presents:

Operation Night Scopion, March 23-25, 2012

Anabasis

June 2011 - January 2012

Two Mexican drug syndicates - the Sinaloan Cartel and the Los Zetas Cartel - battle for control of North American smuggling routes. Tit-for-tat assassinations and small-scale gunfights quickly escalate into all out gun battles.

Mexican border towns such as Cuidad Acuña and Piedras Negras are paralyzed, as hundreds of gun-men from the cartels struggle to wipe each other out. Mexican police forces are unable to stem the fighting. Violence quickly spills across the border into Texas.

As the bloodshed escalates, the fighting takes on a more military nature, and heavier weapons systems are brought into play. The lure of easy money attracts many former law enforcement and military men into the cartels' employment. Individually, such men bring weapons skills, and a willingness to use them. However, the leaders of the cartels are primarily businessmen. They understand smuggling, bribery, and terroristic assassination of individuals or small groups. Direction of large-scale combat is not their strong suit, and no winner emerges in the fight. The border conflicts remain chaotic and inconclusive.

February 2012

The Sinaloan Cartel secretly recruits the "Red Scorpions", a Russian mercenary unit composed of ex-paratroopers.

The Scorpions quickly get to work. On February 5, 2012, the Russian mercenaries capture a large Zetas compound at "El Alto" ranch, outside Hidalgo del Parral in Chihuahua. More than 100 Zetas gunmen are killed, and the regional Zetas commander, Braulio Domínguez, is captured.

Over the next 6 weeks, smuggling depots owned by the Zetas are systematically over-run by the Red Scorpions. Staging areas in northern Mexico are brought under Sinaloan control, and the Zetas are pushed aside in a series of brutal engagements with the Scorpions. The Zetas fragment, and many of their leaders flee.

By late March, Cuidad Juarez is firmly under Sinaloan rule. Free access to the I-10 corridor, and US drug markets, is finally within Sinaloan reach. Peace returns to northern Mexico. The Sinaloans consolidate their gains, and turn their eyes toward expansion into the USA.

The Sinaloan drug-lords and their Russian mercenaries prepare for a last battle to finish the Zetas, once and for all.

The Sinaloans track the remaining Zeta leaders to their hiding place, inside Texas - at a ranch outside of Mineral Wells.

March 21, 2012

The Sinaloan gunmen and the mercenary Red Scorpions launch a surprise attack on the Zetas' final hiding spot. The peaceful Texas countryside erupts with the sound of automatic weapons fire and the explosions of grenades.

Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the leader of the Sinaloan cartel - the man with the foresight to hire the Red Scorpions - is on hand to witness the final attack. He oversees a two-pronged attack on the Zetas' hideout - one arm of the attack conducted by the Red Scorpions, the other arm by the Sinaloan gun-men.

However, in a shocking turn of events, the Zetas manage to beat back the Sinaloan cartel gun-men, and Loera is killed, along with several other Sinaloan lieutenants. The tide turns sharply, and the Sinaloans are forced to turn tail and escape back toward Mexico. They abandon the Red Scorpions, leaving them to their fate at the hands of the Zetas.

Suddenly alone, the Red Scorpions stand their ground. Proud, efficient, professional, they remain undefeated by the Zetas. The battered Zetas realize they are too weak to overwhelm the strong Russian mercenaries, and an un-easy truce is established.

Isolated and illegally armed inside a foreign country, the Russians know their only chance of survival is escape back into Mexico. The Russian leaders quickly decide to head south, hoping to reach the border, and safety.

However, time is not on their side. Open combat has drawn the attention of US authorities. As the Russian mercenaries struggle to escape, a unit of US Army Rangers is moving swiftly to cut them off, and wipe them out.