Dai Li’s plans had been… foiled? By the Chiangs (though not purposefully, at least he thought so)? Unbelievable. Unacceptable. Because of their meddling, and unforgivable lack of pragmatism, his private army was gone. Even worse, large portions of it had joined the communists. Juntong’s quest to create a parallel state was in shambles. Unless…

That was it. Opium. Opium was big business in China. Everyone was using it, and practically everyone was involved in selling it one way or another. Even the communists, because for all their high and mighty behavior that was where the money was at. It wasn’t as if Juntong had never dabbled in the drug trade, of course. Where else would his men get the material for their bi-weekly late night benders? But, Dai Li thought, this was an opportunity which had yet to be fully exploited. Too much of the cashflow was falling into the hands of idiots who didn’t have the slightest idea what they were doing, and more importantly didn’t have anything useful to be doing with the money.

No, no, he could see where this was going. And it was going to be big. Juntong controlled the transportation police. Or the railway protection corps, whatever. The point was, he had a large paramilitary force which was already responsible for policing the country’s main transport arteries. Supposing, for instance, that he had a large, illegal cargo that needed to be shipped en masse throughout the country (and perhaps internationally, the possibilities were endless), well, his men could do it.

The plan was simple.

Dai Li would recruit poppy farmers from the vast masses of disaffected former warlord troops throughout the country, who had no skills to speak of and were now jobless. Normally, putting idiots in charge of farming was a recipe for disaster, but luckily poppies were a plant tailor made for idiots. They could grow in any soil, any weather, prosper even under the harshest conditions and under minimal care. Hell, his farmers would probably get addicted to their own product and spend half their time in a trance, but no matter. The poppies would grow. Then, using his enforcers (and he had many of them), the raw material would be processed into opium, packaged, and transported to market, all without paying taxes, and evading all unfriendly law enforcement. And Dai Li would make money. Unimaginable amounts of it, because the Chinese, all 450 million or so of them, were hungry for the product he was going to sell them.

Dai Li looked at the map. Oh, there was one problem. That meddling Chiang junior. That stuck-up Stalinist boy scout. Ugh, did he even live in a free country if authoritarians like Ching-Kuo were going around telling free, entrepreneurial men like him that they couldn’t operate their own illegal drug empires? Dai Li had gotten his hands on a copy of The Fountainhead last year, and he thought that woman… Ram? Randy? Anyways, she had a point. He needed to make a stand for individualism (more specifically, the right of an individual secret police chief to make money) in this country. Ching-Kuo was going to be all over his business, with his darned “Ag-men” (what a stupid name, Dai Li thought), telling Dai Li to “think of the people” and “practice social responsibility.”

No, he needed to find some land far from the long arm of the law (okay, it was a pretty short arm, let’s be honest). And he had just the place(s). Warlord territory. Lu Han wasn’t the most independent, but his land was far enough from central control that it would do. Ma territory would also do just fine, as would Xinjiang, or Shaanxi. If he was feeling ambitious, he could even grow product in Burma or Laos. He would send his men to colonize the desolate far reaches of China, beyond the reach of the Ag-men and civilization itself. Get them safely out of the way, really, both for their own safety and for the sake of society (really, he was doing society a favor, getting these delinquents out of their hair). And they would build an empire. Their built by their own ingenuity and sweat... he'd been reading too much Ann Rant, or... whatever her name was.

He also needed a good "trade name" (Gang name? He wasn't sure what the proper terminology was) for his troops. One that would strike terror in the villagers when mentioned. Nothing like the "Ag-men." Something serious...

Dai Li had some people to call.