We’re rarely given much of a heads-up before the call to mobilize comes through, generally only enough time to grab a cup of crappy barracks coffee and make our way to the conference hall. This time though, we were pointed toward the comms tent instead, where all the tech jockeys had been cleared out. Only the base commander was there, with a stern-looking woman looking us over from a video screen.

He gave us a nod as we sat down, and introduced us to our new temporary handler, Karen Bowman—a CIA spook who had spent the past few years in South America. With cold pleasantries out of the way, she dove into the brief.

This is Operation Kingslayer; listen up.

Our field of operation is Bolivia. Dense jungles, freezing mountains, and salt flats. And if you don’t watch your back, you won’t leave it alive.

Your target is the Santa Blanca drug cartel. Their network relies on fear, violence, and intimidation. The only way to stop them for good is to completely dismantle them, piece by piece. The cartel is organized into four operations: Production, Smuggling, Influence, and Security. Take them down from inside, destabilize their grip on the country, and you’ll bring them to their knees.

Your team has full autonomy. You pick your targets, you decide how to take them out. Just get it done.

Gather your intel: learn who the players are, learn their methods. Then destroy them.

To make this op a real party, the local military force, Unidad, are on the cartel’s payroll. They’ve been fighting it out with a low-rent rebel group called the Kataris 26 trying to take back the country from the cartel.

You want to survive? These underfunded and underequipped rebels are your new best friends.

You gotta think. You gotta be strategic. No one will come if you call for help.

Use what you can to get the job done. You have your arsenal and every vehicle you can find at your disposal. And don’t be afraid to throw out the playbook. Each of you is an elite warfighter, but together you have the strength to take down an army.

And remember Ghosts: credit is failure. You will burn the Santa Blanca drug cartel to the ground, but no one will know who was holding the match.

Gear up.

The call disconnected, and the commander reiterated her last order. We’d be wheels-up in under an hour, and only be bringing what we can carry. Gaz and I were used to jetting off to far corners of the world on a moment’s notice—and being loaned out to other covert orgs—but usually the farm could spring for juicy toys rather than us relying on on-site procurement—meaning begging, borrowing, or stealing.

The whole brief read like something had changed, and quickly, to bring us in like this. A directive to hit the cartel this hard after they’d already gotten so ingrained into regional politics means they stepped on the wrong foot in a big way. The fact that we were being flown out with no gear, intel, or prep time also means that the situation down there was turning ugly more quickly than anyone was expecting. Then again, that’s the kind of scenario we exist for.

We’d have plenty of time on the plane to read over whatever dossier the CIA had put together on the key cartel players, who held the most sway in what provinces, and what kind of resistance we were up against, and maybe practice some basic Spanish so we weren’t completely out of the water. Most importantly, at least we’d have a few hours to sack out before landing outside La Paz, where we’d hopefully meet Bowman face-to-face and get a few more answers.

Mission briefing text taken almost directly from the introduction cinematic for Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands, the game that inspired all of my Covert Ops story entries.

Header image by PIRO from Pixabay, a fantastic source for royalty-free stock images.