The Tiger's Mail Order Mate (Paranormal Shifter Romance) (9 page)

Then the Colonel  grabbed Sonja by the arm and pulled it behind her, followed by the second one, and quickly applied a plastic restraint to her wrists.    “Do you know how much these Blackwater people cost me?  It is insane.  The government wouldn’t give me the human resources to track you two down, saying it was too delicate of a situation, so I had to hire outside help.  At least I’ll get reimbursed for it down the road.”

Sonja bit her tongue to stifle a retort as she looked back and saw the unconscious Russell being dragged out of their shared room by two men in heavy body armor.  She hoped that they won’t find the SD cards she had stashed in the small, dingy room. 

“He’ll be fine.” Bankes said as he ushered her out of the hostel.  “You know, we have quite the dossier on you, Ms. Fedorenko.  I have orders from the Russian government to kill you on sight, but it would be such a shame to waste such potential.  You wanted to defect?  Well, we’ll give you that chance, just not in the way you had hoped.  We won’t kill Russell, either.  You two are the absolute perfect pair and to waste such an opportunity would be very foolish.”

They stopped at a black SUV.  He opened the door and shoved her into the back seat.  “We have ways to break people. You’ve heard about Project Monarch back in the fifties and sixties?  It never did end.  I can tell you this because by the time we’re done with you, you won’t even remember your own name, let alone this conversation.” he closed the heavy bulletproof door.

Sonja craned her neck to see Russell being unceremoniously dumped into the back of another black SUV.  Bankes bent over and clasped something around his neck, paying attention to the implant at the base of his skull.  It was a suppression collar.  Sonja recognized it from her time in the Russian splicer program, and it was used when the implant had been tampered with in some way. 

She sighed and sat back in the seat as Colonel Bankes slipped into the driver’s seat.  “You’re about to get driven around by a Colonel, little lady, it’s your lucky day.  We’re just going to head to the airport, load you two onto a private jet and it’s off to la la land for you,” he  announced as he clicked in his seatbelt. 

She didn’t say anything in reply, as he put the key in the ignition and drove off.  She was too busy trying to formulate a plan to escape.

CHAPTER SIX

As the SUV pulled up to the airplane, a black hood was roughly pulled over Sonja’s red head. “We can’t let you see where we are going, so you need to be hooded.  We know your accelerated metabolism will clear out any sedatives we put in you, so you get to wear a hood.  Makes sense, we always hood birds of prey we keep before we send them out,” Colonel Bankes said after he pulled the black hood down over her eyes.

Sonja remained silent as she was pulled to her feet and dragged out of the SUV and up the stairway into the small jet.   She was shoved into one of the seats and belted in.  The seat under her felt like leather, or leather substitute.  It was too cushy and well-padded to be an airline seat, so that meant she was on a private jet.  She felt someone brush past her and sit down to her right, and then the air move next to her left as another large body sat down on the other side.  So, she had two armed guards next to her at the very least. 

She heard the sound of Russell’s feet being dragged across the carpeted floor towards the back of the plane and unceremoniously dumped on the floor.  She knew in the back of her head that he would be alright. 

She flipped through her mental rolodex for which potential black site Bankes was taking them.  There was not much in the way of escape in the middle of the Pacific, but if they were lucky, there was one in Okinawa. 

She felt the plane beginning to taxi along the runway before takeoff.  Sonja shifted a little in her seat and decided to bide her time.  “Hey, I wouldn’t try anything if I were you.” A gruff male voice said from her right.

“I’m just getting comfortable.  These zap straps are making my hands go numb.” She quipped.

“Cut them off and cuff her hands to the hand rests.” She heard Bankes say from a seat in front of her.

She felt a tug on her arm and heard a knife cutting plastic.  Her hands sprung free and she placed them voluntarily on each armrest.  She felt the cold metal of handcuffs on each wrist snap shut with a click, securing her to the seat.  “Looks like I’m safe and sound.  How am I supposed to duck in case of a crash?” Sonja said sarcastically.

“Don’t worry about that.” Bankes retorted.  “We have one of the best pilots in Blackwater flying us today.  You have no idea how much this cost me. My expense account is maxed out right now, thanks to you two running away.”

“How did you find us?” 

“It definitely wasn’t easy.  You lived up to your reputation in that respect.” Bankes said.  “It was the Chinese secret service guy you talked to.  He folded like a house of cards when we barged into his office.  You see, the NSA has surveillance in every foreign intelligence office, especially those that are known to be either ambivalent or hostile to American interests.  We just asked them to keep an extra ear out for anywhere you two might pop up. and voila, we found you.”

“How the hell did you get here so fast from Hawaii, anyway?  We’ve only been here for about...”

“You were in the area for more than enough time for this jet to fly here, for us to apprehend you and get this plane ready for the next leg; I’ll just leave it at that.”

She felt pushed back in her seat as the plane accelerated and launched from the runway.  “Fair enough.  Since you’ve got me where you want me, tell me a little bit more about Russell? You were the one to raise him, after all.”

“Yeah, you should know a bit more about him.  You probably got to know him a bit better on the cruise ship that you stowed away on.  Don’t worry, this won’t be erased from your memory.  It will be in the part of your brain that just keeps it as second knowledge.  The inkling that you should know how you know but you can’t put your finger on it, that’s what this will be.”

“Wonderful...” Sonja replied, dryly.  She wondered what kind of brainwashing they would subject her to.  Panthenol was absolutely useless, her system cleared out any and all drugs administered to her within minutes.  The KGB did rigorous testing on her regarding that. 

“Russell is almost too kind for his own good.” Bankes began.  “There have been some missions where we really needed to prod him to get the objective neutralized, even in tiger form, he has a strong conscience.  We tried to limit his attachment to his surrogate, well, his mother, but she ran away with him soon after he was born.  It took us almost two years to find him, and by then it was too late.  The attachment was there and empathy and caring was already in place.”

“Wait, how did she manage to escape?”

“I don’t know, thirty years ago we didn’t have the tracking and surveillance technology we have now.  She managed to break out of our facility in the dead of night and get enough money for a last minute plane ticket to New Delhi.  Once she was there, she was back to her caste and no one paid any   attention to her.”

“She was Dalit?” Sonja asked.

“Yep.  Dalit caste.  No one even looked sideways at a Dalit woman with a baby, that’s why it took two years to find her.  She was good at what she did, almost a ghost.  Russell inherited his ability to blend in and not be noticed in the human jungle from her.”

“Sounds like you misjudged her intelligence as well.” Sonja was smirking underneath her black hood.

“Yes we did.  We took the Indian Government at their word that members of the Dalit caste were, for lack of a better term, slow.”

“Sometimes the sharpest wit develops in the worst circumstances.” Sonja said sagely.

“Yes, I know that now.  Anyway, Megha, Russell’s mother’s name, plotted her escape while she was pregnant.  We still have no idea how she managed to get away, but we think it was with the help of her translator.  He was head over heels for her, despite the difference in social standing, I guess being in America helped wash that caste bullshit away, or something.”

“Probably, or maybe he was one of the rare ones who didn’t care about it to begin with.”

“Anyway, after two years of searching, we found Megha and Russell in the New Delhi slums.  She was making pennies a day sweeping out gutters with him on her back.  She wouldn’t give him up without a fight so we had no choice but to kill her.”

Sonja remained silent.  She knew that Splicer babies needed to be removed from their mothers as soon as possible to prevent forming a strong bond.  No wonder Russell seemed different than Yuri.  He was lucky enough to stay with his mother for two years, despite the extreme poverty, he benefited from it.

“It took him a very long time to forgive me for what had to be done.  I honestly don’t think he ever has.  The implant kept him complaisant, at least, but his upbringing was anything but easy.” She heard Bankes run his hand through his cropped steel grey hair.  “He killed three nannies by the time he was five years old.  You figure a tiger cub would be cute, cuddly and harmless, not so when they wrap their sharp teeth around your throat and dig in.  He was a sneaky little bastard too.  The nanny was rocking him to sleep then BOOM, transformed and went right for the throat.”

Sonja shifted a little in her seat to encourage circulation in her legs.  “Stop moving.” One of her guards barked. 

“Oh come on, it isn’t like I can go anywhere.  I’m out-gunned and we’re probably over open water right now.  It would be stupid of me to do anything.” Sonja barked.

“Leave her be.” Bankes said.  “After we calmed him down a bit, things went a bit better.  He excelled in his academic studies and his physical training was phenomenal.  He was the first successful splicer and the government was happy.  They wanted to make many more like Russell.  Covert ops that could go in and maul a target to death and come out with no one the wiser that we had been involved.  Keeps our hands clean, politically.”

Sonja nodded under her hood.  She knew exactly why the US and Russian governments created people like Russell and Yuri.  She remembered the village that was slaughtered during the field trial of the program. 

“So, now you know why he’s such a considerate softie compared to what Yuri was when he had his nuts.” Bankes said.  “It complicates things greatly, but it also makes him very malleable.  He’s more human than animal so we can work the human angle a lot easier.  Getting him to comply with you in our pocket will make his reprogramming that much less complicated. Now, tell me a bit more about you, before we wipe your brain clean.”

“What’s there to tell?  You have my entire dossier.  Grew up in Pripyat until the Chernobyl explosion.  Got moved out.  My brothers died of cancer from the radiation, but I managed to get mild super powers.  Once the government found out, I was carted off with other girls my age to the Ballet School, is what they called it.  We were trained in hand to hand and small arms combat from early childhood.

Once we hit puberty, we were trained in how to use our sexuality to get information out of men.  At first, no one wanted to do the practical exam.  We were only young teenagers after all.  After a few girls got raped in front of us, we decided to take the easy route.  Well, it would still count as rape since it was coerced, but we learned, and we became good at it.”

“And you were considered the best.” Bankes said softly as he got up out of his seat and walked to where Sonja was sitting.  He silently motioned the two guards to move to other seats, and sat down to Sonja’s right.

“You know you can’t do anything to me while I’m sitting here in cuffs.” Sonja jabbed as she guessed his motivation.

He snorted. “I wouldn’t want to fuck you. anyway.  You’re not my type.  I just wanted to get you a little more comfortable.  Those two meatheads were eyeing you and I didn’t like it.  The moment you are in danger, Russell will shake that sedative off and it won’t be pretty, so we need to keep you as calm as possible so he stays in his cat nap. Those meatheads don’t understand it.”

Sonja nodded.  She had the basics of how the pair bond worked, but was not intimately acquainted with it.  “Maybe you can fill me in.  I know the theory; I was briefed on it when they stuck me with Yuri.”

“Alright, you know about the chemical pheromone he uses to attract you.  Well, it also links you two telepathically to one another.  You can literally get in his head and talk him down so he doesn’t need as big of a dose of adrenal suppressants.  When I was his handler, we went through boatloads.”  Bankes sighed.  “He didn’t have to go under the radar like that.  We were in the process of vetting various women.  He could have done worse, though.”

“So you’re saying, if I think hard enough he’ll come out of his tranquilization and come after you?”

“Well, not exactly.  He’s knocked out so hard that only an unconscious scream of adrenaline from you would jolt him awake. I guess the way it works is, you two protect each other because the same thing would happen to you if he got in trouble.”

“Ah, that makes sense, I guess.” Sonja replied.

“Anyway, you should get some sleep.  It’s a decently long flight and you’re probably not going to be allowed to sleep once the reconditioning begins.” Bankes said as he gently patted her leg.

Thanks for the reminder, Sonja thought to herself as she rolled her eyes under the hood.  “You’re right, I’m exhausted.”  She tried to shift to get comfortable and shut her eyes and tried to snooze for the remainder of the flight.

*

The plane touched down at the undisclosed US Military airstrip.  The mercenaries dragged the unconscious Russell off the plane first, and then Colonel Bankes took Sonja by the elbow and guided her out.

She felt warm drizzle on her bare arms, so she knew she was still either in a tropical climate, or it was summer again. She had to rely on her other senses to determine where she was located. 

Sonja focused on the voices of the people around her and found them strangely mute.   She heard grunts and other nonverbal  vocal noises, but no actual speech. 

Bankes said, seemingly knowing what she was trying to do.

“Can’t blame a girl for trying.” Sonja said as she was escorted into a large brick building.

She heard a heavy door slam behind her as she was roughly shoved into a hard backed chair.  Her hood was pulled off, tousling her bright red hair. 

Sonja blinked a few times to adjust her eyes to the bright light that was hanging above the barren room.  She looked around and noticed there was nothing around her, no tables, and no chairs except the one she was sitting on.  She looked up at Bankes and the two armed guards that were next to her, then to the large white screen that adorned the brick wall directly across from her position.