"Open fire!"
Zolf Sherman's order was merciless.
But that's what an anti-drug war is.
In the 2017 anti-drug operation in Chiapas, drug dealers did exactly this: armed the farmers who worked for them and drove them at the troops and police.
They even set up cameras at the side.
Nineteen officers and soldiers were killed.
Pick up a weapon, and you're a drug dealer!
But the members of EDTV weren't system-issued. Just months ago, they too had been starving poor folks. It was Victor who put food in their mouths.
Facing these people, they couldn't pull the trigger. Their feet even backed away.
Zolf Sherman's face changed. He kicked aside a machine gunner, snatched the Altimax machine gun from his hands, and swept it across the charging crowd.
"They're drug dealers! Drug dealers! Drug dealers!"
With each burst, the muscles in his face trembled. Zolf's voice was hoarse from shouting.
A middle-aged man with a pitchfork, eyes bloodshot, drove it straight into a trainee officer's neck. The reek of blood and the stench clinging to the tines burrowed up the officer's nose in an instant. He stared wide-eyed at the figure before him…
If you plant for drug dealers, aren't you a drug dealer?
He'd survived the "Mexicali Anti-Drug War," only to die under a pitchfork.
Hearing the scream, every officer shuddered.
Someone finally raised their weapon and fought back.
Bullets raked across.
"Drum!" Zolf shouted to the assistant gunner. The man hastily pulled a fresh drum from his vest and passed it up.
Zolf popped the empty drum with style; the new one clicked home.
"Advance! Slaughter the drug dealers!" Zolf cried, shouldering the machine gun and charging into the valley at the head.
Seeing that this dirty trick didn't work at all, the cartel boss went cold as police surged forward. He frantically signaled the gun line to fire!
"Boss, that'll blow up our own people too." The underling stared, wailing.
There were plenty of relatives out there.
The drug boss had long since lost his humanity. He kicked the underling aside and snarled, "If we lose this plantation valley, you think any of us survive?"
The goon shivered, fear flickering in his eyes.
Guzmán was infamous for being ruthless to enemies and even worse to his own. Back in the "Godfather" Gallardo days, he'd already made his name for cruelty.
When he was in charge of Sinaloa logistics, if anyone failed to get a shipment out, he'd personally kill the man and his family.
Lose a plantation this big? Damn it, Guzmán would kill you so you'd never see reincarnation.
At the gun line, the boss barked the order and the crews rushed to load—but the one he'd kicked was clearly… dim.
The fool shoved the shell in backwards!
Then boom—barrel burst!!!
If you're using "regular" mortar tubes and "regular" mortar rounds, a reversed round still won't detonate.
But early mortar rounds without inertial fuzes—or worse, homemade rounds—are another story.
A chain detonation ripped through the position, taking every cartel gunner with it.
Moral of the story:
A bad teammate will get you killed!
Staring at the shattered gun line up on the ridge, the boss gaped. The world swam—and a stray round bored into his skull.
"The boss is dead! The boss is dead!"
The underling felt warmth spatter his face. Terror-struck, he dropped his weapon and bolted.
"M4, copy please. This is the artillery support group. We've repelled the traffickers. Do you require support?"
"Hit the target zone with white phosphorus!" Zolf's guts were boiling. He stared at the valley still resisting and ground out the words.
He'd wanted to storm in and avoid "unsightly" methods, but the traffickers had no bottom line.
Show them "respect," and you disrespect the anti-drug cause.
Since the traffickers like to play, let them all die!
Silence on the other end—then an audible swallow. "That… violates the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons."
"What damned convention? Is Mr. Victor's signature on it?" Zolf snapped. "Any convention without Mr. Victor's signature is just a pile of scrap paper."
Sure enough, they all looked down on Victor for not having done time.
After all, in Mexico if you haven't sat in a cell, are you even a big shot?
In truth, that convention sets restrictions. In Protocol III, it states white phosphorus is fundamentally for illumination, smoke, and marking—the smoke/marking effects are excellent; the burning is incidental.
So I'm firing illumination rounds, right?
What?
It's daylight? Who said you can't use white phosphorus in the daytime?
After a beat, the fire support group accepted the order. "Understood."
"Please pull back."
Zolf keyed his net. "All squads, bound and withdraw."
EDTV officers hesitated, not understanding the order. But the first thing they'd learned in training was: obey!
They fell back by bounds, covering each other.
When Zolf judged the spacing was right, he called for fire.
Two minutes later—whoosh, whoosh, whoosh—
A hiss sang overhead. He looked up and watched the rounds arc into the valley and burst midair.
A 360-degree scatter like white chaff.
A few seconds, and flames whooshed to life.
In the valley…
Screams erupted all at once.
A helicopter slid into view—civilian, with "Grupo de periódicos mexicanos" painted on the side.
Up top, a cameraman was filming.
Below, the valley floor was charred black.
Hundreds of traffickers burned from head to toe, shrieking, rolling on the ground—but the flames slid into their open mouths, and they began to burn from the inside out.
"Too brutal!" The headphone-wearing cameraman couldn't stand it. He threw up, stench wafting through the air.
The female reporter beside him stayed unnervingly calm. She swallowed. "This… this is a massacre!"
"Against who?" a colleague asked.
She froze. She couldn't very well say "against traffickers," but she still pointed down. "There are definitely plenty of traffickers' relatives. Are they guilty? These officers executed them without trial. Isn't that a crime?"
Her colleague looked at her like she was an idiot.
Sleep your way to the top and lose your brain?
"Can you go file a complaint with Victor?"
The reporter shook with anger, grabbed the rig from the cameraman, and shot it all. She had a duty to show everyone.
…
Brave and the freckled one were tied up. They stared at the white phosphorus blossoming in the sky, eyes bulging.
"Damn it, Brave, they've got white phosphorus. Are these police?! Or the army?"
Brave's face was mottled with bruises. Pain wrung a groan from him.
"You recognized white phosphorus?" The police sergeant holding them walked over, squinting at the freckled one.
Brave sensed the man's mood shift.
"No shit, I've got eyes!" The freckled one, hands bound, spat.
The sergeant chuckled.
He drew a knife and drove it straight into the man's eye!
"Ahhhhhhhhh!!!!" The pain sent the freckled man into a howling, writhing frenzy.
"Fuck! Fuck! What are you doing?" Brave stared, appalled, as his companion screamed. "We're Americans!"
"Americans?"
After Kiki's case, Americans did get a certain special treatment in Mexico.
"But you're drug dealers too!" The sergeant grinned, pinning the freckled man with his boot, eyes on Brave. "Tell me, what was that just now?"
Brave turned green.
Christ, they're all lunatics!
More terrifying than the gunmen he'd seen in the Middle East.
"What was it? Answer me! Idiot!"
Brave flinched—and blurted, "Pepsi!"
(End of Chapter)
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