> Whirring over the highlands near the borders of Laos and Thailand, American-supplied Huey helicopters disgorge Burmese troopers; despite a fusillade of small-arms fire, they capture and-destroy a ton of raw opium at a secret jungle laboratory.
> At Rome's Fiumicino Airport, Italian plainclothesmen arrest two Orientals on a flight from Bangkok, whose suitcases yield 44 lbs. of lumpy gray-brown No. 3 heroin, hidden in carvings of elephants, pagodas and lotus leaves.
> In a Skid Row room in Amsterdam's Rosse Buurt (red-light district), Dutch narcotics cops find a young addict dead, a syringe spiked in the hollow of his elbow.
The gun battles, arrests and deaths are stages on the main line of the "Orient Express"—the lethal route from Asia's opium-rich Golden Triangle (the intersection of Burma, Laos and Thailand) to Amsterdam, distribution center for Europe's booming dope market.
Drug busts in Europe are mounting geometrically. So far this year, Common Market narcs have seized 440 kilos of heroin, as much as was intercepted from 1972 to 1975. By the police rule of thumb that seizures equal 10% of the traffic, Golden Triangle dope routed through Amsterdam is now rivaling the volume of the old Turkey-Marseille-New York French Connection. Many European experts see the Continent approaching the type of heroin epidemic that swept the U.S. in the 1960s.
From a handful in 1972, Amsterdam's junkies have increased to an estimated 7,000, Italy's from 1,000 to 6,000. Overdose deaths in Europe will top 300 by year's end. Yet supplies are so plentiful that street prices in Paris have dropped from $120 to $60 a gram in the past six months—thus making it cheaper to lure new addicts. Profits are enormous. A kilo of No. 4 heroin bought for $1,650 in Thailand or Burma commands $32,000 on the streets of Europe.
Heroin Rain. Amsterdam has long been a mecca for addicts and dealers because of The Netherlands' wrist-tapping drug laws. But the mounting flow of "horse" through the city has become a narc's nightmare. Says G.J. Toorenaar, chief of Amsterdam's criminal investigation division: "It's raining heroin in The Netherlands." Worse, Europe's swelling addict population is now getting its dope from overseas Chinese gangs that police cannot understand or penetrate.
The big new market for heroin followed the classic laws of narcotics economy. When the French Connection was cut in 1972, the slack in the American market was soon filled by Mexican heroin, but European addicts were temporarily strung out. At the same time, American withdrawal from Viet Nam cost Southeast Asia's Chinese Tai Los (dope bosses) their most lucrative market. According to one American narcotics expert, "It was simply natural that the twain [Asian supply and European demand] should meet."