I didn't have time to think of anything more than the "Oh shit" as far as a plan to get out of an airplane being flown by the guy who had sold me to a sexual torturer and me finding a shitload of individually packaged heroine stuffed in the seat beside me. Getting out of an airplane floating in the sky but already descending for a landing didn't offer many options. I didn't see an airstrip down there, but I'd have to take it on faith there was one. We'd been in the air not much over thirty minutes. I'd been told that, although the hotel casino where I was to dance in one of the floor shows was in Cambodia, it was right on the border with Thailand and not that far really from Bangkok.
As hedonistic as Thailand was, they didn't allow casino gambling there. They didn't allow it in the other countries bordering Cambodia, either--Laos and Vietnam--so Cambodia, still hard up for foreign capital, was cleaning up on that market. Cambodia had picked Poipet, a sleepy border entry town on the Cambodian-Thai border on one of the only roads leading into Cambodia from anywhere, and made it into a hedonist, almost-anything-goes frontier town where gamblers and sexual thrill-seekers could gather largely outside of the scrutiny of anyone else in the world.
What played in Poipet stayed in Poipet was much more assured than Las Vegas's claim to that phrase.
We were coming down low. I didn't hear landing gear coming down, as I'd never heard it going up. All I could see were the lights of a town below, with one main, neon-lit street. I was told that the Grand Diamond City Casino was only a short walk from the border checkpoint in Poipet and that Poipet wasn't much of a town other than a couple of casinos, the Grand Diamond City being the largest, and a couple of blocks of bars and brothels.
We overflew the town to where darkness was all that stretched out below us into the interior of one of the world's most isolated and primitive countries. It was nearly midnight. Then three lights came on in a row, which were answered by three more in a parallel line. Kevin Lu brought the plane down on a sort-of level stretch of field between the lights. As we were coming down, I could see that the illumination was being provided by the headlights of vehicles.
Lu rolled to a stop, and I heard him exclaim an explicative, as the pilot's door was jerked open and he was pulled out of the plane. I didn't have time to wonder about that other than the sensation that this obviously wasn't the reception he'd been planning to receive, because my door was jerked open too, and I was being pulled out of the backseat of the small plane by muscular Asian guys in dark uniforms. Standing beyond them, picked out in the headlights of one of the vehicles and loosely holding something like an AK-47 like he knew how to use it, was a Western guy. He was taller than the Asians, wiry but muscular, a Marine buzz cut--in fact he had U.S. Marine written all over him, except he looked to be in his late forties--a very fit and in-command late forties, albeit one who was graying. There didn't look to be an ounce of fat on his body--tall, ramrod straight, all business, no smiling. To me, he was sexy as hell. He was a poster child for commando. I couldn't help letting my gaze go to his basket--it was an occupational "thing" with me--and to wonder if he was going commando. There was definite signs of curve and thickness there.
"What?" I said to the Asians holding me and looking like they expected me to say something. "I'm not really with this guy. Just was catching a ride. I've got a job to go to at a casino here--The Grand Diamond City. I'm not really with this guy."
"They can't understand you." The Western guy spoke. "They understand some English, but not being delivered as fast as you're letting it spill out." The voice was low, cultured--calm, sounding a bit amused. Totally in control and obviously used to the role. "You need to slow down. We got this. You'll be fine."
"Sorry, this doesn't happen to me often," I said.
"My impression is that it does," he said. "You're Doug McClure, aren't you? You're on the run from a drug lord in Bangkok--Dusit Thanat--aren't you?"
That got my attention. It also exploded any clever retort I might have given. Into the void that created, he said something to the Cambodian policemen or soldiers, or whoever they were, and they released me and backed off.
He clearly was in control here if not formally in charge and he understood English--he had an American accent--and he knew who I was. That meant he probably knew why I was here. To hide from Dusit Thanat, yes, but that I really did have a job here. So, I tried what was important with him.
"I'm not really with this guy. I mean I know him. His name is Kevin Lu, and he's some sort of dealer as well as a pilot. But I didn't know he was the one who'd fly me here. And I didn't know what he was hauling. I'm not any part of his business. I mean I found it. It's here in the backseat, under the cushion of the seat next to the one I was sitting in."
"Shut the fuck up," he barked, his exclamation cutting through the night like a knife. "Come here."
As I stumbled forward, he waved the Asians--Cambodians, I assumed--back and they turned their attention to the plane, having been joined by other uniformed Cambodians. There was no sign of Kevin Lu. They were going over the plane like ants. They'd find the drugs at any moment.
He put a hand on my arm when I came closer and lowered his voice.
"Don't give these guys ideas," he said. "I know you're not connected to the drugs. I knew Dusit Thanat was flying drugs in tonight. I know you are supposed to dance at the Grand Diamond City. I know that you're a prostitute too--and a doctor. Roger Allard told me about you. We work together in some ways. I also know that you would never have gotten to the casino. Dusit Thanat knew you were on the plane. Kevin Lu was assigned to take you out and leave you in this field."
"No, I didn't know that," I said, meekly. I was trembling. He ran his hand up and down my arm. "I have a job to come to here; that's all I know."
"You wouldn't really have that either if Allard hadn't talked to another dancer in your troupe and found out what you were up to. No one arranged for you to have a job here. That should tell you something about the connections, whoever you were relying on in Bangkok is with Dusit Thanat's crime organization. You would never have gotten off this field alive."
I shivered in the knowledge of the implications he was pointing to. I couldn't rely on Kenon Jackson and his contract with me--at least with his setup in Bangkok. At this minute I was at the mercy of this American soldier of fortune, or whatever he represented.
"I can get you away from here," he said. "I've already established with these men that you weren't ever here. My office works closely with them. We don't rely a lot on regulations and red tape. But we have to walk away now. We'll go to where you thought you were going. You can show up for work tomorrow morning--I've made the necessary arrangements for that. The casino's glad to get you."
"Why again are you doing this for me?" I asked. "What do you get out of this?" He didn't answer directly, but I didn't have trouble latching to a partial answer to that question. He had me fully in his grip now. His free hand had slipped down to cupping my buttocks. "Oh, fuck," I said. "You want a free piece of me just like Allard got."