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 xico, 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 ho, 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 Governnt and the "xico-Scotland Joint Developnt 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 periter 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 xico side of the project, a lean man nad 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 sh network nodes..."
McTavish listened absent-mindedly. His attention was on the outer periter of the site. A few dozen people were gathered there, holding signs and standing in silence. The signs read: "Jobs for Scots!" "xicans Go Ho!" "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 n 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' mbers. Glasgow's been a bit unsettled lately—tools and cables have been stolen at night from several construction sites, and so workers have been beaten. The police say it's 'organized cri,' but there's been no real progress."
"'Organized cri'?" McTavish frowned. Scotland's Independence process had only just begun; the Economy was in tatters and needed rebuilding; foreign capital—mostly xican money—was pouring in for construction. And now, at a ti like this, organized cri shows up?
"Word is their thods are very professional."
The head of security added, "They leave no traces, their targets are clear—only valuable, easy-to-fence materials and equipnt. The workers who were injured said the attackers were masked and silent, but ruthless and efficient, like trained n. 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 so construction workers and unemployed youths."
Drugs? McTavish thought of a briefing he'd recently received from England Liverpool, which ntioned similar violent robberies and narcotics. He glanced at Calum; Calum gave a slight nod, clearly having made the sa 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 rember: unless you're attacked, no one fires first. We can't give anyone an excuse to talk about 'ard foreign companies suppressing Scots.'"
"Understood, Mr. Chairman." Sanchez nodded, though a flicker of worry crossed his eyes. It wasn't the first ti a xican 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.
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 thcathinone, mixed with so other chemicals. The manufacturing process is very advanced—not sothing a local backroom operation could handle. The source is unknown, but its distribution channels... seem to overlap with the recent string of violent thefts. So 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 so 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 xico as pilots."
McTavish's eyes hardened. This wasn't ordinary cri. 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... sar the image of the newly ford Scottish Autonomous Governnt.
"What about xico? Their dostic 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 extrely thorough, but that also drove many drug traffickers and technicians into exile. Central Arica, the Caribbean, and now perhaps... other troubled regions around the world. Fragntary intelligence we've picked up suggests that so remnants of the xican Drug Cartel, under the guise of 'private military companies' or 'security contractors,' are active in certain conflict zones—working as rcenaries, and going back to their old trade on the side."
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