Don Pendleton: Tiger War

They opened the mine office and carried in their gear. They lit a stove, cleared a table and started setting up the radio.

The radio was a Shashkov Mark II, a 1953 model, ancient, but the only Russian radio Stony Man Farm could lay its hands on. As with most old sets, it required a very long antenna.

They strung one hundred feet of wire between trees, attached it to the set and grounded it. They connected the Morse key and the earphones. Nark plugged the power lead into an overhead lamp socket, and Bolan switched on the set. The needle rose. Bolan took an earphone and tapped the key.

"Works? "asked Nark.

"Works," said Bolan.

"Toss you for who sends," said Nark, bringing out a fifty-satang coin.

"You send it," Bolan told him. "I'm not as good as the CIA with bugs."

The key was a semiautomatic transversal that was operated by moving it from side to side. A much faster key than the up-and-down one, it required considerable experience.

They pulled up chairs and sat down. Bolan began writing on a message pad. He wrote a sentence per page, handing the page to Nark for encoding. In the message, Bolan gave Stony Man Farm a sit-rep, requested the air drop and gave the coordinates for the drop zone.

As he was encoding the last page Nark said, "Wouldn't it be a good idea to ask for a team of Green Berets? They could help us lead the Meo. That Tiger hardsite won't be a walkover, and you know the Meo — they don't have much taste for protracted warfare. If the first assault fails, they're quite capable of packing up and going home. You and I can't be everywhere."

"There won't be any protracted warfare," Bolan replied. "Washington would never agree to troops. Troops leave bodies, and one of the stipulations on this mission is no sign of U.S. involvement. Why do you think we're playing at being Russians? If the Thais ever found out we staged a covert mission on their territory they'd pull out of SEATO. We can't afford that. You're acting typically CIA. I'm more modest, like the Meo. By the way, how many people know who we really are?''

"Only Vang Ky," said Nark. "All the other headmen have been told it's a Russian job, not that they care who's behind it as long as it gives them a chance to settle a score with the Chinese. They really hate the Chinese."

"Well, they've been fighting them for close to four thousand years," said Bolan.

"Mind you, we're not all that popular either," said Nark. "Some of the things I've heard the Meo say about us made me glad I was a KGB and not a CIA agent."

"That's not surprising either," said Bolan. "Not after Nam. If I were a Meo, I'd be a rabid anti-Yankee. We used them, then dumped them. It was criminal."

"I don't know about that," said Nark pensively. "I don't think we used them any more than they used us. They weren't in that war exactly for altruistic reasons. You know what Vang Jay told me once? Thanks to the Americans, the Meo now have a big enough army to drive the Lao into the Mekong. That was Vang Jay's plan for the postwar period — turn Laos into a Meo kingdom. I think you..."

The horses' neighing sent Bolan crashing through the door. As he came out, a man in a black Montagnard suit detached himself from under the window and fled down the slope. Bolan took off after him, pursuing him into the trees.

The Montagnard swerved like a rabbit, running this way and that, then he streaked for something white. A horse.

Bolan run full tilt, catching up as the Montagnard was about to mount the horse. He grabbed him by the shoulders, and they crashed to the ground. The horse took off, and Bolan and the Montagnard rolled, thrashing in the undergrowth.

A knife appeared in the Montagnard's hand. Bolan grabbed the man's wrist, his other hand going for the man's throat. The Montagnard twisted and turned, his free hand clawing at Bolan's face. But Bolan held on, and the man's movements weakened. Then he began kicking the way men do when they're being strangled.

"Surrender!" Bolan hissed in Meo.

"I surrender," the man wheezed.

Bolan released his hold on the man's throat. In return he got a punch in the head from the guy's hand, which held a rock. He fell to the ground, blood flowing from his head, but he retained his grip on the man's wrist. A moment later he was back on top again, and this time he did not release the pressure on the man's throat.

The knife fell; the Montagnard was dead.

Bolan found his head scarf, which had come off during the fight, shouldered the corpse, and walked back. So he had been right after all, he reflected. There had been someone following them. Once again his senses had proved right, though this time it was more obvious; he had heard hoofbeats. Bolan still could not explain where his sense of danger on the DZ had come from. Perhaps he never would know, he told himself. Sometimes you just had to trust those age-old survival instincts and not think too much about them.

In the shack the dry, staccato sound of a Morse key filled the room. Nark was transmitting, earphones on his head, eyes concentrating on the columns of figures before him.

Bolan sat down to watch. The way Nark "wiggled the bug," as transmitting on a transversal was called, impressed him. Nark was so relaxed, yet at times the key blurred he moved it so fast.

There was a final, long trrrrr as Nark signed off. Immediately he pulled a pad and pencil toward him while his other hand went to press his left earphone so he could hear better.

Bolan guessed there must be a lot of static. He watched Nark write down a message. Bangkok told them to stand by for a reply in ten minutes.

On this mission all messages to Stony Man Farm were being routed via the U.S. embassy in Bangkok. The Shashkov was too weak a radio to transmit beyond Thailand.

Nark peeled off his earphones. "What happened?"

"He's outside."

They went out. "The shaman's son," Nark announced. "The man who gave me away."

"Did he speak English?"

"Fluently. Good job you got him. He would have told Tiger our entire plan." Nark looked at Bolan's head. "We'd better do something about that."

They found an outside tap, and Bolan washed the gash. Then they returned to the shack and Nark dressed the wound with a bandage from the first-aid kit Bolan carried in his haversack.

"We're getting to be quite a team," said Nark. "You pick locks to free me, I treat your wounds." He nodded at the first-aid kit. "You do come prepared, don't you?"

"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.