Simulation Game: Crisis Management-Chapter 404 - 193: Panic in the Skies (Part 3)

The captain’s stern tone brought some passengers back to reality from their panic.

At this moment, people realized that the man in sunglasses only demanded the flight to change direction. As long as they followed his instructions, perhaps everyone would be fine.

Moreover, once they reached the ground, there would be police and military forces, which seemed far safer than the current situation.

So, some passengers began returning to their seats, though all of them remained in the rear of the cabin. No one dared to go back near where the man in sunglasses was.

However, some individuals noticed that something wasn’t quite right.

Mexico Matzalan...

"Isn’t Matzalan a city in Sinaloa State?"

Someone shouted out.

The next moment, everyone fell into panic once more.

Anyone from the U.S. border regions or Central America knew what "Sinaloa" meant—it was the base of the largest drug trafficking group in Mexico!

Gu Ji squinted his eyes.

If there was a country on Earth where drug dealers were the most rampant, Mexico’s drug dealers would claim second place, and possibly no one would dare to claim first. For more than half a century, Mexico’s drug dealers have gradually taken control of half the country, their filthy tendrils reaching into every corner, with the rule of law almost nonexistent in terms of dealing with drug cartels. Even the police and military are helpless.

Among them, the "Sinaloa Drug Cartel" in Mexico, and indeed all of America, was unrivaled as the "largest".

The leader, Guzman, was unparalleled among the world’s drug lords.

The Mexican authorities dispatched elite forces to capture him three times, expending a lot of effort and lives, but he escaped each time. After the last successful capture, to prevent his third escape, they ultimately had to extradite him to the United States.

The last time the Sinaloa Group caused an international sensation was in January 2023, when they staged an armed attack on a Mexican military aircraft and a civilian passenger plane.

A large number of armed personnel from the drug cartel flooded Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa State in Mexico. They pillaged, set fires, engaged in intense gunfights with Mexican armed forces, attacked police and military elsewhere, and even surrounded police stations with heavily armed drug traffickers, going so far as to assault an airport and attack a civilian passenger plane preparing for takeoff.

This scale of counterattack was exceedingly rare, even amidst the ongoing drug war in Mexico.

The goal of the Sinaloa Group’s operation was to force the Mexican authorities to release Guzman’s son, Audilavi, but it ultimately ended in failure.

It seems that the man in sunglasses using VX nerve agent to hijack the plane and redirect it to Matzalan must be for a similar reason.

As long as the flight lands at the base of the Sinaloa Drug Cartel, the traffickers can control the passengers and use them as leverage to force negotiations with Mexico to release Audilavi.

Attacking civilian airliners, openly challenging the government.

And doing it twice.

Now that’s bold!

No wonder after the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, Guzman was "promoted" to the top spot on Forbes’ global list of top ten villains. Indeed, the Sinaloa Group is full of ruthless individuals!

The flight from Los Angeles to Panama City is in a northwest-to-southeast direction.

While Sinaloa State is on the western side of the flight path, the man in sunglasses must have handed the flight attendant US Dollars, with a note about the hijacking threat and his intentions, after the plane left the United States and entered Mexican airspace. This prompted Captain Shang Mu to make a significant right turn toward the western side of the Northern Hemisphere.

Unfortunately, they encountered an "engine failure" emergency mid-flight.

To make matters worse, four-fifths of Mexico is part of the high-altitude Mexico Plateau, making landing inherently difficult, let alone an emergency landing, raising the crash probability significantly.

In Gu Ji’s memory, there have been two successful emergency landings following engine failures in history.

One was Ural Airlines flight U6178’s forced landing in a cornfield in 2019, and the other was All American Airlines flight 1549’s water landing on the Hudson River in 2009, famously depicted in the movie "Sully".

"High-altitude area, emergency landing, another dead end..."

Gu Ji gritted his teeth, pondering how exactly to break this deadlock.

Meanwhile, the captain began initiating a right aileron turn, and the flight attendants returned to their position to persuade him back to his seat after securing all passengers in theirs.

Gu Ji turned his head.

Good heavens, the rear half of the cabin was completely full, not a single seat unoccupied.

In the entire front cabin, apart from the bald cop, Chief Flight Attendant Betty, and the man in sunglasses, only Gu Ji remained.

"Sir! Come over here!"

Freckled girl Chloe waved her arms, not forgetting this man who had stepped in to help.

But Gu Ji paid her no heed.

Under the shocked gazes of the passengers, he plopped down in the frontmost seat of the economy class.

Which was diagonally opposite to where the man in sunglasses was seated!