"It seems that the method of murder of Julio Salazar is somewhat similar to that of the previous two victims. Both had their necks cut with a sickle, and the removal of the eyeballs seems to have the same ritual meaning as the second victim's arm being cut off.
However, the second victim's arm was left at the scene, and we searched around but couldn't find the removed eyeballs.
And there was paint on the body of the deceased. Why wasn't our wizard covered in pigment or paint? His body wasn't even removed, and the bloodstains on the ground showed that this was the first scene."
Clay raised a series of questions, causing the other three to frown.
Jack sighed and pointed to the mystical symbols with complex meanings in the house, "You have seen everything here. It is almost impossible to figure out the specific content of the ritual."
This thing is no different from the cults he had heard of in his previous life, which were once popular in the country. They were all pieced together with various religious rituals.
If a serious expert in religious studies or mysticism were to design a cult ritual, no matter how many elements they borrowed from Buddhist water and land ceremonies, Taoist fasting and offering rituals, or even Christian mass, there would be traceable traces.
The problem is that whether it's the local shaman whose eyeballs had been gouged out or the murderer who caused this, the voodoo, Satanism, and the Holy Death they espouse are all unorthodox beliefs spread orally by a group of semi-literate or even illiterate people. It
's like the Eight Trigrams flag of the cosmic superpower, where the yin-yang fish has been forcibly changed to resemble Pepsi, and the eight trigrams have been reduced to four.
According to the Seres, the former overlord nation, this signifies the opposition between heaven and earth, the displacement of heaven and earth, the disappearance of wind and thunder, the blockage of mountains and lakes, the lack of eyes in Tai Chi, the conflict between yin and yang, the incompatibility of water and fire, and the difficulty of a good end. The missing four trigrams represent half the country, the lack of wood in the Five Elements, and the rootless floating duckweed—a sure sign of great misfortune.
"No, perhaps there's another way." Lopez smiled smugly.
"Although most shrines and altars of the Holy Death are hidden in homes, some believers, driven by the need to spread their teachings, design them in a removable format and display them on the streets.
I could contact the local police and find some believers who do this and learn from them whether similar blood sacrifice rituals are taking place in their area."
"That might be a good idea." Clay also remembered what Lopez had mentioned before: he'd been ordered to destroy mobile altars displayed on the streets more than once.
Jack paused as he walked towards the door, a thoughtful expression on his face. "How are those mobile shrines and altars usually displayed?"
"In the bed of a pickup truck or the back of a van. I see what you mean," Lopez said, a sudden realization dawning on him. "
As a fanatical follower of the Holy Death, the murderer is likely one of those who frequently display their altars in their cars."
"Indeed," Jack nodded. "We also have a biodiesel lead that should help identify them."
Jack, the other two, and Lopez bid farewell until the local police arrived to deal with the aftermath.
The FBI returned to the hotel to continue their investigation, while Lopez went to the Tijuana police station to arrange for the search.
After listening to Jiejie's horrific account of the murder scene, Alice rubbed her goosebumps on her arms and showed them the progress of the investigation.
"There are many theories about the color of the wedding dress worn by the Holy Death. One of them is that white prays for fidelity, blue prays for health, red prays for love, and black prays for witchcraft and superpowers."
Aubrey took over and continued, "This is obviously inconsistent with the color of the bodies of the first two deceased, but as Jack judged, similar sacrificial rituals are strange and varied.
Even in Tijuana, there are dozens or hundreds of blood sacrifice rituals. We even found cases where the remains of multiple dead people were dismembered and pieced together to look like the Holy Death."
This was probably inspired by the Aztec human sacrifice ritual. Jack curled his lips and looked at Hannah, "Are there any analysis results for those biodiesel samples?"
Hannah nodded, "The laboratory report said that the main components of these samples are peanut oil and soybean oil, which belong to the first generation of technology and should have been eliminated long ago, because the use of this biodiesel as fuel requires additional engine modifications."
"Should there be additional notes when registering such modified vehicles?" Jack asked.
"Yes. Since this technology has been completely phased out in the US, we searched the local DMV database in Tijuana and found fewer than 20 vehicles with similar modifications.
These vehicles are supposedly scrapped, though. Jubal and I are contacting their former owners one by one, but we haven't made any further progress yet."
"Wait a moment," Jubal, who had just gone to the next room to answer a phone call, suddenly appeared and interrupted Hannah's report with a serious look.
"Jack, you're ordered to go to the San Diego Naval Base immediately. There's a plane waiting there, and they need you to get to Washington as soon as possible."
"What mission?" Jack's head was filled with questions. "Isn't our plane parked at San Diego International Airport?"
The Bombardier Challenger 850 has a cruising speed of Mach 0.8, or 850 kilometers per hour, second only to the BAU's Gulfstream G650's Mach 0.9 top speed among civilian aircraft.
What mission could be so urgent that even letting Jack fly in a Bombardier would be too slow? Even military transport planes couldn't go faster than that. Were they planning to send him on a rocket?
I'd never heard that the Americans were so arrogant these days as to build prisons in space (the movie "Space One" is quite good, worth a look). With this question in mind, Jack hurriedly said goodbye to his friends and drove back to San Diego.
The speed of the border crossing gave him a sense of the extraordinary nature of this urgent mission. CBP had reserved a separate lane at the checkpoint, and Jack, without even releasing the accelerator, sped through under the envious gaze of the long queue of vehicles.
A Black Hawk helicopter was waiting in an open space less than two kilometers from the border checkpoint. From takeoff to landing, the flight took less than ten minutes, delivering Jack directly to a runway at the naval base in San Diego Bay.
"Wow!" Jack's mouth dropped open at the sight of the massive black structure on the runway, his mouth wide open for a long moment.
"Am I hallucinating, or is someone up there crazy? You're not planning on sending me to Washington in this old thing, are you?"
Jack was dumbfounded by the dozen or so ground crew members who appeared before him, hauling what looked like a pile of spacesuits on a cart, their intentions clear.
"Sir, we don't really know what's going on, but we're told we have to get it to Washington within two hours. This is the only way."
A portly old man in a grimy ground crew uniform, smeared with grease, even his beard, winked at Jack mischievously.
"But this thing is probably older than you. Can it really still fly?" Jack felt his voice tremble.
The SR-71 strategic reconnaissance aircraft, also known as the "Blackbird", is a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft that was once legendary and claimed to have never been shot down. It can fly at an altitude of more than 20,000 meters at a cruising speed of more than Mach 3.
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The key point is that this aircraft was developed in the 1960s and officially retired before the dawn of the 21st century. Jack had seen the prototype, the Lockheed A-12, at the USS Intrepid Air and Space Museum (Chapter 634: A Rare Vacation).
"Swear this isn't just a museum exhibit!" Jack asked, his face etched with worry as he was being hurriedly helped into his pressurized flight suit by the men behind him.
"Don't worry, young man," a slightly hoarse voice called out from behind him.
"Just close your eyes and count to 100. When you open them again, we'll be at Andrews Air Force Base."
Jack turned around in surprise to find a pilot standing behind him, already in his flight suit.
He wore a round helmet resembling a space suit, half-open, revealing a face identical to Cruise's, even down to the exact placement of the mole on his right cheek.
Though the khaki full-pressure flight suit he wore was hideously unattractive, and his smile wrinkled his forehead, it couldn't conceal the uninhibited aura of an elite pilot.
Jack had seen Top Gun, and although Top Gun 2 hadn't been released before he traveled through time, he already had a rough idea of who he was.
"Hello, Jack Tavola," he offered his right hand.
"Pete Mitchell, you can also call me 'The Lone Ranger.'" The pilot shook Jack's hand and looked at the Blackbird nearby, leaking fuel while being refueled.
"Don't worry, while most Blackbirds are in museums, NASA still keeps this one, No. 831, for various flight tests. It's always been in excellent condition, just like me."
Now that he'd met this legend, Jack didn't waste any time. With the help of the ground crew, he donned his flight suit and prepared for this top-secret flight.
This Blackbird was slightly different from the A-12 prototype Jack had seen. The rear cockpit was slightly higher than the front, and there were two small fixed ventral fins beneath the engine nacelles.
According to the portly old man leading the group, the sergeant major among the dozen or so mechanics, this Blackbird, serial number 831, was actually an SR-71B.
The extra "B" indicated it was a trainer aircraft; the slightly higher rear cockpit served as the instructor's cabin.
Only two Blackbirds of this model were produced. The second crashed in a flight accident in 1968, while the first remains in service today.
As for the fuel leak during refueling, Jack had heard of it; it was a common problem with this type of high-altitude, high-speed aircraft.
The Blackbird lacked external fuel tanks; all fuel was stored in integral tanks within the wings, the tank panels made of the aircraft's titanium alloy skin.
Even at an altitude of over 20,000 meters, where the air is extremely thin, the heat generated by friction when flying at Mach 3, or three times the speed of sound, will still cause the skin to deform.
Therefore, portions of the Blackbird's fuselage skin were not only specially corrugated but also had considerable gaps. This resulted in the aircraft leaking fuel not only during refueling but also during the slow takeoff phase.
Only at high speeds did the heat cause the specially constructed skin to begin to expand in a regular pattern, causing the corrugations to become even more grotesque, stretching the fuselage by seven or eight centimeters. However, the gaps at the joints would automatically close.
After being loaded into the rear cockpit of the Blackbird, Jack, with an oxygen tube attached to his flight suit, began breathing 100% pure oxygen. He looked remarkably like Tom Cruise. The pilot, who called himself the "Lone Ranger," was constantly conducting preflight checks.
The tractor slowly started up. The portly old Master Sergeant cleaned the grease from his hands with Coke and waved goodbye to the two men.
The plane's engines fired up, emitting a six-meter-long tail flame. Minutes later, Jack was pinned to his seat by accelerations exceeding eight Gs as he ascended to an altitude of 20,000 meters.
While it's the 21st century, easily breaking the sound barrier and cruising at supersonic speeds has become standard for sixth-generation aircraft,
what's lesser-known is that beyond the Mach 1 sound barrier lies the "thermal barrier," situated in the Mach 2.5 speed range.
Since the Cold War, only two manned aircraft have broken this barrier and been used in combat: the Blackbird, which couldn't carry weapons and was limited to reconnaissance operations, and the Soviet-made MiG-25 Foxbat. The former
boasts a titanium alloy fuselage, but due to persistent welding problems, it's completely rivet-tightened, resulting in a poorly constructed fuselage. Even basic maneuvers are impossible, forcing it to fly in a straight line along a pre-planned route.
The latter, with its stainless steel fuselage, boasts unparalleled high-altitude performance, but its electronics are relatively outdated, and its low- and mid-altitude performance and maneuverability are equally poor.
However, both were products of Cold War-era "black technology," employing a crude, brute-force approach. Although the latter was developed specifically to intercept the former, they had never actually clashed.
Pete Mitchell's claim that he could reach his destination by counting to 100 was clearly an exaggeration, but reaching an altitude of 24,000 meters at a climb rate exceeding 60 meters per second certainly didn't take too long.
This was probably the closest Jack had ever been to space in his two lives. It was over 20 kilometers from Earth, and the Tiangong Space Station's orbital altitude was only 400 kilometers.
Okay, compared to that, it wasn't much, but watching the paint on the Blackbird's wings gradually turn from black to blue outside the thick quartz glass window, Jack couldn't even blink.
"Um... are you okay?" Pete Mitchell, who called himself "The Lone Wanderer," suddenly asked, apparently having forgotten someone's name.
"It's pretty good. I envy you elite pilots who get to see this kind of scenery so often." Jack didn't mind, but he didn't bother introducing himself again.
Pete Mitchell was visibly taken aback by Jack's relaxed tone, but he was clearly the quiet type. After confirming that Jack's levity wasn't an act, he said nothing more, simply "Enjoy it."
At this altitude, the concept of the horizon disappeared; the curvature of the Earth could be observed. The atmosphere formed a faint halo at the end of the line of sight, its colors shifting from white, light blue, dark blue, to an inky blue that bordered on black.
Jack only needed to look up slightly to see the beautiful starry sky. In the thin atmosphere at high altitude, even the planets no longer twinkled.
Gazing at it for a moment, the beautiful sky felt like falling into it, as if, in a moment, the Earth beneath his feet had completely flipped with the depths of space.
Somewhat regretting not having tucked his phone outside his flight suit, Jack could only try to memorize this magnificent spectacle, perhaps describing it in words someday.
But at the same time, a faint worry lingered in his heart. To have his superiors send him to Washington in such an unconventional manner, how serious this matter must be. Could it really be that he was the one saving the world?
My brain is burning up. I didn't take any pictures of the kittens today. I'll make up for it tomorrow when I have time.
(End of chapter)