Chapter 6 - Rachael's Story

"Rachael was deployed to the border of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait a year and a half ago. Thanks to those five hundred words of Arabic you taught us and more she learned herself, she acted as liaison between local citizens and the troops both in Saudi and then Kuwait. You know, we win them over with kindness by distributing chocolate bars and giving medical care, all the while gathering intelligence for the upcoming ground campaign in Kuwait.

Rachael actually liked doing it. She liked the kids, so much so that when her first deployment was up, she extended it. As she reminded me right before she agreed, she had no other pressing engagements. She still hadn't found that elusive right one. Me either, but I still wasn't giving up hope, so I deferred our bargain again."

"Hold up," Lee said. A man came, did his business and then left without hand washing. Lee thought poorly of him. "Your bargain?"

"Longtime ago, Rach and I agreed that if by our early thirties neither of us found the right one and had kids, then we'd marry and she'd have a kid for us. She ribbed me for postponing the deal for the last few years, pointing out that it was her biological clock ticking. She had a fair point, but I wasn't ready. Rach and I have always been brutally honest with each other."

"Then what?"

"Disaster. Rachael and her unit were amidst a group of nomadic women and children inside Kuwait near the Iraqi border when an Iraqi unit snuck into the village. They open fired. Mowed them down, villagers and Rachael's unit alike."

"But Rachael wasn't killed."

"She had a toddler wrapped around her chest when the shooting happened. She got hit in the shoulder, but the kid and her vest stopped most everything else except for grazes."

"The Iraqis didn't check?"

"No, they threw a grenade instead. Rachael was buried underneath a mass of mutilated bodies. Eventually the villagers pulled her out and discovered she was still alive."

"How horrible!"

"It was only the beginning."

"The Iraqis came back and found her? The villagers turned her over?"

"No, Lee, although that's what the villagers told the soldiers that came looking for her unit, that Rachael had been taken as a P.O.W.. What really happened was that the villagers kept her. Treated her wounds and kept her."

"What do you mean?"

"She was kept to replace the lives she had cost them."

Lee shook his head.

"Mothers and children were wiped out. She was to replace them. Whether she wanted to or not."

"No."

"Yes. Once she was well enough that they knew she'd survive, she was kept shackled in a locked hut with the village men free to come and go as they pleased. After two months, when it was evident she wasn't pregnant, they kept on raping her but also beat her routinely for her failure to conceive as well as for her continuing efforts to escape."

"How did she finally get out?"

"'Did she get out?' might be the ultimate question. I'd been pressing O.N.I. for months for intelligence on where she might be held. We were all willing to go wherever for her."

"I'd have signed on, you know that."

"I'd have called you too, but there was nothing to go on, not until five months later and it wasn't much. A jarhead on a routine patrol reported an odd bit of business to his commander. A nomad was wearing a bracelet that appeared to be made of human hair, red hair. He thought maybe it could have been from a horse, but there were none around. Then there was this odd Arabic yelling or grunting from a hut that had a lock on the outside, very rhythmic, which the G.I. recognized as numbers. They said a crazy old woman lived there, not much left in her mind but counting numbers."

"That info actually got passed up?"

"I guess I was pressing Admiral Johnson hard at that point. Anyway, it was the numbers that turned out to be the important follow up. Johnson sent me in alone, because it was so little to go on, a shot in the dark. With help from a staff psychologist who did hypnotherapy, we were able to get the marine to repeat the counting or at least part of it. Four numbers, not in order, that were part of her service number. Admiral Johnson still didn't want to move on it. He said the four numbers could be random coincidence, but no one just counts in random order like that. It didn't matter, however. Rach's commander was more than willing to send troops in with me," Roger began to weep. "It wasn't even hard, Lee. They hadn't many weapons. We found her shackled to a wall in this filthy hut. She looked like a concentration camp victim. Even when we got her free, all she did to communicate was repeat those damn numbers in Arabic over and over."

Lee's eyes were wet too. He stopped to hug a shaking Roger.

"She was whisked off to Germany for treatment. I was sent back to Kuwait for an emergency extraction and couldn't stay with her except for a day. I may never forgive Johnson for that. When I finally got back, I took some leave and went to Germany. She was looking a little better on the outside, but she'd been broken, Lee, badly broken. For a month, she barely spoke and when she did, it was only in Arabic. Then there were horrific nightmares. Hallucinations of dead babies suffocating her. God knows what else. They kept her heavily medicated for fear of suicide. I just sat with her. Tried to get through to the past with her. I finally started connecting by the Arabic lessons you'd given us. Remember Lee would say this and demonstrate it like this. Then finally she smiled the slightest bit when I did your banana routine."

"I stole it from Monty Python."

"Yes, but it was even funnier in Arabic. We all busted a gut that night, remember? She remembered. It was a long and slow recovery after that, but she came back, as well as could be expected I suppose."

"P.T.S.D.?"

"Other permanent injuries too. Scars on the outside and scars on the inside. All those months they raped her supposedly because they wanted her to replace their kids, they scarred her up so badly she could never carry one to term."

Lee just shook his head. "So she's been on medical leave for the last seven months or so?"

"God, if only. Her commander signed off on a medical discharge, but Johnson, that S.O.B. had other ideas."

"He couldn't send her out like that, he wouldn't?"

"Oh, sure he could, Lee. He took her back inside, got her back into shape, put her through some special training and thought he had the perfect soldier. More than willing to die in the service of her country, maybe even hoping to die. He sent her out twice - without backup."

"To do what?"

"Assassinations. All he had to do was to show her a picture of those villagers and her unit as they found them, suggest the man was responsible for that or something like it, and point her in the right direction."

"Mucked up as she is, she came back afterwards from those on her own volition?"

"He promised her more of them."

"All of which led to her current state?"

"No, there was one more mission. It pushed her backwards. She took out a chieftain of a small tribe who was collaborating with the Iraqis. His little boy jumped in the way as she took the shot. Bullet passed right through the kid's arm into the father's chest. Rachael lost it. She ran and grabbed the child, hugged and cradled him, sobbing more than the kid who got shot."

"You were her backup?"

"Wasn't supposed to be, but JimBob and I, we went rogue. We were in the area and found out where Johnson had sent her. We were afraid for her. The villagers came out, armed, as she held the child. They were going to shoot her with the child in her arms. She yelled at them to stop, to let him get clear, then they could shoot all they wanted. We didn't let them do that. In the meantime, she pulled out her Beretta and was about to blow her brains out. Luckily, the gun failed. Sand got in the firing mechanism. We ran in and hauled her out. She's been out since. Me too, courtesy of Admiral Johnson. Out without pay for three months as punishment. Nothing to go on my permanent record, of course."

"Maybe Johnson felt guilty and wanted her cared for?"

"It's possible. JimBob got off with just a warning. Johnson's always had a soft spot for Rach even if he is a heartless bastard."

"Should we get in touch with him now?"

"He won't protect her from this. He couldn't. If she did it, he'll be busy trying to figure out how to protect himself for letting her out on the streets with her head so messed up."

"Then it's going to fall to us to help her."

"I'd do anything for her, you know that. It's going to a complicated mess though."

"Roger, have you seen Rachael with the S&W recently?"

"No. She hasn't wanted to touch a gun since Iraq as far as I know. She was a reluctant participant in the target shooting yesterday."

"How was her aim?"

"A little shaky at the beginning, but it didn't take long for her to impress Melanie's relatives and friends."

"What did she shoot with?"

"My Sig Sauer. I watched her like a hawk. It's still hard to get that image of her turning the Beretta on herself in the desert out of my head."

"You don't think she's still suicidal?"

Roger shrugged. "The boy wasn't hurt that bad. We took him out with us for medical assistance because I was afraid of what she might do if she didn't know he'd be okay. Still, I worry. Something else, something like this could send her back down that road."

"We better stick tight to her, then."