Business-life in Asia, as it was known, was about to transfer power from a number of players in the stakes of illegal ‘big business’ to a virtual monopoly. The players, all unrelated, would cross paths and lives in a tangled web of deceit, power struggles and mayhem across continents and throughout Asian cities.



The glint from the late afternoon sun reflected on the blued-steel barrel of a snipers rifle, the powerful scope with its cross hairs ready to sweep all before it into its deadly grid, its cross hairs framing the scene ready for death, as it waited silently for its target.

The view through the scope revealed a background of the sun falling on a glistening sea with its silvery path, pointing to where heaven and earth would swallow its increasing size as it turned to an orange ball, an unseen force dragging it to its oblivion at the horizon.

The last of the fishing boats headed East to the Gulf of Siam for the night’s work, silhouetted as they churned the waters to create a golden carpet, shimmering in the light breeze. The scene could not be calmer, giving no indication of the past carnage and the path to a future change in illegal power control of Thailand and its surround countries.

A slim silhouetted figure sat on a wide-topped Tuscany styled villa wall, high in the hills on the island of Koh Samui in Thailand. Looking out to sea, her feet dangled lazily, occasionally tapping the rendered wall or touching the ceramic quarry tiles. She was surrounded by three huge hand thrown earthenware pots, six feet in diameter sprouting Scarlet O’Hara bougainvillea, adding massive splashes of red and green colour under the shade of a row of Royal Cuban palms.

An exquisite creature, she wore a simple black miniskirt revealing her shapely legs, her skin the colour of honey and thin ankles, her right ankle adorned with a gold chain, her left, inked with a Phoenix tattoo. Ray Ban sunglasses protected her eyes, black as midnight and set slightly apart above high cheekbones. Her hair was brushed until it shone with its own radiance and her simple earrings of sapphires set in a circle of diamonds and a complementing identical choker piece highlighted her supple thin neck. She could feel the late afternoon sun warming her body in her peaceful reflection as she closed her eyes and absorbed the universal life giving property. She was inhaling the familiar smells of the outer Southern islands of Thailand, the salt on the breeze and the sweetness of the flowers surrounding her.

The frost on her champagne glass diffused her sight of the golden liquid with its unseen source of bubbles constantly rising in the glass, reminding her, it wasn’t always like this.

The hand belonged to Namfon. At 21, she was a petite 5-foot with a slim exotic figure and long dark hair, her features radiated against the sunset as she sat lost in thought, taking the occasional sip of the liquid. The tranquillity of the afternoon glow formed images in her mind. The game of life already had dealt her a poor hand but she had played it as a novice to the best of her ability and her present circumstances were not reflective of her past. The options afforded her had come at a terrible price and her maturity reflected a person far older than her tender years and stunning beauty. A tear broke loose from her eye and rolled slowly down across her honey coloured skin, dropping from her face to the outside of the champagne glass, joining beads of moisture as it dissipated, as she recalled her past five years.

Born on the island of Koh Samui in Southern Thailand, one of five daughters of a coconut and palm oil farmer, she smiled, remembering she had always been hungry as a child. Her present status, clothing and accessories, did not reflect the times when food was not always abundant. Despite the trials of her early childhood, her family had managed to provide a meagre existence and remain as one.

Her home had been a simple dwelling as she recalled the interference of the first time she had heard the term “Farang”1 when they had begun to inhabit the island. The early missionaries had limited success with their constant berating and intervention in the island’s Buddhist faith. Local monks had tolerated the zealous religious leaders and despite their continuing overbearing Christianity, they remained patient, providing solace and guidance to the local populace. Finally, the missionaries, unable to understand the simplicity of the Buddhist faith not requiring the fanaticism of Christianity, they had become disgruntled with the gentle people of Thailand and reluctantly drifted away to more ‘fertile’ lands where they could preach their hellfire and brimstone sermons and doctrines to more hapless people. With almost non-attendance by the local population in their Farang places of worship called churches, the missionaries re-thought their position and left. As always in the dense undergrowth of the tropics, the jungle overgrew their buildings very quickly, absorbing them back into the forests as if they had never really existed. Abandoned, they were stripped by the poor populace and recycled into other homes and businesses, with Mother Nature took care of the remainder.

In those early years, education had been merely a formality spoken of, a luxury early island families could ill afford. Unlike the palaces belonging to royalty in Bangkok and the Wats2, temples of worship with their gold encrusted figurines, food and incense offerings, good schools and education did not factor as a necessity for any family living on the outer islands of Thailand during the late 1950’s and early 60’s. Food was the only concern and the day’s activities revolved around the procurement of it.

After the massacre of the Chinese in Malaysia in 1969 and the separation of Malaya and Singapore, many Chinese Malaysians and ethnic Malay aboriginals fled to the relevant safety of the northern neighbours of Thailand, to the islands and sultanate regions of Southern Thailand, some even relocating themselves to the Philippines and Vietnam. The Islamic Malays had encroached across the border, with Islamic indoctrinations and teachings into Southern Thailand, settling amongst the passive Buddhist Thais. Initially they had been met with tolerance but as their Mullahs began heavily indoctrinating young Thai men with their easily manipulated minds, there had begun an underlying hatred towards these extremists. There were many clashes during those early years but the new interracial mix produced intelligent, good looking and skilled families.

Namfon’s father was ethnic dark skinned Malay and Chinese mix, his parents having been born in Sibu on the northern side of Sarawak, East Malaysia. Her mother was a Thai national from Na Bon near Nakhon Si Thammarat. She had all her mother’s traits and a beautiful and happy child. Her family were close in those early years and had decided to settle on the island of Koh3 Samui. Their dwelling had been a small thatched roofed Thai hut with unglazed windows, simple wooden shutters hinged at the top, held out away from the building by a bamboo pole. There were sufficient breezes in the hills to keep air moving, allowing relief from the normally warm and humid climate. The hut had a well-kept dirt floor with an open fire for cooking. Smoke from the fire doubled as a deterrent to the relentless mosquitoes during the night when the air was still and during the wet monsoon seasons between May and October.

She remembered her father’s long periods of absence as a fisherman between the coconut, taro and rubber harvests. The plantations did not always provide a living, especially in the wet seasons. If her father had not been out fishing seas in the old rotting timber vessels with their colourfully painted stripes and figureheads, sometimes away for weeks at a time when the agricultural harvest were not plentiful, the family would not have survived. During his absence, the main priority of the day was collection of the meagre staples and preparation of meals, an all day affair. The youngest of five daughters, her elder sisters collected spices and herbs whilst the rest of the family rummaged for ginger root and coriander leaves, to be sold or exchanged for the ever-present Asian staple, rice. Fish were always a delicacy and often part of the family diet when her father brought back the catch. They had always looked forward to the large fresh reef fish and the smells of their preservation over smoke fires for later meals, mixed in delicious spices.

Life had gone on in general ease, albeit monotony, until one afternoon at the end of the monsoon season when Mother Nature wrought havoc on the tiny mid Southern islands and its inhabitants.

Namfon walked along the markets of Chaweng Beach, walking amongst the thatched roof corrugated iron stalls, held together in support from one to the other by flax and vine bark ropes, the corrugated iron partitions holding up rattan shafts to support not only the roofs but the produce and goods being sold. Fresh produce hung from the roof batons and colourful fruits adorned the upturned baskets used to carry them to market. She loved the markets and ran happily with her sisters in her freshly washed white shirt and cotton skirt, her hair tied back in a ponytail. As she walked amongst other less fortunate people, despite their obvious lack of good fortune, all were in immaculately clean clothes even if they were threadbare. She unconsciously noted their worn clothes and bare feet, not with disdain or contempt, but with the unquestioning acceptance of youth and the Buddhist way of life of her upbringing, allowing her to observe circumstances that did not warrant further thought or pity. Karma from past lives dictated ones existing circumstances, always.

The smells of the market were always enticing with the hawker-stalls providing spicy delicacies of chicken kebabs roasting on open coals and curries, jasmine rice, fresh coriander sprinkled over sweet chillies and the sweet smell of the freshly cut coconuts with their delicious juices and the never ending burning incense sticks for the Buddhists. Fresh cut flowers added colour to the enormous visual impact.

This particular morning the wind had been blowing strongly and the usual smells were all but lost. She remembered seeing the palm trees bending as if to give homage to an unseen god, as the wind continued to grow in strength with the odd coconut being launched from the cluster of pods, dropping dangerously amongst the unsuspecting villagers below. The villagers in the tropics learned at an early age to keep clear of coconut trees during high winds and storms, with many having been concussed and even killed from the falling missiles, their skulls crushed by direct hits. Rubbish scurried along the dirt streets and children hung on to their parent’s hands, as the occasional gust of wind would push over an unsuspecting child not held by its mother.

Her mother had needed to buy some fish, as her husband had not returned home from the weeks fishing trip with the usual catch. Sometimes he would travel as far as Sibu, Bintulu and Miri and as far as the Shell oilfields along the North coast of Sarawak near Brunei. His delay was not unexpected.

In the village, old hagged croons had been foretold for weeks, to all who would listen, of some impending disaster and there was general unease in the village ‘though no one could really say what it was’. As Namfon walked through the stalls, her mother rummaged for small change to pay the fish merchant when she heard the low, eerie sound. She could not easily identify it above the melee of the shouting merchants and hawkers but with some trepidation, did not take any notice until she saw the local animals making a great ruckus. Dogs, normally playful and barking were now whimpering, pulling at their rope tethers, birds were flying skywards despite the gusting winds and the caged chickens were flapping their crushed wings vainly against their bamboo bars, screeching as the noise encroached on all who began to hear it.

The sun was now just above the horizon, about to join the two bodies and the former about to become one massive liquid pool dissolving into the Gulf of Thailand. The previously silhouetted fishing boats were no longer visible in the afternoon sun as she looked towards the sunset through her bone-rimmed Ray Ban sunglasses. She remembered the changes that happened, setting her on a path to her present circumstances. In thought, her emotions now surfacing, another tear rolled down her beautiful cheek, holding for a split second until it finally dropped, falling onto the condensation and merging as it rolled down the crystal of the champagne glass.

There was a huge cacophony of sound, rushing water, wind and rain. The few fishing vessels that had been at sea were being pushed before the winds. Her father had been on deck since early morning, two hours before the sun came up, peering out to sea on his watch, as the boat floundered, barely maintaining steerage, lost in the grey forbidding dawn. The old diesel motor had been running all night in its monotonous chug-chug as the sails had eased its forward burden. The old ropes trying to hold the remnants of the woven canvas sail, zigzagged with countless stitched repairs, had all but been reduced to flapping threads yet again. The canvas had split yet again, despite having already been sewn by his blistered bleeding hands that once again were painfully undertaking the useless task, he continued without complaint. The salt spray burned his deep cuts, blisters and needle pricks in his hands as the wind howled even louder through the rigging, the noise and velocity rising still.

He was more determined after quickly lowering the main sail leaving the last untorn storm jib to provide nothing more than holding steerage, as he pulled out his last remaining, almost blunt, curved bone needle from under his shirt collar. With bleeding fingers, he began the task he had done already many times through the night whilst the helmsman tried valiantly to hold a steerage course as the small vessel ran before the wind.

The once smooth swells had become a huge running sea, the wind blowing white caps from the top, the spray stinging his eyes and making the needle slippery to hold. The wiry helmsman was doing everything he could, to hold the tiny vessel on a line to bring the boat and its three-man crew, back to the safety of the coral lagoon on the Eastern side of Koh Samui. Neither the helmsman nor her father could see land despite it being only four miles ahead. The helmsman had been navigating on instinct alone.

The wind rose higher yet again, the sun having disappeared yesterday and only the rolling clouds and growing light reflected the receding night to the storm-filled day. Despite the time being 9:30 a.m., the light was subdued as if dawn had just broken. Her father shivered involuntarily, not from the cold wind ripping icily at his back, but at something he could not explain and did not know he was about to experience.

Thirty minutes earlier, to the East of the Gulf of Siam, some sulphurous bubbles had exploded to the surface. The oil companies had been drilling the ocean floors of North of Brunei in their quest for the ‘black gold’ for many years and the needle like cores had greatly weakened the substrata. Only weeks before a number of shifts had caused pressure points to snap the frail links to the surface and had caused three offshore wells to be shut down to minimise the environmental damage of the leaking crude across the ocean. Unfortunately the line of the wells had been across a fault and the wedge-splitting affect had become the catalyst with an enormous push by the huge pressure of the ocean floor and the tectonic plates shifting as the world took another moment in time to adjust its shape from the tremendous forces within. The result had been a burst of energy equivalent to mega tons of explosives and the ‘slip’ had caused a huge surge in the South China Sea in the direction of the coastal districts of Thailand’s Southern provinces from Pattaya all the way around to Hua Hin, and as far South as Nakhon Si Thammarat and the islands in its path.

As the surge moved at a horrendous pace and the land became shallower towards Thailand, the ocean surge began to compress as it was forced upwards. The mass of tons of water had now pushed upwards of seventy feet and was travelling at speeds incomprehensible to the lowly victims it was about to hit.

Simultaneously both the helmsman and her father looked back and their hearts froze as a wall of water, higher than any of the mountains they had ever seen, spread from one side of their sight to the other. The tiny vessel began to be drawn towards the wall of water as the water trough in front of the tidal wave, became one with it. The boat was now rising, carrying its terrified occupants towards its breaking peaks as they began to be overtaken by this massive moving mountain of water. They had never seen any such waves other than the small island swells with occasional storm surfs, turning over gently against the shells along the shore line, running over children’s feet along the beautiful aqua waters of Koh Samui. This behemoth was beginning to curl over as the seabed rose towards the surface, compressing the wave upwards even further, until it began to topple whence the little boat was now being swept towards its fate as the noise of the exploding water began to drown out the terrified screams of the boat’s occupants.

The boat became airborne as it was hit by the first mountain of water, cascading it down the face of the breaking tidal wave. It turned sideways abeam to the wall of water and began rolling over. The cascading grey-green wave forced the vessel against the solid wall of water snapping the mast cleanly from the deck on the first turn, its twisting spars impaling the helmsman tearing a hole in his stomach as the water spun the debris around against the man’s screams and his departing entrails.

Her father had involuntarily ducked at the sound of the snapping mast, avoiding the swinging timber as it fell and was now clinging to some hardware, old wooden pulleys the size of coconut shells with metal runners, attached to the deck and a large rusting cast iron cleat. The boat rolled only once before he too was thrown into the churning waters. The boat, now fully on its side skidding down the face of the wave, was breaking up with the debris being sucked back upwards again towards the top of the wave, the peak continuing to break as the rising bottom from the fathoms below, was continuing to causing the peak to collapse. The wave was now within two miles of shoreline.

The wave suddenly compressed even more violently against an outer reef before the island causing the peak to surge skyward as if some giant hand had pushed upwards from the now shallow depths. It picked up the remains of the old fishing boat, rolling its shattered hull over dropping its remains directly onto her father. He was crushed in an instant, under the breaking timber and the old burning deck mounted hot diesel motor, as the weight of the motor tore the engine mounts from the hull. It crushed his body as it was pushed down to corals pierced by a thousand sharp edges. His eardrums burst with the pressure but it did not matter as he was dead from the first impact as the weight of the motor crushed his chest, disintegrating his ribs, one of which had pierced his lungs and heart. His flesh was burnt from his body by the upturned motor, which only seconds before, had been running at peak revs and now poured its boiling oil onto her father. The oil exposed the crushed and broken bones of his body, instantly cooking the flesh in the split second before the water doused him.

In an eon of time, he was gone, to become the second unrecorded statistic of the dreadful day about to unfold.

The wind vacuum created by the giant movement of the wave became cyclonic and hit with such force the air compression created by the vortex of the howling winds took away the breath of the peasants along the beachfront stalls of Chaweng Beach. Produce, stalls and bodies were mixed as one as the wailing pitiful humanity became a part of the many victims of the force of Nature.

The sky had been growing darker and the wind was now at gale strength, blasting anywhere from spasmodic gusts to a constant howling pitch. As the stalls were blown before it, Namfon became separated from her sisters and mother. She was and had been very independent by ten and despite her lack of education she understood exactly what was happening and what she should do. Her instincts took over as she remembered her grandparents’ tales of the wrath of Nature and the occasional Tsunamis that hit the islands of a country called Japan. They had never been known to form this far South especially along the calm waters of the Gulf of Siam or the South China Sea. The farmers had always scorned the villages and the itinerant workers for building their dwellings along the beachfronts, preferring to reside in the safety of the hills and tend their plantations in an almost colonial atmosphere. Despite her own home being in the hills of the island, she was nowhere near the safety her home could afford.

Having been subjected to high winds and smaller cyclones throughout their past, the hillside farmers had constantly warned beach dwellers of the possibility of high tides and the probable loss of their homes. They had been ignored so many times previously, it was now with some satisfaction, the hillside dwellers realised this cyclone was going to teach the ignorant beach people a lesson. They had observed the rising winds and having the advantage of their elevation were able to look outwards to sea and observe the changing weather to be able to batten down long before the weather became a threat. Few had thought or in fact had any inclination to try to warn the beachfront people. It was always best to keep to oneself. They sat in awe as they witnessed the huge wave heading to the beach, helpless to do anything other than observe the destruction about to unfold.

For the beach dwellers, this rushing airwave was different. There was no warning of the condensation forming from the humidity from the land mass being forced skyward so rapidly, and rising convection was turned into rain as the cooler temperature varied from that of the warmer ocean. The newly formed rains fell and were driven horizontally, blasted by the winds, hitting the fleeing people, immediately blinding them. The noise Namfon heard was a combination of the moving wall of the wave combined with the blasting rainwater as it hit the sea and now the land, preceding the huge wave. She, like those around her, was blinded by the stinging horizontal rains so she simply ran away from the beachfront trying to leave the direction of the source of what she thought, was a storm.

As if driven by a sixth sense she ran diagonally away from the beachfront and away from the path of the rain. In the dense sheets of rainwater her vision was extremely limited and she stumbled, falling on a rising knoll, she recognised the hill leading to Ban Lamai on the other side of the island they had descended that morning, to come to the markets. Realising instinctively she had to reach higher ground than the beachfront stalls she had just run from, she now half staggered and stumbled with exhaustion, upwards to what she thought she could make out as the road.

Her surroundings now were very dark, the driving rain swirling and the wind tearing her clothes from her body. She could taste the salt spray of the water from the bay being whipped along by the wind. This immediately scared her as she knew she was well above the level of roof height of the beachfront houses and the spray must have come from waves down in the bay, which was normally as flat as a lake inside the reef. The scream of the wind was so high she knew she needed to find shelter from the storm quickly.

The terrified villagers had long since ceased running past her direction. She was alone with only the terrifying sounds of what she thought, was a storm. She looked ahead up the rising land into the swirling rains and saw the old Howitzer gun monument from the Second World War on its embankment overlooking the lagoon. She was about sixty feet above the sea now so decided to take shelter as soon as she could. She could hear the roar of the coming wave making itself known and even though she was unaware of the source of the increased sound, she instinctively felt it her immediate necessity to survive.

The only thing holding the torn remnants of her clothing was a frayed hemp rope around her waist she used as a belt. She struggled towards the gun and crouched in the lee of its shrapnel shield against the force of the wind as close as she could. With one hand hanging on to the gun barrel, holding on for grim death, she used the rope to secure herself to the gun and prayed for strength to her Lord Buddha.

At that same moment, the Tsunami hit the outer reef. The corals exploded as the force of the seventy-foot high wall of water pushed over the reef. The continental shelf collapsed under thousands of tons of the cascading water as the wave temporarily stalled in swirling confusion, slipping back into the depths of the Gulf of Siam. The opening created by the slipping seabed below caused the wall of water to rise vertically and drop back, as the sudden hole drew the torrent downhill. The water in the lagoon was immediately sucked out to sea as the bay emptied, leaving the remaining vessels that had not broken free from their flimsy anchorage, lying on the sandy flats and the occasional muddy sections. The less fortunate vessels who had broken loose were now about to become part of the colossus of matter impounded in the mass of water that again, began to rise as the sea boiled up from the depths. For just a moment, the remaining anchored vessels lying on their sides looked as if there were simply resting at an extremely low tide.

As with all waves, the out running water had now turned and held the added debris from the lagoon, all caught up in its massive soup. It held a mass of cutting edges from the broken corals and the harbour debris of broken and twisted vessels. The sheer force of the push of miles of water and a billion tonnes following behind the now brown mass quickly forced the water back to its breakneck speed again and began to form peaks filled with rubble, as the wave once more compressed against the shallower depth of the lagoon before the beach. The only saving grace that day was the run of the water for a mile from the reef to the beach. The wave broke down to half its height over that distance and in the process, halved its speed. The old fishing vessels left lying on the flats were crushed in its path, the noise becoming unbearable as they exploded like so many matchsticks, before the rushing mass.

The chards of broken corals, the boat debris, seaweed and the water, hit the normally white beach with such force, it immediately stripped away the sand to bare black volcanic rocks, which had lain hidden for centuries. The rocks close to the surface were easily broken free by the surge and became part of the deluge of shrapnel heading inland, cutting a path in its wake.

Destruction was total. Huts and hawker stalls were annihilated. Trees were blasted from the ground, no match for the rushing water, uprooting those the wind had not stripped. The chicken hutches bearing their squawking hapless livestock inhabitants were driven before the torrents of now brown and grey water, with only seconds to live and soon to be drowned and torn to pieces as they were dashed against any obstacle in the path of the water from within their cages.

The first cascading wall of the wave simply pulverised the islands only two “J” series Bedford trucks into the dirt road as if the giant jaws of a wrecking yard stamping press had just crushed them. The force of the water buried them in what would become a communal grave of machines, housing, stalls, livestock and humanity. The villagers’ bicycles were completely destroyed and became a tearing mass of chain-mail, interconnecting as they were rolled and woven together by the water, joining the vendor’s carts, becoming lethal carnage, dismembering and killing any person in their way as they tore inland before the rushing water.

The screeching tearing noise of the bikes and other debris hitting the steel plate of the gun terrified Namfon as it exploded as the water rose up over her head. She immediately realised she was trapped under the water, unable to breath if she could not release herself from her own bondage. The torrents now swirled around her as she held her breath, inadvertently swallowing a mouthful of water and some small debris. The waters ripped the remainder of her clothing away as more debris cut into her skin. She desperately tried to tear at the soggy rope with its unyielding knot. She did not feel the pain of her tearing fingernails against the rope or the larger bits of timber and coconuts pounding her small body.

The last thing she recalled was the movement of the gun as the force of the water pushing against the flack-shield, began tearing it away from the rusting four-inch eye bolts holding it to its concrete pad. In horror, she realised even the gun could not stop the sheer weight of the water and she was going to be crushed and drowned. She was going to die.