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Red Admiral

In and out of New Delhi

Had she known this was the last time she’d see her mother alive, Red Admiral might have worn different clothing. She’d dressed up for the meeting, adding a white lace blouse to her daily denims. Well-heeled and strait-laced Chandra had dressed down in a gold chiffon sari.

   “Really, Danielle, must you wear blue jeans?” Chandra didn’t care much for her daughter, nor her long auburn locks, nor the nickname Red, spawned by her strawberry-blond British father.

   “Did you come to meet me or my clothes?” At the post-teen age of forty-seven, Red mistakenly thought she could select her own wardrobe.

   “Well,” Chandra huffed, “I certainly should have chosen a less luxurious spot for breakfast.”

   “Like Bangladesh so your friends wouldn’t accidentally see us together?”

   Chandra ignored her daughter’s jibe. “I saw one of your father’s so-called friends, Baldev Gupta, at the Butterfly Conservatory Benefit last night. He should’ve been in the cage with the bugs.”

   Red stiffened. She owed Baldev two million rupees after a recent poker fiasco.

   “The Public Prosecutor’s office has been investigating him for years,” Chandra droned on, “but he always manages to crawl through some loophole in the law.”

   “And why are you telling me?” Red asked flatly.

   “He started talking to me about Admiral Aviation, but I walked away. If you meet him, I suggest you do the same. Perhaps if your father hadn’t associated with creatures like Baldev, he might not have disappeared.”

   “Any new clues about his case from your ex-minions at the Prosecutor’s office?”

   “No. You know good judgment wasn’t your devious father Danny’s strong suit. His big head was screwed on crooked at birth, and his little head screwed anything with two legs.” 

   Red’s eyes rolled back as her head rolled to the side. “How often do you have to tell me this? The last time I saw you, I heard those exact words.”

   The rest of their meeting was forgettable. Red chewed and Chandra spewed unwanted wisdom. At the earliest civil opportunity, Red escaped. “Thanks for the meal and all the advice, Mother dear.” She pointed up. “I must fly.”

   An hour later Red Admiral was in the air, in her world. She loved to put Danny Boy’s old crop duster through its paces. In the open cockpit, the wind whipped her hair back and forth behind the leather helmet and goggles. Red’s devilish smile matched the teeth painted on the nose of the yellow and black Tiger Moth biplane. 

   She soared under power lines, dropped to six feet above the field, and released a cloud of chemicals that drifted like a shroud over the cotton. The prop slashed through a flock of butterflies, spitting a bluish haze of body parts into the breeze. Red rose above the fence at the end, sailed down to the river, banking with the curves of the valley, anticipating her favorite maneuver. The arched stone bridge ahead looked too low and narrow to allow a plane’s passage. She sailed underneath with five feet of clearance for each wingtip, her wheels nearly touching the water, and then pulled the stick back hard. 

   “Mmmm…” she moaned with glee, the g-force flattening her slim body against the seat. 

   As Red powered straight up preparing to loop backward, a searing pain stabbed through her brain to the back of one eyeball like a dagger driven into the top of her skull. Tears streamed down one cheek and her vision flickered between single and double. I’ve got to land! Now!

   Unable to see through the deluge in her left eye, with her right she spotted a road bisecting two fields. Spasms in her neck muscles tightened into a noose, but she wrestled the duster around and dived toward the ground. Red hit the rutted road, bounced hard, then ricocheted off to the side, scraping bushes with her tires. Reining the plane back over the road, she cut the throttle, hopping and skidding to a standstill. 

   She shut down the engine, elbowed the door open, and stumbled out onto the wing. Flinging off her helmet, she collapsed in a heap, her hands a vice on her temples.

   On the other side of Delhi, a cement truck driver lost control and smashed through a bridge railing. The truck, Chandra’s Volvo, and two other cars plummeted into the holy Yamuna River below—the “River of Death,” one of the most toxic waterways on Earth. 

   As daughter and mother had begun their day, they ended it together in the same building: Red in the hospital emergency room and Chandra in the morgue.

Angel Phoenix

Near La Paz, Bolivia

Clad in a grubby poncho and ragged, baggy pants, Angel Phoenix limped along with a cane in one hand, pushing an ice cream cart over the cobblestones with the other. Adobe homes and hovels built next to and on top of one another lined both sides of the skinny street. 

   Earlier that week at dusk, he’d dropped from a plane from 20,000 feet, soared nine miles wearing a Ninja Birdman wingsuit before opening his chute to ease into a soybean field near La Paz. His mission: to locate, extract, and return seven-year-old Greta, the kidnapped daughter of a Dutch oil company president. Angel had sailed in unnoticed, except for a few farmers who argued among themselves whether they’d seen an Andean condor or a black-and-white flying mattress.

   For the third day in a row, the familiar ice cream theme tinkling from a plastic speaker announced his arrival. Angel switched it off and paused in front of a burly thug standing under the roof over the doorway of a windowless hut. “Hot day. Cold ice cream,” he hawked in Spanish, smiling beneath his wide-brimmed straw hat.

   The thug understood, but replied in English. “Too fuckin’ hot.” He walked to the cart and leaned over to view the selection as Angel raised the lid. 

   When the thug stuck his hand into the freezer, Angel slammed down the lid, pinning his arm. A second later, Angel chopped the man’s throat to sever his cry as a karate kick buckled his knees. As the thug slumped to the ground, he plunged a tranquilizer dart into the back of the man’s neck and then dragged him to the side of the hut’s doorway. 

   Angel snatched a popsicle from the cart and stuck it in his pocket. After days of surveillance, he knew the code. He rapped on the door three times… two times… once… then leaped to the other side of the street while gripping his “cane”—a three-foot bamboo hanbō with a metal chain concealed inside and secured to one end. As the door cracked open, Angel took two steps and launched his body horizontally through the air, his boots leading the attack. The impact catapulted the man behind the door backward over a chair, then headfirst into the fractured wall. As Angel’s momentum carried him into the room, he kicked off the door to the right, landing on his side. He flipped upright while flicking his wrist to release the chain. Before the third thug could rise from his stool toward the gun in front of him, Angel swung the hanbō, wrapping its chain around his neck, and yanked the choking man over the table. Another dart put him away as Angel’s boot crushed his face into the tile floor.

   “Greta, darlin’,” Angel crooned to the trembling, blindfolded girl tethered to a rickety chair, “are you okay?”

   She nodded.

   Angel spoke softly as he removed the blindfold. “Your Mommy and Daddy’ll be glad to see you.” 

   Greta’s saucer eyes blinked, frantically scanning the room while he untied her. Whether relieved or terrified, he couldn’t tell. 

   “I’ll bet you like ice cream, don’t you?” An orange popsicle appeared from his pocket. He removed the wrapper to reveal a whole stick and half a melting popsicle. “Oops. I busted it.”

   Greta took it hesitantly. “Who are you?”

   “You can call me Uncle Angel. I’m here to save you.” 

   “They were mean to me,” she stammered, her voice slipping into a sob.

   “I’ll bet they were.” He rubbed a few soothing circles on her back. “How’s that popsicle?”

   She looked him in the eyes during her sample lick. “It’s good. I like orange.”

   “I didn’t break this, though.” He took out a tiny stuffed bear from his other pocket. “He’s soft and cuddly. Give him a hug while I take care of the bad guys.” 

   After Angel tied them together, emptied their guns, and smashed their cellphones, he kneeled next to Greta. “How ’bout a piggy back ride?” 

   “Okay.”

   He lifted her onto his shoulders. “Let’s go home.” As he walked outside using the hanbō cane, a butterfly landed on her leg. “Look at our big blue buddy! It’s good luck when one lands on you.” 

   Angel turned on the tinkly jingle as he strolled behind the cart. Kids emerged from doorways and got free frozen goodies. The word “free” seemed to spread telepathically. 

   He leaned over and challenged two newcomers in Spanish. “You can both have free cones, but first you must become men.” Angel peeled off his thick gray eyebrows and stuck them on one boy’s face, then ripped off his mustache and beard and pasted them on the other boy. They pointed at each other and giggled. He set all the boxes of ice cream on the ground and the gaggle of kids dove into them. 

   Angel took Greta off his shoulders and snuggled her into the cart. “We’re gonna play hide ’n’ seek now. You hide in here. It’s cool.”