Working as a police officer in Mexico

"Lassie, sit down! Shut your mouth, we don't need your opinion right now," Aguilar scolded his son with a dark face.

The kid still wanted to speak, but his mother yanked him down, covering his mouth.

"Stopped... it's not shaking anymore."

Aguilar glanced at his watch; the Northern Army had been bombing for nearly two hours. He gave a meaningful look to one of his henchmen, who hesitated before obediently climbing up, looking around, and then lying down by the opening, "Boss, the planes are gone."

Trembling, he climbed up the ladder with a blank expression on his face...

Where's my house?

All gone to hell?!

"The planes are back! The planes are coming again!" Before Aguilar could even speak, a heart-wrenching cry came from afar, followed at last by the belated siren. Panic-stricken, he looked up to see planes diving from the clouds.

"Quick! Get back down!" he screamed shrilly, trying to climb down the air-raid shelter, but his favorite mistress was clumsily climbing up, unresponsive to the air-raid siren.

Aguilar clenched his teeth and kicked her in the head, resulting in a scream from her before she went crashing down into the shelter, her skull frightfully splitting in two.

Blood splattered on the faces of those around them.

When had these high society women ever seen such a scene?

Aguilar considered himself a "gentleman" of the drug world; he believed he was educated and entirely different from others, so even when he killed, he did it discreetly, away from the eyes of his family.
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But when his own life was at risk, he completely tore off his mask of hypocrisy.

As he tried to flee into the shelter, a bomb dropped from the heavens as the plane opened its belly.

Boom!

The massive shockwave instantly engulfed Aguilar, blowing him away like a ragdoll into the rubble, where a protruding rebar impaled him through the mouth.

The entire man...

lay staring with his eyes wide open, his body in a grotesque position, fresh blood dripping from the rebar that had pierced out the back of his skull.

The leader of the Juarez Drug Trafficking Group—Aguilar, killed in an air strike!

"Five hours, a total of 412 sorties, bombing key cities including Juarez, Grand Casas, Durango, and six others..." Horatio Herbert Kitchener pointed at several cities with a stick on the sand table.

"Where is the 1st Regiment?" Kennedy asked, hands behind his back.

"In Madella, advancing towards Juarez along the Sierra Madre Occidental region!" the deputy chief of staff, Rudendorf, said, "But according to intelligence, two units formerly from the Sinaloa Drug Cartel, nicknamed 'God's Group,' are regrouping there, recruiting troops, with their numbers already exceeding ten thousand."

"Wipe them out!" Kennedy tapped the edge of the sand table twice, "Order the 1st Regiment to take Juarez before November 3, and coordinate a counterattack with the 2nd and 3rd Regiments into Durango State!"

The staff's plan was to conquer the surrounding states first, with the 2nd and 3rd Regiments stationed in the south to prevent any drug traffickers from taking advantage of the chaos. Once Chihuahua State was brought under control by the 1st Regiment, all three regiments would launch a fierce assault on Durango.

And if the assholes from Jalisco State dared to join the fray?

Then the 25,000 men of the 3rd Regiment would go in first and stir up chaos.

Staff members compiled the orders and relayed them immediately.

At the front—Sierra Madre Occidental region!

Two M48 Patton medium tanks raced across the vast open ground, belonging to the 3rd Cavalry Company of the 1st Battalion, 1st Regiment. The company was equipped with six aging M48 Pattons—cheap, yes, but enough for their needs.

Victor had exchanged for them with less than 200,000 points.

The nearly 2 billion points he used to have were long gone; arming a 60,000-strong rookie army and equipping it with heavy weapons was no small expense, which was why they were left with weapons like the M48 Pattons, a product of the 1950s.

Even Gambia might not have wanted them.

But for fighting drug traffickers, they were sufficient.

Without points, Victor was anxious. If a world war broke out tomorrow, he wouldn't be able to re-equip in time, no chance. So, it was time to "borrow" some from the drug traffickers.

This was also one of the reasons he initiated the "Northern Reclamation Project."

The two M48 Pattons were chasing a group of about 20 drug traffickers.

"Stop the chase! Something's not right, retreat quickly." The commander of a tank marked with a "Z" felt something amiss and urgently contact his comrades to leave.

But before he could finish speaking...

a loud bang rang out!

He quickly looked over to see the tracks of the other tank blown off.

"We hit a mine!!" Desperation echoed through the headset from his comrade.

A tank without its tracks was like a car without wheels, absolutely immobile, a sitting duck. And sure enough, the next moment, the drug traffickers who had fled turned back for an ambush!

Bullets flew everywhere!

Who could tell where they were shooting?

"Lieutenant Dmitry Lavrenko, pull out, I'll cover you!" the commander of the other tank decisively barked with heroic resolve.

"Fire M416 phosphorus smoke grenades for cover; get on our tank and move out fast," Lt. Dmitry Lavrenko ordered his gunner.

Flood the area with smoke!

Even a schoolkid would know—throw smoke!

Blind those drug traffickers.

The comrade, who had been ready to sacrifice himself, saw the opportunity, dashed for the door with head bent down, and squeezed in. Surviving unharmed was always the best outcome.

Dmitry Lavrenko commanded the vehicle to leave the battlefield. Only after they had gone quite some distance did his tense face finally relax.

That was close...

He nearly made the evening news feature his comrade.

Thankfully, it was a close call, averting becoming a case study in action.

...