud, the rear wheels were stuck in a puddle of water, and a thin layer of fog had formed on the inside of the windshield.

The lights were off in the carriage.

Old Zhang sat in the driver's seat, his left hand on the steering wheel and his right hand holding an enamel mug.

He had been drinking tea for over an hour, and the Tieguanyin in the jar had become bitter, but it was too cold for him to throw it away.

He was fifty-two years old, with his hair shaved very short and his temples already white. He was wearing an old dark gray jacket with the faded words "Huaxi Machinery Equipment - North American Office" printed on the left chest.

This identity is real.

He spent seven years in North America, organizing no fewer than 2,000 meaningless industrial equipment promotion events and handing out thousands of business cards. However, after the events, when he returned alone to his rented apartment, he would sometimes turn on the shortwave radio and tune to a channel that only existed during specific nighttime hours.

Xiaolin sat in the passenger seat with a heavy black laptop on his lap, the screen brightness turned down to the lowest setting.

She was twenty-seven years old, with her hair tied in a ponytail, wearing a navy blue windbreaker with the zipper pulled up to the collar.

I swiped my right index finger twice on the touchpad, and the real-time map on the screen refreshed once. There were no new heat sources on the satellite image of the scrapyard.

Chen Hong sat in the back row.

He leaned against the metal wall of the cargo compartment, one leg straight and the other bent, with an open gray plastic toolbox next to his feet.

Chen Hong closed his eyes, with a Bluetooth earphone plugged into his ear. The current frequency band could only receive encrypted shortwave signals; it was an old model he used when training on a hilltop in the suburbs.

Chen Hong is thirty-one years old this year.

His family has American ancestry for several generations.

Originally, he grew up in the East and attended university there; everything seemed quite ordinary.

Then, out of nowhere, during one summer vacation, he was asked a few questions by a middle-aged man who often came to his family's breakfast stall to eat tofu pudding. The following year, he was transferred to a training base on the border.

As for why he later appeared in North America, he himself couldn't explain it, but it was probably because of his face.

His family genes are very evident in him: high brow bones, deep-set eyes, a narrow and straight nose, and a jawline with the hardness of a Caucasian.

But his eyes were dark brown, and deep in his pupils lay a restlessness that only someone who grew up by the river possessed.

He can chat about football with people in Ohio gas stations using an Ohio accent, and he can also talk white rednecks into patting them on the shoulder and calling them "brother."

He sometimes thinks that this is what talent is.

The three men's mission was to ensure the safety of Lyon's route to the junkyard and the junkyard itself.

They have now completed their final route check and are waiting near the junkyard.

Just then, the outside suddenly lit up.

"What's going on?" Old Zhang put the teacup on the dashboard and leaned forward.

Xiaolin had already pulled up the real-time spectrum of the voiceprint monitoring, and a low-frequency vibration came through the headphones.

She pulled out one earbud, tapped her fingers twice on the touchpad, and then frowned.

"The sound of engines. At least two cars, with fairly large engine displacements."

"From which direction did you come?"

"The entrance that turns off from the southern road junction is not the official entrance."

"Both cars got off?"

"Yes, we're already on a gravel road."

Old Zhang didn't ask any more questions. He pulled the back of the driver's seat forward a little and stared out through the windshield.

Then he heard it.

The roar of the eight-cylinder engine grew louder as it approached, and the exhaust pipes were clearly modified. Every gear shift felt like a cannon firing on muddy ground.

Seven or eight seconds later, two blinding white lights shot out from a gap in a wire fence on the south side of the scrap yard.

A red Dodge Charger without a hood swerved out from the pile of wrecked cars, its rear wheels running over a steel plate, causing the car to bounce violently.

Generally speaking, removing the hood is a common trick used by American biker gangs, not only for heat dissipation, but also to show off their modified V8 to other biker gangs.

Several people were howling inside the car, and it was clear from their voices that they were not in a normal mental state.

Following the Dodge was a Chevrolet Tahoe, painted entirely black, with a bizarre skull painted in fluorescent orange on the side, its mouth holding something that looked like a bone or a genital organ.

The Tahoe's left headlight was off; only the right incandescent bulb shone outwards, illuminating the rear of the car in front and causing the Dodge's license plate to reflect light.

The two vehicles slammed on their brakes in the open space in front of the container, leaving four smoking black skid marks on the ground.

The driver's side door of the Dodge opened first.

A white man wearing a stained white vest climbed out of the car. Before he could even stand properly, he leaned against the car door frame and started vomiting. He had a red bandana tied around his forehead. The letters printed on the bandana were illegible due to sweat and dust, but the last two letters could be identified as CK (redneck).

"Fuck you, Patrick! You almost killed me!"

Two more people climbed out of the back seat.

A tall, thin man wearing a gray hoodie and two silver lip rings was carrying a half-spilled bottle of Jim Beam whiskey.

As he got out of the car, his left foot stepped on the turban-wearing man's vomit, he slipped, his shoulder bumped into the Dodge, and the bottle almost slipped from his grasp.

He hugged the bottle to his chest, gave the turbaned man the middle finger, and then tilted his head back and took a swig.

The last one to emerge from the Dodge was a fat man with his jeans zipper undone, his hair matted together, and his face covered in grime.

He walked to the middle of the open space, stood there for a few seconds, then squatted down and started vomiting.

Old Zhang watched all this through the windshield from inside the carriage, and his lips twitched.

"How much did these guys take?"

"Judging from their condition—" Kobayashi said, "they've most likely mixed alcohol with ice. They've been smoking for at least half a day."

"What about Tahoe?"

Just then, Tahoe's car door opened.

A man with a buzz cut, wearing a leather jacket and a silver chain around his neck got out of the driver's seat.

He was slightly more alert than the others in the Dodge; at least he got out of the car in a normal way.

Then comes the passenger seat.

A woman in her thirties got out of the car wearing high heels, the heels of which wobbled slightly on the gravel.

She leaned against the door of Tahoe, took out an e-cigarette from her breast pocket, and took a drag.

The man with the buzz cut walked to the middle of the open space and squatted down next to the fat man.

The two men looked at each other, said nothing, and then burst into laughter at the same time. The laughter echoed among the wrecked cars, sounding rather nauseating.

Old Zhang shifted the gear to neutral, turned off the engine, and even the lights on the instrument panel went out.

"It needs to be disposed of."

"How much will this affect us?" Kobayashi asked.

"Their position is less than twenty meters in front of the container; no matter who drives in or what kind of vehicle they are, they'll be the first to see them."

.

"If they don't leave, when the target vehicle arrives, it will either crash into them head-on or be too afraid to come in."

Do you think you can get away with this?

"If they don't get through this, do you think these high-rollers will go around making a scene for the next three or four hours? If word gets out, this car factory is going to be a mess tonight."

"Can we wait for them to leave on their own?" Chen Hong asked from the back row.

He had already fully opened the toolbox lid, sat up straight, and placed one hand on his knee.

Old Zhang glanced at him in the rearview mirror. "What do you think the chances are that they'll walk away on their own?"

After Chen Hong finished speaking, the carriage was silent for a few seconds. Only the howling of the group outside drifted in through the metal sheet, muffled and strained.

Xiaolin glanced down at the clock on his laptop; it was 7:52.

"We should arrive in two hours and eight minutes, and we should get there before then."

"What did Director Yang say?" Old Zhang turned around.

"I haven't asked yet."

"Ask him; we cannot act on our own."

Xiaolin put on the headset and quickly tapped two keys on the keyboard.

The handshake signal for the encrypted channel was completed within seconds, and a gray command line window popped up in the corner of the screen.

She typed a few numbers, then stopped, her typing fingers hovering above the keyboard for a half-beat.

"It's been reported. They asked if we have any recommended solutions."

"Yes." Chen Hong took out a small brown glass bottle from the toolbox and waved it in front of his eyes.

"Skunk odor. A mixture of hydrogen sulfide, thiols, and a small amount of thioacetone."

"It has moderate volatility at room temperature. After being sprayed into the ventilation vent, it evaporates upon heating, and the odor concentration can rise to a level that makes people vomit within twenty seconds."

"It doesn't hurt anyone—at least not fatally, and it doesn't leave permanent injuries. During the Cold War, Soviet patrols on the East Berlin border used this thing to clear the area."

"It's truly an essential medicine for home and travel."

"Why are you still carrying this?" Old Zhang asked.

"The trunk of this car was full of this stuff; they said it was a chemical reagent for unclogging pipes."

Chen Hong put the bottle back in the toolbox, picked out a hand-operated sprayer, and flicked the nozzle on his finger.

"It is indeed a drain cleaner, but the formula for this batch of our products is quite special. It is intended for residents with uncooperative sewer systems, so it can be considered a drain cleaner."

"And now you want to use it to fumigate a few drug-addicted rednecks."

"right."

"Director Yang said it's okay." Xiao Lin took off half of his headset, and a line appeared on the screen: "Approved to use chemical expulsion methods, be careful to conceal your identity."

Chen Hong unscrewed the nozzle of the sprayer and took out a tissue from his pocket to wipe the connector.

He poured the concentrated solution into the sprayer's reservoir, paused halfway through, turned his head away, and squinted.

An indescribable smell was wafting from the jar.

Chen Hong quickly tightened the cap, shook the sprayer three times, and then pressed his hand on the nozzle trigger to test the pressure.

A drop of colorless liquid slid out of the nozzle and dripped onto the tip of his glove.

"Damn, this thing is awesome." He muttered in an Eastern dialect, took off his gloves, turned them inside out, and put them back on.

"How do you plan to get there?" Old Zhang asked.

"Just walk over there."

Chen Hong opened the rear door of the car.

A cold draft blew in, carrying the smell of waste engine oil, temporarily masking the thiol odor in the car.

He jumped onto the gravel road and hid the sprayer in his hand.

As he walked around the front of the truck, Old Zhang poked half his head out from the driver's seat and said in a low voice, "Don't forget your identity tonight: you're an Oregon Native. Don't suddenly start speaking in an Eastern accent."

"Don't worry."

Chen Hong waved his hand behind him.

In the open space of the junkyard, the man in the white vest and headscarf and the man in the leather jacket had already gathered together.

The man in the headscarf took a portable subwoofer with a Bluetooth speaker out of the trunk.

The music had just started; it was the kind of electronic mix that made your chest feel tight.

"Play it louder! I'm telling you, last time I was in my uncle's garage, that cop could hear me from several blocks away!"

A man wearing a hoodie and a lip ring sat on the trunk of a Dodge, his legs dangling in the air, waving a whiskey bottle around.

"Your uncle doesn't even have a garage. You said last month that he lived in a trailer!" the man in the leather jacket said, laughing.

"Why doesn't the trailer have a garage? That tree in front of the trailer is his garage!"

"That's not a garage, that's a tree!"

"Trees can be used as garages!"

The fat man stood up from the ground and wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.

His lips were still twitching, but a smile that was hard to describe was on his face.

He staggered to the front of the Dodge and nodded at his reflection in the windshield.

"I think I look like Trump now."

"Now when you look at your mom, you'll think she looks like Trump."

"I really think it looks like him. I just have more hair. And my skin isn't as yellow as his. But that feeling, look, look at my chin."

He raised his chin, turned it from side to side in front of the windshield, and then suddenly burped, exhaling a puff of sour, foul-smelling white vapor.

"You fucking threw up all the wine." The man with the lip ring moved back a little in disgust.

"That's rumination. Cows do it too. Cows are intelligent animals."

"You just said you were Trump! Now you're a cow?"

"I could be a combination of Trump and a cow!"

No one noticed a figure walking towards them from the direction of the junkyard.

Chen Hong walked at a steady pace, neither too fast nor too slow, holding a sprayer in his hand and a holster hidden under his coat.

He wasn't wearing a mask or a hat, and his hair was blown around by the wind, making him look like just another loiterer in this junkyard.

The woman next to Dodge saw him first, took the e-cigarette out of her mouth, squinted at him for two seconds, then turned her head away, ignoring him.

When Chen Hong was about ten meters away from Dodge, the man with the lip ring finally noticed him.

"Who are you?" The man with the lip ring slid off the trunk, a whiskey bottle in his hand, his chin held high.

"I live nearby," Chen Hong said in an Ohio accent.

Are there any houses nearby?

"there."

Chen Hong pointed his thumb backward. There were indeed three farmhouses in that direction, but he knew very well that no one had lived there since last winter.

"I've never seen you before," the man in the leather jacket interjected.

"I moved here last month."

"That's a lie."

"So where do you think I came from, Mars?"

The fat man was still adjusting the angle of his chin in front of the windshield, completely ignoring the conversation on the other side.

The man in the headscarf turned the subwoofer volume down a bit, turned around, and braced himself against the car door with one hand.

"Are you a cop?"

"Do I look like a cop?"

"Not really. Cops don't walk alone. Police officers like to travel in groups, like ducks."

"Have you also studied police behavior patterns?"

"I spent nine months inside!"

The man in the headscarf gave a thumbs-up to his heart. "I went in because I was fighting with someone, but I also did some research while I was at it."

"Then you're very professional."

The man in the headscarf nodded in agreement with the compliment, as if he truly deserved it.

Chen Hong had already reached the back of the Dodge.

His hand reached for the trigger of the sprayer under his coat, and he aimed the nozzle at the exhaust pipe outlet at the bottom of the Dodge's rear.

He pulled the trigger.

A thin, transparent mist was sprayed into the inner wall of the exhaust pipe. Upon contact with the scorching hot metal wall, it instantly evaporated into a colorless gas.

The thiol molecules explode at high temperatures, rushing into the engine compartment through the exhaust pipe, then into the air conditioning intake, and finally gushing out from every air vent inside the car.

The first wave of odor then spread.

"Hold."

The fat man was the first to jump up. He was closest to the air vent in front of the seat, and he jumped backward as if he had been electrocuted, his back hitting the container.

He opened his mouth to speak, but the air he inhaled was even thicker, and before he could utter a word, a chicken-like squawk escaped his throat.

"Holy crap—what's that smell—someone—someone's in the car!"

Before the man with the lip ring could react, he leaned over and peered into the driver's seat.

He inhaled for half a second, and his entire face felt as if it had been slapped by an invisible hand.

He shrank back abruptly, his eyes instantly reddening.

"Who pooped! Who pooped in their pants!"

"It wasn't me!" the turbaned man said, but his voice was trembling. "But I don't think this smells like shit. Shit doesn't smell this bad—"

He didn't finish speaking because when he opened his mouth, his tongue licked the thiol residue in the air.

His taste buds were caught off guard by the flavor, and the whiskey and stomach acid in his stomach rushed up to his throat.

He bent over, braced his hands on his knees, and began to violently retch onto the gravel ground.

The man in the leather jacket covered his mouth and stepped back, his shoulder bumping into Taho's car door.

He was slightly more alert than the others and tried to hold his breath, but those few seconds of inhalation were enough; a large number of thiol molecules had already adhered to his nasal mucosa.

His legs buckled, and he knelt on one knee on the gravel ground, his throat contracting wildly.

The woman yelled and hurled the e-cigarette hard towards the Dodgers.

"This is fucking dead rats! There are fucking dead rats in the car! Dozens of dead rats!" Then she put her hands on her knees and started vomiting into the tires.

Taking advantage of the chaos, Chen Hong circled around to the front of Taho's car and sprayed it randomly around the vehicle.

He then tucked the sprayer inside his coat, took three steps back, and stood outside the range of everyone's vomiting.

The air around Dodge and Tahoe was completely filled with thiol molecules.

The taste of thiols is very persistent.

It will stick to clothing fibers, your head, and the inside of your nasal cavity. Even if you run fifty meters away, the odor molecules stuck to your head will still make your friends ask if you fell into a septic tank today.

"Start the car! Let's go! Let's go! Let's go!"

The man in the leather jacket crawled two steps on the ground and pointed a finger at Dodge.

"This is a terrorist attack! Someone's using chemical weapons! Holy crap, I saw God!"

Fatty Heng stood on the ground, arms outstretched towards the sky, and exclaimed, "God smells like this too!"

The man in the headscarf had already mustered all his strength to shout.

He opened the car door, threw himself into the driver's seat, and tried to start the engine by pressing the start button several times.

The engine roared back to life, and the exhaust pipe propelled the remaining sulfides even further.

He vomited while covering his mouth with one hand and turned the steering wheel all the way to the left with the other.

"Where are you going! Where are you going!"

The man with the lip ring had juice on his back hair, and his face was covered in tears, snot, and saliva.

"Drive back the way we came! Not that way! That's a shipping container! We're going to crash into it!"

The Dodge wobbled as it turned around in the open space, its right rear wheel running over a lump of semi-solid matter that it couldn't tell if it had been expelled or not.

Taho also moved. The woman shoved the car door open and jumped into the passenger seat. The man in the leather jacket stepped on the gas, and Taho's rear wheels spun on the gravel for half a second before getting back on the ground.

Two cars drove one after the other toward the gap in the barbed wire fence, the sound of their engines mingling with the retching and cursing of several people as they drove further and further away.

Ten seconds later, the engine sound completely disappeared in the direction of the road.

Sohong stood still, raised his hand to his nose and smelled it.

The drop of concentrated liquid on the fingertips of the gloves had evaporated, but a faint smell of sulfur still lingered in the synthetic fibers.

He sighed.

"This coat is ruined," he said in a low voice in an Eastern accent.

He turned and walked towards the truck. When he went around to the side of the truck, Old Zhang had already opened the back door.

Kobayashi was still sitting in the passenger seat, but her eyes were fixed on the computer screen, and she was covering her nose with a tissue.

"Don't come up," Old Zhang said, then handed over a bottle of unopened mineral water.

"Put the coat in a sealed bag in the trunk first, and put the gloves away too."

Sohong took off his coat, revealing that he was only wearing a dark gray long-sleeved T-shirt underneath.

He folded his coat and stuffed it into a black sealed bag in the trunk, then turned his gloves inside out, pulled them off, and stuffed them aside.

After the sealed bag was closed, the smell in the air finally began to dissipate.

Old Zhang squeezed the mineral water bottle into his hand.

Sohong unscrewed the cap, rinsed his palms and wrists, and then tilted his head back to drink half the bottle.

"Is the person cleaned up yet?" he asked.

"The road in front of the container has now been converted into a pedestrian lane."

"After those two cars left, the sound of traffic on the south side of the highway disappeared."

77

Xiao Lin took off his ear, his voice a little nasal, "The only problem is that our ventilation system isn't powerful enough; there's a faint smell in the car right now. Old Zhang, you can smell it, can't you?"

"I can smell it."

"You seem completely unresponsive."

"When I was in Warsaw, I spent a full fourteen hours crawling into the sewers. For three days after I came out, no matter what I ate, it tasted like this."

"Then why didn't you say so beforehand?"

"If I had told you in advance, you would have made Sohong change the plan."

"Director Yang asked me to give a reply." Xiao Lin sniffed, placing his fingers back on the tray. "What did you say?"

Sohong tightened the cap on the mineral water bottle, picked up the hem of his long-sleeved T-shirt, and used it to wipe his chin. "The venue is now cleared."

Kobayashi turned and glanced at him. "That's it?"

"That's it."

"That's settled then."

Xiao Lin typed a few words and sent them off.

Then he closed his laptop, leaned back in his chair, and let out a long sigh.

"Now we just need to wait for the target vehicle to arrive."

Old Zhang picked up his teacup again and took a sip of the now completely cooled Tieguanyin tea.

"Once the car goes in, our job will be done. Others will take over inside."

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