Hard deadline huh?
Usually a hard deadline means something quite literally can’t go beyond that date. Like “hey guys, Kursk literally has all our food, if they don’t get it back by the end of September we’re probably going to all starve” or “Kursk has the only insulin stock in the whole country, we’re gonna have a lot of dead diabetics”, “take Kursk back or you are all fired and heading to the front” and in this scenario I’d even settle for “if you guys don’t take Kursk back, I’ll glass the area as a nuclear test site.”
Deadlines can’t be hard if there are no consequences.
Edit: I mean if it were me being a stupid strongman dictator I would totally nuke an enemy controlled region within my own borders after designating it a test site. If any of the nukes were still working of course.
Given that she’s still alive, does that mean she works for the cartels or does that mean the cartels have determined she’s not a threat? From everything I’ve read the only real remaining power in Mexico is the cartels, and I honestly don’t even know how accurate that is because no one I know has actually been in Mexico in the last 5 years or so