Warrior in the Shadows (23 page)

"We know about that," Robert said. "Before you come back here, we'll draw an image someplace else. You won't be able to see it, but it'll help you if we can."

"What else can you tell me?" Charley said.

"We've done what we can, mate. It's up to you, now," Robert said.

With that the two elders turned and began to walk down the trail. Charley followed them and the three men made their way down from the hills in total silence, each alone with his thoughts. Back in the Quinkin Bar, Kativa sat waiting.

"What have you found?" she asked.

"What I need," Charley said. "Are you ready to go?"

"Are you all right?" Kativa said with some concern. "You'd better drink some water. You look dehydrated."

Robert laughed. "He's dried out some. Been out in the sun for a good long while, he was."

Charley bought and drained two one-liter bottles of water, one right after another, barely pausing between them.

"That's better," he said. "Are you ready to go?"

"Yes," Kativa said.

She paid her bar bill and followed Charley out of the dim bar into the heavy light of day outside. The two elders followed them out and stood in the shade of the awning outside.

"Thank you," Charley said to them. "How will I find you when I come back?"

"Whether we're here or not, you know what needs to be done," said the gap-toothed elder.

Robert nodded in agreement and said, "G'day, mate. Good hunting to you."

The two old men went back into the bar.

"What was that all about?" Kativa said.

"I'll tell you all about it on the way back," Charley said. "We know where he lives. But if he's down there looking for us, we need to do a few things."

He got in the truck and started the engine. "Let's go," he said.

Once Kativa shut the door, he turned the truck around in the direction of Cairns and accelerated away, eager to meet the dark man of his dreams.

3.9

Alfie Woodard catnapped in the room Jay Burrell kept for him in his house. It was a spartan room with minimal furnishings: a comfortable bed, a few dressers and foot chests. The closet held clothing, and not just the baggy dusty khakis he preferred when he was home, but some of the denim and leather he wore when he was away in the world outside. A small box held a variety of decorative metal piercings that went into place only when he went away. Another larger locked box held a variety of firearms. While he arranged for weapons when he traveled, as any professional would, he liked having the tools of his trade handy when he was back and they were safer and easier to maintain here.

He woke from a strange and disturbing dream. It bothered him that he couldn't recall the specific details; long years of training and experience had given him the ability to recall his dreams in detail so as to re-create the tapestry of his night journeys. But he couldn't recall anything now, and all he awoke with was a profound sense of unease. He sat up, then went to unlock the box and inspect his personal weapons. He took out an old U.S. Government issue .45 automatic, lovingly maintained and fully loaded with magazines he rotated to preserve the springs. The pistol had been lightly customized by a gunsmith in the States, the barrel and feed ramp throated and polished so as to easily feed the Federal Hydra-Shok hollow points he favored, the extraction port widened and beveled, the trigger tuned and low profile Novak sights. It was simple but effective, which reflected Alfie's credo when it came to weapons.

Then he took out his nulla-nulla. When he was with the Special Air Service in East Timor on a job, he'd used a nulla-nulla to take out sentries instead of his silenced MP-5 submachine gun, much to the amusement of the senior operators, who let him do as he pleased once he'd shown he could do the job.

The experience had stood him in good stead.

He wrapped his hand around the worn grip of the nulla-nulla. The striking head was still sheathed in plastic. There was a faint reek of rotten blood from the club, matted beneath the plastic in head, brain, and hair. His two targets from Minneapolis were still with him. He hadn't done the two policemen and the family that way; there hadn't been time and it had been a rush job anyway. He'd done them quickly and efficiently.

Maybe he would tell Charley Payne that before he took him down.

There was a sudden stirring in his memory when he thought of Charley Payne; he had a brief image of a tall blond man, a figure stick thin and tall in the background… the background of what? He couldn't recall and that bothered him.

He put away his weapons and went out of the room, dressed only in his beat-up khaki trousers, bare-chested with his array of scars on show. His torso was coursed with gunshot and knife wounds and the whorls of ritual scarification. He nodded to one of the hanger-ons that Jay called his staff as he went into the kitchen. Tim sat at the kitchen counter eating a huge sandwich.

Alfie ignored the big man, who visibly bristled as he looked at Alfie's scars. Alfie went into the refrigerator and took out some luncheon cuts to make himself a sandwich.

"Put a shirt on, blackie," Tim said. "You're turning my stomach. I'm trying to eat my lunch."

The other bodyguard got up and left the room.

Alfie took out some sliced ham and cheese and piled it onto a slab of white bread.

"Did you hear me?" Tim said, pushing. "I said put a shirt on."

Alfie took a butcher knife from the wooden block near the sink and began to slice fresh tomatoes into thin slices that he arrayed on his sandwich.

"Where's the mayonnaise, Tim boy?" he asked.

"Piss off," Tim said. Alfie reached across the counter for the pot of mayonnaise where it sat in front of Tim. Tim struck Alfie's hand away, and as he did, Alfie moved quickly and neatly slashed the back of Tim's hand with the butcher knife.

"Fucking hell!" Tim shouted. He slapped one hand on the butcher-block counter as he began to rise to his feet and Alfie slammed the butcher knife point first through the back of Tim's hand and pinned him to the counter.

Tim screamed. Jay came running into the kitchen from his study.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Jay shouted. "Roy! Get in here!" he called to the other bodyguard, who came in and visibly paled at the sight of Alfie sitting down to eat, gazing mildly at Tim, who writhed in pain, pinned to the counter with a knife through the back of his hand.

"I'm eating me sandwich," Alfie said. "Bread's a bit off, though."

"I'm going to kill you!" Tim shouted. Tears of pain ran down his face and he twisted on his stool, trying to find a position that eased the shocking pain.

"You've got the talking bit done, mate," Alfie said, picking up his plate. "Best you clean yourself up before you put me off my lunch."

He walked through the kitchen, brushing past Roy, and disappeared into the study, where he sat down in a chair facing the big windows that looked out over the ocean. He settled into the chair and finished his sandwich. Jay came into the study and stood behind him, fists on hips. Alfie studied Jay's reflection in the window in front of him, raised one hand, and gave Jay a little wave.

"He's going to be useless, now," Jay said.

"He's always been useless except for kissing your arse," Alfie said mildly.

"This gets the rest of the staff upset."

"Need to get better staff, mate."

"I've been thinking of that."

"Need better than that to take my place. Have some pride in your operation. Like the Yanks say, you want someone who'll be all that he can be. Something like that. Good ham, by the way. Where did you get it, in town?"

"I've got people looking for this American," Jay said.

"You mean Charley Payne," Alfie said. "Ex-CIA, one of the wonder boys from the Special Activities Staff, who are bad news when you put them out in the field. Para with the 82d Airborne Division, saw action in the Gulf, and then went into the CIA paramilitary program where he got poached for the SAS. He was with them the same time I was with our SAS. Got a good reputation in the field, but considered hard to manage by his superiors."

"You've been reading up," Jay said. He dragged over another chair and set it facing out the window beside Alfie and sat down.

"You've got good connections," Alfie said. "Read mine in a while?"

"Paid good money to disappear it not long after you went off the reservation for me."

"Interesting psychological brief, what?"

"What are you going to do?" Jay said.

"Wait for him to show up. It won't be long."

"How do you know?"

"I just know," Alfie said, twisting restlessly in the chair. "You know better than to keep asking me that."

"In case you haven't noticed, this puts a real strain on our operation. This needs to be put to bed."

"Put to bed?" Alfie said, amused. "That's an interesting term you Americans use. Put to bed. What does that mean, really?"

"I have people checking the hotels in Cairns and in Brisbane for recent arrivals. It'll take a while, but it's getting done. I want you to take him someplace away from here. We don't need the attention."

"Jay?" Roy, the bodyguard, called from the door behind them. "I'm going to have to take him into hospital, he's bloody well fucked up."

"Do what you have to," Jay said.

"Right then, I'm off," Roy said.

Alfie looked at Roy's reflection in the glass and said, "Don't let the door hit you in the ass."

"Piss off," Roy said as he left.

"You may need their help, you know," Jay said.

"They're not going to be any help to me. And if this American is half as good as he is on paper, they're not going to be much good with him either."

"What are you going to do."

Alfie leaned back, and let the images of his home rise up in his mind.

"Wait," he said. "Dream a little dream."

3.10

On the long ride down from Laura, Charley told Kativa the story of the cave and the two old Law Men and what he'd felt there in the cave, deep in the heart of Quinkin country.

"It was like being in a spotlight of darkness in the light of day," he said.

"We're in a world where the normal rules don't apply," Kativa said.

"I know he bleeds," Charley said. "And as long as that rule applies, that's all I care about."

"All this feels so out of control… I don't know what to do and yet I feel as though I'm doing something I'm supposed to be doing, like I'm part of a plan…" Kativa began.

"I know exactly what you mean," Charley said. "I know exactly what you mean."

When they arrived at the hotel, Kativa went straight to the room. Charley spent a few minutes with the concierge and then went to a builder's supply house with the directions from the concierge. He bought a seventy-five-foot coil of rope and some carabiners and some lengths of strapping and returned to place it all in the locked tool locker in the bed of the pickup truck. In the cab, after a careful look around, he took out the Browning High Power and checked the chamber to make sure there was a round in place, then dropped the magazine and tested the strength of the spring with his thumb.

All was well.

He drove back to the hotel, then went up to the room, where Kativa sat on the edge of the bed, combing out her hair.

"I need a shower," he said.

"I left you plenty of hot water," she said.

Charley stripped and showered, the hot water stinging the fresh abrasions on his back, buttocks, and shoulder blades. He let the hot water beat on him till it began to run cold, then he turned off the water, his skin tingling, and dried himself with the heavy terry-cloth towels. He studied himself in the mirror. There were bags under his eyes and he hadn't shaved. He used the soap and the provided razor and scraped his face clean as best he could. Then he came out and quietly slipped into fresh shorts so as not to wake Kativa, curled into a loose ball on the still made bed. Charley stood there for a moment and looked at her, and a fierce wave of some emotion akin to affection and protectiveness rose up in him. He watched her breathing easily, then slipped into clean blue jeans and a T-shirt and let himself out, the ice bucket in hand. He padded barefoot down the hallway to the ice machine, noting and nodding to the burly man he passed in the hallway who was studying the key in his hand and the room numbers. After Charley brushed by him, the big man turned and watched him go into the alcove where the ice machine was. When he heard the rattle of ice cubes, he continued down the hall to the elevators and returned to the lobby. The big man stopped and said to the bell captain, "Which room did you say my mate Charley was in?"

"Room 304," the bell captain said.

"I knocked and there wasn't any answer."

"I could ring up for you?"

"No," the big man said. He handed the man a twenty-dollar note. "I'll drop by for him later. Thanks for your help."

"No worries, mate."

The big man went out the lobby door into the long driveway and took out his cell phone. "I've got him in the Radisson downtown, boss. Saw him myself in the hallway. It's the American for sure."

"Good work, Roy," Jay Burrell said. "What about Tim?"

"They're keeping him in hospital overnight; one of his ligaments is severed and he's going to have to have surgery to reattach it. Couldn't get him in today, so it will be first thing in the morning."

"You hang tight there," Jay said. "Get you a room there."

"As long as you're paying, boss."

"Stick close and keep an eye on the American. Find out what he's driving. We'll send someone else along to lend you a hand."

"Just don't send that bloody Abo, boss. That fella gives me the creeps and I won't put up with this bit about Tim."

"That's my worry to sort that out, Roy. Are you heeled?"

"Too right, boss."

"Don't take matters into your own hands, Roy. Wait for help. Just wait for help. Understand?"

"Got ya, boss."

"We'll speak soon," Jay said. He hung up first.

Roy went back into the hotel, nodding to the bell captain, and said, "Don't mention it to me mate if you see him, will ya? I want to surprise him."

Then he went to the check-in counter and asked the girl, "Got any rooms left?"