American Gangster by Max Allan Collins

automatic weapons through jungle dense as a pussy patch. Funny thing was, he was enjoying himself, arrayed with pistol, rifle and ammo bandolier like a bronze Pancho Villa.
    Days had passed since he’d sold Nate on the plan. They’d ridden in trucks and on boats and up and down every damn river in the Golden Triangle, as far as he could tell. And now they were about to arrive at the opium farm where Frank would do the deal that would change everything back home, that would make Bumpy Johnson a footnote in the Frank Lucas story.
    If Frank didn’t get himself killed, instead.
    Right now they were under a pleasantly cooling canopy of foliage thick enough to blot out the sun. He could see the sunlight ahead, the light at the end of this tunnel, and when the canopy finally opened up, Frank Lucas found himself breathing in a syrupy sweet scent and staring down at a green-dotted-purple poppy field the size of Manhattan.
    They stopped here and Nate had a confab with a Thai mercenary in the native gibberish. Frank waited for Nate to translate.
    â€œHe says,” Nate said, “this whole area’s controlled by the Kuomintang—Chiang Kai-Shek’s army.
Defeated
army. . . .”
    Frank nodded. “They’re on guard down there.” He’d already spotted the Chinese soldiers with their outdated weapons. “But what about those boys—
they
ain’t Chinese.”
    He was indicating a handful of white sentries in camouflage jumpsuits, Americans probably, with weapons that were real up-to-date.
    Nate said, “CIA, likely.”
    â€œIs that a problem?”
    â€œI don’t know. Let’s see.”
    Nate dispatched the Thai he’d spoken to before, sending him down to talk to the Chinese guerrillas, having no idea how the American spooks would figure in.
    But all went well. Before long Frank and Nate were in a natural cavern the size of an airplane hangar, which Frank gathered was a major processing center. In this rocky cathedral, Frank and Nate used their Thai point man to translate a negotiation with what turned out to be a vanquished Chinese general.
    Not that this shit didn’t get tense: Thais with CIA advisors guarded Frank and Nate and their boy, while the Chinese and
their
CIA advisors guarded the guards.
    Pretty soon Frank found himself in a bamboo dwelling that was goddamn nice for a shack, sitting opposite the general at a desk where the mucky-muck sorted through Frank’s papers—passport, visa, bank receipts and the really important paper: cash. Lots and lots of cash. . . .
    The general had the kind of diamond-hard eyes that had seen everything (including lots of cash) before; and those eyes spent as much time examining Frank as they had the papers.
    â€œHow,” the general asked, as if inquiring about the weather, “would you get it into the States?”
    Frank’s kept his face as unreadable as the general’s. “What do you care?”
    The general responded with a question of his own: “Who do you work for where you come from?”
    â€œAgain,” Frank said, nonconfrontational but giving nothing, “why do you care?”
    The general shifted his chair. His mouth tightened; his eyes, too. “Who are you . . .
really?
”
    Frank nodded toward the passport and visa on the desk between them. “You read it. Says right there: Frank Lucas.”
    The general drew in a sharp breath. “I mean, who do you
represent
?”
    â€œFrank Lucas.”
    The general studied Frank some more, seemed to understand that he wouldn’t accomplish anything down this road, and let it go.
    The general said, “You think you’re going to take a hundred kilos of heroin into the United States, and you don’t work for anyone? You expect me to believe that?”
    â€œI don’t care what you believe.”
    â€œSomeone is going to
allow
you to do this?”
    Frank shrugged.
    The general glanced