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

suddenly he turned to run back the way they had come, straight into a bullet from McCue. A burst of automatic fire rang out from across the clearing. The six remaining men dived for cover. Elliot rolled over behind a tree, snatched a grenade from his webbing, pulled the pin and lobbed it across the clearing. It exploded with a dull thud and somebody screamed. He saw two dark shadows running through the trees at the far side, not ten metres away. Two short bursts with his M16 and one of the shadows fell and lay still. The other kept going and disappeared into the forest. There was another burst of automatic fire somewhere to his left. He rolled over quickly, eyes raking the darkness, and bumped into a prone figure lying in the ferns. It was Van. Elliot turned him over with his free hand and saw the whites of frightened eyes staring up at him. ‘You bastard!’ he hissed. He looked up quickly then whistled once. A single whistle came back in response, and the crouched figure of Slattery crossed the path and moved up beside him.

‘Alright chief?’

‘Where’s McCue?’

‘Christ knows.’

‘The rest of Van’s men?’

‘Two dead. Don’t know about Ferguson.’

A rustle in the undergrowth made them turn. Ferguson stood there, pale and grim in the moonlight. Then he lurched suddenly forward, almost landing on top of Van, to reveal McCue standing behind him, M16 crooked in his arm, muzzle pointing skywards. Elliot jerked his head at him. ‘Check out the far side of the clearing.’ McCue nodded and melted away into the trees.

Elliot gripped the loose flesh at Van’s throat. ‘You sold us out, you fucker! Why?’

‘Tuk’s idea,’ Van babbled. ‘He trade you for big shipment gold artefact. He ask me fix it.’

‘I knew there was something treacherous about that little creep,’ Slattery growled. His gut was aching again.

McCue slipped quietly back through the trees and crouched beside Elliot. ‘Three Khmer Rouge dead. Two hit by the grenade. You got the other with the M16.’

‘And at least one got away,’ Elliot said grimly. ‘We’re going to have to move out of here fast.’

‘What about these two?’ Slattery asked.

‘Kill them.’ There was no emotion in McCue’s voice.

Elliot shook his head. ‘Mike, take their weapons.’ Slattery disarmed them, and Elliot pushed his knee hard into Van’s chest, making him grunt. He leaned over, bringing his face very close to Van’s. ‘You tell Tuk I’ll see him when I get back.’ He nodded to the others and they rose and faded off into the forest. Van rolled over and vomited.

Ferguson crouched over him. ‘Hey, you alright, father?’

Van was shaking. ‘I scared, Garee. We lucky be alive.’

Ferguson spat. ‘Yeah, well that could be the biggest mistake these bastards ever made.’

*

For the first hour McCue took point. Their need to move fast was tempered by the requirement for caution. They kept to the animal tracks, always running the risk of hitting landmines or booby traps. McCue’s face was strained with concentration and tension, listening, scanning the ground, constantly checking ahead. It would be too easy to confuse the rustle of some night creature in the undergrowth for that of a man. But the opposite was also true.

Then from somewhere up ahead came what sounded like voices. He stopped, stood motionless, and listened, his hand raised to halt the others. There it was again. Definitely voices. He turned and hurried back along the track. ‘Someone coming,’ he whispered. Elliot nodded curtly and waved them into the undergrowth at the side of the path where they each lay flat, pressing into the soft damp earth beneath the cover of the ferns. Now they all heard the voices. Then the sound of feet on hard earth. A patrol of six Khmer Rouge soldiers, walking in single file, passed within inches of where they lay. The soldiers carried their AK-47s carelessly over their shoulders. They talked and laughed without caution. Clearly they were not expecting to encounter anyone here. Elliot waited for several minutes before he signalled the others back out on to the path.

‘I’ll go point,’ he whispered. ‘McCue, you ride shotgun.’ He took a compass check. They were still heading south-east towards the small town of Sisophon, though they would not reach it for a day or more.

The next two hours passed without incident, and they were caught almost unawares by the sudden light of dawn. Elliot had forgotten how quickly night both lifted and fell near the equator. They had reached the edge of the forest now, and stood looking out across a flat valley of neglected paddy fields, an occasional line of trees breaking the regular monotony of the broken-down irrigation ditches. Early morning mist rose like smoke across the fields. Beyond, shimmering in a blue haze, the ground rose again, covered by a thick blanket of trees.

It took them fifteen minutes to find a secure place to set up camp and try to grab some sleep during the hours of daylight. The site was flanked on one side by a tall bamboo thicket, and on another by an almost impenetrable jungle undergrowth. It was nearly dark here, still under the thick canopy of the trees. While Slattery collected tinder and kindling to set a fire, Elliot cut lengths of bamboo to feed through the loops on either side of their canvas sleeping mats. He hammered two pairs of sharpened bamboo stakes into the ground, six feet apart, lashing them together to form two A shapes over which he placed the poles to stretch the mats and make comfortable bunks raised twelve inches above the ground. They only needed two, as there would always be one of them on watch.

Slattery’s fire crackled fiercely, fuelled by the dry standing dead wood he had collected. It burned almost without smoke. What little there was filtered through the canopy overhead, where it was lost in the rising mist. McCue returned, having set two spring spear traps two hundred metres apart on the game track they had been