Veil of Silence (4 page)

“This looks pretty formal to me, Major,” the captain said as he looked around deliberately at the camera, the transcriber, and the members in their uniforms.  “I’m calling a halt to this now until I have heard from my client.”

“Captain Gagliano is not under–” he began again, only to be interrupted by the captain.

“No, and with my help she won’t be,” he finished for him.  “Captain,” he indicated with his hand that Marsha was to rise and follow him.  She glanced at the group of people she had come before and back at the major.  She hadn’t realized her story and interrogation might actually be used against her.

“This is outrageous!” another of the people sitting there interjected.  It seemed they were more upset that they had been interrupted than they were about doing anything wrong.

“You will be informed after I consult with my client,” he told them.  He wasn’t afraid of their rank.  They had tried to pull a fast one and nearly succeeded.  Anything that Captain Gagliano had said could and would be used against her.  There was a lot more going on here than she knew.  He escorted her out of the conference room.  “Do you know where we can talk?  I’m unfamiliar with the embassy.”

“What’s going on, Captain?” she felt bold enough to ask.  They were, after all, of equal rank.

“I’m not quite sure, but General Biggins assigned me to this case against the direct wishes of a Colonel Kodel.  Do you know either of these men?”

“No, I don’t,” she confessed.

“I’m sorry, but you are going to have to repeat your story several times.  Not only to me, but to them,” he indicated with a nod of his head towards the room they had just left, “and probably even more.”

“I don’t know that I can,” she answered honestly, her hand easing along her very pregnant belly.

“Captain, you are going to
have
to,” he told her ominously.

Marsha looked into his eyes and believed him.  It was all too much.  She had just wanted to go home.  Now that she was here at the embassy, she just wanted to go back to the house and be with her wife and children.  That was all the drama she could handle right now.

The medical exams just this morning on her and the children had been unsettling, and the shots the children had been given to get them caught up on their vaccinations had caused them to cry and scream.  Her heart had broken at their sobs.  She hadn’t known she had almost no rights as they processed her and the paperwork they had generated.  Her own exam had felt like an invasion and she resented every bit of it.  This morning’s interview was supposed to be the end of it, or so she had thought.  She had been enticingly and vaguely promised that she would finally see her wife, that Heather would be told she was alive.  The most she hoped for was Skyping with her for now.  Then maybe, in a few days, actually seeing her.

“We are going to have an expert on PTSD listen to you as you tell me your side of things before we put you through that,” his head nodded back to the room again.

“What about back pay?” she asked, just to see his reaction.

“What about it?” he asked, curious.  He was surprised she wasn’t asking other questions.

“My understanding is that a POW or MIA gets back pay at the rank they were as well as any promotions.  Has my wife been living on my lieutenant’s pay or my captain’s pay?  Since I wasn’t listed as dead, she couldn’t collect any death benefits.”  She’d guessed that much although she and Heather hadn’t yet talked.  “I
should
be a lieutenant colonel by now,” she pointed out.

“We’ll get to all that,” he dismissed, trying to waylay her.

“No, we’ll get to all that
simultaneously
,” she answered, some of the cockiness and assuredness coming back to her.  They weren’t going to find anything to accuse her of.  She’d done nothing wrong, only survived under harsh conditions.  Part of the agreement with the army had been that they would take care of her family.  They hadn’t, as far as she knew, but she hadn’t spoken to her wife yet to confirm this.  She pointed that out to her legal representative.  “I know they can’t wait until I give birth.  They want to know now, but I can and will put a wrench in their plans if things don’t improve soon.”  Her hand indicated the room they had just left.

Lance looked surprised at the very pregnant woman and then grinned ruefully.  She knew she had the army by the proverbial balls, but they wouldn’t like her squeezing.  The fact that she refused to leave the embassy, forcing them to come to her instead, had been a surprise.  He would look into her claims.  She did have a point.  He led her away, speaking low, “Your wife was provided a life insurance policy.  The Servicemembers Group Life Insurance.  The current benefit is, I believe $400,000.”

“Did my wife receive the $400,000?”  Maybe Heather wasn’t even around.  What weren’t they telling her?

“Well, you weren’t declared dead.  The benefits do expire after a certain point after you are presumed dead.  You are right, soldiers taken POW still receive promotions.  I’ll look into that,” he promised, knowing he had a lot of work to do here.  She wasn’t going to make it easy and he didn’t mind that.  He was pleased to see her spirit showing.  He’d seen tapes of the interview earlier this week here in Kabul and she had been so worn down.  Wearing the burqa had given her a whole different appearance and demeanor.  She looked hideous in the sweats they had now given her.  There was going to be a bit of problem with back pay, but he thought he knew a few strings he could pull.  Her case being assigned to him, and the fact that there were children involved, made the situation…interesting.  “So, your wife didn’t get paid any insurance benefits, right?” he confirmed.

“We’ll have to talk to my wife.  I haven’t seen or spoken to her yet,” she told him.  He seemed to have her best interests at heart, at least she hoped he did.  She wasn’t so sure…she wasn’t sure she could trust anyone.

“Then let’s go talk to your wife,” he stated as he escorted her out of the building into the garden.  He looked around as though for a telephone or a room they could use to talk.

Marsha’s heart was in her chest for a moment with the hope that she could at least hear Heather’s voice.

“Wait a minute, Captain,” a voice halted them.  “You cannot leave the grounds until we have interviewed the captain.”

Another captain was standing there, saluting the lawyer, but not letting him or Marsha leave the garden.

“Can’t this wait?” He was exasperated and wanted to talk to her somewhere they wouldn’t be overheard.

“No sir.  If you come this way, I will show you somewhere you can talk with your…” he glanced at Marsha clad in the tight sweat clothes and finished with “client.”

Marsha was feeling decidedly uneasy.  Her children had been ushered to ‘play’ with a woman she didn’t really know and they didn’t know, but with all of the upset over the past few days, they seemed to be more accepting.  She knew better.  It was just a matter of time before they started crying and screaming.  The newness of the situation would wear off.  She had been so close to talking with her wife and daughter, she had almost forgotten the other two children for a moment.  She now realized that fate had intervened.  The army wasn’t going to let her do anything without a full explanation.  Technically, they still owned her.

As they were escorted back into the building, she breathed a sigh of exasperation.  It really was too much to ask of her and she felt herself wanting to kick and scream about the situation.  She knew it was a relatively short period of time and without a full explanation they weren’t going to let her back in the States, but she was keeping her silence…for now.

“Were you going somewhere, Captain?”  Major Scott and the colonel that had been part of the panel were standing inside the doors.  Obviously they had sent the other captain out to stop them from leaving the building or doing anything they opposed.

“Just taking her to speak to her wife and child,” he said breezily, as though that were the most natural thing in the world.

“That will have to wait until she has been fully debriefed,” the colonel said coldly.

CHAPTER FOUR

“Okay, Captain.  You are going to have to trust me.  This is Captain Lamar.  She is a doctor, a psychiatrist, an expert on PTSD who will help us with your case.”  He let her acknowledge the presence of the people he had brought to the room they were using for this interview.  “I’m going to film this so we can use it for our case and then perhaps some of this, that I know is going to be painful, won’t have to be repeated,” he told her hopefully.  He knew if the army wanted to be difficult, they would and could ask her over and over again.  With the testimony of Dr. Lamar, perhaps they could avoid some of the uncomfortable repetitions that the army would attempt.

“This is my assistant, Corporal Harris.  He will help expedite some of the paperwork we need to get started looking into some of the things we already discussed.”  Marsha knew he meant the other promotion, back pay, and other things that would have to be looked into.  She nodded as she sat down where he indicated.  The camera was directly across from her.

“Tell us, in your own words, exactly what happened on…” he began, similar to what Major Scott had begun in the other interrogation.

She started with, “We were heading to the base on the helicopter.  It went down.  I don’t know what happened to the others, but I was taken by a local tribe.  You see the results of that,” she indicated her belly and gestured outside in a vague direction of where her children were playing.  She actually looked pained to even be sharing that tidbit of information.

Captain McKellan smiled ruefully.  This was going to be harder than he thought.  “Perhaps you should start again,” he clicked the camera to pause it.  “Captain, the more you tell us in detail, the better this will go,” he advised.  “I’m hoping they will accept this and you won’t have to keep repeating it.”  He looked at her hopefully until she nodded and took a deep breath to continue.  Captain McKellan pushed the button on the remote control of the camera again to restart it.

“I was about to head home.  I’d gotten my papers and had to get over to the base to board a military flight back to the States.  The UH-1 was the quickest way to go and the pilots offered to give us a ride to the air force base.  I got on with three other guys.”

He stopped her.  “I thought you stated there were six of you?”

She nodded to acknowledge that.  “Yes, with the pilot and copilot there were six of us.”

Filling in that little detail, verifying her past story, he allowed her to continue at her own pace.

“I remember it was a beautiful day, perfect actually, not a cloud in the sky.  It wasn’t dusty as the rain had just stopped the previous day.  Even the rotors from the helicopter didn’t stir up much.”  She glanced at the captain and then the corporal, who nodded in understanding.  The dust here in Afghanistan could be deadly.  The dust storms had been known to wipe out equipment and men like nothing seen before.  “I’d packed up the previous day and had my gear bag, so did the others.  Two were being reassigned and one was going home like me.  We had to get to Bagram to take a flight out for home.  It was going to be a quick hop by helicopter.  It’s not like they sent it for us special or anything. 

Everything started out fine.  It was as we flew over some mountains that we did a dip that had my stomach dropping out.”  She unconsciously patted her rounding stomach as she remembered.  “We all hung on tightly to our straps.”  She meant the straps that hung down from the helicopter in convenient spots.  “I mean, we were all buckled in so we didn’t worry, you know?”  She looked around and at their understanding nods she continued.  “A loud bang was heard and as I was by a window, I looked up.  I swear I saw something spin off the chopper and black smoke could be seen streaming behind us almost immediately.  I saw the pilot fighting the stick.  He yelled that we were going down.  They were both trying something, but as I’m not a pilot I don’t know how effective they were,” she stopped again to look at the captain and corporal.

“The crash itself was anti-climactic.  I mean, we knew we were going down, but it felt like something from the rides at an amusement park.  Maybe those pilots really knew their stuff after all.  Watching the others, I knew we were all facing the reality of dying.  The spinning was sickening.”  She rubbed her stomach some more, remembering how she had felt like vomiting.  She knew better than to look outside and watch the mountain spin before the windows, so she had closed her eyes.  She closed them now as she remembered.  “Knowing you are going to die and actually hitting the mountain…” she shook her head.  She was quiet for a moment.

“Were you hurt?  Did anyone die on impact?” Captain McKellan asked into the quiet.  He could see she wasn’t having an easy time.  She also spoke oddly, haltingly, as though English were hard for her after all this time.

“The pilots were both dead.  A huge boulder came through the front glass,” she opened her eyes to look into the camera and then glanced at Captain Lamar.

“Do you remember their names?” he asked.  He knew from his reports, but he wanted her to say them if she knew.

She shook her head.  “I had only just met them.  Sergeant Ames was the only one I knew and that was because he was going home too.”

“What happened when you hit?”

“The noise was horrible, the rotors kept spinning and hitting the mountainside.  I was afraid they’d somehow slice through the helicopter.  We couldn’t get out the door behind the copilot as it was against the mountain.  We were trying to get the door open on my side, but it took three of us to pry it open as it had buckled a bit with our crash.  We ended up kicking at the thing.  The cabin was filling with that black smoke and I thought we were going to choke to death from it.”  She paused for a moment, breathing deeply as she relived it in her mind.  It wasn’t that she hadn’t thought about it over the years, but no one in Zabi’s village wanted to hear and had never asked.  They had their own version of events.