Girl, Taken - A True Story of Abduction, Captivity, and Survival Read online

  GIRL, TAKEN

  A true story of abduction, captivity and survival

  Copyright © 2017 Elena Nikitina

  All rights reserved

  Elena loves to hear from you. You can contact her through her website:

  www.girltaken.com

  The names and nicknames of criminals, and the names of some locations, were changed to fictitious ones because the criminals were not caught.

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ABOUT THE CO-AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  October 4th, 1994

  I did not know where I was.

  For a long time, I drifted in darkness. Then a thought came, unbidden.

  I’m alive.

  Another thought soon followed. Then another. They had a mind of their own, these thoughts. Gradually, they began to lead me up and out of the abyss.

  They were confused, a mad jumble of images and ideas, and sensations and disembodied voices, all superimposed on each other. I recovered slowly, crawling through the buzz of a malfunctioning electrical wire that seemed to be inside my head. I felt how my lungs were filling with air; I began to do it consciously and with pleasure. I was breathing!

  More clearly now I heard the revving of a car engine, and mingled with that, the sound of unfamiliar voices. Several men were speaking in a language I did not understand. My body, which had gone as limp and as soft as a fresh corpse, gradually began to stiffen and take form again. It twitched, then stretched, legs and arms lengthening – all of this as involuntary as the beating of my heart.

  I tried to open my eyes. My eyelids seemed glued firmly shut until this point. They were so heavy it was almost unnatural to lift them.

  In the first moments, my vision was out of focus. It was like a photograph taken at night, through a rainy, foggy window. Everything was smeared and hazy and very dark. But with each successive moment of consciousness, my wounded brain began to put all the puzzle pieces together. Soon enough, the picture became clearer – resolving itself, slowly and inexorably, into something I did not want to see.

  I yearned to dive back to the darkness, the unconsciousness, back to where I was not able to feel the fear. But it was too late. I was awake now, becoming alert, and unable to retreat from reality.

  I found myself in a car full of strangers, driving through the night.

  Inky darkness flew along outside my window, shadowy landscapes passing formless and empty. The rickety car moved too quickly over rutted and pitted roads, shuddering and banging the entire time. I could make out nothing about where I was. The car seemed to be passing through an unpopulated countryside – there were no lights out there at all. Inside the car, a dim yellow dashboard light was on. The light cast a reflection on the window – showing me a distorted funhouse version of the men I was too afraid to look at directly.

  I was in the back seat of a car being driven away from my life. The full horror of it began to sink in.

  What has happened?

  Where are they taking me?

  Who are these men?

  My body had gone numb from the uncomfortable position I was in, and instinctively I moved again. Now I noticed my tongue. It felt thick in my mouth.

  I produced a sound, like a shout, but also like horrible animal groaning.

  The men ignored me. They were talking incessantly. Their language seemed to me like the language of a lost jungle tribe. I rolled my eyes from side to side, trying to understand. Impenetrable darkness made it impossible to see their faces, but there were definitely four of them: a driver and three others. To my right, two passengers were squeezed in the back seat next to me.

  My body was still under the influence of some kind of poison. My head felt like it weighed a ton, and my tongue refused to listen to my commands. It groaned again.

  I grew more alert. The unconsciousness, fatigue and stiffness faded, leaving open a place for an increasing sense of all-consuming fear. At my left side, there was nothing but darkness. It sapped my confidence and my hopes. The idea struck me like an arrow – they had taken me. No one knew where I was.

  Will these men rape me?

  Will they sell me into slavery?

  Will they kill me?

  * * *

  The last thing I remembered was the fight with my boyfriend. I argued with him and then I decided to go home.

  It happened at night, three weeks past my 21st birthday.

  That night, there was a party at the restaurant across the alley from my home. The restaurant was called Corvette, the newer place in town where my friends and I had parties all the time. It was a sweet, romantic time of life, and Corvette was our place.

  It was a typical Russian hangout for young people. Loud, alive, buzzing, full of smoke and strong drink. The inside, true to its name, was decorated like a battle cruiser from the days of sailing – it looked like a pirate ship on the high seas – complete with rope rigging hanging along the walls, portholes, crossed swords, and deck cannons.

  The restaurant was crowded that night, tables full of beautiful young people, drinking and talking and laughing and shouting. They were beautiful, and I was beautiful.

  I can still see Sergey’s angry face as we argued. He was a handsome guy, and I loved him in that way people love each other when they are 21. Intensely. Gigantically. Our love was all consuming. It was so huge, it was impossible. It was the biggest thing on planet Earth.

  How could the world go on if Sergey and I were to break up? It must stop, at least for a moment, to acknowledge with its own heavy heart the passing of a relationship so beautiful that the poets would weep to think of it.

  Yes, our love was like that.

  Sergey was a sportsman. He was a boxer, and his training made him thin and strong, and vital, and full of energy. It was as if a current of electricity was passing through his body at all times. We made an attractive couple, and we enjoyed that about ourselves. We were made for each other.

  If our love was gigantic, then so was our anger. It was anger appropriately sized to a love as enormous, and emotions as powerful, as ours. In my memory, Sergey’s hazel eyes are on fire. He is yelling at me, but I am so angry, I can no longer hear what he is saying. All I can hear is the laughter and celebration all around us. All I can see is the color red. Sergey is gesturing with his long arms, like a great bird, a crane, but even as he flaps his wings, he fades from my view, backward into the cigarette smoke and the red haze of my anger.

  I felt a sudden urge to leave the party. I had to get away. The first floor apartment that I shared with my mother was just steps from there. I wanted to escape the ugliness of the fight, escape the self-important flightless birdlike flapping of my boyfriend, escape the god-awful smoke and the cacophonous noise of the merrymakers, and exchange it all for the warm hugs of my mama and the quiet coziness of our flat.

  “I’m leaving,” I told Sergey.

  He dismissed me with a violent flap of his wing. For a second, he reminded me not of a bird, but of a symphony conductor contemptuously demanding a crescendo from a third rate orchestra. “Do whatever you want, I’m staying.”

  He turned away from me, and I moved toward the door. I left the restaurant.

  I was wearing a little black dress, my favorite piece of clothing. It was so tight and sexy, it fit like a second skin, like the skin of a snake. As I
walked, the dress treacherously tried to ride up, exposing my already barely covered legs. In the doorway of the restaurant, I pulled the hem of the dress down and stepped outside.

  The long boulevard was empty. Everything was quiet, and the alley was dark. In my youth, the nights were always dark.

  I started walking, in a hurry to get home. I needed probably ten steps, maybe a couple more than that with my high heels on, to reach the corner of the building and then make a right turn to enter the front dooryard.

  “This dress again!”

  It was my favorite. I loved that dress, and as much as I loved it, I also hated it because it always rode up when I walked. I stopped for a second to fix it. I pulled the hem of the dress down with both hands, took a step and fell into sudden darkness.

  * * *

  My body was fighting off the remnants of whatever drugs they had used on me. The car, rushing on the off-roads, shook me so hard that the poison was jolted out of my body, and soon I finally came to my senses. One thing I knew for sure – my old life was over and something new had begun, something which had no explanation yet, something that I could not change.

  I saw myself trapped, enslaved.

  I had to speak. I had to say something to them. They had made a mistake. They had taken the wrong person. I had to tell them. My mind woke completely. My soul wanted to howl like a wounded wolf. I suddenly heard my own voice.

  “Who are you?” I said. “What do you want?”

  The man in the front passenger seat turned around to face me. I recognized him! Everyone called him the Italian. I did not know his real name.

  He was a Chechen, and he was handsome. He was tall, and wore fashionable clothes for the times. His long dancer’s legs were wrapped in tight jeans. He looked great. He had suddenly come down to Astrakhan from Moscow and started hanging out at Corvette and other places my friends and I went. People said he had lived in Rome sometime before. That’s why they called him the Italian.

  He had first appeared in September, just before my birthday. He seemed to show up everywhere we went. I thought it was a pleasant coincidence. “Oh, there’s the Italian again.” Our eyes would meet and we would exchange a few words. I found him attractive. In those days, I was learning to give men sultry looks and seductive smiles. I tried a few out on him.

  In the car, the Italian was looking at me, only now the glamor was gone – his once contagious smile had turned into a hideous grin. Seeing him there, I went speechless again, this time not from the toxic substances, but from astonishment bordering on shock.

  In the dim light of the tiny bulb above the windshield, I could finally see the real face of the Italian. It no longer seemed attractive – on the contrary, its perfect features seemed disgusting.

  He sat there half-turned and looking at me. He did not answer my questions, but simply grinned with his crooked smile. The tip of his sharp nose raised upwards. His eyes shone, even in the darkness, whether from the alcohol, drugs or from the newly acquired power he had over me. He was still in the same clothes he had been wearing in the restaurant.

  I was in the same clothes, too. I noticed now that I was only missing my high heeled

  shoes – I felt the unpleasant texture of a rubber mat under my feet. All of a sudden, I began to feel cold. My whole left side ached from being in the same position for a long time, pressed against the car’s cold door.

  A sudden attack of fear surged within me. I can’t do this! I do not want to go anywhere with these people!

  I wanted to go home. I wanted to go back. My heart was beating at a furious pace, and the blood pounded inside my temples.

  My hands were not restrained – they simply hung on both sides of my body. My left arm was numb and frozen. I tried to move and change my position, but the small car’s backseat was not designed for three passengers. I was pressed against the door at an awkward angle. The man sitting to my right pushed his huge elbow into my side – he was too big for the car.

  Outside, it was still dark. I could not see the big man's face – only his stooped profile and his nose, bouncing up and down on the bumps with the car, which was still speeding along the back roads. Unanswered questions in my head mixed with an overwhelming sense of fear and helplessness.

  I did not know what to do. I did not know what to say so they would let me go.

  I felt all my strength coming back – maybe I could jump out of the car and run away, run to where there was no car, and no people like these. Or maybe this was a nightmare and if I jumped out, I would just wake up.

  As my eyes became accustomed to the dark, I took a quick look at the door. I tried to figure out the handle to open it and then jump out. I decided I'd rather be smashed under the car's tires than stay inside another minute.

  There was something wrong with the door. It had no cover on it. In the darkness, I could distinguish wires within the open panel. All the insides were visible and welded to each other, or maybe wrapped in something – it was hard to say. There seemed to be nothing I could simply pull which would open the door. It made me want to scream in frustration.

  Everyone in the car was silent now. The only sound was the car's engine, which roared like a tractor.

  Someone said something I did not understand. Maybe they were speaking in Chechen, since the Italian was a Chechen.

  Was he really a Chechen?

  I realized I knew nothing about him, only rumors and hearsay. He could be anyone from anywhere. Fear and despair took possession of me completely. I wanted to run away so badly, to run away and forget all of this. I wanted out.

  “I need to go to the bathroom,” I said. Nobody seemed to pay attention.

  What if they don't speak Russian?

  But it couldn’t be. I knew for sure that the Italian spoke Russian.

  “I need to go to the bathroom,” I said again.

  The man behind the wheel said something in the foreign language. The Italian pulled a bottle from his jacket. To me, it looked like a bottle of a liquor, filled with a dark liquid. The Italian stretched out his arm and handed me the bottle:

  “Drink it.”

  I knew that he spoke Russian! I’d heard him speak it a few times. His Russian was pretty good, with a subtle accent.

  His eyes sparkled at me again. He looked like a demon.

  I did not want to put their foul poison in my body.

  I shook my head. “I won’t.”

  The giant man who was just sitting quietly to my right all this time suddenly turned towards me, and with only his left arm, he pressed my entire body against the seat. He rested his elbow in my solar plexus, his gigantic palm gripping my still numb left hand. He was so huge and heavy that I felt my bones cracking underneath the weight of his arm, as if they were caught in a vise. I could not move – his hand was like a massive clamp. Everything was happening so fast, I could not figure out what was going on.

  The man held down my weak body with his terrible strength, and at the same time, he opened my mouth with his other hand, compressing my cheeks together, his fingers painfully pushing into my skin. The Italian stretched back from the front seat, held the bottle above my head, and poured the alcohol into my mouth – it burned like wildfire.

  The big man’s elbow pressed my stomach so hard, I thought I would burst. I could barely breathe – the flaming liquid fell onto my tongue and flowed down my throat. I was going to suffocate. I tried to resist and set my head free, but the man only tightened his vise grip on my face. And I growled, wildly, through the pouring liquid.

  “I'll do it!”

  The clamps let me free. The massive arm snaked away. I started to breathe again, and my twisted face went back to its normal shape. My throat and mouth were on fire but I felt a little warmer inside. I wiped the spilled liquor from my face.

  “I'll do it myself.”

  I spoke it with all the hatred I could muster. I snatched the bottle from the Italian, and took a long sip. I needed a drink. The nasty liquid ran into my throat, burning, but wa
rming me from the inside. I liked the sensation it gave me. I took a few more sips, one after another after another, until I felt like I was going to throw up. A surge of heat suddenly enveloped me like a cozy blanket. I felt even warmer than before. The voices faded and started drifting somewhere far away. I felt much better. I don’t know if I managed another sip – the waves were already carrying me into the safe darkness. Again.

  October 5th, 1994

  Astrakhan, Russia

  The woman always believed in premonitions, dreams and other magic.

  She was almost used to it – many times, an otherworldly, unknowable force had informed her of something that later came to pass. And now a new feeling surged through her, as persuasive as any she had ever experienced, and so strong that it commanded her full attention. For a few seconds, she could not move – the feeling penetrated to her core.

  Disaster had struck.

  She leaned with her forehead against the cool glass of the apartment window. The feeling of helplessness was like two strong hands, squeezing her throat with incredible force. She realized exactly what it was, or rather who it was, that caused her such foreboding. At that moment she knew for sure:

  Her immensely beloved daughter Lena – she was gone.

  Thoughts raced through her mind: What to do? Run to the police right now and report a premonition? Only an idiot would do such a thing – no one would believe her. Her only choice was to wait – and to pray – maybe this time her vision would not come to pass.

  “Please, God… Please.”

  Behind the glass pane of the window, the street grew dark as night came. She could barely distinguish a few far away stars. The time passed slowly, and her heart thumped fast and loud, so loud she could hear it. The surrounding air, it seemed, was saturated with the banging of drums and the clanging of bells, all of it coming from the desperate beating in her own chest.