"RAID"-ING THE JUNGLE QUEEN

On the other hand, a night of sleep had done little to improve Madlyn Anderson's state of mind. Without the information to deliver to her Interpol contact, she felt lost, a feeling decidedly unfamiliar to her. Madlyn had always succeeded easily: blond, bright and attractive, she had coasted through college, and been recruited by the NSA before graduation. Up to now, her job had consisted of little more than public relations work, made easy when she greeted the public with her flashing smile. This assignment was supposed to have been a sort of "perk": a routine courier job, followed by rest and relaxation on a beach somewhere. Instead, she had been robbed, nearly assaulted, and had failed in what should have been a very simple task. Some of her co-workers might have regarded all this as some sort of great "adventure"; for Madlyn, it had only left her desperate and distracted. In consequence, she barely noticed that one of the pilots, a dark and dangerous-looking man, had left the cockpit, and come back to the passenger cabin. Madlyn only really came to full awareness when the man pointed a gun at her. Madlyn opened her mouth in shock, and was fortunate that it opened widely, as the man slipped the barrel of the pistol past her teeth, and into her mouth.

"Hush." The man's voice was a harsh whisper. "Please, dear lady, do not force us to hurt you." Madlyn's blue eyes had opened to the size of golf balls and she didn't dare even move her head to agree; she was already afraid that her trembling would cause the gun to go off. "Now," the man's dark eyes bored into hers, and an amused smile creased his face, "we are going to ask you to accompany us. We have no need for the services of your friend, however." At this, he nodded in the direction of the still-sleeping Tara Fields. Madlyn moved only her eyes to see the other pilot, a hulking blond man, making his way from the cockpit to approach the sleeping woman. Madlyn would not have thought it possible for her fear to increase, but the knowledge that there was now no one flying the plane caused her to start involuntarily, and her eyes whipped from the empty cockpit back to the face of the man gagging her with the pistol. He laughed.

"Be calm, lady. The plane can fly on its autopilot for a while; long enough for us to finish our work here." The other man was standing now before Tara Fields, and had taken a cloth pad from a bag on his hip. A sickly-sweet smell permeated the cabin as he bent down and pressed the cloth over Tara's nose and mouth. After a moment, the sleeping woman began to stir slightly, and the pilot leaned down heavily, his forearms pressed to her shoulders as he held the pad firmly in place. The drug was evidently potent, as Tara Fields' struggles subsided without her regaining consciousness. As Madlyn watched helplessly, the man took a roll of heavy cord from his bag. He cut off some shorter lengths of it, and placed Tara's left arm on top of the armrest of her seat, and used the ropes to fasten her arm in place at the wrist and elbow. For a moment, Madlyn thought she had seen Tara move, to resist her captor, but it was just her unconscious body falling forward against the man's shoulder. The man laughed, and bound Tara's right arm to the seat in the same way. Taking some longer pieces of cord, he looped the heavy rope about Tara's torso; the shape of the seat seemed to make it harder to tie her as tightly as the man would have liked, but, Madlyn thought, if she didn't wake up soon, it would scarcely matter. The auburn-haired adventuress was about as bountifully "endowed" as any woman either Madlyn or the pilot had ever seen, and the man used this to his advantage, anchoring ropes below her breasts, to secure her more firmly in place, and clearly regarding his assignment as being at least as much pleasure as it was work. When he finished, Tara's body was sitting upright in the seat, with her head drooping forward to her prominent chest, saliva beginning to form at the corners of her slack mouth. He knelt down and tied her ankles to the seat, as well. When she was secured in place, the man stood up, and took from his bag a piece of canvas and some strips of rawhide. He reached down to the sleeping woman, seized her long braid at the base of her skull, and used it to pull her head back. Tara's drugged mouth sagged open, and the man stuffed the heavy cloth deep inside it. He then took one of the thin pieces of rawhide, and used it to bind the cloth in the unconscious Tara's mouth. He pulled it as tightly as he could, knotting the leather several times just behind her left ear. He repeated the process with two more strips of rawhide, knotting each one as viciously as he had the first. When he finished, he lifted the unconscious woman's chin, and snickered at the sight of her cruelly gagged face, still deep in slumber. He pushed her head back until it rested on the seat back, and turned his attention to his Madlyn.

The blond American diplomat was still frozen in her seat, with the oily barrel of the pistol resting nauseatingly on her tongue.

"You can take that out, now," the blond man told the gunman. "There's no one to hear her, anyway." The slick metal was removed from Madlyn's mouth, and she gasped in relief. Drawing a shaky breath, she tried to plead with the men.

"Please, please-I'm so frightened. I-I-uugghh! Uuhhnnfff!". Paying not the slightest heed to her protestations, the blond pilot had drawn from his pocket a heavy piece of the stiff cloth with which he had gagged Tara. His left hand gripped Madlyn's hair to hold her still, while the fingers of his right hand pushed the stiff cloth as far back into her mouth as they could. Madlyn could scarcely believe what was happening: the harshness of the cloth was even worse than had been the oily taste of the gun barrel, and the man's brutal fingers threatened to choke her as he forced the cloth so far into her mouth that it nearly went down her throat. Madlyn, trying to fight both the pain in her scalp and the choking intrusion into her mouth, began to cry, sobs racking her form, and threatening to cut off her breathing altogether. This couldn't be happening, she told herself. Her mind refused to accept it; some part of her brain knew that she was in desperate danger, that she must try and regulate her breathing or suffocate, but another part of her had already begun to surrender, to acknowledge that she was now powerless to do anything to help herself.

Madlyn's life of easy privilege had extended to her relations with men: they were so overcome by her beauty and confidence that most were reduced to stammering fools upon meeting her. This, though, was an entirely new sensation: a powerful man had taken hold of her with the same ruthless brutality he might have used on a recalcitrant animal, and was handling her as casually as though she were a piece of luggage. Her stunning good looks didn't intimidate him: he could have her, or not, as he chose; Madlyn would have nothing to say about it. Her mind swirled as she tried to absorb it all.

She really only came back to her senses as she felt the man's hand tighten in her hair again, and yank her to her feet. She tried to reach for the fist wrenching at her head so painfully, but the other man quickly caught her wrists and laughed.

"Come, pretty lady, give me big hug." And with that, he pulled sharply forward on Madlyn's arms; the other kidnapper released her hair, and she stumbled forward, gasping through her gag. She felt her arms being pulled around the dark man's waist. From behind, she felt the blond man throw her forward, so she fell hard against the pilot holding her arms. As he pulled her wrists together behind his back, her face was forced down to his chest; all the air in the cabin seemed to be replaced with his smell of sweat and engine oil. The blond man must then have moved behind his accomplice, because Madlyn now felt him seize her hands, and pull them as closely together as he could behind the dark man's thin waist.

"Aaaarrrrgggghhhh!" Madlyn thought her shoulders were being dislocated, as her arms were extended farther than she had imagined they could go. Leather straps were applied to her wrists, and cinched tight; her arms were then also fastened to some kind of canvas webbing the man wore. She tried without success to raise her head from the man's chest.

"NNNNuuunggghh!" Just as Madlyn thought things were as bad as they could get, she felt the dark man's hands seize her buttocks and lift her off her feet. He pulled her closely, pressing her up against his groin, his pleasure with their proximity quite obvious.

"Ah, senorita," the man sighed. He pressed his face into her hair, inhaled deeply of her fragrance, and kissed the top of her head. "What a shame there is not more time. However, we must 'fly'." At this, both men broke into a fit of giggling. When it subsided, Madlyn felt her feet being placed carefully on the tops of the dark man's feet. More straps fastened her legs to her captor's legs. Now, the men seemed to be moving more briskly, but the man binding her still found time to run his hand up the inside of each of her thighs as he bound her legs to the dark man's. At this, something inside Madlyn seemed to snap. With all her strength, she began to pull at her bonds. Wrists, arms, waist, thighs, ankles-- she yanked painfully at every place they had tied her,. Incoherent noises pushed past the canvas between her teeth, as her muscles strained against the restraints. Hopeless… useless… Madlyn screamed inside her brain, saliva wetting the canvas in her mouth as she flailed like a madwoman. She could hear her captors laughing, and she knew that all her strength was having not the slightest effect on her imprisonment, but that didn't matter. If anything, the sheer futility of it gave her a kind of freedom to push her bonds to their limits, knowing that nothing would change. Finally, when she could stand it no more, her sweating body sagged against her captor's, and she labored for breath, wheezing through her packed mouth, as her face pressed into the man's shirt.

Now, the man who had bound her stood up, satisfied that the smartly-dressed blonde would remain fixed to his partner in their enforced embrace. He then walked behind the dark man, hefted a large pack, and began attaching it to the man's back and shoulders. Madlyn felt more straps and buckles criss-crossing her arms and waist. She sagged against the man, and felt him start to move forward. Behind her, she felt a rush of air as the door to the outside of the plane slid open. Madlyn could see nothing but the soiled shirt of the man she was bound to, and the sensation of being forced to walk backwards tied to him disoriented her even further. Finally, he reached the open door, and frigid air whipped through Madlyn's thin designer slacks and blouse. With nothing but empty air behind her, Madlyn used her bound arms to clutch the man's body more tightly, burying her face deep into the powerful chest, his pungent scent now overwhelming her. She closed her eyes, knowing now that she was bidding a permanent goodbye to her life as she had known it. What waited out the door of the plane she could not imagine; she knew only that she would be delivered to it as a bound and gagged captive, utterly at the mercy of her captors. The man took one more step forward, Madlyn felt herself move backwards, and then she felt the man launch the two of them from the plane. Now, there was not even the floor of the plane's cabin to anchor her to reality. She was spinning through the air, with absolutely no control over her body, or over her fate, her world focused on a few square inches of grimy khaki shirt, with flashes of blue sky and sun when she dared to lift her eyes. Unbidden, a shrieking animal sound emerged from her throat, only to be trapped in her muzzled mouth, and carried away in the rush of air past her face. The man's strong arms hugged her bound form to him, but Madlyn wasn't fooled: there was nothing resembling affection there; he was simply keeping a firm grip on his cargo. Long before the man's parachute opened, the Madlyn Anderson who had entered the plane just a few hours ago had disappeared into the brisk air of the African skies; dimly, a bound and gagged blonde hurtling through the air wondered just who would be the Madlyn Anderson who landed.

It was the pain that woke her.

Certainly, considering how much trouble Tara had falling asleep, it was strange that she was now fighting so hard to wake up. Her dreams had been disturbing: Madlyn Anderson locked in a strange embrace with one of the pilots, and Tara herself face to face with the other.

Finally, her eyes opened, and her fogged brain came to a chill consciousness. She was still in her seat, but she had been bound tightly in place. Ahead, she could see into the cockpit through the open door, to where both pilots' seats stood empty.

Her arms had been bound to the arms of the seat with some kind of heavy rope. The hemp was fastened about her wrists and forearms; more had been used around her upper body to lash it to the seat back. Her ankles were similarly bound, and her body ached from leaning heavily against the ropes for who knew how long.

The agony, though, was in her mouth. Something that felt like heavy canvas had been stuffed deep inside, and was held in place by strips of leather that had been tied between her teeth and around her head. The knots were a painful lump behind her left ear, and the corners of her mouth were already chafing where saliva dampened the strips. Pain knifed through her jaw as she attempted unsuccessfully to work the gag from her mouth.

The plane seemed to be operating on automatic pilot. That made sense-- the farther it went before it crashed, the farther away the two pilots would be before anything was discovered. What they had done with Madlyn Anderson she could discover later; her sole focus now must be to escape! To that end, Tara began testing the bonds holding her to the chair. Years of disciplined training had left her with a body that would have been the envy of any professional athlete, and her strength exceeded that of most men she had known. What she lacked was leverage. All the muscle power in the world would be useless without some means of bringing it to bear. Tara tried to twist and squirm, to free some portion of an arm or leg, but there was no slack in her bonds. Her progress was measured in fractions of inches; it didn't help that her prominent breasts were helping to anchor the ropes holding her to the chair. Perspiration coursed down her face, stinging her eyes; damn this jacket, she thought, if my arms were bare, the sweat would help me to slip free!

Struggle was useless. The bonds would not yield to all of Tara's strength, and her time was running out. She had but one hope. As a child, when she had been rescued from the plane crash that took her parents' life, the Nepalese monks who had sheltered her had trained her in many of their secrets, but years in Western society had since eroded much of what she had learned. The only chance she had now was to call upon such of that serene power as she still commanded.

Tara closed her eyes. She willed her mind to relax, to forget the horror that awaited her: bound and gagged in an airplane likely to crash at any moment. Instead, she focused all her energy on a single point: her right wrist. She flattened it against the arm of the chair, and relaxed the muscles as much as she could. Her breathing was labored with the gag in her mouth, but she did her best to ignore the discomfort, and breathe slowly and regularly through her nose. In her mind, she pictured the wrist, as it was fastened to the arm of the seat. Now, she allowed the picture to change: she could see the wrist growing thinner and flatter against the arm. Muscles went slack, and she could envision the loops of cord losing their hold. Now, she pictured the loops growing larger and larger, until they were the size of hula hoops, and would allow her wrist to slide through. Perspiration continued to rain down her face from the concentration; finally, when she dared wait no longer, she moved the wrist. It was still bound, but there was something… Tara opened her eyes and looked down: the ropes had certainly not grown to the size of hula hoops, but there was no question that something had happened! There was definitely slack where none had been before! Still regulating her breathing as well as the gag would permit, Tara began to slide her wrist forward and back. She wasn't quite sure what she had done, exactly, but the movement grew easier and in another moment, she had slipped her wrist from where it was bound!

It was only a start. There was no way of knowing how few minutes, or even seconds, might remain before the plane began its inevitable descent, and Tara was still tied to her chair. She still couldn't reach her left arm, so she decided to try and slip the bonds tying her torso to the seat.

Pivoting her right arm on the elbow, she reached to one of the ropes binding her to the chair. As her captor had known it would, having the cord cinched under her breasts made it much harder to slip it free. With only her forearm completely loose, Tara had to use all the strength of her right wrist to force the cord over her chest; though breathing was difficult through the gag, Tara had to hold her breath to reduce the size of her chest as she worked the ropes up and over her breasts. The process seemed to take hours, but Tara knew it could have been no more than two or three minutes when she finally threw off the cords binding her to the seat, and leaned over to free her left arm. Panting and perspiring, she paused only for a moment, gathering her strength: so far, so good, but we're not very far, yet!

With both hands free, Tara was easily able to undo the bonds around her ankles. The gag was another story, though. She felt for the knot lodged behind her ear. The thin leather cords had been tied so tightly that they were biting painfully into her flesh, and the knot had been tightened so that it was little more than a lump of rawhide. Try as she might, she was unable to use her fingers to get a start on undoing the knot. After a moment, she gave up and tried yanking the gag down from her mouth; there, too, it was simply tied too tightly, and wedged too far into her mouth, for her to pull it down. After wasting precious seconds in a futile struggle to pull the gag from her mouth, Tara abandoned the attempt, and raced for the cockpit, still gagged.

The controls. Tara's flying experience was limited to planes smaller than this one, but a quick scan of the panel confirmed that she probably knew enough to keep the plane from crashing-- now, she had to figure out how and where to land. A visual inspection was useless: they were too high up to spot a clearing large enough to accommodate the plane. The only hope was that she might be close enough to Hrare to contact the airport, and have them guide her in. As much as she dared, she looked away from the view out the window to try and find some sort of sharp or bladed instrument to cut her mouth free, but there was nothing. Still struggling uselessly with her left hand to loosen the gag, she grabbed the transmitter, and toggled it on.

"NNggghhh! Heeegghhh!" Damn this gag! How the hell was she going to--

"Hello? Are you there? Please identify." Tara stopped babbling through her packed mouth, as her astonished ears registered the sound of a lilting African voice adopting the flat accent of the American plains that was the lingua franca of aviation worldwide. The ether crackled in the momentary silence, and then Tara shouted into the micrphone again.

"Aaayhhhh…eeeggghhhh…hhheeeggghhh!"

"Say again, please? You need help?"

"Heeeggghhh!" Tara hadn't cried in years, but she was near to weeping with frustration; she continued trying to dig the fingernails of her left hand underneath the strips of leather creasing her cheeks.

"What's the problem?" Another voice joined the first.

"I can't be certain… I think there's something wrong with an unidentified aircraft coming onto our radar, and I think the person on the radio must have some sort of speech impairment."

"You there," came the second voice, "can you hear me?"

Oh, God, thought Tara, how much time did she have left? "Heeegghhh!" She came as close to "yes" as she could manage.

"Look, you must try and remain calm. You are quite close to Hrare airport now; in fact, you're dangerously close. I will try to talk you into a safe landing from here. You'll need to follow my instructions exactly. Can you acknowledge what I've said?"

Tara breathed deeply. She might actually live through this. "Uh-Huh," she was able to get out.

"Very good, then. Now listen carefully…" The man's soothing voice took Tara through a surprisingly easy routine to change the automatic pilot settings, take control of the aircraft, and allow herself to be guided to a landing strip. Bound and gagged for so long, she was stiff and sore, and her landing was bumpier than it might otherwise have been, causing those in the tower to race for the plane, certain that it was about to spin madly out of control. Finally, the plane rolled to a stop, and the gagged adventuress fell back in the pilot's chair, closed her eyes, and let her body go limp, trembling with adrenaline.

There was a banging on the cockpit door; the men from the flight tower had evidently come in through the open door in the passenger cabin.

"Are you all right? Hello in there! Can you hear us?!"

With a sigh, Tara got up and opened the cabin door. Three African men, dressed in short-sleeved sport shirts gaped at her. Tara was vaguely aware that they were staring at her mouth; she reddened, then pointed to the leather holding the canvas in her mouth. One of the men produced a penknife from his pocket, and handed it to Tara. Carefully, she sawed at one of the leather strips; when it fell away, she went to work on the next, and finally the third. With the pressure on her mouth finally relieved, she used her tongue to force the canvas from between her teeth, and pulled it from her mouth.

"Tha…thank you," she croaked. The men's response was a cacophony of questions that Tara was simply too tired to answer. Finally, she held up a weary palm. "Please. Before I go to my hotel, I need to speak to a representative of Her Majesty's government; I have to see someone from the American Embassy, and I believe there is a representative of Interpol waiting to meet this plane." The men nodded assent, assuring her that all these contacts would be made.

The man who appeared to be in charge lent his arm for Tara to lean on, and asked her "Is there any other way we may assist you, ma'am?" Tara's gaze at the man was both grateful and weary.

"Yes. Does this airport have a bar?"

Chapter Four

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