Zero Day

by David Baldacci

  “Then your information is flawed.”

  “Tough-looking Marine you have guarding you now. Where is he, by the way? With death threats I wouldn’t be going around alone.”

  “Your concern for my well-being is touching.”

  “And I take it the bankers in New York weren’t receptive to your cash flow problems?”

  Trent threw his cigar down on the dirt and ground it in with his foot. “What the hell did Jean tell you? That stupid bitch.”

  Less than three days. That’s all Puller had. He decided to go for it.

  “You have your fingers in lots of pies, Roger. Coal. But you operate gas pipelines too, right?”

  “What’s that have to do with anything?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Nothing to tell.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Real sure.”

  “Being in debt is bad. Treason is worse.”

  “You on drugs or something?”

  “Just giving you some advice.”

  “Why should I take advice from you?”

  “Because it’s been given with good intent.”

  Trent laughed. “You’re a real funny guy.”

  “Not really, no. And if things play out the way I think, you’re going to need more than one Marine to keep you safe.”

  “Are you threatening me?” bellowed Trent.

  “You’re smart enough to know that the threat won’t be coming from me, Roger.”

  Trent climbed back in his Bentley and drove off.

  Apparently Puller had struck out again. He had to hope that Dickie would have something more useful to report.

  CHAPTER

  73

  IT WAS NEARLY ten o’clock when he arrived. The neighborhood was quiet. No one was outside. Puller could hardly blame them. It was hot, humid, and the mosquitoes were out in force. It was a night to stay inside the walls, not frolic outside them.

  He steered his Malibu through the network of surface streets, following the path that he and Cole had earlier. He made one more turn and the firehouse was up ahead. No lights on, but he didn’t expect there to be. No electricity here. That’s probably why they all went home when it started to get dark. The overhead doors had been pulled down. Puller wondered if they were locked too. He stopped his car, got out, looked around, and sniffed the air. A mosquito buzzed in his face. He swatted it away. That would only signal more comrades to come, he knew. He’d trained in enough swamps to understand that.

  He locked his Malibu using his remote fob. He’d parked it close to the building. He had decided to keep his car as close to him as possible from now on. He walked up to the overhead door, reached down, and tugged. It slid up easily on oiled tracks. He looked around again, could see no one. Still, his right hand sat on top of his forward M11. He’d grabbed his Maglite from the trunk and popped it on. The beam cut through the darkness as he moved inside.

  While he was waiting for Dickie, he wanted to check out a theory.

  There were two Harleys parked side by side to his right, their front wheels chained together. To his left was a rolling toolbox with a big padlock. It appeared that the members of the Harley club didn’t completely trust their neighbors. Both Harleys had large saddlebags. They had locks on them. Not unheard of, and in fact Puller had expected to find them.

  He picked the locks and probed the interior of the bags with his light. In the third bag he found what he was hoping for—a bit of plastic, an edge of duct tape, and a few nearly invisible shiny flakes. In another saddlebag he found a few crumbly brown grains. The shiny flakes were pure crystal meth. The brown flakes were an impure version of meth called peanut butter crank. Illegal drugs were more of a problem in the military than the brass liked to let on. Over the years Puller had seen just about every type of illicit drug there was.

  So he had found the distribution pipeline for Eric Treadwell’s modest meth operation. The Xanadu bike club put it in their saddlebags and delivered it to their customers. And in impoverished areas where people wanted to forget about their reality because it was so bad, drug dealers had easy prey.

  So Treadwell and Bitner had been small-time drug dealers. That wasn’t why they were killed, he was sure of that. He would let Cole know about this, but it didn’t get him any closer to stopping the terrorists.

  He went through the storage lockers on the left side of the wall. Nothing. Mostly filled with stuff from the Harley riders. When he attempted to access the lockers on the right, he found them locked tight. He picked the lock of one of them and found nothing. He did two other lockers and found the same: nothing. He didn’t waste time on the others.

  He checked his watch. He had gotten here purposely early just in case Dickie wasn’t playing straight with him and someone had set up an ambush. He had some more time to kill. He decided to employ it by searching this place. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that folks who distributed meth could be persuaded to do something far more heinous, even if it meant hurting their country. Maybe folks around here felt their country had already abandoned them, so what did it matter?

  There was another room off to his left. He went in there, the shadows devolving to cavelike darkness, for there were no windows in here. It was empty. He backed out, his ears straining for the sounds of anyone drawing near.

  He ventured up the stairs. There was a kitchen that looked like it was being used by the club. He opened some cabinets and found cans of soup and cereal boxes.

  There was another room adjacent to the kitchen. He opened the door and peered inside, his light cutting into the dark. This must’ve been the fire chief’s office, he thought. Old desk, old file cabinets, shelves, and a couple of rusty chairs. He looked through the file cabinets but they were empty, as were the shelves. He sat down behind the desk and started opening drawers. He found nothing until he dipped his hand farther back in one of the drawers after his light hit on something.

  He looked at the yellowed piece of paper. It had the date 1964 on it.

  The heading said “FIA.” He didn’t know what that meant.

  He read the body of the document. It dealt with procedures in the event of a fire at the facility. There was nothing in it that revealed to Puller what the facility did. Maybe this had to do with what Mason had told him. About the bombmaking component work.

  He eyed something written in the margin. The ink had faded but he could still make it out.

  The numbers 92 and 94.

  He put the page in his pocket and rose.

  He heard the noise as soon as he left the small office.

  A motorcycle, coming fast, its engine throbbing. He strode quickly over to a set of windows on the second floor that overlooked the front of the firehouse.

  It had to be Dickie. He hit his watch with the light. It was time.

  He could see the bike’s single headlight stabbing through the gloom. The motorcycle rolled onto the cracked concrete fronting the firehouse. Now Puller could make out more clearly the man’s image. Blocky shoulders. Chunky torso. It was Dickie.

  The sound of the shot made Puller jerk and instinctively duck. As he watched, the round hit the rider directly in the head, smashing through the helmet, drilling through the skull and brain and exploding out the other side. The Harley drifted to the right as the rider let go of the handlebars. The man fell off to the left and hit the concrete. He jerked once and lay still. The bike continued on before hitting the wall of the firehouse and falling over on its side, the engine still running.

  Puller didn’t see this last part. He had leapt to the fire pole and slid down it.

  The shot had come from the left. Long-range rifle round. Puller figured the sniper was on the ground somewhere. There was no high dirt here, just houses. The shooter could be in one of them. And there were a lot of them. All empty. Well, maybe not.

  Puller eased out of the front entrance next to the still running bike. He bent down, turned it off, his M11 making defensive arcs. He thumbed the number on his cell p
hone.

  Cole picked up on the second ring.

  He explained things in three efficient sentences.

  She would be bringing the cavalry to his aid for a second time today.

  He counted to three and then zigzagged his way to the Malibu. Keeping the body of it between him and where the shot had come from, he unlocked his trunk and quickly snagged what he needed.

  Night optics.

  And his body armor. The outer tactical vest was a modular soft armor configuration that could stop a nine-mil round. But that wasn’t good enough tonight. Puller took a few seconds to slip the ceramic plates into the inserts in the tact vest to bump up his protection level. He powered up his optics and the world was revealed in a sharply defined green. He looked over at the body. The helmet was still on, so he couldn’t see the person’s face. The last piece of equipment that Puller reached for in his trunk was probably the most important.

  H&K MP5 submachine gun. It was the clear weapon of choice by Special Forces for close-quarters battle. Its max range was a hundred meters, which meant Puller was going to have to get a lot closer to his target.

  Sniper rifle against close-quarters small arms put the latter at a decided disadvantage. Added to that was the fact that Puller was certain the shooter had a night-vision scope to make the kind of shot he just had. He would have preferred to have his bolt-action sniper rifle. But the H&K would have to do.

  Puller put his MP on two-shot bursts and slammed the trunk closed.

  He had one bit of recon to do. He got in his car, started it, and drove it in reverse over to the body. He used the car as a shield while he slid out.

  He saw the entry and exit wounds on the helmet. He popped open the visor and saw Dickie Strauss staring back at him.

  He turned to his left and saw it. The slug was lying on the pavement. He focused on it without touching it.

  It was a .338 Lapua Magnum round and Puller’s body armor was not rated to stop it. The Lapua also had a range of up to fifteen hundred meters. And with ideal conditions and a little luck, a talented sniper could hit his target from even farther away than that.

  He broke all crime scene protocols by doing a quick search of the dead man and retrieving his cell phone and wallet, which he pocketed.

  Puller got back in his car and, keeping his head down, drove it forward to the firehouse. He got out on the passenger side and slid the MP5 support sling over his head.

  It was time to go hunting.

  CHAPTER

  74

  SAM COLE’S RACK LIGHTS cut through the darkness and her sirens shrieked though the normal quiet. She knew these roads better than just about anyone, but a couple of times she pushed herself and her cruiser so hard that she thought they would both go off the road and into the open air before she plummeted to an early death.

  She tore into the last curve and punched the gas when she hit the straightaway. A few seconds later, she saw the firehouse. Pulling to a stop, she pointed her headlights at the body on the concrete. Cole drew her gun and opened her door. She called Puller on her cell but got no answer.

  She slid out of the car, keeping the door between her and wherever the shooter might be. She eyed the wrecked bike by the firehouse and then her gaze drifted to the Malibu. She heard sirens in the distance. A minute later two police cruisers pulled next to her vehicle.

  She called out, “Shooter somewhere out there.”

  She saw the deputies open their car doors and duck down behind them.

  “Cover me,” said Cole.

  She had on standard-issue body armor and hoped it was enough. She scooted forward and over to the body. She lifted the visor and stared down at the face.

  Dickie Strauss didn’t look like he was asleep. He looked like someone had dropped a cannon on his head.

  She called out to the deputies, “Fatality.” She eyed the holes in the sides of the helmet. “GS to the head. Heavy ordnance.”

  “Better take cover, Sarge,” said one of her men.

  Cole scuttled back to the car and took up position behind the door. She eyed her deputies. “Call in backup. I want all roads into here blocked off. Whoever it is, they are not getting away.”

  “What about the Army dude?” one of her men said back.

  Cole looked out into the darkness.

  Come on, Puller. Don’t be dead. Don’t be dead.

  Puller had set up a surveillance position next to an abandoned house about five hundred yards from the firehouse. He had come this way following, in his mind’s eye, the trajectory of the shot. A moderately talented sniper could nail a target all day from six hundred to a thousand yards away, if he had the right equipment. The Lapua round signaled to Puller that the sniper did indeed have the right equipment.

  Police snipers in urban settings typically shot at ranges under a hundred feet. Military snipers operated at distances considerably more than that, since combat was an altogether different beast. Puller had heard the report, so the shot wasn’t over a mile away. Military sniper rifles were generally longer than their police counterparts to allow the cartridge propellant to completely burn its fuel load, which reduced muzzle flash and powered up the bullet’s velocity. That kept the sniper’s position harder to find and increased the odds of a lethal shot.

  Puller pondered whether the sniper also had a spotter. If so, it was two against one. He heard sirens in the distance. Cole and her team were almost here. That was both good and bad. Good in that reinforcements were always welcome. Bad in that the shooter now had more incentive than ever to get the hell out of here.

  He swept the area ahead, looking for the telltale sign of a laser finder. The devices were great at acquiring targets, but discouraged in the battlefields for the simple reason that they gave away your position. Puller had always relied on his scope and spotter, and compared the height of targets to their images on the mil dot scope. The average human head, shoulder width, and distance from the hipbones to the top of the head could be roughly gauged. If you had that, you could use your scope to find the proper range. Cops aimed for the “apricot,” or medulla oblongata, the roughly three-inch-long part of the brain that controlled involuntary movement. You hit that, death was instantaneous. Since military snipers usually aimed at nothing under three hundred meters, they aimed for the body because the torso was a larger target.

  The shooter confronting Puller had blurred this dichotomy. Head shot but at over three hundred meters.

  Cop or military?

  Or both?

  If the shooter fired again, Puller might be able to locate his position by triangulation. But if the shooter fired again and hit Puller in the head or torso, the Lapua round would either seriously injure him or more likely kill him.

  He studied what was up ahead, empty houses, quiet streets. But not all of the houses were empty. There were cars parked in front of some. He could see low-level lights in some of them. Were they not aware a sniper was in their midst? Had they not heard the shot?

  He looked back in the direction of the firehouse. His focus went to the exact location of Dickie Strauss’s body. Round impacted, bike kept going. He’d fallen off about three seconds later. Back up the timeline to that. Retrace the trajectory. He looked in the opposite direction. He checked the probable firing line one more time. The only straight sightline. House at the end of a cul-de-sac. Dark, no cars out front. Behind it more houses, but on the next block they were all facing the opposite way.

  He listened, forcing himself to ignore the sirens. No sounds. No running, no footsteps.

  He made up his mind.

  A moment later he was on the move. For a big man he could move with almost no sound. It was both easy and hard. Long legs, less movement to cover more ground. But big men were not noted for being light on their feet. People always assumed someone his size would sound like an elephant coming. Some had thought that right before their deaths.

  Puller hoped tonight would be another example of this.

  CHAPTER

  75


  THE SNIPER RIFLE weighed fourteen pounds and was forty-two inches long, almost like a barbell. That was why you fired it mostly in the prone position. He carried it in his right hand. The collapsible bipod at the end of the muzzle was in the closed position. He moved quickly but methodically. One kill tonight. He had no desire for another. Not tonight.