Chapter 180 Driving Away Wolves to Devour Tigers

After John and Vinny left, Mu Xin sat in his office alone until dark, running through several paths in his mind over and over again.

The first path: take direct action.

Let John lead men to take down Richie's auto repair shop and clear all seven retailers out of Oxford Town. It was the fastest, most direct, and also the stupidest.

Even if he really managed to take down Richie, the Connolly Family wouldn't ask for evidence; they would only look at the results.

Oxford Town was a new area they had just marked out on their distribution map in southwestern Ohio. For it to be taken out before they had even warmed up to it—no one had dared to do that in thirty years.

Once they confirmed that Mu Xin was the mastermind behind it, the retaliation wouldn't follow legal procedures.

It wasn't hard to find ex-cops and retired soldiers in Cincinnati, and it was even easier to find enforcers willing to kill someone for a hundred thousand dollars and family loyalty.

The hotel construction site, the theme park construction site, the parking lot under the Morris Building, the route Jessica took home every day...

He could defend against it once or twice, but he couldn't defend against the other side's endless retaliation.

And if lives were lost in the retaliatory tit-for-tat, regardless of whose lives they were, by then, the file Cohen had on him would be upgraded from an observation status directly to an investigation status.

The second path: apply pressure through the State Government.

Governor DeWine was about to leave office, and his influence was already waning.

Acton hadn't taken office yet, and even if she did, it would be very difficult to deal with a quasi-modern enterprise like the Connolly Family that had spent thirty years infiltrating the local law enforcement system.

Moreover, Acton's campaign funds surely included money from the Connolly Family, so Acton couldn't be counted on either.

The third path: do nothing.

It was the safest in the short term. He could wait for the theme park to open, wait for the hotel to start making a profit, wait for the Medical Center to be built, and wait for the population of Oxford Town to grow to one hundred thousand.

But the spread of fentanyl wouldn't wait for him. Right now, there were seven retailers at the construction site; in two months, it could be seventeen or twenty-seven.

The contraband problem wouldn't subside on its own; it would only grow from a spark he could control into a sea of fire he couldn't extinguish.

By then, Oxford Town wouldn't be his territory; it would be the Connolly Family's warehouse.

All three paths were dead ends.

Sighing, he opened the message Jack Harrison had sent him again: "Cohen mentioned your theme park at a closed-door hearing in Washington last week."

"Not as a subject of investigation, but as a case study. He suggested that the model of foreign capital building large-scale public facilities on U.S. soil needs to be incorporated into the Department of Defense's infrastructure security assessment framework."

Mu Xin hadn't replied when he first read the message, but now he picked it up and read it again.

Cohen was with the Department of Defense, and the Department of Defense's job was to protect America's national security.

Contraband killed over one hundred thousand Americans every year, a number that exceeded the total number of Americans killed in the Vietnam War, the Afghanistan War, and the Iraq War combined.

And there was no doubt that the Connolly Family's contraband business had deep ties to the Mexican cartels.

The scope of contraband was very broad; fentanyl was just one type.

The Mexican drug cartels possessed military-grade weapons, encrypted communication networks, cross-border money laundering systems, and, in some areas, more effective grassroots control than the government.

Any analytical framework that characterized such organizations as purely a crime problem was incomplete; their ability to infiltrate critical infrastructure within the United States already constituted a threat at the national security level.

And the authority to define this kind of threat belonged to the Department of Defense; Cohen's department was responsible for assessing the impact of foreign capital on the U.S. defense supply chain.

The Mexican cartels were a foreign force, and the power, water, and transportation systems in southwestern Ohio were critical infrastructure in the defense supply chain.

This critical infrastructure was being infiltrated by fentanyl; after all, those workers were the builders of this infrastructure.

If these workers had safety accidents at the construction site after taking drugs, if the fentanyl distribution network continued to spread along his employee dormitory areas and commercial districts, sooner or later, it would hit the Department of Defense's supply chain nodes in Ohio!

The Air Force Research Laboratory in Dayton, the tank factory in Lima, the Defense Logistics Center in Columbus...

It was about an hour's drive from Cincinnati to Dayton and Lima. It was already not far from him; it was just that the group of people distributing this contraband hadn't clearly realized this yet.

Enemies wouldn't always be enemies. Cohen didn't need to like him, didn't need to trust him, and didn't even need to believe that he bought weapons to build a theme park.

As long as Cohen believed that the Connolly Family and the Mexican supply chain behind them posed a substantive threat to Ohio's critical infrastructure, that would be enough.

Mu Xin picked up his phone and dialed Jack Harrison's number.

"Mr. Mu, you must have something on your mind to be calling me this late?"

"Jack, the Connolly Family—have you heard of this name?"

"Irish descent, Cincinnati, they run a big contraband business."

"They aren't my area of expertise. I've heard the name, mainly because they have enough connections in the local law enforcement system in southwestern Ohio—so many that the federal level once considered launching a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) investigation." He paused. "Why are you asking about this?"

"First, help me put together a brief intelligence report on the supply chain relationship between them and the Mexican cartels."

"It doesn't need to be too detailed. The supply chain supporting fentanyl isn't just a crime problem, but a long-term project by a foreign force to infiltrate Ohio's critical infrastructure through a network of agents within the United States."

"I need this argument to not sound like it's coming out of thin air to a Department of Defense official."

Jack chuckled. "Mr. Mu, you know, if the words you just said were written in an official Department of Defense briefing, they would be exactly the kind of topic Cohen's department is most interested in."

"So, you want to use Cohen as an ally at the federal level?"

"It's just an information exchange. He has law enforcement authority and intelligence channels that I don't have, and I have on-the-ground data and a human network that he doesn't have."

"He doesn't need to protect my business in Oxford Town; he just needs to characterize the supply chain between the Connolly Family and the Mexican cartels as a national security threat."

"As for what our working relationship will evolve into, that's not a question that needs to be discussed right now." Mu Xin kept his words as ambiguous as possible.

Jack was silent for a moment. "Mr. Mu, the logic you just stated is theoretically sound."

"In recent years, the Department of Defense has been expanding their definition of non-traditional security threats. If contraband infiltration has caused a measurable impact on the stability of the workforce for critical infrastructure, then it does indeed fit the definition of a national security threat."

"But the question is, why would Cohen believe you? In his perception, you are a Chinese international student who buys weapons. Do you think he will trust your intelligence?" Jack's question was very sharp.

"He doesn't need to trust my character; he only needs to verify whether the intelligence I give him is accurate."

"He can send a team directly to Oxford Town, and he will soon get the same data as I have."

"The number of fentanyl deaths, the coverage of the retail network, the degree of the Mexican cartels' infiltration in southwestern Ohio—these are all verifiable facts," Mu Xin said.

"Now there is another problem. You are dragging Cohen into this; sooner or later, he will know everything you are doing now. Aren't you afraid of him?" Jack was a bit worried.

"I am more afraid of seeing fentanyl everywhere on the streets. Compared to contraband, Cohen's threat is not worth mentioning." Mu Xin sighed.

"Then I will have my assistant draft an engagement plan for Cohen. First, prepare a briefing on the Mexican cartels infiltrating southwestern Ohio through the Connolly Family."

"Second, contact Cohen's office and propose an informal meeting in my name to discuss the non-traditional security threats facing critical infrastructure in Ohio."

"If he is willing to accept, we are ready to go see him at any time." He paused. "If he refuses, I will go find someone else."

"In Washington, Cohen isn't the only politician willing to use the Mexican cartels as a political bonus."

"However, if you can elevate the fentanyl problem from a local public security incident to a page in his annual work, it will be a free gift to his career." Jack was very professional and immediately found the direction.

"Regardless of whether he accepts or not, get the briefing ready first." Mu Xin also made the final decision.

Mu Xin hung up the phone; he knew very well what he was doing now. Driving the wolf to devour the tiger—it is impossible to win when one person fights against an entire system. What he could do was to find another system that was stronger than the one he was fighting, and then let the two systems consume each other.