I started with a ship full of max-level veterans, and I'm just a complete noob.

Just before that urgent telegram was sent, the door to the room on the second floor of the Lanzhou Military Region Guesthouse had been opened with a spare key.

The bed was still made in the same shape as it had been made the night before, an old trench coat hung on the headboard, and there was still half a cup of cold water in the enamel mug on the table.

The two officers in charge of surveillance split up to search; one checked under the bed and in the wardrobe, while the other went straight to the back window that had been blown open by the wind.

Fresh mud stains remained on the inside of the window frame, and a torn sheet hung down next to the drainpipe on the exterior wall, the end of which landed on the roof of the coal shed on the first floor.

Meng Dechang did not pass through the corridor, nor did he leave his signature in the duty log.

Only the waiter remembered that a coal truck had come to the backyard when the sandstorm was at its worst last night.

The trucks used temporary passes from the railway freight yard, their license plates mostly obscured by yellow sand, and the drivers left only a note with the stamp of the materials allocation office at the gatehouse.

The surveillance team tracked the vehicle to the freight yard and found in the dispatch register that the vehicle was nominally transporting locomotive repair parts, but its destination was a supply station along the Hexi Corridor.

This freight route allows for vehicle changes every few dozen kilometers.

With Meng Dechang's authority over the allocation of supplies, he could change to a westbound truck at any blind spot and head straight for Aksai.

When the coded telegram was delivered to the front lines by the military region's confidential office, Director Wang had already circled Lanzhou on the map with a red pencil.

He ordered the closure of the railway and highway registrations while relaying the situation to Tuqiu, but he knew that this order could not catch up with someone who had been gone for several hours.

Inside the direction finding vehicle, Lu Qinghe was still maintaining the receiver to follow the frequency hopping sequence, while Jiang Ming held the microphone close to his ear and listened to all the clues relayed by Director Wang.

"The old trench coat was left in the room, which means he was preparing to change his identity on the road. The freight truck was heading west, and he left no later than 11 p.m. last night."

Fang Xudong unfolded the map onto the shockproof box and calculated the distance along the highway from Lanzhou to Aksai section by section.

"If he doesn't stop along the way, he can reach the outskirts of Aksai before dawn. The only place he can go is Mine No. 04."

Old Sun walked back from beside the power supply switchboard, his gloves still covered in diesel fuel.

"Grey Pigeon knew the mine was doomed, so he rushed over to burn things to silence him; the evidence inside couldn't be left for him."

"Director Wang, send one team to bypass the ditch and directly seal the southeast exit of the mine. The rest of you, launch a full-scale assault."

Fang Xudong pressed the pencil on the mine's marker. The two companies from Beigou and Xigou were not far from their target. Forcing their way in might increase casualties, but they could control the equipment and personnel before Meng Dechang arrived.

There was no immediate response on the walkie-talkie; the only sound was the command post personnel moving the map ruler.

Jiang Ming looked at the contour lines around Aksai, the tip of his pencil moving back and forth across the barren rocky beach in the southeast.

The mine shaft was already sandwiched between the First and Second Battalions. If Meng Dechang only wanted to destroy the data, it would be much safer for him to stay in Lanzhou and send an encrypted telegram than to personally cross the sandstorm.

With his position and connections, explosives, gasoline, and timed fuses could be delivered into the mine ahead of time, without him even having to explain the reasons to the frontline personnel.

Now, abandoning the guesthouse as cover, Grey Pigeon is moving westward in freight trucks that leave an easy record, taking risks disproportionate to the destruction of a few boxes of documents.

"We cannot launch a direct attack."

Fang Xudong turned around.

"If we wait any longer, the people in the mine will burn the entire file."

"Meng Dechang risked coming to Aksai not to burn archives."

"What else could he be after?"

Jiang Ming left his pencil on a branch road on the southeast side of the mine. That route bypassed the base's restricted area and eventually entered a large area of ​​weathered rock.

"To pick someone up."

Old Sun pressed his gloves against the edge of the map, but the wind still seeped in through the cracks in the car door.

"Everyone in the mine is surrounded, who else can he take away?"

"Someone who would make him make the trip himself."

Jiang Ming drew a triangle between the mine shaft, the barren rocky beach, and the highway, and then connected the transport line from Lanzhou to the southeast corner.

"Killing someone only requires a telegram, but picking them up requires a vehicle, documents, and an evacuation route. He doesn't trust others to handle these things."

Fang Xudong's pencil stopped next to the mine tunnel marker.

"You mean, he's here to pick up the technical supervisor?"

"Or someone who has access to the complete source of the code can blow up the mining equipment, but once the contents of a living person's brain are destroyed, they can never be recovered."

"Meng Dechang had been operating this network for seven years, and when it was time to close the net, he still risked his life to save people. This is not the usual way to handle counter-espionage cases."

"He didn't come to rescue people on a whim. He arranged his evacuation when he decided to go on a business trip in Beijing. Lanzhou was just a transit point."

Jiang Ming turned the map toward the walkie-talkie so that Director Wang could view it synchronously based on the coordinates.

"Before the Yuanlei No. 1 was launched, Meng Dechang had already left Beijing. He knew that Mine No. 4 would be attacked, and he also knew that the people inside needed another exit."

Inside the command post, Director Wang laid a pencil horizontally on the map and re-examined the overlooked Southeast Highway.

In past investigations of covert operations, contacts would often destroy the list first if they were exposed, and if necessary, they would also deal with their subordinates. Meng Dechang once used cyanide to kill the manager of a pawn shop.

However, the shopkeeper is only responsible for transshipment and does not know the design origins of Lightning 7, the Golden Ratio Codebook, and the cold backup local oscillator.

The technical supervisor of Mine No. 04 was able to activate a completely different system within twenty seconds and take precautions against anti-radiation attacks in advance; such a person could not possibly be just an ordinary operator.

"If he were picking up a living person, the meeting place wouldn't be at the mine entrance, which has already been sealed off by our troops."

Director Wang picked up a scale and measured the distance from the Southeast Highway to the mine.

"He needs a rendezvous point that can be covered by a mine radio station and concealed by vehicles."

"Barren rocky beach".

Jiang Ming's pencil stopped fifteen kilometers away.

There are rows of weathered rocks there, and cars can be hidden behind the rock walls. Shortwave frequencies below seven megahertz can also cross the terrain and establish communication with the mine.

Fang Xudong was still staring at the mine markers, preparing to suggest sending troops to search, when he heard hurried footsteps outside the carriage.

Comrade Song, the flat-headed clerk, crawled into the car carrying a backpack-style listening station. The equipment's casing had just been repaired, and the connecting wires were still tangled in his shoulder strap.

"This was sent from direction finding station number 3. They detected a set of abnormal shortwave signals outside the main interference band."

He placed the listening station on the iron frame, turned on the power, and handed the headphone plug to Lu Qinghe.

"The frequency is around 7 MHz, the power is low, and the call sign is not in our registration form. We just sent three groups in a row."

Lu Qinghe handed the main receiver to Fang Xudong to maintain the frequency hopping preset, and took over the listening station himself, fine-tuning the frequency from 6.95 MHz upwards.

The headphones initially contained distant background noise from shortwave propagation at night. After 7.03 MHz, a short Morse code emerged from the background noise.

She pressed the record button, and the paper tape roller began to move. The waveform composed of short dots and long strokes lasted only a dozen seconds before the transmitter shut down.

"It is repeatedly querying a two-digit checksum, without reporting a call sign, and the transmission time is stuck in the dwell time gap of the mine frequency hop."

Jiang Ming drew the triangle on the map again.

"Determine direction."

Lu Qinghe pulled the control lever of the direction-finding antenna on the roof of the car and turned the compass. Although the signal on the paper tape had ended, the monitoring station still retained the last set of phase differences.

She first determined the location of the mine shaft, and then corrected the nighttime ionospheric deviation based on the cross-directionization data transmitted from Station No. 3.

The compass needle crossed due east and finally stopped in a position slightly south of southeast.

"The azimuth is 147 degrees, and the distance is estimated to be between 14 and 16 kilometers based on the field strength."

Comrade Song took a red pencil and pressed it onto the map along the compass direction. The line did not pass through Mine No. 04, but instead crossed the barren rocky beach on the southeast side of the base.

Lu Qinghe superimposed the azimuth line sent by Station No. 3 onto the paper map. The two lines intersected at the northern edge of the weathered rock zone, with an error circle radius of less than 800 meters.

"The signal source isn't in the mine." She circled the intersection point. "It's fifteen kilometers southeast of the base, on a barren rocky beach."

Comrade Song then marked the freight route westward from Lanzhou with a red pencil.

The line passes through the outer edge of Aksai and hits the center of the error circle.

The paper tape roller continued to rotate slowly due to inertia, with the last set of check codes trailing behind the paper, and a complete reply was never received.

Lu Qinghe took off her headphones. The transmission had stopped, but the azimuth line leading to the signal source was still on the map.