The Khmer Kill: A Dox Short Story (Kindle Single)

suppose you could always just call me on my mobile. In fact, I think that would work well. I could confirm the target for you one last time on the phone, and it would give me an excuse to step out of the way at the ‘critical moment,’ as you say.”
    “All right, if that’s how you want to do it.”
    “Now, I imagine you weren’t able to travel here with your own equipment. What else do you need from me?”
    “I wasn’t and it depends. What kind of distances are we talking about?”
    Dox was expecting Gant to ask why, in which case Dox would have to explain that equipment error that would be meaningless at a quarter mile could mean a missed shot at farther out. And that therefore, if Dox was going to have to drop this Sorm character at extreme distance, it would help to have precision hardware, meaning probably not what was readily available in their current environs.
    But instead, Gant just said, “I would say, no farther than five hundred yards. Probably less.”
    Dox was dubious. “Five hundred yards? Shit, you could have just hired someone to throw a rock at him from that close. Why me?”
    “You have a reputation for reliability and discretion. Forgive my candor, but should the worst happen, we can’t afford the kind of blowback we had in Pakistan with Ray Davis. We need someone maximally deniable.”
    Davis was a CIA contractor who was imprisoned in Pakistan after shooting to death a couple of locals. It had turned into a major hairball and even the president wound up getting pulled into it. So it made sense they would want someone they could hang out to dry if things went sideways. Dox didn’t have a problem with that; in fact, he was used to assuming the risk of a shitstorm and had already factored it into his price for the job.
    “Day or night?” he said.
    “Night.”
    “All right, a night shot at five hundred yards or closer, I can get by without anything too fancy. Still, I’m tempted to ask for an XM2010 ESR, but I reckon that would be a little too recognizably made-in-the-USA. Should the worst happen and all that.”
    “Correct, the XM2010 is too new and too associated with the US military. What about its predecessor, the M24? Combat-proven and reassuringly widespread.”
    Well, old Gant knew his hardware, it seemed. And the M24 was as comfortable to Dox as old pair of perfectly sprung boots. But as sensible as Gant’s reasoning might have been, he didn’t like that the man was proposing a bolt-action weapon. Other things being equal, if the shit hit the fan, Dox preferred a semi-automatic.
    “If it’s all the same to you,” he said, “I’d prefer an M110.”
    “Still a little too new and a little too associated with Uncle Sam. What about the SR-25? The Thai Army has it, and so do the militaries of quite a few other nations, so it’s conveniently deniable.”
    Dox would have preferred to have the weapon he chose rather than the one Gant proposed, but in his experience, there was nothing to complain about with the SR-25. “All right. With the 20-round magazine, the Leupold Mark 4, an AN/PVS-14 night scope, and sound suppressor, naturally. Basically, the MK-11 configuration. Oh, and a hundred rounds of match-grade ammunition. I’ll want to play around with it beforehand.”
    Gant nodded. “I’ll have the equipment by tomorrow morning. I’ll contact you on the secure site and let you know where you can pick it up. Tomorrow night is Sorm’s appointment in Samarra—will that give you time to zero the rifle and make any other preparations you need?”
    Dox understood the allusion to John O’Hara’s novel. But he doubted Gant would have expected that, which meant the man intended the reference to be supercilious. Hell, he probably didn’t think Dox knew what supercilious meant, either.
    He broke out in a good ol’ boy grin. “Tomorrow night ought to be fine.”
    • • •
    That night, lying in bed with Chantrea, clothed as usual, he was thinking of Sorm, and of how much he didn’t know about Cambodia. How much maybe he didn’t want to know.
    “May I ask you something personal?” he said.
    She looked at him, her expression half-veiled in shadow, and nodded.
    “When you’re hanging around in a bar, like you were when we met. If you go home with someone… nobody’s… I mean, nobody’s coercing you to do that, are they? Forcing you, I mean. It’s your choice?”
    She shook her head slowly. “Nobody’s forcing me.”
    He wondered if her distinction had been