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

McCue shouted after him, ‘You’re a callous fucking bastard, Elliot, you know that!’

Slattery’s face was a mask. He raised himself on one elbow with difficulty and grimaced at Elliot. ‘Not like Billy boy to go shooting his mouth off. What’s the trouble, chief?’

‘No trouble,’ Elliot said. ‘Time to go.’

*

The constant but irregular bumping jarred his whole aching being, sending pain in random waves through a hazy consciousness that was clearly focused on only what hurt. And that clarity centred upon his leg, a leg that seemed to have swollen larger than anything in his forty years’ experience, enveloping everything, filling all of time and space. It left him feeling like some infinitely small being attached somehow to one of its vast curved surfaces. But even that infinite smallness was full of pain. His throat was swollen so that he could barely swallow and his head was filled with a fire that burned and raged.

He was only vaguely aware of Elliot and McCue taking turns to drag his crude bamboo litter through this eternal landscape. Overhead, light flitted erratically through the broken canopy, drifting in and out of focus. And from time to time a face would swim into his field of vision, disembodied concern, eyes that blinked to hide their hopelessness. He wanted to say, Stop! Enough! His lips moved, but there were no words.

Elliot looked into Slattery’s clouded eyes and knew he didn’t have long. He brushed flies from dried cracked lips that tried to move and he heard the breath that rattled in his throat. Then suddenly the dying man’s hand clutched Elliot’s wrist, every last ounce of his strength pressed into the grip. And his eyes opened wide, burning with a diamond-sharp blue-grey intensity. For a moment Elliot thought it was death that gave them their brief, bright life, before he saw, with a sudden shocking clarity, that it was not death itself, but an appeal for it. And he felt a sack of bile knot in his stomach.

McCue was on point. He came quickly back through the trees. They had been circling south-east around the top end of the Tonle Sap, avoiding the small towns of Roluos and Kompong Kleang, trying to reach the shores of the great lake. The one thing Elliot and McCue had agreed on was that the only way they were likely to reach Phnom Penh was by boat. It would be the fastest, most direct route, south-west across the Tonle Sap, eventually feeding into the wide, slow-moving, southbound waters of the Mekong, a great river highway that led past the city and on down through Vietnam, before finally debouching, through the nine dragons’ mouths of the Mekong Delta into the South China Sea. McCue crouched breathless beside Elliot.

‘We’re about quarter of a mile from a small fishing village on the lake shore. Half a dozen huts on stilts. It’s partially flooded and looks deserted.’

Serey and Ny squatted silently in the grass, gnawing on small hard biscuits that Elliot had taken from his pack. The heat was devastating, stealing away all their energy, sapping their strength and will to move. The air chirred with the sounds of countless insects, while high above strange birds cawed and screamed in the canopy. Elliot wiped the sweat from his eyes with his sleeve and nodded. ‘Okay.’ He inclined his head towards the two women. ‘We’ll give them five.’

McCue looked at Slattery. ‘How is he?’

‘Do you need to ask?’

A moment of contempt flickered in the American’s eyes, but he said nothing. He stood up and turned away, only to stop as the incongruous sound of voices in idle chatter reached them through the trees. Three Khmer Rouge soldiers walked into the clearing. Stunned by the sight of the two women, they stopped abruptly as McCue and Elliot snatched weapons, the clatter of gun metal on webbing, to cover them. Taken completely off guard, they reacted too late. One swung his AK-47 from his shoulder and fell in a burst of fire from McCue’s automatic. The other two stood in frozen horror, staring in near-disbelief at the Western faces.

‘Mrs Ang, tell them to put their weapons on the ground, very slowly,’ Elliot said. Serey was scared but hiding it. She and Ny were both on their feet, Ny breathless with fear, holding her mother’s arm. Serey glanced at Elliot then uttered a few halting words to the Khmers. They hesitated, just boys with frightened faces. And then the snap of a safety catch from behind forced Elliot into a half-turn. A fourth Khmer was standing over Slattery with a pistol pointed at his head. The soldier’s face was distorted by fear as he shouted a cryptic command.

‘He says if you do not throw down your weapons your friend will die,’ Serey said.

‘Fucking ironic, isn’t it.’ Elliot half-smiled. ‘Keep those bastards covered, McCue.’ And he dropped his M16 and drew out his service pistol.

McCue shifted uneasily. ‘What the fuck are you doing!’ Elliot raised the pistol, levelling it at the soldier’s head. ‘Elliot!’ McCue shouted. And with the fear there was now confusion in the Khmer’s face.

The air hummed with the silence that had fallen after the first shots. Elliot’s eyes met the Khmer’s, and the Khmer could not understand the gratitude he read in this alien face. Then Elliot’s eyes dropped to where Slattery lay on the stretcher. And in a single swift movement he lowered his revolver and shot Slattery through the temple. A small fountain of blood looped briefly through a patch of sunlight. The sense of disbelief was paralysing, the Khmer standing pointing his gun impotently at a corpse. His mouth gaped as he stared at the body then looked up to see Elliot as he raised his pistol to shoot him in the face. A bloodcurdling scream filled the air as McCue squeezed the trigger of his M16, venting his anger and confusion on the other two soldiers, bodies torn apart by two dozen bullets as