Wild Orchids (13 page)

Highway 307 had long since turned into Route 186, which cut due west through the states of Quintana Roo and Campeche. This was wild jungle country, and dense green walls of trees and vegetation crowded in on both sides of the narrow roadway. Craterous potholes abounded. Lora was forced to slow to a crawl, and when the obligatory afternoon downpour came she had to stop altogether. Her captor—it was hard to think of him as Max, although she thought the hard, cruel-sounding name with its shades of the Third Reich suited him to a tee—was not agreeable to merely waiting the deluge out.

In consequence, he took the wheel, and Lora got some little satisfaction from watching him negotiate at a snail's pace the road which soon more nearly resembled a roaring river. He didn't seem particularly concerned about her trying to escape, and looking out the windows at the pounding sheets of rain Lora could understand why: she would drown if she were foolish enough to leave the protection of the car. And even if she waited until the rain stopped—which it would, as abruptly as it had started—she shuddered at the thought of being alone and on foot in jungle country. The twisting trees and vines looked both forbidding and impenetrable. She knew that the rain forest was almost completely uninhabited—by humans, at least. Just before the downpour had started, Lora had braked to avoid hitting a large, flat black furry creature that at first glance had seemed to be no more than a spot on the road. Then one thin leg moved, to be followed by another and another… Steering around it, she had frowned at the creature curiously, trying to determine what it was, when Max casually identified it as a tarantula. They were quite common in these parts, he told her with a grin, obviously relishing her convulsive shudder. No, she thought, remembering, it wasn't surprising that he didn't seem to fear an escape attempt. She wouldn't set foot outside the car for a million dollars. Even he was preferable to a close encounter with a tarantula!

At the tiny village of Francisco Escarcega, which was scarcely more than a collection of huts, nature's call overpowered hunger as her primary discomfort, and she managed to prevail upon Max to stop. Again he didn't seem worried about her getting away from him, and as she climbed out of the car to be surrounded by a swarm of Indian women and children she began to understand why. None of the villagers spoke English— at least, none that she heard—and the village was so small that there was no way she could have hidden from him even if she had tried to run. There was a rusty looking pay telephone in front of a larger cinderblock building that she understood from the picture of an envelope out front to be a post office, but the thought of trying to place a call through a Mexican operator in the limited amount of time she was sure to have before he caught up with her boggled the mind. Besides, she didn't have so much as a penny to her name. That unspeakable man had robbed her of every cent she possessed.

Shrugging resignedly, she abandoned the idea of trying to outwit her captor for the moment and allowed herself to be pointed toward a public outhouse which she thankfully made use of while her captor, she presumed, relieved himself outside. As they were leaving a toothless old woman thrust another packet of the ubiquitous tortillas into Max's hand in return for a few pesos. He drove, for which Lora was grateful as it left her free to eat. When the last crumb of tortilla was consumed, she succumbed to the combined effects of nervous tension and her almost sleepless night and leaned her head back against the vinyl headrest to fall asleep within minutes.

When she woke again, they had just reached a village that rivaled Escarcega for lack of size. A faded road sign proclaimed it Catazaja. Here they turned south off the main highway and found themselves on a narrow, poorly paved road that rose and fell with the increasingly mountainous landscape while twisting in and out upon itself in a way that threatened to make Lora sick to her stomach. In the aftermath of the rain, droplets sparkled like diamonds on the dense jade green of the jungle foliage. Parrots and other exotic birds squawked noisily, and plumes of steam drifted from the roadway toward the sky. The scenery was wildly beautiful, as exotic as anything from
Lost Horizon.
The only ugly thing was the smell. Composed of rotting vegetation and, she feared, the decomposing corpses of animals, the stench was heavy and sweet, and did her already queasy stomach no good at all.

Finally, after more than an hour's drive, they rounded another hairpin bend—and despite her incipient nausea Lora caught her breath. Before them, shining white against the deep green of the rain forest, was a city of temples and pyramids that looked as though it belonged on the white sands of an Egyptian desert. Surrounded by the untamed savagery of the jungle, completely hidden from sight until they rounded that last bend, the ruins dazzled with the mystery and grandeur of a lost civilization.

"Palenque," he said. "I thought you'd like it."

"It's gorgeous," Lora replied as he drove along the narrow road that wound through the lower part of the town where the villagers lived in cheerful poverty. The thatch-roofed huts Max called
tiendas,
many bearing signs advertising Coca-Cola and Seven-Up, and colorfully dressed Indians hawking held no fascination for her at the moment. She had eyes only for the magnificence on the hill. "Can we stop?"

There was a short silence, and then he laughed caustically. "Forgotten where you are, baby? You're being kidnapped, remember? Hell, no, we can't stop. You'll have to come back another time—with your math teacher."

There was a distinct sneer in the last words, but Lora, jerked so rudely back to reality, did not hear it. Gazing at the ruins with disappointment as they rounded another bend and the whole town disappeared like a mirage behind a protective curtain of jungle, she realized that she had, indeed, forgotten her situation. For a moment there, he had been no more or less than any other companion, a friend who could enjoy the magnificence of the ancient city with her. The unpleasant truth came as a jolt.

After Palenque, the jungle grew even more inhospitable.

The roars of unseen beasts that he identified as jaguars or maybe wild boars could be heard from time to time over the fitful hum of the air conditioning. Lizards the size of small alligators lay sunning themselves on the warm pavement, moving sluggishly out of the way with a great deal of tail lashing and baring of teeth only after repeated honks of the horn. Monkeys—she hoped—shrieked ear splittingly from somewhere inside the tangle of trees, and winged insects, some several inches long, launched incessant kamikaze assaults on the windshield with stomach churning results. As night approached, Lora began to grow uneasy. Would they reach their destination soon? She did not relish the idea of remaining in this untamed wilderness after dark.

Finally, about an hour after nightfall, the jungle seemed to clear fractionally, and by the beam of the car's headlights Lora could see that they had reached another tiny village. Max drove to the far edge of the little gathering of huts and pulled to the side of the road, stopping the car. Lora, who had been about to doze off again, sat up, looking around at the dark village and the even darker jungle.

"Where are we?" she asked faintly.

He turned without answering and reached into the backseat for the battered sarape. "I'm going to have to blindfold you," he said, turning toward her with the now filthy garment dangling from one hand.

"What? Why?" Lora spluttered a protest even as he began to wrap the sarape loosely over her eyes and around the top of her head. She lifted her hands instinctively to pull the heavy, musty smelling cloth away. He caught both her hands in his, squeezing with just enough power so that she was forced to remember his strength, and how much in his power she truly was.

"Don't try to look where we're going. It'll be better for you if you see as little as possible. Even this way, the friend we're visiting is not going to like me bringing you along, but I don't seem to have much choice. Unless you would rather I killed you, of course."

"You wouldn't, would you?" Lora asked in a small voice, no longer fighting the shrouding cloth that was giving her a headache to match her unwell stomach. Her hands lay quietly in her lap as he started the car again before he answered.

"Not unless you make me. But my friend isn't as nice as I am, so behave yourself."

Lora behaved herself, for the moment at least, sitting quietly in the passenger seat as the car bumped its way along what she could only surmise to be a dirt track. It wound every which way, and after the third or fourth turn Lora had lost all sense of direction. The blindfold was making her claustrophobic, and despite the fact that her nose and mouth were free, she felt as if she were being smothered. Twice her hands twitched upwards in a reflexive need to tear the cloth from her eyes, but both times she managed to restrain herself. Something in his manner told her that the matter of the blindfold was deadly serious. Nervously, she wondered about this "friend" of his. Another criminal like himself obviously…

A gunshot sounded, close at hand, followed immediately by the sound of running footsteps and the glare of lights that barely glimmered through the weave of the wool about her eyes. Lora started, instinctively reaching for the blindfold as the car rocked to a stop.

"Don't you dare touch that thing now, or you won't get out of here alive." Max growled at her as he caught her hand. Frightened, Lora turned her fingers so that they were clasping his, taking ridiculous comfort from the feel of that warm, strong hand in hers as something metallic—a rifle butt? —rapped sharply at Max's window. He squeezed her fingers once, then released her hand. She heard him rolling down the window, and a short, sharp exchange followed that left her all at sea because it was conducted in the most colloquial form of Mexican Spanish. Then the man who had been talking to Max stepped away from the car, shouting something presumably to others nearby. Lora heard the car window being rolled up, and then the car started. Wetting her lips, she reached blindly for Max's arm.

"Easy, now. My friend doesn't like being surprised, so he has a few guards keeping an eye out. By the way, you're my lady friend for the duration. You won't be asked any questions, but you'll be safer if he doesn't realize that you're liable to go running and screaming to the police the first chance you get."

"I won't—"

"You will. You're the type." There was a grim note in his voice, and Lora didn't like it. He was right, or course, she would go straight to the police when she was free of him, but she didn't like him thinking so. He might decide that the only way to stop her was to kill her…

"I…" She tried again to disabuse him of his all too accurate notion.

"Shut up. We're here. Keep your mouth shut and keep close to me, and you'll be all right. And for God's sake, try not to look like I scare you down to your prim little panties. It'll make him wonder, and he doesn't like to wonder about people. Makes him itchy."

"Who is he?" Lora asked shakily as the car stopped. Max didn't answer. She heard his door open and slam shut, and then her door was opening and he gripped her arm, helping her out. When she was on her feet, he unwound the sarape so that she could see again.

The sudden glare of lights hurt her eyes. She squinted against the brightness that seemed to be made up of dozens of spotlights. They were in some sort of walled compound, she saw. A huge, white painted adobe hacienda stood immediately in front of where Max had parked on the curved drive. A young Mexican was already climbing into the VW and driving it away. Other men, armed to the teeth with ammunition belts crossed over their chests like guerrillas in a bad movie, were everywhere, on top of the yard-thick cement block wall surrounding the complex, by the garage-door-sized solid metal gate through which they had driven, on the hacienda's red-tiled roof, and standing at attention one on either side of the door.

As Lora stared at these last two, the massive oak doors were flung open and a short, stocky man whose thick features told of Indian ancestry strode into view. He was dressed in a blue dress shirt that was open at the throat and what Lora guessed to be a very expensive tropical suit, white linen or silk from the slubs in the material, which nevertheless did not seem to fit him properly. The vest was unbuttoned from halfway down his chest so that his stomach, which was more solid than fat, but definitely there, was more obvious than it might have been. The slacks seemed just a tad too tight at the waist, and consequently rode beneath the stomach bulge to the detriment of both. The coattails flapped behind him like wings as, despite his bulk, he ran lightly down the circular stairs to meet them.

"Max, my friend!"

"Ortega!"

To Lora's surprise—Max seemed too much the embodiment of the Mexican concept of machismo to ever participate in a show of emotion, especially toward another man—the two exchanged a hearty embrace. Then Ortega stepped back, still holding Max by the arms as he shook him lightly.

"It has been a long time,
amigo.
Too long for this to be merely a social call. There is trouble?"

"There is trouble," Max confirmed with a wry twist to his mouth. "I'll fill you in later." He cast a significant glance at the men around them, who all immediately shifted their interested eyes elsewhere. Ortega nodded.

"Yes. Later." He turned to look at Lora. There was a faint hardness in his eyes that sent her shrinking imperceptibly closer to Max's side.

"You're married,
amigo?
Perhaps that is what has kept you away so long?"

Her captor laughed, and Lora felt a sudden strong urge to kick him.

"Would I do such a thing,
amigo?
This is but a lady friend. She has been very helpful to me in this time of trouble. She brings no problems with her, you have my word on it." He made another short comment in Spanish which Lora, to her mingled regret and relief, couldn't follow. Whatever he said, it had the effect of making the Mexican's eyes gleam with interest as they passed over her once again.

"Es muy linda,"
he said to Max with what appeared to be a touch of regret.