Deadly Star

by CJ Petterson

  “Thanks.” He looked down at the blanket. “Hotter’n hell. Need outta this.”

  She pulled aside the thermal. “Didn’t want you to go into shock.”

  “Good you found first aid. Supplies?”

  “Three flares, two-and-a-half canteens of water, two oranges, some Hershey bars that are turning into syrup as we speak, and a bag of Fritos.” She looked at the water canteens then tossed the salty snacks through a broken window. “Scratch the Fritos.”

  She touched the yoke lightly. “How do we get this thing off you?”

  He shook his head in slow motion.

  “Don’t say that!” She braced her good leg against the IP and pushed.

  He touched her arm. “Wait rescue.”

  “Doesn’t this plane have one of those electronic beacon things?”

  He sidled a look at her. “Transponder quit.”

  “Look, over there,” she pointed to a hazy, jagged ridge of hills in the distance. “That’s not so far. I can go for help.”

  No, he mouthed silently. The words that followed sounded wispy and uneven. “Don’t trust desert. Fatal mistake. What you see … not always close … real.”

  She looked away, afraid he would see the fear in her eyes. “What, then?”

  “Signal.”

  “How long will one of those flares burn?”

  He shook his head. “SOS in sand. Clothes, rags, pieces of plane, what you find.” His chest rattled with each shallow breath. “Make a … ” he faded out again.

  She stroked his arm, his cheek. “Okay. I’ll make a signal. Don’t go anywhere.” She watched him for a few minutes then crawled through the space vacated by a missing window and balanced on one leg in the shade of the uplifted wing. Except for some cactus and dry scrub brush, the desert around the plane was naked. Heat hot enough to blister a bare foot radiated through her boot.

  Mirabel reached into the plane and tugged out her two luggage pieces and overnight case. She added Dan’s small bag to the cluster then dumped the contents of all of them. After pulling her broad-brimmed hat out of the pile and jamming it down onto her dark auburn curls, she dropped her overnight case as the starting point then laid out the clothing in a meandering SOS. Every move raised a sweat that the wind dried in an instant, leaving a layer of grit on her skin. The soaring temperature sucked the breath out of her lungs and brought her to a gasping halt every few minutes. A wave of nausea hit, and her sweaty brow felt cold to the touch.

  I’m about to kill myself with heat exhaustion. “Get out of the sun, dummy.”

  She set Dan’s weekender case like a punctuation mark at the end of the distress signal and staggered back under the shadow of the wing. She took a measured sip of water and leaned heavily against the fuselage to keep from collapsing in the sand. She let a good half hour pass before she left the shade to scoop handfuls of sand onto the edges of the clothing. The SOS anchored in place, she surveyed her work. Not good, she thought. The pale summer fabrics looked like a colorless scribble in a colorless desert.

  Mirabel crawled back into the plane and touched Dan’s shoulder on her way into the back seat. “Don’t look,” she said even though she knew he was unconscious. “I’m really sorry. I have to cut up your new seats.” She hacked at the back seats with the stubby blade of the Swiss Army knife. “This stuff will put up a lot of smoke in a fire.”

  She tossed pieces and strips of vinyl out of the shattered window. Clumps of seat cushion foam and white cotton batting followed. She took another sip of water and ran a hand over Dan’s shoulder again on her way back out of the plane.

  A squat, misshapen pyramid rose out of the debris as she added clothes to the pile and finished with her new bras and silk panties on top. Mirabel quickly retrieved the lingerie. “I paid way too much money for this stuff.” She sighed. Won’t do me any good if I’m dead, she thought. “Work your magic, ladies,” she said and rearranged the pieces gently over the top of the pile. “There’s not a man I know who can pass up a black lace 36D.”

  She stabbed one of the flares into the sand next to the would-be pyre then stood on the rise of a sandy mogul and surveyed her work. She used the bottom of her shirt to wipe away the salty sting of tears and sweat that blurred her eyes and retreated into the cockpit.

  Her shoulder braced against the seat, she hung her hat over a knob and watched Dan breathe for several minutes. “I made two signals.” He didn’t respond. She laid her head back and closed her eyes.

  A rhythm of pain in her leg roused her, and for a brief moment of panic, she didn’t know where she was. She eased up one edge of the gauze to relieve the pressure of the bandage against her swollen leg. Then she thumbed off the top of the aspirin bottle and dropped a white pill in her hand. Ignoring the canteen on the floor, she chewed the dry, bitter tablet.

  Dan opened his eyes, dulled and shot through with red streaks. “Sorry, kid.”

  “Not your fault,” she said and shoved the aspirin bottle into a pocket. “Stuff happens. I made two signals, the SOS in the sand and another one to set on fire.”

  “Sully’s going to kick my tail — ” he said and gasped for a shallow breath of air, “when he finds out” — he wheezed again — “I crashed with you in the plane.”

  Mirabel shook her head and smiled. “My ex-husband is not entitled to keep tabs on me.”

  A shallow dimple dented his cheek. “Right.”

  “Unless you told him, he doesn’t even know we’re together,” she said. “And I won’t tell him if you won’t.”

  “Deal.”

  “You okay while I start the signal fire?”

  He shook his head. “Dark soon. Rescue won’t fly … ” His words trailed off. “Mornin’.”

  She fed him slices of orange, slid pieces of melting chocolate onto his tongue, and wet his mouth with droplets of water.

  “Gourmet cook,” he said.

  “Finger food is my specialty.” Her eyes swept the cockpit. “What happened?”

  “Odds all wrong,” he said. “Too many … things quit. Should’ve known.”

  Known what? she thought. “Shhh. We’ll figure it out when we get home.”

  His brows pinched together, and he let go a shallow cough. More red bubbles appeared on his lips.

  When he dozed off, her mind ticked off the things that had gone wrong — engine, radio, transponder. He was right. A lot of things had gone wrong, one right after the other.

  “What went right was you, Danny boy. We’d be dead if you weren’t such damned good pilot.” She stroked his arm. “We’ll have to have a big party when we get back. Invite the whole town.”

  When the only things visible were twinkles of light in a navy blue sky, she laid her head on his shoulder and stared into the heavens. Her fingers laced through his, she fell into an exhausted sleep, serenaded by the night songs of the desert.

  • • •

  A crick in her neck woke her when daybreak was still a painful inflammation on the horizon, hovering blood-red just above the sand. Sometime during the night, she’d left Dan’s shoulder and was curled into a ball next to the door, her head angled against the seatback. Her aching body had acquired a new source of pain. Dan’s eyes were still closed, so she rearranged herself and leaned back. Let him sleep, she thought and nodded off. The sun was a white-hot circle when she opened her eyes again. It took several seconds before she was awake enough to realize Dan wasn’t breathing.

  “Oh, Dan,” she whispered. She caressed his face then rubbed his arm with both hands as if trying to warm him back to life. “Why didn’t you wake me?” Tears washed down her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I should have been awake.” She held tightly to his hand and sobbed while the sun’s form disintegrated into a white light that sent the temperature screaming upwards.

  When the hiccupping sobs halted, she wiped h
er gritty face with both palms and checked her watch. Nine o’clock. Afraid to stay and afraid to leave, Mirabel began to shiver in the sweltering heat. She knew the rules for a crash. Dan repeated them before each time they flew. Stay with the plane. Searchers can see a plane. A hiker is just another invisible grain of sand. She stared long and hard at the purple haze of sawtooth hills in the distance then kissed his waxen cheek.

  “I have to go,” she whispered. “If the radio quit before you got off the mayday, no one knows where we are. They don’t even know we’ve crashed. What if no one comes before I run out of water? I can’t stay.” Mirabel shaped the thermal blanket over him like a shroud. “Don’t worry. I’ll be in the hills before dark.” She rested her hand on his cocooned body for several minutes. “I’ll come back for you as soon as I can.” She inhaled a sob and wriggled out of the cockpit.

  She stared at the pile of clothes in the sand then picked up one of Dan’s blue bandannas and tied it around her neck. Mirabel pulled the flare out of the sand, ripped off the cap, and struck it against the end of the red stick. Flame shot out. She held it for a moment then touched the flame to several places in the clothes before she underhanded the spewing torch to the top of the pyre. The lingerie curled, smoldered, as dirty yellow fingers of fire reached skyward then blazed. Murky smoke rose from the overheated cotton batting she’d pulled out of the seat. Pieces of foam shrank into dark, hissing blobs. Mirabel snugged her hat down tight and watched a shabby column of brown-tinged gray smoke carry her hopes for rescue into the bright, clear sky. Armed with the Swiss Army knife, two flares, an orange, and two water canteens, the straps crisscrossed over her chest like bandoliers, Mirabel turned her back on the smoldering stench and hobbled into the sepia landscape.

  • • •

  “Hey!” she screamed. “Down here! I’m here!” The helicopter didn’t slow. Mirabel pulled a flare and scraped the cap against the end frantically, but it wouldn’t light. The small craft shrank into a dot before she could pull the second flare from her pocket. She staggered after the ’copter, her arms flailing the hot air. “Come back.” Her throat was as dry as the desert, and her voice rasped coarsely. “I’m here.”

  The dot continued on until it disappeared into the horizon and desert sounds were all she heard: wind rushing past her ears, sand collapsing into miniature avalanches down the dune or compressing with a dull crunch under her steps before she sank to the ground. “I’m just a mild-mannered scientist from Brady, Texas,” she said. “When did botany get to be this dangerous?”

  A sip of warm liquid from the canteen left a metallic taste in her mouth. Her skin, chafed by the wind and colored by the sun, felt taut, prickly. She untied the bandana from around her neck, spilled a bit of water onto it, and patted the wetness to her face. The wind stole the moisture from her skin before she could twist the cap back down on the canteen.

  Retying the damp handkerchief around her neck, she struggled to her feet and bent to check the bandage, now blotted bright red. The swollen muscle that had acted like a plug for the hole in her thigh had started to recede. Blood leaked in a narrow line down her shin and into her boot. She felt a feverish heat behind her eyes.

  She lifted her hat and rubbed the back of her hand across the tangle of hair that clung to her brow in short, wet clumps. Tugging down the wide brim, she made a quarter turn, paused, turned again and then again and again like the staccato tick of a second hand until she had spun a full three-sixty. Dust devils twirled and danced across the land, mare’s tail clouds swept the sky, and, just beyond the scrub brush, a lake shimmered in the distance. The thought it might be the reservoir at the south end of the valley crossed her mind, except she was facing east.

  Focused on the silvery pool of water, Mirabel cupped the curve of the orange in her pocket with one hand and fingered the strap of a canteen with the other. After a few minutes, she bent to pick up a pebble, rolled it between her palm and her pants leg, and placed it in her mouth. She was rewarded with a bit of saliva.

  Don’t trust your eyes in the desert, Dan said. Fatal mistake. She turned her back on the lake that was a seductive lie and headed toward the distant hills.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Sully paused the rented pickup at the overlook and gazed for several minutes at the awesome scenery — just another tourist taking in the vistas of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. He always stopped here first, before he descended the narrow trail to the cabin he’d bought as a wedding present for Mirabel. They’d spent many happy days in the secluded and beautiful setting. The deed to the property was his half of the divorce settlement, and now he used it as a place to unwind and recharge after finishing an assignment. His visual check for unwanted visitors came up empty so he drove onto the dirt road that led down the mountainside. No more than a two-track that meandered through the pines and scrub brush, the trail was invisible from the asphalt road, unless one knew where to look.

  It took almost an hour to navigate the seven miles of dirt and rock and get the truck parked in the shed. It seemed to take longer than usual, but he knew it hadn’t. He was tired, verging on exhaustion. “I need a vacation,” he muttered. He checked his cellphone. “No service.” He’d drive back to the main road in the morning and call in. Right now he craved undisturbed isolation.

  He unloaded the groceries he’d bought in Tahoe, started the generator, and prepped the kitchen stove. “Don’t need a propane explosion,” he said as he cleaned spider webs out of the burners. He had his taste buds primed for a three-egg omelet topped with chili, onions, shredded cheddar, sour cream, and cilantro. Mirabel used to say it was the only thing he could cook without ruining it, because it was already a mess.

  It gets dark early and completely in the mountains, and Sully was ready to hit the sack when the sun disappeared behind a mountain around six-thirty. He tossed restlessly for another hour before deciding he was either too tired or it was too early to go to sleep and got up. He turned on the lamp in the main room and started looking through the box of photos and mementoes he kept hidden in a niche behind a false electrical fuse box.

  The first thing he saw was the divorce decree. The marriage certificate was stapled to the back of it. When he picked up the papers, his wedding band came with them, and he put it on.

  “Mirabel Elizabeth Campbell O’Sullivan, Plaintiff, vs. Robert Patrick O’Sullivan, Defendant,” he read aloud. “It is therefore ordered, adjudged and decreed” — he took a deep breath — “that a Decree of Divorce shall be granted and the marriage terminated.” The words still hurt.

  He shuffled slowly through the photos he’d saved … Mirabel at River Walk in San Antonio where they met, Mirabel in Antelope Canyon, Mirabel at Lake Como, Italy, where they honeymooned. He lingered longest on the photograph of Mirabel in her wedding gown, him in his officer dress whites, and Dan Harbin, his best friend and best man. Mirabel was laughing. His heart beat a little faster just looking at her picture and remembering how happy he was that day. He had the perfect life … a career as a Navy Commander piloting F/A-18s and married to the perfect woman. He settled back on the couch and held the photo to his chest.

  When he’d become an undercover CIA agent, he was ordered to not tell Mirabel. There was less risk of exposure, they said. It would be safer for her. So he lived a lie. His civilian job as a consultant for international oil companies was a perfect cover for his CIA assignments, but both took him away from her for too long and too often.

  “My fault, Mirabel,” he murmured. “Sorry.”

  He ran his fingers lightly over the picture, slipped off his ring, and put everything back in his box of memories. The strain of his double life had ended the marriage, but he knew his love for Mirabel was much stronger than a fairy tale’s “happily ever after”; it was immortal.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Inside a hangar of the airport on the outskirts of Mendocito, Ray Briggs pored over a large typographic map spread out on an
aluminum folding table. Out on the tarmac, Sheriff Evan Thompson dropped his car radio’s microphone onto the front seat of his police car and sighed. He spat a stream of tobacco juice that sent a dark, teardrop-shaped wet streak onto his pants leg and thumbed off a drip of brownish spit at the corner of his mouth. The sheriff adjusted the wide Sam Brown belt under his stomach, brushed dust off his tan pants, and ambled into the hangar.

  The sun’s glare bounced off the tarmac and blasted the interior of the structure like a furnace. The wind blew hot and dusty through the open doors. Thompson took off his coffee-colored Stetson and wiped the hatband with a wad of dingy handkerchief. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was the middle of July, not the middle of May.”

  “Have they found them yet?” Briggs asked. He was leaning hard against the table. As the local dentist, Briggs usually spent his days in air-conditioned spaces, and he was fast becoming exhausted by the oppressive heat. Beads of sweat escaped from his close-cropped brown hair and rolled down his temple. Wet streams coursed from under his arms, leaving dark trails on his light blue shirt.

  “The helicopter pilot just radioed in,” Thompson said in a voice that was unexpectedly high for a man his size. “He’s getting low on fuel.” The words bounced in hollow echoes around the building’s metal roof and walls of corrugated steel. “He’s going to set down here,” the sheriff said, dragging his finger in a line on the map, “in Chowchilla.” He tapped a fingernail near the California-Nevada state line.

  “He’s going back up, isn’t he?” Briggs said, his voice tinged with impatience. “They’ve been missing for more than thirty hours. He can’t quit now. There’s a lot of daylight left.”

  “Yes sir, there is, but if you’re so all-fired worried, why’d you wait so long to let me know their plane had gone missing?”

  “I wasn’t really sure. I thought maybe Dan had some radio trouble, and I kept waiting for Mirabel to call after they landed. You’re not going to stop looking, are you?”