Free The Khmer Kill: A Dox Short Story (Kindle Single) by Barry Eisler

the khmer kill
a dox short story
    D ox sat on one of the stone benches at the edge of the open-air courtyard in the center of Phnom Penh’s National Museum, insects buzzing in the tropical vegetation, the December air agreeably hot. The broker had told him to be there at noon, but Dox had arrived just after eight, when the museum opened. Back in his oo-rah days, he’d sometimes waited through a half-dozen sunsets in a sniper hide—cold, wet, whatever it took. A few hours on a cool and shady veranda was nothing by comparison, just a cheap and easy insurance policy that might prevent an unpleasant surprise.
    Not that he was expecting trouble. After all, how many other operators could deliver a headshot at all distances, and under all conditions, as reliably as he could? Some active-duty military, sure, but there were all sorts of jobs Uncle Sam wanted done but didn’t want to be associated with, and for those, nothing beat the private sector, and ideally a discreet sole proprietor instead of one of the big contractors with all their bad publicity. To the powers-that-be, an operator like him was more useful alive than dead.
    On the other hand, he’d learned the hard way that people who had no particular beef with him might take an interest just because of his known associate John Rain, who despite his doubtless good intentions had a habit of riling the people he did business with. “Act as if” was a pretty good maxim in his line of work, here meaning “act as if a passel of nameless badasses is looking to punch your ticket even if you yourself can’t imagine a single thing you’ve done to deserve it.”
    Which is why he’d arrived in the city ten days ahead of schedule. Doing so had given him plenty of time to get the lay of the land and to build up some credible cover-for-action. He’d already been to the National Museum twice, and to the Royal Palace and the Silver Pagoda. He’d snapped pictures of these and the other tourist attractions, such as they were, and of the streets he’d been methodically exploring. He was staying at Raffles, the best hotel in town, and he’d brought a different bargirl back with him every night. By now, the hotel staff must have concluded he was some kind of off-the-charts western pussyhound, taking advantage of Phnom Penh like it was a cut-rate version of Bangkok. Well, maybe there was a kernel of truth in all that, but hell, the best cover was always the one that kept closest to the facts. He’d been generous with the girls, during and after, and he imagined if the shit ever really hit the fan and they were questioned by the police, they’d corroborate his story. Not ideal, of course, but “All right, it’s true, I came for the local ladies” was preferable to “Shit, you got me, I’m here to assassinate some hombre I never even heard of until after I’d arrived.”
    Despite the cover-for-action usefulness of tail-chasing in Phnom Penh, though, and despite its other, more obvious attractions, he was ambivalent. He didn’t want to wind up with anyone other than a freelancer, and he certainly didn’t want to give his money to anyone involved in child prostitution or anything else coercive. Cambodia was notorious for that kind of thing. In fact, twice late at night in some of the seedier parts of town, he’d seen several very young girls sitting in front of a dim storefront. Their cheeks were rouged and they looked doped up and vacuous, and he had a feeling they were for sale. But what could you do? Once, when he was still green in Asia, he’d punched out a punk in a Bangkok bar for slapping a woman. It turned out the punk was her pimp and was affiliated with the bar’s management, and Dox had wound up running for his life from a bunch of security goons with truncheons who were doubtless themselves hooked up with the local police. Probably after he’d been forced to hightail it, the pimp had beaten the woman even worse, no way to know. And he’d given cash to seemingly