Angel of the Night (8 page)

That Monday, Barry got the jump on the social discussion about why he and Wendy were no longer together. He tried to claim it was because Wendy was a frigid bitch. Enough people had seen and heard the action at the theater to know what had really happened, though. Wendy’s female friends let the word out that Barry had been a jerk. Barry and Wendy never spoke again, and Wendy’s rep as being distant remained intact.

Wendy had graduated from high school as the rarest of young ladies. She was a virgin until her first year at UW-Madison. Her sexual experiences there had been…nice, but she really couldn’t see what all of the fuss was about. What she, and so many others of her generation had failed to realize was that sex was just that…unless the heart was involved.

“This is so different,” Wendy thought as she dined at La Petite Orange’ with Henry Washoe. Certainly being a half dozen years out of high school was part of the difference, but there was more to it than just that. Henry behaved as the perfect gentleman. Yet there was a boyish enthusiasm that Wendy found to be delightful.

Wendy found herself only half listening to Henry’s story about procuring a fan belt for a Humvee. As long as she nodded on occasion Henry wouldn’t know that she was thinking about what it would be like to kiss him.

The dinner concluded with La Petit Orange’s signature dessert which was Bananas Foster. When the flame from the rum began to subside, and the server spooned the warm sauce over the ice cream, Wendy took a peek at Henry. She saw a man in the midst of an experience that she had only associated with a deeply moving religious service or the throes of an orgasm. His eyes took in the dessert with a ravenous hunger. His hand tapped his spoon in anticipation of what he was about to consume. Wendy couldn’t resist giving Henry a bad time.

“Hey, big fella’. Are you going to be okay?”

She may as well have been struck dumb, and Henry struck stone deaf. Henry wouldn’t have noticed if she had removed her blouse and given him a look at her breasts. If he had broken into a chorus of “I Only Have Eyes for You” and directed it at the dessert Wendy, wouldn’t have been surprised. That was the level of his concentration. Finally, Wendy couldn’t help herself. She giggled.

Something about Wendy’s giggle shook Henry out of his trance. He looked up at his date and blushed.

“I’m sorry, Wendy. Did you say something?”

“Not so as you would notice darlin’. Enjoy,” Wendy said with a smile and an indication toward the Bananas Foster.

After dinner, and a litany of praise for the dessert from Henry, the young couple walked slowly back across the base. Henry took Wendy’s small hand in his own large one and then let go of it hastily. Wendy stopped and looked at him in surprise.

“Henry? Is everything okay?”

“Yes. Everything is more than okay, really. I just…I mean I…”Henry stammered and finally fell silent.

Wendy had an idea of what might be on Henry’s mind, but she didn’t want to assume facts not completely in evidence.

“Just tell me, Henry. Whatever it is, you can tell me.”

Henry took his hat off and held it in his hand. He blinked twice and steeled his nerve for what he wanted to say.

“Wendy, I…well I like you. I like you a lot. I may like you more than you know.”

Wendy nodded but didn’t want to interrupt Henry, who seemed to be finding his verbal stride. Henry waited a second, in part because he had been hoping that Wendy would confirm that she had feelings for him, as well. But when she remained silent he forged on.

“When I go to see Michael I find myself hoping that you’ll be there, too. When he improves, or there is other good news, I want you to know. Or even if and when there is, God forbid, bad news, I find that I want to find you and tell you about it. I...I guess that you have become really important to me.”

By this time, Wendy was doubly certain that she knew what was worrying Henry, but she wanted him to be able to say it in his own words and in his own time. Henry gulped hard and made it clear that this was his own time to share his innermost concerns.

“Wendy you’re an officer, and I’m not. You went to OCS to train to be someone really important. I’m just a single stripe parts procurer, and you save people’s lives! Not only can we not be in a relationship because of the military’s rules, but I should be grateful that you even talk to somebody like me! But you do, and now I have all of these feelings building up inside me and…and…, and I’m just miserable about it. That’s all.”

Wendy took a good long look at the man standing before her with his hat, literally, in his hand. He had poured his heart out to her, and now the ball was in her court. There was certainly some truth to what Henry had said. Oh, not the nonsense about how he shouldn’t even be talking to her. That was simply ridiculous. But absolutely a relationship between officers and enlisted personnel was frowned upon by the military. Wendy knew that Henry deserved an answer to his thoughts. She just wasn’t completely sure in what form her answer should be. She decided to start talking and see where her heart and mind led her half of the conversation.

“Henry, let’s sit down over here,” Wendy said walking toward a bench in a park-like area near the children’s playground. They sat down, both grateful for the privacy afforded by the few trees that rimmed the play area. Wendy turned to Henry and took one of his hands in both of hers.

“I have grown to care a lot about you, Henry. I don’t think I realized just how much until tonight. We laugh, we talk, we joke around, and sometimes we talk about serious subjects. That means the world to me. You are a really good man with a really good heart.”

Now it was Wendy’s turn to lose her words for a moment. What she was about to say could change the course of two lives.

“There isn’t any choice, though. I have to say what needs to be said.”

“Henry there are a few things that we don’t know about each other yet. Significant things at that. But my heart wants what it wants and so does yours! Sure, there will be people who will say that we shouldn’t be together, but it happens! It happens everywhere, but for sure it happens when men and women are together thousands of miles from home and are surrounded by danger every day. Henry, my heart hears what your heart is saying. And my heart is answering ‘Yes’, Henry!”

Henry’s eyes filled with joyous tears. His heart pounded so rapidly that he thought that he might be having a heart attack. But he didn’t care. What Wendy had said was more than he had dared hope. As he looked down into Wendy’s chocolate brown eyes, he knew that he never wanted to do anything to cause them to show pain or fear. He knew that this woman was the one for whom he had been saving himself for all those lonely and cold winter nights in the Northern Plains. Henry wanted to tell Wendy, and the world, that he was in love. But he held his fire on that account. He didn’t want to scare her off.

He didn’t need to tell Wendy his thoughts. She could read him like a book. She was thrilled to have been able to make this large and handsome man happy with her words. At that moment, she was confident that she and Henry could survive whatever secrets hadn’t yet been told.

Henry walked Wendy to her CHU like the gentleman that she had already realized him to be. At the door, he took her in his arms and kissed her in a way that she had never been kissed before. There was passion, of course, but she had been kissed passionately before she had ever set foot on an army base. But with Henry there was a deep tenderness in his kiss. She returned his kiss with equal ardor. The romantic scene on the sandy sidewalk in front of her CHU was raising the air temperature around Henry and Wendy until it was broken up by a catcall from the street.

“Get a room!”

Henry tried not to react but couldn’t help it. Nothing breaks up a passionate kiss like one of the two kissers laughing into the mouth of the other. Wendy stepped back and smiled at Henry, who apologized.

“Wendy, I’m sorry. The thing is, I’ve said that to people before…but nobody has ever said it to me!”

Wendy knew then if she hadn’t known before that Henry was the rarest of young men. He was kind, romantic, funny, sexy, and someone who was blissfully unaware of just how attractive he was. She knew from some of their earlier conversation that he hadn’t had many girlfriends. Though he hadn’t come out and said it, she thought that he might still be a virgin. While that certainly wasn’t a requirement it was definitely a plus to Wendy. Her sexual experiences had been rare and, on the whole, rather unsatisfying. She had a feeling that things in bed might be different with young Mr. Washoe.

Henry didn’t know how to ask for the next step. He was, technically, a virgin, though he had been sent off to war by a patriotic young lass with a talented mouth and a weakness for soldiers. Since then there hadn’t been any women in Henry's life at all, and the lack was wearing to a red-blooded male in his early 20s.

Truth be told, he had been a little uncomfortable down below for over an hour of his dinner with Wendy. He wanted to be invited into her CHU but didn’t simply want to come out and ask. He decided to use the suggestion from the passing motorist as an idea.

“So…shall we? Get a room I mean.”

Wendy had never seen a man turn as red as Henry did when he asked his question. Henry’s already ruddy complexion turned scarlet as he waited to see whether he was going to get laughed at, slapped, or invited into Wendy’s garden of earthly delights for a night of romp the like of which he had never known.

She wanted to acquiesce to Henry’s request. Truly she did. But she felt that this probably wasn’t the right moment. She hoped that the moment would come soon, but not tonight.

“Henry, this has been a great night. I have loved every minute of it, including right now. But let’s not jump into something and not get to know one another as well as we should get to know each other. Does that make sense to you?

What made sense to Henry and what he wanted to have happen were two wildly divergent things at that moment. There was within the young man, a volcano of impressive proportion. And yet, he did understand Wendy’s position. This was only their first date. Sure, they had gotten to know one another through and around the drama of Michael Kitcavage’s heat stroke, kidney failure and tentative recovery. But that wasn’t the same thing as spending quality time together, getting to know one another inside and out. Henry reluctantly stepped away from Wendy.

Wendy laughed and gave Henry a warm hug. Through the hug, she could tell that his desire for her was at least as great as her desire for him.

“Waiting is for the best,”
she told herself.
“Too bad what is best and what is easiest so often don’t match up.”

After Wendy and Henry had taken their reluctant leave of each other, she went into her CHU and walked back into her bedroom. She locked the door and approached the bedside table, where a pad of paper and a pen were sitting. From under her bed, she took a box that said “Nylons” on the cover. She opened it and reached under a small pile of nylons that were on top. Fumbling around the bottom of the box she finally found what she was looking for. She pulled out a tiny rectangular object, less than one inch by one inch in size.

It was a specially built receiver (named X 11 Texas 10) developed in 2009 by British Intelligence for use in the worldwide hunt for Al-Quaeda leader Osama Bin Laden. Weighing less than 2/15 of an ounce the device was nevertheless the most powerful and sensitive receiver ever built. There were fewer than 100 in operation worldwide at any one time, and the whereabouts were kept a closely guarded secret by the governments who used them in covert operations.

If a bystander were to stumble upon the X 11 Texas 10, he or she was likely to believe that it was a packing disk of some kind. It had neither buttons nor dials and had no distinguishing markings whatsoever. It was, however, a powerful reception device for use by intelligence and counter intelligence agents.

Carrying the receiver into her closet Wendy plugged it into a hidden wall socket that had been specially rigged up for use with the X 11 Texas 10. While the socket looked like a normal electrical outlet, it would read “dead” if a normal multimeter was attached to it to measure amperage. It only recognized the X11 Texas 10 and, for added security, would only work with this particular X 11 Texas 10.

Wendy sat on the floor of the closet, ready to take notes. After a couple of soft clicks, the X 11 Texas 10 came to life. A familiar voice spoke to Lt. Wendy Shafer.

“Tomorrow at 0530. The usual location.”

Wendy put her pen and pad of paper away. “It won’t be hard to remember that one,” she said to herself. “I had better get some sleep. It’s only six hours to 0530.”

Wendy’s sleep was restless that night. Her dreams were of black helicopters and gunfire…and of a big man with a bigger smile.

Henry didn’t get to sleep until extremely late that night. Before he even went back to his CHU, he went to the Glynnis Unit to see if they would let him see Michael one last time before he was discharged. He was summarily turned away.

“Pfc. Kitcavage needs his rest, young man,” the receptionist told Henry. “And, quite frankly, so do you. What’s the meaning of showing up here after midnight and wanting to visit a patient? What’s the matter with you, boy?”

At the moment, Henry didn’t believe that there was anything wrong with him at all; or with anything else in the world, for that matter. Sure he wanted to know how Michael was doing on his last night in the hospital, but mostly he wanted to tell Michael about the date with Wendy. He wanted to recount the things that she had said, and how he had responded. He wanted to relive the evening to his friend as if dinner had been the Super Bowl, and now it was time for the highlights on ESPN’s Sports Center. Henry was, as his father used to put it, high as a kite.

Henry left the Glynnis Unit and walked over to The Afghan Canteen. While he was there he visited with some friends and tapped his fingers to the music that was being played on the vintage Wurlitzer jukebox. But his mind was somewhere else.

The next morning, well before the sun peeked over the Afghan/Pakistani border, Wendy had been up and had dressed. She chose a darker hued uniform than was usually worn in the desert, but that was by design. As she slipped out of the door of her CHU she was almost invisible in the moonlight. She checked left and right as she walked outside. Seeing no one, she walked quietly toward the main gate.

While Wendy didn’t see anyone that she knew well on her way to the main gate she did run into Sgt. Will Hale. Sgt. Hale had been a patient of Captain McGuire’s the previous spring. Wendy remembered him as someone who took the admonition to “stay on top of your pain” very seriously. He had used his post-operative morphine button so often that he had almost broken it in two. And still he asked for more. Wendy and Sophia had both assisted in his surgery, which was a routine orthopedic procedure. Both nurses had shut down Sgt. Hale’s somewhat persistent requests to get together later, as well. While Sgt. Hale wasn’t the very last person that Wendy wanted to see so early in the morning, she would have liked to avoid the encounter. Her luck wasn’t running that way, though.

“Hey Nurse! Remember me? Ned Hale! You were my favorite nurse!”

“Your favorite nurse was whichever one that would let you paw her, and since neither Sophia nor I would do that, that makes me your favorite. At least for right now.”
Wendy thought.

Aloud, Wendy said, “Sgt. Hale. Of course, I remember you. How are you feeling?”

Sgt. Hale held up his fingers and wiggled them at Wendy. “With my fingers, that’s how I feel!” he said, and guffawed as if he had just made the funniest joke ever told.

Wendy was in neither the mood nor the circumstance to be able to stand and have a conversation with Sgt. Ned Hale. So, rather than allowing herself to be stopped, she stepped around Sgt. Hale and kept walking. The sergeant called out from behind her. ” Stop by and we’ll go out for a drink.”

“I’ll do that,” Wendy said, waving goodbye without turning around.

“No, I won’t”
Wendy thought as she turned the last corner and headed toward the main gate. Sgt. Hale was off of her mind as soon as she walked away from him. There was much more important business to attend to today, than the unwanted attentions of a ham-handed Lothario. And it was the kind of important business that could have a huge impact on her life.

Wendy stood in the moon shadow behind the Post Exchange. The PX wouldn’t be open for another hour, so she wasn’t likely to be spotted by anyone as she waited. She checked her watch and realized that she had seven minutes to wait until 0530 rolled around. She watched the first rays of the sunrise appear on the horizon, and took some deep cleansing breaths.

At the stroke of 0530, the same Lincoln Continental that had come through the gate several days earlier glided inside the perimeter of Kabul Air Base. Wendy quickly covered the 50 feet that separated her hiding place from the big car. She slid into the plush leather back seat of the luxury automobile, and closed the door. The driver made a U-Turn and allowed the car to coast out of the gate. Then he pressed down on the accelerator, and the car sped toward the rising sun.

Wendy knew how this was going to go. She had been here before. There would be silence in the car until it had left town and passed into the desert proper. Only then would she learn the purpose of the meeting. Wendy watched the terrain of downtown Kabul whiz by for several minutes.

After several minutes on the open road, the big car was steered off of the main A01 highway and onto an unmarked dirt road. The luxury car, more suited for an American interstate than it was for rutted dirt trails, squeaked and groaned at the abuse it was taking. After almost two miles of bouncing along the trail the car was pulled off the road on the left. The engine was killed. Wendy stopped looking at the dusty countryside and turned toward the other passenger in the back seat.

Lt. Major Will Hudspeth looked back at her. “They are closing in, I’m afraid,” he said. “We are doing what we can through back channel negotiation, but I can’t, in all honesty, tell you how it’s going to go from here.”

“I understand. It was a sensitive situation from the get-go. You never promised me any kind of positive outcome. But do the people at the top know what we know? Do they know how critical the mission was to the interests of not only the United States, but the war effort as well?”

Dr. Hudspeth’s lips narrowed as he pondered his answer. Wendy Shafer had been a valuable ally in an important operation of international significance. He had grown to like and respect her, even as he had been forced to distance himself publically from her in the medical center. He remembered how he had upbraided her in front of her co-workers during and after surgery. She hadn’t deserved that, but she had responded exactly as he had expected that she would respond. She had confronted him in a setting as public as the one in which he had reprimanded her. As far as the other people at the air base were concerned, Lt. Major Doctor Will Hudspeth and 2nd Lt. Wendy Shafer were colleagues in medicine who didn’t care much for each other. That was the way that it needed to be so that they would be able to work undercover together. In reality, Dr. Hudspeth believed that Wendy Shafer was a fine nurse, and one with whom he would work in any operating theater in the world. At this juncture, though, he didn’t know if he, or any other doctor, would get that opportunity. Things were just that critical.