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

following earlier. He had cut two strong saplings to use as springs, then sharpened short sections of bamboo and lashed them to the springs to act as spears. Short lengths of twine provided a tripwire. They would be lethal to the wild hogs that ranged through the woods, and could disable or even kill a man.

Over the burning embers of the fire Slattery brewed up coffee to wash down a handful of protein biscuits while Elliot took the first watch. McCue bunked down and was asleep almost immediately. Slattery took Elliot some coffee. The mist was dispersing now as the heat and humidity rose with the sun. The clamour of jungle life had grown around them with the coming of the dawn; the screeching of tropical birds, the howling of monkeys high up in the canopy, the hum of a million insects, and other sounds of unidentified life, large and small. Both men were sweating.

‘What do you think, chief?’

‘I think we were lucky last night. And we’ve still got a long way to go.’ Elliot sipped his coffee thoughtfully. ‘We’ve probably come through the most densely patrolled area of the border, but we’re going to make slow progress if it’s like this all the way. And getting back could be harder.’

Slattery nodded. ‘Yeah, with a woman and a couple of kids.’ He threw away the dregs of his coffee. ‘Think I’ll stretch my legs before I crash.’

He followed the path towards the edge of the trees, carefully skirting McCue’s trap, and moved out on to a rock promontory overlooking the fields below.

Elliot tried to make himself comfortable in the undergrowth, from where he could cover both approaches along the path from a position of concealment. A silent approach to the camp was impossible through the bamboo thicket or the undergrowth, yet both provided instant cover should they have to abandon camp in a hurry. Elliot guarded the only other possible approach. He was tired, plagued by insects and heat, and he knew it was going to be a long and difficult two hours. The problem would be staying awake after the rigours of the night.

He still had the taste of Grace on his tongue, the smell of her in his nostrils. He was aware that he disliked her, while at the same time finding her irresistible. No one had ever aroused such passion in him. The alexandrite ring she had given him was tied on a thong around his neck, tangling with the chain of his tarnished St Christopher. Almost, he thought wryly, like the Lady’s favour the Knight would carry into battle.

Suddenly he was alert. The sound of footsteps hurrying along the track. A soft whistle told him it was Slattery, and he relaxed just a little. ‘Chief!’ Slattery slipped through the undergrowth and crouched down beside him. ‘You’d better come have a look.’

‘What is it?’

‘Soldiers. Down in the paddies.’

The two men darted back along the path, crouching low as they left the cover of the trees, and then dropping flat to inch their way forward to the edge of the promontory. Away below them, a group of twelve Khmer Rouge soldiers was escorting two ox-drawn carts across the fields. They seemed to be in no particular hurry. ‘What’s that they’ve got in the carts?’ Elliot asked.

‘Can’t see.’

Elliot reached back and took out his binoculars. He checked the position of the sun before raising them to his eyes and levelling them towards the little procession. ‘Jesus!’ The oath escaped his lips in a breath.

‘What is it, chief?’

Elliot lowered the glasses grimly. ‘Bodies.’ He handed the glasses to Slattery.

‘Shit! Must be twenty or thirty of them.’

As they watched, the carts drew to a halt, oxen shuffling as the soldiers began pulling the bodies from the carts and dumping them into the liquid mud of the paddies, like so many sacks. No need to bury them when, in very little time, the mud would claim them.

When it had completed its grisly business, the procession of soldiers continued across the fields at the same unhurried pace. There was a sinister ease in the casual ceremony, as if death had grown routine. Bodies cast carelessly into disused paddies: the human refuse of an inhuman tyranny, incongruous in the morning sunshine.

Elliot felt a chill like the cold blade of a knife run through his heart. He recalled again the story of the refugee at Mak Moun. Bayonets flashing in the rain, the death of a mother and her children. And he remembered the flies and the heat of Aden. The smell of cordite, the clearing smoke – and all those bodies. Women and children. A white flag of truce ignored. Fear corrupting reason.

‘You’d better catch some sleep,’ he said to Slattery.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

They drove to Heathrow in silence. David glanced at Lisa sitting pale and impassive in the passenger seat. He suppressed lingering feelings of anger at her unreasonable behaviour. They had fought furiously over her trip. She had faced down his angry protestations with a childlike obstinacy. Of course she knew the dangers that faced a girl of her age alone in Bangkok! He knew she did not. And it was not just ignorance. She wore her innocence like a badge. Not even the death of her mother had brought her into the real world. She lived still in that strange, protected never-never land in which she had grown up.

Grown up! He almost laughed at the irony. She had never grown up. Never had to. She had the arrogance of the adolescent, the unswerving belief of the child in the triumph of good over evil, the certainty that if something bad was going to happen, it would never happen to her. In an odd way, it was this very naivety that had first attracted him.

And now he blamed himself for failing to protect her from her own innocence. His damned temper. He should have known better.

He had asked her how she thought she was going to find her father in a city of