King Of War: Starting with Arms Dealer
Chapter 875 - 786: Repeated Revenge

A cart of fake gold set off a chain reaction like a domino being pushed.

Anna could never have imagined that Yuri's meticulously laid plans would be thwarted by counterfeit targets.

No one could have anticipated that Boss Qiao had switched the gold, even causing the media to label them as the 'gold thieves' who scared Robin Hood.

For without them, the whole world would not have known that some of the gold distributed from the New York Gold Trade Center was fake.

Once the actions of the vigilantes were legitimized, the busy and scattered police and FBI no longer had the inclination to pursue them.

What motivates a 'vigilante' is no longer important; what matters is how to deal with the consequences they have caused.

After all, what would it change even if they were captured?

This was a robbery where no one died, and even when the gold was proven to be fake, legally the charge of 'intending to rob gold' could no longer stand.

Experienced detectives suspected that the 'vigilantes' knew the gold was fake before they acted.

This could have been a premeditated exposure attack, but so what?

Everyone was already overwhelmed, and as various bigwigs got involved, the case began to shift towards the political arena.

Rashiri was caught off guard; the Shah Intelligence Agency faced such a massive loss and deception, so they rushed to the police to report that it was a serious fraud related to Rashiri.

The unluckiest were those that didn't lose the gold but had it exposed as fake; now even the insurance companies were refusing to pay.

Furthermore, these insurance companies started banding together, demanding that major banks inspect their own vaults and significantly increased the premium rates.

The Federal Reserve Vault issued a statement overnight and expressed willingness to open its underground vault for public visitation to the more than eight thousand tons of gold.

The New York Stock Exchange vault conducted its own inspection and found no issues, and then the spotlight turned to Halliburton, responsible for the transport.

Now, it wasn't a matter of whether Halliburton was wronged or not; with the FBI swearing to uncover the truth, the pressure on Rashiri's side began to grow increasingly intense...

Since the procedures for releasing the gold were flawed...

The gold indeed belonged to the Shah people, but it was Rashiri who helped the Shah's people skirt regulations, secretly facilitating the removal of the gold.

Once this currency enters the market, it's untraceable, and it's well-known that some within the Shah have ties to extremist ISIS factions.

20 tons of gold converted into untraceable funds, how could strait-laced allies like the US accept this?

'Freedom'?

Nonexistent!

You listen to me, then you have freedom, otherwise you have human rights issues, you have corruption issues, you have structural problems...

Once what Rashiri did was verified, and then linked with the previous donation times of Shah, that's when her troubles would really begin.

To quickly mitigate the incident, it was necessary for someone from Halliburton to take the blame, and someone else to fill the financial hole.

Because once the credibility of the New York Stock Exchange was questioned, it would trigger a series of chain reactions.

Less than half a day after the news release, central banks around the world began to jointly exert pressure to redeem gold.

The Federal Reserve faced an unprecedented gold run; if this issue couldn't be resolved, the Federal Reserve's credibility would be gone.

The Federal Reserve is more important than the White House; you can slap the president's face, but you can't shake the position of the Federal Reserve.

20 tons of gold, about 900 million US dollars.

The chairman of Halliburton is a former vice president, but that's useless. As a military contractor with heavy asset investment, even selling Halliburton wouldn't cover this much money.

Hoping that powerful directors would dig into their pockets to fill the hole was purely wishful thinking.

Then who will fill the hole?

Joe Ga had no idea, and would not be able to influence it even if he did, he only knew that members of the Halliburton board were practically all in attendance.

Most people couldn't imagine that a military contractor like Halliburton had its office in a 6-story building on Wall Street.

Dozens of influential bigwigs took various modes of transportation from around the world to meet in New York.

Meanwhile, Boss Qiao was driving an electric maintenance truck, slowly entering Wall Street.

At 3 am, Wall Street was very quiet; Halliburton's front door was parked with dozens of luxury cars, guarded by several black-suited security officers...

Joe Ga boldly parked the electric maintenance truck under a burnt-out streetlight beside the office building.

Then he adjusted his work clothes, put on a cap, got out of the truck, kicked the streetlight, then raised his middle finger at the security guards in the distance and cursed: "Are your people idiots? Complaining about streetlights in the middle of the night, are their brains sick?

Those sons of bitches just don't want to let us live comfortably, right?"

A few security guards who wanted to come over and check gave each other a look, then shrugged and returned to their positions.

They did not know what Halliburton was undergoing, but they knew that among those directors meeting inside, some really did like to make things difficult for people.

Moreover, the duty of a security guard is to keep strangers out of their designated area, and clearly, the streets and streetlights of Financial District aren't under their jurisdiction.

Joe Ga, given the security guards' weird behavior, took a rather large toolbox from the car, climbed into the cherry picker cursing and swearing, and then as if he had forgotten something, he climbed down while swearing and got into the car to pick up his phone again...

Then, he seemed to accidentally hit a switch, and the cherry picker started rising.

Joe Ga, who was on the phone, seemed extremely irritable, possibly due to late-night overtime and various frustrations pushing him to the brink of collapse. He kicked the car door several times, drawing the attention of security guards a few dozen meters away...

Then, he yelled into the phone, "We're divorced, I'm not an ATM machine, why should I pay for your boob job? Would you even show them to me after doing it?"

This typical angst and aggression of a European and American divorced man appeared to make the security guards exchange glances and even cast sympathetic looks towards Joe Ga's back.

However, nobody noticed that the cherry picker had risen to the outside of the window of the third-floor conference room.

The large floor-to-ceiling window was covered by curtains, hindering the people inside from seeing outside.

A few of the security guards were distracted by Joe Ga.

By the time Joe Ga turned into an alley and sprinted for a few dozen meters, the cherry picker on the utility vehicle exploded suddenly...

'Boom~'

After a burst of bright orange flash, a huge plume of black smoke rose in the middle of Financial District.

Unlike in movies where explosions lead to fire, this explosion shattered the windows of nearby buildings instantly and triggered the alarms of cars within a few hundred meters radius.

Torpedo-shaped explosive devices explode directionally!

A barrel-sized shaped charge exploded about 8 meters from the floor-to-ceiling windows of Halliburton's conference room.

The explosion, like a giant blaster firing buckshot, swept across half of the conference room in a fan-shaped pattern with countless fragments since there was no solid cover to hold them back.

Actually, whether the fragments shattered or not didn't really matter. The intensity of the explosion instantly knocked down security guards several dozen meters away to the side.

These guys were lucky to avoid most of the shrapnel, but the lateral shock from the explosion caused internal injuries.

In such a scenario, even without shrapnel injuries, merely being 8 meters away was enough to kill the people inside the conference room from the shock.

A few security guards who were lucky to be inside the main entrance of the office building rushed out to check, then upon seeing the office spewing black smoke, looked at each other and exclaimed, "OH MY GOD..."

Security guards inside the building rushed into the conference room with fire extinguishers, also shouting in shock...

The explosion propelled the shattered glass like blades, scraping through the entire conference room.

Those who remained in the conference room during the explosion were like meat in a grinder.

The flying shrapnel was rather merciful; mostly causing instant fatalities to those it hit.

But those blasted shards of glass propelled by the explosion continuously shattered and rebounded inside the conference room, turning everyone inside into a bloody mess with more, finer fragments.

When the surrounding people panic-strickenly chose to call the police, by the time the police and ambulance arrived, Joe Ga had already boarded a low-profile car in a blind spot of surveillance...

Joe Ga drove, switching cars multiple times, and finally arrived in a coffee shop in Queens, New York by dawn the next day.

Thompson, with a newspaper in his hand, sat in the booth of the coffee shop. Seeing Joe Ga sit across from him, he called the waiter over to order breakfast for his boss.

Watching his boss eat in comfort, Thompson said with a smile, "Just a few hours ago, Bayar from Homeland Security and Cooper from the FBI both called me.

They're scared by the terrorist attack that happened on Financial Street!"

Joe Ga took a bite of his sandwich and then looked at Thompson with a smile, "Do they suspect it has something to do with me?"

Thompson shook his head and scoffed, "On the contrary, they think it's Rashiri's doing.

All the directors of Halliburton are dead. Dead men tell no tales.

Halliburton is finished, now someone is selling off their stock, along with the assets and contracts that Halliburton controlled."

Hearing this, Joe Ga laughed and said, "The explosion was from an ISIS shaped charge, and they link it to Rashiri. Should I admire their keenness or despise them?"

Then Joe Ga shook his head with a laugh, took a sip of his coffee, and looked at Thompson, "How's the thing with the emails going?"

Thompson took a sip of coffee and glanced across the street at the high-end apartment, smiled and said, "According to the speed of the New York police, they should be there by now.

Unfortunately, last night's explosion has put a lot of pressure on the police, so it seems they arrived a bit late."

While Thompson was speaking, two police cars stopped in front of the apartment across the street...

Four police officers with grim expressions - two men and two women - got out and entered the building.

Soon a man wearing only underwear was brought down and put into a police car, and then two female officers accompanied a weeping girl, along with some computers and cameras, got into another police car.

Joe Ga watched as the cafe's waiter ran out to watch the commotion. He shrugged at Thompson and asked, "That's it? Who's that guy?

You planned to have the New York police 'fix his computer'?"