Free Lethal Redemption by Richter Watkins

and turning to Cole. “We will have them soon.”
    “I’ll believe it when I’m holding hands with her,” Cole said.
    Cole saw the future of Southeast Asia and he wanted to be a big player in that future. He and Besson were well positioned.
    No centerpiece in his planned massive casino/hotel complex outside Angkor Wat would be able to touch the ultimate icon, the Golden Elephant. The tens of millions that might be on that plane were attractive as well. But the real interesting coup would be finding the documents and the connections of some global banks. That plane was potentially the mother lode of them all.
    The driver pulled up to a small, innocuous building and they piled out and went inside and into a room where five men hovered around a single chair.
    In the chair sat a frightened and bloodied Khmer who looked about half dead.
    “Miloon,” Besson said with contempt.
    “He the one drove her around?”
    Besson nodded. He spoke with two of the interrogators.
    “He says he dropped her at Chenla Theater and maintains he doesn’t know anything other than she was robbed when she arrived this morning.”
    They weren’t there five minutes when Besson got a call.
    They left the bloodied driver with his interrogators and drove to the quay on the eastern edge of the city where dozens of houseboats were moored.
    At the quay they learned from Besson’s men that a fisherman saw a tall westerner and a tall white woman leave by boat. Maybe an hour or so ago.
    Besson turned to Cole. “My guess is they’re headed up river to the village where Michael Vale’s former partner lives. Charles McKean.”
    “McKean is still alive? The Special Forces guy?”
    Besson nodded as he lit a cigarette. “Lives up river with his Khmer wife.” Besson made another call. Took awhile to get an answer.
    “My pilot’s about half an hour away at a girlfriend’s,” Besson finally shared.
    Cole said, “Get the fastest boat on this river over here and let’s go. We need to stop this now. Can’t let them get out of Cambodia with somebody like McKean. We lose her out in the boonies it’s going to be a real problem.”
    Cole stared into the darkness. He was very unhappy to hear that an old Special Forces hand like McKean, one of SOG’s best, was possibly involved. That would just potentially make things different. They absolutely had to stop them before they got into Laos.
    “I’m not losing her,” he said. “You make sure everybody understands. I’m not losing her.”
    Ten minutes later they were aboard a speedboat with Besson’s security team heading up the Mekong at high speed.
    Cole had a strange sense of déjà vu.
    He was once again chasing ghosts. But this time he was going to catch them.

14
    “Look at all the fireflies,” Kiera said. “Must be a thousand of them.”
    As they closed on the shore, Porter said, “You came here ten years ago the place was lit by millions of fireflies to guide you in. Like stardust, an explosion of sparks, fantastic. What you see is nothing compared to what was.”
    “What happened to them?”
    “ Us .” He said it with a bit of resignation.
    They slowed. A village on stilts appeared in the darkness perched precariously above the floodwater, like a colony of fat cranes standing among huge water lilies that turned out to be a tangle of fishing boats.
    An apparition emerged from the gloom on the bank of the river.
    “That should be Charlie,” Porter said. “One of a kind.” The boat slipped in among the village fishing boats.
    “How much does he know?”
    “I told him pretty much everything. He’s the guy will know how to get us up there. The area is where the Hmong are at the moment, so that’s a very good thing. He has contact with a Hmong group hiding in the area. They might be of help to us when we get up there.”
    It was very dark under the monsoon sky and she didn’t see McKean until the flare of an inhaled cigarette pierced the darkness on the bank, revealing for a moment an