The Noble Path: A relentless standalone thriller from the #1 bestseller by Peter May (learn to read books .TXT) 📕

– a dark, subterranean existence where they had contrived sleeping chambers, food and ammunition dumps, and even makeshift hospitals. It was an extraordinary complex of tunnels, dug by hand out of the hard, laterite soil over twenty years, built on several levels to protect against flooding and gas. They were riddled with booby traps.

The VC would pop out of hidden trapdoors on the ground, catching American GIs unawares, and then vanish again into the tunnels. The soldiers sent down after them were almost invariably killed, either by booby traps, or by VC waiting with grenades or AK-47s. The twisting dark tunnels were only big enough to allow a small man to crawl on his belly. Operating here took special skills. Techniques for engaging the enemy, and a very special kind of soldier, quickly evolved. The Rats were formed in 1967.

‘You knew Batman, then?’ Elliot asked.

Sergeant Robert Batten Batman had been the most famous of the rats, and the most feared by the Viet Cong. So much so that he had made it on to their ten-most-wanted list. All the VC in the tunnels knew his name. McCue shook his head. ‘Before my time. But I heard the stories.’

‘Why were you picked?’

‘I wasn’t. I volunteered.’ A slight ironic smile hovered on his lips. ‘I loved it in the tunnels,’ he said. ‘When they told me they had a VC down there I came unglued.’ The most dangerous moment for the Rat, when he was most exposed, was when he was lowered into the hole. Often a VC would be waiting for him at the bottom with a poisoned bamboo punji stake, or a grenade, or he would just cut the Rat in two with a burst of automatic fire. It was one of those moments that had finally got to McCue, a split second when he lost his nerve and just couldn’t do it any more. Just six weeks earlier he had almost been killed in a tunnel. He remembered the cold horror of the moment. They knew there was a VC somewhere up ahead in the dark. McCue had inched his way forward, his flashlight held out to one side in his left hand, his gun in the other. A second Rat followed about five metres back – the distance at which a grenade would not be lethal.

As they came to a bend, McCue had reached round and fired three shots into the blackness. Nothing. So he had moved on. The tunnel straightened out and came to a dead end. A slight earth-fall betrayed the presence of an overhead trapdoor. As he reached it, sweat running in clear rivulets down his blackened face, the trapdoor slid into place. The VC was right above him. His mouth dry, he had raised his pistol, ready to fire, and pushed the trapdoor up. Something fell, almost into his lap. ‘Grenade!’ he screamed, and started scrambling back along the tunnel. The explosion ruptured one of his ear drums, and his legs were peppered with grenade fragments. The second Rat had dragged the bleeding and half-conscious McCue back along the tunnel. It had taken nearly an hour to get him to the surface.

The smell of cooking came to them from the back of the house. Outside, the cicadas kept up an incessant chorus and the murky waters of the klong lapped constantly at the stilts. Slattery passed round cigarettes and the three men sat smoking in silence for some minutes. At length McCue looked at Elliot and broke the silence. ‘You were responsible for the Aden massacre.’

Slattery glanced at Elliot anxiously, but the Englishman was impassive. ‘It’s what they said at the court martial.’ He stared back at McCue, unblinking.

‘Apart from that, I don’t know anything about you,’ McCue said.

‘No one does, Billy boy, no one does,’ Slattery said cheerfully. ‘But he’s the chief. And take my word for it, a handy man in a scrap.’

McCue’s eyes never left Elliot. ‘What’s your experience in south-east Asia?’

‘Nam.’ McCue raised an eyebrow, and Elliot answered the unasked question. ‘Freelance.’

A flicker of distaste crossed McCue’s face. ‘A headhunter.’

‘I only counted them.’ It wasn’t a defence. Just a statement of fact. In the early days in Nam, some of the mercenaries had been paid by the head. Literally. Elliot had not been squeamish about it. Just practical. Heads were bloody and cumbersome. He knew McCue was weighing him up, and he liked that. Soldiers who thought before they acted stood a better chance of survival. He had already decided that McCue was in.

McCue said, ‘When do we go?’

And Elliot knew that he, too, had passed muster. ‘Ten days. My fixer in the UK has set us up a contact here in Bangkok. He’ll provide arms, kit and supplies. We’ll make contact tomorrow. He’ll also provide passes to get us into selected camps along the border. I want to do a recce, talk to some of the refugees. And we’ll need a guide. Someone to get us across the border. Then we’ll be on our own. Initial planning meeting in a week.’

Lotus brought in half a dozen bowls of steaming food on a tray and laid it on the floor beside them. With a careful, elegant precision, she knelt down and placed each of the bowls on the floor in the centre of the small circle of men. McCue described each dish. ‘Kaeng jeud, soup with vegetables and pork. Khao phat muu, fried rice with shrimp. Phat siyu, noodles and soy sauce. Plaa priaw waan, sweet and sour fish. Phat phak lai yang, stir-fried vegetables. Yam neua, hot and sour grilled beef salad.’

‘Jesus, that’s some spread, Billy. Tell the little lady it’s much appreciated.’

She nodded, unsmiling. ‘Thank you.’ She passed them each a bowl and chopsticks.

‘Tuck in, chief. Thailand’s finest. All cooked in lovely klong water, that right, Billy?’ McCue inclined his head in acknowledgement. ‘Wash, shit and cook in the stuff.’ Slattery glanced at Elliot. ‘But don’t worry, chief, suck it and see. You’ve had your cholera booster, ain’t