#KillAydaKhoury

Improbable Prison

A/N: In honor of Wattpad loading for me after a few days of questionable Internet, have an extra update!

Farah Azran

Kargıcak, Turkey

Turkey lends us helicopters, and military doctors, and we descend on Kargıcak from the air. Kargıcak is an improbable place to imprison Felice, a little picturesque village surrounded by fig and olive orchards, nestled against the Mediterranean Sea that stretches south along the coast toward my old home. The North Ridge contractor badge gives me the dubious right to be here, and the military tolerates me like they tolerate the career-hungry CIA officer from the Istanbul substation who insisted on tagging along.

I haven't seen Felice since Beirut, but I owe him at least the courage to come for him myself.

Far upland from the Med, where the tracts of farmland leave wide open spaces for holding captives without being heard or seen, we reach an ostentatious four-bedroom ranch house on too much land, set far back from the road. Marines from the consulate in Istanbul break down the door and clear the house for me, the emergency medical technicians, and the career climber.

What if they don't find him? What if El-Shafei lied and turned Ayda Khoury and they let Raoul die in revenge for Bab al-Hawa?

"We found him!" calls a booming voice from somewhere inside the house.

It's sparse in here. A safehouse, not a home. The smell clings to everything, urine and sweat and vomit. Felice lies cuffed hand and foot to the headboard in a U-shape, thin and hollow and mercifully unconscious. His breathing is jerky and shallow through peeling dry lips. I pull the blindfold off carefully while the Marine who got there first deals with the handcuffs.

I squeeze Felice's freed hand softly. "Hey, hey Alex. Guess who came over Stateside. We'll celebrate at Şahin's, you want to come?"

He stirs. His eyelids flutter, but he doesn't open them. The EMTs take him away from me.

I am Farida Lujayn, operative of the most feared intelligence service in the world, and I can tease a dying man about not enjoying life enough. But I, Farah Azran, on the other hand, want to murder Sacha El-Shafei. I am not a kidon assassin. I do not kill people. I've been an escort for several people who do. I rode a backup motorcycle in Natanz. Now I have North Ridge Consulting, outside the reach of Executive Order 12333, and I'm sure I'll do more of the same. I have Jack Kolda, and if his recruitment to Halliwell is a done deal, he has OIS military contractors. We are going to avenge Raoul Felice.

I call Kolda in the clear as I race in the rental car after the ambulance. "We've got him." My voice breaks, for real. Lujayn would be more together than this. "He's alive, we've got him."

"You promised me my agent was safe, Silver."

What's he talking about? He sends me a link. YouTube is currently unblocked in Turkey and I listen to the audio of a repost from Al-Manar while I watch the road.

"I thought someday I'd see where I came from," says Ayda Khoury, "And I found it at war because of my government and the Israeli's government's involvement in the proxy war in Syria. We warned them about the Party of God. That they wouldn't just retreat and hide behind their borders. That if Israel launched another incursion into Lebanon, Hezbollah would retaliate..."

They're using her against my home. She's still their prisoner and she'll say anything they make her say, and she worked against us in Operation Intifada, but I promised her, and all I get, to make my agents sell out their countries, is the value of my word.

"We were ready for this," I tell him. "The company's already down there. We're not going to grab her at the Party station, but we'll get her back in one piece. Watch this."

The hospital won't let me see Raoul, and I regret not fighting for it as hard as I should, but I have to get to the U.S. Consulate.

The consulate isn't terribly obliging of my contractor credentials, but when someone from the station recognizes me as Farida Lujayn, they let me use their secure communications room on the strength of my connection to Mossad. Just as well. I wanted to use it to call home.

Dov, my favorite kidon, of many I've escorted and given operational support to, worked Natanz with me. He was in Tel Aviv when I left, and I try him at headquarters. "You want to bring in El-Shafei?"

Dov is silent for a long time, weighing the political implications, or scribbling a message for a superior, or avoiding asking me about Bab al-Hawa. "I'll try to get approval for you—"

"Now or never. The Qataris have got a tracker on the agent he just put on TV, and we're running a rescue operation with or without you. Tell the office if they want him, they've got to beat the Qataris."

He gives me that cold field voice. "Why don't you get CIA to do it?"

"Right of first refusal. Would you trust CIA right now?"

"I'll remind them upstairs."

I head for the airport. By the time I make it there, the American consulate has forwarded me a message from Dov. MEET YOU THERE.