Chapter 67: The Gateway

  In the brightly lit office, an old man with white temples sat, his brown hair already somewhat grayish-white, looking dull and uninteresting. He wore a pair of reading glasses and was seriously reviewing some documents.

  A knock at the door sounded outside, the guard opened the office door and saw the visitor hastily salute.

  "Is Ed here?" The old man raised his head and stopped reviewing the documents.

  The general appeared in front of the old man, saluted and said: "General, Lieutenant General Ai De reports for duty."

  The old man pointed to the chair beside him and said, "There's no need for so much formality between us, Ed. The Congress is pressing again, and we must have an explanation for what happened with Zamat."

  Ai De hastily stood up and said: "General Shang..."

  The old man interrupted General Ed's words and said, "Ed, just call me Mark in front of outsiders. We've been through life and death together for so many years. You really have more affairs than I do."

  Aid smiled and sat down, saying: "I'd still rather call you Big Brother, otherwise I wouldn't feel at ease. Big Brother, the small city of Bas is already under our control."

  Mark nodded, pulled out a pack of cigarettes from the drawer, with "Zhonghua" printed on it, tossed one to Ed and lit one himself, saying: "I heard that Nightingale did a good job. With Quirke's death, being able to control the situation so quickly is very helpful for our speaking rights in Congress."

  "You've heard too, I activated a reserve special forces team and increased their numbers to ten." Ed smiled slyly.

  Mark smiled and said, "You've made a big fuss about it. I think even if I didn't know, I would have found out anyway. How did you manage to convince Shatan? Even his students are willing to be bait for you?"

  "It doesn't matter." Ed smiled and said, "Even if the students of Shatan act as bait, no one will think they are an ordinary special forces team, but rather a trump card special forces team."

  "Who are you planning on sending?" Mark narrowed his eyes at Ed.

  Aide said faintly: "Liefeng has arrived in Kela City two days ago. I have ordered them to wait."

  Mark laughed and said, "Old fellow, not bad. It seems we'll be able to give Congress a satisfactory account soon. With Lefox around, I'm at ease. However, have your intelligence network continue to sift through it again, take advantage of this opportunity to catch them all in one net."

  "I understand." Ed greedily took a drag on his Chinese cigarette and comfortably exhaled a ring of smoke.

  The truck stopped at a gas station. At this time, all resources were controlled and still in the government army's territory. Xu Ming took out his own documents.

  The soldier checked the documents, saluted Xu Ming with a military salute, and quickly filled up the oil tank of the truck. Less than ten kilometers ahead, they would enter the territory controlled by the opposition party. To avoid trouble for himself, Xu Ming still refueled on his own turf and had the tent taken down to facilitate inspection by the opposition's army.

  In this chaotic war, both the government army and the opposition have roughly the same attitude towards businessmen. As long as they don't transport military supplies, it's reasonable to say that they won't be particularly troublesome. But someone like Qu Qi is an exception, he has a twisted mind, can't help it.

  This is already the junction, both sides seem to have reached some kind of agreement, only a small number of garrison troops formed checkpoints, walking out of the government army's checkpoint, opposite is the opposition's checkpoint.

  Both sides symbolically checked the things in the car, and to avoid arousing suspicion from the opposing side, Xu Ming stuffed a large amount of money into both sides, but the opposing side's was noticeably more.

  The leader in charge of the checkpoint was very satisfied, secretly praising Xu Ming for being sensible, and provocatively glanced at the government army on the opposite side. Symbolically opened a few bags, then let them go.

  After leaving, Xu Ming thought he would proudly boast to Wing Wolf for a while. However, Wing Wolf looked at Xu Ming like an idiot and said, "There are nearly ten card mouths before arriving in Kala City, you've almost given away half of the expenses, what do you plan to use as bribes?"

  Xu Ming's heart suddenly felt a chill, silently scolding himself for being foolish. This kind of thing should be left to Wing Wolf, why bother getting involved.

  He looked at Wing Wolf for help, but Wing Wolf pretended not to see him and continued driving his car.

  At the second card mouth, Xu Ming came down to negotiate with a hard head. After a fierce and intense bargaining session, they finally gave some money and goods to get through the card mouth.

  Xu Ming couldn't help but feel extremely depressed. He couldn't bear to ask Wing Wolf, were all the opposing factions of Card Mouth like this?

  Wing Wolf said faintly: "You'd better hope they're all like this, otherwise if they find our equipment, we're dead for sure."

  Indeed, if it were ordinary weapons with only a few bullets, that group of terrorists would have been able to get through by bribing them. The merchant teams all carry their heads on their shoulders every day, who doesn't have a few broken guns, if they really didn't have any, that's when the trouble started.

  But Xu Ming's equipment was not just a few broken guns, they were all relatively advanced military equipment. If they were searched, the first thing would be a firefight, and afterwards it wouldn't be bluffing at the checkpoint, it would probably be a strong attack.

  Smoothly passed several checkpoints and entered the range of Kla City, less than sixty kilometers away from downtown Kla. This is the last checkpoint and also the most stringent one for inspection.

  Xu Ming handed all the money to the leader, but the leader didn't even bother with Xu Ming and ordered his men to unload all the goods for inspection. Moreover, each person had to undergo a body search before passing through the checkpoint.

  Everyone tensed up at once, they all had weapons and hand grenades. The hidden compartment in the carriage wasn't well made, probably not enough to fool an old hand.

  Others turned their eyes to Xu Ming, Xu Ming nodded to them, and as soon as something was found in the search, they immediately took action.

  The bunker had done some simple fortifications, with a heavy machine gun, and there were less than seventy people. Xu Ming still had confidence that he could end the battle within ten minutes.

  Just as they were halfway through unloading the cargo, a soldier suddenly reported that there was a phone call for the leader. The leader answered the phone and told his subordinates to check casually before letting Xu Ming and others pass through.

  This made Xu Ming very puzzled, he didn't believe that he could have such good luck to step on dog shit. From the moment he crossed over into this ghostly place, he knew that he was the type of person who would mess up cooking stir-fries, mess up cooking rice, and wouldn't even get a good hand when playing mahjong.

  There must be something wrong here.

  Xu Ming made everyone wear their equipment and be ready to fight at any time, while he himself opened the map, frowning as he looked at it in the car.