Little by little, his hearing returned, and he could hear Bahira screaming again, an outpouring of pure, unmitigated terror. She scrambled to her feet and staggered over to the far parapet and began screaming down into the courtyard below.

"Shut up!" He ran to her and grabbed for her arm, but she got away from him and began running around the rubble-strewn perimeter of the roof, shrieking at the top of her lungs.

Four more explosions erupted at the far east end of the compound.

Khalil spotted men on the adjoining roof setting up an anti-aircraft machine gun. Bahira saw them, too, and threw up her arms to them, shouting, "Help! Help!"

They saw her, but continued setting up the machine gun.

"Help me! Help!"

Khalil grabbed her from behind and pulled her down to the concrete roof. "Shut up!"

She fought with him, and he was amazed at her strength. She continued to scream, broke free of his arms and clawed at his face, opening gashes along his cheeks and neck.

Suddenly, the machine gun on the next building opened fire, and the staccato sound mixed with the wailing siren and the thuds of explosions in the distance. Red tracer rounds streaked up from the machine gun and this caused Bahira to scream again.

Khalil put his hand over her mouth, but she bit his finger, then brought her knee up into his groin and he rocked backwards.

She was completely hysterical, and he could see no way to calm her down.

But there was a way.

He put his hands around her neck and throat and squeezed.

The F-lll streaked southward over the desert, then Satherwaite banked hard to starboard and executed a hundred-and-fifty-degree turn that would bring them back over the coast a hundred kilometers west of Tripoli.

Wiggins said, "Nice flying, Skipper."

Satherwaite didn't acknowledge, but said, "Keep an eye out for the Libyan Air Force, Chip."

Wiggins adjusted the knobs on his radar screen. "Clear skies. Gadhafi's pilots are washing their underwear about now."

"We hope." The Fill had no air-to-air missiles, and the idiots who designed it hadn't even put a Gatling gun on board, so their only defense against another jet was speed and maneuver. "We hope," he repeated. Satherwaite sent out a radio signal indicating that Karma 57 was among the living.

They sat in silence waiting for the other signals. Finally, the radio signals began coming in: Remit 22, with Terry Waycliff piloting and Bill Hambrecht as wizo; Remit 61, with Bob Callum piloting, Steve Cox, wizo; Elton 38, with Paul Grey piloting, Jim McCoy, wizo.

Their whole flight had made it.

Wiggins said, "I hope the other guys did okay."

Satherwaite nodded. So far, this was a perfect mission and that made him feel good. He liked it when everything went as planned. Aside from the missiles and the Triple-A, which in any case had not done him or his flight mates any harm, this could have been a live-bomb training mission over the Mojave Desert. Satherwaite jotted an entry in his log. "Piece of cake."

"Milk run," Wiggins agreed.

Asad Khalil kept squeezing, and this had the intended effect of making her stop screaming. She looked at him with wide bulging eyes. He squeezed harder, and she began to thrash around beneath him. He squeezed even harder and the thrashing turned to muscle spasms, then even those stopped. He kept the pressure on her throat and looked into Bahira's eyes, which were wide open and unblinking.

He counted to sixty and released his hands from her neck. He had solved the problem of the present and all the problems of the future with one relatively simple act.

He stood, put his Koran on the prayer mat, rolled it and tied it, put it over his shoulder and went down the stairs and out the building into the street.

All the lights in the compound were out, and he made his way through the darkness toward his home. With every step he took away from the building where Bahira lay dead on the roof, he was that much more removed, physically and mentally, from any involvement with the dead girl.

A building in front of him was in ruins and by the light of the burning structure, he saw dead soldiers lying all around him. A man's face stared up at him, the white skin reddened by the reflected flames. The man's eyes had popped out of his skull and blood ran from his eye sockets, his nose, his ears, and his mouth. Khalil fought down the nausea in his churning stomach, but he caught a whiff of burning flesh and vomited.

He rested a moment, then pushed on, still carrying his prayer mat.

He wanted to pray, but the Koran specifically prohibited a man from praying after he had intercourse with a woman, unless he first washed himself, including his face and hands.

He saw a ruptured cistern pouring water down the side of a building, and he stopped to wash his face and hands, then washed the blood and urine from his genitals.

He moved on, reciting long passages from the Koran, praying for the safety of his mother, sisters, and brothers.

He saw fires raging from the direction he was headed, and he began running.

This night, he reflected, had begun in sin and ended in hell. Lust led to sin, sin led to death. Hellfires raged all around him. The Great Satan himself had delivered punishment to him and to Bahira. But Allah the merciful had spared his life, and as he ran he prayed that Allah had also spared his family.

As an afterthought, he also prayed for Bahira's family and for the Great Leader.

As Asad Khalil, age sixteen, ran through the ruins of Al Azziziyah, he understood that he had been tested by Satan and by Allah, and that from this night of sin, death, and fire he would emerge a man.

CHAPTER 17

Asad Khalil continued running toward his home. There were more people in this quarter of the compound-soldiers, women, a few children, and they were running, or walking slowly as if stunned; some he realized were on their knees praying.

Khalil turned a corner and stopped dead in his tracks. The row of attached stucco houses where he lived looked strangely different. Then he realized there were no shutters on the windows, and he noticed debris strewn in the open square in front of the houses. But even more strange was the fact that moonlight came through the open windows and doors. He suddenly realized that the roofs had collapsed into the buildings and blown out the doors, windows, and shutters. Allah, I beg of you, please, no…

He felt as if he were going to faint, then he took a deep breath and ran toward his house, stumbling over pieces of concrete, dropping his prayer mat, finally reaching the doorway opening. He hesitated, then rushed inside to what had been the front room.

The entire flat roof had collapsed into the room, covering the tile floor, the rugs, and the furniture with broken slabs of concrete, wooden beams, and stucco. Khalil looked upward at the open sky. In the name of the most merciful…

He took another deep breath and tried to get himself under control. On the far wall was the wood and tile cabinet that his father had built. Khalil made his way across the rubble to the cabinet, whose doors had been flung open. He found the flashlight inside and switched it on.

He swept the powerful, narrow beam around the room, seeing now the full extent of the damage. A framed photograph of the Great Leader still hung on the wall and this somehow reassured Khalil.

He knew he had to go into the bedrooms, but he couldn't bring himself to face what might be there.

Finally, he told himself, You must be a man. You must see if they are dead or alive.

He moved toward an arched opening that led further back into the house. The cooking and eating room had suffered the same damage as the front room. Khalil noticed that his mother's dishes and ceramic bowls had all fallen off their shelves.