Chapter 41: Gold in Hand
The dimly lit base was illuminated only by Jake's flashlight.
"Mr. Jake, there's a generator here—turn on the lights." Knowing he was powerless to resist, Adolf wisely refrained from futile struggles.
Jake, fortunately, knew a thing or two about electrical systems.
Click!
The generator roared to life, and all the lights in the base flickered on.
Adolf continued leading the way, and Jake silently followed behind, not even offering to push the old man's wheelchair.
They were both lost in their own thoughts.
Led by Adolf, the two arrived at a massive steel door. Jake stepped forward and knocked, but the door didn't even vibrate; it was solid, probably at least a foot thick!
"You need that three-piece key to open it," Adolf reminded Jake, eyeing the keyhole on the door. He'd seen Jake snatch the key from Condor. "But I don't know the password."
"I do," Jake smiled cryptically, looking up at the four openings above.
In the original movie timeline, if the password was wrong, whoever tried to unlock it would be greeted by a storm of bullets from four mounted machine guns—enough to shred a person to pieces.
Moreover, the password wasn't Lisa's mother's birthday, September 16th, but 618—this was the advantage of knowing how the story went.
Following the correct sequence, he turned the key step by step.
With a click,
the entire door suddenly became electrified, then it opened...
Jake tested the door's weight; approximately three hundred pounds!
Gritting his teeth, he pushed, and the door slowly swung open.
"Quick, I'll take you to the gold!" Adolf exclaimed excitedly as the massive vault door opened.
Jake, about to step forward, paused. He didn't turn back or speak, just continued ahead.
Adolf, seeing Jake ignore him and keep moving, gritted his teeth, gripped his wheelchair, and followed.
Entering the elevator, Jake tried to calm himself. Two hundred and forty tons of gold were about to be his, and he wasn't nearly as composed as he appeared. He completely ignored Adolf, who had followed; the old man was now utterly powerless to stop him.
The elevator descended, and after a long corridor, a cavernous vault appeared before Jake.
He strode forward, ignoring the wooden crates lining both sides, heading straight for the massive structure covered by an enormous tarp at the very back.
The structure was about three feet tall.
The tarp was pulled away, and
the light, no longer obscured, reflected off the metal beneath, combining to create an even more dazzling brilliance!
It was all gold!!
Jake forcibly controlled his breathing, but his nostrils flared uncontrollably from overwhelming excitement.
At that moment, Adolf had just rolled in. "Gold! Gold!!" he cried out like a lunatic.
If Jake had less life experience, he might've been even more unhinged than Adolf was right now.
He calculated the time; Condor and the others had been forced outside, and he'd collapsed the entrance. Unable to find their way back into the base, they'd definitely race out of the desert immediately and request UN assistance. If the UN provided helicopters, it might take less than two days.
"Two days," Jake thought, surveying the two hundred and forty tons of gold. Moving this treasure might not even take half a day.
"Quick, I know there's more gold in the back. I'll take you there!" Adolf, in his wheelchair, waved frantically at Jake, who stood deep in thought. His voice was loud and echoed throughout the massive vault.
Jake had zero interest in being deceived by this old man.
Behind them wasn't more gold, but the control room for the entire base. If they went in, this crazy old bastard would destroy the facility, and Jake wasn't about to let his fortune go up in smoke.
Shaking his head, ignoring the furious Adolf, Jake walked up to him, grabbed him, and in a flash, both disappeared from this world.
"I was originally planning to drop you somewhere safe so you could live out your golden years," Jake shook his head, looking at Adolf in his wheelchair, who had already started vomiting. "But since you can't sit still, I can only send you to a better place."
When Adolf slowly recovered from the vomiting and vertigo, he only heard Jake's voice behind him. "I think you'll really enjoy this place. World War II—I hope you can still find your Führer and help him achieve victory."
"Oh, and if you want to survive, find a soldier named Ryan. But whatever you do, don't tell him you're German..."
The voice faded away, and Adolf quickly spun around, only to find Jake had vanished.
Looking around, he saw only ruins and the scars of artillery fire. This scene was all too familiar. This was World War II, when the Nazis still held the advantage. Yet somehow, he felt like he was now deep within the territory of that country with red and white stripes and stars...
Adolf, that old man, was no saint. A former Nazi, he'd committed countless atrocities. Even after the war, he hadn't done any good, instead engaging in robbery and murder throughout the desert. It was already merciful of Jake not to just shoot him dead.
Perhaps if he returned to World War II, he could thrive with his decades of experience? But none of that mattered to Jake anymore.
Back at the World War II base, staring at the gold in the vault, Jake realized it would take him forever to move all this treasure by himself.
Each crate weighed about eighty pounds, and there were at least four hundred such crates in the entire facility!
There were also three or four massive gold ingots, each weighing tens of tons, stacked into a golden wall about three feet high.
Gritting his teeth, he hefted a crate. The heavy weight made Jake's back strain, and it took him two or three seconds to adjust before he could take a step.
Next, Jake began shuttling between the massive basement of the Genovia palace and the World War II base from the desert.
One crate after another. By the tenth, he was drenched in sweat. He took a deep breath and wiped the perspiration from his brow. "Looks like I'll need some mechanical assistance."
Thirty minutes later, Jake reappeared at the World War II base.
This time, he was operating a compact front-loader. He drove the machine, using the bucket to lift over a dozen crates at once, then activated his teleportation ability, returning to the Genovia palace basement, setting them down, and teleporting back.
Again and again, hundreds of wooden crates were quickly transported. Faced with the massive gold ingots, Jake had no choice but to painstakingly use a heavy-duty hand truck to move them manually.
The front-loader couldn't lift the solid gold bars.
This left him almost completely exhausted after transporting the gold.
Finally, five hours later.
Looking at the vault that had been completely emptied, Jake nodded with satisfaction. Just as he was about to leave, he seemed to remember something.
He pulled out a hundred-dollar bill and casually tossed it on the ground.
Can't let Condor walk away with nothing, right?
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