The Noble Path: A relentless standalone thriller from the #1 bestseller Read online

  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 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 b
lamed 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 eight million people. Eyes blazing defiance, she had turned on him. ‘I’m training as a reporter, aren’t I?’

  He hadn’t been able to help himself. ‘Reporter! You really have no idea, do you? Newspapers are for grown-ups, Lisa. You’ll be lucky if you end up writing knitting patterns for the woman’s page of the Torquay Gazette!’ Instantly he had wanted to bite his tongue, but it was too late. She had turned away, her face red with anger and embarrassment, refusing to discuss it further, determined to prove him wrong. He was still cursing his stupidity.

  There had been a reconciliation since then – of sorts. He had made all the running, apologized, said he was angry and frustrated and hadn’t meant what he’d said. He asked her to reconsider. She refused, and was relieved when he seemed to accept it. In truth he had realized, at last, that there was no point in fighting her. She was obsessed with finding her father. So, let her find him. He could never live up to the myth she was creating in her own mind, or accord with the excuses she had been making for him. He probably wouldn’t even want to know her – why else would he have stayed away all these years? But, whichever way it went, she would have to get it out of her system, and David had decided it was easier to swim with the current than against it. When the river of her obsession ran dry, as it was bound to, Lisa would be his again.

  He still did not fully understand why it was he wanted her so much. Perhaps because she was one of the few things in his life that had not come easy. Winning had always come easy to David. Lisa was a challenge. One he was determined to beat.

  For her part she was glad they had made up, was in need of his moral support. There was no one else, after all. She glanced at him as he drove. She wanted to say, I’m scared, but was frightened to admit it. All those brave words – I’m going to find my father. The reality was very different. And she was frightened, too, of the unknown. Of the stranger she was going to find. She would have liked to turn to David and say, I’ve changed my mind. But it was too late now. She was trapped by her own pride.

  ‘Listen, I want you to telephone me when you get to your hotel,’ David said. ‘So I know you’re alright.’

  ‘I will.’

  He allowed himself an inner sigh of relief. As long as she kept in touch by phone he would retain some measure of control over what she did.

  They checked her in at the British Airways desk and took her luggage, and she and David sat in the departure lounge waiting for her flight to be called. She had gone very quiet, subdued by nerves. He took her hand and squeezed it.

  ‘It’s a long flight,’ he said.

  She nodded.

  ‘I’m looking forward to meeting him.’ She looked at him, surprised, and he forced himself to laugh. ‘After all, he’s the one I’m going to have to ask for your hand in marriage.’

  She tensed and drew her hand away. ‘Don’t, David.’ It was as though he was making fun of her.

  ‘Oh, come on, I’m sorry. It was a joke, that’s all. I know you don’t want to hurry things. And I don’t want to push you.’ He took her hand again and decided to steer the conversation in a different direction. ‘You know what hotel he’s staying at?’

  ‘The Narai.’

  ‘And if he’s not there?’

  She hesitated. ‘I went back to see the Sergeant.’

  He turned his head sharply. ‘You never told me.’

  ‘I was going to. But I thought – well, I thought that you might be angry.’

  ‘Why would I be angry?’

  ‘Because you’ve behaved very strangely over everything to do with my father.’ The defiance in her voice again.

  I’ve behaved strangely! he thought. But all he said was, ‘What did he say, the Sergeant?’

  ‘He said he thought my father would still be in Bangkok. If he wasn’t at the hotel he gave me another address to try. A man who might be able to help me. A man called Tuk Than.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  McCue had been watching the pig for some time from a concealed position a metre back from the path. It was somnolent and off-guard in the late afternoon heat, snuffling about in the undergrowth, foraging idly for something to eat. Elliot and Slattery were sleeping, and McCue was nearly at the end of his two-hour stint on watch. He was refreshed and alert after five hours’ sleep. The pig moved nearer the trap, infuriatingly slowly. But the tunnels had taught McCue patience. The beast was quite large and thickly haired with a long snout and two sharp tusks. McCue knew the dangers of provoking a wild pig into attack. It could knock a man over, and its tusks could inflict serious injury, often dangerously close to the femoral artery on the upper leg. He had seen a man bleed to death from such an injury.

  Something close to McCue seemed suddenly to draw its attention, and it began lumbering down the path towards him, still contentedly unaware of his presence. As its forelegs broke the tripwire, the sapling sprang and the two sharpened bamboo stakes plunged deep into its chest. It let out a blood-curdling squeal and rolled over on its side, still twitching. It was not dead, but quickly failing. McCue approached with caution. It could still be dangerous. He raised the butt of his automatic and moved in to finish the job, clubbing the beast several times over the head. The twitching subsided and it lay quite still. A rustling in the undergrowth behind him made him swing round, drawing his knife to meet his assailant. It was Elliot.

  ‘What the hell’s happened!’

  McCue smiled a rare smile. ‘We got pork for dinner,’ he said.

  Slattery still slept while Elliot put water on the fire to boil and then made his way to the small clearing McCue had hacked out with his machete to prepare the dead animal. Four stakes were hammered into the soft earth and lashed together into A shapes, a bamboo pole laid across the top. The pig was hung upside down from the pole, tied by the hocks. McCue had made two neat incisions in the carotid artery behind the ears, allowing the blood to drain into a pot beneath the head. ‘We should save the blood,’ he said.

  Elliot shook his head. ‘We can’t carry any more than we’ve got. We’ll have to eat what we can and leave the carcase.’

  McCue shrugged. ‘Pity. This little mother could have fed us for days.’

  Elliot watched, fascinated, as McCue wielded his hunting knife with dexterous ease to gut the pig. He pinched the abdomen as high as he could, raising a pouch of flesh and cutting a slit big enough for him to slip in two fingers. Using the fingers as a guide for the knife he cut upwards towards the anus, taking care not to damage the internal organs. Then he cut downwards the same way as far as the breastbone, holding back the gut with his left hand as it began to spill outwards. When he had completed the cut, he let the gut hang down so that he could inspect it for signs of disease. ‘Looks okay,’ he said. He removed both kidneys and the liver, then cut through the membrane covering the chest cavity and took out the heart and lungs and windpipe. ‘Better bury this stuff.’

  Elliot started digging a hole to take the animal’s innards. ‘You not going to skin it?’

  McCue shook his head. ‘You never skin a pig. We’ll have to remove the hair over the fire. Did you boil that water?’

  Elliot nodded. ‘Where’d you learn to use a knife like that?’

  McCue sat silent for a while, his lean cadaverous face taut and thoughtful. ‘My Pa was a small-time farmer in the Midwest,’ he said. ‘He was a real hard bastard, but I guess I loved him. Ma died when I was just a kid and Pa had to raise me and my three brothers on his own. I was the baby of the family. When we was having bad times, like when the crop would fail or the animals got diseased, he would pack me off to his sister’s. I spent half my life there when I was a kid, but I guess they didn’t like me too much. I was none too happy staying there neither. I used to run off sometime
s, and then I would get sent home and my Pa would beat the crap out of me. I didn’t mind that, though. I just wanted to be home.

  ‘He didn’t have much patience, my Pa, and his temper worked on a short fuse, so I got the buckle end of his belt more times than I can remember.’ He paused, lost in some childhood past. But there was reverence in his voice, more than rancour, when he spoke of the beatings. ‘He taught me to use my fists. Stand up for myself. I was a bit of a runt, even then, and he said I had to be big in other ways.

  ‘I was about nine or ten when he took me out in the yard one day and gave me a knife and told me it was my turn to kill a pig. ‘You seen how it’s done,’ he said. ‘So do it right. Kill it with the first stroke. You get it wrong I’m gonna beat the shit outa you.’ So I got it with the first stroke. He taught me everything I needed to know about using a knife. Never needed nothing else since.’

  ‘Is he still alive?’

  There was a moment of pain in McCue’s eyes and his voice took on an edge as sharp as his knife. ‘Two of my brothers was killed in Nam. The other got a bullet in the spine. He’s in some hospital somewheres for the rest of his days.

  ‘While I was out there the bank foreclosed on my Pa’s loan, tried to put him off the farm. Some shit, huh? He’s worked that land all his days, two of his boys is killed fighting for their country, they give a third wheels for legs and stick me down a hole chasing gooks. They took all his boys, he wasn’t about to let them take his land. It was his life, you know? So he blew his brains out in the back room.’ He examined the blood on his hands. ‘God bless America.’ He got up to cut down the pig. ‘Better get this old hog on the fire.’