The Khmer Kill: A Dox Short Story (Kindle Single) (6 page)

Gant was sweating harder now. His breathing was rapid. It was a beautiful thing to behold.

“Look,” Gant said. “This is business, right? You came here on business. Let’s not make this personal.”

Dox thought about that. There was something appealing about it. Wasn’t it the very thing he’d been clinging to since arriving in Phnom Penh?

But all at once, he felt he’d been lying to himself.

“I’m sorry, son. I guess I’m just not built that way. I can’t always keep business and personal separate. I don’t even know if I should. A better person than you made me aware of that recently.”

“Hey,” Gant said. His eyes were wide and darted back and forth across the river. “I told you, the people who hired you, you don’t want to cross them. Bad enough you don’t do the job. If something happens to me on top of it, they’ll come after you.”

“Two things,” Dox said, still relishing Gant’s loss of composure. “First, I don’t believe you. I think you’re a pissant. You’re just a cut-out hired to hire other cut-outs. You carry yourself like you’re a made man, but in the end you’re just dog shit on a boot heel. I don’t think anyone’s going to care much one way or the other if somebody scrapes you off on a curb.”

Gant swallowed. “What’s the second thing?”

“The second thing is, even if you were someone special? I still wouldn’t care.”

He eased the trigger gently back. The SR-25 recoiled smooth and hard into his shoulder. He heard the soft crack. Almost simultaneously, a small hole blossomed in Gant’s forehead. He jerked, dropped his phone, and slid to the ground. On his face was an expression of utter surprise.

Dox headed back toward the bike, sighting down the barrel through the night vision as he moved. This time he approached from the opposite direction. The changeup was just a precaution—he didn’t expect any more opposition after the three he’d dropped. So he was surprised to see another Khmer, this one barely a teenager from the look of him, squatting in the dark at the side of the dirt road. In one hand he held a cell phone, in the other, a knife.

Dox’s finger started to ease back on the trigger. But good lord, he was just a kid. A kid.

He circled silently behind the boy, walking toe-heel, the soles of his sneakers soundless in the dirt. When he was directly behind him, he raised a leg and kicked him hard in the back of the head. The boy sprawled facedown, the knife and the phone hitting the deck alongside him. Dox kicked them out of the way. The boy cried out and tried to rise. Dox planted a foot between his shoulder blades and drove him back into the dirt.

He scanned through the night vision and detected no problems. He looked down at the boy. “What the fuck are you doing out here, son?”

The boy moaned and coughed, then spat out something in Khmer. It didn’t sound like
Pleased to meet you
.

“I don’t speak Khmer. You know any English?”

“You fuck your mommy!”

Dox snorted. “Well, I don’t know if that’s a maximally useful phrase to travel the world with. You might do better with, ‘I’ll have a beer, please,’ or ‘Pardon me, I’m looking for the restroom.’ Now I asked you what you’re doing here.”

“I watch for big American. He come, I call.”

So a lookout on the more obvious approach to the bike. Either they couldn’t find anyone older, or they recruited this kid as cut-rate labor. “What’d they pay you?”

“Five dollar.”

“How much if you kill me?”

“Twenty dollar.”

“Well, it looks like you’re shit out of luck either way. But tell you what. If I pay you twenty, will you just vamoose? Leave, I mean.”

The boy turned his head as though trying to see Dox’s face, to gauge whether the offer was serious. “You give me twenty dollar?”

Dox reached into his pocket and took out a pair of twenties. “I’ll give you forty. Here.” He leaned closer and dropped the bills on the kid’s hand. The kid gripped them and squinted. Dox wasn’t sure if he could see them in the dark.

“It’s forty. And you’re lucky I didn’t kill you. Get yourself a better job. Those guys who hired you were underpaying you and they would have sold you out in a heartbeat regardless. Christ, where are your parents anyway?”

The kid glanced back at him again. “No parents.”

Dox wondered whether he was being played. Still, he took out three more twenties and handed them over.

“Now I’m going to step back, and you’re going to get up and run along the river. Forget about the toys you dropped. Just run away. Don’t make me regret letting you go.”

He stepped back. The kid hesitated, then stood up and took off like a rocket. It was only then Dox realized how scared he must have been.

Dox made double time back to the bike. Other than the three cooling Khmers, there was no one around. He drove a half mile, then stopped and broke down the rifle, wiping each piece with a rag and slinging it into the river. He purged the phone, pulled the battery, and sent all that in, too. Last was the duffle bag. Then he drove back to the city center. Along the way, he purged, broke down, and tossed his personal mobile phone, too. He wasn’t a hundred percent sure they’d followed him via a tracking device in the rifle, so no sense taking chances.

There were no more flights that night, but he’d catch something to somewhere in the morning. Best not to linger after a job. Especially one that had turned out like this. He’d meant it when he told Gant he didn’t think anyone would bother to retaliate on Gant’s behalf, but he didn’t see any upside to testing the theory, either. Besides, there was always the law to be careful about, too.

He thought about immediately checking into a more obscure local hotel, but then decided against it. Best not to do anything too out of the ordinary, like suddenly disappearing from Raffles. The staff knew him too well at this point. No, better to check out tomorrow morning like a normal person, earlier than anticipated by his reservation but nothing remarkable, either.

By the time he reached the hotel, he realized he was starving. He wolfed down a meal of beef
lok lak
and
amok trei
in the hotel restaurant, then went up to his room and took a long shower. That kid. It really bugged him. Like hell they would have paid him, even if he’d done what they’d hired him for. They were just using him. And Dox had almost killed him.

He thought about calling Chantrea. But he didn’t know what to say. He had to leave town tomorrow and he doubted he’d be back for a while, if ever.

He was still wired from everything that had happened, but by the time he was done with the shower, the parasympathetic backlash was kicking in and exhaustion washed over him. He got in bed and was asleep almost instantly.

The room phone woke him. He glanced over at the bedside clock and saw it was just past midnight. He wondered who the hell would be calling him. Who even knew he was here?

Then he realized—Chantrea. She must have been trying him on his mobile, but he’d dumped it. He almost didn’t pick up, but then he did.

“Hello.”

“Hello,” she said. “I’ve been trying you on your mobile. It goes straight through to voicemail.”

“I’m sorry. I lost the damn thing. I had kind of a bad night tonight. Ate in the hotel restaurant and crashed early. I’m sorry I didn’t call.”

There was a pause. Then: “Are you… are you alone?”

Shit, he hadn’t even thought about her thinking something like that. “Yes, I’m alone. I was just tired. Really.”

“Do you want me to come over?”

He paused, feeling sad and torn. “The truth, darlin’? I do. But I have to leave tomorrow morning, and I don’t know when I’ll be back. Or even… if I’ll be back.”

There was another pause. “I see,” she said.

“And if you come over tonight, I just… I just don’t know.”

Another pause, longer this time. Then she said, “I want to. If you want me.”

He felt himself weakening. He knew he was being stupid. “Are you sure?” he said.

She was sure.

She got there a half hour later, and he was kissing her the second he had the door bolted behind her. And she was kissing him back with equal abandon. They pulled off each other’s clothes and threw them aside as though the garments were on fire, and he tried to take his time with her but she made it clear she didn’t want that, and she was wet when he touched her, so wet, and God he was glad she called. He still had condoms in the room from before he’d met her, and by the time the sun came up they’d used three, talking and dozing and laughing in between, the second round slower than the first and the third slower still, each of them wanting to make it linger because it was likely to be the last.

The alarm clock on her mobile phone woke them at eight. She showered and dressed and he pulled on a robe to see her to the door. He felt groggy and guilty and happy and sad. He wanted to say something but didn’t know what.

Chantrea paused by the door and touched his cheek. “I’m glad.”

He smiled. “I am, too.”

“You don’t look glad.”

“Well, I’m sad, too, I guess. I… I like you, Chantrea.”

“I like you, too.”

The way she said it was so direct and open. He wanted to believe it was true, that there was nothing more to it.

He said, “But I have to go today.”

She looked at him, and something in her eyes seemed to close off. “Come back sometime. If you like.”

“I’m not sure if I’ll be able. But… I’d like to. I would.”

Her lips moved, and then something in her expression made him think she’d changed her mind about what she was going to say. She smiled, but the smile was too bright. “Well, you know my number.”

He wanted to ask her what she’d been on the verge of saying. But he didn’t. She hesitated a moment longer, then unbolted the door and walked quickly away.

He closed the door and leaned back against it, and realized suddenly that he hadn’t given her any money. He thought she’d left abruptly because the goodbye was awkward. But maybe it was because she was afraid he might try to pay her, and didn’t want to give him the chance to spoil things more than maybe he already had.

Shit, what was wrong with him? She was sweet and smart and strong. And delicious on top of it. He liked her. He admired her. What was his problem? Was he just afraid that maybe in some ways she might have been trying to manipulate him? Why was he so reluctant to get involved?

Fuck it. There was nothing he could do.

He thought of the boy he’d almost killed the night before. And the rouged, doped-up girls he’d seen in front of that dim storefront earlier.

He smacked the back of a fist into the wall next to him. Christ, what was with this country?

He stayed like that, leaning against the door, thinking. Then he stood and paced for a while. Eventually, he found himself looking out his window onto the sunny courtyard below. He felt better, somehow. Calmer.

He wondered whether they really couldn’t make a decent martini. It did seem a shame he hadn’t properly tested that proposition.

And Gant had said Sorm would be harder to get to in Pailin province, where he lived, because foreigners are more conspicuous there. Be interesting to test that theory, too.

He thought of Chantrea, the way she’d said,
We have to do what we can, yes? Even if it’s just a little.

Maybe there wasn’t much he could do. A problem this widespread and malignant, it seemed like taking out one man would be no more than a fart in a gale. But all at once, he decided he wanted to believe otherwise.

Because sometimes you had to act as if something was true, even if it might not be.

A
s far as I know, there is no bar called Café Mist in Phnom Penh. But there are plenty of places like it. Other than Mist, all locations in this story are described, as always, as I found them.

I’m indebted to two friends for the phrase “un-fucking an attitude”—one, Clint Overland; another, who must be known only as Wade—a topic on which they are both expert. And indebted to Marc “Animal” MacYoung for the wonderfully droll line, “Sometimes you just have to explain things to people in terms they understand.” Indeed. It sounded just like Dox and I shamelessly stole it.
http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/

The National Museum of Cambodia
http://cambodiamuseum.info/

More on Cambodia’s world-famous Citadel Knives
http://www.knives-citadel.com/

The Somali Mam Foundation, “Envisioning a world where women and children are safe from slavery”
http://www.somaly.org/

Somali Mam on Twitter
http://twitter.com/somalymam

Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine
, by Somaly Mam

The “wild thing” quote Dox is thinking of is D.H. Lawrence: “I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A bird will fall frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.”
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/33221.html

The “Homeland Battlefield” Bill
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/16/three_myths_about_the_detention_bill/singleton/

Stephen Colbert on the president’s power to order the execution of American Citizens
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/410085/march-06-2012/the-word---due-or-die

Ray Davis Pakistan shooting incident
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Allen_Davis_incident

US torture of whistleblower Bradley Manning
http://www.salon.com/2012/03/07/un_top_torture_official_denounces_bradley_mannings_detention/

XM2010 Enhanced Sniper Rifle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XM2010_Enhanced_Sniper_Rifle

Khmer Borane Restaurant
http://www.borane.net/