Tiger War by Don Pendleton

might have discovered the wreckage and be following our trail."
    They came to the horses and drank some water from their saddle canteens. They untied the animals and mounted.
    "Maiouk!"
    From the undergrowth around them rose soldiers, pointing weapons. They were surrounded by at least thirty guns. Following Nark's example, Bolan raised his hands. He would not fight if it endangered an ally.

Chapter 6
    Flanked by their captors, hands tied behind their backs, cords around their necks, Bolan and Nark were trotted past rows of coconut palms. The sun was going down and they had been on the road for over six hours. All of them, prisoners and captors, were tired and covered with dust. Just why they were being taken to this plantation instead of the hardsite was not clear, but Bolan suspected it might have something to do with the annual meeting. White men as prisoners would lead to questions. No doubt Liu preferred his directors not to know of the recent goings-on. That would be bad for company morale.
    They rode up to the plantation house, and the commander dismounted. An overly made-up middle-aged woman in a cheongsam came onto the verandah and he talked to her. Equally over-painted but younger women appeared at the windows, and there was a great deal of banter between them and the soldiers, as well as ogling and giggling in Bolan and Nark's honor. White men might have lost the Vietnam War, but they were still number one as far as the bar girls of Southeast Asia were concerned.
    The commander saluted the
mama-san,
remounted, and the troop trotted on. They went through the plantation yard and came to a long building that had once been a stable but was now used as living quarters and storage. Through the open doors of the pens Bolan could see rice sacks in some, and beds and clothes in the others. Two were empty, and it was into them that Bolan and Nark were led.
    A soldier untied Bolan's hands, another brought a bucket and a ground mat. The door shut and a bar went across it. The troop rode off, leaving a guard pacing outside. Bolan looked around. He was in a rectangular cubicle with an earthen floor and wood walls. The pen was dark and gloomy, the only light coming from a grille in the rear wall. He went to it and tried the metal bars. It was solid. So were the walls and so was the ceiling. He unrolled the mat and sat down, leaning his back against a wall. In this position he took stock of their new situation.
    They were in a real bind, he acknowledged. Tomorrow night the planes would come, there would be no one to give the ground recognition signal, and they would fly away without making the drop. A couple of days later an agent would arrive to investigate. When he learned they were prisoners he would try to organize a rescue. But would the headman agree to another mission on credit? Unlikely. The agent would have to ask Stony Man Farm for a money-drop. And more days would go by.
    Of course, Lady Luck might intervene, and he and Nark might get the opportunity to escape, but that was a big if. A professional fighter could not base strategy on chance and luck; he had to face reality, which was that Tiger would have a week to work on them.
    A week. A wink in time when you were sitting on a beach in the Caribbean, but in a torture chamber it was an eternity. And what if one of them broke? This time Tiger would have the advantage of working on two men at once, playing off information gained from one against the other, demoralizing them with conflicting testimony.
    It was too bad they had not had the opportunity to agree on a common story. The one and only time they tried to talk during the march, they were whipped. Now it was too late. Nark's cell was at the other end of the stable. In order to avoid giving conflicting testimony, one man had to clam up completely and refuse to talk no matter haw painful the consequences. And Bolan knew who that man would have to be. Nark might or might not decide on a similar approach; a soldier could