nice flight,â the mask said.
Kennedy fell to his knees, his vision blurring. Four more men dressed in black, also wearing balaclavas, surrounded him and held him upright. When he lost consciousness, he fell into a lightless abyss, the voice of Belle echoing around him.
I donât want to go alone.
W hen Kennedy came to, he was disoriented, blinded by a black canvas sack wrapped around his head, and bound tightly at the wrists and ankles. He felt like he was suffocating and struggled violently to free himself. After a few minutes of bellowing obscenities and thrashing like a caged animal, he heard the sound of the engines and realized he was crammed in the baggage compartment in the tail of the Bombardier Global 8000, and they were airborne.
He drew in long, ragged breaths to calm his nerves in the claustrophobic space, but the onslaught of worst-case scenarios invading his thoughts held him right on the knifeâs edge of panic. He had to force himself to focus on the facts of the situation. Like a golf shot: address every angle independently and avoid the big picture at all costs. Who the fuck were they? No clue. Not enough information. Why did they want him? That was easy. He knew more about US airport security than the head of the TSA. He was a high-value target and he was a civilianâthe perfect mark.
His abductors had access to one of the most expensive private jets in the world, meaning he was dealing with a well-funded group. Maybe they were the ones behind the recent threat? It made sense. If someone wanted to know every possible security weakness at all the major airports in the United States, Kennedy would be the one to beat the information out of. He could also tell them if anything had been done to safeguard airports in response to the threat. Heâd have laughed out loud at the irony if he werenât facing torture. They were going to do all the things to him that heâd read about the CIA doing to terror suspects, things that made him sick to think about.
The internal panic voice reared its ugly head again.
Iâm not trained for this . I canât even hold my fucking breath in a swimming pool for more than thirty seconds, let alone survive waterboarding.
âShut the fuck up!â he yelled to himself inside the sweltering black hood.
He heard and felt the telltale signs that the airplane had begun its descent. The clock was ticking. He knew he was a dead man, but he had to keep his head screwed on straight in case that one chance in hell to escape presented itself.
Back to the angles. Where were they taking him? The airplane had a range of nearly eight thousand nautical miles. Depending on how long heâd been out, they could have taken him almost anywhere in the world. When he was losing consciousness, he was pretty sure heâd heard his abductors speaking Arabic. Having lived in Israel, he knew how it sounded. The man who shot him with the dart spoke English but had a slight French accent, which meant he might be North African. The connection to France was potentially strengthened by the type of airplaneâBombardier, a French-ÂCanadian manufacturer.
If they were North African, they might be landing in Morocco, or more likely Algeriaâsomewhere they could hide him away for an indeterminate amount of time with zero cooperation from the local government if, by some miracle, someone came looking for him. This thought threw Kennedy into a very dark place. He was more than likely being taken to a hostile country to be tortured to death. When they were finished with him, they would dump his corpse like garbage, toothless and without fingertips or eyeballs, to make identification impossible. And no one was going to come looking for him. He hadnât told a soul he was going to Paris, and there were no customs records or travel documentation to track him. He was about to become the ghost Love had been talking about the night before.
The plane landed and
Kennedy fell to his knees, his vision blurring. Four more men dressed in black, also wearing balaclavas, surrounded him and held him upright. When he lost consciousness, he fell into a lightless abyss, the voice of Belle echoing around him.
I donât want to go alone.
W hen Kennedy came to, he was disoriented, blinded by a black canvas sack wrapped around his head, and bound tightly at the wrists and ankles. He felt like he was suffocating and struggled violently to free himself. After a few minutes of bellowing obscenities and thrashing like a caged animal, he heard the sound of the engines and realized he was crammed in the baggage compartment in the tail of the Bombardier Global 8000, and they were airborne.
He drew in long, ragged breaths to calm his nerves in the claustrophobic space, but the onslaught of worst-case scenarios invading his thoughts held him right on the knifeâs edge of panic. He had to force himself to focus on the facts of the situation. Like a golf shot: address every angle independently and avoid the big picture at all costs. Who the fuck were they? No clue. Not enough information. Why did they want him? That was easy. He knew more about US airport security than the head of the TSA. He was a high-value target and he was a civilianâthe perfect mark.
His abductors had access to one of the most expensive private jets in the world, meaning he was dealing with a well-funded group. Maybe they were the ones behind the recent threat? It made sense. If someone wanted to know every possible security weakness at all the major airports in the United States, Kennedy would be the one to beat the information out of. He could also tell them if anything had been done to safeguard airports in response to the threat. Heâd have laughed out loud at the irony if he werenât facing torture. They were going to do all the things to him that heâd read about the CIA doing to terror suspects, things that made him sick to think about.
The internal panic voice reared its ugly head again.
Iâm not trained for this . I canât even hold my fucking breath in a swimming pool for more than thirty seconds, let alone survive waterboarding.
âShut the fuck up!â he yelled to himself inside the sweltering black hood.
He heard and felt the telltale signs that the airplane had begun its descent. The clock was ticking. He knew he was a dead man, but he had to keep his head screwed on straight in case that one chance in hell to escape presented itself.
Back to the angles. Where were they taking him? The airplane had a range of nearly eight thousand nautical miles. Depending on how long heâd been out, they could have taken him almost anywhere in the world. When he was losing consciousness, he was pretty sure heâd heard his abductors speaking Arabic. Having lived in Israel, he knew how it sounded. The man who shot him with the dart spoke English but had a slight French accent, which meant he might be North African. The connection to France was potentially strengthened by the type of airplaneâBombardier, a French-ÂCanadian manufacturer.
If they were North African, they might be landing in Morocco, or more likely Algeriaâsomewhere they could hide him away for an indeterminate amount of time with zero cooperation from the local government if, by some miracle, someone came looking for him. This thought threw Kennedy into a very dark place. He was more than likely being taken to a hostile country to be tortured to death. When they were finished with him, they would dump his corpse like garbage, toothless and without fingertips or eyeballs, to make identification impossible. And no one was going to come looking for him. He hadnât told a soul he was going to Paris, and there were no customs records or travel documentation to track him. He was about to become the ghost Love had been talking about the night before.
The plane landed and