Weaponized (27 page)

T
his section of the Prey Lang forest has been marked for active deforestation and forced population removal for several intersecting reasons.

The government needs the occupied lands to plant corn, beans, and cassavas to feed the population—which keeps growing, despite officials’ best efforts—and also to lease to the Chinese and Saudis, who are prepared to pay handsomely to plant their own crops on it. Also, timber is one of Cambodia’s most prized exports, and the state can’t subsist solely on ill-gotten gains and aid money; it needs to exploit that resource. Finally, clearing the land of its inhabitants is part of an active plan to relocate people from the countryside to the cities. People in cities are easier to monitor. It’s hard for the state to exert draconian control when a third of the nation’s populace exists effectively off the grid.

A combination of chain saws and controlled fire works over the forest.

Heavily armed men in khaki clothes lead a march of the forest’s former residents, who haul their meager possessions in wheelbarrows or by hand. The people started squatting here over thirty years ago when the Vietnamese kicked out the Khmer Rouge. They have no rights, no legal title for the land, no hope of combating the state.

Some weep, some explode with anger, only to be put down with a gun barrel to the belly.

But no one bothers speaking.

And Robinson moves right into the middle of it. His intelligence was right. This is the perfect point of entry. He can move freely and cloak himself in chaos.

Workers wearing gas masks transport large branches, brush, and tree stumps to a pile, then douse it with gasoline and start a fire when the pile reaches a designated height. The squatter shacks have been stripped of their usable timber, and whatever’s left will be razed.

Robinson puts on a gas mask, secures his duffel bag to his chest, and crisscrosses through the smoke, people, and destruction without attracting attention.

He stops at an area blighted by drought, the soil something out of science fiction, the grass reduced to intermittent wisps of brown. He pounds his heavy-soled boots on the dirt, which is so rigid his seismic activity barely dents the surface, the impact registered by patterns of thin veins.

After stomping several hundred square feet, he’s satisfied—he’s found what he’s looking for. He removes his gas mask, wipes away sweat, kneels down, pulls a small shovel from his duffel bag, and begins clearing away soil.

The workers let machine-gun rounds off in the air to get the migrants to pick up their pace.

Robinson stops digging when he hits steel. He clears the dirt away, and underneath, there’s a grate, roughly the size and weight of a city manhole cover. He uses the lip of the shovel to pop up one side of the grate, then slides three fingers under the lid and lifts.

He pushes the grate to the side, drops the duffel bag down the exposed hole, then lowers in his legs and kicks around until he finds what’s he’s been searching for.

A ladder.

With one leg stabilized, he pivots, turns his body, and lowers himself in farther.

Before he’s too far down, he reaches into his pocket, pulls out a penlight, turns it on, and fixes it between his teeth.

Then he places the grate back over the hole.

He reaches the bottom of the ladder, and it’s a ten-foot drop to the floor. He uses the penlight to find his duffel bag in the dark and extracts a tactical hiker’s flashlight from inside. He’s seen this spot only on a map, but now it’s real.

Thank Christ,
he thinks,
that I don’t have claustrophobia, ’cause it is close in here.
More tomb than tunnel. Barely high enough for him to stand or wide enough to stretch out his arms. Unlike drug tunnels, there’s no breaker lights and, more important, no ventilation, no fans, no air-conditioning.

He shines the light down the shaft. According to his intelligence, it’s about a mile and a half. And he’s going to sweat every square inch of it.

He adjusts his legs and back to the height, drops the duffel bag in front of him. He’s going to have to
carefully
push it the length of the tunnel. When not requisitioned by someone like himself, this tunnel serves a practical use. It’s the second stage of a four-tiered journey for Cambodian dissidents and NGO workers to escape to Thailand.

Robinson trudges, trying to find his pace. If he goes too fast, he can’t breathe. If he goes too slow, he’ll run out of air.

He stops, takes some shallow breaths, shoves the duffel bag, and continues on.

Sixteen minutes later, he reaches the end, and another ladder. He rests his hands against the rungs, opens his mouth, and tries to yawn. In his current state, he can take in more air that way. He coughs up a broken cloud of dirt, then straps the duffel bag across his chest and mounts the ladder.

At the top is another steel grate.

Robinson pushes it up and over. He detaches his duffel bag and heaves it over his head and through the hole. He follows and surfaces inside a walk-in closet housing cardboard boxes crumpled by humidity and sinking into each other.

He rises to his feet, grabs his bag, and leaves the carpeted room.

The plastic nameplate on the desk reads Dun Vibol, and the office furniture reflects the man’s occupation, nonprofit human rights lawyer. Everything appears to have gone through at least two or three different owners—all seemingly abusive—from the wooden desk that looks like it was involved in a knife fight to the cratered filing cabinet to the graffiti-branded computer that still needs a tower to run.

Robinson removes Zeiss night-vision goggles, a FatMax measuring tape, and a collapsible handheld telescope from his duffel bag.

He approaches a window made of four distinct panes that each open independently. He opens them individually, then takes a measurement of the entire frame.

He extends the telescope out the window, surveys the buildings across the street and the ground below. He’s pleased. His abstract calculations match the physical reality of Mr. Vibol’s office.

Robinson dumps all his supplies back into the duffel bag, picks it up, and returns to the closet. Before closing the door, he attaches a small wireless camera to the bottom of it, just above the gap between wood and floor. The lens feeds imagery directly to a handheld television.

Mr. Vibol is in court most of the day, but Robinson still needs to monitor the coming and going inside the room.

He settles in the closet, leaving the tunnel uncovered so he can dive down at a moment’s notice. He extracts the rifle cases from the duffel bag and slides on surgical gloves. If he has to leave something behind at the scene, he doesn’t want anyone to get his prints.

He sits there, building his gun and watching the outer office on his handheld screen.

K
yle’s handcuffed to the leg of a metal desk inside the police station at Siem Reap, a recently erected but still ramshackle stucco sandcastle surrounded by high-tension power lines. On the wall behind him are framed anticorruption commendations from Hun Sen’s office.

Two members of the Chinese secret service, Agents Di and Lai, sit across from Kyle. Even though the room is sweltering, they haven’t taken off their sunglasses, blazers or loosened their ties. The pair strike Kyle as taking their role as the literal embodiment of their nation seriously. They will not drop their façade for something as mundane as heat.

Kyle forgets his hand is cuffed and nearly falls over when he tries to use it to punctuate his conversation. “Look, we keep going over this. Maybe you should just let me talk to Li Bao’s private security.”

“We are in constant contact with Li Bao’s private security. Many of them were former colleagues of ours who went to work for him out of loyalty to his message,” Agent Di says. “He’s very popular in certain circles. More so than the CCP.”

Agent Lai lights a cigarette and offers one to Di, who accepts. They smoke in total silence, a fly caught in the window screen offering the only auditory interruption.

“What can I possibly do to convince you that I am
not
Robinson?” Kyle says.

“Look at it from our perspective,” Di says. “All of our intelligence on Robinson dried up a week ago. He was seen in Phnom Penh, and then—”

“Then,” Kyle interrupts, “I traded passports with him.”

“A passport you seem to have lost.”

“I had to jump in the Mekong. It’s somewhere in there.”

“Right,” Lai takes over. “Then Robinson reappears all over the place, but this time he’s
you?
”

“I was trying to find him.”

“Look at it from our perspective,” Di continues, obviously trained in dialectic. “You were at the scene of the murder of two of Li Bao’s security guards. You accompanied a woman who killed one of our former employees. Then you injured several of our agents in a car chase. Even if you are not Robinson—as you contend—you still have a lot of explaining to do.”

“I understand. I really do,” Kyle says. “But look…please, please alert Li Bao’s people that there’s going to be an attempt on his life in a few hours.”

“They’ve been aware of it for weeks,” Di says. “Attempts on Li Bao’s life are not as infrequent as you seem to believe.”

“I’m fucking serious,” Kyle says, once again forgetting his wrist is chained and stopping short of falling over. “Robinson is going to kill him.”

“As far as we are concerned, you still are Robinson,” Lai says.

“You took my fingerprints, right? That should tell you who I am.”

“Unfortunately,” Lai says, “the computer systems are down in this office. We had to fax your prints to the Chinese embassy. We’ll have to wait.”

“What happens in the meantime?”

“Our embassy is sending its helicopter over,” Di says. “You will board it with us. Then we are taking you back to Beijing. If you are Robinson, you are quite a prize for us. And if you’re Kyle West, as you claim,” Di continues, “you are also quite a prize for us. Either way, it’s a very estimable position for us to be in.”

“I know that. I know. But your man is going to be killed. I turned myself in knowing I could end up in China. I turned myself in to warn you. You can take me wherever you want, but you have got to save him.”

“If you are Robinson, you are no longer a threat to Li Bao. We have you. If you’re not Robinson, you’ve told us Robinson’s plan. Do you really think he’ll go through with it knowing you’ve been captured and are talking to us?”

“Absolutely,” Kyle says. “He will absolutely go through with it.”

“Mr. Robinson is a professional,” Lai says. “If his plan is blown, he will try on another occasion. And we will be ready for him.”

“Robinson is not going to let this stop him,” Kyle says. “I’ve been him. I know how he thinks. He’s…he’s not as attached to life as you or me.”

“This is all very interesting,” Di says. “We can continue on the plane ride. In the interim”—he rises, pushes in his chair—“we have other business to attend to.”

Kyle’s dying to rub his eyes, scratch his nose. “Wait…wait. When does the chopper from the embassy get here?”

“Another two hours or so.”

“Just listen to me, okay? You have to make Li Bao change his schedule. Just do that for me. Promise me.”

“We told Li Bao’s people to do that when you first told us your story,” Di says. “We’ve done all we can. Li Bao gets many threats. It’s up to his people how seriously they choose to take this one.”

“He’s never had a threat like Robinson,” Kyle says.

“Who I’m still not convinced you’re not,” Lai says, and he follows Di out of the room.

They lock the door behind them and leave a guard stationed outside to keep an eye on Kyle.

K
yle tries to lift up the table so he can slide his cuff off the leg, but it’s bolted to the floor. Frustrated, he slams his fist down on the table.

Well,
he thinks,
a situation that was already fucked up has now reached new heights. Not only is Li Bao going to be dead in a few hours, because these guys won’t take me seriously, but China’s going to be reduced to riots, and I’m going to be there to see it all burn down.

He stops fussing with the cuffs when he hears talking outside the room. He can’t make out what the voice is saying, but it doesn’t sound Chinese.

The lock turns. Kyle tries to duck, certain Lara or Robinson managed to track him here, intent on finishing the job. So he’s surprised—
pleasantly
wouldn’t be the right word, but it’s not far from the sentiment—when the door opens and the CIA agent from the hotel steps inside.

“You sure fucked up downtown traffic,” he says. “I just came from there. They’re still cleaning it up.”

Kyle stays quiet, not sure how to this play this.

“No balcony for you to jump off this time,” the agent says. “You remember me?”

Kyle nods. No words feel quite right.

“I’m Fowler.”

“You’re CIA. I remember you said that…”

“Before you jumped. That’s right.”

“Well, if you’re here to arrest me, you’re a little late. I’m already booked for a flight to Beijing.”

Fowler pulls out a chair, sits across from Kyle. “I know you’re not Robinson.”

“Great,” Kyle says. “Why don’t you tell them?”

“They don’t care. If you’re not Robinson, you’re Kyle West. They’ve got big plans for you either way. Think of the spies they can trade you to the U.S. for. Christ, you’re worth at least two or three nuclear thieves.”

“So you’re going to let them take me to Beijing?”

Fowler lights a cigarette, evades answering. “I want Robinson. And I need you to help me get him. You really think he’s going to try and hit Li Bao? The Chinese think you’re bluffing.”

“I
know
Robinson’s going to hit him.”

“Know where he’s going to try it?”

“I do.”

“Does Robinson know you know?”

“He does.”

“You see him recently? Can you point him out for me?”

“Yeah. I’ll know him. Definitely.”

“Okay. All I need to know.” Fowler drums his fingers on the table. “We gotta go.”

Kyle indicates his cuffed hand.

“I can take care of that. That’s not the problem,” Fowler says. “Thing is, I can’t just waltz you out past the Chinese. In the name of interagency-fair play…they did get you first. Plus, I’m not actually on official business. And I scoped this place out. No back doors, no private exits. Nothing. We can only go out the front door.” He pulls out his gun, puts it on the table, and sucks down the rest of his cigarette. “But I’ve got a plan.”