Free Web NovelChapter 39: Chapter 38: Hercules Company’s Security
On the second morning in Los Angeles, at Old Ode’s recycling yard, the managers from Hercules Security Company stood with the chubby Old Ode and his family at the entrance to the mine pit.
Hercules Security Company was a well-established firm, founded nearly ten years ago. Most of its employees were military veterans, and it enjoyed an excellent reputation in the industry.
A security company like this would always prioritize handling incidents themselves. Calling the police was seen as a mark against their competence.
The senior staff who had come over this morning were three formidable, well-built men. One of them had a shrapnel scar on his forehead. They were accompanied by a five-man team.
They called it a mine pit, but it was really just a large hole dug into the ground, surrounded by a lot of scaffolding.
Baru squatted on the ground with a cigarette dangling from his lips. He picked up a piece of clothing shed by one of his company’s employees. There were no scratches or marks on it.
There was even underwear nearby.
The simple guard post was completely empty. On the floor lay the uniforms and undergarments of the other guards, their weapons scattered beside the clothes.
The items were located exactly at the company’s standard patrol posts: one uniform set inside the guard post, and two sets at each of the corners.
A scene formed in Baru’s mind.
At some point during the night, his company’s five employees were on their regular patrol.
Then suddenly, they all put down their weapons and began to take off their clothes, stripping until they were completely naked.
He looked up at his two colleagues, who were also frowning deeply.
Clearly, this level of deduction wasn’t difficult for a few seasoned veterans.
’What in the world happened here?’
The mine pit itself wasn’t very large. The new five-man team had already gone inside to search.
"KSHH— Calling Eagle."
The communication came from inside the pit via the walkie-talkie.
"KSHH— Go ahead."
"KSHH— No sign of them. There are three tunnels inside, less than twenty meters deep. We’ve checked the rock and soil composition of every main path and found no hidden spaces."
Hearing the voice on the walkie-talkie, Baru and the other two men fell silent for a moment.
"Alright, come on back."
Old Ode stood behind them, at a loss. He wasn’t exactly a man of the world and didn’t know if he, as the employer, bore any responsibility for this situation. After all, five men were missing.
Baru stood up and faced his client.
"Mr. Ode, do you have any enemies? Or any massive debts?"
Old Ode thought for a moment.
"Last week I scraped a Cadillac at the gas station... uh, but I paid him 50 USD and we settled it... The day before yesterday, I called to complain about the electric company and yelled at them pretty badly... Yesterday I..."
"That’s enough, Mr. Ode. If it’s all just trivial stuff like that, you don’t need to mention it."
At that, Old Ode fell silent.
He considered himself just an ordinary, lucky guy who rarely made enemies.
Still, he asked cautiously.
"Mr. Baru, about your five employees..."
"Please rest assured, Mr. Ode. I will give you an explanation regarding our guards abandoning their posts. We will have a new shift on duty tonight, which I will lead personally. That is, if you don’t terminate the contract."
Hercules Security Company valued its reputation above all else. Although the scene was bizarre, it wasn’t impossible that it was man-made.
They actually had a file on their client, Old Ode. He was just an honest, simple, ordinary man.
If last night’s incident really involved an enemy, it could only be a rival of the Hercules Company.
Old Ode hadn’t expected this group of intimidating men to have such a good service attitude. He breathed a sigh of relief, and his opinion of the Hercules Company improved slightly.
Besides, deep down, Old Ode had a nagging feeling that Hercules’s employees weren’t to blame for what happened last night.
He had a secret.
Yes, as the owner of the property, he had done a general survey and some prospecting back when he first bought the land for his recycling yard.
He knew very well that there was absolutely no way such a peculiar Crystal Ore mine should be under this property. To take it a step further, there absolutely shouldn’t be such a large underground cavern either.
This mine’s appearance was incredibly strange!
’I’ll see what happens tonight. If there’s another incident...’
Old Ode was naturally worried that more guards might disappear tonight, but his lust for money made him conceal this information.
He deceived himself, reasoning that his initial survey must have been incomplete or not thorough enough, and that the guards’ disappearance had to be man-made—the work of their rivals, for instance.
After all, who knew what enemies these veterans had made during their military service? Plenty of movies featured retired heroes getting payback from their past.
In a small grove of trees in the distance, Jack and Joseph were perched in a tree, each holding a pair of binoculars and watching the situation inside the recycling yard. freeweɓnøvel.com
They had been pretty spooked by last night’s events. Partly for their own peace of mind, they were desperate to know what had happened to the five guards.
So, they had rushed over with their gear as soon as it was light out.
"What are they saying?"
"No idea."
"Looks like they haven’t found the five guards?"
"Yeah, look. The team that went in to search the mine pit is coming out."
Through the binoculars, they could see the leader of the search party shrug at Baru.
"Guess they didn’t find them?"
The two fell silent.
Jack lowered his binoculars.
"But we definitely saw the guards strip naked and go into the mine pit..."
Joseph looked at him and said, a little uncertainly.
"Maybe... maybe after we left, the five of them came back out..."
"And just walked away with no clothes on?"
The two fell silent again.
None of the four of them had told anyone about this yet. To be honest, they had no idea how to handle the situation.
Logically, it had nothing to do with them, but psychologically, they couldn’t just stay out of it.
Of course, they had no intention of just rushing in and telling everyone they had been there last night and what they had seen.
Jack raised his binoculars again, and seeing this, Joseph instinctively looked again too.
"They’re shaking hands with Old Ode."
"The security guards aren’t leaving?"
Through the binoculars, it looked like Old Ode and his family were leaving, but the security guards stayed. Instead, they gathered the clothes and weapons from the ground and began to take up guard positions, apparently planning to take over the shift.
The two lowered their binoculars again and looked at each other.
"Are we coming back tonight?"
Faced with Jack’s question, Joseph swallowed hard.
But then, as if possessed, he blurted out, "Yeah!"
...
「Time passed quickly, and soon it was nightfall again.」
The other two didn’t come because they had the night shift, leaving just Jack and Joseph.
This time, the two of them brought a bag of food and got to their tree by the grove early. In any case, they didn’t dare get too close to the recycling yard.
Although they didn’t have night-vision goggles, their binoculars were good quality. Combined with the bright lights at the yard, they could still make things out more or less.
But the two of them had clearly overlooked one problem.
Just what kind of people worked for Hercules Security Company?
They were elite military veterans; at the very least, they were battle-hardened old soldiers.
After five men went missing the previous night, would they be stupid enough to just set up patrols at a distance on the second day? Were they just waiting to repeat the same mistake?
Baru and his men’s initial assumption was that an unknown rival had made a move, so naturally, they would be prepared.
The guards in the yard were just the visible sentries. As for the hidden ones...
Jack and Joseph had just unwrapped a sealed sandwich and hadn’t even taken a bite.
"AH—!" "AH—!"
"MPH—!" ...
A powerful force dragged both of them down from the low tree simultaneously, and their mouths were covered as they wore expressions of terror.
After scanning the surroundings again with his colleague, a black man spoke into his walkie-talkie.
"Calling Eagle, we’ve caught two suspicious individuals here."
Baru, sitting inside the guard post, put down the pistol he was cleaning.
"Bring them here."
PS: Thanks to book friends Ren Jian Gong Yi and Yun Xinghe Yoseya for the 1,000 coin donation, and thanks to book friend With the Tide of Flowering and Withering for the 200 coin donation~
This is yesterday’s second update, now posted.
