Wild Orchids (23 page)

"That son of a bitch Ortega was using us to run dope!"

Lora gaped at him, but Max barely saw her as his mind worked furiously. That reception at the airfield had been intended for them after all, it seemed. Or at least, for who the
Federales
thought they were: drug-runners! Max wanted to spit. No wonder Ortega had been so amenable to lending him a plane! He had thought it rather strange at the time—Ortega was a careful man, not one to get on the wrong side of the law for any reason but his own advantage—but his mind had been on other things and he had let the suspicion wash over him without really registering it. And why? Because of her, of course! Lora. He threw her a glance of such acute dislike that she actually took a step back from him, her eyes widening. Never before had anyone ever caught him this flat-footed! Hell, he was no saint, but he drew the line at running dope! He
hated
dope! And Ortega, the oily son of a bitch, knew it.

When the feds caught up with them—and they would, they'd been there at that hidden airport waiting for them— they'd probably tracked them on radar, and to top it off he'd sent that damned mayday, mainly for Lora's sake. Crashing in the wild, nearly impenetrable Sierra Madres was a nightmare; surviving the crash with no chance of rescue was a worse one, especially for a woman. But if he had known what was in the cargo bay he would never have radioed their position as they had been going down. By doing so, he had done his best to put himself and Tunafish, to say nothing of the two men he'd been paid to bring safely
out
of jail, in a Mexican prison for more years than he, for one, had to spare. He hadn't even done Lora a favor, as it turned out. The police were quite likely to decide that she was as guilty as they, and throw her in jail, too… There was nothing to do but wait for the feds to show up. Alone, he could walk out of the jungle; under the circumstances, he would have even been willing to take a chance on walking out with the triple encumbrances of Lora, Minelli and DiAngelo. But there was Tunafish with a broken leg. And Tunafish weighed close to two hundred fifty pounds, all of it solid muscle. Max thought of the almost impassable terrain of the montana jungle and groaned. How could he carry Tunafish over nearly a hundred miles of uncharted, uninhabited jungle alone? The answer was, of course, that he couldn't.

"Goddamn it!" He swore, bitterly, and turned to see Lora regarding him as if he'd grown two heads. He scarcely glanced at her, because a few feet behind her stood Minelli, who had obviously heard most of the previous conversation. Wordlessly, Minelli brushed by Lora to look into the cargo bay himself. What he saw made him whistle.

"There must be ten million dollars worth of stuff in there!

Enough to get every junkie in New York high for a month." The words were said softly, as if to himself. "Smack?"

Max shrugged, stepping closer to look through the hole again. "Probably.”

Minelli caught the sides of the hole and pulled himself up and through. Max watched him a minute, then followed. Lora, coming up to look through the hole after Max disappeared inside it, watched as Minelli picked up a bag, tore a small hole in it, touched the powder with a finger and put the finger in his mouth.      "Smack," he said.

Putting down the bag, he picked up a loose board and pried up the lid of an intact crate. More powder-filled bags appeared. Max followed suit. By the time they had opened all the crates, they had, by Minelli's muttered count, uncovered perhaps a thousand bags of smack—in response to her question, Max told her that it was the street word for heroin—and at least a hundred thousand dollars in U.S. currency.

The discovery of the cash, in a suitcase hidden in one of the crates, seemed to add the final fillip to Minelli's excitement. His small eyes glittered and his thick lips quivered with the sudden quickening of his breathing. Max's face, in contrast, had grown increasingly grim. He was watching Minelli, his eyes hard. Then Minelli looked up to find Max's eyes on him. His expression changed, growing bland again although nothing could erase the excited glitter in his eyes. The two men eyed each other for a moment, then Minelli abruptly got to his feet. Max rose more slowly, his eyes never leaving Minelli's swaggering back as the man moved away and then jumped down from the cargo bay. Lora stood back as he landed beside her. Then Max was jumping down too, and Minelli walked quickly away, shouldering through the dense foliage and stepping up on a thick branch apparently felled by the crash to grab the sides of the hole and hoist himself back inside the cabin. Max stared after him, frowning. Lora frowned at Max.

"That bastard's going to make trouble."

"Over the money?"

"And the dope. He wants it. Hell, it's white gold! That son of a bitch Ortega! I may have to kill him."

This last was said softly, more to himself than to her. Lora was horrified.

"Ortega?"

"Minelli." The answer was short, clipped. Looking up into Max's rigid face, fiercer looking than ever now with the white bandage wound around his forehead, Lora was irresistably reminded of the way he had looked when he had first kidnapped her. The face of a killer—she had thought so then, and she thought so now.

"You can't kill him!" She caught hold of Max's arm, staring up at him, appalled.

"Why not?" He sounded cold, deadly cold. Lora shivered, but hung grimly onto his arm. She would not let him do this thing—why, she didn't even consider.

"Because…" She stared up into eyes that were as black as a winter night. This was the part of him she feared. "Because he's a human being. You can't just go around killing people, for heaven's sake!"

"Can't I?" To her dismay, his eyes grew even more remote, seeming to focus on something that was beyond her line of vision. "Remind me to tell you about Mei Veng sometime."

Her brow knit. He shook his head. "A place in Vietnam. It doesn't matter. Come on, I want to check on Tunafish and see what Minelli is up to."

This last was muttered, but Lora heard it. Max's hand on her arm propelled her forward. She walked ahead of him, making her way carefully over the downed trees. Sunlight filtered through the dense green treetops far above. The canopy of intertwining branches, leaves and vines was so thick that it was almost impossible to tell where the plane had torn through. Brilliantly colored birds flapped from treetop to treetop, their raucous calls joining with the whirr of swarming blue-bodied flies and the rustle of fallen leaves as things— Lora refused to speculate about what kind of things; she knew that she was better off not knowing, if the tarantulas were any guideline—moved through them. A fine mist rose from the jungle floor as moisture from yesterday's downpour evaporated in this new day's heat. A small brown monkey appeared, chattering, to survey the wrecked plane. Lora smiled at the sight of the creature balancing on a rock, and turned to call Max's attention to it.

What she saw as she turned made her blanch. He had extracted his gun from the waistband of his jeans and was checking the magazine. Apparently satisfied, he thrust it back into his jeans, pulling the hem of his t-shirt down to cover it. Then he looked up to catch Lora's eyes upon him. She expected an explanation, at least, but all he said was, "Come on," before taking her arm and helping her up into the plane.

As the hours passed, the atmosphere on the plane became so thick that it could have been pureed in a blender. Waiting, like war, was hell. Lora so strained to hear the sounds of approaching rescue that she gave herself a headache. Minelli paced restlessly, his eyes sliding away from Max, who spent most of his time staring at nothing with cold, expressionless eyes. DiAngelo slept; beyond checking to see that he was all right, there was little anyone could do for him. Lora spent most of her time with Tunafish, who was in dreadful pain though he tried to hide it. Sweat rolled freely down his face and his clothes were soaked with it, which wasn't surprising; the interior of the plane became like an oven as the day wore on. Bugs flew through the holes in the metal fuselage to feast on whoever happened to strike their fancy. Curses and slaps were practically the only sounds, and they were nearly continuous.

The humidity was dreadful. Lora almost welcomed the onset of the afternoon downpour—until she found that the loud click-click striking the metal was not caused by raindrops alone. The force of the rain washed ticks down from the treetops, causing them to fall by the hundreds. Several dozen of them fell into the plane; Lora scrambled to her feet, shuddering as she first identified the repellant things. Max scooped as many as he could find onto a folded magazine and out into the jungle again, but Lora knew that he couldn't possibly have captured them all. The thought of ticks made her want to scream, but screaming would have been useless. So she set her teeth, and sat back down on the floor beside Tunafish. She didn't need Max's quiet warning of disease to make her keep a sharp eye peeled. The thought of ticks crawling on her was revolting enough by itself.

After the rain cleared. Max grew increasingly restless. He prowled up and down the plane, then finally stopped by the hole.

"I'm going to scout around for water and something to eat. Minelli, you can come with me."

It was an order, and from the look on Minelli's face he didn't like being given orders. For one frightening moment Lora thought the confrontation that she was rapidly beginning to regard as inevitable would occur there and then, but Minelli shrugged.

"Why not?" he said, and followed Max out me hole.

They were gone for perhaps an hour and a half. During that time, Lora mopped Tunafish's sweating brow with what was left of Max's windbreaker, and chewed slowly on half a Hershey bar, all that was left of the four that Tunafish, a chocoholic according to Max, had stowed in his jacket pocket. Once that was gone, there would be no more food, unless there was something growing in the jungle that they could eat. Or perhaps the men could hunt. Max seemed perfectly at home with a gun. Surely he could shoot something to eat. Or maybe they would be rescued before it became necessary. Lora tried to cling to that thought, but as minutes turned into hours it was gradually losing its power to comfort.

At least water would be no problem, Lora thought as she murmured soothingly to Tunafish, who slept restlessly with his head pillowed in her lap. Puddles of it still shimmered against the cockpit wall, which was the lowest point of the plane. She was thirsty, and looking at the water made her thirstier still. When Tunafish woke, she would swallow a handful… DiAngelo was sleeping, too. At least, Lora hoped he was sleeping. He hadn't moved for some time; perhaps he was comatose—or dead.

Minelli's head and shoulders appeared through the hole without warning. An instant later, he laid a squat black pistol on the floor. She hadn't realized he was armed… Lora watched, wide-eyed, as he heaved himself inside and picked up the gun. What was he doing with it? Vivid images of mass murder flitted through her brain. It took an effort to dismiss them as ridiculous. She did not like him—something to do with the way he looked at her, she supposed. His eyes moved over her body from time to time with such intimacy that it gave her the willies. The last time, those loose lips had almost seemed to drool… Lora shuddered. Face it, she just didn't like the man. And she didn't trust him.

This time, however, Minelli hardly spared her or the sleeping men a glance as, gun in hand, he made his way down to the cockpit and disappeared behind the torn curtain. Lora heard him thumping around, heard a faint whine and static, but she was hardly paying attention. Like an alert terrier, her mind was quivering with alarm as soon as it registered that Minelli—armed with a pistol—had returned alone. Where was Max? He had said that he might have to kill Minelli—had Minelli reached the same conclusion about Max? And carried out his plan more quickly? The mere idea of it made Lora's heart beat faster. She couldn't sit here and worry, she decided, she had to find out for herself. Carefully, she lifted Tunafish's massive head from her lap and placed it on one of the flotation cushions she had removed from a seat. In the process Tunafish's spaniel eyes opened.

"What…" He frowned at her for a moment, then his eyes narrowed and his face whitened. One hand made an abortive movement toward his splinted leg.

"I'm sorry I woke you," she began, when it occurred to her that she needed an ally. Tunafish could not move about, but maybe he could tell her that she was being silly…

"Where's the boss?"

Tunafish did not appear to have lost any of his mental faculties despite the pain, Lora concluded as she looked into eyes that seemed aware as well as awake. Which was a relief. If something had happened to Max, if he was injured or—she hated to even think the word—dead, Tunafish would be the only one she could turn to. Surprising how, under the circumstances, she had so quickly come to feel she could trust him; with her life, if necessary, certainly with Max's.

"I don't know. That's what I want to find out. He left with Minelli—and Minelli's back. Without Max. And with a gun."

Tunafish had heard from Max what the plane carried, and his opinion of Ortega had been even less elegantly expressed than Max's. At this new piece of information, Tunafish frowned. "Probably nothin' to worry about," he said finally. "Minelli's got no reason to harm him—yet. And believe me, lady, the boss is one tough dude. He can take care of himself. I can't see Minelli gettin' the drop on him."

"That gun…"

Tunafish shrugged. "I gave it to him myself, when the trouble started back in Mazatlan. Could be carryin' it out because of the jungle. I would myself. No tellin' what a man might run into out there."

"I'm worried." Lora muttered, and would have stood up if Tunafish hadn't caught her hand.

"Wait."

"I just want to see…"

Tunafish shook his head. His hand tightened on hers. "Boss wouldn't want you runnin' around in the jungle. Dangerous. Besides, ain't nothin' you could do for him. If he's dead, he's dead, and if he ain't, he'll be back."

This way of looking at it did not soothe Lora, and she opened her mouth to tell him so when Max himself appeared, levering himself through the hole. Like Minelli, he carried his pistol in his hand.