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

Chantrea.”
    “I like you, too.”
    The way she said it was so direct and open. He wanted to believe it was true, that there was nothing more to it.
    He said, “But I have to go today.”
    She looked at him, and something in her eyes seemed to close off. “Come back sometime. If you like.”
    “I’m not sure if I’ll be able. But… I’d like to. I would.”
    Her lips moved, and then something in her expression made him think she’d changed her mind about what she was going to say. She smiled, but the smile was too bright. “Well, you know my number.”
    He wanted to ask her what she’d been on the verge of saying. But he didn’t. She hesitated a moment longer, then unbolted the door and walked quickly away.
    He closed the door and leaned back against it, and realized suddenly that he hadn’t given her any money. He thought she’d left abruptly because the goodbye was awkward. But maybe it was because she was afraid he might try to pay her, and didn’t want to give him the chance to spoil things more than maybe he already had.
    Shit, what was wrong with him? She was sweet and smart and strong. And delicious on top of it. He liked her. He admired her. What was his problem? Was he just afraid that maybe in some ways she might have been trying to manipulate him? Why was he so reluctant to get involved?
    Fuck it. There was nothing he could do.
    He thought of the boy he’d almost killed the night before. And the rouged, doped-up girls he’d seen in front of that dim storefront earlier.
    He smacked the back of a fist into the wall next to him. Christ, what was with this country?
    He stayed like that, leaning against the door, thinking. Then he stood and paced for a while. Eventually, he found himself looking out his window onto the sunny courtyard below. He felt better, somehow. Calmer.
    He wondered whether they really couldn’t make a decent martini. It did seem a shame he hadn’t properly tested that proposition.
    And Gant had said Sorm would be harder to get to in Pailin province, where he lived, because foreigners are more conspicuous there. Be interesting to test that theory, too.
    He thought of Chantrea, the way she’d said,
We have to do what we can, yes? Even if it’s just a little.
    Maybe there wasn’t much he could do. A problem this widespread and malignant, it seemed like taking out one man would be no more than a fart in a gale. But all at once, he decided he wanted to believe otherwise.
    Because sometimes you had to act as if something was true, even if it might not be.



the detachment
a john rain thriller
    John Rain is back. And “the most charismatic assassin since James Bond”
(San Francisco Chronicle)
is up against his most formidable enemy yet: the nexus of political, military, media, and corporate factions known only as the Oligarchy.
    When legendary black ops veteran Colonel Scott “Hort” Horton tracks Rain down in Tokyo, Rain can’t resist the offer: a multi-million dollar payday for the “natural causes” demise of three ultra-high-profile targets who are dangerously close to launching a coup in America.
    But the opposition on this job is going to be too much for even Rain to pull it off alone. He’ll need a detachment of other deniable irregulars: his partner, the former Marine sniper, Dox. Ben Treven, a covert operator with ambivalent motives and conflicted loyalties. And Larison, a man with a hair trigger and a secret he’ll kill to protect.
    From the shadowy backstreets of Tokyo and Vienna, to the deceptive glitz and glamour of Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and finally to a Washington, D.C. in a permanent state of war, these four lone wolf killers will have to survive presidential hit teams, secret CIA prisons, and a national security state as obsessed with guarding its own secrets as it is with invading the privacy of the populace.
    But first, they’ll have to survive each other.
    The Detachment
is what fans of Eisler, “one of the most talented and literary writers in the