Copyright 1988.
The Guardians with their Texican allies have defeated the Cristeros invasion of Texas and secured the desalinization plant. The Cristero threat has not gone away. Chairman Maximov is still pulling the strings on this movement. After the popular Mexican president has been assassinated a power vacuum has opened in the country. The Cristeros are threatening the weak government and forcing them to install the young seventeen year old leader in a new coalition government. This will give Maximov control over the nation to the south.
So the Guardians are ordered to stop this transition of power by any means necessary. With a bunch of Texicans, an old Texas Ranger and a diplomat of dubious loyalty they head out to Mexico City. Along the way they have to battle treacherous army units, Cristero hordes, Federal Security Directorate agents and dangerous Mexican drivers on their way. They eventually ally themselves with a corrupt head of police in kidnapping the young girl and exposing the FSE plot.
So this book takes the Guardians to Mexico. The country after the war is still going pretty much as it was before the war. The oilfields weren’t a Soviet priority so they are still pumping but there is a glut what with a few 100 million customers worldwide now dead. They did have to fight off a Cuban-Nicaraguan invasion after the war. There are hordes of fanatical Cristeros rampaging in the north massacring whole villages of those perceived as heretics. Otherwise the corrupt system still chunks along. This was an interesting book in how it showed the various factions in the government and Mexican society in general. It seems well researched so I think the author has some knowledge about the country. Another one of the better stories.