Chapter Ninety-One: An Operative from the CIA

When Jihad, the brother of Mukhtar Ushaw, was mentioned, both Black Fox and the chief inspector of Kipisile changed color, and the other two middle-aged policemen gave wry smiles as well.

Clearly, this was no ordinary matter.

"So this guy Jihad is that formidable? Is it really that hard to get him to cooperate with the investigation?" Xing Xiaolong thought to himself.

Seeing the chief inspector of Kipisile still bowed in thought, seemingly unable to make a decision anytime soon, Xing Xiaolong simply opened the folder Black Fox had tossed over and started searching for the answer himself.

After quickly skimming more than a dozen pages, he found Jihad's personal file.

It turned out that although Jihad was Mukhtar Ushaw's half brother and was also born in Kenya, he had not remained there, nor had he gone to work for Mukhtar Ushaw's company.

Instead, he had obtained citizenship in Somalia, Kenya, and Ethiopia.

He had long been active in the Black Triangle region. On the Ethiopian side, he gathered a group of men and formed a gang engaged in the transport, cultivation, and sale of drugs.

About a year ago, Jihad exchanged gunfire with another gang in Bulebela, Ethiopia. Although he had the advantage in numbers and weapons and wiped out the other side, he was caught on the spot by Ethiopian anti-narcotics special forces who had already been watching him.

No one knew what had gone wrong in between, but Jihad had now been detained for nearly a year and still had not been brought to trial. He remained locked up in the court holding facility in the border city of Dilla.

That was all the information in the file, but it was already enough to dispel Xing Xiaolong's doubts and allow him to infer deeper things from it.

Anything involving two countries was troublesome enough; let alone handing over a notorious kingpin from the Black Triangle, a man whose successful trial would be a major anti-narcotics achievement, to another nation.

Xing Xiaolong had come from the army, and he knew very well how much both the police and the military valued honor.

If the Ethiopian police department was willing to surrender Jihad, it was obvious they would demand an equivalent and substantial bargaining chip in return.

Moreover, Jihad had not been sentenced to death, nor had he been executed by the government.

Given his status as one of the top drug lords in Ethiopia, Xing Xiaolong could already imagine that at least two clearly distinct groups would be watching his every move.

First were the underlings under Jihad, who would certainly try every possible means to rescue him.

The other group consisted of Jihad's competitors or partners in the drug trade. Their own hands were far from clean, and they would surely fear that any testimony Jihad gave might drag them down with him, endangering their safety. They would inevitably try by any means to eliminate him.

Only the mouth of a dead man is safest.

Thus, if Black Fox requested Jihad, the matter was no longer merely about whether Ethiopia and Kenya could ultimately coordinate successfully.

Even if Jihad were to be brought back to Kenya without incident, it would still depend on whether the Ethiopian police were capable enough.

Whether they could hold the line on the way.

Of course, these were only Xing Xiaolong's personal speculations. What would actually happen was impossible to predict in detail.

As for the chief inspector of Kipisile, if the drug route was not cut off as soon as possible, the pressure from the White Eagle government would only grow greater, and the layers of pressure from the Kenyan government would eventually fall hardest on him.

For this reason, after several minutes of thought, the chief inspector of Kipisile finally agreed to Black Fox's request.

...

The next day.

Eight in the morning.

Xing Xiaolong followed Black Fox aboard a helicopter and arrived at the military base in the border city of Marsabit.

According to Black Fox's request, the chief inspector of Kipisile had dispatched twelve of his most elite special police officers and one seasoned liaison officer, all of whom were already in place and ready.

There was also an added agent from the Central Intelligence Agency named Bill Lipschultz.

Sent by the White Eagle government.

Officially, it was said that since the "Top Arrest Plan" had failed to proceed as scheduled and the difficulty of the mission had increased, they had specially sent an agent skilled in handling affairs between the two countries to assist Black Fox.

Xing Xiaolong immediately saw that there was something wrong with that explanation.

Black Fox, and Xing Xiaolong in his present identity, could also be considered people of the White Eagle government. At the very least, during this anti-narcotics contract period, neither of their identities would change in the slightest.

Yet at the most critical moment of the mission, the White Eagle government had suddenly, and without any prior notice, inexplicably sent an agent to help.

To say that CIA agent Bill Lipschultz had come to assist Black Fox with the case would be putting it nicely; in truth, he had been sent to keep watch.

Xing Xiaolong found this deeply displeasing.

Black Fox, having worked with the White Eagle government many times, knew their methods well and had long since grown used to them.

She did not care in the slightest, and even gave the very dissatisfied newcomer Xing Xiaolong a little popular explanation.

It turned out that even when Delta Force and the SEALs, the White Eagle government's most elite counterterrorism special operations units, were sent overseas on official operations, a completely unfamiliar person from another department would be inserted into the team, one with years of existing cooperation and tacit understanding.

Such an added outsider was usually called outside support, field support, or something similar.

Beyond helping to fill gaps in the team's capabilities, such as adding specialists required by the mission like negotiators, chemists, interrogation experts, and international affairs experts so that a combat-oriented team could complete the assignment more efficiently, this outsider also served another purpose, exactly as Xing Xiaolong had guessed: to monitor them.

It was to prevent these elite teams, sent abroad on missions and beyond easy control in lands where the mountains were high and the emperor far away, from succumbing to temptation during the operation and, because no one could keep them in check, taking advantage of the opportunity to do something irrational behind the scenes.

For example...

After successfully eliminating the target, discovering that the target possessed vast personal wealth, seeing all the glittering jewels and treasures spread before them, and, because they were outside the country, allowing greed and false confidence to take hold, secretly pocketing some and stashing it somewhere.

Then, after returning home and turning in the mission, they could later go back and retrieve it, selling it off for a windfall.

This was not unnecessary worry; there had already been many such precedents. Even the hardened elite of special forces, when faced with an entire truckload or a whole room full of gold and cash, knowing they could take it and no one would ever find out, could still have moments of confusion.

Though it was not an absolute certainty, there was at least a fifty percent chance that they would not be able to resist.

By assigning an unfamiliar outsider to the operational team, and by making it impossible for them to collude and conceal things from each other in the short term, one could shatter that tempting sense of luck.

It served as mutual supervision, greatly reducing the chances of such embezzlement from happening.