Working as a police officer in Mexico.

Chapter 668 The Traitor!

In the piles of decaying leaves in the Amazon rainforest.

John McTavish, the captain of the Mexican Army's 141st Special Forces Battalion, used a tactical knife to pry open the camouflage netting, revealing diesel drums half-buried underneath. Through his night vision goggles, the drug manufacturing plant 300 meters away looked like a poisonous toad lying in the mud, with condensation on the corrugated iron roof dripping down the rusty rivets.

"Are the Colombians in position yet?" he growled into his throat microphone, sweat trickling down his spine and into his tactical pants from beneath his bulletproof vest. "Tell that sniper called 'Viper' that if he makes me wait any longer, I'll shove his sniper rifle up his ass!"

A Colombian special forces soldier chuckled through the headset: "Calm down, John McTavish. My crosshairs are already on the machine gunner at the factory gate."

The voice of the man codenamed "Viper" came through, "Where's the Brazilian guide? Where exactly is the tunnel entrance he mentioned?"

John McTavish spat out a mouthful of saliva mixed with decaying leaves.

Three days ago, intelligence provided by the Brazilian Federal Police indicated that there was a drainage system connecting to the underground laboratory. However, the local guide who had led them through the darkness for five hours was now crouching behind a tree trunk twenty meters away, shivering, with the smell of urine emanating from his crotch.

"Bastard."

John McTavish cursed in Spanish, “If you dare to lie to us again, I’ll cut off your testicles and feed them to the mermaids.”

He suddenly grabbed the guide's hair and shoved the beam of his tactical flashlight into his face, demanding, "Where exactly is the tunnel?!"

The guide's pupils shrank to pinpoints in the bright light, and he made a gurgling sound in his throat: "Right...right behind the factory, next to the rubber trees, there's a disguised steel plate!"

John McTavish released his grip and gestured to his team behind him. Four Mexican soldiers crouched low and crept towards the designated location, the sound of their boots crushing dry branches particularly jarring in the deathly silence of the rainforest. Suddenly, a rustling sound came from the bushes thirty meters to their left. John McTavish instantly raised his M4A1, but through his night vision goggles, he only saw a startled sloth taking flight.

"Damn, that was a false alarm."

He wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. "Brazilians, where are your men? Didn't we agree to block the eastern river channel?"

There was a two-second silence in the headset before the voice of Carlos, the commander of the Brazilian Federal Police, came through: "We're stuck. Damn it, the drug traffickers set up booby traps in the river bend and sank two of our speedboats."

His voice was filled with suppressed anger, "We can only proceed on foot now, and we expect to arrive in twenty minutes."

John McTavish cursed under his breath and glanced at the tactical watch on his wrist.

The raid, originally scheduled for 3 a.m., had been delayed by 40 minutes, as the dampness in the rainforest was slowly eroding their equipment.

To make matters worse, the searchlights outside the factory suddenly turned on, the pale beams sweeping across the edge of the rainforest and startling a flock of shrieking parrots.

"Damn it! They've spotted us!" Viper's voice suddenly tightened. "The rooftop machine gunner is moving, the target is—"

The gunshot almost grazed John McTavish's scalp.

He instinctively plunged into the mud pit, bullets scattering sawdust on tree trunks. Through his night vision goggles, he saw two machine gunners on the factory roof firing wildly, tracer rounds darting through the rainforest like red venomous snakes.

"C4!" John McTavish roared as he rolled behind a tree. "Blow up the tunnel entrance!"

Two Mexican soldiers rushed out with explosives, but were blown over by the fire of a pillbox on the side when they were only five meters away from the target.

John McTavish watched helplessly as one of the men's bulletproof vests was torn open by a 7.62mm bullet, his intestines and blood spraying onto the rubber tree.

"Bastard!" He pulled out his M4A1 and started firing wildly. Just as the magazine was empty, he suddenly heard a metallic scraping sound behind him.

The Brazilian guide was raising his pistol with trembling hands, the dark muzzle pointed at the back of his head.

"I'm sorry..." the guide's voice trembled with tears, "They said they would kill my family..."

John McTavish did not hesitate.

He swung his tactical dagger backward, the blade spinning as it plunged into the guide's throat.

As the body fell to the ground, he grabbed the deceased's pistol and pulled the trigger at the drug dealers who suddenly appeared twenty meters away.

When the bullet pierced the first drug dealer's forehead, he saw the snake head emblem embroidered on the dealer's bulletproof vest, which was the "Golden Serpent" drug cartel mentioned in Mexican intelligence.

What kind of person are you, using your tongue?
"John McTavish! The tunnel is to your left rear!" Viper's sniper rifle fired, and a spray of blood erupted from the head of the machine gunner on the factory roof. "I saw someone carrying boxes out of the tunnel!"

John McTavish tumbled into the bushes, and through his scope, he saw three drug dealers carrying a wooden crate toward the river. One of them suddenly turned around, and the RPG-7's exhaust trail drew an orange-red arc through the rainforest.

"Get down!" John McTavish roared as he lunged toward the nearest tree pit. The rocket exploded five meters away, the blast blast blowing off his helmet. His ears were ringing. When he got up, he found that his right leg had been cut open by shrapnel, leaving a deep, bone-revealing wound. Blood was dripping down his combat boot.

"Damn it, I've been shot!" He ripped off his tactical belt and pulled it over his thigh. "Carlos, where the hell are you?!"

The Brazilian commander's panting came through the headset: "Three minutes left! Hold on!"

John McTavish ripped off his torn tactical glove, pulled out a morphine syringe from his first-aid kit, and injected it into his thigh. The excruciating pain subsided slightly, and he picked up his M4A1 to continue firing, only to find that the magazine was empty.

“John, here we go!” The Colombian sniper’s voice suddenly came from close by.

Viper slid down from the tree at some point and tossed him a magazine and an M67 grenade. "There's a fuel depot behind the factory. Blow it up!"

John McTavish grinned as he pulled the pin and hurled a grenade at the group of drug dealers pouring out of the tunnel. The explosion sent at least three dealers flying, and burning gasoline flowed through the tunnel into the factory, instantly igniting the stored chemicals. In the towering flames, John McTavish hopped to the riverbank on one leg and shone his tactical flashlight on the floating crates. One crate was torn open by shrapnel, revealing neatly stacked blocks of cocaine, each labeled "Spanish Royal Warfare Special."

"Did you get the footage?" he growled into the microphone. "This evidence is enough to give those bastards in Madrid a run for their money!"

His answer was the roar of helicopter rotors.

Brazilian special forces' UH-60 Black Hawks landed on the open ground, and Carlos led his team down, their boots treading on burning cocaine bricks. "Well done, John McTavish! But—" He suddenly raised his pistol and pointed it at John McTavish's head, "Mexican, hand over what's in the tunnel."

John McTavish was stunned. He noticed that Carlos's tactical vest also bore the embroidered snake head badge.

"Why do you think we were deliberately late?" Carlos grinned as he pulled the trigger. "Nobody's getting all of the Golden Serpent's goods!"

The moment the shot rang out, Viper's sniper bullet pierced Carlos's forehead. The Colombian sniper leaped from the tree and threw his last grenade into the sinking drug smuggling ship: "Keep your cocaine, you bastard, we just want the evidence."

In the turbid waves of the Amazon River, burning wooden crates floated downstream like a string of lanterns illuminating the night. John McTavish lay in the medical bay of the helicopter, listening to an urgent Interpol report through his earpiece: the president of a Spanish bank had been arrested for money laundering, and the account list provided by Mexico had been found in his office safe.

"Looks like the gift worked." He ripped off the IV tubing, pulled half a bottle of tequila from his tactical pants pocket, and said, "Tell Mexico City that in the next operation, we're going to blow the Golden Serpent's lair to the sky."

As the helicopter flew over the rainforest, John McTavish saw the drug factory still burning in the distance, and in the firelight, he could vaguely see drug dealers firing at each other with weapons.

He laughed, splashing the liquor onto the wound on his leg, letting the excruciating pain and alcohol surge through his veins.

"This is the fucking war on drugs!" he roared at the night sky. "Let those bitches in Madrid see that Latin America isn't their ATM!"

……

Inside the presidential palace conference room in Brasilia, the smoke was so thick that beams of light could be seen.

The defense minister slammed Carlos's report of defection onto the mahogany table, causing the liquid in his coffee cup to splash out and leave dark stains on the document.

“This kind of traitor has been planted in the federal police system!” His voice was hoarse with anger, his fingers jabbing at everyone present. “That bastard is not only the operations commander, but also the poisonous needle that the Golden Serpent planted in our hearts! If John McTavish and his men die in the rainforest, how are we going to explain this to the Mexicans? How are we going to explain this to the Latin American Federation?!”

The federal police chief's face was as white as paper. He grabbed a bottle of mineral water from the table and chugged half of it, the sound of his Adam's apple bobbing jarringly in the deathly silent conference room.

"Initiate an internal purge immediately!" He stood up abruptly, the second button on his uniform flying off. "Start with Carlos's direct subordinates. Freeze all accounts that have financial dealings with Golden Serpent. I want those scum hiding in the shadows to know what the consequences of betraying the country are!"

Meanwhile, in the meeting room prepared by the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the Mexican delegation, the air was as still as solidified cement.

Gerd von Lundstätter, the deputy commander of the frontline forces who held a position on the Mexican National Security Council, stared at his Brazilian counterpart, Almeida, the Deputy Secretary of State for Security Affairs, with a somewhat unfriendly look.

“Mr. Almeida.” Gerd von Lundstätter’s voice was low and deep, like sand being ground against gravel. He suddenly threw a casualty report of the operations team at him, the sound of the paper scraping against the table particularly jarring in the silence. “The blood my men shed in the rainforest hasn’t even dried yet. If John McTavish’s leg is ruined, do you know what that means? He’s the commander of Mexico’s most elite anti-narcotics special forces, a warrior who crawled out of mountains of corpses and seas of blood, and he almost died at the hands of your so-called own people!”

Almeida's forehead was beaded with sweat. He tried to pick up the water glass on the table, but his fingers trembled. "General Lundstätter, this is an internal failure on our part, we..."

“Neglect?” Gerd von Lundstätter jumped to his feet, his tactical boots slamming into the floor. “This is fucking rotten!” He suddenly raised his voice, making the map of the Americas on the wall seem to tremble. “Carlos’s serpent head badge has been hidden in the files for five years! His bank account has been receiving funds from the Golden Serpent every month. Are you blind or deaf in your anti-corruption department?!”

He leaned close to Almeida, spitting almost in his face: "We cooperated with you with the best equipment and intelligence, and you put venomous snakes in our tents! While John McTavish and his men were fighting drug dealers in the tunnels, your commander was plotting how to double-cross them. Is this your so-called security guarantee?"

Almeida's Adam's apple bobbed, as if she wanted to say something, but Gerd von Lundstätter interrupted her sharply: "Shut up! I don't want to hear your apologies, and I don't want to see you pretending to investigate!"

He pointed outside the door, "Your internal problems are rotten to the core! From police officers to officials, how many people are pocketing drug dealers' money? How many people are using the interests of the country as bargaining chips?"

He suddenly grabbed the coffee pot from the table and smashed it hard into the potted plant in the corner, scattering ceramic shards and dirt everywhere.

"Let me tell you, Almeida, we're lucky this time! If any of my men had been killed, the Mexican army would have crossed the Amazon and wiped out all your dens of iniquity. Don't fucking talk to me about sovereignty. In the face of drug traffickers and traitors, sovereignty is just a piece of toilet paper!"

Almeida's face turned a deep purplish-red. He jumped to his feet, but was held in place by Gerd von Lundstätter's unwavering gaze. "General, please calm down. We have already established a special investigation committee, and they will definitely..."

"calm?"

Lundstätter sneered and poked Almeida in the chest. "By the time you figure it out, the Golden Serpent's cocaine will have already been transported to Madrid!"

He took a step back and straightened his wrinkled uniform jacket. "You have 72 hours."

"Within 72 hours, I want to see everyone connected to Carlos handcuffed, all of Golden Serpent's strongholds in Brazil destroyed, and the list of those you've purged of your internal parasites. If a name is missing, or a piece of evidence is missing, then let us take over!"

Gerd von Lundstätter turned and walked toward the door, but stopped abruptly as his hand touched the doorknob. Without turning back, he said, “Don’t mistake this for a threat. The tears our warriors shed in the rainforest will become a fire that burns against all traitors, including those hiding in your government buildings.”

The sound of the door slamming shut made Almeida slump into a chair.

Looking at the huge map on the wall that symbolized the territory of Brazil, he suddenly felt that countless eyes, gleaming with greed and betrayal, were hidden in those green rainforests.

"Hold!"

Almeida could only vent her frustration helplessly.

……

(End of this chapter)