Angel of the Night (11 page)

McLean was apparently going to be the lead interrogator as he was the one to speak first. “Lt. Shafer, it has been no secret that the investigation of the death of General McKillop has taken top priority here at Kabul Air Base. We have some questions for you concerning the case. You are under no compulsion to answer our questions, but we’re sure that you want to cooperate to your fullest extent. Am I right?”

Wendy didn’t answer immediately. She hadn’t been placed under arrest. In fact, she had been treated respectfully to this point. Should she answer their questions or should she hold her tongue and ask for counsel? She knew that military law allowed interrogators greater freedom than did civilian law. That constituted danger. On the other hand, if she refused to talk didn’t that reflect a guilt that she wanted, at all cost, to avoid? She decided to answer some preliminary questions and stop if things got out of control.

“Yes, Captain. I want to help however I can.”

Captain McLean let the barest hint of a smile cross his lips. Wendy didn’t get the impression that much more of a smile than that ever landed on McLean’s face.

Capt. McLean leaned forward in his chair. Capt. Harcourt moved his chair closer to the edge of the desk.

“Lt. Shafer, do you know a Lt. Major William Randolph Hudspeth?”

“Yes I do. I have assisted him in surgery on more than one occasion.”

“Have you had any reason or occasion to meet with him outside of work?”

“Why yes, we have seen one another outside of work? We have also been at the same table in the dining room and also at The Afghan Canteen, though not together. This is a big place, but a very small town when it comes right down to it. I’m sure you know that.”

“Yes, we do know that. But we want to focus on any contact that you may have had with Lt. Hudspeth outside of the work environment. Who does he talk to? What are his habits outside of work?”

Wendy’s throat went dry. This wasn’t going in the direction that she expected. Were they going to trap her into lying about being with Hudspeth outside the gates a few days earlier? Maybe she should stop this line of questioning in its tracks. She felt the hair on her neck slowly settle back into place. She would play out the string a little bit, but she was surely going to be careful.

“Captain McLean, Lt. Hudspeth and I are not close. In fact, we have had differences of opinion at work on more than one occasion. But I don’t really know the man.”

Captain McLean slid his chair back and folded his arms. “Lt. Shafer, I know that this investigation has been stressful on everyone her at KAB. I appreciate your answering our questions. Please be available if we need to be in touch again, won’t you?” He stood up and walked out without waiting for a response.

Captain Harcourt asked Wendy if she needed a ride back to her CHU, but she declined, on the pretense of needing some air. As quickly as the line of questioning began, it was over, and Wendy was free to go.

On her walk back to the CHU, Wendy had some time to think.
“What was that all about? Were they just laying out a snare for me? Or is it Hudspeth that they want?”

When Wendy got back to her CHU, Henry was still there. He had nearly worn a rut in the linoleum as he paced back and forth through the living space. When Wendy came back, and wasn’t accompanied by police, the relief on Henry’s face was palpable. He caught Wendy up in an embrace that nearly knocked the wind out of her.

“Oooof! Henry I can’t breathe!” Wendy said as she realized that she was holding him as tightly as he was holding her. They both loosened their hold a bit until they were able to see each other’s eyes. What they saw in the other’s eyes would be a look that both would remember forever. There was mutual relief and love, mixed with a growing smoke.

Without another word, Henry took Wendy’s hand and led her back to the sleeping area where they had been hours before. They made love, but it was different this time. Certainly the passion was as strong as it had been earlier, but gone was the frantic urgency. They made love, not as a starving man greets a buffet, but as a couple who knew that this was a treasure to be shared forever.

“I don’t know if I’m out of the woods yet,” Wendy thought. “But this is the man that I want beside me no matter what life brings.”

The next morning Wendy awoke to the smell of coffee in the Keurig. Henry had made breakfast for her so she could sleep in a bit. He had offered to do so the night before, and Wendy had gratefully accepted. She was supposed to be at work at 0830 for a full eight hour shift. She and Henry acknowledged, with secret and silent smiles, how easy they found “together” to be.

“I could get used to this,” Henry said after he and Wendy had smiled at each other about a hundred times.

Three orthopedic surgeries were on the agenda when Wendy got to work. Only one of the broken bones had been suffered in combat. One soldier had fallen off the roof of his CHU trying to patch the roof and another one had broken his leg playing soccer on the same playfield where Michael Kitcavage had almost died months earlier.

“They should stick to American football. It’s safer than soccer!” Wendy said to Sophia as they were scrubbing in for separate surgeries that were to be performed at the same time. Sophia told Wendy that she would gladly trade her bowel resection for a broken leg.

“I have a hot date tonight, and the bowel resection might take all day.”

“Who is the lucky guy?” Wendy asked.

“Pete Thommerson. He’s a pilot. He’s only been here about three weeks.”

Wendy wished Sophia Godspeed with her bowel and went into the operating theater. She was surprised to see Capt. McGuire ready to start the procedure. It was supposed to be a surgery performed by Hudspeth and Wendy had been anxious to see if she could find out anything about the investigation.

Capt. McGuire acknowledged Wendy’s puzzled look. “Dr. Hudspeth never showed up for work today. I went by his place this morning, and he wasn’t there.”

The surgery went off without a hitch, and the patient was sent to recovery. Wendy never failed to admire the precision work that Capt. McGuire brought to the operating table each and every time that he cut. She knew that there was no one that she would rather have work on her than the kindly prematurely gray doc from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, who was serving his third deployment in six years.

Wendy was taking a break between surgeries when her phone rang. It was rare that she got a call at work because there were no calls allowed in the operating wing and the cell service in the rest of the medical complex was spotty at best. She answered the call before the second ring was complete. She was surprised to hear the voice of Lt. Major Will Hudspeth. His voice was strained, and his words were clipped.

“I need you to come to the gate, now!”

“I’m on my way. I’ll tell…” that was as far as she got.

“Don’t take the time to tell anyone! Come now!”

Wendy left the lunchroom immediately. She was still in scrubs and surgery shoes as she walked quickly outside and toward the main gate, where a car was waiting.

The back door swung open as she got to the Lincoln. Hudspeth was inside.

“I have to leave,” he said, without even a greeting. “I just found out from my sources inside the investigation that they found and deciphered some encrypted messages that were sent to me, and some of my answers to them. They have concluded that I killed McKillop. I have to go.”

Wendy’s eyes widened as she tried to absorb all that she was hearing. “But they will eventually find out that I….”

“Not if I can help it. Listen to me. Hell, if they catch me I’m past my prime anyway. That’s the way the people we work for think of it. You’re good at what you do…both of things that you do,” Hudspeth allowed a small smile to cross his lips. “You’re a valuable asset. So get out of the car and go back to work.”

“Will I hear from you again?” Wendy asked.

Hudspeth paused a moment and looked at Wendy with warmth. “You never know, kid. Now get out.”

Wendy opened the car door and did as she was told. She needed to get back into the operating wing, but her head was spinning with the news that she had just heard. It took the heat off of her. But at what price?

Wendy finished work just after 1700 hours. Everything was thrown off a bit because she had been late coming back, but no one asked her about it. She did her job competently and efficiently but couldn’t help wondering what was going on with Major Hudspeth.

When Wendy went back to her CHU, she was greeted with a pleasant surprise. Not only was Henry waiting for her, but Michael Kitcavage was waiting there, as well. Fully recovered from his bout with heat stroke and the kidney issues that followed, he wanted to take Henry and Wendy to dinner to celebrate his health and their new relationship.

The three soldiers walked companionably down the street. Wendy smiled as Henry and Michael were giving each other grief about anything and everything. She was in love with Henry but counted Michael as a friend, as well.

Michael wanted to take his friends someplace nicer than Frisko Freeze but couldn’t afford La Petite Orange’. The Afghan Canteen was out because it was hard to talk in there. That left The Olive Pit. It was the closest thing to true Italian food that could be found on the grounds of the air base. After a short wait, they were seated at a table for four. The waiter discreetly removed the fourth chair and place setting.

Right after the antipasto plate had been consumed at Wendy’s table, the calm of the restaurant was broken by news that was passed from table to table. A black Lincoln Continental had burst into flames on the A01 52 miles out of town. There had only been one person in the car, and he had not survived. Wendy knew before the word got around that the person in the car had been Lt. Major William Hudspeth.

Details were sketchy, but the Lincoln Continental had apparently run off the road as it raced through the desert toward the Pakistan/Afghan border. There had apparently been munitions of some kind in the trunk because the car had blown up when it had run off the road. No one seemed to know whether the car had left the road because it was being driven at such a high rate of speed or whether it had been shot at and intercepted. Its destruction was total to the point that discovering if it had taken fire was impossible.

Wendy left the table, and the lively discussion that was going on about the accident to have some time alone in the ladies room. She dabbed at her eyes as she recalled the last conversation that she and Major Hudspeth had shared in the car. She recalled the fondness in his eyes when he called her “kid.”

God grant him entry into your Holy domain,”
Wendy prayed.

The investigators left Kabul two days later. The official word, made in the form of another press conference from the theater in the Henderson Center, was that Lt. Major William Hudspeth and Brigadier General Cole McKillop had gotten into a dispute that had turned deadly. There would be no further announcements about the case, and no one cared to dig into it any further.

General McKillop’s widow received all of the death benefit and life insurance that she deserved. Major Hudspeth’s parents and siblings memorialized him in his home town of Elkhart, Indiana. Proper grieving was difficult for them because no traces of his body were ever recovered from the wreckage. He had never married and had no children.

Henry and Wendy’s relationship continued to grow deeper. As the holiday season came around, they could often be seen holding hands and walking through the cold winter evenings. Wendy bought Henry a leather bomber jacket for Christmas. He bought her a turquoise ring that was, to them both, a promise ring.

The promise ring was replaced the following Easter with a real engagement ring. Henry had proposed to Wendy in the same theater, and the very same seats, from which they had seen The Hunger Games months earlier. At first she thought that he had lost his mind when he dropped to one knee on the popcorn and soda stained floor of the theater. A few seconds later it was she who lost her mind when she realized why he was down there.

Henry and Wendy planned to be married by his uncle Jordan Travers, an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), in Racine. Her hitch in the military would be complete six months before Henry’s.

“Just enough time to plan a big wedding,” she told him when he was sad that she would be leaving him to fend for himself in Kabul. “I want to show you off to all of the little old ladies in Racine who thought that I would never get married. Wait until they get a load of you, darlin’”

When she said that, Henry laughed and carried her into the bedroom so that she could, in fact, get a load of him. Their passion only grew as they got to know one another more. They felt as if they had known one another forever, even though it had been less than a year earlier that Henry had rushed to tell her about Michael Kitcavage, who was scheduled to be Henry’s best man.