Adrenaline surged in King’s brain, wiping out any regard for his injury.
He couldn’t feel his bad ankle anymore.
He reached for the Sig Sauer in his waistband but the front of his shirt was slick with sweat and he couldn’t get a proper grip on—
No time.
Go.
He launched himself down the descent, landing in a heap on top of the guide, sending them both sprawling into the gravel with enough force to break a bone or gash skin completely open. Thankfully King landed on top of the guy, using him to cushion his own fall, and when he rolled off the body out of fear of a stab wound he instantly recognised the man had gone limp.
Lying on his back, panting, he looked over.
And immediately looked away.
He’d seen enough.
The guy was dead. No question about it. The back of his skull had met a particularly sharp rock, and then all two hundred and twenty pounds of King had come down on top of him.
Not good for your health.
King got to his feet and stared up and down the trail. As if sensing the absence of their guide, most of the mules up the back of the pack had come to a standstill. They stood in place on the rocky incline, emotionless, staring at the ground. They knew nothing but the trail.
King barked a sharp unintelligible command and they set off up the mountainside.
Then he put two hands on the body, gave it a short heave, and rolled it off the edge of the path. Limp as a rag doll, the corpse plunged into the thick undergrowth and rolled into invisibility, disappearing down the hillside. King kicked dirt over the grotesque bloodstain on the rock and rubbed it in with the sole of his boot.
With the evidence wiped away, he deemed it acceptable to check on Slater.
Slater was sitting on a smooth rock in the shadow of the mountain, his eyes wide and unblinking, staring straight ahead, refusing to look at the damage. He was using his good hand to hold two folds of skin together along his forearm. Blood seeped out of the wound.
King scrutinised it.
He said, ‘Fuck.’
But it wasn’t the end of the world. Blood wasn’t fountaining out of the cut. There was just a steady trickle — Slater was doing an excellent job of mitigating the blood loss by gripping the wound tight.
Slater kept staring forward and said, ‘How bad?’
‘You’ll be okay.’
‘It hurts.’
‘I don’t doubt that.’
‘Get the medkit.’
King shrugged the duffel bag off his back and dropped it to his feet. He unzipped it, fished around, and came up with a clear plastic carry bag about the size of a handbag. It was large by commercial first-aid standards, but they’d brought a few extra goods in case of emergency. They’d been expecting bloodshed, after all.
King pulled a spare water bottle out of his pack, already loaded with iodine tablets to kill germs. He unscrewed the lid, gripped Slater’s arm, and poured it all over the wound.
Slater clenched his teeth, closed his eyes, and let out a long and turbulent groan.
When they looked up, there was a Caucasian couple frozen in place beside them, staring in horror at the injury. Behind them, a small Nepali guide carrying their packs tried to peer through to get a look at the wound.
‘Oh my God,’ the woman said. She was probably sixty, with long hair tied back and tanned, weathered skin. Her accent was Australian. ‘What happened?’
Still gripping Slater’s arm, King gave a ludicrous smile and said, ‘It’s fine. He just ran into a low-hanging branch. Terrible luck. We’ll get it cleaned up.’
Trying to stay conscious, Slater half-smiled and half-nodded.
Looking queasy, the Australian man said, ‘That, uh… that doesn’t look too good.’
‘Don’t worry,’ King said. ‘I’m a qualified medical practitioner. I’ll sort this out and get him to the next teahouse as fast as possible.’
‘Is there anything we can do to—’
‘No,’ King and Slater said in unison.
A little too enthusiastically.
The couple hovered, unsure how to react. Eventually they turned away from the grisly injury and shook their heads in disbelief.
‘If you say so,’ the woman muttered.
They set off down the trail.
King waited in silence until they were out of earshot, then said, ‘You know what I need to do, right?’
‘Yeah,’ Slater said through clenched teeth. ‘Don’t drag it out any longer. Just do it.’
‘It’s going to hurt.’
Slater stared daggers at him. ‘No shit.’
‘Just warning you.’
‘It hurts right now. Can’t get much worse than this.’
‘Yes,’ King said with a sigh, ‘it can.’
He pulled something out of the medkit.
Something thin and metal, with a small trigger.
A medical gun.
Loaded with reusable stainless steel surgical staples.
37
With his right arm bound from wrist to elbow in heavy-duty bandages, Slater staggered along the trail toward Phakding.
This time, King led the way.
Somehow, he’d escaped further injuring his ankle when he’d crash-tackled the assassin into the dirt. He must have come down on his good side, preventing his foot from bouncing off the dirt. Even slightly disrupting the joint might have inflamed it beyond comprehension, and there was a point where no amount of mental toughness would let you walk on a brutalised limb.
So he was in high spirits, setting a cracking pace. Slater tried to keep up, but under the hot sun it felt like he was walking through a fever dream. His arm hurt like hell, but he knew the injury wasn’t catastrophic. He could flex his fingers, so his movement hadn’t been impeded. There was no nerve damage. It just tested his pain threshold, like most operations did. All it required was steeling his mind, focusing on each step, and absolutely nothing else. He couldn’t afford to think about how much it hurt, or how far they had to go. That would freeze him in his tracks, flood him with dejection.
After they spent an hour covering solid ground, King seemed to figure it was time for conversation.
He backed up a few steps so
