The Iron Tiger

The Iron Tiger
Jack Higgins

Classic adventure from the million copy bestseller Jack HigginsThe called it the Place of Silence: the last frozen barrier between Balpur and Tibet. An icy wilderness where desperate men made a living smuggling guns across the border.Even for the bravest, the luck has to run out…On what he thought would be his last flight, Jack Drummond found his own recipe for disaster. A deadly cargo of machine guns. A band of ruthless guerrillas. And a confrontation with the Chinese Reds, leaving no chance for escape…

JACK HIGGINS

THE IRON TIGER

Contents

Title Page (#uc5414db4-03b5-5d6f-bff2-0a9a4f120689)Publisher’s Note (#u345c6185-e1da-5f9b-9b4a-64625888add3)Dedication (#u14ca116d-5e80-57e0-82c9-b6477b466f2e)Foreword (#u36ab95d4-e9d7-53a6-89e9-bdc071842cab)Chapter One: The Place Of Silence (#u1ef4b861-69e3-5be8-a0c9-9e38b4b42088)Chapter Two: House Of Pleasure (#u3b0443bf-259b-5958-ad1d-be23e9e81f27)Chapter Three: The Nightwalkers (#u5266cc2c-b6e4-5ef4-99fd-1e5b4627669e)Chapter Four: The Last Place God Made (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Five: Dinner At The Palace (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six: Action By Night (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven: Edge Of The Sword (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight: Forced March (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine: Council Of War (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten: Nightwatch (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven: The Bridge At Sokim (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Twelve: The Long Night (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Thirteen: The Mountain Of God (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Fourteen: The Last Round (#litres_trial_promo)About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)Also By Jack Higgins (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

PUBLISHER’S NOTE (#u47efee06-3ab1-500a-a032-c0a73b7e79c5)

THE IRON TIGER was first published in the UK by John Long in 1966, then later by Signet books, but has been out of print for some years.

In 2008, it seemed to the author and his publishers that it was a pity to leave such a good story languishing on his shelves. So we are delighted to be able to bring back THE IRON TIGER for the pleasure of the vast majority of us who never had a chance to read the earlier editions.

For Brenda Godfrey who likes agood story

Foreword (#u47efee06-3ab1-500a-a032-c0a73b7e79c5)

India has always fascinated me, although I had not visited the country when I wrote The Iron Tiger. I have since, of course, and was delighted to find that, thanks to careful research, I had got it right. The period during which I wrote the book, the early sixties, was one in which the Chinese occupying power treated the Tibetan people with great brutality and many thousands of those unfortunates died. The Chinese invasion of India hardly made them popular in that country and, because of this, The Iron Tiger was a great success with Indian people. However, a strange thing happened. It made me, as the author, highly popular for a while as for some reason people believed that I had simply fictionalised a true story about myself and that the events of the book had actually taken place.

Jack HigginsJuly 1996

1 (#u47efee06-3ab1-500a-a032-c0a73b7e79c5)

The Place of Silence

Beyond the mountains, the sky was sapphire and blue, a golden glow spreading across the ice caps as the sun slowly lifted. Below, the valleys lay dark and quiet, the only sound the tiny, insignificant drone of the Beaver’s engine as it followed the maze through to Tibet.

Jack Drummond was tired and a slight dull ache behind his right eye nagged constantly. Too many late nights, too much whisky and he was getting old. Too old to be dicing in the worst flying area in the world at sixteen thousand feet in a non-pressurised cabin.

He turned to Cheung and grinned. ‘There’s coffee in a black flask under your seat. I could do with some.’

His companion was Chinese, but it was obvious that he had European blood. The eyes were startlingly blue in the bronzed, healthy face and his mouth lifted slightly in a quirk of ironic good humour.

He wore a heavy sheepskin coat and an astrakhan cap and shivered as he opened the vacuum flask and poured coffee into a plastic cup.

‘Is it always as cold as this?’

Drummond nodded. ‘The wind comes all the way from Mongolia. There have been times when it’s stripped pieces off the fuselage.’

Cheung peered down into the jagged valley below. ‘What would happen if the engine stopped?’

Drummond laughed harshly. ‘You’re joking, of course.’

Cheung sighed. ‘It becomes clearer minute-by-minute that you have been earning your money during the past six months.’

‘And perhaps a little more?’

The Chinese smiled amiably. ‘My dear Jack, in Formosa, we subsist almost entirely on the goodwill of our American friends. If it wasn’t for their generosity, we couldn’t even afford such minor gestures as this Tibetan venture.’

Drummond shrugged. ‘It doesn’t worry me. A couple more trips and I’m through. I’ve done this run too often. I’m on borrowed time.’

Cheung frowned. ‘But Jack, there is no one else. What will we do?’

‘There’s always someone else,’ Drummond said. ‘You’ll find him in one bar or another in Calcutta. Plenty of ex-R.A.F. types who can’t settle down or the other kind who’ve lost their licences to fly commercially. They’ll go anywhere if the money’s right.’

They moved on through a landscape so barren that it might have been the moon, great snow-covered peaks towering on either side. Drummond handling the plane with the skill of genius. Once they dropped sickeningly in an air pocket, and on another occasion flew along a canyon so narrow that the wingtips seemed to brush the rock face. Finally, they lifted across a snow-covered ridge and plunged into space.

Beneath them an enormous valley dropped ten thousand feet, black with depth, purple and gold, great shimmering banks of cloud strung across it in broken strands. Perhaps seven or eight miles away on the other side was the last frozen barrier between Balpur and Tibet.

The sound of the engine suddenly seemed strangely muted and Cheung sighed through the uncanny quiet. ‘The most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen.’

‘The Place of Silence, that’s what they call it,’ Drummond told him. ‘Used to take two days to get across on foot when caravans were still coming through.’

The Beaver seemed to glide on through the enormous blue vault, drifting through the shadows, and then they burst out into golden sunlight and the final barrier rose before them.

Drummond eased back the stick and the Beaver lifted, the sound of the engine deepening into a full-throated roar and a deep valley appeared between the peaks.

‘Sangong Pass,’ he called above the roar of the engine.

They swept into the pass, a brilliant red and gold leaf, bright against the dark walls, and the frozen earth rose to meet them. Drummond gave the Beaver full power and pulled the stick right into the pit of his stomach.

Cheung held his breath, waiting for the crash as they rushed to meet the skyline, wheels no more than ten feet above the boulder-strewn ground and then they were over the hump and flashing across a great, cold glacier.

Rolling steppes, golden in the morning sun, stretched to the horizon and Drummond grinned. ‘Now you know why I charge two thousand a trip.’

Cheung wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of a gloved hand and managed a weak smile. ‘I’m beginning to get the point. How much further?’

‘Ten or twelve miles, that’s all. Better get ready.’

The Chinese reached behind his seat for a sub-machine gun, cocked it and held it across his knees. As the Beaver descended, he could see a narrow river, brawling across a mass of tumbled boulders, widening into a shallow lake. A hundred yards to the left, sheltered against a rock escarpment, was a ruined monastery, a scattering of houses at its feet.

Drummond pointed to a wide sand flat at the far end of the lake. ‘That’s where we land if we get the signal.’

‘And if not?’

‘We get the hell out of here.’

He circled, coming in low across the lake, and Cheung pointed excitedly. ‘There are people down there, standing in the shallows.’

‘Women doing the washing,’ Drummond said and swung in across the village, turning away from the escarpment and the fire-blackened ruins of the monastery.

‘What happened there?’ Cheung demanded.

‘It was a headquarters for local resistance back in 1950 when the Chinese Reds first invaded Tibet. There was a siege for a couple of days, but it didn’t last long. They brought up a couple of field guns and blew the necessary holes through the walls.’