Aces Abroad

She momentarily wished she'd grabbed her overnight bag. At least she had the passport case with the Amex card and traveler's checks in the small handbag slung around her shoulder. Cordelia realized she still had the room key clutched in her left hand. She maneuvered it in her fist so that the key thrust out from between her index and middle fingers.

The steps were metal, but they were old and they creaked. Quick and stealthy, Cordelia discovered, were mutually contradictory here.

She saw she was descending into an alley. The noise from the street, about twenty yards distant, was loud and boisterous. At first she thought it sounded like a party. Then she detected undercurrents of anger and pain. The crowd noise rose. Cordelia heard the flat sounds of what she guessed were fists on flesh.

"Terrific," she muttered. Then it occurred to her that a riot would provide good cover for her escape. She had already started mulling contingency plans. First, stay alive.

Get out of here. Then call Rettig or Alcala and let them know what had happened. They would send someone to replace Carlucci while she stayed out of sight. Wonderful. A brandnew guy in a tailored suit to sign his company's name on a contract. What was so difficult about that? She could do it. But not if she was dead.

With both key and gun at the ready Cordelia eased down from the bottom step of the fire-stairs and started toward the mouth of the alley. Then she froze. She knew someone was standing directly behind her.

She whirled, driving her left hand forward, aiming the key at a spot she hoped would be right beneath the intruder's chin. Someone was indeed there. Strong fingers clamped around her wrist, easily soaking up all the forward momentum of her thrust.

The figure pulled her forward into what little light spilled down from the Stuart Arms through the stair gratings. Cordelia brought the gun up and stuck the barrel into her assailant's belly. It didn't go far. She pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

She caught a glimpse of dark eyes catching hers. The figure reached forward with its free hand and clicked something on the side of the weapon. A male voice said, "Here, little missy, you left on the safety. Now it will work."

Cordelia was too astonished to. pull the trigger. "Okay, I get the point. Who are you, and can we get out of here?"

"You can call me Warreen." Sudden light flooded down from above them, bursting through the gratings, painting quagga stripes of illumination.

Cordelia stared at the bars of light falling across the man's face. She registered the wild, curly black hair, the hooded eyes as dark as hers, the broad flat nose, the high, sharp cheekbones, the strong lips. He was, her mama would have called him, a man of some color. He was, she also realized, the most striking man she had ever seen. Her daddy would have whipped her for that thought alone.

Footsteps clattered down the fire-stairs.

"Now we get out of here," Warreen said, steering her toward the alley mouth.

Naturally it wasn't as easy as that. "There are men there," said Cordelia. She saw an indeterminate number of men holding what seemed to be sticks. They were waiting, silhouetted against the light from the street.

"So there are." Warreen gri

Sounds good to me, Cordelia thought, bringing up the weapon in her right hand. When she pulled the trigger, there was a sound like ripping canvas and bullets screamed off brick. The ragged muzzle flash showed her the men in the alley were now flat in the dirt. She didn't think she had hit any of them.

"Later we worry about marksmanship," said Warreen. "Now we go." He enclosed her left hand in his right, not seeming to notice the key still in place in her fist.

She wondered if they were going to jump from back to back of the prostrate men like Tarzan hopscotching crocodiles in lieu of stepping stones.

They didn't go anywhere.

Something akin to heat washed over her. It felt like energy flooding through Warreen's fingers and into her body. The heat seared from the inside out-just like, she thought, a microwave oven.

The world seemed to move sharply two feet to the left and then drop a foot more. The air rotated around her. The night fu

Warreen and she stood on a reddish-brown plain that joined the distant sky in a far, flat horizon. There were occasional hardy-looking plants and a bit of. a breeze. The wind was hot and it eddied the dust.

She realized this was the same plain that had overlaid the cabin of the Air New Zealand jumbo in her nightmare between Honolulu and Auckland.

Cordelia staggered slightly and Warreen caught her arm. "I've seen this place before," she said. "Will the wolf-creatures come?"

"Wolf-creatures?" Warreen looked momentarily puzzled. "Ah, little missy, you mean the Eer-moonans, the longtoothed ones from the shadows."

"I guess so. Lots of teeth? Run in packs? They've got rows of quills around their necks." Holding the gun loosely, Cordelia massaged the inflamed place on the back of her left hand.

Warreen frowned and examined the wound. "Pierced by a quill? You're very fortunate. Their venom is usually fatal."

"Maybe us 'gator types have natural immunity," Cordelia said, smiling wanly. Warreen looked politely puzzled. "Never mind. I guess I'm just lucky."

He nodded. "Indeed so, little missy."

"What's this `little missy' crap?" Cordelia said. " I didn't want to take time to ask back in the alley."

Warreen looked startled, then gri

"I'm not European," said Cordelia. "I'm a Cajun, an American."

"Same thing to us." Warreen continued to grin. "Yank's same as a European. No difference. You're all tourists here. So what should I call you?"

"Cordelia."

His expression became serious as he leaned forward and took the gun from her hand. He examined it closely, gingerly working the action, then clicking the safety back on. "Scaled down H and K full auto. Pretty expensive hardware, Cordelia. Going shooting dingos?" He gave her back the weapon.

She let it dangle from her hand. "It belonged to the guy I came to Alice Springs with. He's dead."

"At the hotel?" said Warreen. "The minions of the Murgamuggai? Word was out, she was going to ice the agent of the evangelist."

"Who?"

"The trap-door spider woman. Not a nice lady. She's tried to kill me for years. Since I was a kid." He said it matter-of-factly. Cordelia thought he still looked like a kid.

"Why?" she said, involuntarily shivering. If she had any phobia, it was spiders. She coughed as the wind kicked red dust up into her face.

"Started as clan vengeance. Now it's something else." Warreen seemed to reflect, then added, "She and I both have some powers. I think she feels there is space in the outback for only one such. Very shortsighted."

"What kind of powers?" said Cordelia.

"You are full of questions. So am I. Perhaps we can trade knowledge on our walk."

"Walk?" said Cordelia a bit stupidly. Once again events threatened to outstrip her ability to comprehend them. "Where?"

"Uluru."

"Where's that?"

"There." Warreen pointed toward the horizon.

The sun was directly overhead. Cordelia had no idea which compass direction was indicated. "There's nothing there. Just a lot of countryside that looks like where they shot Road Warrior."

"There will be." Warreen had started walking. He was already a dozen paces away. His voice drifted back on the wind. "Shake a pretty leg, little missy."

Deciding she had little choice, Cordelia followed. "Agent of the evangelist?" she muttered. That wasn't Marty. Somebody had made a bad mistake.