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

Decaying houses and empty gaps. There were no lights, no signs of life except for a dog that bayed at them as they passed. McCue sat up at the back beside the open canvas flap, in black pyjama top, chequered scarf wrapped loosely around his neck, AK-47 resting across his knees. Elliot and Slattery lay flat on the floor beside the stiffening corpse.

‘Alright,’ McCue said, and they sat up again as the town receded into the night.

‘What place was that, chief?’

‘Must have been Kralanh.’ Elliot squinted at his map in the torchlight. ‘That would put us about halfway to Siem Reap.’ He checked his watch. ‘It’s early yet. We could be there by midnight.’

*

The driver turned his truck towards the lights in the centre of town, a refuelling stop for the convoy south.

Siem Reap was his home town, and a deep sadness ran through him at the ghost it had become. He remembered, as a boy, bathing in the palm-shaded river that ran through the town. People had loved to bathe in it then, dipping themselves in the milk chocolate-coloured water to cool themselves in the noontide heat. The rickety waterwheels that had once turned and creaked all day, feeding water into a crazy, wasteful network of bamboo conduits to water the little pocket handkerchief-sized gardens, stood idle now, broken and abandoned. The houses too stood empty, fallen into disrepair, perched on sinking stilts above long-decayed piles of garbage. Once, in a workshop here, Cambodian craftsmen had etched out scenes from the Ramayana on leather murals, squatting on the ground, dressing and marking out the hide with chalk and then punching out the patterns. They had enjoyed the patronage of the King.

The driver supposed he was lucky to be alive, but all that life held for him now was a handful of memories, like fading snapshots in a family album. A past that could never be recaptured, a future he was afraid to think about. He pulled the truck into the line of vehicles awaiting refuelling, and supposed he ought to try to find a replacement for his spare tyre, or at least attempt to have it repaired. The chances of either were slim, but if he had another puncture on the road he could at least say that he had tried, and perhaps they would not shoot him.

He switched off the engine and banged on the back of the cab. ‘You can get out and stretch your legs if you want,’ he shouted. ‘We’ll be stopped for a while.’ He jumped down on to the road and breathed in the cool night air of his home town. But even the air did not smell the same anymore. In his memory it had always been laced with the scent of nuoc mam, a pungent fish sauce that smelled foul and tasted wonderful. It was a taste he had not had on his tongue for years.

No sign of the guards. He banged several times on the side of the truck. ‘Hey, wake up guys!’ When he got round the back he pulled out the pin to drop the loading flap. As it swung down, the naked body of the dead guard tumbled on to the road, and the driver screamed.

*

Elliot, Slattery and McCue moved quickly through the forest, eyes scanning the moonlit gloom for the tiniest movement, ears straining to pick up the slightest sound. Each held his automatic ready, for everywhere here there were signs of human activity. Many trees had been felled and there was a criss-cross network of footpaths and cart tracks. Much of the undergrowth had been hacked away, creating access for more tree felling. From time to time they came across piles of cut and stripped trunks awaiting transport. The moonlight splashed down through the thinned-out forest in irregular patches, like liquid silver, but they stuck as far as possible to the shaded areas.

They had dropped, one by one, from the back of the truck as it neared Siem Reap, and regrouped in the trees. Elliot had used his compass and the stars to fix, as best he could, their position. According to the refugees’ accounts, the commune where Ang Serey and her daughter were being held lay four to five kilometres north-east of Siem Reap, almost within sight of the temples of Angkor Wat. Beyond the trees, in what had once been open savannah, work had begun on digging a new irrigation network to create more paddies for increased rice production. Further to the east, a new dam was being built to feed the irrigation canals, all part of the Khmer Rouge grand plan to turn Cambodia, now Democratic Kampuchea, into an agrarian Stone Age society based on a self-sufficient rice economy.

They had made steady progress through the woods for nearly an hour when the sound of a vehicle engine stopped them dead in their tracks. It came from somewhere away to their right. At a signal from Elliot they fanned out through the trees, treading cautiously in the direction of the sound. The ground began to fall away, the trees grew more sparse, and they dropped flat as the lights of a truck raked the ground below. A wide open plain stretched ahead in the moonlight, partially flooded and divided into neat rectangles marked out by irrigation ditches under construction. Along the near perimeter ran a winding dirt track, and it was here that the truck bumped and clattered its way over ruts and potholes. Apart from the driver it appeared empty. It passed below within fifty metres.

When it had gone they moved back up into the trees and continued east, following the line of the road. McCue again took up point, moving silently and carefully through the shadowed areas, stopping every twenty or thirty seconds to check out the lie of the land ahead. After a while the ground started to rise steeply and they followed it upwards.

Now Elliot saw McCue crouch down suddenly and signal them to stop. Still crouching, he sidled