Chapter 685 Intelligence Collection
Qiao Zhiya frowned and said: "The commissioning ceremony will be held in Changhua in two days. The mining of Shilu cannot be stopped at this time."
"It won't break if it breaks." Tian Yeyou responded: "But the production capacity will definitely not be what it was before the accident. I think it would be good to keep half of it. If Tiandu Industrial Zone can send maintenance personnel and spare parts over as soon as possible, then about half Production can be resumed in about a month. Of course, this must first ensure that there will be no more problems in the labor camp.”
"If something goes wrong again...if something happens again, I really have no choice but to take the blame and resign!" Qiao Zhiya responded with a wry smile.
Although the forced labor camp is under the responsibility of the police department, Qiao Zhiya's position is the military and political manager of Changzhou and Shilu. If there is trouble in the forced labor camp, he is more or less responsible. What's more, such huge losses of people and property were caused in the follow-up. If the executive committee wants to hold the leadership responsible, Qiao Zhiya will definitely bear the brunt.
However, judging from the news conveyed by Gu Kai, the Executive Committee does not intend to start settling the issue of responsibility at this time. It is still preparing to hand over the next task of chasing down the enemy to Qiao Zhiya. Of course, this may also be regarded as the executive committee giving him an opportunity to make up for his past mistakes. If Qiao Zhiya can handle the follow-up matters properly, then probably no one will use the riots in the mining area to make trouble again.
"I will lead the troops into the mountains in a few days. Shilu will have to be taken care of by you first." Qiao Zhiya said solemnly: "It stands to reason that with the current strength of the troops, nothing will happen again, but You still have to be careful.”
"Don't worry!" Tian Yeyou didn't have any fear about this: "When I went to Heitu Port before, everyone had to serve as a platoon leader and company commander in the militia. Although I have never been a soldier, I also followed the money. Tiandun and the others have learned a lot. If those bandits dare to come back to Shilu again, I will hang them up and skin them one by one!"
After counting the battle damage, it was time to deal with some of the thugs caught after the riot. During yesterday's counterattack, the police and vigilante groups killed a total of 82 people and arrested more than 300 people. Perhaps some of these dead and injured prisoners were unlucky and accidentally injured, but most of them personally participated in yesterday's riot, and thugs who were not prisoners of the hard labor camp were found among them, so they knew that there were people from outside. Sneaking into mining areas and hard labor camps to instigate this riot.
Because Qiao Zhiya had too many things at hand, he did not interrogate the prisoner himself, but handed it over to his militia. However, the militiamen are good at fighting, but they are not good at extracting confessions through torture. Most of them do not have any effective interrogation methods other than simple and crude executions. Moreover, the information obtained purely by torture is not true. Performance and reliability are also questionable. The only good thing is that a lot of people have been arrested, and we can slowly compare the circumstances explained by these people to judge whether it is true. However, this will undoubtedly greatly slow down the efficiency of handling the case. After a night of interrogation, it is not possible. Only a dozen subjects were interrogated.
However, the efficiency of the Security Department's operation this time was very high. As soon as Qiao Zhiya finished talking to Tian Yeyou, Changhua sent a message through the radio. The Security Department team coming from Danzhou had arrived at the port and would take the train as soon as possible. Go to Shilu Mining Area.
The voyage from Danzhou Bay to Changhua Port is about 40 nautical miles. There is no doubt that after receiving the news, they had already set out to sea overnight to rush here, so that they could reach Changhua the next morning after the accident. This news also made Qiao Zhiya feel a little relieved. People from the security department rushed over to take over, so that the interrogation of the prisoners could be handed over. The field staff of the Ministry of Security have basically received relevant interrogation training. Having them responsible for interrogating prisoners will obviously greatly improve efficiency.
Two and a half hours later, the security field team led by Lin Nan and Li Qingyang arrived at Shilu Station.
"We are all our own people. I won't hide it from you. Sanya has organized a team and will be here in the next few days to deal with the follow-up matters." Qiao Zhiya led the two of them to the prison area while introducing the situation: " After this army arrives in Shilu, I will lead the army into the mountains, so I only have two days left for you. I want to know where these people come from, whose orders they follow, where their base is, and their strength. How about... the more information you can provide at that time, the more confident we will be about our actions after entering the mountain, do you understand?”
"Understood! Please rest assured, chief!" Lin Nan stopped immediately, stood at attention and saluted Qiao Zhiya.
"Li Qingyang, you used to work in Jinyiwei, and you should be very familiar with Jinyiwei's methods of doing things." Qiao Zhiya turned to Li Qingyang behind Lin Nan and said: "We must catch Zhao Ye this time, and we will not allow anything to happen." Lost! As for whether you can catch him, it depends on how much you can get out of these prisoners! ”
"In this humble position, I will do my best and swear to serve the Executive Committee to the death!" Li Qingyang quickly lowered his head and responded. He has now become accustomed to no longer kneeling to his superiors, but when showing loyalty like this, he knows exactly what he should do and what he should say. Although there are many differences between the officials of Haihan and the officials of Ming Dynasty, the officialdom is actually still the same. There are many similar rules.
"I don't care what you say, but I will see what you do!" Qiao Zhiya patted Li Qingyang on the shoulder. After serving as a local official in Shilu, Changchang for two years, he has gradually acquired the aura of a superior person in his words and deeds, and is no longer the returnee style that was obviously different from the local culture.
Qiao Zhiya really didn't have time to interfere with the interrogation in the following time, because he had to rush to Changhua as soon as possible to preside over the commissioning ceremony of the local steel production workshop.
Two days later, the Second Battalion of the Annan Militia, which came from Sanya, arrived at Changhua Port by boat. However, they did not make any publicity. After getting off the boat, they got on the train and rushed to the Shilu Mining Area to assemble. However, the ships transporting equipment and supplies are still on the way, and the packhorse team organized in Danzhou will also take another day to arrive, so it will still take some time for the official departure.
After Qiao Zhiya hastily completed the commissioning ceremony of the steel production workshop, he rushed back to Shilu without stopping to join the Annan militia that had just arrived. But before setting off, he had to listen to the intelligence summary compiled by Lin Nan and Li Qingyang in the past few days. "Chief Qiao, this is some useful information we have compiled. Please take a look at it. You read it while I explain it." Lin Nan handed over a pile of information. Both his and Li Qingyang's eyes were bloodshot, and it could be seen that they had not had much rest in the past few days.
In the past few days, they both stayed in the small black torture room and almost never came out. They interrogated more than a hundred prisoners. Because of the heavy pressure from above, Li Qingyang also used ruthless tactics. He maimed more than a dozen people in his hands. He used almost all the interrogation techniques he had learned in the yamen. Of course, their work these past few days was not in vain. They still obtained a lot of valuable information from the mouths of many prisoners.
"According to the information we have, this riot was indeed planned by Zhao Ye, an officer of the Jinyi Guards..." Lin Nan began to report the overall situation to Qiao Zhiya from the side.
After the Danzhou assassination failed in March, Zhao Ye knew that the towns near Danzhou and even the entire Qiongbei would be screened by the Haihan people, so he did not dare to stay in these places and directly chose to sneak into the Qiongzhong Mountains. . Since he still had his identity certificate with him, he was able to find a place to stay, a village called Heishandong in the interior of Qiongzhou Island.
This Lidong has over a thousand men, and it can be considered a large village in the Qiongzhong area. More importantly, Heishandong was also awarded by the Ming Dynasty in the early years, and the owners of the cave all had the hereditary position of Thousand Households - of course this The position does not have any power to mobilize the Ming army, but only gives a reasonable name to the armed forces organized by Li Dong. And Zhao Ye's method of winning over was also very simple, that is, promising high-ranking officials and generous salaries to the owners and core personnel of the Black Mountain Cave, and asking them to cooperate with him to try to attack the Haihan people outside the mountain.
Because Heishandong is too far away from the coastal towns of Qiongzhou Island, all channels are very closed. In addition to knowing that a new force called Haihan has emerged on the island in the past two years, I only know that the salt and iron sold by the Haihan people are cheaper than those sold by Ming merchants in the past.
The promise made by Zhao Ye was very generous. In addition to promising to ask for rewards from the imperial court and ensuring that Heishandong would have the treatment of a hereditary general in the future, more importantly, he promised to hand over all the salt fields and iron mines under the control of the Haihan people. Operated by Heishandong. The entire Qiongxi Coast will be dominated by the Heishandong family, and they can also find land to build the city on their own... In short, Zhao Ye almost always agrees to the treatment requested by the other party, regardless of whether he can fulfill it in the future.
No one in Heishandong ever doubted Zhao Ye's sincerity. After all, in the eyes of ordinary people, the Jinyiwei were indeed the heavenly army that represented the emperor's will. Although Zhao Ye is only a deputy Qianhu in Jinyiwei, his position is much more valuable than the Qianhu position of the leader of Heishan Cave. He speaks on behalf of the imperial court, so how can he go back on his words.
So under Zhao Ye's organization, Heishandong recruited hundreds of strong men, and quietly contacted some nearby Lidongs, planning to work together to help the Jin Yiwei master from Nanjing suppress the Haihan rebels outside the mountain.
However, Zhao Ye did not take action rashly again. His previous experience in Danzhou had already frightened him. At that time, Huang Zixing and others were in Danzhou as a cover, and they also networked a group of people. In the end, the news leaked out somehow, and the Haihan people noticed it before they took action. If Zhao Ye hadn't been careful and didn't go into the city to personally direct the operation, his head would have dried on the Danzhou City Gate long ago.
Although these Li people didn't have any bad intentions, Zhao Ye also knew that it would be difficult to achieve anything with just this few people. When the Nahai Han militia swept through Qiongbei, they used at least two to three thousand people, and most of them were musketeers. How could these Li people, who still used wooden bows and arrows and hook knives as individual weapons, defeat them? ? Regardless of whether it is a siege or a field battle, if these people from Heishandong are drawn out, they will only die. Zhao Ye does not intend to consume this limited power easily again.
So this time Zhao Ye spent a lot of time collecting intelligence and then formulating the next action plan. However, because the terrain of Heishandong was too remote, Zhao Ye's intelligence collection work progressed very slowly. It was not until July that he learned that the Haihan people were mining in the Shilu area of Qiongxi on a large scale.
Zhao Ye didn't care whether the Haihan people dug gold or silver mines in Shilu. What he cared about was another thing - the labor force working in the local mines was said to be all prisoners, including prisoners under the jurisdiction of the Ming Dynasty government and others. Prisoners convicted in private courts held by the Haihan people, and prisoners of war taken back from overseas operations. And its scale is indeed not small. The news Zhao Ye received is that there are at least four to five thousand people. Zhao Ye believed that if this power could be used for his own use, he would have a certain chance of causing some trouble for the Haihan people on Qiongzhou Island, or even achieving a counterattack.
After Zhao Ye further learned about Shi Lu, he learned that this place was dozens of miles away from the seaside and was only connected by a narrow road. It could be said to be an extremely closed environment. This was probably why the Haihan people used this place as a prisoner. One of the reasons for the place of sentence. However, in Zhao Ye's view, if he can instigate a major chaos and make these prisoners obey his orders on the condition of regaining their freedom, then as long as the road to the outside world is cut off, the local area can become a small rebel sea. Han Fortress.
After having a clear goal, the next step is to continuously improve the plan. Zhao Ye also took people to the vicinity of Shilu for on-the-spot inspections many times to formulate action plans. It wasn't until August that the general plan was basically formulated.
First, Zhao Ye sent some Li people to deliberately cause trouble outside the mountains, and then these people were arrested into the hard labor camp without any suspense. Then Zhao Ye used remote control command to let these Li people collude with others in the hard labor camp, and gradually Form an underground force. What happened next was just like what Qiao Zhiya had experienced. The rebels used the collective escape as bait and launched an ambush against the militiamen who entered the mountains to pursue them, thereby attracting more militiamen to garrison.
Then a real offensive was launched in the mining area, catching many police officers in the mining area off guard and quickly seizing control of the mining area. But at this time, two situations occurred that Zhao Ye had not expected. First, there were not as many prisoners participating in the riot as he had expected. This situation directly led to the second accident. Because the scale of the rioters was not large enough, They failed to successfully conquer the prison area and obtain more manpower and weapons. As a result, the local garrison was given time to respond. When Lu Li led the militia troops out for a sweep, the rebellious team immediately became a mess. The prisoners who lacked weapons had no ability to resist at all in front of the musketeers. They had to either surrender or escape into the mountains and forests.
(End of chapter)