Empire of the Ring

Chapter 182: A Collaborative Business with Mafias (2)

“So, I can send my men as mercenaries who can’t adapt to my normal business.”

“Mr. Yaniv, they should at least show outstanding physical skills. They’re mercenaries.”

“I have plenty of strong men whose brains are filled with muscles.”

Mafias were a group of people who controlled nights of Russia. They could fill in the empty spots of night public security and it was one of the reasons that the police department had been overlooking their existence.

In Youngho’s perspective, mafias were better than many Russian policemen who robbed people before their presence.

Yaniv more than welcomed Youngho’s mercenary business proposal since his organization was growing at a rapid rate and he could split some of the problematic men as the mercenary company’s employee.

Even to Yaniv, it was hard to control young mafias who had been living on the streets for their entire lives. There were many mafias in supervisor positions who generated more heat than light. Yaniv was excited to turn them into mercenaries.

They agreed on making mafias as watchers only at the ports and letting Youngho’s security crews take over the explosion and blows of suspicious cargo. The mercenary company would be based in Volgograd.

The security crew from Youngho’s company would only be involved in special operations, so it was not likely that their identities would be exposed.

If they could attain cutting-edge weapons during operations, that would also be a huge plus to Youngho’s assets.

The establishment of the mercenary company was processed quickly. To gain the trust of Azerbaijani government, the business had to be established properly. Now what was left to do before getting to work was to sign a contract with the government.

The reason that Youngho started the business was to block Armenia’s arms supply routes. He did not care if he could make money from this but he was surprised to see what Sergey showed him. Sergey had attained a European mercenary company’s yearly profit.

The company made various amounts depending on each case but it made millions of money as a base amount for each case. The company must have been dealing with life-threatening requests since they were making a huge amount for each case. It was a valuable data for Youngho since it could be useful when he negotiates the charge for the Azerbaijani government’s request.

It all started from Jongil’s bold idea and now that it was becoming a concrete business plan, Youngho had to report it to the European chapter. Since it was a business for peace between the two countries, it was a praiseworthy job.

Youngho called Michael and explained the whole business idea.

“I’m saying that the president had made this decision after a long concern.”

“So, you’re saying that President Aliyev is not going to have a war. Right?”

“Considering the current situations, there can be some local battles but it’s not going to be a war.”

The battles would begin around the time when the cultivation was completed. Since Armenia had provoked Azerbaijan first, the Azerbaijani government had a rationale for attacking them.

“Well, you’re finally working on an operation that’s worthy. Well done, Lee. If you need any operation expense, let me know.”

Michael was happy to hear about Youngho’s plan that he even offered to give him expense. Since he was a stingy person, it was quite unusual for him.

“Well, I don’t think I’ll need any more from the chapter. I’m just supporting the business from a side.”

“Okay, you should show France and Armenia that they had made a huge mistake. Do whatever you want! I’ll put in good a word to the headquarters.”

***

Youngho had been going here and there so busily that the grape cultivation period was already over while he was gone.

The Serbian descendants had helped with the cultivation labors and the international school had accepted working at the farm as a field experience for the cultivation seasons, so the farm was crowded with helping workers.

The primary work the helpers had to do was to hand-pick grapes after the harvesting machines had swept the trees already. Although the number of hand-picked grapes were not much compared to what the machines could do, the international school’s students and Korean overseas in Baku came to help every year since Youngho had been having a festival-like event around the cultivation time.

Even when it was not the cultivation season, the Korean overseas now frequently visited the farm for fun and took Korean food products naturally. That was why the farm’s daily necessity storage was always filled with Korean products. To them, Zeynep Farm or Arirang Hotel’s existence was a huge comfort and pride.

This year was also a rich year like the last year, so Youngho’s finger that was pushing buttons on a calculator was moving lightly in excitement.

Now, the amount of export of wine was exceeding 23 million dollars a year and this was when Youngho had not counted the ones being stored in oak casks for long-term aging. Zeynep Farm had produced 500,000 gallons and the Charles farm produced 100,000 gallons of grape extracts this year. Since every extract produced in the Charles farm was all stored in oak casks, the farm would produce 2.3 million bottles of wine by next year.

Now the regular wine was sold at eight dollars for each bottle and a short-period oak cask-aged wine was sold at sixteen dollars a bottle by Russia.

The commissions Youngho made from arms deals and information business deals were an astronomical amount of cash that did not even feel real but what he made from hard labor at the grape farm had more meaning to him. It was valuable money.

As Youngho was calculating the money, someone made noise by knocking on the door to his study. It was Zeynep without question.

“Oppa, I finally flew an airplane by myself!”

Youngho questioned what he just heard.

“What? Are you out of your mind?!”

Astounded, a scream-like sound came out of his mouth. It did not make any sense that a seventeen-year-old girl had flown by herself.

“No, no. Of course, I had an engineer with me. How can I manage to control the airplane by myself? I’m still so scared of flying.”

Youngho was still in a shock. He had raised Zeynep like the apple of his eye.

“You almost made my heart drop. Pick it up and sew it back on me.”

“Hahaha. You don’t need to be so surprised, oppa! I’ll be an adult soon.”

Then she talked about her first flying experience for a while.

Now that he learned a seventeen-year-old girl could control an airplane with help, he thought that anyone could learn to fly. It would be useful if he could teach the Serbian descendants how to fly. Also, flying was getting old since there were only four people who could control airplanes.

It was exciting to take control of an airplane in the beginning but after one or two hours of flying, it became boring. Youngho and his friends all agreed that driving a car was less boring than flying.

Since there could be many urgent incidents from now on, it was not realistic to have only four people who could fly his airplanes. The more pilots on the farm, the faster he would be able to handle urgent situations. There were many smart descendants at the farm. He wanted to train as many teenagers and young adults as possible.

Since he had his own airfield, it was not all impossible to train them at the farm.

***

Youngho invited the flying school’s trainers to the farm. He sent two trainers to Kazakhstan and placed a four-seater Cessna airplane and an eight-seater Cessna airplane in there. One trainer now resided at Zeynep Farm as well.

The young adults were picked for flying lessons after going through some tests. They were an elite group of young adults who would be able to fly at an urgent time. Teenagers would also be trained in the near future but for now, he started out with young adults only. Three were picked from Zeynep Farm and six were picked from Arirang Farm.

Even though they would be flying light aircraft, there were many things to study for. They would have to spend some time of training as Youngho and his friends did.

Stunned to hear that Zeynep was flying, Youngho added various safety features to his airplanes. Parachutes were prepared for each passenger and for the body of the airplanes too and inflatable cushions were installed to reduce shocks of the emergency landing.

He also emphasized to everyone to abandon the airplane in an emergency. Airplanes could be bought with money at any time but valuable talented people could not be bought with money.

“Those guys are trying to compete with each other to go as mercenaries.”

“I only need a few who are specialized in explosives.”

As Youngho asked Insoo to pick suitable security crew to be sent as mercenaries, many crews who were bored by Baku’s peaceful lives had volunteered.

“You can land at Batumi’s airport at any time since I’ve already gotten the permission from the airport. When I said that we’d be transporting the guests of Arirang Hotel regularly, the airport staffs issued permission quickly.”

It was only achievable since Agent Philip, who was in charge of Georgian regions, had used his connection to help Youngho.

Batumi’s Arirang Hotel’s basements had been already completed and its floors above ground were under construction.

Youngho had requested a long-term regular use of runway at the airport because he wanted to store gold bars at the large-scale safe in the basement of the hotel. Although he could not carry a lot at once on the light aircraft, he would at least come twice a week to deliver all of the produced gold bars. It was only possible since he only carried ten to twenty kilograms of gold bars.

Now that Youngho could travel to Batumi at any time he wanted, he would be able to effectively cut out the weapons going into Armenia. Whenever the mafias who were watching the cargo in Georgian ports contact Youngho, he was ready to fly there immediately.

Just in time, as if it was waiting for him to be prepared, he received a call from the mafias at the Batumi Port. They reported that a French freighter was entering the Batumi Port. Youngho had ordered them to report any French vessels entering the ports and because of that, he had to go check even if the vessels turn out to be normal.

As soon as he received the call, he got ready to set off.

Eight men dressed as travelers were being inspected at the control tower of Zeynep Farm’s airfield. The group included Youngho, Youngho’s two friends, Ilkwon, and four other security crews who specialized in explosives.

“You wear sunglasses on a rainy day? Take it off, you look like a country boy, and why are you wearing shorts?”

Park Jongil, who had taken the drill instructor’s role, pointed out every flaw from the crews.

“Never mind. That’s fine. Everyone get on board. Some had gotten off from the French ship, let’s hurry!”

Although it was raining at Batumi airport, it was not difficult to land.

At the airport, Michael had come out to greet Youngho. Michael was Yaniv’s man who was a middle boss mafia and Yaniv had put him in charge of the mercenary company.

Since he had traveled to South Ossetia and Kazakhstan with Youngho, it was easy to work with him and not to mention, he was the swiftest man that was close to Yaniv.

“Mr. Lee, you’ve made it quicker than I thought.”

“Thank you for your work, Mr. Michael.”

“We spent several days without catching anything but now it seems like we’ve got something. You told me to inspect supplies from France but we checked every freighter headed to Armenia. There is a possibility that the arms could be delivered by a ship of a third country.”

Michael was indeed an experienced middle-boss mafia. Youngho had not considered that Armenia would use a freighter that belonged to a third country.

“I had not even thought about that at all. I almost made a huge mistake.”

“I contacted you to come since I found a suspicious French freighter today. You’ll see what I mean soon. It’s just weird that it’s overloaded to the point that its waterline had almost gone under the water.”

There were not a lot of freighters that were overloaded to the point where they exceed the waterline since it was prohibited by the international law of the sea. Ship owners of advanced countries especially strictly followed the law’s guidelines, so it was quite strange that a French freighter had not followed the law. It probably meant the owner of the freighter was pressured by his nation or the cargo exceeded the recommended weight.

If the cargo was an inseparable body, it would have been inevitable to violate the law. After hearing from Michael, Youngho became hasty to check the freighter.

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