Previously in The Fall, Ruslan Chepiga executed the fake Hugo Ojeda.

Part III

June 2023

Operation Isabella was the systematic removal of all known Russian presence in South America, the drugs trade was thrown up in the air. Whilst Chepiga thought he had taken out Bastardo’s Caporegime, he had not considered the ever-increasing Venezuelan army. They called us ‘The Free Folk’, untraceable loyal partisans ready to do Ángel Bastardo’s bidding. From all over Central and South America, we operated in unison…silo-by-silo the presence of Chepiga was removed. In its place, a more Mercosur focused regime was implemented: we’d take on the business of the drug trade but the money would no longer drift away across the Atlantic Ocean.

My instructions were to head to Mexico in order to broker a deal with the Sinaloa Cartel, and it’s here where the great Ángel Bastardo wanted his battle to resume. Operation Isabella signalled the end of Ángel Bastardo, Peñarol & La Celeste, the succession without himself as our leader. It takes a brave man to plan for this, but that’s what he was. I watched the incarceration of Bastardo live on TV, the Americans keen to broadcast and humiliate him to a global guidance. Yet he remained brave, I could see it.

Despite being in prison, Bastardo’s plan so far had been faultless…with the most pivotal moment, in his words, still to come. On the outskirts of Sinaloa’s biggest city, Culiacán, we had set up camp 34 days ago. We had been asked to reside next to an old watchtower overlooking a basin where a large river once meandered, in its place a small stream remained. It’s here where Bastardo’s instructions became meticulous in detail, offering an insight into the military mind of a seasoned commander.

The water was to be drained 100m upstream every night for exactly 5 hours at a time. Likewise, the watchtower brick-by-brick was reconstructed onto an enormous wooden wheeled trolley…this had to move 3 meters each night towards the site of where our drainage took place, with candles emitting a light from dusk till dawn to signify it’s occupancy.

Yesterday, on the 34th day, the written instructions in Operation Isabella told me to call the Tijuana Cartel of Baja California; to inform them of our agreement with Sinaola and offer an extension and future partnership between all three groups. The watchtower would be tonight’s meeting place, where the particulars would be discussed and agreed…but betrayal was Bastardo’s prediction. Sensing pressure from the other border states and upsetting the status quo, the site would be a massacre…one instigated by the Tijuana henchman. Outgunned and outnumbered, my mixture of Venezuelans and Uruguayans would rally behind the watchtower, along with Sinaloan representatives. We would face the Tijuana Cartel and the accompanying river that had now been starved of it’s most precious resource: water. The land was a nightmarish illusion, solid until pressure is met: quicksand.

It was by far one of Tijuana’s boldest moves on Culiacán soil since the Mexican Drug War began, around 50 soldiers advanced on the watchtower. Except the soil was now to the Sinaloa advantage, gunshots were traded back and forth towards the watchtower, but the mobile shooters now belonged to me. The Free Folk strafed around the watchtower and quicksand, encircling the Tijuana Cartel until we were behind them. It now looked like death by gunshot was the honourable solution for the men from Baja California, as men drifted into the abyss of mud. For 35 days of preparation, the shootout was over in no time at all. Sinaloa had secured a key victory in their quest for border control. The Sinaloan’s ultimate goal: to manage the San Diego–Tijuana conurbation, the largest urban link between the United States and Mexico.

Bastardo’s Mexican ambitions? Well, I guess we all were Bastardo now. Our aim is to undermine the United States, on our path to prosperity, and to honour the man that gave us freedom back in the Colombian jungle…

…I am Hugo Ojeda. I am Bastardo.

Note from the Editor - Mexico is where we now reside. I haven’t revealed the Football Manager element to our story just yet, that’s for one final [more serious] post to come. But I wanted to lay the ground properly, for what I hope will be a 4-5 season save before FM21 comes out (*pandemic dependant, of course). Hugo Ojeda will be our manager, a 20-year-old Venezuelan refugee who balances Bastardo’s splintered Empire on his young shoulders.

Can he keep it together, in the middle of a Cartel Drug War, and make a success of it all? I hope you can join me to find out.

As always, thanks for reading/sharing/caring.

FM Grasshopper