Requiem for an Assassin

we kept hustling forward down the pier. The automatic side door of Kanezaki’s van slid open. We helped Dox in, then followed inside. Kanezaki pulled smoothly away.
    “You got him?” Boaz said to me.
    For an instant, I didn’t even know what he was talking about. “Who?”
    “Hilger.”
    I shook my head. “He wasn’t on the boat.”
    “Damn it,” he said. “Delilah told me…” He stopped and smiled. “Well, I guess she was wrong.”
    “Intel,” I said. “What can you do.”
    He laughed. “I think maybe things between you two are better than you let on.”
    Dox was lying on his back on the floor. I used the bolt cutters to get the manacles off him. While I cut, Boaz called Naftali. He was a half-mile behind us, and there was no pursuit.
    Kanezaki pulled over. I removed the fake plates and we set out again.
    We kept driving. Naftali called again. Still all clear.
    It looked like we were going to make it. I pulled off the hat and shades and patted Dox’s shoulder. “How are you doing?”
    “I feel like shit.”
    He looked it, too. He was pale and he was having trouble breathing. Adrenaline was probably masking a lot of his pain, but that wasn’t going to last much longer. I knew Kanezaki had morphine in the medical kit. I got out a syringe and gave Dox a hit.
    “How’s that?” I asked.
    “Oo-rah,” he said. “John Rain, my angel of mercy.”
    I laughed.
    “Who’s driving this thing, anyway?” he said.
    “It’s me, Dox,” Kanezaki called from up front. “Tom.”
    “Good to have you here, man,” Dox said, his voice a little stronger now, rallying from the morphine. “I’d shake your hand and thank you properly, but I’m a little laid up at the moment. And who’s this?”
    Boaz pulled off the hat, wig, and shades. “Boaz,” he said.
    Dox held up his hand and Boaz shook it.
    “I didn’t know John had other friends,” Dox said, the words slurring slightly. “I thought I was his only one.”
    Boaz smiled. “I guess that’s why he wanted to get you off that boat so much.”
    “My skin’s starting to hurt,” Dox said. “What did you guys use, some kind of millimeter wave device?”
    “Am I the only one who’s never heard of these things?” I said, and heard Kanezaki laugh.
    “Sorry,” Boaz said. “Calibrating the waves isn’t an exact science. You probably have first-degree burns, maybe second.”
    Dox laughed, grimacing as he did so. “Jesus Christ, you think I give a rat’s ass about a sunburn? Uncle Fester back there was fixing to decapitate Nessie.”
    Kanezaki glanced back. “Nessie?”
    “Please don’t ask him,” I said.
    “If you’d shown up ten seconds later, I’d be singing in a girl’s choir somewhere, I’ll tell you that,” he said, laughing and grimacing harder. “Goddamn, I’m telling you, that was a near, near thing.”
    Then his voice cracked. “I…ah, fuck, this is embarrassing,” he said. “I really thought I was dead, though, I…ah, fuck.”
    He lay there, gritting his teeth and shaking, and the tears rolled silently down his face. I put a hand on his shoulder. “Go ahead,” I said. “Get it out.”
    “Why did it have to be in front of you?” he said, half laughing, half crying. “You never puke, you never cry, and you’re going to make fun of me for this for the rest of my life.”
    “I’m going to tell all your lady friends, too,” I said, and he laughed again through the tears.
    It lasted another minute, then played itself out. “Thanks for bailing me out,” he said, looking around. “All of you. You too, Boaz, whoever you are. I will not, ever, forget it.”
    “I’m glad we could help,” Boaz said. “And I’m sorry about the sunburn.”
    Dox tilted his head back toward Kanezaki. “Where are we, anyway?”
    “Singapore,” Kanezaki said. “On the way to a private jet at Changi. We’ll be there in five minutes.”
    “Five minutes,” Dox said. “Good. ’Cause I’ve got a joke to tell.”
    “You don’t really have to,” I said, familiar with Dox’s notions of comedy.
    “Tell me,” Boaz said, with the boyish grin.
    “I swore I’d tell John the kabunga joke if I came out of this alive, and I mean to keep my word, even high on morphine.”
    “You really don’t have to…” I tried again, but he was already rolling.
    “There are these three missionaries,” he said, “and they get captured by a nasty tribe of aborigines deep in the jungle.” He looked at Boaz. “You don’t know this one, do