Daughter of Destiny (7 page)

“I suppose you're right. I feel like an utter fool, Jake. I've never had a dream download into me like this, in pieces or parts. What if I'm wrong?” She touched her forehead. “Or just plain crazy? I'm sure Major Houston isn't going to be happy about spending all that money for nothing, if this turns out to be a wild-goose chase to Australia. There may be no Ooranye when we reach Kalduke….”

Jake murmured, “Instead of worrying, let's use this time to try and put together what we know for Major Houston. He's Indian. He understands how people get useful information through dreams. When we land at Yulara, near Ayers Rock, we might have a clue as to where to find this woman, and this place.”

“D
amn, it's hotter than hell here,” Kai said as she stepped out of the Yulara Airport at Ayers Rock. It was three in the afternoon and she saw wavering curtains of heat shimmering everywhere she looked. Jake had their luggage and he set it down nearby. As part of the undercover nature of their mission, Major Houston had issued passports, driver's licenses and credit cards created for them under the name Davis. As in Mr. and Mrs. Kai didn't like the fact that they were pretending to be married, but Houston told her they were dealing with thieves who had brazenly stolen from the ark to get the crystal totems. He wasn't going to take chances with their lives under the circumstances. Kai felt Houston was overreacting, but she couldn't talk him out of the phony identification.

Kai squirmed over the fact she'd have to share a bedroom with Jake. That was something she didn't want to do at all and had adamantly said so. Jake had smoothly suggested they rent two hotel rooms next to each other and
they could have separate quarters while appearing to be married. That made Kai a lot more comfortable.

“The temperature must be about a hundred and thirty degrees,” Jake said. “October Down Under is the beginning of their summertime.” Kai had placed her hands on her hips, scowling as she surveyed the surrounding landscape. Jake had spent his time on the unending flight reading up on the area, which was called the Amadeus Basin. Nine hundred million years ago, this place had been a shallow sea that had spread across most of central Australia. Nowadays, it was nothing but desert—the continent's famous Red Center.

The sea had been replaced with red sand, eroding in dunes that resembled ocean waves frozen in time. Wherever he looked, Jake saw clumps of prickly, spinifex grass and ghostly desert oaks. What drew him most were the vast, undulating sand ridges covered with tough vegetation that somehow endured this inhuman heat.

“Dude, this sucks. I like hot weather, but not this hot.” Kai watched as crowds of tourists from around the world left the small air-conditioned airport for their destination hotels. Yulara Tourist Village was situated fifteen miles from the famous Uluru, or Ayers Rock. The red sandstone mountain would be most people's destination, but not theirs.

“At least it's dry heat,” Jake said, smiling slightly. He was reeling with exhaustion. The twenty-hour flight from Montana, through Seattle, Washington, and then across “the Pond”—the Pacific Ocean—to Sydney had been a helluva long haul. Of course, first class seats made it bearable, and he'd slept off and on, but not well.

Settling his gaze back on Kai, which was always a pleasure for Jake, he saw she had plaited her hair into two thick braids shortly before they landed. She wore what she called her field gear—the Rail Rider tough-as-nails olive-green nylon pants, her brown leather Ecco boots, a dark red T-shirt with capped sleeves and a boat neck that revealed her beautiful collarbones and emphasized her slender neck.

Kai was the embodiment of power melded with beauty, as far as Jake was concerned. And she'd shut him out just as if she'd shut a door in his face. Sighing inwardly, he tried again to not take it personally. The flight over had been mostly silent.

They'd received their weapons, briefing, money and other information from the Perseus Sydney officer, Lionel Smythe, before coming to Yulara. Jake had wished for a helicopter flight from Sydney, but that was impossible due to the distance. It was nearly twenty-five hundred miles from the east coast to the interior, where Yulara sat in the middle of some of the most important Aboriginal sacred sites on the huge continent.

Jake had seen two rented helos at the Yulara airport, small commercial types, although one was a 1970s-era Huey painted blue and yellow, which had been a combat helo at one time in the past. The other was a white-and-silver Bell Longranger helicopter. Jake would be happy to fly either of them around the area in air-conditioned comfort, instead of heading out in a car in this suffocating heat.

“Well,” Kai said, dropping her hands from her hips. “I guess I have to figure out where we go to find Kalduke and this Ooranye woman.” She swung her gaze around, trying
to grasp the enormity of the Red Center. She saw red sand dunes in the distance that were anywhere from three to fifteen feet in height. The sand ridges seemed to ripple like the skin of Mother Earth, or maybe a sidewinder moving, Kai imagined. She'd read that these ridges had been formed more than thirty thousand year ago by the strong southerly winds. Well, it was still windy here, if today was typical.

The land was scattered with rugged vegetation, from wildflowers to clumps of grass, shrubs and even mystical looking oak trees, which was surprising to her. These plants had hardy spirits to survive this oven, for sure. From the air, as they flew over the national park, Kai had seen ditches, dried up stream courses, vast lake beds that were the color of bleached bones. She'd seen mines, a few water holes with lurid green water in them, and the red sand that reminded her of Mother Earth's blood. For indeed, Mother Earth's bones were composed of rock, and her skin was considered the soil and vegetation.

“I'll pick up our rental car,” Jake said. “You watch the luggage?”

“Sure.” Kai watched him saunter back inside the airport. Frowning, she tried to ignore all the emotions that Jake's continued nearness brought up in her, all the yearning. Oh, Great Spirit, she felt a longing in her heart and an ache in her body for Jake. Kai didn't like herself very much. One moment she was grumpy with him, the next, she tried to be nice—her way of apologizing for her prickly emotional state. It wasn't his fault that he'd been ordered on this mission with her. He was as much a pawn in it as she was at the moment. Still upset with Mike Houston and Morgan
Trayhern because of their stupid insistence that every team need a male and female, she looked around at the departing bus engorged with tourists wanting their first look at Uluru, the heart of the world for Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory of Australia.

As they'd flown in, Kai, who had the window seat, had caught her first glimpse of the magical Uluru. The rust-colored monolith looked exactly as she'd seen it in her dreams. It rose out of the flat desert terrain, a geological jewel—regal, solitary, awe-inspiring. No wonder the Aboriginal people called Uluru the “heart” of the world. She was big, red, smooth and magnificent.

Ayers Rock rose forty-one-hundred feet above the basin. Thirty-six miles west was a set of stone formations that looked like giant red marbles that had been dropped carelessly onto the desert floor by some unknown giant. Kai acknowledged she had a vivid imagination, but that's what those round red rocks looked like to her as she saw them in the distance. From Jake's travel guide, Kai learned that they were called Kata Tjuta, or “many heads” by the Aboriginal in the Pitjantjatjara language.

Kai had been struck by the feminine, smooth and softly rounded curves of Uluru, and pointed them out to Jake. He'd said that Kata Tjuta reminded him of male energy. The fact that they were the only geological monoliths for hundreds of miles made them hugely significant, Kai was sure. Male and female. Even the rock structures below her conspired to remind her of the necessary union of male and female—on this mission and in life. She understood that the natural world reflected the two-legged's world. And
though she didn't want to acknowledge that male-female duality, she was in awe of the dramatic and powerful Uluru, which called to her, tugging strongly at her heart.

The wind slapped at Kai, bringing her back to the present. She winced in the heated breeze, which felt like a blow dryer on high being aimed at her. There was very little humidity out here, probably less than ten percent, judging from the dryness in her mouth. Rows of silver-leafed eucalyptus trees surrounded the parking lot, providing patches of badly needed shade. Still, the black asphalt wavered in the heat.

The odd-looking desert oaks that stood here and there beyond the airport drew Kai's interest, for she'd been reading about Outback vegetation on the plane. Instead of leaves, they had long, dark green needles that hung in clusters and moved gracefully in the breeze. They looked a lot more like pine trees than the oaks she knew in North Carolina. But pines couldn't live in this scorching desert, where summertime temperatures reached one hundred thirty degrees. Yet there were plenty of these trees dotting the gently rolling dunes surrounding the airport.
Amazing.

The sky was pale blue and seemed to stretch endlessly, with not a single cloud. Lionel Smythe had warned them that they were going to the Red Center at the hottest time of year. He'd suggested Kai bring along a long-sleeved, white cotton shirt so she wouldn't get badly burned by the scorching rays of the southern sun. Kai had scoffed, but now realized he had been right.

Jake drove up in a white Toyota Corolla sedan and parked at the curb. She picked up their navy-blue and green canvas bags and put them in the trunk when he opened it.

“I hope that sucker is air-conditioned.”

He grinned and closed the trunk. “Oh, yeah. I got it on high. Hop in. We're staying at the Yarrageh Hotel, run by Aboriginals.”

“Spirit of the Stream Hotel,” Kai confirmed, opening the passenger door and sliding in. “Helluva name, but out here, it sounds good, doesn't it? I don't see water anywhere.” She had a small handbook of Aboriginal words and phrases that she'd also studied on the flight. Kai liked the idea that the Aborigines, who had been subjected to terrible prejudice by white Australians, were finally bouncing back, and owned their own hotel as well as worked with the government to protect their sacred land.

The coolness of the car felt marvelous. When Jake got in and shut the door, she said, “I never thought I'd appreciate air-conditioning, but if there's a place on earth that needs it, it's here. It doesn't even get this hot in the cockpit of an F-14 on its worst day on a carrier.”

“Right on.” He got out the local map and looked at it, memorizing the route to the hotel. Yulara wasn't very big, maybe five thousand people. The man who'd briefed them for the mission had told them that the place was a tourist trap and the population consisted mostly of people who worked at the hotels and restaurants. Few people were crazy enough to live out here for the love of it. Jake understood why. Putting the car in gear, he pulled away from the curb.

Kai looked around at the airport landscaping. From her tourist book she identified Desert Grevillea bushes sprouting bright yellow-and-orange flowers that resembled bottle brushes. Purple flowers hugged the ground like a rich
carpet beneath the tall, many-limbed Grevillea, suggesting a bright, almost surrealistic painting. Tall, swaying clumps of what could be spinifex grass were planted all around the perimeter. Each one looked like the hair of a woman who'd stuck her finger in a light socket and gotten electrocuted, Kai mused. She had read that the native grass, although beautiful, was dangerous because it was sharp-bladed and could cut a person's flesh as easily as a filet knife. Furthermore, spinifex had topknots like barbed wire that would cling to a person's clothing and then work their way in, abrading the skin.

A two-lane asphalt road pointed toward the village in the distance. After they'd left behind the spinifex barrier around the airport, they found the desert alive with many interesting plants and a surprising rainbow of colors. Kai was amazed anything grew here, and she knew the plant spirits had to be tougher than nails to survive such a harsh environment. They had her respect.

“You any good at driving on the wrong side of the road?” she asked Jake, glancing over at him.

“No, but I learn fast.” Like their British forefathers, Australians drove on the left side instead of the right. Jake found the switch uncomfortable and paid much more attention to his driving than he usually did. “It's only a few miles to Yulara. And there's not much traffic, so I don't think I'll plow headlong into anyone.” He smiled briefly when he heard Kai's “humph.” If she didn't trust him to drive, she'd do it herself, Jake knew. Such was her independence. Kai wasn't one to wait on decorum. That suited him. He'd been raised to respect a woman's opinions as much as a man's.

“Gawd, I'm beat. All I want is an air-conditioned room, a cold shower and about twelve hours' sleep.”

“Makes two of us.” He braked the Toyota at a stop sign and then turned left. Ahead of them he saw fifteen or twenty buildings huddled together roughly four miles away—Yulara Village.

Kai settled back, her eyes closed. “What do you think about Smythe's comment about watching out for the bad guys?”

“Probably on the mark. We don't know who stole the totems yet and that's what has me on high alert. We could have flown in with one of the robbers.” He looked in his rearview mirror. “No one is following us.”

Mouth twitching, Kai muttered. “No one knows who stole them. Grams doesn't know. The res police are throwing up their hands. And who would be interested in them, anyway?”

“According to Smythe, there are some rich men who will pay big bucks for Native American objects for their personal collections. They'd be at the top of the list of suspects. Houston is running that list right now, and maybe he'll have some names for us shortly.” Jake glanced at Kai. She was lying back against the seat, her eyes closed, her hands resting in her lap. He could see the dark shadows beneath her eyes. And couldn't help noticing how long and thick her eyelashes were against her coppery cheekbones.