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.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“Would you care to explain to me, Lieutenant Colonel Gagliano, what you were thinking last night?” Captain McKellan asked her as he visited her in the brig. She’d caused a helluva lot of paperwork for him and this was a nightmare he didn’t need. Six Afghanistan nationals who had slipped into the United States through Canada and across Michigan, were dead. Also dead was a civilian, this woman’s mother. He didn’t need it to get out that she went bonkers and killed them all.
Marsha looked up at Captain McKellan, one of the few men she felt she could trust. She didn’t blame all men for what had happened to her, but his defense of her and the long hours they had spent together meant she trusted him. “You’re a good man, Lance. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me and my wife.” She didn’t elaborate. She stuck to her infernal silence.
After trying for an hour, Lance left the room. He was met by General Biggins, who he saluted and stood at attention for. “This is a really big SNAFU, Captain!” he stated without preamble. “What the hell was an unbalanced person doing with an army-issued Beretta?”
Lance nearly laughed at the acronym SNAFU. He thought it an appropriate use of the words that it stood for: Situation Normal All Fucked Up. “Sir, I believe that Lieutenant Colonel Gagliano was defending her family. We’ll know more after forensics finishes at the site. We also need to question her father.”
“You know that the press is going to have a field day with this, don’t you? I told you to take care of this for me!”
“I did, sir. We couldn’t know that the Afghan nationals would be this determined to obtain custody of Gagliano and her children.”
“Find out how they got into this country and keep me informed. I’ve already got Kodel trying to say she lied during her testimony!”
“Yes, sir. Of course, sir,” he promised.
* * * * *
“Can I see my wife?” Heather pleaded with Lance when she finally got him to answer his phone t
wo days later. “She is alive, right?”
Lance felt terrible that he couldn’t tell Heather more. It had been a nightmarish couple of days. He had help from the State Department since they had been involved in Marsha’s case all those months ago. They helped to confirm how Zabi and his brother and the four tribesmen had gotten into the country. Nothing had alerted border patrol about six guys going sightseeing in the U.S. Meanwhile, they waited for forensics to confirm that Marsha had killed all six men. He only hoped they wouldn’t confirm she had also killed her own mother. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Gagliano,” he said formally, “Lieutenant Colonel Gagliano is being held under military…” he began, but she interrupted him.
“Lance, don’t do this to me. I beg you. I finally got her back. I need to see her. I need to know she is okay.”
“I can confirm that she is alive and unhurt,” he told her, again sounding official in case this was being monitored. He didn’t want to slip up, although her use of his first name would not look good if anyone was listening.
“That’s it? Can you tell me where they are holding her? Can I see her?” She sounded frantic and he could hear the baby crying in the background.
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Gagliano, I have no information I can give you at this time. This is a military matter.” He hated having to pull military protocol, but his butt could be on the line here too.
“Are you forgetting it was me who called you the other night?” she tried to guilt trip him.
“Yes, ma’am, I am aware of this; however, at this time Lieutenant Colonel Gagliano is being held until our investigation shows exactly what happened.”
“What did happen, Lance?”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Gagliano. I’m not at liberty to release that information at this time.”
“You bastard,” she spat at him, releasing some of her anger and anxiety at the same time as she slammed down the phone.
Lance stared at the phone as he heard the dial tone. He understood Heather’s frustration, but there really was nothing he could do. Marsha had used military equipment to kill those men. While she may have defended her parents, it didn’t justify killing them. They needed to get to the bottom of it. He’d already subpoenaed Marsha’s phone records and some other information he might need in her defense. He felt bad about Heather. She was a really nice woman and had welcomed his wife to the area and even shown her around. He sensed she had few, if any, friends and the two had hit it off. His own wife was asking questions and he could say nothing.
A week went by and still Marsha kept her silence. Lance petitioned for visitation rights for Heather and was denied. They were determined to break Marsha. Her father was able to make a statement. He told how these men had pretended to be lost and then out of the blue asked, “Aren’t you Lieutenant Gagliano’s father?” When he confirmed his identity, proud of his daughter who he considered a hero, and their apparent knowledge of her, they had pistol-whipped him and his wife and tied them up. They were convinced that Marsha was living in their home and when they saw no evidence of either her or the children, they became angry.
“Where is she?” the angry one asked them over and over. He was later confirmed to be Maahir, Zabi’s brother. He appeared to be the only one of the tribesmen who spoke English. It was only after Marsha had phoned that they calmed down. She was on her way, they were certain. Maahir taunted Lawrence and MaryBeth with that fact. There was nothing the two could do. They were tied up for days, weak from lack of food, and had pissed themselves because their captives wouldn’t let them be released for basic necessities.
“Where is Marsha? I need to see my daughter,” he sobbed.
“I’m sorry, sir. We need all the information you can give us to mount a defense for Marsha,” Captain McKellan told the distraught father.
Lawrence looked at the man who had introduced himself as her defense lawyer. He didn’t have much faith in the man since he wouldn’t tell him anything. “I want to see my daughter,” he demanded once again. They had released him from the hospital into the custody of his son the other day. Marvin had some disparaging words for the army and for the fact that his sister had killed so many in their parents’ home.
“You don’t understand. They came here to take her children,” Lawrence defended his daughter to his son.
“If she had stayed home like a good woman and not married that dyke, she would never have been over in that God-forsaken country in the first place and none of this would ever have happened,” he reasoned.
“When did I raise you to be such a sexist bigot?” he wondered as he looked at his son in horror. It was then that he realized what an influence MaryBeth had been on her children. This one was a lot like her: opinionated, self-serving, and rude. In Marsha, she had raised a rebellious woman who didn’t conform to any of the things that MaryBeth held sacred. She had gone into the army and become her own woman. He’d been disappointed to find out she was a lesbian, but she was more of a respectable human being than this son of his. She’d also had the good sense to marry Heather, who had turned out to be a good mother to their daughter Hayley.
Marvin went on and on as he drove his father to his home in Ohio. He had opinions on everything from the army to the possibility that Marsha had stolen those children and those men were merely trying to retrieve them. Lawrence stopped listening. After a lifetime of putting up with MaryBeth and her strong opinions, he was used to tuning out such crap.
* * * * *
“Lieutenant Colonel Gagliano, if you refuse to answer our questions you will be stripped of any and all commendations and sent to Leavenworth for a lifetime of hard labor,” they threatened her.
Marsha remained quiet. It wasn’t until they allowed her to see Heather that she finally broke down and cried. She cried—not for the men she had killed, not even for the death of her mother—she cried because she might not ever see her wife and children again. Even this visit was through a window and they didn’t allow the two women to touch. The phone call was stilted and non-revealing. They were both aware they were being monitored in the hopes that Marsha would give away something, anything. When Heather was taken away after a mere fifteen-minute visit and Marsha was returned to her cell, she cried.
“I’d like to see my counsel, Captain Lance McKellan,” she formally requested. They ignored her. She’d remained quiet when they wanted her to talk. Now she wanted something from them and they would let her rot. It took two days and seven requests before Captain McKellan was even informed that his client wanted to see him.
“Marsha, it’s about time,” he said to her as they sat in a room at the base’s jail.
Marsha looked around, knowing they were being listened to. “I won’t talk here. I want to tell you some things.”
“Yes, you need to tell me what happened that night,” he encouraged her.
She nodded, but that was not what he was looking for. “I’ll tell you that, but I remembered something. Is Colonel Kodel still behind this? Is this why the army is coming down on me so hard?” she indicated the handcuffs and ankle cuffs that she was wearing.
Lance looked at her incredulously, wondering where her line of thought was going. Of course Kodel was behind some of this, and so was Biggins. He was pissed that he had started to turn Gagliano into a hero only to have her go rogue. The paperwork for this incident was absolutely astounding. The State Department was also going nuts over the six dead Afghan natives they had on their hands.
“I assure you, sir,” she said formally to the captain, “Colonel Kodel and General Biggins will want to hear what I have to say. It’s regarding one Lieutenant Kodel,” she put enough insinuation into what she was saying that Lance knew whoever was listening was on the phone already to beat him to the punch.
“I hope you know what you are doing,” he muttered, wondering at the bluff she was pulling.
Marsha just winked at him, sat back, and waited. They didn’t have long to wait.
“Your client, the prisoner, is being transferred,” Lance was told
when two MPs came in to escort Marsha out to a waiting Hummer.
“Where is she being transferred?” he asked, trying to keep up. They were doing their best as Marsha could only shuffle along in the leg irons.
“Washington,” was the short answer and Lance stopped still as he watched them stuff her into the vehicle. He quickly gathered his things and returned to his base where a series of phone calls confirmed Marsha’s eventual location. He called Heather next.
“Hello?” she spoke cautiously into the phone. Somehow the media had gotten their phone number and hadn’t left her alone since the story broke that there had been a shooting spree in Michigan by an army lieutenant colonel named Gagliano. MaryBeth would have been proud of the publicity, Heather often thought.
“Heather? Don’t hang up. I need Marsha’s dress uniform and some changes of clothing. I need you to pack too. I’m heading to Washington.”
“What? Why?”
“I don’t know. I can’t tell you…not yet. Can you find someone to take the children?” He hoped she had someone in mind. He would need her to keep Marsha calm. He didn’t know what she knew, but if she was pulling a bluff, she would be going away for a long, long time.
“I guess,” she answered hesitantly, looking at the children and wondering if she dared.
“I’ll be there in a little over an hour,” he told her as he hung up the phone. He raced to his house to pack his own bag, annoyed that his wife wasn’t there. He had no time to leave her anything but a note on the fridge as he headed to Marsha and Heather’s home. He was surprised to find his own wife there answering the door.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, surprised.
“I’m babysitting,” she answered drolly and then her gray eyes twinkled at him. “Consider it good practice for when we have our own brood.”
Veil of Silence Page 25
