He walked to the edge of the tent and watched the busy Belgian doctors inside and the wounded who kept groaning. Victor had purged these tumors in Mexico, but they hadn’t disappeared; they had just scattered to other bleeding wounds around the world and begun to fester. And now he was supposed to deal with these gun-toting desperadoes from back home, here in the quagmire of Africa. It was a brutally ironic turn.

...

Scotland, Glasgow, the "Rebirth District" construction site on the south bank of the Clyde River.

This had once been derelict shipyards and factories, now designated as the first smart-city pilot project jointly run by the Scottish Autonomous Government and the "Mexico-Scotland Joint Development Company."

Huge tower cranes rose into the morning mist, prefabricated components were hoisted like building blocks, and workers in hard hats bustled about on the scaffolding. On the site’s perimeter wall, slogans reading "New Scotland, New Future" were painted alongside blue-and-white saltire flags.

McTavish, accompanied by Calum McDonald and two security officers, was inspecting the progress of the site. The lead Engineer on the Mexico side of the project, a lean man named Sanchez, was enthusiastically explaining: "...the underground integrated utility tunnel is already seventy percent complete, with conduits reserved for Quantum communication fiber-optic cables. The smart streetlight system will be installed next month; they’re not just for lighting, they’ll also monitor air quality and traffic flow, and serve as wireless mesh network nodes..."

McTavish listened absent-mindedly. His attention was on the outer perimeter of the site. A few dozen people were gathered there, holding signs and standing in silence. The signs read: "Jobs for Scots!" "Mexicans Go Home!" "No New Colonizers!"

They were protesters, but not many, and the situation was still under control. Yet McTavish noticed that behind the protest crowd, in the Shadow of a street corner, several unmarked vans were parked, their windows darkly tinted. A few men in leather jackets stood by the vehicles, smoking, their eyes periodically sweeping over the site entrance and over toward him.

"Who are those people?" McTavish cut off Sanchez’s briefing and asked the head of security beside him.

The captain raised his binoculars and took a look. "Not sure, officer. They’re not police. Might be local... ’gang’ members. Glasgow’s been a bit unsettled lately—tools and cables have been stolen at night from several construction sites, and some workers have been beaten. The police say it’s ’organized crime,’ but there’s been no real progress."

"’Organized crime’?" McTavish frowned. Scotland’s Independence process had only just begun; the Economy was in tatters and needed rebuilding; foreign capital—mostly Mexican money—was pouring in for construction. And now, at a time like this, organized crime shows up?

"Word is their methods are very professional."

The head of security added, "They leave no traces, their targets are clear—only valuable, easy-to-fence materials and equipment. The workers who were injured said the attackers were masked and silent, but ruthless and efficient, like trained men. And there are rumors..." He lowered his voice. "They’re selling a new drug called ’Black Pearl.’ It’s very potent and very cheap, and it’s already spreading among some construction workers and unemployed youths."

Drugs? McTavish thought of a briefing he’d recently received from England Liverpool, which mentioned similar violent robberies and narcotics. He glanced at Calum; Calum gave a slight nod, clearly having made the same connection.

"Tighten security on the site, especially at night," McTavish told Sanchez. "If necessary, you can hire additional private security; we can share the cost. But remember: unless you’re attacked, no one fires first. We can’t give anyone an excuse to talk about ’armed foreign companies suppressing Scots.’"

"Understood, Mr. Chairman." Sanchez nodded, though a flicker of worry crossed his eyes. It wasn’t the first time a Mexican Company had run into law-and-order problems on an overseas project, but that usually happened in far less stable regions. For Scotland, a place known for order and relative safety, to see this sort of thing was anything but normal. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

The inspection wrapped up hastily. On the drive back, McTavish asked Calum, "’Black Pearl’—what exactly is it? Have you found out?"

"The intelligence services are just starting to get a picture." Calum pushed up his glasses. "It’s a synthetic cathinone, a high-purity variant of methcathinone, mixed with some other chemicals. The manufacturing process is very advanced—not something a local backroom operation could handle. The source is unknown, but its distribution channels... seem to overlap with the recent string of violent thefts. Some suspect the thefts aren’t about money, but about acquiring specific chemical precursors to produce the drug."

"What kind of precursors?"

"Certain controlled chemicals that are also additives or by-products in some construction materials." Calum pulled up files on his tablet. "For example, a particular epoxy curing agent, a specific thinner used in waterproof coatings... easy to obtain on large construction sites, especially on projects like ours that are importing a lot of new materials from Mexico as pilots."

McTavish’s eyes hardened. This wasn’t ordinary crime. This was targeted, exploiting the chaos of the construction boom and the flow of materials to seize drug precursors and spread the finished product. The aim might not be just profit; it might also be to undermine social stability, corrode the workforce, even... smear the image of the newly formed Scottish Autonomous Government.

"What about Mexico? Their domestic drug war is supposed to be pretty intense, isn’t it? Could these production techniques be leaking out from there?"

"It’s possible." Calum spoke carefully. "Reyes’s crackdowns were extremely thorough, but that also drove many drug traffickers and technicians into exile. Central America, the Caribbean, and now perhaps... other troubled regions around the world. Fragmentary intelligence we’ve picked up suggests that some remnants of the Mexican Drug Cartel, under the guise of ’private military companies’ or ’security contractors,’ are active in certain conflict zones—working as Mercenaries, and going back to their old trade on the side."