Veil of Silence (32 page)

“I won’t,” she answered as she leaned her forehead on her wife’s.  “I have too much to come back for.”  She gave her a kiss, a deeper one than normal, and held it for several seconds before she gently pushed Heather away.  Leaving the bedroom, she wasn’t surprised that her wife followed her as she grabbed the car keys and headed out to the garage.  She looked back once more to see the worried look on her face.  “I’ll call if I can,” she promised and was given a slight nod as Heather held herself in, crossing her arms and looking worried.

* * * * *

The drive across Chicago was horrible.  Why on earth there would be a traffic jam this late at night was beyond Marsha’s comprehension.  Her thoughts were on what she would find once she got to her parents’ place.  She didn’t have any delusions about what Zabi would do to her parents.  He would kill them simply because he could.  Also to revenge Marsha’s insolence at daring to escape, much less take
his
children with her.  She was certain her mother’s interview had led his English-speaking brother to them.  They weren’t stupid hicks.  She had known they would find out where she was if they could.  She knew he was probably angry that he hadn’t been able to surprise her, beat her, humiliate her in front of her parents.  The man had a sadistic streak a mile wide and had enjoyed holding her captive in his cave, in his tent, in his arms.  He knew she didn’t like him.  He knew she would resist him.  Just the fact that she had stopped fighting him, resisting him, had taken some of the fun out of it for him.  He blamed his impotence on her and beatings were a way to excite him again.  Her being pregnant was the only way to assure his prowess.

Marsha wasn’t sure what she was going to do when she got to her parents’ home.  It was on the eastern shores of Lake Michigan, a very provincial little town.  Her parents’ home was cozy, gorgeous actually.  It had been a great place to grow up.  It had also proven stifling to the young lesbian who knew she couldn’t conform to their expectations.  Her joining the army had been a betrayal of sorts to her mother.  She couldn’t understand why her daughter wouldn’t behave like the other girls in their small town.  Marsha couldn’t explain that she couldn’t behave like the other girls because she had dated several.  Their experimentations had confirmed to Marsha that she was indeed a lesbian.  She sighed as she remembered the turnoff she had to take.  It had been so many years since she had been here, she hadn’t been certain she would remember.

She drove, not to her parents’ lakeside house, but to the local Walmart.  She left her service pistol, minus the round in the chamber and with the safety on, under the seat.  She didn’t want any problems due to being armed in the store.  She went in, drawing curious glances as she put things in her cart.  She wore no insignia to show her status as a lieutenant colonel.  She just had her name, Gagliano, on the front of her fatigues.

“Hey, soldier,” two guys tried to pick her up.  The look on her face had them both backing down.  This late at a Walmart was obviously not the time to pick up a lonely soldier gal.

She checked out and was back in the van within half an hour.  She checked her gun again, put the bullet back in the chamber, and put the safety back on before replacing it in her holster and snapping the flap closed for the moment.

She turned off the lights before turning down her parents’ rural road.  It was nearly impossible to see with the overhanging trees and no street lights for miles.  She counted on that for her enemies as well.  She did, however, drive carefully and only once heard the sound of gravel as she drove slightly off the road.  She parked down from her parents’ property line and slipped across.  She cringed as she used the power lock mechanism on the van and it beeped once, flashing the headlights.  Cursing under her breath, she headed into the woods and, remembering the paths of her youth when she and her friends played cowboys and indians, she slipped rapidly towards the house.

She saw that the lights were on in her parents’ home.  She knew her parents normally went to bed by ten p.m. every night.  They watched the local news and then went to sleep.  She could see someone pacing and wondered if that were Zabi, his brother Maahir, or if they had brought more of the tribesmen with them?  She saw a strange vehicle in the drive, something her parents wouldn’t be caught dead in.  It was then that she saw the other four men.  One was smoking, the light of his cigarette giving him away.  He was obviously there to guard the vehicle, but doing a terrible job.

The other three were patrolling the perimeter of the house.  She wondered why, when she realized they fully expected her to drive up with the three children and calmly hand them over.  Well, they were mistaken.  She wished she had time to sharpen the knife she had purchased to a razor edge, but it would have to do.  Even if its edge was blunt, she’d take out these men, one by one. 

She slipped up on the first of her targets, the one with the cigarette he couldn’t live without…he didn’t.  He barely made a sound as his lifeblood was pumping out of the slit across his neck.  She didn’t wait to watch and see if he would die well, she knew where the knife had cut.  She went on to her next victim and then her next.  Only the fourth, alerted somehow to his companions’ silence, was a struggle.  She ended up plunging her military-issued Ontario 490 into his heart and holding her hand over his mouth to keep him from alerting those in the house.  She then wiped her knife on his
Shalwar Kameez.  As the light from the house fell on his face, she felt immense satisfaction knowing that one of her rapists was now dead by her own hand.

Marsha slipped onto the back porch and was disappointed to find that the patio door she had counted on using was locked.  Using her knife, she attempted to jimmy the lock, but some sound or something caused Maahir to come into sight.  Marsha could feel the pounding of her pulse in her head and in her arms as she saw one of the men she hated.  Not because of the rapes, but because the man would return her to his brother out of a sense of duty.  Maahir had actually been kind to her in camp when Zabi wasn’t looking.  To have him here, in her parents’ home, was causing Marsha all sorts of anxiety.  She slipped away, hoping he wouldn’t go looking for his guards.  She went to the scene of many a childhood escape and was disappointed to find that her parents had removed the trellis she previously had used as a ladder.  Swearing under her breath, she went to the pantry window and pushed on it.  It hadn’t been locked, it had probably been overlooked.  Unfamiliar with American homes, she hoped it simply hadn’t occurred to the men that a window in the pantry would need to be checked or that there would even be a window there.

As she slipped through the pantry and into the kitchen, she could see her parents tied to the elegant dining chairs her mother took such pride in.  The set was from the 1800s and she had tried on more than one occasion to say they were a family heirloom.  They probably were, but not the Gagliano family.  The Gaglianos had come over after WWII and didn’t bring any furniture with them.  Marsha kept herself from being seen as she reconnoitered.  She didn’t want her mother or father to get hurt by their own actions, however well intentioned.

Marsha heard a creak upstairs.  She knew exactly where that loose floorboard was.  She’d had to hop over it many times in her youth to avoid detection as her mother had dog-like hearing.  Was it any surprise that MaryBeth must have realized that Marsha was in the house?  She heard her yelling, or attempting to yell through the tape they had around her mouth.  Marsha heard it and someone else heard it, and they came running.

Marsha was set, or so she thought; however, she wasn’t set to see Zabi suddenly standing before her wearing typically American jeans and a t-shirt.  She went to strike him with her knife.  He fisted it aside, knocking it out of alignment and causing it to strike his shoulder instead of the artery blow she had hoped for.  She quickly pulled back and set herself again, knowing he would strike.  The delight on his face startled her.  She knew how much he had loved to conquer this American female warrior, but his excitement was a palpable thing.

She pulled the knife back and quickly tried to strike him again.  She used her right hand, hiding her left from his view as she worked at getting her gun out.  She wasn’t going to take a chance.  She heard her mother’s grunts against the tape behind her.  She was becoming clearer and must be working at the tape across her mouth.  Marsha knew that duct tape did not hold up well with moisture.  It would be so like her mother to be unable to keep quiet and to work the tape away from her mouth.  She struck out at Zabi with the knife and he easily slapped it away again, his strength and her fear of him causing her to make mistakes.

“Where are
my
children, woman?” he asked her conversationally.

“You mean
my
children?”

“No, I mean
mine
,” he lunged at her as she tried to fend him off with the knife.  Her other hand came up and she slipped the safety off with her thumb before gripping it steadily, automatically, as it fit comfortably in her hand.  She may not have fired a gun in over five years, and then only on the practice target, but she brought it up and fired straight into Zabi’s body.  While he was celebrating his ability to fight her off with her knife, she shot him.  She didn’t stop at one shot as she saw the look of confusion on his sadistic face.  She fired and she fired and she fired.  She stopped at the count of fourteen.  Holding the gun straight out, she was shocked to watch him fall.  He had stayed upright as she quickly triggered the gun.  He had probably been dead by the second or third shot, but she had kept on shooting to be certain.  He was definitely dead as he fell.  She was confused as she heard another shot right after she stopped her own firing.  Looking up and around, she saw a neat, little hole between her mother’s eyes.  She quickly looked over her shoulder and brought her gun to bear.

Maahir must have thought the Beretta was empty, as he raised his own to shoot her in cold blood.  The service pistol she had chosen was a Beretta M9.  The standard army-issued Beretta held fifteen rounds of 9mm ammunition.  She knew that there were ten round versions available.  She only wished she could have obtained one of those versions made by a couple of companies that produced thirty round magazines.  It had felt comfortable in her hand, was lightweight, but with the clip and one in the chamber, held only fifteen rounds.  She knew that would have to be enough.  Besides, she had two more clips on her belt.  The one shot she got off before he could fire didn’t even register in her brain, it was so automatic.  She took a step…not forward, but backward and to the side, to get out of his line of fire.  She dropped the clip from the pistol and was already reaching for the replacement.  Not until the gun was reloaded and a round chambered did she even look to see that she had killed him outright.  She walked over to the body and kicked the pistol away from his hand, just in case she was wrong.  For good measure, she put a bullet between his eyes.

Turning, Marsha looked sadly at her parents.  She kept her cocked pistol in her hands as she walked towards them.  She could see the sadness in her father’s eyes as he looked over at his spouse of over forty years.  She went around behind him to untie his hands.  The smell of urine was strong in the air.

“Were there any more?” she asked him when he ripped the tape from his mouth.

“Four of them, outside,” he warned her as he went to untie his feet.

That accounted for all of them.  She let him mourn his wife, her mother, as she looked around the house, wondering what Zabi and his kinsmen had thought of the trappings of American wealth.  He must have thought it would be so easy to get her back, to get his children back.  He hadn’t counted on a well-trained officer of the army…a pissed off woman he had made helpless and victimized for so many years.  He hadn’t counted on a mother protecting her young.

The police were the first to arrive.  They found the front door open and father and daughter sitting in the living room waiting for them.  Lawrence looked dazed and a bit confused.  The other person sitting there, a woman in her twenties dressed in fatigues, held a Beretta in her hand, the safety off.

“Ma’am, could you put the gun down?” one of the officers requested gently.  Marsha looked up.  She’d heard them coming of course, but it didn’t register that she was still holding the gun.  She put the safety on and holstered the gun in one effortless move.

“Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to give me the gun,” he ordered a bit more sternly.

“I understand that; however, I will not give up my gun to anyone but an officer in the army,” she told him in a cold, flat voice.  He looked into her dark brown eyes that looked almost dilated, and shuddered.  He wondered if she was on drugs.  He’d been on the scene first and seen the dead man in the driveway.

“Are there any others here?” he asked, other officers coming up behind him.

“Yes, sir.  There are four dead outside and three inside, including my mother.”

“Did you kill them all?”

“No, sir,” she answered respectfully and then refused to answer any more questions.  Her silence annoyed them.  Since she was armed, they stationed an armed officer by the door as they checked the house out fully, both upstairs and down, inside and out, and confirmed what she had told them.  By the time they checked it thoroughly, the army officers were there.  Heather had called Marsha’s commanding officer, Colonel Brenson, and he had arranged to have her taken in by the army military police.

“Now wait here.  This is
our
jurisdiction,” the first cop on the scene attempted to pull rank.  By the time they got their pissing match finished, Marsha was disarmed, in handcuffs, and in the back of a military vehicle under arrest.  Her father was taken away in an ambulance.