Dukkha Reverb

Loren W. Christensen

Description

If you're going to fight bad guys, you might as well make them really mad at you!

A few weeks ago, I had a good life—I was a respected Portland police detective and successful martial arts instructor. Then I shot somebody—then I shot two more people. It changed everything. Into this chaos stepped a man and an enchanting Vietnamese woman. Turns out he's my father who I thought was dead, and she's—wow. We got to know each over coffee and, oh yeah, fighting for our lives against Vietnamese gangsters seeking revenge against my father. What a week, glad it's over.

A restful trip abroad, to get acquainted with my 'new' father and the beautiful Mai, sounds like a good idea. Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, here I come!

What I didn't expect, in this exotic city, was Lai Van Tan, the crazed mob boss and sex trafficker, still raging against my family for an imagined wrong—now he wants me too. With the aid of some unique Vietnamese War veterans, each with a deadly set of skills, the fight is on. My hope for a restful visit is deteriorating fast.

Sujets

• ACTION
• Martial arts
• Ethics
• Sifu
• Adventure
• Crime
• Moral
• Master
• Détective
• Hard Boiled
• Dojo
• Saigon
• San Francisco

Informations

• Publié par: YMAA Publication Center
• Date de parution: 01 août 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781594392665
• Langue: English

Extrait

LOREN W. CHRISTENSEN


A SAM REEVES MARTIAL ARTS THRILLER
YMAA Publication Center, Inc. Main Office PO Box 480 Wolfeboro, NH 03894 800-669-8892 www.ymaa.com info ymaa.com
ISBN Paperback edition 9781594392634
ISBN Ebook 9781594392665
2013 Loren W. Christensen
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
Editor: Leslie Takao Cover Design: Axie Breen
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Publisher s Cataloging in Publication
Christensen, Loren W.
Dukkha: reverb / Loren W. Christensen. -- Wolfeboro, NH : YMAA Publication Center, c2013.
p. ; cm.
ISBN: 978-1-59439-263-4 (pbk.) ; 978-1-59439-266-5 (ebk.)
A Sam Reeves martial arts thriller.
Summary: After six weeks of being intensely investigated for the accidental killing of a young boy, Portland police detective and martial arts instructor Sam Reeves travels to Saigon, Vietnam to visit his newly found family. Although he hopes to find peace and refuge, Sam, along with his family and a bizarre set of new friends, suddenly find themselves thrust into a nightmarish world of sex trafficking, a deadly warehouse of Buddha statutes, and a dirt tunnel that leads to a suffocating death.--Publisher.
1. Reeves, Sam (Fictitious character)--Fiction. 2. Families--Fiction. 3. Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam)--Fiction. 4. Human trafficking--Fiction. 5. Tunnels--Vietnam--Fiction. 6. Martial arts fiction. 7. Mystery fiction. I. Title.
PS3603.H73 D857 2013 813/.6--dc23
2013935650 1308
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Editorial Note: Dukkha: a Pali term that corresponds to such English words as pain, discontent, unhappiness, sorrow, affliction, anxiety, discomfort, anguish, stress, misery, and frustration.
Publisher s note: There are some Vietnamese words in this ebook. You may need to adjust the fonts and/or select the Publisher Defaults option on on your Nook device for these to display properly.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY LOREN W. CHRISTENSEN
PRAISE FOR DUKKHA-REVERB
BOOKS FROM YMAA
DVDS FROM YMAA
As much as I scramble through the ruins of my memories, I find that time, that other time, fresh and untouched by forgetfulness
- Ida Fink
PROLOGUE
Thang s tooth was killing him, the pain a steady thump as if keeping time to that terrible American rap music that Toan made him listen to whenever they pulled duty together in the warehouse. Thang had only one tooth left in his top row, but it hurt so intensely that it felt like forty, no, fifty rotting teeth, all rhythmically pounding in his mouth. Adding misery to his rotting tooth was a night so humid that it made his body feel like it was covered with glue. The steady rain that came late in the afternoon cooled only a little of what had to have been one of the hottest days in months in Bien Hoa, but the dark brought with it a sticky and thick mugginess.
It was nearly midnight now and he slumped drunkenly on the gnarled wooden chair. The maddening cries from the garden had finally quieted, and Thang was just about to thank Buddha for his compassion when a scream ripped through his brain and once again triggered the piercing agony in his mouth.
Quiet! he shouted toward the door, which set off a machine gun volley of awful throbs in his tooth.
The thunder passing overhead was so close to the earth that the flimsy guard shack in which he had the misfortune of being assigned this horrid night shuddered from each deafening, tooth-jarring concussion of air masses. With the electricity knocked out, the only illumination came from sporadic lightning flashes that found their way through the cracked and dusty window to bathe briefly the sad interior in harsh whiteness. No matter. He did not need a dim light bulb to know that the shack contained only empty bottles on the dirt floor, and an unopened one atop a decrepit table.
It was about eleven p.m. when Thang decided to open the scorpion wine. He usually drank cheap Chinese wine when the boss made him watch the garden all night, but he ran dry about eight tonight, long before it had dulled the pain in his mouth. The expensive delicacy, one that would cost a year of his wages, he acquired when a wealthy and foolish woman set down her bag on a Saigon sidewalk to answer her cell phone. He out ran the old hag even with his crippled leg.
He had hoped to sell the wine but his mouth needed it now, desperately. He had heard that scorpion rice wine is as delicious as it is strong, and it is good medicine to treat back pain and other ailments. He hoped it worked on a rotting mouth too.
Just as Thang lifted the bottle from the table, lightning washed through the room, illuminating a large scorpion floating in the amber liquid, and a cobra coiling lethally from the bottom of the bottle to the top where its evil mouth clamped tightly on the midsection of the scorpion. The serpent s eyes pierced into Thang s. Mother fuck!
Another scream emanated from the garden, making Thang scrunch his face against the pain. Then another, even louder than the last.
With hands trembling from the wine drunk earlier, and from what felt like nails stabbing into the roots of his lone tooth, Thang ripped off the yellow wrapper from the neck of the bottle and stabbed his knife into the cork. His face dripped as he twisted the blade left and right until it began to lift. When he twisted it too hard and unevenly, the cork broke off, with nearly half of it still jammed in the bottle.
Cursing, he stabbed the blade at the cork again, missed, and rammed the knife blade deeply into his thigh, the very same leg that bad karma had twisted and deformed at his birth sixty-seven years ago. Oooiii! he cried loudly, and immediately as if an echo, several voices cried out from outside the flimsy wooden door.
Shut up, you fucks! he screamed, clutching his thigh and watching as blood oozed over his boney fingers. Ooiii!
Moaning, he stripped off his filthy T-shirt and wrapped it around his thin leg, tying a knot tightly over the wound. Ooiii! he cried again.
Another scream burrowed its way into his rotten tooth.
He angrily twisted about in his chair and punched the door with his fist, nearly dropping the bottle. He started to punch it again but instead waved his hand at the door with disgust, and turned back to dig out the last of the cork. The knife slipped again, miraculously missing his leg this time. Finally, he speared out the last chunk, tossed it and the blade onto the table, and upturned the bottle into his mouth. He wasted no time swallowing, but with eyes closed, he poured the burning liquid straight down his throat and into his stomach. He drank for a long glorious moment, and when he opened them, just as lightning flashed, he looked straight into the cobra s eyes. And the snake looked into his.
Emitting a guttural cry, he snapped the bottle away, slopping some of it onto his legs and onto the floor.
Shit, he wheezed, his breath on fire from the powerful liquid. He tilted the bottle again to his wet, trembling lips just as another flash from the heavens lit the small room long enough for him to see that he had drank nearly half and that the scorpion was-gone.
He slammed the bottle onto the table and beat frantically at his chest. Where ?
The wine had acted fast on his brain, blurring his vision and making his head feel like mashed rice. The shcorp scorpion, he slurred, continuing to swat at himself. Where is the shor-pion?
A gush of wind slammed rain against the side of the shack and the little window. The lightning flash was briefer this time, but it lasted long enough to see that the scorpion was still in the bottle. He giggled to himself for a moment. Of course it was still in the bottle, but still he drew his feet up under his stool.
Gripping the sides of his chair to keep from falling off as the room rocked and spun, he realized the pain in his mouth was now no more than a dull ache. When an especially loud scream came from the garden, he started to grimace, but realized he felt no pain. Even his leg no longer hurt. He giggled again. It is said that the power of the cobra and scorpion can heal.
Me agree, he said aloud. Did I say me agree ? he asked the darkness. That made him laugh too.
He had not checked the garden since early evening. Maybe the cabbages had grown. That thought made him giggle again.
He used the table to pull himself to his feet only to fall back into his chair with a hard thump. Oooii, he said, then laughed like a fool because he did not feel anything.
This time he got up and stayed up, but swayed dangerously. When he tried to pull open the door, it struck his foot and bounced closed. Cursing, he lumbered to the side so he could open it all the way.
Ah, the rain felt good splattering against his hot face and bare chest. It had eased a little and the lightning flashes w