The Noble Path: A relentless standalone thriller from the #1 bestseller by Peter May (electronic book reader .TXT) 📗

his backpack. His legs felt stiff and sore. He tried to move them to ease the ache and felt the pain revive in his shoulder.

A match flared in the dark, and he made out McCue’s face behind it. The American lit two cigarettes and passed one to Elliot. ‘Funny the things you hear in the night,’ he said. ‘A fish jumping to catch flies, something moving through the rushes, some goddam insect whining away in the dark aiming to suck your blood. In the daylight you might not even notice – there’s a rational explanation for everything. But in the dark, well, your imagination gets its turn. Comes up with some damn strange answers.’ He paused. ‘You alright?’

‘Sure.’

‘I used to love the dark. Kinda freed you from thinking about things the way they really are. Then you find yourself crawling along some goddam tunnel. It’s black like pitch. And whatever your imagination comes up with ain’t half as bad as what the gooks got waiting. After that, if you survive, you never trust the dark again – or your imagination.’

Elliot gazed up into the blackness and thought he could see stars through the chinks in the matting. ‘What’s brought this on?’

‘Dunno. Fear, I guess. In the dark you can believe you ain’t never gonna see nothing again. In the daylight it’s hard to believe you’re ever gonna die.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Funny thing is, I never used to be afraid of dying. Didn’t seem to matter much one way or another. But when you got a kid, it’s their life, too. You got responsibilities. You only get scared of dying when there’s some point to living. And what makes it worse is, you know it was always the ones who was scared that got it first.’ He stood on the butt of his cigarette. There was irony in his chuckle. ‘One thing that’s easier in the dark, though.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Baring your soul. I mean, you can’t see my face and I can’t see yours. In the daylight I’d be scared I could see you laughing.’

‘I’m not laughing at you, Billy.’

‘Maybe in the dark you understand a little.’

‘A little.’

‘Ny told me you got a kid, too. It’s hard to think of bastards like us as having kids – counting as someone’s daddy.’

Elliot watched the glow at the tip of his cigarette dying away. He shook his head. ‘That little girl’s got no daddy. He died sixteen years ago. And even if he was still alive she wouldn’t want to know him.’

‘That’s sad, Elliot.’

‘No. It’s history.’

The curtain was drawn aside, and the faint yellow light of an oil lamp spilled through from the other half of the cabin. Serey’s face looked drawn and pale as she crouched in the half-light, but there was a brightness in her dark eyes that Elliot had not seen before. ‘Time,’ she said.

McCue sighed. ‘My watch.’ But he made no attempt to leave. He lit another cigarette and chucked the packet to Elliot. ‘Not many left.’ He took a long draw on it. ‘Tell you a funny story.’

Elliot glanced at Serey, but she remained impassive, waiting patiently.

‘I spent some time upcountry with my unit in Nam before I was in the Rats. Always used to pull night watch. Used to love it. Me and the dark, you know. So anyway, my bunker was next to this lake, full of lungfish – you know, they got lungs and sound like humans breathing. Well, sometimes, in the dark, they would get stranded in the mud. You couldn’t see them, but you could hear them, like horror-movie monsters breathing right in front of you.’

Elliot managed to extract a cigarette and light it.

McCue went on, ‘So one night I was just lying there, thinking and listening, and I hear very clearly, right in my ear, this voice saying, “Fuck you.” Shit! I knew I was a dead man. I grabbed my rifle and all I could see was this lizard, about eight inches long, just sitting there. I looked at it, and it was looking at me. There was this moment of just nothing, then it blew out its gills and said, “Fuck you,” again. Christ, I’m shaking and waking the other guys. “Hey, man, this lizard just told me to go get fucked!” They’re grabbing their rifles, too, and the three of us – three grown men – have this stand-off with an eight-inch lizard. Finally the little bastard said “Fuck you” for them, too.’

Elliot laughed till the laughter caught in his throat and he choked, and lapsed into a fit of coughing that pulled and hurt his shoulder. But the pain didn’t matter. He had forgotten how good it felt to laugh. He saw McCue still grinning as he pushed past Serey to the outer cabin. Her face showed no understanding.

The sampan rolled as McCue clambered out to sit up back. Elliot’s smile faded. Serey turned away. ‘Wait,’ he said. She hesitated, still holding back the curtain. ‘Why are you doing this? You’d have been safe if you’d stayed in Phnom Penh.’

She took a long time to answer. ‘After four years under the Khmer Rouge, I’d forgotten I was still a human being. I just remembered, that’s all.’ And she dropped the curtain and was gone.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Long Xuyen lay in the heart of the delta. Nature had been generous here. It was the richest, most productive area of Vietnam, the rice bowl of south-east Asia. Its comparative wealth had been almost shocking to the conquerors from the north. It had also been the breeding ground for revolt. The Viet Cong and their cadres had worked tirelessly among the peasants, to turn them against the puppet regime of the Americans. There had been little to choose, back then, between the corruption of capitalism and the harsh and unforgiving dogmas of communism. But the communists possessed the more effective weapon. Fear. And they used it to good effect.

Life had changed little for the people since 1975. They worked in the