Condley knew Klong Toey. When he first came to Bangkok after the war, he had run the security detail for an American company that, among other things, owned several farms near Chiang Mai. The company, a part of which was a CIA front, had raised hogs and goats. The goats, with Condley escorting them, were usually sold to Iran and were shipped along with hidden weapons to assist the clandestine forces of the recently ousted Shah. The hogs, along with Condley, most often came to Klong Toey. A lot had changed in Iran since then. But despite all of Thailand’s advances, very little had changed in Klong Toey, especially in the slaughterhouse section.

The gutter next to them on the dirt path was pulsing and splashing with a runoff that was rolling slowly downhill toward the river. Its rich aromas surrounded them as they crept up the hill, filling their nostrils and attacking their lungs.

“What is that?” whispered Muir, pointing to the gutter.

“Hog blood,” said Condley. “And guts. Mixed with water.”

“I stood in it when I got off the boat!” said Muir disgustedly.

“You sure did,” muttered Condley, his eyes fixed piercingly to his front. They were nearing the slaughter pens, and in front of them the road was lined with trucks. Behind him he heard the professor retch. He kept going. This was not the time to baby-sit a sick scientist.

As he moved slowly up the path he reached underneath his shirt, testing his grip on his pistol. He did not want to walk into the open with the pistol in his hand lest someone, even a worker, see it and attempt to disarm him or kill him. Instead, he had placed the Glock inside the belt just over his right hip, so that he could draw it and fire it in one smooth motion. The extra magazine was in his left pocket, as were enough bullets for a reload.

Your fucking ammo better work, Simolzak.

Muir shuffled close behind him, done with his puking. The dirt path ended and the slaughter pens were suddenly before him, filled with the sickening sights and screams of hogs being killed, hacked into sections, and dressed for the market. As he walked along the edges of the pens he saw them in the floodlit street: four trucks with identical company markings and green sideboards near the front of a long line of vehicles, moving slowly into place at the slaughterhouse gates so that their hogs could be off-loaded into the waiting pens. The drivers and passengers in the front two trucks were clearly Vietnamese. The drivers and passengers in the third and fourth trucks were Burmese. Also in the fourth truck was a brooding, dark-faced Caucasian.

“He’s early,” said Condley quietly to Muir as well as to himself, his whole body going electric with goose bumps. “If we’d taken a taxi we’d have missed the son of a bitch.”