Damn.
But the man couldn’t have gone far; Cole had spent less than half a minute firing at his pursuers.
Straining his eyes, he managed to make out a small mound of crumpled weeds, a hole of crushed vegetation which led further into the jungle.
Leaving the empty Kalashnikov by the riverside, Cole picked up his shotgun and entered through the imposing green wall, determined to catch his quarry and make him talk.
Who the hell was this guy? Khat Narong simply couldn’t believe what had happened in the last half an hour.
First, one of his good Thai customers had come up to him and told him that a crazy foreigner was here asking questions about Liang Kebangkitan Apparently the man had come to Boom Suparat’s home and threatened him. Boom had led him here to the Angkor market — a crime Khat might ordinarily have killed him for — but had then been quick to tell Khat exactly what was going on.
Khat had told Boom to circle round and ambush the American from the rear, while six of his own men would fan out to surround him. And that’s exactly what had happened.
But what had followed was hard to understand. How had the man done that? Killed everyone so quickly, so efficiently? Six armed men — not including Boom, who had been killed by Khat’s own men — killed in just a few seconds.
Khat was a tough man; although he looked young, he was fifty-six years old and had lived through the civil war and the Khmer Rouge’s brutal extermination years, seen his mother and father shot in the head and thrown into a ditch by the roadside right in front of him. He’d served as a mercenary throughout Southeast Asia himself, then as an enforcer for a Chinese gang in the Phillipines, before realizing that there was more money to be made supplying arms rather than using them. He’d spent the last twenty years building up his business, and had been instrumental in setting up the Angkor market. Most of his big trade was done off-site and privately, but it was here that he felt most at home, the place where he could meet friends old and new. It was amazing how many lucrative deals had been secured through relationships he’d first developed here in the jungle.
Liang Kebangkitan was one of them, and Khat had cursed out loud when they’d hijacked that ship with three American crewmembers on board. Their name hadn’t been confirmed, but Khat knew it must be them; they were the only pirate group in that area capable of pulling off such a large-scale operation.
Khat had feared that the trail might lead to him; after all, he had supplied the gang with all of their weapons and equipment. Hell, even the fast Rigid Inflatable Boats they used had come from Khat.
But Khat had expected to be questioned only if Arief and his pirate gang were caught; he’d never thought that the Americans might use him to get to the gang in the first place.
But who was this American? He seemed to be working alone, which was strange in itself. And his swift recourse to lethal violence was not something which Khat had experienced from intelligence and law enforcement officers from that country before.
But, Khat reasoned as he pushed through the fierce, cloying vegetation of the jungle, whoever the man was, Khat was best off very far away from him.
In the grim twilight, Cole tracked the man; using his eyes when he could, stopping to feel the ground, the vegetation, when he couldn’t, using his fingers to get some physical sign of Khat’s progress through the jungle.
It was a strange situation — Cole was hunting Khat, and Khat’s friends and colleagues were hunting Cole.
Cole wondered if Khat would double back, towards his friends, but thought this might be dangerous for the man. As the incident at the riverside would have taught him, there were some men in the ‘rescue’ posse who were willing to shoot first and check who was dead later. Khat wouldn’t risk being shot by going back towards them.
Khat would therefore press on deeper into the jungle, which is what it looked like was happening; although in such a dense, claustrophobic atmosphere it was next to impossible to keep one’s sense of direction intact, especially at night. They could both be running in circles for all Cole knew.
Sounds were confusing in such an enclosed space, blocked by trees, shrubs, bushes and vines; but behind, Cole could hear shouts, the odd AK round being fired. A pistol shot here, a shotgun blast there.
And up ahead…
Cole could have sworn he’d just heard a splash.
Had he been right? Had they just circled round in the dark, and were now back by the river? Or was it something else?
Cautious, Cole edged forward, leading with the muzzle of his Chinese Hawk semi-automatic shotgun.
The tree line came upon him suddenly, but Cole didn’t slip this time; he just stopped and stared at the wide expanse of water in front of him. At the edge of the jungle, the moonlight was able to finally get past the trees, illuminating a perfectly straight line of water which Cole estimated as being a hundred or so meters across.
Cole knew something so straight couldn’t be natural, and realized that it must be a moat, carved out of the jungle hundreds — perhaps even thousands — of years ago to protect the ancient temples beyond.
Had they arrived at Angkor Wat? But Cole was sure that the Angkor Wat moat was even wider than this.
And then he realized — this must be Angkor Thom, an even larger complex hidden further north in the jungle. Less tourists made it this far, but the scale of the place was supposed to be even more impressive than its more famous neighbor.
These thoughts flickered through Cole’s brain in the blink of eye; no longer than it took him to scan the moat and opposite bank with the aid of the blessed moonlight and reacquire Khat.
He was there, a vague figure in the distance, climbing out of the moat on the far side. Cole was impressed; the man must have hauled ass through the jungle to get there this far ahead of him.
Cole considered his options quickly, and reacted while he still had time.
He fired the shotgun across the moat once, then again, and finally a third time. He heard a grunt of pain in between blasts, and saw the figure of Khat stumble on the other bank in the waning moonlight.
The spread of the shotgun shells’ pellets at a hundred meters could be probably be measured in yards rather than inches; and yet Cole didn’t want to kill Khat, only to slow him down.
Velocity at that distance would also be seriously reduced, and Cole knew that the pellets wouldn’t penetrate far into Khat’s body. But they would make it difficult to move, and would help Cole track him by leaving a tell-tale trail of blood.
The shotgun blasts would bring other people quickly to the moat though, and Cole knew he wouldn’t have much time left.
And so without a second thought, Cole leapt from the jungle into the still, green-black waters of the Angkor Thom moat.
Khat staggered through the trees, pulling himself over vines and undergrowth, pain shooting through his legs, into his back.
The bastard had shot at him from across the moat, hit him too; although with a shotgun spread at that distance, it would have been a miracle if some of the pellets hadn’t hit him.
Khat remembered selling a vast quantity of those guns to a Triad gang in Macau. For fun, they’d taken a line of what they’d called ‘prisoners’ — although Khat had had no idea where they’d come from, or how they’d offended the Triads — and then lined them up far away from the guns. Members of the gang had then fired towards them, checked for damage, and then made the line shuffle a few feet further forwards. When the prisoners finally died of their wounds, the Triads had been happy that they’d found the maximum lethal range of the weapons.