Playa Bagdad, Tamaulipas, Mexico

2037

The wind howled and whistled across the arid land, dry cactus leaves rustling against one another under the pale moonlight. The waves’ soothing rhythmic claps against the shores of a nameless fishing village betrayed its sinister secrets. 

Around the Matamoros beach, black-clad commandos with night vision goggles approached the fishing ship landings near the Pearls Bar & Restaurant, careful not to tip off the sicarios on the prowl around the meeting site’s perimeters.

Among the commandos present there, one was an anthro robot jaguar, whose jet black metal armor made him a walking obsidian feline. His diamond-tipped tail gracefully flickered to balance his movements. The panther carried an FX-05 Xiuhcoatl rifle, an underbarrel grenade launcher, and a digital magnification scope doubling as his guncam, allowing him to shoot from behind cover. He ducked onto an abandoned Bodega’s roof, rifle raised over the crumbling sign for the guncam to feed him with surveillance footage of the deal sight.

He watched as a truck arrived at the wharf with its headlights off, laden with women locked in its bed. Their black and white thermal signature quickly came into view as the cartel sicarios and their Kingpin hauled the women off the truck to their dealer. The panther, Delgato, zoomed his scope in on the dealer in particular, noting that the target had a rather cold body temperature, with bioluminescent highlights accentuating their silhouette. He made out the odd fishy features such as gills, flippers, bulging, and unblinking eyes. 

The panther and his human commandos quietly tightened their noose around the beach. They traded knowing glances before the jaguar fired two shots at the sicarios defending the wharf’s inroad. The commandos sprinted into action, storming the meeting site from three angles to box in the cartel sicarios and their Kingpin. 

The Kingpin was busy in the meeting with his dealers, who gestured for the other humanoid amphibians to slip over a crate full of wooden carvings and reliefs of eldritch fishmen, sacrificial offerings of human women to these oceanic monstrosities. 

The gold jewelry of monstrous half-man, half-fish or frog-like amphibians with monstrously large blade-like teeth, whose heads were adorned with crowns bearing oceanic motifs such as five swirly octopus tentacles forming an upside-down pentagram. 

The wharf’s doors were blown open, followed by a lightning-fast assault, automatic staccatos from assault rifles and light machine guns tore through the walls and windows, sending debris chunks and broken glass shards flying. The Kingpin grabbed his golden Desert Eagle and fired wildly in a fit of panic. As the lights went out, he stumbled in the dark while his Sicarios stumbled around with flashlights. The dealer likewise panicked and flailed about, stumbling out to the direction of salt water as bullets ricocheted passed him, one struck him in the legs, sending him falling face-first on the sand. 

As the robot panther pressed into the fishing trawler’s landing, systematically cleared through sicarios and eldritch fishmen armed with plasma weaponry, a second team was riding high on their sleek Black Hawk helicopter, their gunners lit the place up with M134 miniguns and tracer rounds, turning cartel pickup trucks and armored SUVs into bullet riddled swiss cheeses. The snipers riding aboard the helicopter carried M82 rifles, firing precise shots on the fishmen, tearing their torsos in half from the powerful .50 BMG rounds. 

The team leader, a jade anthro robot eagle, barreled out of the helicopter’s starboard side, unfurling his wings before landing with a power stomp on one of the fishmen. The sicarios around the beach panicked, entering a rapid-fire spree. Their bullets tore through the trawler hulls and the nearby bar and restaurant.  

The eagle, armed with an FX-05 Xiuhcoatl rifle, scoured through the bullet-riddled huts of Playa Bagdad, letting his enemies exhaust their magazines before pouncing on them with a double tap. The process repeated from one hooch to the next as the panther and bird converged on the Kingpin’s location, the local church. 

The duo traded nods to each other before stacking up on the wooden door, not taking any chances with the don’s Desert Eagle. The Don quivered in fear by the altar of the Holy Virgin, counting his magazines just as the doors were kicked in. He fired wildly at the doorway, hoping to scare the robots away from snatching him. Only to have Delgato tossing in a flashbang, stunning him.

The two robots stormed the church, Cuauhtemoc launched his knee against the Don’s stomach, and twisted his arm into a lock, throwing his pistol over to Delgato, who secured it as evidence. The jaguar gave the splendor golden and ivory lacquer pistol a second look, fancying it as a trophy. The eagle’s hand grabbed the Don by his neck collar, hauling him out of the church to their waiting convoy that pulled up by the main highway.

“Four minutes flat. Not bad, Pollito,” Delgato said, smirking like he already knew it.

“Doesn’t matter,” Cuauhtémoc muttered, optics dimming slightly. “Will he walk?” 

“I heard the Supreme Court this time is chomping on this one. He won’t.” One of the commandos chimed in. 

“Not his soldados.” Cuauhtémoc replied grimly.

The convoy returned to their home base at Monterrey’s Base Aerea Militar No. 14, where the vehicles piled up inside the motor pool, and their HVT was presented to the prosecutors. Cuauhtémoc and Delgato dismounted from their vehicles and went over to debrief their operation. 

A long series of questioning by military intelligence officers, reviewing recorded footage from their optics. Once done, the duo was allowed to have some freedom. Cuauhtémoc checked in his rifle at the armory before going over to his locker. Like the humans of his unit, he and Delgato were afforded lockers to themselves, next to one another, an inseparable duo. 

The eagle opened his locker and found a cardboard package planted there, with no sender, but the address was unmistakably to him. He tore open the packaging with a sharp talon before picking out the content; oddly enough, it was an Ace of Spades within a Full House deck. At a glance, others might think that Cuauhtémoc got a new poker deck. 

But from his optics’ UV vision, he saw what others did not: a Delta symbol with an unmistakable dagger within the symbol. Both were superimposed on the black spade, forming the Delta Force symbol within USSOCOM. Another card in the deck was the King of Hearts. The eagle blinked momentarily before tucking the cards away in his pouches and sealing his locker shut.         

Delgato was waiting for Cuauhtémoc in the lounge area, a smoke-filled, alcohol rich den of exhausted operators. The Mexicans there traded banter, gallows humor all around, and sarcastically sang a crucifix of Marijuana for their funeral. 

Cuauhtémoc ventured through the doorway, wings folded behind his back, before sitting down with Delgato by the bar counter. The eagle sat down with a slumped torso over the counter, his beak lazily resting as the bartender handed him a shot of Tequila.  

“Something troubling you, mi corazon?” Delgato asked, one arm tenderly wrapped around Cuauhtémoc’s shoulder.

“You can tell, mi querido?” Cuauhtémoc half-jokingly squawked, turning his gaze to Delgato’s smirking feline face. 

“Eight years together, how can I not?” Delgato softly purred, his index finger caressed Cuauhtémoc’s cheek, and trailing his avian chin, earning a slight chortle from the emerald green avian. 

“Four years of this. At least those guys can leave.” Cuauhtémoc quietly lamented, pointing over to the humans watching a soccer match, placing their bets with eager anticipation. 

“Si,” Delgato nodded, “But then we’d have to kill them. Remember Los Zetas?” He grimly added. 

Cuauhtémoc sighed before knocking his Tequila shot, “Rare. But how many more years of doing that?” Cuauhtémoc asked, to which Delgato let out a soft sigh and pressed his forehead against the emerald eagle’s own. 

Their moment was brief and fleeting when several nosy operators came over, their jeers and mocking tone filling the robots’ audio receptors. “Hola ‘mi corazon.’” One of the GAFE operators mocked.

“Filming Cuauhtémoc la del Barrio again?” Another one from the Airborne Brigade (Brigada de Fusileros Paracaidistas) jokingly said.

“Blackjack table’s over there, cabrones.” Cuauhtémoc pointed over to the couch where the others were betting on the soccer match. The pesos were stacking up, the chips were coming down, and excitement was through the roof all around. 

“Muy bien, Pollito. At least after today, you’ll be a neighbor to GAFE. Moving up the ladder and all that.” The GAFE operator replied with a friendly smile before turning to the bartender, getting a shot of Mezcal. “Oye, hermanos y companeros! A toast to Cuauhtémoc! For his selfless service, gallantry, and bravery! Without him and Delgato, we wouldn’t be celebrating here tonight! So thank him for a chance to see your wives and kids again!” 

The operators in there joined in cheers and celebratory hollers, earning a reluctant smile from Cuauhtémoc, who joined them with his tequila. Delgato joined in with his shot of Mezcal before the lounge dunked their drink. 

“It’s been a fun four years frolicking with you guys from Sonora to Matamoros. But it’s time for the eagle to take flight beyond the dunes and bushes.” Cuauhtémoc confidently spoke, and the bartenders and the operators present there whistled and cheered. “See you all in CDMX!” 

The lounge erupted in celebration and melancholy, and soon, their eagle and jaguar were leaving for greener pastures. That meant their grind would revert to what it once was. A few of them grimly joked they might have to write their testaments and last wills just in case, now that he was leaving them. 

Back in the locker room, Cuauhtémoc and Delgato were busy cleaning out their footlockers. They picked out posters of telenovelas for Cuauhtémoc and lucha libre for Delgato, personal cleaning and hygiene items, alongside personal items. 

Among those, Cuauhtémoc’s memento, a partially faded photograph, but he could still make out the trio in the photo. Himself, Delgato, and a robot bald eagle with a tall, tank-like build. He let out a soft synthetic sigh before closing the locker and carrying the duffle bag to his barracks. 

Delgato followed him to their quarters for some rest before their transfer. The eagle’s confine was a partially partitioned section of the barracks warehouse. Staring out of the barred window, he gazed longingly at the celestial body beyond, where birds soar freely and his namesake descends from. 

Next to his bed, the mattress on the floor, was a poster labeled ‘Activación Formal de los Caballeros de Tenochtitlán - CDMX.’ He let out a soft sigh before entering sleep mode, letting his concerns drift away to the back of his processor.