Night Victims

“Shit!” Vine said, relaxing. “You beat me to this one.”

Mandle didn’t answer, didn’t move.

And Vine looked down at the bundle at Mandle’s feet and knew why.

It was a young Afghan girl, wound tightly in her burka, which was darkly stained. Vine knew the stain and the faint metallic scent in the cave. Fresh blood.

“What the fuck did you do, Aaron?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Mandle said, standing straight now and smiling, his automatic weapon slung beneath his right arm, the knife in his left. “I found her in here.”

“Like this?”

Mandle actually smiled. “Not exactly, Joe.”

Vine sat down on the hard earth. “Fuck! Oh, fuck!”

“I didn’t do that to her.”

“What I mean,” Vine said, “is that you can’t get by with something like this, Aaron. It’s murder.”

“It’s war, Joe. Total fuckin’ war. The small and the crawl-that’s us, Joe-we get fucked in total war. Any goddamn thing goes.”

“Not that!” Vine said, pointing to the dead girl, marveling at how pale and angelic her face looked in the dim cave. She must have lost most of her blood before she died.

“Yeah, that,” Mandle said. “It’s what we trained for, Joe. Don’t shit yourself, it’s what we trained for.”

“That kid’s not the enemy!”

“Sure she is, just like all those Kraut and Jap civilians we bombed in World War Two. You ever read history, Joe?”

“Yeah, history. .” Vine was feeling a little sick. The heat, even in the dim, shallow cave. The dead girl and the smell. Jesus!. .

“I want you to do me a favor, Joe.”

“I know. Forget about this.”

“For a while, is all I’m asking. Until we can both think some more. Talk some more. Maybe straighten this thing out. Will you do that for me? I’d sure as fuck do it for you.”

Vine worked his way to his feet, still feeling woozy. He glanced at his watch.

“We gotta rejoin the unit,” Mandle said.

“Yeah, Aaron.”

“Thanks, brother,” Mandle said. “I owe you big.”

Vine wasn’t quite sure if he’d agreed to anything. He had to get away and find some time. Think about this.

He led the way out of the cave.

Closer to the base of the mountain, at the mouth of the main cave, they heard gunshots.

Mandle and Vine looked at each other. Then training took over. Crouched and fast, they moved into the cave with weapons at the ready.

The firefight was over when they reached the bend in the cave. Three al-Qaida lay dead in limp bundles like the girl in the other cave. Colonel Kray had a brown metal box tucked beneath his left arm.

Vine almost said something to him then, even though it wasn’t the right time. The girl in the cave. Probably no more than twelve or thirteen. She was a kid. .

Mandle was staring at him.

And for the first time Vine felt afraid of Aaron Mandle.

And felt his resolve waver.

After all, Mandle could simply deny Vine’s story. Might even say he, Vine, killed the girl. Simply reverse their roles. There were no witnesses, only a dead Afghan girl. Dead in a country of death.

Gotta think about this, Vine told himself, and held his silence.

Think about it.

“. . time we shag-ass outta here,” Kray was saying. “We got what we wanted. Looks like it could be a schematic for some kinda biological weapon or some such shit. We get it back to base, no matter what. Understood?”

“Understood, sir!” answered twelve voices almost in unison, heavy on the sir.

Kray motioned with his right arm and led the way out of the cave, toward sunlight and heat.

Vine spat on the cave floor and fell in behind Mandle, knowing he’d turned a corner in his mind, trying to convince himself he hadn’t.

Think about it..

50

New York, 2004

Ten minutes after Cindy Vine had agreed to talk, Horn and Larkin were in the interrogation room with Millhouse, Twigg, and Cindy.

It was warm in there. Horn could feel the body heat and smell the sweat and fear emanating from Cindy. Getting mixed up with the wrong man was every woman’s potential pitfall, he thought. It worked the other way, too, but not as often and not as severely. Not a lot of wives turned out to be serial killers.

“Joe had a lot of pressure,” Cindy began, with the recorder running. “So did I, so maybe that’s why I didn’t notice how odd he was behaving. He was full of hate, and something else. Then, a couple of months ago, he told me about Aaron Mandle killing those women.”

“The Night Spider murders?” Millhouse asked softly.

“No, the ones that happened while they were in the SSF, when they were on missions in various trouble spots around the world. Mandle was sick, dangerous. In Afghanistan, Joe walked in on him right after he’d killed a girl.”

“Did Joe tell his commanding officer?”

“No, he couldn’t. Their unit was separate from the main force, like usual when they were on a nearly suicidal mission. That’s how Joe described it. So he waited before saying anything. He figured out that the girl Mandle killed wasn’t the first and wouldn’t be the last. Then, after a while, he realized it was too late to speak out. It would have looked bad for him if he’d said something, maybe ended his career in disgrace. He said that until now they never told their wives or anyone else about the murders. Joe thought Mandle was dead, until he was arrested for the Night Spider killings. He watched the news and followed the trial, the conviction. .” Cindy started to sob again but bit her lip. She held in her distress like a great pressure, without breathing for a long time.

Finally she sighed, in control of herself, but seeming to become smaller as she exhaled. “Then came the phone call the night Mandle escaped. We were in bed, but I heard Joe on the phone. I knew he must be talking to Mandle. Joe hung up and started getting dressed in the dark. It surprised him when I asked where he was going. He’d thought I was asleep.”

“What did Joe say?” Millhouse asked casually, isolating and emphasizing the answer for the recorder.

“That he had to go out. An old friend who was in trouble had called. I asked him what old friend, but all he said was not to worry about it. He kissed me good-bye and went.”

“When did he return?”

“I’m not sure. I’d taken pills. We’d both been drinking. The stress of our son. . what was happening in our lives. When I woke up at about nine the next morning, Joe was next to me in bed.” Cindy couldn’t hold back her tears now. She dropped her head onto the table, hid her face in the crook of her arm, and began to sob uncontrollably.

“Enough for now,” Twigg said.

“Joe’s not an evil man!” said Cindy from the shelter of her bent arm. “Joe is not an evil man!”

Horn kept his teeth clenched. Oh, really? Is this the Joe who wants to torture and kill my wife?