#KillAydaKhoury

Missile Crisis

Raoul Felice

Turkey

He never gave me any borek and he's making me pay for the water. He must have gone to sleep for a long time because it's broad daylight when he starts the whipping with the cables again. My bladder feels like it's going to burst and my vision is getting blurred and he's still talking about Hatay.

"American security contractors ensuring safe passage for the rebels?" he says. I think I missed half that sentence. We talk in the breaks. When he gets tired of talking, or I stay quiet too long, he rotates tools, the cables, some kind of truncheon, the lighter, to keep the pain new and sharp. He's brought in a car battery, but he hasn't used it yet. As an idea, it's a trump card; once he's used it he'll have to escalate. He leaves the blindfold off so I can see it sitting there, promising.

"They're not American," I tell him. "If Turkey is securing Hatay, maybe they're worried someone like you-"

That's why he wants to know about the security contractors, the paramilitary security manning the concrete barricades outside and the checkpoints inside the Hatay airport. He's going to bomb Hatay. Not a little suicide vest. That would still be relatively easy to get into the airport, but he'll want a bigger explosion, to deprive the rebels of one of their points of entry by making it unusable, killing civilians in a flash of collateral damage.

Get him off the civilian target.

"You've got bigger problems than Hatay," I tell him, "The US is doubling down on fighting the Cold War in Syria."

"You're getting confused. Your country made a separate peace with Russia on Syria."

"When?"

"Before you were here. You don't remember? You want your borek?"

Yes. I haven't eaten since he kidnapped me; my stomach hurts and my heart is jumping in my chest from the starvation. "I want to urinate." I can't think of the polite word in Arabic, only a vulgar one.

"In a minute. Focus for me for a minute. Would you like to speak English?"

Nod.

"What did you want to tell me about the US in Syria?" he asks in English.

"I want both."

He laughs. It's sick, someone who can do this and laugh. "You think you can negotiate?"

He gets up from the crouch beside me and walks toward the battery.

"Wait."

"Impress me," he says in Arabic. "I want to hear about American missiles in Syria."

The jolt of adrenaline gives me clarity. "There are American Longbow Hellfire missiles bound for the Free Syrian Army," I tell him, and I can't take my eyes off the battery.

"From Incirlik?"

Nod. He's an inexperienced interrogator. I should be able to do more with that, but I'm dizzy and he's promised me borek.

"Overland?"

Nod. My head hurts, but my jaw hurts more and it's hard to talk.

"When?"

"I don't know. Soon. Approved before you took me but not yet-"

He crosses back over to me and crouches with his boots inches from my face. "How? What crossing?"

"Please, Sacha." I won't humiliate myself by urinating through my pants on the kitchen floor.

I see the kick coming. I turn so it catches me in the side of the head instead of the broken nose. The world spins and goes distant and dim.

"Don't call me that," I think he says. I've hit a button, but I don't know why. Maybe nothing more than secrecy. He's denied for days that he and the girl are Hezbollah, but I know the picture from the Interpol list.

I think I blacked out. One of El-Shafei's hands is examining the side of my skull and the other is feeling my carotid pulse. The front of my trousers is wet and sticky and the pain in my bladder has gone away. He's saying something derogatory about men who wet themselves, but his voice is far away.

"I don't want to die like Buckley," I tell him, though I don't think he cares.

"That wasn't us." He pulls his hands back and stands up. I hear him pull out a chair behind me, though I can't bring myself to move to face him.

"You still want to deal?" His voice has gone soft and solicitous. "Answer my question and I'll cuff your hands in front the next ride and give you your borek. I'll let you eat in the car, but you'd better not make another mess. If you vomit in the car, I won't let you lie down anymore."

I shudder. "Repeat the question?"

"How is the US getting the weapons to Syria?"

"Bab al-Hawa. Overland through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing."

El-Shafei pulls the blindfold back over my eyes. I hear him shuffle around behind me for a few seconds before he puts a gun to my head, a pistol, not the iconic Kalashnikov.

I can't make the shaking stop. "You have to tell me what you want me to do."

After an interminable silence, soft footsteps return from outside. The woman.

"Be still," says El-Shafei. The woman cuts the zip-ties.

"Hands in front," says El-Shafei.

I obey. Is he going to give me the borek? She zip-ties my hands in front of me, and again higher up my forearms to keep my elbows together, but my arms are free at the shoulders, which are on fire now after days of being pinned back to keep my hands behind me.

She cuts the ties at my feet, hooks her fingers under the zip-tie at my forearms and leads me by it. I could break her fingers, but it would gain me nothing and lose a great deal. El-Shafei still has the gun to my head. We go outside, back over the concrete driveway, and she stops me and hits the back bumper a couple of times so I can more or less guess where it is. I climb in clumsily and she presses something soft into my hands.

"As promised," says El-Shafei. A single piece of borek.