Tiger War te-61 Read online

  "When you've done as many missions as I have," said Bolan, "you don't forget to bring the essentials.''

  "The odds are that blood will flow, right?"

  "Pretty much," said Bolan. Nark looked at his watch. "Transmission time."

  They went to the set and each took an earphone. From across fifteen thousand miles of ether crackling with static, there rose and fell a pattern of dits and dahs repeated over and over. Stony Man Farm was calling Lotus Seven.

  April, thought Bolan. He could tell by the touch. An operator's mode of sending was as individual as a person's handwriting. Bolan tried to imagine her sitting by the transmitter in the radio room, a caring, vastly understanding woman who gave of her very best to Stony Men who were forever meeting other women in their wars.

  The call signal ended and the message began. Bolan and Nark both wrote it down. That way if one missed, the other could fill in. With all the static it was easy to miss letters.

  The message ended, and Nark sent a signal confirming receipt. Bangkok relayed it to Stony Man Farm, and a few minutes later April sent her love and Stony Man Farm went off the air.

  Nark and Bolan decoded. The message informed them there would be an air drop in two nights' time and gave the air recognition signal. Tagged on to the message was a bit of news from Hal Brognola.

  A new survey just published by the National Institute on Drug Abuse showed the number of Americans on drugs had passed the twenty-two million mark, of whom three-quarters were under twenty-one. Schools continue to be the centers of distribution of drugs.

  Bolan stared at the message, a brooding look in his eyes. "A country's youth condemned to slavery," he said quietly.

  * * *

  The tiger gunship hovered like a bird of prey. In front of it was a forest, then a sea of high grass, then more woods. The crew was observing a trio of horses move through the grass in the distance. There were two riders and a packhorse. The riders were not aware of the helicopter. It was behind them, and the distance was too great to hear it.

  In the front of the helicopter, the gunner was observing the riders through binoculars. "They are long noses, sir,'' he reported to the pilot behind him.

  "That's them. Prepare to attack."

  "Chain gun, sir?"

  "No, rockets. I want to test the system. Nap-of-the-earth attack."

  The helicopter shuddered as the gunner fired. The rocket streaked for the horses. Wisps of vapor trailed it. It flew over the heads of the riders and exploded in a cloud of white. The horses reared in fright.

  "The trees!" shouted Bolan. He dug his heels into the horse's flanks, and they galloped for the nearest cover.

  Once inside the woods they turned to look for their attacker. The rocket had come from the direction of a forest behind them, but there was nothing there.

  "Could be someone in those trees," suggested Nark.

  "No, it was an air attack," said Bolan. He could tell by the angle of elevation. "Hold my horse."

  Bolan jumped to the ground and ran to the edge of a clearing. He brought out his field glasses and scanned the sky. It was empty. Nor was there any sound of aircraft.

  "There! "Nark shouted.

  Bolan zeroed in on a camouflage-painted helicopter rising from behind a stand of trees. A Hughes Apache. It was America's latest attack helicopter, except this one was not American or even Thai. On its tail was painted the sun of Nationalist China.

  "Tiger!" Bolan shouted over his shoulder. He inspected the helicopter's armament: a chain gun and four rocket pods, but no missiles. The last was a blessing. With missiles — the Apache was normally armed with Hellfire missiles — they would not have stood a chance.

  Nark ran to his side, and Bolan passed him the glasses. "An AH-64," said Bolan. "New kind of gun-ship. Flies between hills and trees, darts out to fire, then disappears."

  They watched the helicopter turn to face them, the crew able to tell where Bolan and Nark were because the horses had left a swath in the grass. It hovered suspended at treetop level, silent, menacing.

  Suddenly the helicopter shot sideways. The speed was amazing, a good fifty miles per hour. It flew in an arch from right to left and came to a stop above another group of trees. It hovered for a while, then dropped out of sight.

  "Something tells me we're going to serve as target practice," said Bolan. "Let's tie up the horses."

  "We're going to stay here?" asked Nark.

  "It's our only chance," Bolan told him. "He'd get us long before we ever reached those hills. This way he won't know if we're dead or alive, and he'll come to investigate."

  Just then the helicopter popped up. It fired a rocket, then dropped out of sight. Bolan and Nark hit the ground as the rocket swished through the treetops. They nearly lost their horses, which were sent rearing by the explosion. They managed to fight them down and get them tied to trees, spaced apart so one unlucky shot would not kill them all.

  From his saddle Bolan took the RAW. "Lend me your rifle," he said to Nark.

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Not quite sure yet," grunted Bolan. "But as they say in the Boy Scouts, 'Be prepared.'"

  They swapped guns, and Bolan attached the launcher with the rocket to the underside of the M-16.

  "If I get hit before I can fire this," he said to Nark, "simply pull the safety pin from the launcher and fire a normal round. The gases from the round will activate the launch."

  They went to the edge of the woods again, and Bolan knelt in the grass, awaiting the gunship with his puny rocket like David with his sling awaiting Goliath. He was sure the gunship would cease firing rockets and come looking for them. Not that it was short of rockets — in its four dispensers, Bolan knew, were seventy-six of those 2.75-inch folding fin toys — but Bolan also knew that a soldier had to account to a quartermaster. There was a limit to how many rockets the helicopter's crew could expend simply to flush out two men.

  And Bolan guessed right. Two rockets later the Apache flew toward them. It came in low and slow, obviously figuring it had nothing to fear from the men below. After all, they were only armed with rifles, and an Apache was built to withstand even a .50-caliber machine gun.

  The sky filled with the whap, whap, whap of blades. This is how the enemy must have felt in Vietnam, thought Bolan. To an American the sound of chopping blades was always good news in that war — extract, Medevac, fire support, reinforcements — but to the VC and the NVA it meant something completely different. Death riding the sky.

  As the gunship approached, the long barrel of the 30mm chain gun protruding from its belly moved, the gunner trying out the controls. Then the muzzle began winking and the sky growled.

  Bolan and Nark threw themselves to the ground as a small storm swept the woods. High explosive rounds. Behind them they could hear the horses neighing in fear.

  "You'd better go and keep an eye on the horses," Bolan said to Nark.

  The other ran back while Bolan crouched behind a yang tree. As the helicopter drew nearer, it changed course slightly. Bolan rose and moved through the trees, adjusting his position to the new trajectory.

  A hundred yards from the woods the gunship paused, its gun moving from side to side. The muzzle winked as the gunner sprayed the trees with a long lateral burst. The trees around Bolan thudded from the impact of the exploding rounds. A second burst followed.

  The gunship flew nearer. But when it reached the edge of the forest it stopped again as if afraid to proceed, as if some instinct of self-preservation told the pilot a hunter was waiting below. Orders are orders, however, and the helicopter moved over the trees, the wash from its blades flattening the canopy.

  Bolan watched from behind a tree as the Apache inched its way overhead, visible through the leaves, the chain gun winking, hosing the woods with its hail of death. The noise was tremendous: the whining engines, the chopping blades, the growling gun, the exploding rounds.

  As the machine passed, Bolan ran to place himself under its tail. He cocked the rifle and
withdrew the safety pin on the launcher. Eyes tearing from the dust and bits of wood stirred up by the churning air, ears deafened by the constant din, Bolan followed his prey, waiting for an opening.

  It came an instant later when the helicopter began turning. Perhaps the gunner had seen something and wanted a better angle of fire. The rotorwash blew some of the treetops apart to create a hole in the canopy. Bolan raised his rifle and fired.

  The metal sphere hanging under the M-16's muzzle spun and flew to meet the green gray shape above. It punched a hole in the belly, there was a flash, and a ball of fire enveloped the helicopter. It fell through the treetops amid the sound of breaking tree limbs and shearing metal.

  A blast of hot air knocked Bolan off his feet as the helicopter blew up. More explosions followed as the rockets and ammunition went. Bolan lay with his arms over his head while the earth heaved, metal and wood rained down.

  Finally there was silence, broken only by the crackle of flames. Around him things were burning — wreckage, trees, leaves, bark, even himself. He jumped to his feet and beat out his smoking clothes.

  Bolan heard the sound of running feet. "Are you all right?" shouted Nark.

  "So far," said Bolan. He picked up his weapon and stared pensively at the destruction around him. A minute ago the forest was filled with the noise of a sleek killer machine at whose command sat two men. Now that was history, the men vaporized, the machine so much junk.

  "We've lost the packhorse and the radio," said Nark. "The other horses are okay."

  On the way back to the horses Bolan said, "Tiger must be rich to afford helicopters like that. They come fifteen million dollars apiece."

  "There's no shortage of money in that business," Nark replied. "In the States alone, illicit drugs is a ninety-billion-dollar-a-year industry. Ninety billion! Can you imagine? Only Exxon is bigger."

  "Yeah, well," said Bolan, coming to his horse, "let's see what we can do to change that.''

  Chapter 5

  From atop a ridge, hidden by bushes, Bolan and Nark surveyed the Tiger hardsite. The place reminded Bolan of one of those company towns that grow up in the middle of nowhere around a source of raw material. At one end was the industrial section with the heroin refinery, a long, three-story brick building with chimneys. Next to it were opium warehouses, a water tower, a power plant, tool sheds, and administration offices. At the other end was a residential section of neat villas with flowers, tree-lined alleys, shops and a park. But it was a militarized company town. The center was a parade ground with a flagpole, and there were barracks, lots of soldiers, an LZ with helicopters, and mortar facing the jungle.

  The entrance to the town was a pair of heavy iron gates over which was a flag-bedecked arch. Written on the arch in Chinese characters was the name of Tiger's parent company, 93rd Kuomintang Division.

  "They still use the old name," Bolan observed.

  "Very proud of it," said Nark.

  "Yeah, I guess from their point of view they're a real success story."

  "At least someone got something out of the Vietnam War," Nark remarked.

  It was the Vietnam War, or more precisely its outcome, that launched the 93rd into the heroin business. Prior to the war the division was basically a military organization dealing in opium on the side as a means of amassing money for the reconquest of the homeland.

  This ambition was encouraged by the U.S., which used the 93rd, and other Nationalist army units that escaped when the Communists conquered in 1949, for the forays into China to destabilize the Communist regime.

  The Vietnam War changed that. The U.S. defeat, with the emergence of Vietnam as a pro-Moscow satellite, upset the balance of power in the region, and to offset it, Washington was forced to seek a rapprochement with China. In due course the Communist regime was given diplomatic recognition, the trade embargo was lifted, President Nixon toasted Chairman Mao, and the CIA washed its hands of the 93rd. A twenty-year dream died.

  To the men of the 93rd this was a bitter blow, and the division began disintegrating. Some of its members turned to banditry, while others prepared to emigrate to Taiwan, now the seat of the Nationalist regime. But a group of young men managed to arrest the disintegration process by offering its members the prospect of another adventure, a much more profitable one this time.

  Until that moment the 93rd merely bought the opium from Montagnards for resale to Bangkok merchants. Now it went into the actual production of heroin. Not only that, it expanded into the other facets of the trade: shipping, packaging, distribution — even retailing with the creation of a chain of smoking dens.

  Finally it went international, creating subsidiaries on four continents. Tiger's huge money reserves — capital that it had accumulated over twenty years to buy the latest weapons when the big day came — gave the 93rd, now renamed Tiger Enterprises, a considerable edge over the competition. So did its military command structure. By the sixteenth year of operation, Tiger was the world's biggest heroin ring. In a business already noted for success stories, thanks mainly to a combination of liberal laws and public inertia, Tiger managed to outshine them all.

  Now it was Bolan's intent to put an end to that success story. But he would do it his own way, fired by personal feelings. The site was surrounded by two wire fences, both electrified, separated by a mine strip. Behind the fences at regular intervals were sandbag emplacements with mortar, and turrets with arc lights and machine guns. And there was only one entrance: the iron gates.

  Out of his haversack, Bolan brought a pad and pencil and began sketching the site. First he drew a general map, then proceeded to sketch the individual targets. With the Meo one had to be strictly visual. You could tell a GI his target would be a three-story building with chimneys, but not the Meo. Their language had no term for chimney — in Meo huts the smoke went out through a hole in the roof — and the Meo did not understand the concept of multistory building. Similarly, in marking distance between targets, Bolan marked them as so many hut lengths apart. The Meo did not know meters or yards, but counted length in huts for short distances, while long distances were counted by how many cigarettes one smoked en route.

  The sketching over, Bolan designated the targets. There were three primary targets, one in the industrial sector and two in the residential area.

  In the industrial sector the primary target was the administration building. Not only did it contain the communications center that Tiger could use to summon help, the basement housed Tiger Enterprises' worldwide files. As soon as the building was secured, a helicopter would come to transport the files to a ship in the Andaman Sea. There they would be sifted, and pertinent information would be passed on to Washington for immediate exploitation. On four continents, agents of the NSA and the Drug Enforcement Administration were standing by to strike against Tiger.

  The two primary targets in the residential section were the home of Tiger's president, Colonel Liu Hsiao, and a two-story guest villa that was housing Tiger's fourteen directors while they attended the company's annual meeting. The strike had been planned to coincide with the meeting. All fifteen men were to be executed by Bolan. Personally. It was that kind of war. The enemy would understand no other.

  "I think we're going to get some entertainment," said Nark.

  On the parade ground soldiers were setting up chairs in a semicircle. Then from a nearby building came a group of men dressed in kendo uniforms. Each man carried a sword.

  "The man with the bandanna is Liu," said Nark.

  So this is the man who has vowed to turn America into a nation of junkies.... Bolan focused his field glasses on the Tiger president. Bolan always found it interesting to compare a gangster with what he had read about him, and in most cases the real thing was a disappointment, imagination inevitably being more romantic than reality. But not in this case. This man, Bolan decided, was every inch the prince of darkness. Handsome, athletic, he had deliberate movements and a commanding presence.

  What Bolan had read about Liu was this: Th
e son of General Liu, commander of the 93rd, now dead, Liu was educated in Japan in honor of his Japanese mother who died in childbirth. The mother was the daughter of a samurai, and in keeping with tradition, Liu was sent to one of those select boarding schools that still taught bunbu itchi, or pen-and-sword-in-accord, an ancient art that combined calligraphy with swordsmanship.

  He continued his education at a university in England. After being graduated with an engineering degree, Liu served as a soldier, leading parachute missions sponsored by the CIA on reconnaissance and spoiling raids in China. His grudge against the U.S. was said to date from those days. Liu felt the U.S. had sold out the Nationalists and exploited his father with false promises of a return to the mainland.

  Liu's dislike of America did not prevent him, however, from taking advantage of a CIA-sponsored grant to the Harvard Business School where he picked up the know-how for his subsequent successes.

  At Harvard Liu was remembered for his demonstrations of savate boxing, and for the subject of his master's thesis — the financial prospects of the illicit drug trade, a thesis his professors found amusing in its originality, not realizing Liu was having a laugh at them.

  Long before he went to Harvard Liu was already pushing for the transformation of the 93rd from a military to a commercial enterprise, arguing that fighting Communists was a waste of time and the U.S. would recognize the People's Republic of China sooner, or later. When subsequent events proved him right he automatically became head of Tiger Enterprises, and it was under his direction that the company had reached its heights.

  On the parade ground, meanwhile, the kendo masters had reached the area where the chairs had been set up. They stood around, seemingly waiting. One pulled his sword from his scabbard, and Bolan caught the glint of sun on steel. That surprised him. Normally in a kendo demonstration wood bokkens were used. There was also no evidence of the usual head guards, another indispensable item. Even a wood bokken could do considerable damage to a man.