Chapter 8

A hood was yanked unceremoniously over Jadzia Arkadczyk's pigtails. She was thrust emphatically into a seat. Her wrists were yanked together before her and a plastic restraint twisted around them. A gruff Italian-accented voice told her in English she should sit there and not cause trouble, or she would regret it.

She sat and did not cause trouble. She regretted it anyway.

She wept. Hysterically at first. Then as she got tired, she subsided into whimpering. That in turn dwindled as she got control of herself and she realized it wasn't doing any good and it was making the sack enclosing her head wet and hard to breathe through.

By the time she got that all sorted out in her head the helicopter had touched down. Hard hands hustled her out into the afternoon heat. The pavement beneath the soles of her Converse All-Star knockoffs was so hot she could feel it through the cheap rubber. When she left the circle of ominous sounds made by the idling rotor blades she was unsurprised to hear rising around her a screaming hurricane roar from a horde of jet engines.

A few stumbling steps and she was being half dragged, half pushed up stairs that rang metallic beneath her feet. Jadzia didn't even dare hope someone would spot her, an obvious victim, being hustled aboard some kind of private jet. Likely this was a secluded hangar at Naples airport, probably belonging to her abductor – could it be any other than one or another Satanic limb of Big Oil? – where no one would see.

Even if anyone saw, this was Italy, land of the red Brigades and the Mafia, and more particularly Naples, which, like Marseilles, boasted a record of piratical skullduggery dating back to approximately the dawn of writing. Anyone who spotted her being kidnapped would simply pass it off as business as usual.

"Dude? What the fuck?" an American-accented voice asked from up the ramp.

"Ran into some problems," the guy pushing her up on her left said with a French accent. "Change of plans."

"Dude! We're supposed to take delivery of, like, two chicks and a bag."

"Shut up!" rapped a German voice, apparently from the guy who was towing Jadzia up the ramp by her right biceps. "We speak more inside."

She hit a barrier of cool air and was swallowed within. A new hand took her right arm. The French guy released her left. The new hand urged her back and into a comfortable chair. As muffled sounds of argument came from the front of the aircraft she was buckled in. Immediately the engine scream began to rise to a piercing mosquito whine.

Jadzia felt a stab of optimism. Maybe it's a Gulf stream, she thought. She had always wanted to ride in a Gulf stream, a big expensive executive jet she had often read about in Tom Clancy novels.

The airplane taxied for a time then took off. Some time later the dark cloth hood was removed. When her vision coalesced from random fields of fuzz, there in the middle of it was a narrow, handsome young Asian face, crinkled slightly with concern.

"You okay?" the man asked in American-accented English. "They didn't, like, hurt you or anything?"

Jadzia had already determined to change her angle of attack. Physical resistance was clearly not going to work. So she blinked her big cornflower-blue eyes at him and gave him her most seductive smile.

He turned and fled toward the front of the aircraft.

****

"What is the matter, Lee?" the lanky Russian asked. "You look as if you have just seen ghost."

"That girl," the Asian kid said. "She, like, smiled at me."

The Russian cocked a ginger-colored eyebrow. "So? You may look but not touch. Or Gus Marshall takes your man-junk off with belt sander, maybe." He laughed and laughed as if this were the greatest joke of all.

Lee shook his head emphatically, whipping his luxurious ponytail around his shoulders. "No, man. She's totally hot. But the way she looked at me – I'd rather hook up with a barracuda. You can see it in her eyes. She's scary crazy, man."

"Is slang?" the Russian asked.

"What?" Lee asked blankly. "No, man. It's slang for she's, like, Angelina-Jolie-in-her-Billy-Bob-Thornton-phase crazy. Drink-each-other's-blood crazy."

"Oh," the Russian said, slightly crestfallen. "I guess is not good."

****

Her attempt at gaining the cooperation of her captors through her seductive wiles having failed miserably, Jadzia sulked for hours, refusing food or drink, as the airplane flew north. Then the organism made its demands known. She started screaming for attention.

A tall, goony-looking guy with prominent ears and a bad ginger crewcut came loping down the aisle in response. He wouldn't meet her eyes and seemed to be sweating. She knew the look and addressed him in peremptory Russian.

He unbuckled her from her seat and escorted her to a dark-stained walnut-paneled door.

"Untie my hands," she commanded in the haughty tone appropriate to a proud Pole addressing a Russian lout.

He turned and called a nervous query in English.

"So cut her loose, idiot," came a command through a closed curtain.

"No-culture German fascist," the Russian muttered in his own language as he produced a blade to cut the plastic restraint.

The bathroom was comparatively large and luxuriously appointed in brushed brass and cream tones. She was fairly sure now this really was a Gulf stream. She took her time and used the privacy to think about ways to disable the aircraft. Some ideas promptly came to her quick, capacious mind.

And were just as promptly dismissed. She was, it occurred to her, flying in said aircraft. Disabling it suddenly seemed like not such a hot idea. She wasn't ready to admit these clowns had gotten the better of her, the certified girl genius.

Thinking about Annja calmed her. Annoying though she was, the woman did show remarkable abilities. She was almost like a real-life version of her favorite adventure-novel heroines.

More to the point, she seemed to have decided she was personally responsible for Jadzia's welfare. And though she was maybe not as bright as Jadzia – but then, who was? – she did seem the sort to take her responsibilities seriously.

Jadzia decided to allow the plane to continue on its flight. She would return to her seat and make the jug-eared Russian bring her the food and drink she had been promised earlier. And she would rely on the mysterious Ms. Creed to come to rescue her.

****

The gulf stream flew out over a sizable body of water. It was either the Baltic or the North Sea, Jadzia knew, pretty much by default. The springday, short at such northerly latitudes, was already ending in a pool of fire out the port-side windows, and gilt clouds of gray and lavender velvet out the starboard side where Jadzia sat.

Almost apologetically, the handsome American Asian in the dark suit and the Russian in the yellow polyester shirt and faded dungarees came back to hood her again.

As they tried to pull the bag over her head, without conscious decision, Jadzia abandoned her strategy of cooperation and started screaming. She didn't target the Asian kid particularly, because he was actually quite cute, which convinced her he couldn't be all bad. But she nailed the Russian in the crotch with a rising instep that lifted him up a good inch, caused his little watery blue boar eyes to bug out and his ears to burn red as he doubled over.

The Asian kid was fast as a rattler. He took advantage of Jadzia's reflexive pause in frantic activity to admire the effect her kick hit had on the Russian – she'd never actually kicked anyone in the nuts before – to whip the hood right over her head. Unable to target effectively, she felt her wrists seized and strapped together again with a nasty plastic strip that bit into her skin when she fought against it.

She cursed her captors enthusiastically in several languages.

Her oppressors fled.

She settled back to sulk some more.

When the aircraft touched down, someone un-snapped her from her seat, urged her up and guided her forward along the aisle to the front of the aircraft, then out into a brisk, saltwater-scented breeze.

She stayed on autopilot and let the world happen around her. It wasn't as if she was unaccustomed to zoning out into a private world of intellectual reverie.

She was escorted across the apron and handed into a new craft. When the engines spun up with a turbine whine and unmistakable chop she knew it for another helicopter. It leaped in the air, angled, and was away.

How long it flew she didn't try to track. From a general impression of light through the cloth hood and decreasing temperature she gathered the sun was setting.

The chopper rose, then settled to a landing. Still hooded and with her wrists still bound before her, she was unstrapped from the seat and gently but insistently urged out of the aircraft.

Cold spray-freighted wind struck her like a slap. She was led at a brisk pace into clammy darkness, up echoing metal stairs.

She knew where she was.

Not specifically. But she knew quite well what kind of place it was.

The question that rang in her mind, was, How will Annja Creed find me here?