Thai Horse by William Diehl Read Free Book Online

waited to transport them to their jobs. It was a daily occurrence, nothing out of the ordinary.
    Except that these were not ordinary babies. They were all barely six months old. All had been bought on the streets of Bangkok a few hours earlier. All had been murdered just before the plane took off for Hao Yai airport.
    Kilhanney did not know about the dead cargo he was carrying. The women had seemed uncommonly quiet when he picked them up, but he thought it was probably the weather.
    He pulled the truck up at the border crossing and jumped out. The rain had slacked off for a few moments and was falling only in a light, steady drizzle, but lightning still ripped the sky and snapped at the thick jungle surrounding them.
    Kilhanney got out, went to the back of the truck and lowered the tailgate. He helped the women out, particularly the ones with their babies on their backs. The women scurried along a muddy path toward the guard station with their work permits ready.
    Two guards huddled in the small outpost to keep out of the rain. Kilhanney got back in the truck and watched as the women approached the border guards. The rest was routine. The Malaysian guards were friendly and flirted with the women.
    As one of the women started past the guard her child’s arm dropped out of the sling and dangled loosely. She hurried on, unaware that the child was slipping and its head had come out of the sling. As she passed the guard he stopped her and, smiling, reached out to put the baby back. But as he touched it he froze. The baby was ice-cold.
    The woman panicked and ran, and the child toppled out of the sling into the guard’s arms.
    The guard holding the baby in the rain screamed to the other guard, ‘This baby is dead! Stop her,’ as the woman ran back toward the pickup.
    Then all the women with babies began to run. The second guard checked the child on another woman’s back. He stood in the rain holding another dead child. ‘This one is dead, also!’ he yelled back.
    The women scrambled. They started to run back toward the pickup, and the guards fired several shots in the air to stop them. Kilhanney freaked out. He slammed the pickup in gear, and with tires digging into the mushy road, he drove off.
    Kilhanney drove like a madman, the heavy pickup skittering along the slippery back road. The truck roared through the savage storm with Kilhanney frantically peering through the rain-swept windshield. Fear had turned his mouth to ashes.
    ‘Oh God,’ he kept repeating over and over again. Then suddenly the road in front of him exploded in white light, a bolt of lightning seared the sky in front of him and shattered one of the towering trees. The blaze of light temporarily blinded Kilhanney. He wiped his eyes and then the road seemed to vanish and there was only the jungle in front of him. He spun the wheel. The truck’s tires slithered in loose gravel and crumbling pavement and water. The truck plunged sideways into the jungle and snapped to a crunching stop against an embankment.
    Kilhanney was dazed. The windshield was shattered. He groped for the door handle, pulled it up, and as the door swung open he toppled into a soggy ditch. The cold rain brought him around. He sat up for a moment, then scrambled up the slippery side of the gully and plunged headlong into the jungle.
    He ran frantically through the jungle as tree branches and bamboo snapped at him, tore at his clothes, stung his face. Lightning turned the jungle into a strobed nightmare.
    Vines the size of boa constrictors curled out of the ground and strangled the big mangrove trees. Another jagged bolt of lightning streaked overhead. In its eerie blue-white light, Ki l hanney saw a giant stone Buddha, eroded by time and weather, glowering through the ferns at him, its face and body shrouded by the relentless growth. Kilhanney fell back against a tree with a scream. Then with his heart smashing at his ribs, he raced on through the storm.
    The place looked like the set of a