“There is a place nearby that I want to take you to. The ground is good and flat and I can draw you a map with my fingers. I’ll show you how to get to this cave in the canyon where the sacred stone mask is located.” Ooranye stood up and dusted off the dark green shift she wore.
The morning sun was strong and they’d just finished a delicious breakfast with the wise woman in her hut. Ooranye carried a huge loaf of damper bread in one hand and a bowl of bush honey in the other as she slowly walked toward the spring. Jake walked beside Kai, his heart still warm with the memory of holding her that morning. He had noticed during their breakfast with Ooranye that Kai seemed softer, more open than before.
The old woman led them to a spot near the Anangu rock hole where Jake took his sponge baths twice a day. The area was just right for scratching pictures into the soil. Around the water hole in the gray stone grew a circle of white-barked River Red Gum trees. Their long, graceful limbs spread above the spring that Jake had come to appreciate so much. The eucalyptus trees with their broad, reaching limbs made it one of the few places where shade was available on the Gibson Desert, a miniature oasis. Their two camels were nearby after drinking their fill, hidden in the deep shade of the thick grove of trees.
Ooranye settled herself on a smooth red rock that was flat on top. She placed the flour damper on a similar one nearby, and gestured for Kai and Jake to join her. Sitting back, Jake enjoyed the morning, the birds singing…and then his sharp hearing caught an unnatural sound. Turning, he scanned the pale blue sky to the south.
“You hear it, too?” Ooranye murmured, cocking her head to listen. Her frown deepened.
Kai was the last to hear the sound. She got up and placed her hand against the trunk of a gum tree, looking at the southern horizon. “What is it?”
Jake moved closer to Ooranye. “Sounds like an engine…maybe a helicopter?”
Frowning, Kai said, “Yeah, for sure, an aircraft. And it’s coming our way. Are the binoculars nearby?”
“No, they’re in our hut,” Jake said unhappily. The sound was growing stronger. “That’s a helicopter,” he told them, sure of it now. Moving to Kai’s side beneath the spreading arms of the red gum, he saw a black spec on the horizon. “There it is.”
“I see it….” Kai turned and looked down at Ooranye. “Do you get aircraft out here often?”
Shaking her head, she said, “No. We live very far away from where such craft fly. We do not like the sound, so we make sure we stay away from them. The government has promised that none would come near our village, so this is strange….”
The hair on the back of Kai’s neck stood up. She got that same sensation when a SAM had been aimed at her as she flew over the skies of Iraq. Worriedly, she glanced at Jake. Hands on his hips, he stared at the approaching aircraft. “Could it be a tourist chopper?”
“I don’t know….”
“The darkness has found you….” Ooranye muttered.
Kai’s heart thudded with fear. She saw Jake’s eyes narrow and his lips thin.
“It’s that Huey from the Yulara airport,” Jake said in a low tone.
“Yes,” Kai agreed tensely. “I wish I had my pistol on me now….”
“Children, you must go!” Ooranye warned. “They must not see you. They are darkness. I feel it strongly. Hurry! Run to your hut and stay there. If they land, they will be looking for you, and we will take them off your scent. The camels will remain here with me.”
Kai glanced again at Jake. He held out his hand toward her. “Let’s go.”
Kai nodded, and they turned and quickly jogged toward the huts that stood a quarter mile away. “I wonder if they have infrared on board.”
“I doubt it,” he said, breaking into a run. Feeling sure they could make it before the helicopter pilot saw them, he kept up the steady pace. Kai ran fluidly at his side. “That’s a 1970s model, Kai.”
Nodding, Kai narrowed her eyes. It felt good to run, although fear was shooting through her. They were without weapons, which made the situation more dangerous. Her heart actually slowed in beat, adrenaline flooding her bloodstream, readying her to fight. “There were two choppers there,” she huffed. “I didn’t pay much attention.” The copter was drawing closer by the moment, but they were nearly to their hut. A number of the Aborigines were looking toward the sky as Kai and Jake approached.
“I did. There was this Huey with a blue-and-yellow paint scheme, and a Bell helicopter, a silver Bell Longranger.”
“Good memory,” Kai said huskily. The whapping of the blades began to make the early morning air tremble as the helicopter sped nearer. Kai glanced back at Ooranye, who sat dipping her fingers into the bowl of bush honey and methodically spreading it across the damper bread held in the palm of her hand. She was pretending nothing was wrong. Wise woman, Kai thought. Acting as if nothing is out of the ordinary. Maybe if the pilot thinks nothing’s out of place, he’ll just go away.
“Jake? Can you read the numbers on the fuselage? And do you have a pen or paper handy once we get to the hut?” She didn’t, and again Kai berated herself for her lack of preparedness. If someone was really hunting for her and the crystal mask, she had to get off her duff and stay more alert. No pistol. No binoculars. Nothing. She felt frustrated at her own incompetence under the circumstances.
The helicopter was behind the grove of gums now. “Yeah, when it passes by, I’ll try and get a look at it without giving away our hiding place.”
Kai spied a group of Aboriginal women walking toward them, water jugs in hand. Whoever was in the helo would certainly see them and know they were heading to the rock hole oasis. Maybe that would throw them off Kai and Jake’s scent. The helicopter was less than a mile away and flying at three thousand feet. Kai wasn’t completely convinced they were hostile. Ooranye hadn’t been wrong yet, but something in Kai didn’t want to believe that anyone would challenge her quest for the crystal mask.
Ducking quickly into their hut, she got down on her hands and knees and reached for her pack. Unzipping it, she grabbed her holster and pistol. Jake did the same. Their breathing was heavy as they silently but quickly worked to arm themselves. Would the copter land? Kai wasn’t sure. She turned, inching back toward the opening, where Jake now crouched, looking skyward.
He lifted his head as the Huey flew low overhead. The whole area trembled in the wake of the turning blades. “Got it!” he said to Kai. Memorizing the numbers on the fuselage, he watched as the pilot, who sat in the right-hand seat, banked the helo and flew in a circle around the oasis. Jake quickly scribbled the numbers down on a small notebook and shoved it into the pocket of his white, short-sleeved shirt.
“They’re looking for something,” Kai muttered, her voice grim. Indeed they were. She could see the copilot craning his neck as he looked around. Kai couldn’t make out his features because he was so far away.
After circling the oasis three times, the helicopter landed near the rock hole where Ooranye was calmly eating her bread. Kai peered through the cracks in the hut wall and saw two men emerging from the helo as the blades swung sluggishly, the engine shut down.
“They’re armed,” Jake hissed. He rose on one knee, his pistol held high, a bullet in the chamber.
“They’re walking over to the rock hole where Ooranye’s sitting,” Kai said, worried for the old woman. She still couldn’t see the men’s faces clearly.
Jake turned, rummaged through his pack and pulled out a pair of binoculars. “I want to see who they are,” he muttered, raising the field glasses to his eyes. They wore civilian clothes. The pilot appeared to be in his thirties, with black hair and brown eyes. He was deeply tanned, and Jake saw that he wore a pistol at his side. The other man was taller, leaner, red-haired and carrying an AK-47 military rifle. Looking closer, Jake saw there was a small label on the left-hand side of their red polo shirts. A name. What was it? Sharpening the focus, he honed in on the label: Marston Enterprises.
“It says Marston Enterprises,” he told Kai, watching as the men approached Ooranye.
Shaking her head, she said, “Same Marston who Giles Rowland worked for?”
“That’s the label on their shirts. They’re both wearing that name on it.” Pursing his lips, he whispered. “They’re talking to Ooranye. She seems to be playing dumb.”
Kai squinted and looked through the cracks of the hut wall. The men were too far away for her to see facial expressions, but she saw the rifle. The camels stood in the shade calmly chewing their curds, disinterested.
“Why would this dude be carrying a rifle around with him?”
“Hunters?”
“Of us? Or animals? Besides, who hunts in the bush with an AK-47? No, he’s no hunter of animals.” In her gut, she knew the men were looking for them. Mouth dry, Kai wiped her lips with the back of one hand, her pistol ready in the other one.
“Hang on—the red-haired guy is looking around…toward the village. I think he wants to check it out….”
“Yeah, and he’s raised the rifle, ready to be fired,” Kai growled. Her hand began to sweat around the handle of her pistol. She was glad there was a nine-bullet clip in it. “If they come into the village…”
“Then there’s gonna be a shoot-out.”
“Yeah…”
Jake watched Ooranye. By now, several of the other women, all relative of hers, had reached the spring and begun filling their jars with water, acting as if nothing was out of place. The two men appeared irritated. The red-haired one kept looking their way, impatience stamped all over his narrow face and close-set eyes.
“That guy wants to come into the village. The one with the AK-47,” Jake warned her quietly. His heart was pounding with dread. The last thing he wanted was a firefight in this village. With bullets flying, the possibility of innocent people being wounded was very real. Yet there was no place for them to run and hide, either. This village was their only cover. If they took off, they’d be seen, and those two would hop in their chopper and hunt them down from the air. No, there wasn’t much choice left to them.
Gritting her teeth, Kai watched the red-haired man with the rifle take a couple of steps toward the village. Her breath hitched and she tensed.
The pilot who was talking to Ooranye called him back. A breath exploded from Jake. “They’re leaving!”
Relief shot through Kai. Eyes slitted, she watched the two men reluctantly turn away and walk back to the Huey. “Thank the Great Spirit….”
“When they’ve left, we’ll find out from Ooranye what they wanted,” Jake murmured. He continued to watch the men, still not assured they would leave. Only after the copter was airborne and heading back in the direction of Yulara did he relax.
Kai sighed and gave him a tense look. Then she strapped her holster around her waist and put the pistol in it. Jake did the same. He kept the binoculars around his neck as they emerged from the hut and quickly walked back to the water hole to speak with Ooranye. By the time they arrived, the three women with the water jugs were sitting with the wise woman. They nodded respectfully as Kai and Jake approached, and chatted animatedly with Ooranye, who had continued eating as if nothing had happened.
Kai walked at Jake’s side. “We weren’t at all prepared for this incident.”
“No, we weren’t.” He frowned. “We’re not exactly cloak-and-dagger types, are we?”
A sour smile tugged at Kai’s lips. “No…we’re on a steep learning curve here, for sure. But I don’t want to be caught like this again.”
“It wouldn’t make sense for a helicopter to come out nearly a hundred miles from the airport to this place,” Jake told her in a low voice. “Not unless they wanted something real bad—like us.”
“We can check all this out when we get back to Yulara. As soon as we get done talking with Ooranye, I’m going to call Mike Houston. You can give him the fuselage numbers on that Huey. Plus the name Marston Enterprises. Maybe he or someone else can run down the numbers and name and we’ll get some info.”
Nodding, Jake said, “That’s a good idea.” And then he gave her a silly grin. “The satellite phone is back at our hut, too.”
“Lesson number three—don’t leave home without it.”
“Yep, that’s right.”
Ooranye welcomed them back. She gestured for them to sit before her, and they did. Licking her fingers free of the bush honey, she said, “These white men wanted to know about you. They asked for you by name, so they know who you are.”
“Did they ask about the crystal mask?” Kai inquired.
“No,” the wise woman murmured. “But they saw the camels. They asked if you were here and I said no, that we’d bought the camels in a trade with some white men many months ago.” She grinned. “They believed me.”
Jake smiled briefly. “I know you can’t see them, Ooranye, but they wore red shirts with a label that said Marston Enterprises on it. Do you know about that company?”
Wrinkling her brow, Ooranye said, “No. But Robert Marston is a very rich white man. We know of him because he sends his men to steal our sacred objects. He collects them because he wants their power. He is a two-heart, a man of darkness.”
Jake gave Kai a meaningful look. “This could be the same guy that sent men to steal the totems from our nation.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” Kai said. “I’ll give Mike the info and have him do some serious snooping on this Marston guy.”
“These men are dark,” Ooranye murmured. “They are looking for you. That means you must get to the canyon and into the cave to find that stone mask quickly. I have a feeling they will return or keep looking for you no matter what I told them. There is much danger around you.”
Kai reached out and squeezed the elder’s wrinkled, callused hand. “Thanks for all your help. We’re going to make a phone call and then we’ll return to you.”
“Of course. I need to draw you a map of how to reach the canyon. You must go by camel. It is too far away for you to walk there.”
“Okay…” Kai turned and fell into step at Jake’s side. “I hope Mike is up.”
As they emerged from beneath the silver-green leaves of the shady gum and into the sunlight spilling across the land from the eastern horizon, Jake smiled. “We’re half a world away and too many time zones to count. We have his personal number and I think you should use that one to call him.” As they hurried back to their hut, the sun was already heating up the red desert. It was beginning to feel like another blast-furnace day.
Kai crawled back into their hut. All their gear was packed in a large green canvas bag. She unzipped it and pulled out the satellite phone. Getting up, she slipped out of the hut, walked to a nearby gum tree for shade and dialed the number that would connect them with Mike Houston.
Jake stood nearby as Kai talked to Houston on the phone. He took from his shirt pocket the notebook where he’d scribbled down the fuselage numbers earlier, and he handed it to her. Kai gave him a slight smile, her eyes warm as she held his gaze.
“Hold on, Mike, Jake has the tail numbers on that Huey for you….” She passed the phone to him. “You talk with him.”
Jake was pleased to see that Kai would entrust him to do some things on this mission. Until now, she’d been a control freak about handling everything herself, but he understood why. This was her mission and she was in charge of it. He gave her a nod of thanks and took the phone. The fact that he’d held Kai earlier was changing their relationship remarkably. Miraculously. He only hoped they would survive the dangers that lay ahead to see what the future held.