Warrior in the Shadows (28 page)

3.21

Alfie Woodard wormed through the narrow passageway like a furious wounded snake. Besides the bloody wound to his shoulder, chips and rock fragments peppered his skin, and several buckshot pellets were lodged in his legs. But Alfie felt no pain now, and the blood leaking from a dozen places on him served as a lubricant as he wormed through the stone, following a narrow tunnel just barely big enough for his body. The tunnel had made a sharp turn that had saved him from the worst of the gunfire, but ricocheting pellets had struck him. The tunnel sloped upward in the depths of the hill, and after a long climb in which the rocks began to scrape his ragged flesh, he came into a chamber barely big enough to stand in.

He stood there, body trembling with exertion and something else, his body paint smeared with blood, and he threw his head back, eyes rolled back to the whites, and began to sing a song of vengeance, a song that might be fifty thousand years old. He turned off the part of himself that still felt pain and planted his back against the wall of the chamber and his feet against the opposite wall and began to climb up the narrow passageway. At the very top, like a tiny silver dime held at arm's length, was a sliver of sky, growing dull with darkness. He droned in his chest in a deep imitation of a didgeridoo, and the image in his mind was of him becoming stronger, of the weak vessel of his wounded flesh filling with strength that ignored the loss of blood, ignored the pain, ignored everything except the task at hand of getting up and out of the hole.

Images rose in his mind, released by the old song he sang: a boy, playing with sticks, dimly seen parents laughing; his foster homes; himself standing over the body of Mr. Edwards; his first parachute jump, dangling in the harness and whooping with joy, to the amusement of the Airborne instructors who'd expected him to fail; his first talk with his mentor Ralph, and the day that he had killed him; the look of resignation and acceptance in Ralph's face as he had bowed his head to accept the blow of the nulla-nulla war club; the long line of killings he'd done for Jay Burrell and how his power had grown in the quiet times after, when he'd lain here in the cave and explored it all thoroughly, all against the contingency he felt coming out on the horizon. The mission, the problem, the solution to everything that was here tonight, this was what he'd been born to do, this was why the Dreamtime ancestors had chosen him, guided him to Ralph who had taught him the way of puri-puri as best he could and then died as a willing sacrifice to propel his best and only student forward. All of this had been dreamed before, and only the end of the dream wasn't clear because that hadn't yet been decided— and that's why he had to get out of the cave.

There was a hard part in the passageway where it was too narrow for him to lever up with back and leg, so he inched his way up, callused toes gripping tiny holds and his fingers clawing for purchase on the battered stone. At the top, the narrow passage required him to turn his head so that his head went through, then one shoulder, and then the rest of his body squeezing over the agonizing wound in his other shoulder, the bloody matter spreading around the hole in the rock, and Alfie Woodard was no more, it was Anurra who stood with trembling legs beside the hole of his birth, ready for his final initiations, an initiation that required the blood of his old enemy and the woman.

He stood there and let darkness fall around him, then knelt and picked up the nulla-nulla club he'd lain there against this contingency so long ago. No more guns. This would be settled with club and knife. He looked more carefully and found the weathered plastic pouch, weighted with a stone, and took out the Emerson CQC-7, its blade still slick with the Break Free lubricant he'd sprayed on it when he'd cached it there. He clipped the knife to the front of his loincloth, took the nulla-nulla in his hand, and then limped to the edge of the cliff.

It was almost full dark, well into the gloaming of dusk. He came to the tree where Charley had rappelled from, and he laughed.

"Good one, mate," he said. He tested the rope. It still held, so he took the rope in his hand and stood there, then threw back his head and shouted out, "Wonk! Wonk!" The cry of the Quinkin hunter rang through the darkening hills. Then he wrapped the rope around him in a hasty rappel and made his way down the cliff. At the foot of the cliff he took a moment to get low to the ground and pick up their sign. Like he thought, they were wounded and slow. An Aborigine SAS trooper who'd been the best tracker in the unit knew just how to utilize that to his advantage.

"Wonk! Wonk!"

Anurra was on the hunt.

3.22

Kativa and Charley were running through the thick brush. In the dark they had lost the thin trail and so they oriented as best they could, using the big hill and the cave as a landmark. The thorny brush tore at their clothes and skin, leaving bits of cloth clinging to branches, and Charley wished for the time to clean up their back trail. That wasn't going to happen. All they had now was speed and a good head start and the hope that their pursuer was badly wounded.

"I know I got into him," Charley said half to himself. "It will slow him down."

"He wants it this way," Kativa said, her voice full of fear. "He wants to fight you in the dark."

"What did he tell you?"

"He said that this was all foretold, that the three of us were in this together in some way."

In the distance, they heard, "Wonk! Wonk!"

The mocking cry sounded closer, or it could have been a trick of the night air, clear and cold, carrying the sound farther. Kativa stumbled and fell; Charley picked her up and urged her forward.

This is what he wants
, Charley thought.
He wants us to rush blindly, and then he'll get close and bound around us, count on us being so scared we'll only look back, herded like crazed animals wild with fear.

Charley knew how to fight that. He looked over his shoulder as he ran, calculated time and distance, read the terrain. They ran past a rock outcropping that would be perfect, on the edge of a clearing. He slowed to a stop, holding his hand up to silence Kativa's question.

He recognized this place.

In the wide clearing were long uneven rows of chest-high termite mounds, daubed clay that in the dim starlight looked like crouching humans.

"I've seen this place before," Kativa said.

"Yeah," Charley said. "We've both been here before."

He took her hand and led her back to the rock outcropping that hulked on the edge of the clearing. It was twice the height of a man, and the top was worn like an old molar, with a declivity in the center and sides that made a ragged ring around the top. He stooped, looped his hands, and hefted Kativa up on the top of the rocks. Then he held the shotgun up and said, "Take this end and pull."

With her help he pulled himself up. From the top they had a good vantage point; he could see almost a hundred yards to their rear in the dim light. He looked back over the field of termite mounds and felt a cold emptiness in the pit of his belly.

Yes, he'd seen this place before.

In the dim starlight it seemed as though everything rippled for a moment, like the still water of a pond ripples under a faint breeze. He heard the voice of Robert the Aboriginal elder saying, "You've been to this place before… now you'll see it through."

"Did you hear something?" Charlie said to Kativa.

She paused, listening. "No," she said. "Did you?"

"I can't tell," Charley said. "I don't know anymore."

Charley counted his shotgun shells. Four shells remained in the magazine and he had two loose ones in his pocket. He thumbed those two into the magazine. That gave him six rounds of buckshot. He took the magazine out of the silenced Walther and counted four rounds in there with one spare magazine of eight rounds. He'd lost the policeman's revolver in the mad scramble in the cave. The Aborigine's machine pistol would be effective at close range, but Charley could reach out farther with the shotgun. Alfie would know that to use his weapon to maximum advantage, he'd have to get in close. Charley meant to deny him that opportunity. He'd keep him out farther with the ambush he was preparing, where he could punish the hunter with the heavy fire-power from the shotgun. Then he could move in close and finish him with the Walther.

Right here was where it would finish.

There were several other rock outcroppings he could have chosen, but this one, while not the most desirable, would work. Alfie had been a ground fighter, an infantry man, who knew how to read the terrain and he would be watching the most favorable bits for an ambush. Charley hoped to stay one move ahead of him by picking a bit that wasn't as choice but would still serve.

"Wonk! Wonk!"

He was closer still.

3.23

It surprised Alfie that they made no attempt to clear their trail. Someone with Payne's background would at least try, not that it made much difference to a tracker of Alfie's skill. But maybe the time spent as a photographer had dulled Charley Payne's operator instincts. He was limping badly and he had the woman with him, and both were slowing him down. He would be burdened with the fear of anything happening to her and that was a significant handicap. They would be somewhere just ahead, he knew. The place of their final confrontation was as well known to him as the cave he'd wormed out of. Like Kativa and Charley, his Dreaming had led him to that place before.

Up ahead was the field of rock outcroppings that surrounded the clearing where the termite mounds waited in long rows. If they were going to strike back, they'd pick a place like that. Alfie slowed and let his senses, enhanced by his altered state, probe slowly forward. There was something… he crouched low in the dim light and looked closely at their trail. He saw sign: a rock tipped up, exposing the dark side still matted with dirt, a single thread hanging from a thorn, the compressed dirt where a man's heavy weight and booted feet had been. He was still on track. Charley Payne was angry and alive and still mobile and he had that shotgun. For a moment, the old SAS trooper in Alfie was angry for bringing a knife to a gunfight, but then he squelched the thought: that's not how it was meant to be.

He inched forward, every sense alert, aided by his vision that seemed preternaturally keen, which limned each rock with a little nimbus of light like an aura. Each tree branch seemed to speak to him in the movement made by the breeze. He sniffed for scent that spoke to him, the smell of sweaty humans and a trace of the scented deodorant that Kativa wore.

They were close. Very close.

3.24

Charley saw the dim figure moving from rock to rock. The Aborigine sensed an ambush, but he moved forward carefully and well. There was only a hint of a hitch in his stride to indicate he'd been wounded; the man still moved with the supple flow of a healthy animal. Charley watched him with dread. The hunter was cutting their sign and like a good soldier, he was looking ahead for possible ambush sites. He'd slowed, and it seemed to Charley that their hunter was sniffing the air as though he could scent them.

The gold aiming bead on the muzzle of the Mossberg shotgun shivered a bit as Charley eased the long gun into a braced position on the rock. A hundred yards was too far for buckshot and he didn't want to mess about working with another hasty slug. He had to wait until Alfie was close enough to get most of the buckshot into him and that meant twenty-five yards. The Aborigine was carrying something in his hand that wasn't a submachine gun; it looked like a longish club.

The hunter slowed to a stalk; there was no doubt that he sensed something. He came forward, foot by cautious foot, as though he expected them to spring from the bushes. But his attention was on the rock outcroppings. As Charley hoped, Alfie needed to follow their trail into the rocks and that would bring him in close enough for the shotgun to be the decisive factor.

He hoped.

3.25

Alfie saw that the trail led into the rock. It looked as if they had slowed before they got there. Were they cautious entering the boulder field, as he was, or had they been surveying for a likely ambush site? Charley would want to fight. He would have circled back on this trail before now but for the woman. From the look of her tracks, she was nearly exhausted, dragging her feet, and Alfie knew that her long night of fear had nearly broken her. That was one of the things Alfie was counting on: the white man was tired, in country he didn't know, and he had someone else to tend to. Alfie could get close to them, run them ragged, then circle around in front and take them at close range.

But there was something in these rocks.

Be careful
, a voice in his head said.
The man is close
. Alfie nodded in agreement, and then other voices rose within him.

Anurra, it's time. All this is over for you, Anurra, go back to the cave if you want to live. Anurra, look over there, what is that? Anurra, look over here, what is that? Are we out here, too, Anurra? Old Men of the Law, the Law Men, remember us, Anurra? We're here now to see you. No more humbug, no more evil from the thing that used to be Alfie Woodard. He'd been a good boy before you, but that is done and now you, Anurra, you have to go. The Old Men are watching you and we will see you die.

Alfie stayed frozen in place as those voices came and went in his head. He paused to listen, and he thought he heard the far off drone of a didgeridoo and voices raised together in a song that was singing his death. He skinned his teeth back and said, "Not tonight, Old Men. Not tonight, with your feeble songs."

He forced himself to concentrate on the trail in front of him. He picked up his pace and turned his anger into immediate action. The wound in his shoulder burned as though someone had thrust a burning ember into it and twisted it clockwise, just as the spear heated hot had burned in his leg when the Law Men wounded him as a boy.

"Piss off," Alfie said loudly, as though the voices in his head could hear him.

He stalked closer to what waited for him in the rocks ahead.