“What happened?” Hamish managed, his voice coming out far higher than he would have liked. Under the stern cold gazes from his brothers and his father, he made an effort to lower his voice. “Is she really dead?”
There was no need to answer that question. He’d seen dead bodies often enough.
All three fixed him with that stern stare. No one spoke. Finally, his father said, “Her name will never be mentioned again.” With that, he walked to the women’s quarters, pounded on the door, and told his mother and the cook to get his dinner. All voices behind the heavy door ceased. The two women came out, moving slowly, their faces averted from men. They slipped quietly into the back, ghosts — the way they should be.
Later that night, Hamish got part of the story from his other brother, who was only three years older. The twelve-year-old was clearly shaken by what he’d seen.
They had gone to the marketplace, to the alley where the younger sisters had last been. His sisters had been walking down the way when a group of soldiers had suddenly come upon them. They’d tried to get past, but had been grabbed, touched, their veils stripped away from their faces. The strangers, pale men with loud voices talking in an unknown language, ran their hands over the sisters, laughing and snarling at one another. The girls instantly froze.
Mistaking lack of resistance for some sort of acquiescence, the soldiers had dragged them up a flight of stairs and into a dirty room with a few blankets strewn across the floor. There, the girls had finally started to fight back, screaming in protest. The bruise and the split lip were the results.
His older sister fought the hardest, and it had taken two men to hold her while a third ripped off her clothes. Grabbing the opportunity, his younger sisters had fled. The men, occupied with his oldest sister, had not followed. The younger sisters had made their way home, shamed for all the neighbors to see by their condition, running as fast as they could to get off the dark streets. It was a miracle they had not been picked up by a patrol.
“My sister — why did they kill her?” Hamish asked, his voice agonized. At nine, he was just barely beginning to glimpse the possibilities inherent in the difference in the sexes.
His brother turned away, his face an immature imitation of his father’s. Hamish felt tears well up again and panicked. It would not do to let them see that, no. Never.
He concentrated on his father’s face, letting it replace his sister’s in his memory. The high, hard cheekbones, the strong nose and full beard. He felt comforted by the strength he saw there, by the absolute surety. Around his father, there could be no weakness. No doubts. And especially, no crying. That was one reason the women had their separate quarters, wasn’t it? Because they were given to those displays of emotion that distracted men from the important things in life.
With his brother, he returned to the main area of the house where his father and brother were. Hammish approached, cleared his throat, and said, “I sent the women to their quarters,” his voice more unsteady than he would have liked initially, but firming it as he spoke. “They were too loud.”
A faint trace of amusement flashed across his father’s face, followed by an approving nod. “You did well.” He turned to his brothers, and said, “Wash. We will pray.”
So whatever those men had done to his sisters was too despicable to be discussed. Hamish decided that was it, and turned to follow his brothers to wash.
Three years later, he realized how wrong he had been. Their neighbor had come running over, asking for help. He had no sons of his own, only three daughters. The oldest one was gone, last seen in the company of a foreigner. He thought he knew where they were.
Without discussion, his father had summoned Hamish and his two brothers to join him. They proceeded to a poor outlying neighborhood, one where the houses were crowded close together, the rooms often rented to strangers. The smells were unfamiliar, the looks of the women far too bold. Hamish felt himself growing angry as they stared at him.
Without knocking, the men opened the door to a house and proceeded upstairs. Hamish brought up the rear. As the rear guard, Hamish was unable to see what initially happened. All he heard was a high, thin scream, followed by his neighbor’s voice shouting. His brothers crowded into the room, his father lingering in the doorway to watch for anyone who followed. He summoned Hamish to him with a slight flick of his finger, then shoved him into the room.
His older brother had already grabbed the foreigner and jerked his head back, but the stranger was muscular and was fighting. His younger brother clung to one arm, trying to pull it back, and Hamish grabbed the other one. His neighbor crowded in, then suddenly drew his knife and slashed the foreign man’s throat. Then he plunged the dagger into the man’s heart. His brothers let the body drop to the floor.
Hamish stared, dumbstruck. Blood, so much blood. The body on the floor twitched, and air bubbled out of the ruined throat, forming a froth. There was a sudden stench, as the man’s bladder and bowels let go. There was one final convulsion, and then all the joints relaxed into unnatural angles.
Then his brothers and his neighbor turned to the daughter. She was much easier to hold than the man had been, although fear and certain knowledge gave her strength and she fought them. Years of tradition fell away in the face of imminent death, and she screamed, kicked, and fought back, scratching at their eyes with her fingers.
Her struggles seemed to merely give the men strength, exciting them in some way that Hamish only felt an echo of. His father shouted encouragement from the doorway.
After a brief struggle, they held her spread-eagled on the bed. The father withdrew the bloody knife from the man’s heart and advanced on her, rage consuming his face. He touched the knife to her throat, holding it there. She froze, a small animal caught in headlights. He spoke quietly, his voice dripping venom. The words were seared into Hamish’s memory.
“You are dishonored. You are no longer of my house. You are no longer of my blood. By your actions, you are consigned to burn in everlasting hell. Let your fate serve as an example to others.” With that, the father pressed the blade home slowly, puncturing skin. Blood welled, cascading down her throat and to the bed as he bore down. She jerked, trying to escape the sharp metal blade separating her flesh, but it was no use. All she did was twist the knife, making the cut wider.
Her father stared into her eyes, vengeance in his face as he watched her panic. An ugly smile curved his lips. She groaned, air rushing out of the ruined throat, trying to speak or scream or pray — Hamish would never know.
With one final movement, the man pressed the dagger up. It rammed through her throat and under her chin, reaching up higher behind her face to the brain. He saw her open her mouth to scream, and caught a flash of the blade deep in her throat. Her father gave the knife one final twist, then jerked it out of her throat.
Her body spasmed, the death throes giving her strength to toss his brothers away. She convulsed again, then rolled over on her side, her fingers slightly curled in protectively toward her palms. Her nails were red where she’d made contact with his brothers’ faces, and one brother sported long, bloody welts.
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.
Wild Weasel 601
0145 local (GMT +3)
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.
“Damned right it does,” Barry muttered. Nothing worse than having a critique offered by somebody who was well out of harm’s way.
“Come left ten degrees,” his RIO suggested. “I think I’ve got another — yes, there it is.” He toggled another target onto the HUD, adding, “Your dot.”
“Like shooting fish in a barrel,” Barry said. “With the other fishermen standing on the bank afraid to get their feet wet.”
There was a moment of puzzled silence from the backseat. Barry’s fondness for homespun metaphors was exceeded only by his willingness to combine them in new and interesting ways, often to the confusion of his listener.
“Well, their bank is going to get a little crowded after we’re through,” his RIO said finally, having deciphered the mixed metaphor and simply trying to go with it.
“That’s right,” Barry said. “Bank walkers, all of them.” Leaving his RIO to puzzle that one out, he toggled off another weapon.
Viking
0150 local (GMT -7)
“Torpedo in the water, torpedo in the water!” Greenberg said, drowning them out. “Two torpedoes — no, three! Probable targets, carrier and cruiser.” Even as he spoke, the tactical circuit was springing to life as the symbols he entered on a screen classifying the new contacts as torpedoes were immediately trans
mitted to everyone in the data link. The cruiser began a series of sharp evasive maneuvers, intending to throw the torpedo off track. The carrier began its own long, slow turn, popping out noisemakers and decoys in the water like confetti.
“Targeting solution — now,” Greenberg snapped, sending the data to the TACCO, who promptly entered the point and sent it to Rabies.
“One fish away — two,” Rabies reported, toggling off two torpedoes. “Greedy little shit, isn’t she?”
“For now,” Greenberg said, his voice grim. “But the carrier’s blasting out so much noise off the water from her propellers and her noisemakers that I’m having a hard time holding contact on passive sonar. Recommend we go active immediately.”
“Concur,” his TACCO said crisply. They activated the dual-purpose sonobuoys, the ones capable of both passive detection and active ranging. Each one had a small sonar transmitter in it as well as a receiver — the transducer. They started pinging, and immediately acquired contact on their target.
“I got her!” Greenberg reported. “She’s heading for the drilling rig, sir. The torpedoes are in active mode, search pattern now — man, she’s putting out some noise! No way our fish will miss her!”
Rabies chewed his lip thoughtfully. Once the torpedoes acquired the contact, they would head for it at speeds in excess of forty knots. Minisubs themselves were not capable of much over ten knots, if that. Still, the torpedoes were mighty close to the drilling rig, and there was always a chance that they would nail one of the supports to the rig rather than the submarine.
“You keep an eye on them,” he ordered, aware that it was unnecessary, but feeling he had to do something. “They head under the drilling rig, you pull the fish off. You got it?”
“Yes, sir. I got it.” Greenberg’s answer was almost offhand, as he was already working the intercept solution himself.
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