Immunity, Part 2
By Littlesilverstar, silverstar222b@yahoo.com
The female assassins finish the job


Abby picked the lock of the mansion's back door and she and Natalie slipped
inside. They cleared the rear first-floor rooms quickly, finding only two
guards along the way. Abby cleanly decapitated one with her sword. Natalie
shot the other from behind in the hand with a poisoned arrow. He was down and
foaming from the mouth within two seconds.

Rania and Angela split up as they began going through the rooms

on the front side of the first floor. Angela went through empty room after
empty room until she finally came to one where three men were playing cards
for money and drinking whiskey. Three AK-47s were piled on the floor near
them. "Dirty hypocritical bastards," she thought to herself. "These
politically connected types make laws against drinking and gambling that
oppress the regular people, then break the laws themselves because they can
get away with it." She was going to enjoy killing these fuckers.

Angela, unnoticed by the men, stepped through the doorway and killed one man
with a perfectly aimed throw from her dagger that sent the blade right into
his right eye. Before the other men could go for their assault rifles, she was
upon them, launching her muscular body through the air in a flying kick. Her
booted foot impacted the second man and he in turn was knocked into the third
man, sending both of them down. She swiftly finished the second man with a
kick to his neck, breaking it. The third man, dizzy, sat up, his back to her.
She knelt down and grabbed him in a choke hold from behind, her tanned and
toned arm cutting off his air. Her muscles bulged as the athletic blonde vixen
choked her helpless victim to death. When he was gone, she did a back walkover
to get back to her feet, then casually pulled her dagger out of the first
man's eye and wiped the blood off on his shirt before resheathing it.

The lethal beauty continued her rampage. When she rounded a corner and almost
bumped into two guards, Angela simply reached out and used her superhuman
wrist strength to snap both men's necks one-handed. Moving on, she again
almost bumped into a guard. She dealt with this one by performing an
ultra-powerful backflip kick on him. The kick was so strong that it not only
broke his neck, but nearly decapitated him as well. The corpse's head was now
loosely attached to the body at an odd angle.

Rania, after going through several small rooms that were empty, heard voices
speaking in Arabic coming from a larger room. She paused and listened. Several
voices were ranting in Arabic about their desire to kill "the infidels." What
surprised her, however, was a female voice among them speaking the same words
encouraging violence.

Rania quietly opened the door - and found herself staring directly into the
face of a guard who had been standing there.

Though both of them were equally surprised, Rania reacted faster.

She punched him in the jaw with all her strength, knocking him to the plush
carpet. She then bent down, wrapped her slender but muscular thighs around his
neck, and twisted her slim, boyish hips 180 degrees, snapping his neck.

She looked up. The others were so engaged in their angry conversation that
they hadn't noticed her silent kill. She drew her silenced 9mm and let out a
soft whistle. Four heads, three male and bearded and one female and
headscarfed, looked up at her. She began shooting them, one perfectly aimed
bullet to the heart for each. Rania had killed the three men and was about to
kill the headscarfed woman when she suddenly cried out in broken
English, "Please no kill me! Me victim of bad men!"

Rania looked at her coldly. "I might believe that...if I didn't speak Arabic,"
she said, emphasizing her Lebanese accent. The woman's eyes widened in panic
and a dark spot appeared on the crotch area of her ankle-length dress. She had
wet herself. Rania, shaking her brunette head in disgust, did a vicious
crescent kick to the woman's face that knocked her to the carpet face first.
She then finished her victim with five swift kicks to her head from her heavy
boots. Blood and brain matter flowed from the mutilated skull. "That was for
all the REAL victims of bad men!" Rania hissed at the corpse.

"People like you are part of the problem," she continued. "When women go along
with that crap, it gives legitimacy to the kind of culture that got my sister
killed."

Suddenly, she heard soft footsteps padding up behind her. She whirled around,
gun at the ready, but relaxed when she saw that it was only Angela.

"I heard," whispered Angela, giving Rania a hug. "Traitors to their gender are
the worst." The blonde glanced turned over the body with her boot. "You were
doubly right to kill her," she added. Rania looked over. Outlined under the
dead woman's dress was a pistol, and near it was the outline of her hand.

Rania and Angela met Abby and Natalie at the bottom of the mansion's grand
staircase. They could see faint lights upstairs,

and a crack of light coming from underneath the closed door to what appeared
to be a grand ballroom.

"Have you checked that out yet?" Angela asked, nodding at the ballroom door.
Natalie and Abby shook their heads.

"Take a look and take out the people inside if you can do it quietly and there
aren't too many," Angela instructed. "Rania and I will go upstairs."

Abby and Natalie approached the door. "Sounds like a lot of people in there,"
whispered Natalie.

"But there's no way to tell without opening the door and being discovered,"
Abby sighed.

"Maybe there's another entrance. I'll go around and look for one," said
Natalie.

"Okay. I'll stay here by the door."

Meanwhile, Angela and Rania padded silently up the stairs. Two guards were at
the top, their backs to the girls. Angela stabbed one in the back, her dagger
finding his heart with expert precision. Rania smashed the butt of her shotgun
down onto the other's skull with all her strength, killing him.

They entered the upstairs hallway. "Let's check all the dark rooms first to
make sure there are no suprises," said Angela. "We'll save the room with the
light for last."

The first two rooms they tried were empty, but the third contained a pair of
guards smoking marijuana. The ladies quietly snuck into the room, unnoticed by
the high men.

"Hey, fuckers," said Rania softly in Arabic. The guards whirled in shock and
tried to go for the guns in their holsters. The women were much too quick for
them, however. Rania reached out with both hands and snapped the first man's
neck. Angela snapped the second man's neck one-handed.

Rania stared at her companion. "Wow!" she whispered excitedly. "I wish my
wrists were strong enough to do that!" She compared her slender forearm with
Angela's thick one.

"Honey, they probably are," Angela whispered back, ruffling Rania's long dark
brown hair. "You just haven't tried it yet.

C'mon, let's check the next room."

Downstairs, Natalie returned to Abby. "Couldn't find another entrance. I was
thinking about slipping back outside and trying to peek in one of the
windows."

"Good idea. We've got to get a count of how many people are in that room."

Upstairs, as Rania and Angela left the room where they had just killed the two
weed-smokers, a flash of movement came from their left at the far end of the
hall. A guard was there...and he had seen them. He raised the AK-47 he was
carrying, but before he could take aim, Rania shot him twice with her silenced
pistol. She breathed a sigh of relief as he fell...until in his death spasms
his finger jerked the trigger of his weapon. Several bullets went into the
ceiling. The sound was incredibly loud.

"Uh-oh," said Rania.

"Never mind that, get ready for a fight," said Angela. She whipped out her
AK-47. Rania drew her shotgun and pumped it one-handed.

At the ballroom door, Natalie was just about to leave when the gunshots were
heard. "Uh-oh," she said.

"Never mind that, get ready for a fight," said Abby. She removed the
suppressor from her high-powered rifle and attached the bayonet in its place.
Natalie drew her Uzi. The girls took kneeling positions and aimed at the door.

Two seconds later, the ballroom door burst open and men began pouring out.
Abby fired off well-aimed head shots into the men, while Natalie dispatched
any Abby didn't get with short, controlled bursts from her submachine gun.
Together the two ladies slaughtered ten men before they stopped coming. The
girls then advanced into the room. They stopped and stared when they saw
dozens more men inside.

"Please!" begged one man in broken English. "We're unarmed!"

"That evens the odds then," said Natalie calmly. "After all, there are only
two of us." She flicked her Uzi to semi-auto and killed the speaker with a
single shot to the head.

With animal roars, the rest of the men charged Abby and Natalie.

Abby killed five more men with her rifle before it clicked empty.

Natalie flicked her weapon back to full auto and cut down several men with a
single long burst before it too went dry.

"Now we get to the fun part," said Abby. Bayonet ready, she charged straight
at the crowd with a high-pitched warrior cry.

Natalie stayed back as several men rushed her. There wasn't enough time to
reload her gun, but there was just enough to draw her crossbow and fire a
single shot into the chest of the man nearest her. The others ran around the
dead body and as they converged on her, she got into a fighting stance.

Meanwhile, upstairs, men began pouring out of the room with the light. Bullets
from Angela's assault rifle and slugs from Rania's shotgun cut them down with
brutal efficiency. Although these men were armed, their female opponents'
lethal firearms skills brought them down before any had a chance to shoot.

The flow of men stopped. Angela still had a few bullets left, but she ejected
the magazine from her AK-47 and inserted a fresh one with a full thirty
rounds. While she was reloading, Rania, her shotgun emptied, kept her pistol
trained on the doorway. When Angela was finished, Rania holstered her pistol
and swiftly reloaded her shotgun as Angela trained her weapon in turn towards
the door.

Angela noticed a grenade attached to the belt of one of the dead men. With a
wink, she picked it up, pulled the pin, and tossed it into the room. There was
a loud BOOM. Angela and Rania stormed into the now smoke-filled room, guns at
the ready.

Two men were just standing up dizzily. They had been stunned by the blast, but
were not hurt as they had been hiding behind a couch ever since the shooting
had started. Rania let out a hiss when she recognized one of them as Abdul
al-Razizi himself.

"At last," she growled. "You murdered my sister. You thought you got away with
it because of your diplomatic immunity. But now you're going to face justice."
Al-Razizi simply glared at her coldly. His assault rifle was on the floor a
few feet away.

The second man, a big, burly fellow who looked about 6'3" and 240 pounds,
looked at his AK-47, which was on the floor near him. "Don't even think about
it, asshole," snarled Angela, aiming her own AK-47 right at his heart. The big
man raised his hands in fear.

"Both of you fuckers, kick your assault rifles away!" Rania ordered. A growl
from the slender brunette and a wave of her shotgun spurred both men to obey
her. Angela then searched the men while Rania kept them covered.

Angela found a revolver in the big man's pocket and a knife strapped to
al-Razizi's leg. She threw both weapons away as the men cursed in Arabic.

"Who the fuck are you, anyway?" said Angela, addressing the big man. He
hesitated, but spoke up when the blonde woman's finger tightened on the
trigger of her AK-47.

"I'm Salim, chief bodyguard for al-Razizi."

"Oh, are you now? Well, I'm glad you're here."

"Er...why?"

"Because now I have someone to beat to death while my friend Rania here takes
care of the asswipe who murdered her sister."

"Yeah," growled Rania, her shotgun pointed right at al-Razizi's head.

"Go ahead, bitch. Shoot me," spat the murderer.

"Oh, you don't deserve to die that quickly. I'm going to make you suffer as
much as you made Leila suffer." Rania tossed her weapons aside and raised her
fists.

Al-Razizi broke into a grin and advanced on her. "Like a skinny little girl
like you can beat me. After I beat you and before I kill you, I'm going to
rape you just like I did your sister." At that, Rania screamed in rage and
charged. Angela tossed her weapons away and advanced on Salim.

Meanwhile, down in the ballroom, Abby bayoneted one man in the heart and
another in the throat. She stabbed a third man in the center of his chest. As
he screamed, she raised her rifle upward, lifting him into the air. He was
impaled on her bayonet like a piece of meat on a stick. Holding his weight up
with one incredibly strong arm, she drew her sword with the other. She spun
her helpless victim around and in rapid succession cut off his legs, his arms,
and finally his head with her sword. Dropping the rifle, limbless and headless
corpse still stuck on the bayonet, she readied her sword for the other men,
who were now all trembling in fear.

Natalie was facing five men. She leapt into the air, splitting her legs and
kicking two men in the head. She grabbed two more men and bashed their heads
together. An athletic aerial cartwheel kick from her knocked the fifth man
down.

Four dizzy men were still up. She knocked two down with a crescent kick that
struck both their faces. A lethal spin kick to the side of another's head
broke his neck with a sharp CRACK. His falling corpse crashed into the only
man currently standing and knocked him down too. She raised her leg over her
head in a full vertical split and casually but swiftly smashed it down onto
his skull, shattering it and sending blood and brain goo flying all over the
place. "There now, three against one, seems a little more fair!" she laughed
brightly.

Abby sliced one man in half at the waist with her ultra-sharp sword. Hearing
another try to sneak up behind her, she donkey kicked him in the gut, then
spun around and cut off his head.

Picking another victim, she stabbed him in the heart, then killed another with
a powerful roundhouse kick to his head that both cracked his skull and broke
his neck. Moving on to another man, she simply cut off both his arms and left
him to bleed to death.

The remaining men began running away from the sword-wielding vixen in fear.
Some of them had wet their pants, and two had soiled themselves. Laughing
mockingly, Abby did a tumbling pass towards them, starting with an aerial
roundoff and then a set of whip backs. She caught up to them easily.

Rania, charging al-Razizi, suddenly threw herself into a one-handed cartwheel
as she got near him. The murderer was unprepared for the unconventional attack
and Rania's boots kicked him hard in the face in rapid succession as she
cartwheeled. Before he could recover, Rania had landed neatly on her feet and
sent a wicked one-two-three combination of punches into his face.

The third punch from the slender but muscular 5'7", 125-pound girl sent the
6'1", 190-pound al-Razizi to the floor, hard. "Not bad for a skinny little
girl, huh," she mocked him.

Angela's 5'7", 135-pound frame looked very small facing big Salim. Fully
confident in her abilities, however, and not afraid in the least, Angela
easily dodged two of his attempted punches, then sent a punch of her own right
into his nose, breaking it.

As he howled in pain and his hands flew upward to his bloody face, she doubled
him over with a vicious fist to his solar plexus, straighted him with a
powerful uppercut, and finally sent him flying backwards with a kick to his
chest.

As Rania approached the downed al-Razizi, he tripped her. The slim Lebanese
girl began falling backwards, but used her athleticism and cheerleader
training to turn the motion into a standing back handspring, landing perfectly
on her feet. Cursing at his failure, al-Razizi stood up and charged her. She
expertly

stopped his charge by pivoting and firing a side kick into his chest. She then
aimed a little higher, doing another side kick into his face. As the
diplomat's right hand flew up to his wounded face, Rania performed a
cheerleader-style high kick. Her booted foot smashed his hand against his
face, breaking several small bones in his hand. She laughed sadistically as he
howled in pain. Moving in close, she rammed her knee into his stomach, then
headbutted him hard enough to knock him down again.

Angela did a tumbling pass of a roundoff followed by two back handsprings to
bring her close to her opponent. "I've studied your culture. I know you guys
like to do this to your women."

She viciously backhanded him across his face. "Hurts, doesn't it? Well, this
is going to hurt worse." With that, she delivered two roundhouse kicks to him,
one on his left side and one on his right. Each kick broke a rib. While he was
rendered helpless by the extreme pain, she moved in close and drove her knee
into his groin three times in rapid succession, pulverizing his genitals.

She then stepped back slightly and knocked him down with a kick to the face.

Downstairs, one of the men Natalie was fighting heaved himself to his hands
and knees. She kicked him in the head with her insanely powerful leg, breaking
his neck. "Two against one!" she counted down mockingly. The two remaining men
climbed to their feet. A swift side kick to one's gut sent him doubled over,
gasping for breath. The second swung a punch at her elegant face, which she
easily dodged. She responded with a lethal palm strike to his face that drove
the cartilage from his nose into his brain. She laughed. "Finally, one on
one!"

Five men were running away from Abby. As she finished her tumbling pass and
caught up to them, she smirked, "Don't any of you cowards have the balls to
face me?"

Two men turned around and charged her. She rammed her sword into the throat of
one, swiftly pulled it out, and stunned the second man with a quick kick to
his face. As he stood there, dizzy, she

held out her sword in front of her, positioning it under his crotch. She then
raised her sword arm upward. The blade sliced him in half vertically from
groin to head. Blood flew everywhere.

The last three men were still running away. Abby hid her sword behind her back
by tucking it into her pants.

"Hey, guys!" she called out, raising her hands. "I don't have my big scary
sword anymore. Wanna come and fight now?"

The men turned. Seeing her empty hands, they ran at her and surrounded her.
With a wicked grin and lightning speed, Abby

drew her hidden sword, raised it above her head, and spun around like a
ballerina, brutally decapitating all three men. "Suckers!"

she laughed.

The guard Natalie was facing was now the last man alive in the room. He looked
around and trembled in fear upon seeing all the corpses. In desperation, he
swung a punch at Natalie's stomach.

Seeing it coming, she tensed her abs. The man screamed in pain as his fist
impacted her rock-hard six-pack. Unhurt, Natalie giggled. "Wimp. I'm a girl
and I have better muscles than you."

She saw Abby, having slaughtered all her opponents, watching her.

"C'mon, Nat, finish him off. I want to go get something to eat."

"Yeah, I'm hungry too." Natalie grinned wickedly at the guard. "This will be
quick but painful." With that, she slammed her left fist into his eye, turning
it black, then drove her right into his jaw, breaking it. She did a fierce low
kick to his knee, breaking it too and sending him to the floor howling in
agony.

His howls only got louder when she stomped down hard on his broken knee with
her black leather boot, mutilating and grinding the bones. She jumped onto him
and began punching him in the head with her gloved fists. Blood flew as the
slim but lethally strong girl pummeled him, smashing through tissue and bone,
cracking and penetrating his skull, and finally bashing his brains in. Thirty
punches later, all that was left of his head was a mass of blood, gore, and
pieces of bone.

Natalie and Abby walked up to each other and gave each other a hug. Both
stunningly hot girls were covered with the blood of the helpless enemies they
had mercilessly slaughtered. Looking at the gory scene of death, Abby smirked,
"We are so good."

"Yeah, we're the best." Natalie rubbed her toned abs. "I'm in the mood for a
big steak. Do you think they have that here?"

"Sure. They only don't have pork. They're cool with beef. C'mon, let's go
upstairs and see how Angie and Rania are doing.

Maybe they're done and we can all go out to eat."

Angela and Rania were doing just fine. The same could not be said for their
opponents, however. Angela peformed a front tuck somersault to take her to the
downed Salim. He climbed to his

hands and knees as she reached him. She knocked him down again by driving her
elbow down onto his head.

"Finishing time, honey," she said in her slight Southern accent.

She wrapped her ultra-muscular thighs around his skull and began squeezing.
Salim, crying in pain, tried to pry her thighs loose with his hands, but she
was far too strong. He thrashed and struggled helplessly, feeling agony and
crushing pressure he never thought possible from a woman. Angela squeezed
harder.

Soon she heard cracking sounds as her opponent's skull began to give way.
Salim's eyes closed and he went limp. The cracking grew louder. Finally, with
a horrible squishing noise, Salim's skull caved in completely. Bloody goo
rolled off of Angela's thighs.

Meanwhile, Rania was standing over al-Razizi, who was still on the floor and
dizzy from the petite girl's powerful headbutt.

She stomped hard on his face with her size 8 black leather boot.

"That's for harassing me." She then began kicking him in the groin with all
her strength. The first kick sent searing, white-hot pain through him. By the
third kick, he had permanently lost the ability to be a father. By the tenth
kick, his gonads were no more than messy paste. "Those were for all the other
girls you harassed!"

Al-Razizi was in unimaginable pain and crying like a baby. Rania

reached down and lifted him by the hair. As the Lebanese beauty looked
straight into his frightened eyes, he began begging for mercy.

Rania glared at him with hatred and scorn. "You want mercy? I bet Leila begged
for mercy before you raped her! I bet she begged for mercy before you slit her
throat! I'll show you exactly the same mercy you showed her, asshole!"

She dragged him to the nearest wall and placed him against it in a sitting
position. He was too wounded to move and could only continue to make feeble
pleas to be spared, which Rania ignored.

"This is for Leila," she said softly. With that, she rammed her knee into his
head. Blood flew, splattering on her black pants.

Al-Razizi shrieked in agony. Again she drove her knee into him,

striking him with expert precision in the middle of his forehead.

His cry of pain was fainter this time as he began losing consciousness. She
smashed her knee into his forehead again and again, cracking and weakening her
victim's skull. After several blows, he was mortally wounded, blood from his
brain oozing out.

Rania looked at him with a smirk and prepared one final knee strike, putting
every ounce of strength she had into it. Her knee impacted his forehead with
devastating force, driving right through the skull bone and deep into his
brain.

Rania stood up straight, heart pounding, as she looked at al-Razizi's corpse.
"Leila, you are avenged. Justice is done," she whispered.

Angela came up and gave her a tight hug and a long kiss. "Good work, Rania.
How do you feel?"

"I feel like I have closure now. I think I'll be able to get a good night's
sleep tonight." She looked over at Salim's mutilated skull. "What did you do
to him?"

"Crushed his head with my thighs," said Angela.

"Wow, you're so strong," said Rania admiringly.

"You're strong too, especially for someone as thin as you. Even most men don't
have the muscle to do what you did." Angela stroked Rania's back. "C'mon,
let's find Abby and Natalie."

"We're here!" sang out Natalie's voice as she and Abby entered the room.
Natalie looked around. "Looks like you guys did some good work too."

"Yeah," said Abby. "We almost tripped over some of the corpses in the doorway.
So is everyone finished off?"

"Yep, all the men in the house are dead," Angela confirmed.

"Great!" said Abby. "Nat and I are really hungry. Any good steakhouses around
here?"

Angela looked startled for a second, then nodded. "I guess we can go out to
eat. There are several good steakhouses in the Diplomatic Quarter of the city.
No one's going to find these bodies until tomorrow, and we'll be long gone by
then. But we should change first. Luckily we have clean clothes in the
Explorer."

Rania looked down at her clothes, looked at Angela, then at Abby and Natalie.
"Sheesh, you guys are COVERED in blood. Angela and I have some, but you
two...What did you DO downstairs?"

"To be fair, most of mine I got from Abby when I hugged her," said Natalie.
"She was a machine with that sword of hers."

Abby, laughing, drew her sword, twirled it, and resheathed it. "Yep! Those
guys didn't stand a chance."

The women headed out of the mansion, stopping downstairs to look at Abby's and
Natalie's handiwork in the ballroom. Rania gasped when she saw dozens of
corpses. Some had been shot or had their necks broken, but others were
decapitated or sliced in half. One

corpse, which was armless and lying in a massive pool of blood,

had a look of pure terror frozen onto its face.

"Um...I think I'll just have some soup when we get to the restaurant," said
Rania, looking at her reflection in one of the ballroom mirrors. Her normally
healthily tanned face was looking slightly green.

Angela shook her blonde head in amazement. "There were this many and you did
all of them? Wow. I never thought there would be so many. Something must be
up. Maybe Danica will know when we get back."

They exited the house, Natalie and Abby walking ahead, already chattering to
each other about what kind of steaks they wanted.

Rania whispered into Angela's ear. "Are they always this...casual about
killing?"

"Yes, they are, pretty much," Angela whispered back. "They're natural born
assassins."

"I don't think that's the life for me," said Rania. "I mean, I'm glad I killed
al-Razizi, but that was a personal case of revenge.

I can't imagine living the way Nat and Abby do. I'd rather get back to
college."

"That's perfectly fine," Angela responded. "The assassin's life isn't for
everyone. And even if it is your way of life, you don't have to live it the
way those two do. Take me, for example. I'm a professional killer, but I don't
make fun and games out of it." She paused. "But I want you to know, any time
you want to go on another mission with us, you're more than welcome."

"Thanks," said Rania, squeezing Angela's hand.

After a dinner of steak and potatoes for Abby and Natalie and soup for Rania
and Angela, the girls boarded the cargo plane for the sixteen-hour journey
home.

"Sixteen hours?" said Natalie. "It was fifteen on the way over."

"We had the wind at our backs eastbound," said Angela. "We're flying against
the wind this time."

On board, Angela called Danica on the plane's radio. "Mission accomplished,
Dani," she said with a grin.

"Excellent," crackled Danica's voice. "We'll do the full debriefing as soon as
you land."

It was 2 AM Pacific time when the plane landed at the secret base outside of
Seattle. Danica was waiting for them as they disembarked. She gave each of the
women a hug. "Luckily it's night so I could sneak onto here," she said. "I
could have scheduled this during my normal off hours but I like to do these as
soon after the mission as possible. Feels funny sneaking away from a regular
Army base where 99% of the soldiers don't know about this secret one. Anyway,
let's go into the basement room and you can give me all the details."

Inside, Angela did most of the talking, summarizing the mission from start to
finish. Abby and Natalie occasionally interjected with boastful but true
statements of their kills. Rania talked

about peronally finishing al-Razizi off. Danica gave her a kiss when she said
that.

"And so after we made sure there was no one alive in the mansion except us, we
went out for dinner, got back on the plane, and here we are," Angela finished.

"All wrapped up nice and neat," said Danica.

"Actually, I do have a couple of things," said Angela. "One, why were there so
many men there? And two, will there be any international repercussions over
our going to a foreign country and killing a bunch of people?"

"People who had it coming," said Natalie.

"Agreed, they had it coming," said Angela. "I was just saying..."

"Anyway, who's going to know it was us?" Abby asked, interrupting her.

"They could guess, based on what al-Razizi did," said Rania. "But there's no
proof against us, and frankly, they did have it coming. And not just al-Razizi
himself. They were all associating with him. Lie down with dogs, get up with
fleas."

Danica raised her hands for quiet. "I can answer both of those issues right
now. It seems that the Shah of Kurtaria is a reformer who wants to modernize
his country, and the Kurtarian reactionaries don't like that. Some of them
were plotting to overthrow and murder the Shah, and al-Razizi was in on the
plot.

All of those extra men at his house were conspirators who were to provide
muscle for the coup. If the Kurtarian government ever finds out it was us who
'took care' of al-Razizi and his men, I'm sure they won't be anything except
very grateful."

Angela broke into a wide smile. "Wonderful!"

"Would you ladies like a drink before you head off to the airport to catch
your flights back home?" Danica asked. "I have some excellent tequila here."

"I'd love a drink right now!" said Abby.

"Yeah," added Natalie. "We couldn't have any booze at the restaurant because
alcohol is banned in Kurtaria."

Danica smiled. "Incidentally, that's one of the things the Shah is trying to
change. He wants to legalize alcohol."

"Can't he just make it so?" asked Angela. "He is the Shah."

"Laws have to go through the Kurtarian parliament, and it's full of
reactionaries," said Rania, whose knowledge of Middle Eastern

politics was extensive. "It's ironic, isn't it. Democracy in this case is
actually a roadblock to freedom. People shouldn't have democracy until they're
ready for it. In those countries, a benevolent dictator is actually better."

"I'll drink to that," said Danica. She poured shots for everyone. "To freedom.
True freedom," she said, raising her glass.

"To a clean and successful mission," said Angela.

"To victory," said Abby.

"To kicking some serious butt," said Natalie.

"To vengeance...and closure. To Leila," said Rania.

"To Leila," the others echoed. The girls downed their shots and leaned back,
content.

THE END

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