And once again, like always, he was alone.
LAURA
January 1996
“So, what did you get?”
Laura opened the package. Even though Christmas was officially over, it had taken a good while for the boxes to reach Bosnia, military mail being notoriously unreliable. Inside the package were socks, her favorite shampoo, and three sticks of her favorite deodorant, along with some feminine products. They’d also tucked four letters in with the personal items; there was one each from her mom, dad, brother, and Charles. “Did you get a box?” she asked Brian.
“Yeah, my mom sent it. A couple of books and some of her peanut butter cookies. Want one?” He held the tin out to Laura.
“Oh no, you save those for yourself,” she said, packing away all of the things she’d received.
“You going to the card game tonight?” It was one of the few forms of entertainment they had.
Laura shook her head. “Nah. I think I’ll just sit in my bunk and read. Hey, can I borrow one of your new books?”
“Sure!” Brian fished them out. “This one is probably a murder mystery,” he offered, holding one out. It had a picture of a knife with a drop of blood on the tip in full color on the cover. “Wanna try it on for size?”
“Yeah, I like that kind of stuff. Thanks.” Laura put the book under her pillow and got busy.
Being the only woman anywhere near the location was a challenge. She’d had to learn creative ways to shower and take care of her personal needs because the guys had flatly refused to make allowances for her or show her any courtesy. It was obvious they resented her being there, but they sure didn’t want to do her job. The job of a U.S. Navy Explosive Ordnance Disposal Specialist was something most service people wouldn’t even consider, but Laura had always wanted to be an EOD specialist. She’d gotten interested in explosives when her dad’s department had gotten themselves a bomb squad. The counties around theirs had all pooled their money to start the unit. Since their county was centrally located, they chose her dad’s department to house it, and with him being the sheriff of their county, she’d been able to see up close and first-hand how the bomb squad worked.
When she graduated from high school, she hadn’t been interested in college; she went straight into the Navy to train as an EOD Specialist. It had been hard; the men didn’t want her there. They had no choice but to allow her to do her job, but they didn’t have to accept her. In fact, they made her day-to-day life hell, but she was tough and managed anyway. Then she’d been deployed to Bosnia. It was her dream come true, if she could just hang on.
She spent the afternoon checking in equipment for one of the infantry divisions, then went to the mess hall and ate what only passed for food. Dinner was meatloaf and mashed potatoes, which looked and tasted suspiciously like the chicken fried steak and mac and cheese they’d had the night before. After dinner, she showered and climbed into her bunk to read the book Brian had loaned her. It was kind of nice to have her own sleeping quarters; she loved the privacy after being around the men all day.
She could hear the music from the big hall down the way – the poker games were in full swing. Then she heard something else, something closer and quieter, but still audible. She turned on her battery-powered ceiling light and called out, “Hello?”
Her door opened and Brewster, a private she recognized from one of the infantry divisions, came into her quarters.
“Hey, Brewster! Can I help you with something?” Laura asked him.
“I dunno – maybe.” Brewster walked closer to her. As he crossed the room, the door opened again and two more men walked in. She’d seen them around, but she didn’t know their names. After they’d made it through the door, two more men walked in, two she’d never seen before but also probably from an infantry division. “What are you reading?” He reached over and took the book.
“I borrowed it from Brian.” Something felt wrong, and she started to get nervous. “I think you need to leave. You really shouldn’t be here,” she said forcefully, hoping they’d just go.
“The lady thinks we need to leave,” she heard a voice say and, through the group of five men, a sixth man walked in and right up to her. Her heart froze.
Sergeant Wagner stood in the front of the group, a menacing grin on his face. “But we don’t want to leave, EOD Specialist Billings. We’d like to have a party, but we don’t have any girls to dance with. Do you like to dance?” he asked her, leering.
“Please leave. I really don’t want any of you here.” She tried to sound brave even though she was terrified.
“She doesn’t want us here, guys. What do you think of that?” Wagner asked.
“I think we should make her glad we came,” one of the men said.
Wagner walked right up to Laura and grabbed her arm – hard. “I think you’re right, Taylor. I think she’ll be glad by the time we’re finished.” With that, Wagner pushed Laura back onto her bunk and told two of the men, “Hold her arms. I’m first!”
Laura started to struggle and tried to scream, but one of the men put his hand over her mouth while Wagner fished around under her bed, found a pair of her underwear, and stuffed them in her mouth. He pushed her tank up until her breasts were exposed, and squeezed both of them hard. Some of the men laughed. After he’d stripped her underwear off, he told two more of the guys, “Hold her ankles. I don’t want to get kicked by our mule!” He opened his fly, pulled out his penis, and growled, “Now I’ll teach you to dance, Billings!”
Laura struggled, but the men held her firm. The two holding her ankles walked outward and spread her legs as wide as they could, and Wagner drove himself into her. She tried to scream, but she could barely breathe, and the panties muffled any sound she made. Oh, god, please, Brian, come back to check on me! Wagner continued to pound into her, and the pain was excruciating.
When he was finally finished, he said, “Here, Brewster. Give me that arm and you take your turn!” The men swapped places, and Brewster freed his penis and pounded into her just as Wagner had. Laura’s mind spun out of control, and the pain was so unbearable she hoped she’d lose consciousness. Just as she thought she might actually go out, Brewster finished and swapped out with Taylor, and the process continued.
Laura could hear them laughing, making comments about how tight she was, how her breasts looked, how good it felt to take her, but she felt like she was somewhere else, hearing them from a distance. She felt the pain, but it was dulled somehow, and she felt her body being bumped up and down by their activity. It seemed to go on forever, days and days, and she just floated, feeling completely disconnected from what they were doing to her body.
When they’d all had a turn, Wagner started in on her again, and she wondered if he’d ever finish. Just as she thought he might be done, he did something she never expected: He started to stroke her clitoris, trying to make her have an orgasm. Even though she didn’t want to, her body responded, and her hips started to buck of their own accord. She hadn’t felt shame until that moment, but suddenly she felt as though she was an accomplice in her own rape, somehow responsible for it. Charles had been the only man who’d ever done that with her, and when her body convulsed and the orgasm hit, it felt like Charles and all the love and tenderness he’d ever given her had been ripped from her.
“See? You liked it, slut!” Wagner snarled, continuing to rub her until the spasms were unendurable. “Now, you listen to me and listen good. You tell anyone, anyone, what just happened here and you’ll die. You hear me? You’ll be dead before your tongue can wag.” He pulled the underwear from her mouth and asked, “You gonna scream?” Laura was too afraid and too exhausted to make a sound. “That’s what I thought – liked it too much to tell, didn’t you? Hey, maybe we’ll be back!” He turned to the other men. “You can turn her loose now. She’s not gonna do anything, are you, cunt? Let’s go play some poker!” They started out the door, but before they left, one of the men pinched one of Laura’s nipples hard and said, “Nice lay,
bitch. Nail ya later!” Another slapped her mound and said, “Can’t wait to fuck you again, sweetheart.” They left her quarters like a bunch of friends walking out of the local bar after a night of playing darts.
Laura lay on her bunk, afraid to move, wondering what she’d find when she looked down at herself. She expected to somehow look damaged and wounded, but when she finally worked up the courage to look, she found she looked pretty much normal, except there was blood on the insides of her thighs. When she finally stood, a tiny trickle of blood made its way down the inside of one thigh. She grabbed her robe and headed to the showers.
There wasn’t enough soap made to wash them off of her, but she tried – god, she tried. While she was in the shower, she ran her fingers up inside herself and the pain was so bad that she couldn’t stand it. She didn’t know what to do. If she went to the medics, they’d ask her what had happened. What would she tell them? No way could she tell them the truth. Wagner would kill her.
By the time she left the shower, she’d devised a plan. She went to the medics’ tent and told them that a Bosnian national had somehow gotten into the compound and assaulted her. Dismay mingled with relief as they took the report but didn’t really seem too interested, as though it happened all the time and they were powerless to do anything about it. They decided she needed some stitches, then gave her some antibiotics to take and sent her back to her bunk. No psychologist. No chaplain. No concern. Nothing.
When she got back to her bunk, Laura wanted to cry, but she couldn’t. She tried, but nothing happened. A numbness set in, and she lay in her bunk and tried to sleep, but that didn’t happen either. Instead, she lay there awake all night, and all the nights to follow.
February 1996
“EOD Specialist Billings? Can you hear me? EOD Specialist Billings?” Laura tried to make sense of what was going on around her, but she couldn’t. She was cold, really cold, and everything was white. Her head was buzzing, and she couldn’t figure out where the sound was coming from.
“She’s going into shock,” she heard a voice floating somewhere above her say. Then everything got dark.
When she finally woke again, her ears were assaulted by a sound that was so loud it was painful. What had happened to her? Why did she hurt everywhere?
An air medic looked down into her face and saw her open eyes. “EOD Specialist Billings! Hold tight! We’ll be off the ground in a few minutes! Are you in any pain?” he yelled over the sound of the helicopter’s rotors.
“Wha . . . wha . . .” Laura mumbled, but she couldn’t make her mouth form the words.
“We’re flying you out now,” he yelled. “Do you remember what happened? The ordnance exploded. Remember?” No, Laura didn’t remember. She had no idea what had happened.
“We’ll be off the ground in about thirty seconds, but you’ll be fine – eventually.” She heard squawking over his helmet headset, then he said, “Someone wants to see you before we take off. It’ll be just a minute.”
She tried to remember what had taken place, but everything was fuzzy. Then she remembered the sound – like a cannon going off. There was the sensation of flying, and nothing else. She blinked to clear the blurriness in her eyes, and she heard something, someone, nearby.
Sergeant Wagner looked down into her face. “Well, well, well, EOD Specialist Billings! How are you? You gave us quite a scare!” His voice was sympathetic, but there was something in his eyes that scared the shit out of her. “That was some bomb, huh? It threw you fifty feet! I guess you’re kinda sore, huh?” he yelled above the rotor noise, then added, “If you know what I mean.”
She knew exactly what he meant. Bastard. Why was he there rubbing it in? It was bad enough that she’d had the accident. Why did he have to come there and make everything worse, remind her what they’d done to her the month before?
“You know, that blast would’ve killed most people,” he yelled. “No one knows how you managed to live through it. Guess you were just lucky.” He looked down at her, got close to her face, and spoke low so the medic couldn’t hear him. “You won’t be so lucky next time. I don’t make the same mistake twice.” With that, he disappeared from her vision, but she heard him say, “Get well, Billings. The guys are counting on you.” Then she felt the chopper wobble as it lifted off.
Laura’s heart almost stopped. Wagner had tried to kill her. She didn’t know if he’d messed with her body armor or the explosive device, or exactly what he’d done, but he’d done it, practically confessed to it. And there wasn’t one damn thing she could do about it.
She tried to quiet her mind, but she was just too scared, and there was no one she could tell. And if she did tell someone, their life would be in danger too. She was starting to feel panicky when the medic broke into her thoughts.
“Billings, you’re one lucky young woman, but your injuries are still very extensive. We’re taking you to a field hospital, then stateside, and I don’t think you’ll be seeing any more active duty.”
“When are you sending me?” Laura asked. Oh, please, let it be soon!, she thought. Getting out of here is the only thing that will save me.
“You’ll go to the field hospital today and be shipped out tomorrow. In the meantime, try to rest. The trip will be rigorous enough, and pretty painful for you. But you’ll be back in the states – we’re sending you to the naval hospital in Jacksonville, Florida. They’ll take good care of you. Best of luck, Billings.” With that, the medic went back to monitoring her vitals, leaving her with more questions than answers, and no energy to ask.
Laura tried to get her wits together and look herself over, but the only thing she could see was a huge bandage all over the front of her torso. It looked almost like a sheet of bandaging, cut to fit her shape. She didn’t know what was under that bandage, but she was sure she’d find out eventually.
March 2010
“Laura Butler?” Laura rose from her seat and strode across the room toward the man, then followed him to an office down the hall. He pointed to a chair and said, “Have a seat, please.”
“Thank you for calling me for this interview, Mr. Ludlow.” Laura straightened her skirt. “I’ve been wanting to get into the field for awhile. I did very well in the training program and I’ve been hoping you’d find an opening for me somewhere, something that’s a good fit.” She’d passed all of the courses with flying colors and gotten all of her arms certifications. Security work was something she thought she’d like. She’d been looking for a position for too long and was getting really tired of working in the bar at a restaurant. It had been years since she’d had a job where she carried a gun, and she was ready.
“I have to say, Miss Butler, your CV is very impressive,” the placement counselor told her. “I think we’ve found a place for you. We got a call from someone who’s looking to put together a team of security specialists, and he called us looking for candidates. How do you feel about relocating?”
“That would be no problem, sir. I’ve got no real ties to this area.” After she’d recovered, or at least recovered physically, she’d lived in a half-dozen places, with the most recent being St. Louis. She just kept moving around, and she’d taken her mother’s family name, Butler, so it would be harder for Wagner to track her down. “So where would this move be?”
“To Louisville, Kentucky.” Laura almost gasped – her hometown was less than thirty minutes away. “Oddly, one of the reasons the gentleman pulled your information and called us was because he’s originally from southeastern Missouri, and with you being in St. Louis, he felt you might be a good fit, might be more on the same page with him. Are you interested?”
If Wagner knew she’d grown up in the Louisville area, he might look for her there. Or maybe he’d think that was the last place she’d go because it would be too obvious. She felt like she was pondering iocaine powder in the movie The Princess Bride. This move would put her closer to her family; that would be nice. Maybe she could pull herself together enough that they’d want to be around
her. “Does he want to interview me too? Because I could go there.”
“No. Oddly enough, he said if I found someone suitable that I was to just send you there and he’d hire you on the spot. I’ll give you his contact information if you want the job.”
“Yes sir!” Laura almost shouted. Mr. Ludlow handed her a sheet with the information. On it was the name Steve McCoy – her new boss. “Thank you. I’ll call him as soon as I get home.”
STEVE
April 1975
In the waiting room of a community hospital in Sikeston, Missouri, the tall, lanky teenage boy sat alone, his hands shaking. “Steve?” When the nurse called his name, he rocketed up out of the chair and hurried toward her.
“Now, honey, she won’t be with us long, but you can hold her and talk to her until she goes. I know this is hard, but the doctor said you told him that you wanted to do it, so just be brave, okay?”
She took him into the hospital room and pointed to a chair. “Just have a seat right there. Vanessa, honey, Steve is here. I’ll be right back with her. Just sit tight.” She turned and shuffled out of the room.
Steve looked around. Plain white walls, plain white floors, plain green curtains. Vanessa lay in the hospital bed with her face turned away from him.