Everyone was looking forward to this one.
4
‘Hello, Boom.’
The old man turned to Cole, his eyes narrowing. It was clear that he never expected to see his morose erstwhile lodger again.
‘Why you back here?’ he asked in broken English. ‘You lose something?’
Cole couldn’t blame the man for being suspicious; he was a black-market gun dealer, and paranoia kept him safe. The only reason he had spoken freely around Cole before was because he didn’t realize the quiet man living under his roof could understand Thai.
‘It’s good to see you too,’ Cole said, trying a smile before realizing that this would make Boom even more suspicious; Cole had never smiled when he’d lived there.
The house itself hadn’t changed; it was as ramshackle as before, and Cole had often wondered what Boom did with the money he made from dealing guns. He had a wife and seven children, but Cole thought it had more to do with gambling addiction. He remembered that Boom would sometimes leave for days at a time. On occasion he would return with a new supply of small-arms, and yet on others he would return with nothing more than a scowl and a cross temper.
‘What you want?’ Boom asked. ‘I busy man, remember? Got plenty work to do, yes?’
Cole nodded. ‘I understand that you’re a busy man, Boom. That’s why I’m here. It’s about your work.’
A broad grin spread across Boom’s dark, wrinkled face. ‘Ah! I understand now. You get in trouble, right? Now you want protection!’ He gestured towards the house. ‘Come! If you have money, I have protection!’
Cole followed Boom through the sagging porch, saw the stairs which led up to the spare room he’d rented, stepped over children playing in the hallway and squeezed past Boom’s young wife who was cooking in the small kitchen, pots and pans all around her, the smell of spiced noodles in the air.
She looked surprised to see him, but turned back to her cooking a moment later without a word; Cole was sure she was used to seeing strange people in her house all the time, and knew better than to ask questions.
Boom led Cole out of the back door, through a small, untidy garden where more children played, to a small wooden shack. He gestured for Cole to enter, then followed him inside, shutting the door behind them.
In an instant, a gun appeared at Cole’s head, just as Cole had known it would. Boom pressed the barrel into Cole’s temple, grinding it.
‘What the fuck you come here for, eh? Who sent you? You working with police? That it? Eh?’
‘Boom, calm down,’ Cole said evenly as he instinctively took in the angles, assessed the timing of his moves if he felt the need to take Boom out. He could tell that it wouldn’t come to that though; Boom was just going through his normal routine. ‘You know me. I lived here for weeks and never brought anyone here. You were right the first time; I need protection, and you’re the only one I know who can help me.’
Boom paused, the gun still aimed at Cole’s head. Then he grunted and lowered the pistol. ‘Okay. Okay. You right, you okay guy. Quiet. I like this. After seven kids, quiet is good.’
Cole pretended to breathe a sigh of relief. ‘Okay, thank you. Now, what have you got?’
The arms store hidden blow the shed and accessed by a trapdoor and a steel ladder, was impressive. It was a small room, but filled to overflowing with everything from Makarov pistols to Chinese AK-47s, with a few RPGs and sticks of TNT thrown in for good measure.
‘Explosives?’ Cole asked in surprise.
‘Hey,’ Boom said defensively, ‘some people have bigger problems than others, yes?’
Cole smiled. The fact was, he liked Boom; he was funny, friendly, and decidedly good-natured, and he’d given Cole a place to stay when he’d needed it. He liked to talk too, and Cole hoped that he would be able to find out details about the man’s Cambodian source without having to be heavy-handed about it.
The next half hour was filled with discussions about what Cole needed, how much he wanted to pay, and what Boom had in stock that was suitable. The discussion was interesting, and Boom certainly knew his subject.
After a rapport had been built, and Cole was handling a Czech CZ-75 pistol he was thinking about buying, he decided to start making a few subtle enquiries.
‘I can’t believe how much you’ve got stored here,’ Cole said in wonder. ‘Where do you get it from?’
Boom smiled at him; a wide, beaming smile which revealed a mouth bereft of half its teeth. He took the gun back from Cole, placing it on a nearby table. ‘I have guy in Cambodia, right? Plenty years of war and terrorists and freedom fighters and all that make for plenty guns, okay? Place full of them. And the guy I buy from, he the best! Guaranteed! He even sells his stuff to the big groups, you know, terrorist groups in southern Thailand, tribespeople in Burma, you name it.’
‘Pirates in Indonesia?’ Cole asked, realizing too late that he’d been too obvious, too eager to get an answer. The months in the jungle had dulled his people skills; he would never have made a mistake like that in the past.
The look on Boom’s face changed in an instant, and Cole could tell that the old gun dealer realized that his first paranoid fears might be true; Cole had been sent by someone — maybe the police, maybe someone else — to get information.
Boom’s gun appeared again as if from nowhere, but Cole was anticipating it already and gripped the man’s wrist with one hand as his other snaked out to grab the man’s throat, fingers tightening around Boom’s windpipe like a vice.
Boom’s eyes bulged as he struggled to breath, disbelief and indignation all across his reddening, sweating face as his gun dropped to the floor beneath him.
‘I’m sorry about this, Boom. Really I am. But now you haven’t left me any choice. Tell me where I can find your source, or I’ll kill you.’ Cole gripped tighter to emphasize his point. He meant what he said; he was more than prepared to kill the man. He liked Boom, yes; but at the end of the day, he was a gun-runner who sold arms to anyone who had the money, and his death wouldn’t be the worst on Cole’s conscience.
After trying to resist Cole crushing his windpipe for a few agonizing seconds, until he started to black out completely, Boom sagged and blinked his eyes in defeat.
Cole released his hold on the man, letting him breathe. He pushed Boom down, picking up the man’s loaded pistol from the floor in the same smooth action. His people skills were off, but his body seemed to remember how to move just fine.
Cole pointed the Beretta at Boom’s head. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘now talk.’
5
It was far from ideal, but Cole had had to take Boom in the car with him for the four hour drive to Siem Reap.
If he had left Boom back in his village, the arms dealer would undoubtedly have warned his Cambodian colleague of Cole’s impending visit. The only other option was to kill him, which he hadn’t wanted to do if he could avoid it.
Besides which, after he’d been persuaded to start talking, Boom had made it quite clear that the arms market where his colleague traded was very hard for an outsider to find, hidden in a jungle clearing near the Angkor Wat temple complex.
Cole had therefore decided to take Boom with him, to act as a guide. And in the end, Boom appeared glad to be there, especially after he’d decided that Cole was trying to find out where the Indonesian pirates were hiding the Fu Yu Shan. ‘Oh, very good!’ he’d said with great excitement, ‘it will be big adventure, right? You and me like Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson! We solve the case! Like Batman and Robin, then we kick ass! Right?’