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

flesh. The full extent of the damage became apparent. He glanced at Elliot, and the look that passed between them left no room for words. He cut a strip of cloth and tied it round Slattery’s upper thigh, tight enough to stop the blood that was still gouting from the wounds. Then he took out a plastic bottle of spirit and several gauze pads from his backpack to wash away the blood and clean out the wounds.

Serey and Ny watched, transfixed with horror, as McCue clipped and then tied off the severed arteries as best he could, and the fleeting security they had felt with these men evaporated into the night.

Elliot, working in fevered silence, unravelled a roll of lint and wrapped it tightly around the pads that McCue placed over the wounds. He tore the ends, running one back around the leg to join with the other and tie the bandage in place below the knee. The whole process took less than two minutes, both men ignoring the frequent bursts of gunfire that seemed increasingly nearer. Slattery’s face was chalk white, his breathing shallow.

Now they could hear voices and many feet tramping through the undergrowth, not more than three or four hundred metres away. Elliot pulled Slattery into a sitting position then heaved him up over his shoulder. McCue lifted his own and Slattery’s backpacks and jerked Serey to her feet. ‘Listen, lady, you’re going to have to run or we’re all dead.’

‘I help her,’ Ny said, and she held and squeezed her mother’s hand.

McCue nodded to Elliot. ‘Go.’ And they started to run, along the bed of the dry stream at first, then up over the bank and through the trees, away from the sounds of the approaching soldiers. Ny put her mother’s arm around her neck and her own arm around her mother’s waist, and half-dragged her after Elliot. McCue came behind, automatic held in one hand ready for use, frequently turning to glance back, eyes searching the darkness on either side. Elliot’s long strides took him quickly through the forest, bending at the knees, transferring the strain of the extra weight he carried to his thighs. Within a few minutes his shoulder, arm and neck were aching. But there could be no stopping. Pain at a threshold of intensity. If you passed through it, then it became bearable, and you could live with it a little longer. His sweat almost blinded him, salt stinging his eyes. But he found a rhythm, of stride and of breathing, that carried him on for ten, perhaps fifteen minutes before his knees began to buckle and gradually his rhythm was lost, becoming a stuttering, staggering stumble.

He barely noticed how the trees had grown sparse, and was almost surprised to emerge from the darkness on to a bright moonlit track rutted by cartwheels and pitted by the hooves of many oxen. He lost his footing and dropped to his knees, acid rising in his throat. With leaden arms, he lowered Slattery to the ground, lungs pumping hard to feed oxygen to starved and aching muscles.

He felt light-headed and sick as he heard Ny and Serey stagger up behind him. Breathless sobs caught in Serey’s throat as she fell down beside him, utterly exhausted, unable to take another step. Ny was pale, her face stained and glistening with tears and sweat. Elliot looked up and saw pain in her eyes, but also courage there. McCue’s whisper seemed to fill the night. ‘We can’t stop here!’

Elliot nodded. He took a few more seconds to catch his breath. ‘How far behind us are they?’

McCue shrugged. ‘Difficult to say. We may have lost them – for the moment. But we gotta keep going. I’ll take the Aussie.’ He stooped to heave the dead weight of Slattery on to his shoulder, and visibly buckled under the strain. Elliot dragged himself wearily to his feet, wiping sweat from his eyes, and lifted Slattery’s discarded backpack. He took Serey gently by the arm and raised her upright, slipping an arm round her waist to support her. He looked at Ny, whose face gave no clue as to what was going on behind it. She reached across and took the backpack from his hand and slung it over her shoulder.

The stricken group stumbled east along the rutted path, at little more than walking pace, for ten to fifteen minutes. The path grew wider, the trees receding on either side, quite suddenly and unexpectedly opening out to reveal a large moon reflected in black water. And from myriad lakes and waterways, awesome and dark, rose the lost temples of Angkor Wat.

Serey dropped at once to her knees, pressing her palms together and bowing towards the sacred ruins. The sheer scale of the wat filled their eyes and minds, gathering itself in the distance, rising above a long, low-lying portico, its lotus-broken reflection carried on the still waters of the moon-silvered lake. Elliot glanced back through the trees, watching for movement, listening for sounds of pursuit. But he saw nothing, heard nothing. The Khmer Rouge must have assumed they would head north, rather than south towards the Wat and the dead-end shores of the Tonle Sap. The silence was broken only by the mumblings of Ang Serey as she offered prayers to the Lord Buddha. Slattery’s face was a waxen, grey mask shining with sweat. His grin was a grimace as he raised his head to look out across the waters at the temples.

‘Shit, chief,’ he said, ‘it don’t hold a candle to the Sydney Opera House.’

Serey was weeping now. Ny knelt beside her, an arm around her. ‘What is it, Mother?’

Slowly Serey raised her head, drawing her daughter’s eyes to where a red flag hung limp in the still night air above the temples.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Elongated slats of bloodless light, like the bars of a prison cell, fell across the floor, distorted by the debris that littered it, extending upwards across a wall daubed with revolutionary slogans. They had no