Black Orchid

by Vaughn C. Hardacker

  “Jesus! I almost shot you,” he gasped.

  “You wouldn’t have had the chance. The two of you made more noise than a pair of skeletons screwing on a hot tin roof.”

  Traynor knew he was right, but rather than leave himself open for another evaluation of his escape and evasion skills, he changed the subject. “You get them?” he asked.

  “I hit two of the three, but don’t think I killed them.” He studied the sky for a second. “They no doubt know where we are and will concentrate their efforts.”

  “I’m assuming you’re alluding to the possibility of an aerial search.”

  “It isn’t a possibility—it’s a sure thing.”

  Manuel must have been a prophet, Traynor thought, because no sooner had he finished speaking than they heard the unmistakable beat of a helicopter’s rotor blades.

  “Quick,” Manuel said, “follow me.”

  Manuel led them off course, to the northwest. They both grabbed a handful of Toledo’s shirt and hauled him along. “There’s a narrow pass through the mountains about a mile from here. If we can get in there the chopper won’t be able to land.”

  “Yeah,” Traynor answered, “but won’t it allow them to concentrate their efforts?”

  “There’s always a critic …”

  The way the undercover officer conducts himself during a chance meeting with a suspect will determine his acceptance or rejection by the suspect

  —FM 3-19.13, Law Enforcement Investigations

  56

  McMahon stood off to the side, watching the camera crew and technicians ready the set for his cinematic debut. He drank from a disposable cup of coffee and yawned. He stared through a large picture window at the dark waters of Howe Sound. He’d had no idea that most movies and TV shows were filmed at the ungodly hours around sunrise. The woman who had selected him from among the onlookers suddenly appeared at his side. “You ready for your fifteen minutes of fame?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” He smiled. “You know, you and I have been talking off-and-on since yesterday afternoon and I still don’t know your name.”

  “It’s Abigail Allen. I’m Kondrat’s assistant.”

  Their discussion was interrupted when Rock Stone entered the set with the air of a king. “Well, now that the Great Ham is on set—it’s time for me to get to work,” she said.

  Before she could approach him, Stone walked over to them. He gave McMahon a critical look, as if he considered him a rival for his leading role. “And who do we have here?” Stone asked Abigail.

  “This is Peter Puller. He’s Kondrat’s latest discovery.”

  Stone stiffened and looked around the room, obviously searching for Jabłoński. McMahon was amused at how Stone so obviously lacked confidence in his own abilities as an actor. During his years in LA, he had come in contact with a number of celebrities, and it always amazed him how fragile their egos were. Stone was more nervous than most, but then, according to Allen, he had no acting skills. Still, he had to learn what Stone’s hold was over the director.

  Allen studied McMahon for a moment. “We’ll have to come up with a better name for you than Peter Puller, if you want to get anywhere in this business.”

  “Do you mean something sexy … like Rock Stone?”

  Stone’s smile was smug. “Yes, I came up with that on my own.”

  “No doubt,” McMahon answered.

  His sarcasm seemed to go over Stone’s head, but Allen picked up on it and looked as if she would explode as she struggled to suppress her laughter. When Stone wandered off, she let out an explosive breath. “Touché,” she said. “His stage name sounds as hokey as his acting. Still it’s an improvement over his true name.”

  “Which is?”

  “Cupido Pugliesi.”

  “You have to be shittin’ me.”

  “Nope.” She took him by the arm and said, “C’mon, let’s go over your big role.”

  “If I’m to play a crucial role in this movie, maybe I ought to know its title?”

  “You’re going to be the first victim in Murder by Moonlight.”

  McMahon lay on the floor, soaked in fake blood, which had started to congeal around him. Thank God, they gave me these clothes, he thought. His musing was interrupted when Jabłoński shouted, “Action!”

  The script called for the corpse to have its eyes open, so McMahon could see Rock Stone’s inept investigation. He was not sure if the movie crew included an advisor on police procedure, but if it did, Rock was evidently not about to worry over authenticity. The pseudo-detective approached the corpse and without putting on latex gloves, immediately knelt down in the pool of blood.

  Stone looked at the red stain on the knee of his trousers and said, “Shit.”

  Jabłoński erupted like a volcano that had been building pressure for millennia and shouted, “Cut!”

  McMahon stood and turned to the director. “Don’t you have a consultant on police procedures?”

  Jabłoński, who was not accustomed to being questioned on his sets, seemed to back up, as if repelled by McMahon’s challenge.

  Unable to stop, McMahon pushed the issue. He pointed at Stone. “Ole Rock here made at least three major mistakes in the last three seconds.”

  “What?” Stone stepped forward as if he had been personally attacked.

  Jabłoński held up a hand in Stone’s direction, silencing the affronted actor. “What were these mistakes?”

  “For starters, he isn’t wearing protective gloves. Any investigator worth a nickel knows that contaminating a crime scene is a cardinal sin. Always wear gloves. In fact it’s advisable to wear a minimum of two pairs, one over the other.”

  Jabłoński became interested and said, “Why is this important?”

  “To keep from contaminating the scene by leaving fingerprints all over the place.”

  “Ahh, I see.”

  “Then there’s the problem of biohazards, like AIDS and HIV … the gloves offer some personal protection.”

  “How is it you know so much about this?” Jabłoński approached McMahon with an entirely different attitude.

  “I was a cop.”

  Jabłoński raised his voice. “Take a break.” When all of the crew and cast except Stone began walking away, he said, “You too, Rock.” To McMahon he said, “You stay.”

  Stone began to protest, but the director raised a hand, cutting him off. “I said, take a break.”

  The actor walked away, his shoulders slumped like a chastised child’s.

  “I think you hurt your superstar’s feelings,” McMahon said.

  “Hah!” Jabłoński waved his right hand back and forth as if he were shooing a fly. “He is of no consequence. Besides, his talents are more suited to pornographic films.”

  McMahon’s internal alarm system went to condition red. He stared after the departing actor. “Has he made porn?”

  “Several. It’s the one thing he is equipped for.”

  … a tempestuous noise of thunder and lightning heard.

  —William Shakespeare, The Tempest

  57

  The wind picked up and Traynor looked to the east. An ominous bank of dark clouds rolled at them, turning the sky an ominous purple-black, like bruises on a battered boxer. “What you make of that?” he asked.

  “That,” Manuel answered, “is the last thing I want to see.”

  Traynor studied the dense blanket of clouds as it rolled toward the northwest, obliterating the blue sky in its path like a tsunami. A vortex dropped from the maelstrom’s black bowels, and he realized that he was watching the birth of a tornado…. As pants-shitting scary as it was, there was a violent, hypnotic beauty to it. There was no doubt that Fredericka had caught up with them. Traynor didn’t know about the others, but he’d been praying that it would follow the computer model that predicted it would turn right and head away from them, giving Texas some badly needed rain.

  “In a few hours,” Manuel said, “all of northern Chihuahua is going to be one gigantic mud-p
ie. It appears that our luck has run out.”

  “When I saw it on TV, I knew we’d be caught in it …” Traynor muttered.

  Manuel cast him a quizzical look.

  “If it wasn’t for bad luck … I’d have no luck … and that is some serious bad luck.”

  “I wish you’d told me that before we left LA.”

  “Don’t blame me,” Traynor retorted. “You shoulda asked.”

  One minute it was dry and the day bright, the next they were in the middle of a wind-swept deluge in late twilight. The wind was so powerful that brush and cacti were torn from their tenuous grip on the soil and whipped through the air. A large tumbleweed rolled into Toledo, knocking him off his feet.

  Manuel turned his back to the wind and yelled something that Traynor could not hear over the raging storm. Dirt, gravel, and grit pummeled them and he began to feel as if he were being sandblasted.

  Toledo curled into a fetal ball and tried to protect himself from the elements. Afraid that he would get away in the storm, Traynor grabbed him by the waist of his pants and pulled him to his feet. By the time Toledo regained his feet, Manuel had staggered his way back to them. “We have to find some shelter,” he shouted.

  It was all Traynor could do to breathe in the sand-filled wind—so rather than answer him, he nodded. His feet sank into the wet ground, and when Manuel turned and motioned them to follow, Traynor lifted one of his now fifty-pound feet and walked like a zombie, pushing Toledo ahead of him.

  Suddenly a figure appeared on the rise to their left. The figure bent forward against the wind and when it tried to raise what looked to be a weapon, Traynor released his grip on Toledo, shouldered his rifle as he spun, and fired. Either he hit the shooter or else he was pushed back over the dune by the tremendous gust of wind that blasted into them.

  The gale was so strong that for every two steps they took forward, they took a couple sideways. Traynor’s skin felt as if it were being scraped away and the heavy rain drops mixed with hail, pounding their heads like steel ball-bearings being hurled from some hell-born machine. Just as Traynor became certain that they were going to be flayed to death, a line of large boulders appeared and Manuel turned toward them.

  The rocks served as a windbreak and though they were still getting drenched, they were at least able to be heard above the storm. They settled down, sitting against the wet rock, trying to minimize their silhouettes and hunching over to protect their faces from the driving rain. Traynor began to shake and shiver violently, and he realized in that moment that it was possible for any one of them to die of hypothermia. Manuel crawled over and settled beside him. His features were barely discernible in the primordial dark. “You okay?” he asked.

  “Hell if I know. Ask me when this is over.”

  Lightning flashed, revealing a scene worthy of inclusion in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. The trio looked like the survivors of a terrible shipwreck, coated in mud and grime, and Toledo’s and Traynor’s hair was gnarled into filthy tangles. Toledo fared worse than Manuel and Traynor: at least they had boots. Toledo had lost his shoes—a pair of expensive Gucci loafers—somewhere along the way the sucking mud had taken his socks. He sat barefooted, staring into the torrential downpour.

  Manuel broke Traynor’s trance when he said, “The storm seems to be moving fast, shouldn’t last but a few hours.”

  “That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

  “No, but think of it this way: the guys who are chasing us won’t be able to use their vehicles or aircraft in this.”

  “That does make me feel better,” Traynor shouted against the wind. A gust of wind curled around the boulder, and in a flash of lightning, Traynor spied a rattlesnake trying to swim against a surge of water that raced down the mountainside like a swollen stream. Suddenly, he became more worried about being bitten by a panicked reptile than he was about the storm. Toledo must have seen the snake, too; he shouted in alarm and pulled back against the rock. Manuel grabbed him by the arm and said, “Where you think you’re going?”

  Toledo’s eyes were open wide, shining like beacons in the storm. He stammered when he pointed past Traynor, saying, “S-s-snake …”

  “Don’t worry,” Manuel said, “it has bigger things than you on its mind.”

  Traynor found it slightly calming to know that at least one of them was more scared than he was.

  A typical tropical cyclone will have an eye of approximately twenty to forty miles across, usually situated at the geometric center of the storm.

  58

  The storm raged on for three more hours. Water formed into rapidly moving streams and washed dirt and debris down the mountainside. As Traynor hunched over in a lame attempt to protect his face and keep his weapons as dry as possible, he kept remembering the raingear that he had left in the truck. But then, as suddenly as it had hit, the wind died away and the storm abated. “Is it over?” Toledo asked.

  “The leading edge is,” Manuel replied. “We’re in the eye. In a few minutes—maybe as long as an hour, depending on the size of it—we’ll be in the trailing edge. The wind and rain will return, only from the opposite direction.” He stood up and wiped his muddy hands on his trouser legs—but as far as Traynor could see, all this did was smear more mud.

  “We should move,” Manuel said. “Use the reprieve in the storm to put some distance between us and them … and see if we can’t find better shelter.”

  Ever the optimist, Toledo whined. “What kind of shelter will we find in this wilderness?”

  “We’ll know when we find it.” Manuel turned and slogged through the mud and muck.

  Walking was a battle against the elements. The heavy mud clung to their feet like a prisoner’s ball and chain. It did no good to shake it off, because as soon as their feet hit the ground, the clinging mess covered it again. Toledo slipped and fell face-first into the mire. He sat up and cursed. “You could at least remove these fucking shackles so I, too, can climb.”

  Traynor was in no mood for his perpetual pissing and moaning. It was taking every bit of his own willpower to keep climbing the mountainside. He doubted they would ever reach the top; it seemed as if they would take three steps forward and slide back two. Remembering that their pursuers were faced with the same challenges was little, if any, consolation. As they climbed, they were forced to hold their rifles high to keep them as dry and clean as possible. Thus they used their feet and free hands to crab up the slippery slope—an act that he knew made them look like three-legged donkeys … with the exception of Toledo. With his hands shackled, he looked like a two-legged platypus in a mud wallow.

  Traynor tried to keep his anger out of his voice when he said to Manuel, “Why didn’t we wait until the storm passed?”

  “A couple of reasons. First, I thought we’d be able to outrun it. But, and more importantly, I didn’t set the agenda—Holy did that.”

  “One more reason why we should shoot the sonuvabitch,” Traynor complained. Rather than continue his harangue, he trudged on. He needed all of his strength to overcome the greasy mire and keep moving forward.

  Toledo stumbled again and fell on his face. As he slid down the slope, Traynor stopped him by putting a foot on his ass. When his weight pushed against the foot, Traynor’s other one slipped, threatening to send him down the slope too. But he braced himself and was able to maintain his balance.

  Manuel turned sideways and half walked, half slid to them. He grabbed Toledo by his collar and lifted his face out of the mud. “If I thought you kept falling to slow us down, I’d step on the back of your head and drown you in this shit.”

  Toledo’s face was coated in muck and he looked completely dejected and defeated. He didn’t even protest when Traynor said, “Hell, we should do it anyway.”

  Toledo tried to get up, but lost his purchase again and slammed back into the mud. He looked as helpless as a cow on a frozen pond and Traynor laughed. He ignored the fact that the drug lord had a reason for falling so much: w
alking while wearing boots was tough enough, let alone doing it barefoot.

  Manuel and Traynor each grabbed one of his arms and pulled him up. Toledo’s hair was soaked and matted with sludge and grime. He looked about as happy as a cat that had been thrown in a river.

  They shoved him forward. “Move,” Manuel ordered him.

  As they trudged on, Traynor thought that if his current profession didn’t work out, Manuel could get a job as a weatherman. About forty-five minutes after they had first noticed the calm, the storm came raging back with even greater ferocity. Traynor, for one, had had his fill of being soaked and wearing a suit of armor made of Mexican mud. Similar to Toledo, he too was getting frustrated and entertained thoughts of giving up. It was then that he heard the loud crack of a bullet breaking the sound barrier near his head. In the howling wind and rain he had no idea where the bullet was when it reached its final destination. Simultaneously, lightning flashed and he turned and saw a new man shouldering a rifle. The shooter tried to aim at them while maintaining his balance on the slippery slope. Traynor did not hesitate. Once again, he lost his footing and as he dropped onto his butt, he fired three rounds at the gunman. Like before, he didn’t know if one of the bullets hit the assassin or if the wind knocked him down; either way the shooter fell onto his back and slid down the slope. Traynor lost sight of him in the torrential rain and clawed and scrambled to his feet. Manuel and Toledo had turned and were looking in his direction. Traynor knew that if he said anything they would never hear it against the gusting wind, so he waved to let them know he was all right. Without any fanfare, Manuel grabbed Toledo and they turned back to their ascent.