Operation Kingfish

Ghost Leader Dominic "Nomad" Rubio assisting Bolivian rebels against cartel sicarios in Barvechos City, central Bolivia, 2019

## Overview

### Objective(s)

* Destabilize Santa Blanca Cartel operations in Bolivia (Succeeded)
* Capture/Kill Santa Blanca leader El Sueno (Failed)

### Outcome

US Pyrrhic Victory:* El Sueno murdered by rogue US government agents
* Bolivia falls into anarchy following the collapse of the cartel.

## Belligerents

### Opposing Forces

Santa Blanca CartelBolivia (After June, 2019)

## Commanders & Leaders

### Allied Commanders and leaders

United States of America:* Karen Bowman (Before June 19, 2019)
* Dominic Rubio (Before June 19, 2019)

### Opposition Commanders and leaders

Santa Blanca Cartel:* El Sueno (KIA)
* Julio Baro (Before June 19, 2019)
* La Plaga (KIA)
* El Muro (Before June 19, 2019)
* Carl Bookhart (KIA)

## Strength

### Allied Forces Strength

United States Armed Forces:* CIA operatives
* Task Force Stalker operatives

Bolivian Armed Forces:

* UNIDAD forces (Prior to June 19, 2019)

### Opposition Forces strength

Santa Blanca cartel sicariosUNIDAD infantry

## Casualties and losses

### Opposition Deaths

Heavy

In response to what appeared to be a terrorist attack against the US Embassy in La Paz, Bolivia, the United States government launched **Operation Kingfish**. Operation Kingfish was intended to be a covert military operation conducted by the United States Armed Forces' 5th Special Forces Group, known as the Group for Specialized Tactics (Officially known as Task Force: Stalker), also known as the Ghosts.

## Background

Santa Blanca, a new drug cartel that was created as a sub-division of the cartel known as Los Zetas, came to power in Bolivia through coercion and bribery; they took control of Bolivia by killing rival drug cartels in the nation, prompting the Bolivian government to create a military police force known as UNIDAD 93 (Also known as simply UNIDAD). The war between the cartel and UNIDAD raged on for months. With both sides locked in a bloody stalemate, a truce was decided: "If you stop killing our people, we will look the other way." Since then the cartel grew with power spreading its influence across all of South America and soon tried to spread its influence to other countries.

Meanwhile, as United States intelligence services began operating in Bolivia in response to the rising Santa Blanca threat, numerous agents were deployed to the Bolivia, with many infiltrating the cartel. Amongst these agents included CIA Agent Karen Bowman and undercover DEA Agent Ricky Sandoval. Unfortunately, Sandoval felt that the United States needed to intervene. To provoke a military intervention, Sandoval attempted to frame Santa Blanca in a plot to bomb the United States Embassy in the capital of La Paz. Though he initially got away with it, Sandoval was eventually outed as a double agent thanks to a traitor within the United States of America, a cyber-terrorist codenamed "Lancelot". As a result, Sandoval was captured by the cartel and tortured to death.

However, because Sandoval succeeded in framing Santa Blanca for the bombing, the United States government retaliated by creating a joint task force consisting of the CIA, the DEA and the United States Army Special Forces, known as Joint Task Force Kingslayer.

A four-man team of operatives led by Dominic Rubio, callsign "Nomad", was inserted into Bolivia alongside their handler Karen Bowman. Because Kingfish was supposed to be a covert operation, the Kingslayer team was ordered to assist a resistance movement known as the Kataris 26, which had suffered heavy losses for months. This was so Kataris 26 could take credit for the elimination of Santa Blanca once Operation Kingfish concluded.

## Events of the operation

Having arrived at Bolivia, the Stalker team linked up with the leader of the Kataris 26, Pac Katari. They then coordinated sabotage operations against the Santa Blanca cartel. After dismantling much of the cartel’s operations and eliminating two of the four cartel heads, El Sueno reacted by offering the Ghost team a position with the cartel. They refused, instead threatening his life.

Following this, the Stalker team was temporarily retasked by Bowman to rescue a Mexican engineer named Daniel Rodriguez Arellano, who worked as a technical director for megacorporation and tech company Skell Tech, who had been arrested by UNIDAD and was being held prisoner in an underground UNIDAD facility. Unbeknownst to Nomad and the team, fellow Ghosts operative Cole D. Walker got to him first, having massacred the Skell Tech prisoner’s UNIDAD guards singlehandedly.

After navigating through the facility, Nomad found Walker and an unconscious Daniel. Walker claimed that Arellano had turned traitor and was feeding secrets to UNIDAD. Unfortunately, UNIDAD sent reinforcements after discovering the aftermath of Walker’s rampage and Walker assisted Nomad and the Ghost team in extracting Daniel to a safe house in Inca Camina, southern Bolivia.

Nomad suspected something bigger was going on and decided to retask his team with tailing Arellano, discovering that Daniel had arranged to meet with the Ghosts’ CIA handler without any security.

Nomad immediately reported his findings to Walker, who directed them to an airfield in nearby Malca Province. Upon their arrival, Walker revealed that he’d had led a team that were killed by drones he claimed Arellano helped UNIDAD build using stolen US national security secrets. He swore his vengeance, but Nomad told him to hold off on his craving for vengeance until they figured out what was happening.

Guided by a tracker Walker planted on Daniel, the team reached a farmhouse guarded by UNIDAD patrols. After eliminating them, Nomad confronted Daniel, who admitted to being coerced by UNIDAD into selling out Bowman and that she had been taken to Mobile Operating Base Jaguar in Floro De Oro province. Walker executed Daniel afterwards, much to Nomad’s outrage.

Upon reaching the base, Walker told Nomad of an UNIDAD captain who knew where Bowman was being kept before reaching the location himself. Nomad and his team interrogated the UNIDAD captain and eventually located Bowman, tied to a chair while Walker attempted to interrogate her. Nomad cut Bowman loose and the team commandeered an UNIDAD vehicle before escaping to a nearby safehouse.

Upon their arrival, Bowman attempted to defend her actions against Walker’s claims that Bowman was committing treason by helping an alleged enemy spy. While Bowman argued that she had orders to safeguard the interests of US personnel in Bolivia, as well as the Bolivian people, Walker argued that Bowman should've executed Daniel the second she knew he'd turned (a claim Bowman didn't believe at all), and that Bowman could soon be selling information herself if she could protect such a person. Bowman retorted by cursing Walker, causing him to erupt in a rage about how her orders got his men killed and aided UNIDAD. Fortunately, Nomad was able to talk Walker down before things got ugly. Walker, being an old friend of Nomad, chose to trust his judgment, warning Bowman that if she strayed from the law again, he'd come to "collect that debt."

As the operation in Bolivia continued, Nomad became uneasy about Walker’s claims. Even worse, he began to hear from Bowman evidence that Walker's accusations were indeed true. At length, they were once again retasked by Bowman, this time with finding Ricky Sandoval’s body. After a lengthy search, they were able to locate Sandoval’s corpse, alongside an audio recording in which El Sueno tortured Sandoval into confessing that it was he who bombed the embassy in La Paz, framing Santa Blanca with the intention of provoking the US into taking military action. Nomad took this to mean that Walker had been right all along about the US government’s corruption problem but chose to hide the revelation from Bowman.

After the capture of the last cartel head, Nomad was told by rebel leader Pac Katari that they had sighted someone who knew of El Sueno’s location, but upon arriving at the site they instead found the dead body of Amaru, one of the founders of the Kataris 26.

They attempted to contact Bowman but found that she’d gone radio silent. They found Bowman unconscious at a nearby safehouse, where Bowman revealed that Pac Katari betrayed the team after falling into a delusional mania that led him to believe that it is his destiny to free Bolivia from Santa Blanca without foreign assistance.

It is also revealed that Pac Katari was the one who killed Amaru, having executed him for “not believing strongly enough” in his vision. Fighting through their former rebel allies, the Ghost team broke into El Sueno’s mausoleum, where they found El Sueno himself. El Sueno revealed that he had beheaded Pac Katari following a confrontation between the rebel leader and the drug lord. As the team moved in, Bowman received a call from her superiors revealing that El Sueno had agreed to become a US informant after brokering a deal with the Department of Justice.

Now that Bowman also realized that Walker had been right about his corruption allegations against the US government, both Bowman and the Kingslayer team went rogue; disobeying her orders, Bowman executed El Sueno. The Ghost team also eliminated CIA reinforcements sent in to apprehend Bowman and the Ghost team for their treason and they both fled into the Bolivian wilderness soon afterwards, having effectively disavowed their own government.

## Aftermath

The failure of Operation Kingfish and the shocking betrayal committed by the Ghosts and their CIA handler outraged the United States government. The events of Kingfish also attracted the attention of college student Ralph Rager and his siblings Brock Rager, Jordyn Rager, and Judith Rager, who had been concurrently tracking a notorious cyber-terrorist known as Phoenix alongside the FBI and the CIA.

Ralph and his siblings eventually stumbled upon the gruesome aftermath of the failed operation, while at the same time learning that Phoenix herself had a hand in the operation ending the way it did.

The operation also led to political, economic and civil unrest within Bolivia itself. The death of Pac Katari had resulted in the Kataris 26 falling into infighting, but they reformed after being reunited under the Rager siblings, after agreeing to assist their mission to eliminate Phoenix in exchange for the Ragers conducting their own sabotage operations against cartel remnants to continue supplying rebel forces. El Sueno's murder at the hands of the CIA resulted in the near-collapse of the Santa Blanca drug cartel, with numerous warlords established in their own fiefdoms, quickly creating a civil war.

Additionally, the Ragers exposed the deal made between La Unidad and the cartel, which would prove devastating to the unit. The war between Santa Blanca and UNIDAD had effectively restarted following the Ragers' whistleblowing operation, and UNIDAD was soon left unable to maintain order. The entire country fell into anarchy, with waves of ministers in the government resigning, fired or arrested by authorities once their corruption was exposed for the whole world to see.

The aftermath of Operation Kingfish would see Ralph Rager and his team collaborating with the CIA once more, this tasked with evacuating all compromised CIA agents and remaining American civilians from Bolivia in what would ultimately turn out to be a successful exodus.