Just in case.
6
After Cole had pushed past the shadowy parking lot into the well-lit market beyond, he watched Boom enter the crowd from another direction, drifting through the myriad stalls.
The sight was about as bizarre as anything Cole had ever seen — a full market, not too dissimilar in size to Siem Riep’s famous Old Market back in town; only that instead of spices and silks, there were AK-47s and rocket launchers. Other stalls sold skewered meats, noodles and Khmer palm wine; music blared from portable speakers, the sounds of Asian pop mixed with local Kantrum folk music from a pinpeat orchestra of cymbals, xylophones and flutes. The overall impression was of a bacchanalian street party, a feast for the senses after the dense darkness of the jungle.
There seemed to be a busy trade too, hundreds of buyers and sellers swarming the narrow alleyways between the stalls, lit by bare bulbs powered by huge generators chugging away in the background, barely heard above the babble of loud bartering.
And all around was the ominous presence of the jungle, thick vegetation pressing in on the clearing from all sides, always threatening to overwhelm it all and reclaim this small piece of land for itself.
Cole watched as Boom strolled casually along one of the alleyways, shaking hands as he went, a big smile on his beaming face.
Could Cole trust him? It was a risk, but a necessary one. Boom was a gun dealer himself, but seemed excited at the prospect of helping Cole catch an internationally wanted gang of pirates. He’d probably use the story to entertain his own customers.
Cole followed at a respectable distance, not wanting anyone to see that he was watching Boom, waiting for the signal. He wasn’t the only Westerner at the market, but there were few enough for people to notice him if he wasn’t careful.
He slowed at a stall selling grenades, feigning interest in some of the products on display as he saw Boom stop at one of the larger stands, embracing a man, nodding his head as the man spoke — once, twice, three times.
It was him.
It was Khat Narong — Boom’s contact at the market and the man who allegedly dealt with Liang Kebangkitan.
Khat was younger than Cole would have imagined, although in the strange light from the dangling bulbs it was hard to tell. He was slim, short, and dark-skinned, his face baby smooth, hair slicked back under a camouflage baseball cap. He wore an open black shirt, camo shorts and tennis shoes. He looked like an average street seller from Bangkok, not a man making hundreds of thousands in arms sales. But appearances could be deceptive, as Cole well knew.
He knew where Khat was now, and so turned to speak to the man shoving grenades towards him, the enthusiastic seller asking in Khmer how many Cole wanted to buy.
‘Just looking,’ he said in English, hands out. ‘Just looking.’
The man stopped barking at him in Khmer and switched to English himself. ‘This no place to be just fucking looking!’ he screamed. ‘You waste my fucking time!’ He moved as if to swing a punch at Cole, but Cole could tell it was bluster and moved backwards easily. ‘That’s right!’ the man shouted again. ‘You best back away! Now go on, fuck off!’
Cole did as he was told, and turned to look across the crowds towards Khat’s stall. He noticed that Boom was gone; probably didn’t want to be in the area when Cole turned up. Which was fair enough, Cole considered, checking the pistol in his waistband.
It could get messy.
Cole’s plan was simple — he was going to kidnap the man right in front of everyone.
When he had been held captive in that hellhole in Pakistan, he had met an Indian prisoner who had taught him the secret marma adi pressure point strikes of the ancient Indian art of Kalaripayattu, said to be the forerunner of the later martial arts of both China and Japan.
It was Cole’s skill in this art which had made him so valuable to Charles Hansard and his assassination program. Through subtle attacks to specific parts of the human body, he was able to cause a wide range of conditions in his victim — from shock, to unconsciousness, to death, to a death which could be delayed for several hours and or even days. It was a seemingly mystical power, but one which was based on thousands of years of observation and practice within the holistic Indian health system of Ayurvedic medicine.
As a ‘contract laborer’ for the US government, Cole could therefore assassinate enemies of the state just by getting close enough to press or squeeze their pressure points, often without the victim even noticing. And by the time the person died, he would be long gone, the death blamed on natural causes such as stroke or heart attack.
It was hard to use such skills in the heat of a fight, as the art required absolute precision to be effective; but when used on an unsuspecting victim, it was the assassin’s art par excellence.
Not that Cole wanted to kill Khat; not yet, anyway.
Instead, he was going to shake the man’s hand whilst pressing into the forearm with the fingertips of his other hand; a simple yet effective attack which would render Khat immediately unconscious. Cole would then apply first aid, make a scene of it being a heart attack, and load him in the Toyota for an emergency hospital visit.
It would require confidence to pull off, but Cole knew that the scene would cause a panic — and when ignorance was mutual, confidence was King.
He edged towards the stall as Khat’s last customer moved away, smiling disarmingly towards the dealer as he approached.
Here we go, Cole thought as he extended his hand in greeting.
It went wrong almost instantly.
Cole could see Khat’s gold fillings as he smiled widely at him; yet it wasn’t a friendly smile at all, it was the smile of a spider welcoming the fly into its trap.
And suddenly Cole realized how stupid he had been, going into such a place with no surveillance, no reconnaissance, no detailed planning; trusting a man he barely knew.
The gun which came up to press against the back of his head was held by Boom, Cole knew that without having to look. And then Khat’s associates broke away from the stall, drawing their own weapons and forming a semi-circle around Cole.
At the head of the circle was Khat; still smiling, shirt-front open, relaxed and casual.
‘You come behind my tent and we talk, yeah?’ he called over to Cole.
Damn it.
He’d been out of the game too long, grown soft; not physically, but mentally. There was no way he would have ever trusted Boom a few years ago, no way he would have approached a foreign gun market so eagerly, with such little preparation. But he had been punishing himself for so long — making things hard for himself, intentionally putting himself in harm’s way, putting himself in dangerous situations with no thought for his physical safety — that it had become a habit.
And unfortunately, a habit like that could kill him before he ever got a chance to change it.
He looked around at Khat’s six colleagues; most carried pistols, one aimed a Soviet-era Kalashnikov, all looked like they wouldn’t hesitate for a second before they blew him away. Activity around the rest of the market seemed to have come to a complete halt; all eyes were on the group outside Khat’s tent. Even the pounding music stopped after a time, and Cole felt a deep unease. It wasn’t fear, not yet; but it was close.