Thhhrrummmmmm

The floor shook. the air cracked and popped.

Thrummmmmmmm

Wooden crates shuddered in their holdings. Heavily-laden cargo slid back and forth as the X-Class Frigate Ship Intrepid banked and dove through the air. Millie gripped the cargo straps as best she could, struggling to stay put.

Thrumm, Thrumm, Thrummmmm!

The engines roared behind her head, punished by the ascent, giving three final blasts of effort before the plane levelled out again and Millie found her feet, keeping a wary eye on a juddering crate opposite her that looked ready to split its strappings and slide right into her face.

'What the fuck are they doing?' she yelled out loud. Her ride out of the states had bucked under her like an angry bull at least six times in the past hour. Until then she had been asleep - for the first time in days - so that now she had absolutely no idea where they were, or how close she was to freedom.

Millie tested the floor with her feet. It shook violently but stayed level, just about enough for her to stand. Her back and thighs were aching in protest at the tiny hole she had shoved herself into when they had taken off. Time to stretch, she thought, and had a walk among the crates.

Moving upright was like walking through the belly of a whale; everything seemed to be moving. She held on to anything solid she could find as she moved, ready for the burps and belches of ascent and descent as they hit her without warning.

The crate Millie had held onto for dear life was marked with Chinese characters she could not read, but it was big, and seemed to be moving independently of the racking aircraft. Millie put some distance between herself and that one. Next up was a palette loaded with brown packaged blocks of some substance - most likely cocaine, or some other illegal substance - and behind that were a series of white plastic tubs marked with a red cross, strapped down more securely than anything else in the room.

'Right,' she reminded herself of her time as Chief of Staff, 'organ trade.'

The then-Secretary, now late Chief had warned the cabinet infinite times about organ smuggling. European and American ultra-rich who can't buy their way up the donor list make their way over the border and pay obscene amounts of money for kidneys, hearts, lungs and livers that are most likely stolen from the poor in Asia or Africa and shipped into South America. If the recipients were lucky, they might actually be human organs. If they were luckier still, they might live to think about the poor wretch whose body parts they had stolen.

Millie felt a rising sickness that had little to do with air travel and kept moving, determined to keep her mind active. There were a few more indistinguishable crates filling the enormous belly of the flying metal beast, but none looked all too interesting. Her mind drifted back to the trail she had tried to obliterate, and any cracks in the seams of her plan. Her plan, formed in the hell-hole of Filipe's control, made solid on the road to New England and finalised with the bullet that passed through Germaine Edgecliff's head. The plan was perfect, it was a work of art. There was nothing they could do to stop her. They wouldn't even find her.

'Unless they get to Ruth.' She spoke softly.

Millie hurled herself between two crates and vomited hard, clinging to the woodwork as the plane jolted. She wiped her mouth and staggered back to her feet.

Ruth.

She was sure she had scared that treacherous cunt enough to keep her mouth shut, at least until the boys at the top worked out the gun situation. Maybe they would realise that Ruth Esther-Narrow didn't have the guts for fly-fishing, let alone killing another human being.

More proof, as if she needed it, that writing about feminism and being a feminist were not and had never been the same thing. Women wailed at the loss of Ruth but what did the bitch actually do? Millie had stood up, she had worked in the highest office in the country and driven the policies of one of the most progressive Presidents in their history. Writing Top Ten Signs Your Boyfriend Is A MIsogynist in a bathrobe at three in the afternoon didn't exactly equate in her book, even if it did in the minds of easy-impressed morons.

Another pitch-dive threw her forwards onto a crate, the edge of which hit her painfully in the gut and she cursed.

Ruth would crack eventually, she was sure of it. What mattered then was how far they were willing to go to find her. She wanted to believe they would underestimate her resolve, forget she existed and focus on their plans for the States, and in all likelihood, the rest of the world.

But if they really, really wanted her... well, it would still be a nightmare. Her flight had no manifest and had flown under the radar since Albuquerque. The only records were the accounts of the five men on board, and even if they wanted to turn her in, admitting that this had been their flight would mean admitting to the kind of crimes that would mean none of them would see sunlight again. She had chosen the craft with the heaviest load of illegal-as-fuck contraband she could find, just so she could be sure that she was not the hottest thing on board.

Hard drugs, smuggled organs, some kind of illegally imported animal and... women. The latest addition to the restricted items list. She was on board the S.S. Holy Grail for the C.I.A.

'Achoo!'

Millie spun around and nearly lost her footing. Nobody was standing behind her. No bodies were visible. Someone was hiding in there with her.

'Who was that?' She yelled, trying to keep the fear out of her voice.

'Ahhh....choo!'

She zeroed in on the animal crate.

'Shut uuuup!'

Millie rolled her eyes and gave the crate a heavy kick.

'Girls, its Millie Slate. You're fine.'

There was a silent pause, and then a squeaking sound as wood wrenched against wood. Five women came tumbling out the side of the massive crate, all coughing and sneezing. They were wearing what looked like basketball uniforms and small white converses.

'The fuck are you doing in there?' Millie said angrily. A blonde girl got to her feet shakily and bit her lip.

'Our coach paid for us to get out,' she whimpered, 'he said it wasn't safe for us at home any more.'

Millie grunted. 'He's right. Good man getting you airborne before the real shit begins.'

'Please!' One of the younger girls held her hands together and implored Millie with eyes full of tears, 'please don't tell anyone we're here!'

'Open your eyes, bitch, I'm a woman too. We're in the same goddamn boat together.' Millie started moving further up the cargo hold while the younger woman dropped her hands and said, 'oh...'

'You could have let me know you were here!' Millie snared back at them as she made for the tiny retired gunner window at the very back of the hold, 'Would have been nice to have some company this whole time.'

'Sorry!' The blonde piped up again, 'its just... we didn't know if you were, you know, friendly.'

'Not the word I would use.'

Millie stuck her head up against the thick window and peered through. It was dark, and whisps of cloud made it hard to see, but there appeared to be mountains surrounding a lush green basin. They were low enough for her to see buildings and a few of the big roads. It didn't look like Mexico, and those mountains were too tall for any of the islands.

'I think we're close,' she told the others. They broke into cheers and clapping and hugging. A few started to cry with relief. She wondered if they had any idea what to expect when they got off at the other side. Most likely their 'coach' had not told them they were as likely to be double-crossed and sold on the black market to be slaves to some Arabian Prince as they were to actually making it to freedom. Best if she didn't let them know. The noise might have been unbearable, and she wasn't sure how many hours they had left.

The hull gate opened and a man in black khakis and a camo top burst into the hold. The girls screamed and dove back into the crate, but he ignored them, looking directly at Millie.

'We'll be on the ground in forty,' he said, chewing through a lump of tobacco. He sniffed, 'get yourself hid. Climb in with them girls if you want, saves us leavin' you till last.'

'No thanks,' Millie said, keeping her eyes on the window, 'Not my company.'

'Please yourself. If you get seen by anybody wants you back home, you don't know us, we clear?'

'We were clear when you said it before take-off. I'll take care of myself.'

The man left. Millie watched the sun go down behind the mountains, after which there was nothing to see but little bits of cloud and darkness.