Authors: AeroGirl and Daenar
Disclaimer: See Part One Chapter Thirteen 2027 Local - 1557 Zulu
On approach to 3PPCLI base, Kadesh
Afghanistan "No pressure in the starboard hydraulic lines." Cash had to raise his voice to be heard over the alert signals, but he was still composed. "How are the control surfaces?"
"No starboard flaps, but I've still got the rudder, and I can hold our altitude for a while with just port surfaces and a little judicious use of the afterburner." I was locked in a constant battle with the controls - Tomcats simply weren't designed to fly with sections of a wing missing. From the beginning, this bird had been built for power, not grace. Now we were going to absolutely epitomize the nickname "Flying Turkey."
"Echo Flight, head for home," I ordered the rest of the squadron. "Cash and I will catch up to you after we partake of some Canadian hospitality."
"Good luck, Lead," Red responded. "Buck, you got 'em?"
"Aye, ma'am." As the other two fighters made a slow, banking turn back toward the sea, Buck came up alongside our damaged wing.
"Lieutenant, are you hearing impaired?" I asked him in a clipped tone, most of my focus still on my own flying.
"Due respect, sir, you didn't think we were gonna leave you without a wingman, did you? If you can't make the airfield and have to punch out, somebody's got to note your position and scare away any unfriendlies down there."
I sighed, the answer not unexpected. "Buck, if you follow us in, you're not going to have enough fuel to get back to the boat, and this airstrip hasn't been cleared for Tomcats. I don't have a better option, but you do, so I'd suggest taking it."
"Appreciate the suggestion, sir, but a bumpy landing isn't gonna bother us. Besides, I could really go for a cold Labatt's right about now."
I had to smile a little at that. "Whatever you say."
Despite my unorthodox use of thrust - I'd been periodically raising the nose and applying short bursts of afterburner to push us temporarily higher - we were still losing altitude faster than I would have liked. Cash radioed over to the other RIO. "Rocky, check us out, will you? Any kind of damage report you can give."
"Can't see much, man. You worried about your wheel well being breached?"
"That's high on the list, but the list is long. We can't drop the gear until the last minute - can't afford the drag. So by the time we find out whether our gear works, we're going to be about fifty feet off the ground."
"And even if the gear does lock, we might not have brakes," I pointed out grimly. "Kadesh, you've got your runway clear, right? And when I say clear, I mean completely clear."
"Affirmative, Echo Lead. We've got a barrier net, but we're not very accustomed to deploying it, so be forewarned."
"Right, because otherwise this would be too easy, wouldn't it?"
A sudden thought occurred to me: Mac was down there, watching and waiting. If I couldn't put this aircraft down in one piece, she would have a front-row seat for the crash.
God, Sarah, I'm so sorry...
For an instant, I thought I could hear her voice in reply, and I wondered if she'd gotten back on the radio. But I couldn't quite make out her words, and once I realized that it was only in my mind, I had no choice but to put it aside and concentrate on the upcoming landing. Flipping a switch near my left hand, I changed the ejection to rear-seat command. "Ejection's all yours, Cash."
"Not planning on needing it, sir. Kadesh, we're coming in on final approach."
Here goes nothing. "Gear down." I pulled the handle and felt the slight vibrations as the landing gear descended from the nose and both sides of the fuselage. Three lights illuminated simultaneously, and I breathed a little easier. "Everything's locked. Rocky, how's our tire situation?"
"Looks to be intact, sir. Good luck."
The aircraft lurched again: aerodynamic ground effect was playing havoc with our not-so-aerodynamic wing. I pulled the nose up to flare out for landing and soon felt the wheels strike the runway with an uneven jolt. We settled unsteadily onto both sets of wheels, and I applied the brakes with a fervent prayer for them to function.
Even as the nose gear contacted the pavement, we began to skid sideways. The starboard brakes were squishy at best, but the port brakes had caught immediately, sending us off-balance. I eased up on them and applied the rudder hard, hoping to straighten us out. It only partially worked.
Our speed was decreasing, but not fast enough. "We're going off-road," I told Cash curtly. "Hang on."
As soon as the nose gear ran off the edge of the runway into the dirt, the aircraft took a jarring bounce, and I saw stars again - and finally, miraculously, we slowed to a stop, still upright and intact.
Neither of us moved for a moment, still trying to grasp the fact that we'd gotten down safely. A voice crackled over the radio. "Echo Lead, welcome to Kadesh."
I was still clearing my vision, so Cash responded for us. "Much appreciated."
Slowly, I pried my fingers off the throttle and stick. "Tell me you weren't half a second away from punching us out," I prodded my RIO.
"You'll never know, will you?" he replied innocently.
As Buck and Rocky came in for a much calmer landing, I popped the canopy, and we climbed down out of our ailing jet. Both of us yanked off our helmets at the first available opportunity and drank in the first fresh air we'd had in hours. A support truck made its way across the tarmac to us, pulling up alongside and spilling out a throng of flight line personnel to secure the aircraft and its remaining weapons.
The pounding in my head abruptly increased, and rather than risk an embarrassing stumble, I quickly dropped to one knee, waiting for it to pass. The perils of flying without the benefit of my own form-fit helmet. The borrowed one hadn't fit perfectly, and thanks to that Stinger-induced jolt a few minutes ago, I was paying for the difference. Of course, in retrospect, I'd been spending a fair portion of the last couple of days worrying when I should have been eating and sleeping, which probably hadn't helped matters. But there wasn't much to be done about that now.
My gaze trained on the ground, I noticed a pair of black boots moving toward me at a rapid pace. "I'm all right - just give me a minute," I muttered, closing my eyes.
Then I felt a hand on my shoulder, and from that simple contact, recognition instantly set in. As I looked up, she knelt down in front of me with an expression of concern.
An indescribable feeling of wonder swept over me at that moment. With the runway lights illuminating her from one side, I could see the horrible bruises that marred her graceful features, and she was holding one arm tightly to her body, betraying further pain. Through dark eyes reddened either by tears or the harsh winds, she captured and held my gaze.
She was a goddess. A vision. And suddenly I could breathe, really breathe, again.
I pulled her into my arms without a word, trying to be gentle but at the same time desperate to show her the magnitude of my relief. After a measureless time spent holding onto each other in silence, giving and receiving support, I offered the understatement of the year. "Good to see you, Marine."
"You, too." Her voice was partly muffled by the collar of my flight suit, where she'd buried her nose against my neck. It was a wonderfully natural act, but also a more intimate one than just about any I could remember between us. This wasn't Sarah Mackenzie trying to project strength to the outside world. This was Sarah Mackenzie simply being strong, just by being unafraid to care.
"You sure you're okay?" she asked.
"Yeah, I just smacked my head. Forget about me. What did those bastards do to you?"
"It's okay. I eventually gave as good as I got. You don't have to go back and kill them again."
I pulled back to examine her, both out of worry for her injuries and out of a desire to absorb all I could of her presence. "Have you seen a doctor yet?"
"That would have required me to leave the operations center. You can imagine why I wouldn't have wanted to do that." Mac held very still as I traced her cheek with my fingers. I'm sure my eyes must have betrayed my feelings, but for the first time, I didn't care. In fact, I welcomed it.
She flinched every so slightly under my unwavering gaze. "Harm, I'm all right," she said quietly. "Those guys are never going to hurt anyone ever again, thanks to you."
"I wasn't alone."
"No, you weren't." She reached up to cover my hand with her own. "You never are."
"Neither are you." I wanted to say more, but couldn't make the words come out. This time, though, there were too many words racing around in my head, rather than too few. So I simply continued to stare.
Mac ducked her head self-consciously. "All right, I know I look like death warmed over. You don't have to keep looking at me."
If she was trying to offer me a way out, it was useless. I didn't want a way out. Ever again. Before I knew it, I was answering. "If I could get away with it, I'd never look at anything else."
At that, a brilliant light shone in her eyes, and suddenly it was so clear. We understood each other, fully and completely, and I could see that the thought that had sustained me throughout this entire ordeal was the same thought that had sustained her.
"We have a few things to talk about, don't we?"
"You could say that. But it probably ought to wait until after we debrief and get you checked out." I got to my feet and helped Mac up as gently as possible, reluctant to release her even after she was standing on her own two feet. "No longer than that, though."
In response, she leaned up on her toes and delivered a kiss that will forever be imprinted on my memory.
When we finally broke apart, I swallowed hard and quipped, "Not in front of the plane crew, ninja-girl."
"Oh, screw 'em."
I couldn't have agreed more. I slipped an arm around her waist and steered her toward the truck that had brought her out. Halfway there, a thought struck me. "You know, I'm starting to think that there's more to this mental connection between us than I realized."
Mac turned, lifting an eyebrow. "How's that?"
"When I was coming in to land, and I knew you were down here, I was thinking about how sorry I was that you had to go through all this ... and I swear I heard your voice."
"Yeah? What did I say?"
"That's the thing. Either I heard it wrong, or it wasn't English. It sounded like 'Anna-shay,' or - "
She stopped walking. "Anusheh?"
"That's it." When her eyes filled with tears, my heart immediately sank. "But like I said, the odds of me being wrong - "
"You weren't." She gave me a smile that lit up the night. "It's a name. It means 'fortunate.'"
"I guess that's appropriate, but I'm still confused."
"It's a long story."
"But it's a long story that you're going to explain to me at some point, right?"
She leaned against me, and I had to say a silent prayer of thanks - for this moment, and for all those that were certain to follow.
"Let's put it this way. If I believed in fate, I'd still have about 426 days to explain it to you."
Epilogue
25 months later
2144 ZULU
Rabb residence
Falls Church, VA
Surely Harm was convinced that I was asleep.
But I wasn't. For the past 42 minutes I had been quietly lying in my deckchair, enjoying the sun that bathed our backyard in a warm afternoon light, through my eyelashes observing the two people that meant most to me in the world.
My husband and my daughter.
Mary, as we called her. Maryam Anusheh Rabb. When we announced to our friends the name we had chosen for our little girl, people were, well, stunned. I could still hear Jen's reaction: "Colonel, you want your daughter to have your cover name? And, what's more, that of the very mission where you and the commander might easily have ended up killing each other?"
"Actually, no," I had answered with an open smile, disarming her and everyone else present, "It's my grandmother's middle-name."
"Oh..."
I hadn't commented on Mary's middle-name at all. Harm's and my psychic link was only for us to know about.
Then people had asked what the names meant. Rather than give the full translation, I chose to reply that somehow, the name seemed to create a tentative link between two yet hostile cultures, implying the hope that my little girl wouldn't have to face a future of constant war against al Qaeda and its worldwide consorts. Harm and I simply wanted our daughter to be 'Mary, the fortunate.'
From the way I saw Harm interact with the tiny creature in his arms, I could have bet that he didn't have a clue that he was being watched. Sure, he had come a long way when it came to showing his feelings. Two years ago, it had taken a near-disaster to make him open up. By the by he had grown easy around me, knowing I was with him for good. He didn't feel the need anymore to keep up the hero façade at all cost. But he was still reluctant to become too openly emotional when anyone was near, even me. I couldn't blame him - for decades this had been his true self. Seeing that he was trying to change was enough for me. Every little step he took was taken in the right direction.
Mary was clumsily reaching for Harm's index finger that was gently tickling the tip of her nose. The tall, broad-shouldered fighter-jock was totally engrossed in observing his daughter, smiling at her, making funny faces, reacting to her movements... in short, he was wrapped around her finger and completely oblivious to his surroundings. I could have gone on watching the display for hours.
The doorbell broke the spell, though. "I'll go get it," I immediately told him, getting up and revealing that I hadn't been sleeping at all. The veranda door closed behind me before Harm even had the time to blush in my presence. I knew he'd appreciate a moment of quiet to regain his star-lawyer dignity.
"Who is it?" I called as I approached the front door.
"Delivery for Mrs. Goshtasbi."
With a wide grin, I opened. "Gunny, you made it!""
Obviously resisting his fleeting instinct to draw back, Galindez heartily returned the bear hug I engulfed him in. "As you see..."
"Please, come in!"
Gunny's smile turned a little guilty. "I'm sorry, ma'am, I can't. Jen Coates is expecting me at 1800 at Tiner's for a little last-minute organizing and I'd better not keep my future fellow godparent waiting. I'm only glad we weren't delayed."
I sharply looked at him, curious. "We, Gunny? Who's 'we'?"
"Uh... I had some time in London, waiting for my connecting flight, so I thought I might just bring a friend..." Gunny turned his head to the right in an exaggerated gesture. I followed his glance - and couldn't believe my eyes.
"Did anyone from this household order a tailor-made christening robe?" Ahmad Salimi stepped forward, smiling mischievously, holding a parcel. "I hope my presence won't create any inconveniences."
After a few seconds of stunned silence, I finally found my voice. "Of course not! Mr. Salimi, it's so good to see you! How are you?" Not knowing how an old British gentleman of Muslim upbringing would react to being hugged by a much younger woman, I only shook his hand, but I did it with all the warmth that was in me.
Then I stuck my head back in. "Harm!"
The creaking of the wooden floor told me that my husband was already on his way.
Salimi seemed genuinely flattered by my warm welcome. "Oh, please, that's Ahmad to you, Sarah. When Victor called me and told me about his idea to join him for his soon-to-be godchild's christening, I found this would be the perfect occasion to give you something that I've been wanting to give you for a long time. Hello, Commander."
Indicating that Mary had fallen asleep in his arms, Harm in a low voice greeted our friends and then proudly presented his daughter. Salimi's grin grew exuberant, letting show the gap between his lower teeth. "Hello Maryam," he murmured in Farsi, bending slightly over the little girl, "I'm your Abu Ahmad."
"Where will you be staying, Ahmad?"
"Victor's friend agreed to accommodate us both, this Petty Officer... uh..."
"We'll be at Tiner's, ma'am," Gunny cut in. "And don't worry," he added with a slight grin, "Jen Coates has already offered to help him out a little."
"I see."
"Sarah," Salimi now addressed me, handing me the little package, "We will be late to arrive at Mr. Tiner's house if we don't leave now. But first I wanted you to have a look at this."
"That's so sweet, but you didn't need to..."
Salimi gently patted me on the cheek. "Of course I needed to. Afghan tradition meets British education. Have a look."
Chuckling slightly, I removed the delicate tissue paper, only to draw a deep breath. "Oh, my God... this is beautiful."
I held in my hands a simple ivory-white christening robe in the finest cotton. There weren't any laces or frills on it, but something else that made me smile wistfully: on the chest, tiny onyx pearls formed a perfect circle around an Alpha and Omega, artfully embroidered in ivory-white thread.
"I couldn't bring myself to choose snow-white," Salimi's voice was actually apologetic. "I'm sure you know that white is the Muslim color of mourning. But I can assure you of one thing, Sarah: the pearls are yours."
I was overwhelmed. This was so perfect, unpretentious yet beautiful, and it came from the heart. "Where did you find the pearls?" was all I managed to say, my voice slightly shaky.
"Right at the observation room of the Canadian base," Salimi explained. "You were so desperately worried about the commander and at the same time so shocked when you ripped that little chain that you'd been clinging to all night as if it were an anchor... I could see in your eyes that on the one hand you absolutely needed to get out to the runway, but on the other hand you seemed to be thinking that letting the small pearls roll out of reach would be like letting your lifetime's happiness slip away. So when you decided that the urge to get out was stronger, I convinced the Canadian lieutenant who was with us to open the ventilation shaft and get out at least those pearls that had caught on the smaller grille beneath. Half of the chain is lost, though, I'm sorry."
Impulsively, I hugged my old friend, not caring now if he might think it proper or not. After a short moment, I felt him return the hug in a slightly shy but not uncomfortable manner. "Ahmad, you have no idea how much this means to me."
Just a little embarrassed, Salimi somewhat indistinctly waved his hand. "Awww, it was the least I could do. After all, you were about to make my dream of returning to London come true. I've been contemplating ever since in what way I'd give the pearls back to you. As I said, this was just the perfect occasion." Salimi's voice had sobered a little. "Your daughter will be baptized to the name of Jesus, wearing a dress that bears visible proof of Allah's blessing. She may be a child of the first generation that will see our faiths and societies coexist in peace and understanding. That is why I wanted her to have this robe."
All our glances were focused on the girl's tiny, relaxed face as it rested against Harm's broad chest. The olive tan of her eyelids was hiding the stunning blue of her eyes that had as yet refused to show any signs of turning into brown. Maybe they never would.
I leaned against my husband's side, putting my arm around his waist. "I would be glad to know that she'll grow up in a world where young people everywhere decide to build their future, not bomb themselves to death." My voice was thoughtful as I took in the innocent expression on my child's features. "If we want to spare her what we had to go through, then we'll have to make her courageous enough to start building bridges."
Once again, a benign, sage smile tugged at the corners of Salimi's mouth. "Don't ask me what makes me so sure but I can see that happening. Knowing her parents, I know she will make this world a little better."
Never looking up at us, Harm gently smoothed Mary's dark hair with his right hand. "Amen to that," he said softly. THE END A few people have expressed uncertainty as to which author wrote which character in this story, so we thought we'd try to clear things up. It goes like this: AeroGirl works with jets for a living, while Daenar works with words for a living. Therefore, AG wrote the character who spent his time in the air, while Dae wrote the one who used her language skills (among other things!) so effectively. In the unlikely event that anyone is *still* unsure about the concept, just consider this: AG is a proud member of the HarmyBoard. ;-)
