The Summer House(41)
When he gets out of the house, back onto the porch, he takes a deep, cleansing breath.
The house was locked, the car is still here, and there’s no sign of violence or a struggle.
But Wendy Gabriel is gone.
Sanchez holsters his pistol, walks back to the car.
Check that.
The witness is gone.
Chapter 33
SPECIAL AGENT CONNIE YORK is with Major Jeremiah Cook in the small and nearly empty office of Captain Rory O’Connell, the officer in charge of the Fourth Battalion’s paperwork, family issues, and supply matters during any overseas deployments.
O’Connell’s in his early thirties, trim, with black hair streaked with gray, narrow black eyebrows, and tired yet alert brown eyes. He has on an Army combat uniform, and the cinder-block walls of his office enclose a desk with a phone, a computer terminal, and piles of papers and file folders stacked on either end.
O’Connell’s voice is quiet and whispery, and only when he starts talking does Connie note the scar tissue around the base of his throat. “Let’s make this as quick as we can, all right? In a half hour I’ve got a Ranger wife coming in, scared to death her husband’s truck is going to be repossessed, and thirty minutes later, I need to check in on a sick ten-year-old girl who’s afraid Daddy’s never coming home. And then I need to find out where in hell the battalion XO has gotten himself. He’s due to leave here in twelve hours, and I have a shitload of paperwork for Major Moore to sign before he heads out. What a goddamn mess. I was hoping the deployment would stay on schedule, but it was moved up, which meant I got picked to initially take care of things while they’re gone.”
Cook looks at her and gives her the slightest of nods.
She has the lead.
“Captain, with the battalion deployed, any soldiers we could possibly interview about the four arrested Rangers are now overseas. We’re hoping you can help us fill in the blanks.”
O’Connell shifts in his seat as a bout of pain slides across his face. Connie sees him now as someone who has wounds like Cook, struggling to get through every day.
O’Connell says, “I’ll try, but I was in Bravo Company. They’re in Alpha.”
Connie says, “We know they’re called the Ninja Squad. True?”
O’Connell sighs. “Yeah. Over in the ’stan they were known for being able to target and hit Taliban sites—sometimes little farmhouses—without being detected. Hard and fast at night, got the job done, never injured on their part. I was even in their operating area for a few months during my last deployment, where I saw their work firsthand. Very impressive. Thing is, they believed their own headlines. Which can lead to trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?” York asks.
“They think they’re invincible. That’s fine, but other Rangers, they get infected. If the Ninja Squad can slide through without getting hurt, well, why not us?”
York’s not sure how to reply to that, but the major moves his cane for a moment and says, “The Humvee I was in got nailed by a roadside bomb. You?”
The slightest of nods, one warrior acknowledging another. York feels both admiration and jealousy.
“Mortar rounds at our FOB,” he says. “I was caught outside with our local interpreter. Killed him, injured me. Which is why I’m out of here in a few months. My body…just can’t take it anymore. But those Ninjas. Ninjas over there, Ninjas back here.”
Cook says, “I think I know what you mean.”
No, she’s not going to let that one slide, the two men ignoring her. York says, “Sorry, I don’t know what either of you means. Please explain, Captain. What do you mean, ‘Ninjas back here’?”
“Well, it’s the way Rangers think when they’re deployed,” he says. “There’s an intensity and pure raw thrill of being under fire, returning fire, trying to kill someone who’s trying to kill you. It’s a kind of…a high. And having experienced that high, of having everything on the line, of being exposed and seeing death around you, coming back to the post and dealing with what’s called chickenshit—polishing your dress boots, having all the forms filled out and checked off, keeping your uniforms properly ironed—it can push combat soldiers over the edge.”
Connie says, “Ninjas here, then?”
He nods. “They look for action, they crave action. Staff Sergeant Jefferson’s squad, they looked to raise hell here. Either on post or off. Sometimes it made for long nights and weekends for the MPs and local law enforcement within about a thirty-mile radius. But because the locals love the military, no charges were officially filed against them.”
Cook says, “What did these Ninjas do stateside?”
O’Connell shakes his head. “Assaults, drunk driving, breaking and entering private quarters while drunk, vandalism, petty theft. Stunts and pranks against other companies in the battalion. It got to the point where other Rangers here in the Fourth Battalion got a real hard-on against them, thinking those four could break the rules and mostly get away with it.”
York says, “That includes their battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Marcello, am I right?”
“Quite right,” O’Connell says. A helicopter roars overhead, causing some of the desk files to vibrate. “A number of years back a previous battalion commander here had his career ruined because another Ranger squad raised hell like Staff Sergeant Jefferson’s Ninjas. Marcello vowed it would never happen to him.”