Chapter 36: Wheels, Fuel
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The theft of the county compound’s wheels was certainly no trivial matter.
Yu Yang hurried downstairs and found Officer Zhou, who was in charge of security.
Upon receiving the news, Zhou turned around and took a look.
Good heavens. Three Santana sedans and two police cars had all been neatly propped up on red bricks beside the provincial highway. It was quite a spectacular sight.
“I had people watching them all night. How could every wheel disappear in the blink of an eye?”
“What do we do? Get the officers from the convoy moving?”
“They don’t know the area at all. They’ll be completely lost. Does the Shiliying Police Station have any experience with this sort of thing?”
“An abundance.”
“Contact them. The theft just happened, so they need to investigate at once. You send people to search as well.”
Yu Yang immediately called the station and arranged for villagers from Yu Family Village to block the bridge opening with farm machinery.
Then he mobilized 156 able-bodied men from his own village, along with more than three hundred workers from the construction site, sealing off the area and checking everyone one by one.
Half an hour later, the truth was clear.
The officers at Shiliying Station really were highly experienced.
Just as before, they found nothing.
The station chief was both regretful and uneasy. “There was nothing we could do. More than two minutes had already passed, so we missed the best chance to make an arrest.”
Fortunately, several vegetable peddlers who had gathered to watch the commotion provided an important clue.
“Boss Yu, it was a group driving off-road Jeeps. Three vehicles, more than a dozen young men. They moved incredibly fast.”
“Four or five of them pretended to be spectators and blocked the rear, while the others crouched down and removed the wheel hubs.”
“From the moment they jumped out of their vehicles to the moment they loaded everything up and fled, it took no more than the blink of an eye.”
“The last I saw, they went through the bridge opening and headed toward Hanye.”
“Hanye?”
Hanye, Futu Temple, and Shiliying all belonged to Pingdong County. They were neighboring townships, practically brothers.
The station chief immediately called over there.
“Yes, three off-road Jeeps. What? They headed north toward Beihe?”
Yu Yang lit a cigarette. “Outsiders?”
The villagers watching nodded emphatically. “Definitely. A rabbit doesn’t eat the grass around its own burrow. Our local people usually go to—”
Before he could finish, the township investment director pinched him, and the villager hurriedly changed his words.
“Ah, our local people are all honest and law-abiding.”
Yu Yang looked toward the county official, whose expression had darkened after hearing the news.
“Leader, you heard them yourself. It wasn’t done by our local people.”
“How brazen!”
“Exactly. Only outsiders from another province would dare be so arrogant… Shall we pursue them?”
The county official looked toward the roadside, where several Steyr tractor-trailers were gradually gathering, along with scores of workers rolling up their sleeves and carrying wrenches and pliers.
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In a daze, he could vaguely hear the chief of Shiliying Township quietly giving his men instructions.
“I’m telling you, once we get there, dismantle the valuable equipment before moving it. Work quickly…”
“What’s the most valuable?”
“Transformers and electrical converters. We desperately need them to build the factory. And water pumps, pressure pumps…”
The county official’s gaze turned sharp as a blade.
“Chief Huang, what exactly are you doing?”
The township chief turned around, his expression solemn.
“Reporting to you, Leader, I’m reminding them that once we enter someone else’s territory, they must behave properly and avoid causing trouble. Even if they’re beaten, they must endure it.”
The county official stared at Chief Huang for a long while, then waved his hand.
“Disperse. First contact the county and have them send wheels over.”
“Leader, should we keep looking for our wheels?” Yu Yang asked.
“No!”
If they crossed provincial borders to search for the wheels, judging by this gathering, they might cause a major incident.
Besides, he knew why vehicles so often lost their wheels in Shiliying.
The story went back to the days of communal dining.
Back then, after Shiliying had gone through countless hardships to obtain two wheeled tractors from the county, someone stole the wheels on the very night the tractors were driven back to the township.
Later, after the militia investigated, they discovered that people from Beihe were responsible, so they raided the place in the middle of the night and took the wheels back.
The townships around Beihe had come to Shiliying to steal wheels because their own wheels had been stolen. Once they had finally managed to acquire two sets, they were promptly robbed again. Naturally, they were not pleased.
And so the two sides went back and forth, making trouble for one another for more than two years.
Later, for reasons unknown, Nanhe became involved.
That gave wheel thieves an opportunity to fish in troubled waters. After selling the wheels, they discovered how profitable the business was and became even more active, until more and more townships were drawn into the chaos.
By now, at the junction of three provinces and four cities, at least seven or eight wheel-stealing gangs were operating.
Cross-county investigations were troublesome enough for the police.
Cross-city investigations were even more troublesome.
Cross-provincial investigations were practically impossible.
After countless negotiations among the four cities, a team had finally been assembled to wipe out the wheel-stealing gangs.
No one could have imagined that the team would be robbed the moment it set out.
From then on, the surrounding villages and townships became a place where no one governed and no one took responsibility.
…
In the eyes of the people of Shiliying, losing a wheel was perfectly normal.
After expressing their position to the county grandees, everyone went back to their own business and stopped paying attention to the matter.
It was as though nothing had happened. Even the Shiliying Police Station behaved the same way.
Yu Yang, however, did want to catch the wheel thieves.
But the enemy was hidden while he was exposed. Moreover, they had left the vegetable vendors’ farm machinery alone for more than half a month, which showed considerable respect for him, Yu Sanyuan.
It would be unwise to sour relations now.
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Unless his own people could find the thieves’ hiding place and wipe them out in a single sweep.
After thinking it over again and again, Yu Yang selected several vegetable peddlers he knew from the scene and asked them to pay close attention to any nearby wheel thefts.
Unexpectedly…
“Boss Yu, our wheels have never been stolen, but the fuel in our tanks often goes missing.”
“Boss Yu, I filled mine completely the day before yesterday, and it was empty yesterday. The vehicle never moved at all.”
“Mine too. These days, I don’t even dare leave it on the dirt road leading into the village.”
“I park mine in a lot, and nothing has ever happened.”
Yu Yang’s heart stirred, and he walked toward the five cars that had lost their wheels.
He had someone start the engines and check the dashboards.
Sure enough…
It was not only the wheels that had disappeared. The fuel was gone as well.
Just then, someone else began to complain.
“Boss Yu, they may have all figured out that selling bean sprouts is profitable. Those highway robbers seem to have set their sights on us lately.”
“That’s right. I was robbed twice at the border between Nanhe and Hanye. Now I don’t dare go there anymore.”
“There are people lying in wait on all three roads from Futu Temple to Beihe.”
Brazen!
Utterly brazen!
Yu Yang cursed furiously inwardly, yet his face remained expressionless. He did not let his own people make a move either.
Because a dog that bites does not bark…
No, that was not the reason. The county official was still here.
If his people rallied on the spot and formed a thousand-man force to cross the provincial border in pursuit, he would not only leave the county official unable to save face; once the matter escalated, he would also make it impossible for the man to answer to his superiors.
So they would have to wait until the county official had left.
Once the rice had been cooked into porridge, the other side would probably be delighted too.
After all, losing a set of wheels was humiliating.
And there was something else.
This matter had to be dealt with swiftly and ruthlessly.
His people were in the wholesale business. The thieves lying in wait for the vegetable peddlers were effectively cutting off their source of income.
Stealing fuel from Yu Family Village was an even more blatant insult.
If they did not reclaim their dignity, the bean-sprout business would become difficult to sustain in the future.
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