Tiger War

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: The 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.

'What sort of contest is this?' Bolan wondered aloud.

'The headman said they hold fights until first blood, 'said Nark.

The waiting fighters turned toward the residential area, and Bolan looked in that direction. Coming out were Tiger's directors, middle-aged iron of various races dressed in sober suits, some with hats. What a respectable-looking lot, Bolan reflected. They could have been a group of United Nations diplomats. But he knew evil always wore a mask; in fact the bigger the evil, the more respectable the mask.

Bolan recognized one of the directors as Jack Fenster. He was a distinguished-looking man, impeccably dressed, the sort of man people admired. He was a Wall Street financier who lived in Summit, New Jersey, where he had a palatial home, nice wife and children, belonged to the right clubs, pumped iron at the YMCA twice a week and attended church every Sunday.

Fenster was Tiger's laundryman in New York; he invested the profits from the narcotics operation in North America. Operating by remote control, protected by a battery of highly paid lawyers, Fenster was untouchable. Nothing could be proved against him.

The reason Bolan knew of Fenster was that he was the subject of a hush-hush study by the Drug Enforcement Administration that Bolan had read. The study pointed out a dangerous trend in U.S. society. A growing number of rich, supposedly respectable people were becoming involved in the narcotics trade not for the money, but for the life-style it provided.

What organization could offer its members such unusual and varied experiences as group sex in Manhattan with ten-year-olds, boys or girls, a Black Mass in the heart of Rome, gladiatorial combat in central Africa between men and pythons, or pursuing headhunters in remote regions of Brazil? As the author of the study pointed out, for the man who has everything, Tiger offered the ultimate in escape from boredom.

The directors reached the parade ground and took seats. Two kendo masters stepped before them, Liu and a huge Chinese man with a shaved head. They bowed to the spectators, then bowed to each other. They drew swords and the contest began. Holding their weapons with both hands in an extended position, the men circled, feet moving sideways, watching each other across the tips of their blades, ki flowing out, each man waiting for the other's concentration to waver, for his ki to flag, so he could move in and fill the void.

'When are they going to start fighting?' said Nark, impatient for action.

'They are fighting,' Bolan replied, his eyes glued to the field glasses. 'They are fighting with their minds.''

'Eee-yiii!'

The attack cry rose from the parade ground, and the bald giant charged, sword raised. Liu watched him come, immobile. Only at the last moment did he move, parrying with a hold-down-a-shadow sweep of the sword. The giant retreated and Liu followed him with a slash across the abdomen. A long tear appeared in the giant's shirt,