Zero Day

by David Baldacci

  “If it were only that easy.” Mason pulled a sheaf of papers from his file and slid them across to Puller. He said, “We tracked down what that facility was used for. It doesn’t really help us.”

  Puller scanned the sheets of paper. It was a classified document that he was cleared to read. It was dated from the 1970s. He said, “They built bomb components there?”

  “Key components. Not the boom part of the ordnance. The concrete dome was put in because some of the material they handled there was radioactive. Back then DoD had money to burn. And there was no EPA. So instead of cleaning up the site the military just covered it over.”

  “Is it a threat?”

  “Environmentally? Who the hell knows? Maybe. But that’s not our concern. The report is clear that all materials and equipment were removed from the place. And you’re not going to punch through three feet of concrete to see if your Geiger counter goes nuts.”

  “What if someone were to blow it up, maybe release the radioactivity, if there’s any left in there?”

  “Yeah, Puller. You’d need a mountain of explosives, a lot of assets on the ground, and you have no way of knowing if there’s anything in there to make it worth your while. So they release some radioactivity into the air in Drake? Who cares?” Mason sat back in his chair. “No, the answer has to lie somewhere else.”

  Puller slid back the papers. “Okay. What else?”

  “We know you talked to General Carson.”

  “She was cooperative.”

  “Reynolds knew something. That was why he was killed. He knew about something happening out there.”

  “I just found that out. If you’ve known for a while it would’ve been good to know back then.”

  “Drake didn’t exist for me until we decoded that transmission. And that was only two days ago. You’re probably way ahead of us.”

  “Because you’re not out there. You left it to me and some local cops. Two days ago was shortly after the murders. They have to be connected. You could have sent a team out here. Why didn’t you?”

  “Tricky questions, trickier answer.”

  “I’m used to both.”

  Mason smiled. “I guess you are. Soldiering is a lot more complicated than it looks.”

  “The soldiering part is easy compared to all the other crap. Firing a gun straight just takes practice. No practice in the world prepares you for the backroom hopscotch.” He paused. “You ever in? You look the type.”

  “Marines. Didn’t do my full time. Got out, went to college, and ended up carrying a gun for Uncle Sam anyway. But I wear a suit instead of the uniform.”

  “Marines have covered my back many a time.”

  “And I’m sure you did the same for them. But getting back to your query, the consensus here is to let this thing play out a bit. We bring in the heavy artillery we spook these folks.”

  “Spooking might not be such a bad idea. Especially if they’re planning a second 9/11. But why they would pick Drake after they hit the Big Apple, I’m not sure. The damage potential just isn’t the same.”

  “Which is why we’re worried. And if we went in heavy, we figured they’d scatter, regroup, and hit somewhere else just as unlikely and they wouldn’t make the chatter mistake again. Their choice of location has us concerned, Puller. It’s not a traditional target. It has no replication value. You nail one airport or mall or train station it shuts them all down countrywide.”

  “But you hit a Podunk, you don’t get the same result.”

  “Which means they know something we don’t. This is not on our tactical or strategic grid. We don’t have a playbook page on this one. We’re the ones who are spooked, frankly.”

  “Your strategy could be playing with the lives of everyone that lives in Drake.”

  “Yes, it could.”

  “But since there’re so few of them and most of them are dirt poor, I guess that makes it okay?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. They’re still Americans, poor or not.”

  “But if this were the Big Apple we were talking about, or Houston or Atlanta or D.C.?”

  “Every situation is different, Puller.”

  “The more things are different the more they’re the same.”

  “An Army guy who’s also a philosopher. I’m impressed. Seriously, though, I don’t want any innocent citizens to die. But it’s tricky. But if it were New York or Chicago or L.A. and certainly D.C., we’d be going in with the big guns, no doubt.”

  “So Drake is the experiment in evolving tactics?”

  “Drake is an opportunity.”

  “Okay, Reynolds was military and maybe that was enough to make him a target. What about Molly Bitner and Eric Treadwell?”

  “Right across the street and all.”

  “Could one of them have been the one Reynolds stumbled onto? That’s the word Carson used.”

  “What makes you say that?” asked Mason.

  “From what I can tell they never went anywhere other than the nursing home or hospital, which isn’t even in Drake. The only people they would logically come into contact with would be the neighbors on the street. My focus, obviously, is on the only neighbors to end up murdered too.”

  “I see where you’re going with this, and I like the angle. We don’t have anything concrete on either of them, but it still might be a promising lead.”

  “So what do you want from me?”

  “To do what you’ve been doing. Keep digging. The only change will be that you’ll report directly to me instead of your SAC. You’re going to be our eyes on the ground there, Puller.” Mason rose. “I know you want to get back.”

  “I was going to go by the Reynolds house in Fairfax City, check it out.”

  “We’ve done that canvass already. Nothing there. Your SAC can verify that. If you want to go over there, feel free.”

  Puller didn’t hesitate. “I’d rather see for myself.”

  “Pretty sure you’d say that. You’ll have full access. You can go right after you leave here.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Now that the prelims are out of the way, fill me in on your investigation.”

  Puller gave him the condensed version. Mason perked up when he mentioned the probable videotaping of the Reynolds family.

  “That sounds ominous,” he said.

  “Yes, it does,” replied Puller.

  When he got to the soil report, Mason stopped him. “I’d like to see it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Why a soil report?”

  “Must’ve been important somehow.”

  “And we don’t know from where it was taken?”

  “No.”

  “After you go by the Reynoldses’ you need to get back to Drake. I’d let you ride on DHS wings, but I don’t know who might be watching. Right now I’m not trusting many people.”

  “Not a problem. I’ll go the way I came.”

  As they walked down the hall Mason said, “Samantha Cole? Asset or liability?”

  “Asset.”

  “Good to know.”

  “What’s your gut telling you about this?”

  Mason stared straight ahead. “That it’ll make a lot of people forget 9/11.”

  Mason turned left down another hall.

  Puller kept walking straight ahead.

  Right now it was the only direction he could go.

  CHAPTER

  57

  PULLER DROVE DIRECTLY to the Reynolds home in Fairfax City. It was in an older neighborhood of modest homes. Reynolds had probably been transferred back and forth from the D.C. area several times during his military career. For those who had to sell their homes at the lows of the real estate market and then buy back in at the highs, it could be rough financially. Puller didn’t know Reynolds’s personal situation, but he concluded the man was probably looking forward to a fatter paycheck in the private sector to offset all those years of earning far less than he was worth while serving his country.

  Two hours later Puller
sat in the living room of the home holding a picture of the Reynolds family in his gloved hands. Though the place had already been processed by DHS, he never broke crime scene procedures.

  In the photo the Reynoldses looked happy, normal, alive.

  Now they were none of those things. He had noted baseball gear in the boy’s room and swim and tennis posters in the daughter’s room. There were photos of Matt and Stacey during various military functions. And on vacation. Sailing, skydiving, swimming with the dolphins. There were pictures of their children on tennis and basketball courts. The daughter in her prom dress. The son, then just a toddler, hugging his old man when he was in uniform. Puller could easily read the expressions on their faces.

  Dad was being deployed.

  The son was not happy about it. He was hugging his father tight, trying to keep him from going.

  Puller put the photo back where he’d gotten it. He locked the door on the way out. He sat in his car for a while gazing up at a house that had no one left to live in it. It would go on the market, be sold, the belongings dispersed, and the Reynoldses would live on only in the memories of their friends and family.

  And in mine.

  Afterwards, Puller drove to his apartment and packed a duffel bag full of clean clothes. By the time he got there it was very late. He spent a few minutes with AWOL while he thought through the night’s events. He’d changed his return flight to Charleston for the next morning. He’d missed the last direct flight there tonight.

  Carson had been more right than she thought and also more wrong. There was something big going on. Only she had thought that Reynolds and she were the only ones on the federal side who knew about it. That was incorrect. She had thought she had blown it by not contacting the authorities. Obviously, the authorities had known, albeit after Reynolds was dead. The fact that the Reynolds family had been slaughtered did not give Puller much confidence in DHS’s ability to cover his back if need be. But for the chatter, they’d still be clueless.

  As he stroked AWOL’s ears his thoughts turned to Sam Cole. How much if any of this could he tell her? The official answer was simple: He could tell her little if anything. The unofficial answer was far more complicated. He didn’t like putting people in harm’s way without telling them the lay of the land. He would have a short flight and then a longer car ride from Charleston to think about it.

  He checked his watch. He had prearranged this. He had to, otherwise it couldn’t happen.

  He made the call. He spoke to a line of people and gave the appropriate responses. Finally, the familiar voice came over the line.

  “Surprised when they told me you’d set up a call for tonight,” said Robert Puller.

  “Wanted to catch up.”

  “It’s late on the East Coast.”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  “The call’s monitored,” his brother said. “There are people listening.” He changed voices, dropping it deliberately into a deep baritone. “Can you hear us clearly enough, Official Monitor? If not we’d be glad to speak up while we plot the destruction of the world.”

  “Knock it off, Bobby, they might cut the call off.”

  “They might, but they won’t. What else do they have to do?”

  “I saw him.”

  For the Puller brothers this was not so subtle code. There was only one “him” in their lives.

  “Okay. How’s he doing?” Robert’s voice had quickly turned serious.

  “Not all that great, actually. Things tend to wander.”

  “In and out of the stars?”

  “Right. Exactly.”

  “Otherwise?”

  “Healthy. Live to be a hundred.”

  “What else?”

  “A beef he has.”

  “With whom?”

  “Blame game. Still the stars, he thinks. But trajectory shot all to hell.”

  Puller didn’t care if the monitors figured out they were talking about their father. Unless their conversations were deemed to be criminal or inappropriate in any way, this call was confidential. And military careers could be curtailed and even destroyed if it was shown that any part of a prisoner’s conversation was revealed in an unauthorized way, particularly when a highly decorated combat vet was on the other end of the line.

  “One guess,” said Robert.

  “Right,” said Puller.

  “He really believes that? The timing is way off.”

  “Not in his mind.”

  Puller heard his brother give a long sigh.

  Puller said, “Thought about not telling you.”

  “As in what does it matter?”

  “Something like that. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you.”

  “No, no, you should have, little brother. I appreciate it.” He paused. “Working on anything interesting?”

  “Yes and no. Yes I am and no I can’t tell you about it.”

  “Well, good luck. My money’s on you.”

  They spoke for another thirty seconds on innocuous matters and said their goodbyes. When Puller clicked off he stared down at his phone imagining his brother being walked back to his cell. Nothing to do but wait for the next day when he would get out of his cage for an hour. Wait for the next phone call from his brother. Or the next visit. Totally out of his control. There wasn’t one segment of his life in which he had real input.

  I’m all he has left.

  I’m all the old man has left.

  God help me.

  And them.

  CHAPTER

  58

  EARLY THE NEXT MORNING the jet lifted off from Dulles Airport and climbed smoothly into the sky. Puller drank a bottle of water and spent most of the short hop staring out the window. He checked his watch. Nearly 0600. He had tried to sleep some last night, but even his Army training failed him as his mind continued to whir about as fast as the plane’s engines.

  The plane landed in Charleston less than an hour later and he retrieved his Malibu from the parking lot. He arrived in Drake in time for breakfast. He met Cole at the Crib Room after calling her on the drive in. He drank two more cups of coffee and had the biggest breakfast platter the Crib offered.

  She stared over at him as the mounds of food disappeared.

  “Don’t they feed you in the big city?” she asked.

  He took a bite of eggs and pancakes. “Not this trip they didn’t. Not sure the last time I ate, actually. Maybe breakfast yesterday.”

  She sipped on her coffee and tore a bit of toast off and ate it.

  “And was your trip productive?”

  “It was. We actually have lots to talk about. But just not here.”