Hamish’s father picked up the stranger, staggering under the burden. Hamish’s older brother took the girl, slinging her over his shoulder as he had their sister. The lines of her body against his and the unnatural way her arms tangled, her head lolled, it all brought it back to Hamish. Once again he was seeing his brother carrying his sister across the room and tossing her dead body into the women’s quarters. And in that moment, Hamish knew.
It had not been strangers who had killed his sister. It had been his father.
Later, after they returned home, with the keening echo of what he remembered from his own house in his mind, Hamish tried to pray. The horror was so fresh, but he mustn’t think of that. It was the right thing, the only thing — his father would not be mistaken about something like that, would he? No, it was not possible. Therefore, it was Hamish who was the weak one, the unworthy one.
Back at their own house, as though sensing his thoughts, his father turned to him. “It is our law,” he said, answering the unspoken question. “Women are weak, foolish things. This is an example to them all of what will happen when they violate Allah’s natural order. It is the only thing that will stop them.”
Hamish clung to the explanation, forcing it to make sense. There had to be some meaning behind what his father was saying.
Hamish was not a stupid boy, and he was still young enough to think for himself. The questions that arose in his mind could not be ignored.
How had his sister dishonored herself? In a way, he could understand the neighbor’s situation. The daughter had left willingly, had known what she was doing and what the consequences were. But, from every account, his sister had not. She been forced and then abandoned. The disgrace was not of her own making, not unless you counted her failure to choose a path wisely as a mortal sin. So, were the two situations different? Didn’t Allah emphasize an individual’s responsibility for his own actions?
And if women could only be controlled by showing them consequences of their actions, then why hadn’t had that worked in his neighbor’s case? They had lived next door for years and all knew what had happened to Hamish’s sister. Why had that not served as a sufficient example to the other daughter? Surely she had known what would happen if — when — she was caught.
And yet she had gone anyway. She had risked everything, her life, her family’s honor, everything, to leave with that man. Why?
In time, the complexities of daily life drew Hamish away from thinking of the two incidents. Life returned to normal, and he never asked his father those questions that bothered him, knowing immediately that it would be dangerous to do so. Yet, in odd moments when he was alone and caught the glimpse of a woman moving a certain way, one with particularly translucent skin, he thought again of his sister and her death.
Two years later, the call came to join the militia. Hamish, convinced now by the passage of time and the daily influence of their way of life, no longer wondered about his sister and her neighbor. Instead, like every other male over the age of fourteen, he obeyed the mullah’s call and went to war.
Barry Hart glanced up and to his right and left, confirming that the Tomcat escorts were in place. There was something about being armed with only HARM missiles that made any jet pilot feel oddly vulnerable. Having to depend on someone else for defense against enemy air was no picnic, either. In his heart, every pilot was convinced that he could do the job better, harder, and faster than any other jet jock. It was that self-confidence that kept them alive, that gave them the ability to climb into the cockpit each day. Because the day you quit being invulnerable, the day you quit believing you were, and started believing that things could go wrong for you, too, was the day you got dangerous in the air, not only to yourself but to your squadron.
Still, there wasn’t much help at this time. There were enough of those nasty little bastard SAM sites along the coast that he had a full load-out of HARMs and no room on the wings for antiair missiles. The Tomcats, he reflected, probably weren’t too damned thrilled about it, either, riding herd on him and his load of weapons instead of flying high and tight looking for other fighters.
“Forty-five seconds,” his RIO said, updating the information on his HUD. “I got nibbles but no bites yet.”
On his HUD, Berry could see the arcs of yellow and green radiating out from the suspected shore stations, updated with the latest satellite imagery, calculated to a fine degree, and absolutely worthless until they had a hard hit. It was one thing to run the numbers for the atmospheric propagation and figure out how far out the radar site could detect you, then target you, and then reach out and touch you. Twenty minutes of computer crunching couldn’t hold a candle to two seconds of tickle, or the first-rate indications that his RIO was reading on his own sensors.
“They’ll get their chance,” Barry said, letting his fingers run lightly up the stick, feeling the familiar shapes below them, his fingers automatically curling around to stroke the weapons-release button and weapons-selector switch. So familiar, as familiar as the smooth round curves of his wife’s body, the delicate bones of her ribs, and the sweeping curves of her body below that. And so it should be — his fingers had known the stick a lot longer than he’d known his wife.
“They’ll get a chance,” his RIO answered. And that, Barry hoped, was the God’s absolute truth. Because all they need was a solid tickle, a good, hard hit from a radar looking for them, and then the fat lady sang.
The antiradiation missiles slung beneath his wings were the latest in technology. They were fire-and-forget weapons with some features that would’ve astounded pilots of only a few years back. They had their own sensors that were wired into the aircraft’s avionics, working as independent receivers. In addition to the data that they generated on the ground, the small electronic brains received a continuous stream of data from the aircraft’s threat-detection system, which itself was continuously updated by the carrier, the Hawkeye, and the intel weenies as new intelligence became available.
At the moment of release, two things happened. First, the seeker head locked on to the designated signal, memorizing the location in relation to where it was and heading directly for it. Second, it began exchanging data over the airwaves with the carrier itself, slipping into the LINK just as though it were an independent aircraft. While in flight, it could be retargeted by either the watch officer on the carrier or by Barry.
Once it was clear of the Tomcat, the missile would make certain of its bearings, then descend rapidly to a preprogrammed altitude above ground — or sea, in this case. From there, it would home in on the site, hopefully sliding under the radar envelope and using terrain to hide itself. The altitude could be preset or altered from the cockpit, allowing for maximum flexibility in cases of high sea states. The lowest possible setting was nearly five feet, and any sea state at all could easily result in waves knocking it out of the air.
“Got it,” his RIO snapped. The new target appeared on Barry’s HUD. “Just where she’s supposed to be.”
“Range?” Barry asked.
“Release in three seconds,” his RIO answered. “Two, one — release!”
Barry toggled the weapon off, feeling the aircraft jolt slightly as it left the wing. It shot out in front of them, then arced away, a slender white streak against the dark blue sea.
“Fox One, Fox One,” Barry snapped over tactical.
“Looks good,” the E-2 Hawkeye commented from overhead, overseeing the engagements a safe distance away from the shore stations.