Shadow Empire

Chapter 802: Promises, Mistakes, and the Sheriff
Lance's request was not excessive. He just asked the mayor to dismiss the police chief and some police officers, some law enforcement officers.

But both Lance and Wade knew that this matter was not as simple as they imagined.

If the mayor is the "master" of a city, then the police chief is the master's most trusted and reliable hound.

It can help him guard the house and protect his own interests, and it can also help him tear apart enemies and hunt prey.

Anyone who can serve as the police chief can basically be said to be the mayor's core confidant.

The situation in Jingang City was actually the same as before. The mayor was just a decoration, and the real owner at that time was the Bay Area, so this is not a paradox in essence.

It is actually a bit embarrassing for a master to kill his most reliable hunting dog with his own hands.

So after Lance made this request, Mayor Wade did not agree immediately. He still needed to think about how to handle this matter.

He is very cautious and never believes that he is a lucky person. Instead of gambling on "what if", he prefers to assume the worst possible outcome from the start.

He is not familiar with the mayor of New Bern, and this matter may need to go through some other channels, such as other middlemen. He is considering the price he would have to pay and the benefits if he were to do so.

After thinking about it for a while, he thought that the gains would definitely be more than the costs, so he agreed.

"Leave this matter to me. When you call me, I will do it."

In the first contact, both parties have to show some sincerity. Mayor Wade did not ask Lance what he could give him in return. This is a statement.

"Okay, we can meet then."

The two ended the call quickly. After all, they were not very familiar with each other, had never met before, and there was not much to talk about.

Small talk can only exist between friends who have at least a good relationship, not between strangers.

At this time, the two policemen who were being followed had already left the city of New Bermuda. Today was the day for them to deliver the money from the sales of alcohol this week.

The two men had no idea that they were being followed, nor did they expect that someone would follow them here.

State police may not have much impression in the minds of "city people". The few things they may see are that they hide their cars behind some bushes, and when your car passes by at a fast speed, they will sound the alarm and chase after you, telling you that you are speeding.

People don't like highway police. Federal interstate highways are very long and the surrounding scenery doesn't change much, so people tend to step on the accelerator harder and harder when driving!
This means that they are driving faster and faster. Not many people can drive on the interstate highway for an hour and still maintain a low speed. Almost everyone is speeding!
If they find out, you will be punished, so no one likes them.

But no one dared to deal with them casually. After all, they were also federal police with law enforcement powers. If they really met someone brave enough, they would be the first to draw their guns.

Once you leave the city, the number of vehicles on the road gradually decreases, and drivers will check their rearview mirrors from time to time.

After looking at it a few times, he realized something was wrong.

"There's a car following us from behind. Is there something wrong?" The driver was the strong guy, and he was a little worried.

He had a delicate heart that was inconsistent with his size and appearance, especially since they made it a little bigger this time, he was a little scared.

That day they were on routine patrol on the interstate highway and spotted several trucks heading from Likale State to Indeno State.

The name of a transport company in Likalai State is printed on the outside of these trucks, and it is not surprising that these trucks often appear on state highways.

Sometimes they will randomly inspect these vehicles, and their main purpose is to cause trouble for these truck drivers and extort some money from them.

Don't think this is excessive, this is almost what most interstate highway police would do during this period -

They are not completely unreasonable in their extortion. They will find out the non-compliance of these trucks, such as their headlights are not bright enough, their tires appear to have created safety hazards, or there appears to be too much cargo in their cabins.

They even ask drivers wearing headscarves to stop, arguing that the headscarves may block their vision and cause traffic accidents.

In short, they can always find something that is not in compliance with the rules for these large trucks, and then ask them to correct the problem, such as returning to the original route to find a repair station, and then continue on their way after it is fixed.

It is difficult to find repair stations on both sides of the interstate highway. Even if there are any, they have been visited by serial killers. Moreover, car repairs here are not cheap, and some of them may be in cahoots with these highway police.

Some of them will ask to be detained for a period of time. In short, they will make things difficult for these truck drivers.

Because transportation has time requirements, and capitalists will not give them too much time to transport slowly, the time requirements are often quite strict.

A journey of one thousand kilometers may only leave you with five or ten hours.

If they exceed the time limit, they will face the risk of not getting their wages or even being sued, so when many truck drivers encounter such a situation, they will be very tactful to cooperate with the police and give them some money, as a way of avoiding disaster.

This is also how interstate highway police make extra money.

Otherwise, do you think that these people who work in the wilderness in the wind and rain all day long really just love this job?

No, what they love is money in their pockets.

The last time they checked those large trucks, the drivers were very cooperative and didn't complain at all.

They have dealt with many such truck drivers, who often complained and cursed while being extorted for money.

But this time, these truck drivers were too cooperative, a little too cooperative!
When the two policemen were inspecting the vehicles, they smelled some alcohol and they knew that these vehicles were transporting alcohol.

It is illegal to transport alcohol openly like this.

If the Hazardous Materials Administration finds out, they will destroy the alcohol on the spot and arrest the drivers and put them in jail.

In other words, even if they confiscated the alcohol, the drivers would be unable to do anything about it.

Five truckloads of booze, how much the hell is that worth?

After the police on duty allowed them to pass, they immediately reported the news to the section police station, and then the police chief of the station decided to seize the goods.

In his words, these drivers are criminals, and the alcohol is stolen goods, and they are police officers, so they have no burden at all!

Then these people set up checkpoints on the road, and unexpectedly killed the driver and about twenty gunmen hiding in the carriage who were responsible for escorting the drinks. Their bodies were thrown into a secluded place in the wild, and the drinks were stolen by them.

No one except the people in the section police station knew what they did.

Of course, several of them died in this battle. The sheriff reported to the state police department, saying that an exchange of fire had occurred and several policemen had died accidentally.

This kind of thing also happens frequently among highway police, so the state police department later sent people to investigate.

When they saw the police car riddled with bullet holes and the bodies of several police officers, they confirmed the sheriff's statement.

Because there were no "witnesses" at the time, the case became an unsolved case, and a reward of one hundred dollars was offered for information related to the case.

In fact, what intelligence is there?
Apart from them, all other people who knew about the incident were basically dealt with, so the matter was left unresolved.

It’s not that the State Police Department doesn’t care about the lives of their own people, but that they can’t figure out who did it and where these people are now.

The road section police station has been telling the higher-ups that it is investigating, and it is impossible for the state police station in the capital to mobilize a special team to solve the case.

The sides of every state's interstate highways are littered with innocent souls and bones, and the state police department's more important police forces are basically used to detect serial killers and serial pervert killers.

In short, this matter was concealed in a reasonable and appropriate way.

After a while, the sheriff seemed to be unable to bear it anymore and began to sell the wine on a small scale.

He tore off the wine label, replaced the bottle cap, and even found some chemicals to remove the small gold-stamped logo on the bottle!

The market value of the wine is two to three million, and he has no problem selling it for one or seven hundred thousand or eight hundred thousand.

This is 1.78 million! Not 170 or 80 yuan!
Everyone involved in this incident in the entire police station was extremely excited. If all the wine was sold, even if the sheriff ate half of it alone, the rest of the people would be full!
It’s just that some people seem excited and happy, but some others are more worried. After all, goods with a market value of two to three million were dumped here, and the owner of this batch of goods will definitely find a way to investigate the matter thoroughly and then take revenge fiercely!

Gangs have been rampant in recent years, and once you get involved with them, it will definitely be a huge trouble.

But the sheriff told them that as long as they didn't say anything nonsense, the people behind the wine would never imagine that it was them, the intercontinental police, who swallowed up the goods!
The painter said this, but those who should be worried will still be worried.

After the policeman in the driver's seat gave this reminder, the policeman sitting in the passenger seat looked back and saw a car about thirty or forty meters behind them.

The two cars seemed to be traveling at the same speed, following behind them, neither falling behind nor catching up.

The policeman in the passenger seat turned his head and was seen by Allen who was watching.

"They may have discovered us," he said, and the person sitting in the passenger seat and the driver's seat behind him took out their pistols.

Alan glanced at them and said, "Shit, put it back!"

"Erwin didn't ask us to do anything. We can't engage in a firefight with them right now. It might disrupt his or the Boss's plans."

His friend in the passenger seat asked, "What should we do then?"

Alan looked at the car in front and thought for a while. "Anyway, we know where they live. Let's change directions with them at the next intersection and go straight back."

Naturally, other people had no objections, and silence returned to the car.

The policeman in the passenger seat of the front car looked for a while. He was not sure whether the vehicle behind was following them. He thought his partner was too sensitive.

But he couldn't say it directly, so he thought for a moment and said, "Pull over to the side of the road later. If their car slows down or stops, it means they have a problem."

"If they continue to move forward without slowing down, it means there is nothing wrong with them."

Although this method is not very reliable, it can at least solve the problem of tracking if the other party is really tracking them.

After driving for a few more minutes, the policeman driving the vehicle chose a gravel ground and pulled over.

Both of them now have some sheriffs, and they are very clear about the style of these gangsters. If they knew that these goods were in the hands of their state police, they would definitely attack the road section branch!
These people were all vicious desperadoes. There were only two of them now, and they didn't feel any sense of security from the belts on their bodies. Instead, they felt some danger.

The palms of the tall policeman in the driver's seat were sweaty. He wiped them off his body, then opened the leather buckle of the holster and put his hand on the gun handle.

He can draw his gun and shoot anytime and anywhere!
As long as the car slowed down or stopped, they would shoot.

Regardless of whether the other party is the owner behind the wine or a new perverted killer, for their own safety, they will never wait until the other party takes out their guns and is ready to fire before considering counterattacking.

They will definitely strike first!

Being a police officer is indeed a very dangerous job. You never know whether the next person you are going to check will do as you say and produce something to prove their identity, or pull out a pistol and fill you with bullets!

Alan, who was driving, also saw them suddenly pull over. He knew that the other party had discovered them, so it was better not to stop at this time.

Erwin hasn't given him any new instructions yet, so he can't alarm these people now.

He continued to maintain a steady average speed and soon overtook the car in front.

The policeman sitting in the passenger seat finally breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the car whizzing past them without slowing down. He glanced at his partner and said, "Look, they are just passing by."

The Federation now has a large land area and the people living here are highly concentrated, so outside the city is an endless wilderness.

On many interstate highways, you only see one fork in the road after hundreds of kilometers, so what the police officer in the passenger seat said is not without reason.

Although the tall guy who was driving still felt something was wrong, he temporarily accepted the result.

The car waited in place for about seven or eight minutes before it started again.

Neither of them spoke during the entire journey; this little episode still brought them some heavy pressure.

When they arrived at the section police station and saw their colleagues, their mood improved a little.

One of the two men carried a backpack and entered a three-story house on the roadside, which was the office building of the section police station, and soon arrived outside the office of the police chief of the station.

They knocked on the door, obtained the sheriff's permission, and entered the office.

"sit."

The sheriff was in his fifties, with blond-brown hair and a curled-brimmed cowboy hat, and looked more like a free rider than a sheriff on this stretch of road.

He was a typical Federal man, with a mustache that was well-kept and curled back at the far end.

There are some animal specimens hanging on the walls, the largest of which is an elk and its horns.

Two old-fashioned rifles hung on the wall, and within the sheriff's reach were his holster and his large-caliber revolver.

The sheriff was a very "old school" guy and he preferred these revolvers to those semi-automatic pistols.

The chrome-plated exterior is covered in exquisite carvings, and with the ivory handle, it is not just a weapon, but also a work of art!

His clothes don't seem to be that elegant, but only those who know him know that he has at least two villas in the capital.

This is a very low-key guy who knows how to make himself look like everyone else.

"How was this week?" He clasped his hands together on the table and looked at the two people who sat down with a smile on his face.

The shorter policeman untied the backpack and handed it over, and the sheriff poured out everything inside.

They were all counted stacks of banknotes, mainly ten-yuan and five-yuan notes, and there were also twenty-yuan notes, but relatively few.

The money fell on his desk like rain, and it was obvious that he was happy and contented at that moment!
After the last stack of money was poured out, he began to sort the money quickly.

Some people say that federalists are not good at math, but that must be a rumor!

The sheriff demonstrated through his own actions that federals can be good at math and have no trouble adding four or five-digit numbers!
The sheriff briefly counted them, "There are over thirty-one thousand dollars here."

He took out the change and threw it back, "Let's call it thirty-one thousand."

As he spoke, he shoved the remaining money on the table back into his open backpack and said, "Have you been lazy this week?"

“Only sold 30,000 dollars of wine this week?”

In fact, 30,000 yuan is not a small amount. After all, they are selling it secretly.

It is completely different from those sold openly in bars, and they are very careful and cautious, not even wanting old customers, so sales are not very high.

The two of them smiled awkwardly and made some humming and aha sounds, but did not give a direct answer.

After the sheriff put all the money into the backpack, he zipped it up and threw it in the corner.

There were already seven or eight similar backpacks in the corner, all of them bulging.

The shorter policeman quickly explained, "We don't dare to do regular business with some people for fear of being discovered, so our sales volume is equivalent to constantly opening up new customers."

"If we also do business with those old customers, we can at least get 70,000 or 80,000 less in sales!"

(End of this chapter)