Three horses were tied by the bodhi tree, obviously for them. Two had saddles, while one carried Nark's radio and generator. From one of the saddles hung an M-16 with a canvas bandolier containing ammunition magazines, a weapon for Nark.
The headman came up. He glanced from the man with the mustache to the man with the ice-blue eyes. 'Tiger know?'
'No, they don't know,' said Bolan. 'We can still surprise them.'
'When come money and arms?' asked the headman.
'In two nights' time,' said Bolan.
The headman's tiny eyes held Bolan's. 'How you know?'
Bolan glanced at his watch. 'In two and a half hours, which is when our next radio transmission is, we will ask for an air drop.' He turned to Nark. 'Where should that drop be?'
'Valley of the Spirits,' replied Nark.
'We will tell our planes,' Bolan continued, 'to drop arms and money in the Valley of the Spirits the night after tomorrow. This is the earliest they can come. We will ask for the drop to be at midnight. You must send messengers to the villages to tell people that. They must be there to collect the drop.'
The headman grunted. 'We ride to village now?'
'You do,' said Bolan. 'Nark and I ride to reconnoiter the Tiger camp. I want to make a final check before we attack. Okay?'
'Okay.' The headman turned to the milling figures in the square and blew a whistle.
Watched by bonzes leaning from windows, the Montagnards headed for home. The Tiger War had begun.
Mack Bolan knew this would be a strange one. Drugs were a blatant form of terrorism, he understood that to the depths of his being, and the enemy was as clearly defined as ever. But to Bolan there were even more serious concerns in his recent life that seriously slewed the picture.
Increasingly he was aware of the potential for betrayal. At every turn, politics and nationalism muddied the clarity of the essential task: the clean versus the unclean. More and more he realized the dangers implicit in his hastily organized missions.
So it felt good to be a soldier in fatigues again. A soldier's kind of action was the best way to find out which of a guy's allies were for real. Bolan needed that.
He felt he was edging toward some terrible revelation now. He needed a soldier's faith to see it through. Yeah, this would be a strange one.
Chapter 4
The trio of horses wound its way through the cold, wet night. First came Nark, then Bolan, then the pack- horse. They moved slowly; rain had turned the trail slippery.
Bolan hissed for Nark to stop.
Nark reined his horse as Bolan drew alongside.
'I think we're being followed,' Bolan whispered. 'I'm sure I heard hoofbeats.'
They sat motionless, listening. The still jungle dripped with water. Far away a barking deer called.
'You're imagining things,' scoffed Nark.
'And was I imagining things when I parachuted into the DZ?' said Bolan. He twisted in his saddle and cocked an ear.
The horses tugged at the reins, trying to nibble the ferns bordering the trail. 'We'll miss the cast,' said Nark.
A gust of wind swayed the treetops, showering them with water. 'Okay, let's go,' said Bolan, and they resumed their journey.
A little later the trees thinned out, and they came to shacks and wheelbarrows. They dismounted and tied the horses to a wheelbarrow.
'I'll get the keys from the watchman,' said Nark.
'What is this place?' asked Bolan.
'A tin mine that went bust,' said Nark. 'The owners are in Bangkok looking for a buyer.' He went off, swallowed by the night.
Bolan waited, rubbing his arms for warmth. This detour would cost them a good hour, but it could not be helped. They needed shelter to transmit. It was too wet to send in the open air.
An electric generator broke the night's stillness, and lights came on everywhere. Now Bolan could see an entrance to a tunnel and a water tower.
Nark appeared, key ring in hand. 'Won't need to pedal the ge-gene tonight,' he said with a gesture at the lights.
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...'
