Flying was awesome. Flying over the Atlantic Ocean was boring.
Visually, anyway. Kat had forgotten that part, since she hadn't gotten to do it since forever. Still - although the scenery outside remained half blue-and-white and, wow! half blue-and-green - she could go up, down, forwards, backwards, and she could be upside-down or sideways while she did it. Boring or not, it was a vast improvement over slogging down the highway in a stupid bus.
"You've got me at a disadvantage," Dragonelle said behind her, quite conversationally.
A vast improvement - except for the company.
"More than usual?" Kat tossed back. She was mostly concerned with the radar screen. Theoretically a Hawk was undetectable by anything other than N-Tek know-how, but she wasn't going to count on that as a certainty, especially not after the FBI had gone through the spy division with a fine-tooth comb.
Of course, they hadn't gotten the blueprints or data on any of N-Tek's vehicles; that info had walked out of the building casually tucked into the shabby coveralls that Chuck Marshak habitually wore - and none of the Feebs had bothered to search a lowly janitor. The old man's audacity (not to mention success) had been one of the few high points in an otherwise sucky day. It still made her laugh.
At any rate, as a consequence of her paranoia, she couldn't give her backseater the attention the dragon required. Kat prayed that Dragonelle believed the line about DNA scans and behaved herself.
Yeah right.
"I just can't figure out why," Dragonelle continued, sounding more sly than curious. "Why now, for example? Why the dramatic escape? What," she dug in with deepening malevolence, "is so important that little Kat Ryan would risk her gold star to set a terrorist free?"
The dragon would turn an inch into a mile. Kat wasn't even going to begging to allude to Josh's "condition." Keeping her own tone dismissive, she tossed back, "It has nothing to do with you, that's for sure."
"The escape was brilliant, I'll admit that - even if it was just for show. I wasn't expecting it," Dragonelle added, "since you've never been that good."
Good enough to pluck your sorry self out of orbit, Kat thought, but bit her tongue because the last thing she needed right now was to overly antagonize Dragonelle. She did file away the dragon's suspicion that she had faked the escape. That could be useful later.
Maybe it was the proximity to the water, but Dragonelle obviously felt inclined to do some blatant fishing. "I don't know how you got a shark like Bob following orders when you're hardly one yourself."
"Who?" Kat had no idea who Bob was. Her oh-so-middle-aged spook, a Bob? It was possible; Jeff's computer had listed the agency and contact number only.
Dragonelle mistook her confusion for obfuscation and snapped, "Don't deny it - I saw him tagging along behind you on the plane. Called in a favor with Jefferson, I guess."
Kat snorted. Oh yeah. That was exactly what she'd done. If anything goes wrong, I'm going to be job-hunting within a day. Scratch that - I'm going to be on the corner with my new WILL WORK FOR FOOD sign. The distressing part was that, as the plan unfolded, the more chances there were for things to go wrong.
Dragonelle threw out another fishing line: "Must be a big deal if the CIA is playing nice."
"The CIA never plays nice," Kat said, which was indisputably true, and then, on the theory that two could play at this game, changed the subject. "So where's Dread?"
"Dread? Good question."
"Unless you want to swim -" Kat threatened. She rolled the jet starboard until they were inverted and her backseater had a lovely, unobstructed view of the deep blue sea.
"I never swim," Dragonelle said, in that dark, dry amused tone she seemed to love so much. "I'd rust."
Cue visions of a rusted-out dragon bobbing helplessly in the waves. There were sharks of a literal nature in the visions, too, and they had big sharp teeth and a taste for cyborg flunkies.
Under her breath, Kat muttered, "Don't tempt me."
"Honestly - I don't know where Mr. Dread is," Dragonelle said, amusement evaporating. In fact, she sounded so very irritated to admit it that Kat decided it was also true. "I've been behind bars, remember? I do know that he escaped and nearly destroyed N-Tek." She gave a nasty little chuckle. Clearly the honey vs. vinegar strategy wasn't covered in Villains 101.
"Less editing, more directions," Kat said. She checked her radar, didn't see any US or NATO blips popping up, and took the Hawk higher. She'd set a course to Paris - at random; a lot of stuff happened in Paris and it seemed like a safe bet - and hoped that'd be Dragonelle's choice as well. In a little while they'd have to waste a serious amount of fuel if it were anywhere else. She was not going to fly around on bingo fuel with a dragon.
Dragonelle made a humming noise. "Answer one question first."
"Maybe," Kat said, wary. And paranoid.
"Why are you doing this? What's waiting for you at the other end?"
"That's more than one question, sorry," Kat said with no trace of apology. Then she reluctantly answered them both: "I'm trying to save lives."
Josh and Max. Two lives.
If you fudged the count a little.
She held her breath and silently told the dragon that she better be satisfied, 'cause she wasn't getting any more info and the next question would be an invitation to swim.
But all Dragonelle did was sniff disdainfully. "We'll start looking in Berlin."
Kat punched in the new coordinates and the rest of the flight was spent in blissful, if tense, silence.
They landed on the roof of N-Tek's Berlin headquarters, built after Dread's local lair had been blown to really itty-bitty pieces. It was a technically flawless and aesthetically soulless building - all glass, metal, and concrete - but it did have a touch of SoCal flair in the giant neon aqua-colored N-TEK sign that sprawled across its streetside face.
She'd checked up on all the worldwide offices before leaving Orlando and had the specs of this place pretty well memorized. The roof was secretly reinforced for Hawk landings, the secret elevator to the secret underground levels was still operational, and her secret security code still worked.
All the secret stuff was definitely one of the coolest parts of being a spy.
Kat powered down the engines, but not all the way, and told the on-board computer to broadcast a signal on Berto's frequency. He hadn't wanted to get too involved her plan; he did want to keep an eye on her. This way he'd know where she was if there was an emergency.
"Okay, get out," Kat announced, sliding back the canopy. She followed her own orders and hopped down, glad to be back on solid ground after all the time in the cockpit. Dragonelle disembarked too, and Kat got her first look at the terrorist wearing one of her very own stupidly pink shirts. It was too funny - even if the dragon was straining the fabric in ways she never could - and that possibly accounted for the fact that she was caught off-guard.
Whatever the reason, before she blinked, before she expected it, Dragonelle had her pinned against the curving metal of the jet, one strong hand around her throat.
"Now, Agent Ryan," she hissed, tightening her fingers with a malicious smile, "we're going to do things my way."
