6: Chapter 6 Dock Site Reconnaissance

Two days of waiting were enough for him to do many things.

The system repair progress had climbed to 67%, his ribs no longer hurt at all, and his breathing was as smooth as if they had never been broken.

He used that six hundred-plus dollars in cash to pick up a black hoodie, a cheap pair of binoculars, and a pair of sneakers with soft soles from a second-hand shop.

December 15th, nightfall.

Yan Zheng pulled up his hood and slipped out from the back door of the Antique Shop.

The Skeleton Soldier was released ten minutes early, dressed by him in an old cotton coat found in the previous owner's wardrobe, with a baseball cap pulled over its head and a scarf tied around its face.

From a distance, it looked like a thin, weak homeless person, and the same up close, except its gait was a bit stiff.

"Follow thirty meters behind me; if anyone approaches, stop and play dead."

"Playing dead shouldn't be hard for you, after all, you already are."

The phosphorus fire in the Skeleton Soldier's hollow eye sockets flickered slightly, though it was hard to tell if that counted as an acknowledgment.

Pier 12 West was at the westernmost edge of Hell's Kitchen, right next to the Hudson River.

It was about a twenty-five-minute walk from the Antique Shop; the further west he went, the fewer streetlights there were, the sparser the pedestrians, and the heavier the fishy smell in the air.

In the last three blocks, there were almost no residents to be seen, just abandoned factory buildings and rusty chain-link fences.

Yan Zheng crouched down behind a brick wall that had collapsed on one side and raised the binoculars.

The pier area was much larger than he had imagined.

Hundreds of shipping containers were stacked layer upon layer into a steel labyrinth, some as high as three or four stories, with passages between them narrow enough only for a single vehicle to barely squeeze through.

On the side facing the river, there were three large warehouses; most of the paint on the exterior walls had peeled off, but the chains on the rolling doors were brand new.

The warehouse closest to the riverbank had its lights on.

Yan Zheng twisted the focus of the binoculars to the maximum.

The rolling door of the warehouse was half-open, and the pale light of industrial lamps shone from within.

Two black box trucks were parked at the entrance, their license plates caked in mud and illegible.

Four people were moving things out from the cargo area.

"Interesting."

Yan Zheng whispered to himself, the lens of the binoculars steadily locked onto those movers.

They were wearing full white hazmat suits, filter masks, and thick rubber gloves, lifting silver-gray cylindrical metal containers one after another from the truck.

Each container was about a meter high and about half a meter in diameter, with striking yellow and black striped labels on the surface.

Biohazard symbol.

He had seen this stuff plenty of times in the laboratory in his past life; that three-lobed fan-shaped pattern had only one meaning: whatever was inside was highly hazardous to the human body.

"The Russian Gang is involved with biochemical items?"

Yan Zheng's mouth twitched, his gaze scanning back and forth at the warehouse entrance.

In addition to the four movers in hazmat suits, six armed bodyguards stood outside the warehouse, all bald, burly men with Slavic-style crosses tattooed on their necks.

Vladimir's men, no doubt about it.

"But Vladimir is just a drug lord and arms dealer; when did he get the ability to handle this level of stuff?"

Yan Zheng put down the binoculars and leaned against the brick wall to think for a few seconds.

Then he took out the mobile phone he had swiped from those two Irish Gang thugs, aimed the camera towards the pier, and pressed the shutter.

He had turned off the shutter sound beforehand; the image was very blurry in the night, but the outline of the labels on the metal containers could barely be seen.

He took seven or eight photos in a row, from different angles.

"Enough, retreat."

He bent over and retreated twenty meters along the brick wall, circled into a further gap between shipping containers, and after confirming he hadn't been discovered by anyone in the direction of the warehouse, he straightened up and walked back the way he came.

The Skeleton Soldier followed silently in the shadows thirty meters away, its steps stiff but making no sound.

It was just past one in the morning when he returned to the Antique Shop.

Yan Zheng locked the door, pulled the curtains, and turned on the dim desk lamp on the cash register.

He enlarged the photos on the phone one by one, his two fingers repeatedly zooming in and out on the screen.

"The clarity is too poor; the phone's pixels aren't enough."

He smacked his lips and looked back and forth at the clearest photo several times.

On the side of the metal container, below the yellow and black striped label, there was an area covered with black paint.

It was painted very sloppily, as if it had been covered up with spray paint on the fly.

But the paint coverage wasn't uniform; after zooming in on the photo to the limit, a small section of the remaining pattern's edge was revealed beneath the layer of black paint.

A circular outline, with several curved lines extending from within.

Yan Zheng's finger stopped on the screen.

He closed his eyes and filled in the missing lines in his mind.

A circle.

Inside was the frontal outline of a human skull.

Below the skull, six curved structures resembling octopus tentacles extended out.

He put the phone down, leaned back in his chair, and stared at the ceiling for a full ten seconds.

"This is a bit beyond expectations."

His voice was very soft, his tone carrying a complex flavor that was hard to tell if it was excitement or vigilance.

"The Russian Gang is smuggling this batch of goods for someone, the Irish Gang hijacked a truckload of weapons and wants to snatch it, but I'm afraid neither of them knows who they are running errands for."

Yan Zheng stood up, walked to the entrance of the Underground Room, exported all the photos from the phone to an SD card, and then performed a factory reset.

"HYDRA."

When he uttered these three words, the corners of his mouth curved slightly upward, as if savoring a glass of fine wine.

"One of the biggest shadow organizations in the Marvel Universe, with its tentacles reaching into every corner of S.H.I.E.L.D."

"And their cargo is just sitting out in the open on the docks of Hell's Kitchen."

"Old Jack said the Irish Gang is coming to snatch the goods this weekend, and Vladimir has made threats that he will hold the line."

"With those two gangs clashing, there will definitely be deaths."

Yan Zheng turned off the desk lamp, and in the darkness, his voice carried the delight of a scholar about to begin field research.

"But more importantly, HYDRA's stuff—if what's inside is truly biochemical products."

"Then the guards for this shipment might not just be ordinary thugs."

He smiled silently in the darkness.

"High-level materials might just be waiting for me inside."

"The day after tomorrow is the weekend, gentlemen."

Yan Zheng's voice disappeared into the stuffy air of the Antique Shop, the last sentence sounding like an invitation to some invisible guest.

"Let me see what surprises this clash can bring me."