After the ceasefire in Laos in February 1973, London forbids Colonel Jason Rance, the British Defence Attaché in Laos, from continuing his search for four Lao ‘moles’, who work within the Communist Party and wear a dedicated ring as a talisman. Unsanctioned contingency plans are therefore made by others for Rance to continue his work with the moles, the ‘Four Rings’, in an unattributable Operation Four Rings. But Rance remains ignorant of the plan and does not know he is in imminent danger. The communists now suspect the Four Rings as well as Colonel Rance and they launch their own Operation Four Rings: to kill the four moles and the British Defence Attaché. The tightest of races ensues. Based on historical fact and the author’s personal experience, Operation Four Rings is the fifth in a series of books involving Gurkha military units and includes Operation Black Rose, Operation Janus, Operation Blind Spot and Operation Stealth. The author, a retired Gurkha colonel, draws on real characters and events he witnessed across various theatres of war.

In post-WWII Laos, Vietnamese communists secretly commence to infiltrate the kingdom. They are countered by four dedicated Lao ‘moles’ who try to thwart these aims. Gurkha Colonel Jason Rance is unwittingly dragged into a confrontation between one of the Lao moles and a Thai spy and the mole gives him a ring as a reward for saving his life. During his appointment in Laos as military attaché, Rance becomes a target of the KGB and of the Vietnamese communists, and is sought by the remaining three Lao moles because of the ring in his possession. Rance’s two Lao language instructors are nieces of the Lao king and London hopes that, by stealth, Rance might, through them, persuade the king delay his coronation no further in an effort to prevent the spread of communism southwards. Can the new military attaché manage to do the seemingly impossible? Based on historical fact and the author’s personal experience, Operation Stealth is the fourth in a series of books involving Gurkha military units that may be read in any order and includes Operation Black Rose, Operation Janus, Operation Blind Spot and Operation Four Rings. The author, JP Cross, a much revered retired Gurkha colonel, draws on real characters and events he witnessed across various theatres of war.

Papers in this book report on a wide variety of multicomputer applications, systems and architectures. They all have one aspect on common which is message passing multiprocessors. It includes research presentations of the T9000, TI C-40 and T8/i860-based multicomputers.