Meanwhile, in a remote village in Yangjing District of Pudong, a man in his thirties dressed in coarse cloth was pacing anxiously back and forth in a house.
Seeing his unease, the middle-aged man beside him couldn't help but say, "Tanikawa-kun, don't be too pessimistic. Kobayashi's squad has carried out many attack missions, and Kobayashi Haruki is an extremely cautious and excellent soldier. There shouldn't be any problems."
The speaker was Akita Akio, the intelligence captain of the Special Higher Police Headquarters. This time, as the head of the intelligence department, he was cooperating with the military's plainclothes team to carry out a sabotage operation on the battlefield in Pudong.
In the early stages of the war, the plainclothes teams were composed of Japanese soldiers and special agents. Although Japan had made meticulous preparations for the invasion of China decades earlier and trained a large number of agents fluent in Chinese, it was impossible for them to be so extravagant as to have the entire plainclothes team composed of such talents.
Their organizational structure is guided and investigated by highly trained agents fluent in Chinese, and their personnel are elite soldiers.
The plainclothes team only had a small number of agents fluent in Chinese to cooperate with them. These agents were all provided by the headquarters of the Special Higher Police. Akita Akio, a senior officer of the Special Higher Police, was selected to carry out this task.
The four plainclothes teams dispatched to Pudong were mainly composed of the Tanikawa Brigade, with the other three sub-teams as support. Akita Akio also accompanied the team to coordinate and command his agents.
Over the past two months, the various plainclothes teams operating behind enemy lines have made relatively smooth progress. They have attacked various military targets, gathered intelligence on the Chinese garrison, and even directly cooperated with the main force in amphibious landing operations, gradually becoming an important force threatening the Chinese garrison.
Colonel Kazuma Tanikawa, the captain of the Tanikawa Battalion, was the commander of this operation. The other three detachments were under his command, so they had to contact each other by radio every now and then to report important intelligence, receive combat orders, and so on.
However, this time, four hours had passed since Kobayashi's team last contacted them, but there was still no radio wave coming in. This had never happened before.
“Akita-kun, you’re an experienced veteran agent. Four hours without contact is impossible unless something major has happened. Kobayashi’s team could only make such a mistake if they had lost the ability to transmit. This is Chinese-occupied territory, after all. Could they have been attacked by the Chinese army?” Tanikawa Kazuma frowned, but he couldn’t be sure of the truth.
Akita Akio stood up, walked over to Tanikawa Kazuma, and analyzed, "The Kobayashi squad reported in their previous telegram that they were preparing to launch another attack on the Chinese army's supply line. It seems that this attack has failed. It is very likely that the Chinese army has strengthened the protection of the supply line. We should not attack the supply line for the time being, and instead focus all our efforts on reconnaissance of the Chinese artillery positions. This is also our most important task."
The greatest threat posed by the Chinese right-wing army to the Japanese was its artillery brigade. This brigade possessed formidable firepower, capable of striking Japanese warships on the Huangpu River from a distance and shelling Japanese military targets on the opposite bank. Its artillery fire could even threaten the Japanese command post in Yangpu District. It was the best-performing unit in the entire Shanghai-Nanjing battlefield and posed a significant threat to the Japanese.
The Japanese tried every means to destroy this heavy artillery brigade, but to no avail. Last month, the plainclothes team spent a lot of effort to find out the exact location of the brigade and sent the coordinates back. But at the critical moment, General Zhang Zhengkui suddenly ordered the brigade to move to a new position. As soon as they moved, the original position was bombed to the ground by Japanese bombers, narrowly escaping this fatal blow.
From then on, Zhang Zhengkui understood the Japanese intentions and strengthened the protection of the artillery brigade, frequently shifting positions to keep the bombers from finding targets.
Therefore, the Japanese military strictly ordered the plainclothes team's main task to be to locate this heavy artillery brigade and then destroy it when the opportunity arose.
Hearing Akita Akio's words, Tanikawa Kazuma had no choice but to agree. They had already wasted too much time in this area. They had originally thought that the artillery unit would be placed at the location of the Chinese army's command post, but after such a long period of reconnaissance, they still hadn't found anything. The military headquarters was urging them to hurry up, and they needed to focus their energy on solving this problem.
"The reconnaissance of the Chinese artillery positions has also made no progress. I think it must not be in Yangjing District. Could it be located in the Lannidu area? Your reconnaissance personnel could go further east and conduct some reconnaissance!" Tanikawa Kazuma continued. The lack of progress in the reconnaissance of the artillery positions has always been his biggest headache.
Akita Akio's eyebrows twitched involuntarily. He had always felt that as a commander, Tanikawa Kazuma was always impatient. Yangjing District, as the main garrison area of the Chinese army, was the best location to deploy artillery positions, whether analyzed from the aspects of geography or human resources. However, the area was too large, and the Chinese garrison was heavily guarded, so many places had not yet been searched. Under such circumstances, how could they give up so easily?
“Tanikawa-kun, we can send some more people to scout the area, but the scouting of Yangjing District should still be the focus!” Akita Akio pondered for a long time. He couldn’t directly oppose Tanikawa Kazuma’s opinion, but his attitude was clear: the work should still be carried out in Yangjing District.
"You have too few investigators. How will you proceed if you split some of your personnel? Or, how about your Special Higher Police transfer some investigators across the river to increase the intensity of the investigation? What do you think?" A glimmer of hope flashed across Tanikawa Kazuma's face. He had been requesting the Special Higher Police to send more investigators fluent in Chinese, but Akita Akio had always made excuses. "Now is a critical moment. I hope Mr. Akita will show his utmost sincerity and make another request."
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