Zero Day

him. Now when he stood he no longer towered over most people, not that he stood that often anymore. The fact was, his father almost never left his room at the VA hospital. His hair was nearly gone. What was left was cottony white, like Q-tips stitched together, and nearly encircled his head, just nicking his ears.

“At ease,” said Puller Sr.

Puller relaxed but remained standing.

“How was the trip to Hong Kong, sir?” he asked.

Puller hated playing this fictional game, but the doctors said it was better that way. While Puller didn’t put much creed in the shrinks, he had deferred to their expertise, but his patience was growing thin.

“Transport plane blew a tire on takeoff. Never made it. Almost ended up in the drink.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Not half as sorry as I was, XO. Needed some R and R.”

“Yes, sir.”

As his father looked at him, the first thing Puller noted was his eyes. It was also part of Army lore that Puller Sr. could kill you with a look that would induce such a deep sense of shame at your having failed him that you would just curl up and die. It wasn’t true, of course. But Puller had talked to many men who had served with his father, and every one of them had been on the receiving end of such a look. And every one of them said they would remember it to their final day on earth.

But now the eyes were just pupils in the head. Not lifeless, but no longer full of life. They were blue, but hollow, flattened. Puller looked around the confines of the small, featureless room, just like hundreds of others here, and concluded that in many important ways his father was already dead.

“Any orders, sir?” he asked.

His father didn’t answer right away, and Puller often didn’t receive any answer to this question when he came to visit. When the response did come, it surprised him.

“It’s over, XO.”

“What, sir?”

“Over. Done. Dead and done.”

Puller eased forward a half step. “Not following, sir.”

His father had hung his head, but now he turned to look at his son. The eyes flashed like blue ice thrown at the sun. “Scuttlebutt.”

“Scuttlebutt?’

“You have to pay attention to it. It’s shit, but they get you in the end.”

Puller now wondered if paranoia had been added to his father’s list of issues. Maybe it had always been there.

“Who gets you, General?”

His father waved a careless hand around the room as though “they” were right there. “The people who count. The bastards who call the shots in this man’s army.”

“I don’t think anyone is out to get you, sir.” Puller was now wishing he had not come to visit today.

“Of course they are, XO.”

“But why, sir? You’re a three-star.”

Puller caught himself too late. His father had retired a three-star, a lieutenant general. That would have been a career achievement worthy of virtually any person who ever wore the uniform. But Puller Sr. had belonged to that rare percentile who expected to reach the very top of the mountain with everything they did.

It was well known in the Army that Puller Sr. should have gotten that fourth star. The man also should have received something even more coveted: the Medal of Honor. He had earned it on the battlefield in Vietnam; there was no question about that. But in the Army it wasn’t just about valor in the field, it was about politics far away from battle. And the fact was, Puller Sr. had ticked off many important people who had a great say in his career path. Thus the fourth star and the Medal of Honor would never be his. And while his career kept advancing after that snub, it didn’t do so at quite the same trajectory. When the trajectory flattened, the highest targeted goals were no longer achievable. You would miss them. He had missed them. He did have three stars and every medal other than the one he had wanted above all others.

“It’s because of him,” snapped his father.

“Who?”

“Him!”

“I don’t know who you mean.”

“Major Robert J. Puller, United States Air Force. DD. Convicted at court-martial of treason. Imprisoned for life at USDB. They blame me for what that bastard did.” His father paused, drew an angry breath, and added, “Scuttlebutt. The sons of bitches.”

Puller’s face collapsed in disappointment. His brother had been convicted and imprisoned long after their father had retired. And yet he was blaming his son and Puller’s brother for his career problems. On the field Puller Sr. had never let the buck of responsibility pass him by. He took the credit and the blame. Off the field, though, it had been another matter. His father had been a finger pointer. He laid blame on the most unlikely of places. He could be petty and vindictive and callous and unfair, brutal and unyielding. These personality traits could also be applied to his description as a father.

Normally, Puller would say something before leaving. He would play out the fiction as the shrinks had requested. As he started for the door, his father said, “Where are you going, XO?”

Puller didn’t answer.

“XO!” yelled his father. “You have not been dismissed.”

Puller kept walking.

He passed down the hall of the VA hospital that was filled with old, sick, and dying soldiers who had given their all so that the rest of the country could live in peace and prosperity. He could hear his father screaming until he was three hundred feet away. There had never been anything wrong with the old man’s lungs.

When he hit the exit, he never looked back.

Family time was over.

The Army and Navy Club was next.

He was back on the hunt.

Where he really belonged.





CHAPTER





52


OLD.

Architecturally impressive.

Efficiently run.

These were the thoughts running through Puller’s mind as he walked toward the Army and Navy Club on 17th Street N.W. in downtown Washington, D.C. He nodded to the men working the valet zone as he headed inside. He took the short flight of steps up and looked left and then right. He was in his dress greens. The Army was phasing out the green and the white uniforms in favor of the blue. They were in essence going back to their roots. Blue was the color chosen by the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War to distinguish the colonial fighters from their British redcoat counterparts. And it was also the color of the Union army during the Civil War.

Two big wars. Two big victories.

The military didn’t mind building on past successes.

Puller would ordinarily only wear his dress uniform to a special military occasion. He would never wear his rank uniform when interrogating someone. He recalled that when he’d been a sergeant first class, commissioned officers would look down their noses at him while he was questioning them. That no longer happened now that he was a warrant officer. And military personnel lower in rank could have their legal counsel argue that you had intimidated their clients by shoving your rank in their face. So Puller largely stuck to civilian clothes. But tonight something told him to dress up a bit.

To the right was the club’s main dining area. To the left was the reception desk. Puller eschewed both and headed up the stairs, taking them two at a time.

He had gotten here early for one purpose. He didn’t like other people finding him. He liked to find them first.

He reached the second floor and looked around. There were meeting rooms here and small dining areas. On the third floor was a library where there was a table with bullet holes from being overturned and used as a shield by American soldiers during a skirmish in Cuba over a century ago.

There was also another establishment on the second floor that caught Puller’s eye.

A bar. If you were looking for a soldier off post and during his off hours, you would probably matriculate to a bar.

He looked through the glass doors into the bar. There were four people in there, all male. One Army, one Navy, and two men in business suits. The suits had their ties loosened. They were looking at some papers with the guys in uniforms. Maybe a meeting that had carried over to the bar.

They clearly weren’t his mysterious texter.

He next looked around for a surveillance post and found it almost immediately. A restroom down the hall had a small anteroom with an open doorway leading back into the hall. There was a large mirror there. Puller took up position in front of it and found that it made an excellent vantage point for viewing the bar entrance.

Whenever someone came to the restroom Puller pretended to be exiting it. When they came back out, he pretended to be either adjusting his clothes in the mirror or yakking on his cell phone.

He checked his watch.

Seven on the dot.

That’s when he saw her.

She was in uniform. He had assumed that from the military time used in the text. Military folks were punctual; it became ingrained by your training.

She was in her early thirties, slender, medium height, with short dark hair framing a nice face. She wore wire-rimmed glasses and a set of dress blues; her official cap was in her right hand. He noted the silver bar on her shoulder denoting her rank as a first lieutenant. There were two types of officers in the U.S. military, commissioned and warrant officers. She was commissioned and therefore higher-ranking than Puller. Her commission came from the President of the United States, while Puller’s came from the Secretary of the Army. If he achieved the rank of chief warrant officer 2 he would receive a commission from the President. But in the military pecking order he would still be below the true commissioned officers. They had gone to West Point or ROTC or OCS. He had not. He was a specialist. They were generalists. In the Army the latter ruled the day.

She peered through the glass into the bar.

It took Puller only four long strides to reach her.

“You want to do this in private, Lieutenant?”

She whirled around and it was probably only her Army training that turned a scream into a gasp.

She gazed up at him. Female regulation shoes could have no heel higher than three inches. She had chosen the full three and still looked like a kid next to him.

When she didn’t say anything he let his gaze wander to the right side of her uniform and saw her nameplate.

“Lieutenant Strickland? You wanted to talk to me?”

His gaze wandered to the left and he studied her ribbon rows. Nothing there that would knock anyone’s socks off, and he wouldn’t have expected there to be. The Army’s combat exclusion for females limited what they could earn in the field. No blood, no glory.

He saw her gaze go to his rows of ribbons, and her eyes widened as they took in the enormity of his combat experience and military achievement.

“Lieutenant Strickland?” he said again, more gently. “You wanted to talk?”

She met his eye and changed color. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting, I mean…”

“I don’t like to be found, Lieutenant. I’d rather do the finding.”

“Yes, of course, I can see that.”

“How did you know how to text me?”

“Friend of a friend.”

He pointed to the stairs. “They have some private areas up there.”





CHAPTER





53


SHE FOLLOWED HIM UP and they found a quiet spot and sat down in worn leather chairs. When she didn’t seem inclined to begin the conversation he said, “I obviously got your text, Lieutenant.”

“Please, just call me Barbara.”

“You can call me Puller. So I got your text.” He let this dangle.

“I know you’re investigating Matt Reynolds’s death.”

“Are you one of his coworkers? If so, someone forgot to tell me.”

“I’m not one of his coworkers. But I knew him. I knew him well.”

“So you were friends?”

“More than that. He and my father served together. He was a mentor and one of the main reasons I joined the service. I was a friend of his wife’s too. And I knew his kids. In fact, I babysat them when they were younger.”

“Then you have my condolences.”

“Was it as bad as… I’ve heard?”

“What did you hear?”

“That the whole family had been slaughtered.”

“Who told you that?”

“It was scuttlebutt. I’m not sure who told me.”

“It was pretty bad,” replied Puller.

“Okay,” she said shakily. She pulled out a tissue and dabbed at her eyes.

“As you noted, I’ve been assigned to find his killer.”

“I hope you do,” she said firmly.

“And I need all the help I can get.”

“I… I might be able to assist you.”

Puller opened his official notebook. “I need to know everything you can tell me.”

“It’s not too detailed. I knew that Matt and Stacey had been going back and forth to West Virginia to care for her ailing parents. They took the kids too. They hated it, of course. They were away from their friends, spending their summer in the middle of nowhere, but family is family. And Stacey was very close to her mom and dad.”

“I’m sure she was.”

“Matt commuted there on Friday and came back on Sunday to go back to work on Monday. He did that most weeks.”

“I know that. I talked to his commanding officer, General Carson.”

Strickland’s face flushed at this comment, but she hurried on. “He called me up about two weeks ago and said that he’d come across something in West Virginia that was really puzzling him.”

“In what way?”

“He wouldn’t go into detail, but from what he said he had stumbled onto something that was really serious.”

“Like maybe a drug operation?”

Puller didn’t normally like to interject anything into the conversation when questioning a witness, but his gut had told him to do it this time.

She looked at him strangely. “No, I don’t think it had anything to do with drugs.”

“What, then?”

“Something bigger than that. That involved other people. I could tell that he was a little scared, uncertain of what to do.”

“How did he stumble on this, as you said?”

“I think he learned about it from someone else.”

“And that person had stumbled onto it?”

“I’m not sure. It might have been that the person was already looking into it.”

Puller’s pen hovered over his notebook. “You mean like the police?”

“No, it wasn’t anyone in authority. I’m pretty sure of that. At least Matt never mentioned it.”

“Who, then?”

“Well, I think it was like someone working undercover.”