Don Pendleton - Tiger War

"Arty, arty, all four tubes lock into number three! Number three down ten. All four go!"

A cluster of bombs warbled overhead. The inside of the tree line lit up with orange explosions. The machine gun positions disintegrated, arms and legs flying through the air.

"Bingo!"

"Ayu!"

A mass of black riders poured through the gates. They fanned out into the hardsite, heading for their assigned targets. Many horses carried two men apiece, miniature gun platforms flying through the night, the rider shooting to the right, the passenger to the left.

A group of riders with pack animals stopped by Bolan. Nark and Stressner were among them. They had brought a spare horse for Bolan with a pepesha attached to the saddle. Bolan mounted, and the group galloped off in the direction of the industrial sector.

Three abreast they thundered down an alley bordered by opium warehouses, the area dark and deserted. But not deserted enough. A squad of Tiger troops appeared, running for the parade ground. The three white riders rose in their saddles, and the perforated barrels of their pepeshas flickered flame. The squad scattered and the riders flew by.

They crossed a square, turned some corners, and the administration building came into view. Muzzles flashed from open windows. But there was no stopping Bolan now. He had neither the time nor the energy to work out some clever, safe way of taking the building. Horses tumbled, men died, but the charge continued.

One of the windows was closed and in darkness. Bolan steered his mount for it. At the last moment, still on the gallop, he jumped to the ground, bounced, and crashed through the window amid flying glass. The rest of the force followed in his wake, into the office, out into the corridor, some going left, others to the right, shooting up everything in sight.

Within minutes the building was secured. The Tiger communication center was theirs. So was the gold and, most important of all, so were Tiger's international files.

It was a veritable Ali Baba's cave. In the files were the names of every Tiger agent and contact around the world. There were names of shippers, importers, distributors, lists of companies that laundered the money, who invested what and where, the numbers of secret bank accounts, names of paid politicians, crooked cops, enforcers, and district managers. A wealth of data.

One filing cabinet contained all the smuggling networks and the methods used to smuggle heroin into the U.S. In Amsterdam the heroin was inserted into the rectums of airline flight attendants. From Marseilles it was imported inside blocks of marble. Hong Kong sent it in cans of litchi nuts. Colombia dropped it offshore in shallow waters.

"We really hit the jackpot," said Bolan.

"About time," said Nark.

"Got 'em!" shouted Stressner.

The room filled with the crackle of the Crypton as Stressner began transmitting material already penciled by Nark. Bolan's and Nark's eyes met, and Bolan gave him a thumbs-up. For both it was a triumphant moment. After all they had been through, the ups and downs, the nerves, the lack of sleep, and in Bolan's case, the severe pain he still carried... finally, the payoff.

Bolan imagined the scene at the other end, the Stony Man Farm radio room triple-staffed for the occasion, April in command, the hustle and bustle as the incoming messages were decoded and passed on to the appropriate offices.

The radio blared, "Colonel, come quick!" It was Vang Ky. "We found the fish. In the refinery."

"They've located the management!" Bolan shouted to Nark and ran out.

He came out of the building, mounted his horse, and galloped through the dark, deserted alleys. There had hardly been any fighting in the industrial sector. It was all taking place in the residential part. Bolan could hear mortar warble overhead as artillery gave support. The sky over the residential section glowed with fires.

The refinery milled with Montagnards wandering between rows of vats steaming with frothy liquids that workmen were stirring. Vang Ky ordered the night shift to carry on for the education of the troops. For most of them, it was their first opportunity to see what happened after they sold their harvest.

One of Vang Ky's assistants led Bolan through the crowd past the steaming vats to the foot of a staircase. It was here that the action was taking place. The steps were littered with bodies of Montagnards shot by Tiger troops occupying the landing above. Now Bolan understood why the main body of the assault force was on R&R. There was no room in the stairway for more than a handful.

"They are on the third floor," Vang Ky reported.

Bolan unslung his submachine gun and climbed the stairs cautiously, followed by Vang Ky and some Montagnards. He came to a corner, took a dead man's beret, and placed it on the muzzle. He stuck the beret around the corner. A bullet sang past, and Bolan withdrew.

"We'll have to try something else," he said.

"I say we burn them," said Vang Ky.

"I want them alive," said Bolan.

A metal object bounced down the stairway. "Grenade!" shouted Vang Ky, and the recon party descended frantically to the ground floor. But it was only a metal cap.

From the landing above, a voice laughed. "Fooled you, eh? Next time it will be for real."

A Montagnard ran up the stairs and let off an angry burst from his AK-47. From the landing an M-16 replied.

"Colonel, what are we going to do?" asked Vang Ky.

"I'm thinking, Major," said Bolan, eyeing the elevator. The car was on the ground floor, the door open. Inside stood a wheelbarrow with a load of brown jelly, raw opium.

"Colonel, we cannot send men in the elevator," said Vang Ky. "They will be killed before they open the gate."

"I wasn't thinking of sending men, Major." Bolan pulled up the aerial on his radio. "Phoenix to Pincus."

"Pincus," replied the copilot of the Ilyushin. A former navy SEAL, Bolan had put him in charge of dynamiting.

"Where are you?"

"Mining the warehouses."

"I got a target and I need some explosive. Send me a couple of kilo. I'm in the refinery."

"Any particular sort?"

"Give me a mixture. And I'll need caps, wire and a bravo mama."

"Coming up."

Bolan told Vang Ky his plan. "The explosive will be here in a few minutes."

"You're a man of imagination, Colonel," said Vang Ky. In the same breath he added, "When can we have our gold?"

Flattery won't get you anywhere, guy, Bolan thought. "When the fighting's over," he replied.

They lit up cigarettes and waited for the dynamite, watching the work around them. From where they stood Bolan could see several processes going on at once. In one section opium was being boiled with water and lime to extract the morphine. In another the morphine was being solidified with ammonia. Farther on, beyond drying and filtering machines, stood rows of vats with thermometers where morphine was being dissolved in acetic anhydride to bond chemically into diacetylmorphine, the chemical name for heroin.

"Very interesting," said Vang Ky, nodding at the activity.

"Yeah," said Bolan. "Deadly, too."

"What happens in the laboratories behind the partition?"

"That's where the heroin's purified and solidified," Bolan replied. "Before you get the final product there are four or five stages through which the crude heroin must go. You must treat the heroin with chloroform, sodium carbonate, charcoal, hydrochloric acid, ether. Then you have something that will destroy the body as surely as viper's venom. But it looks harmless, just a white powder."

"Complicated business," said Vang Ky, sucking his teeth.

A stir by the door told Bolan his goodies had arrived. Two Montagnards appeared carrying sacks. Bolan emptied the contents. The explosive came in bricks that carried such names as Plastite and Nepolit, Pirkinsaure and Ammon Saltpeter, and Sprengmunition 02.