Daylight

by David Baldacci

PULLER JUMPED BACK ON THE METRO and rode it to the Reagan National stop, where he had left his personal car in long-term parking. He drove south on Interstate 95 to his apartment, where he found his cat, AWOL, lounging on the kitchen counter, his tail flicking back and forth like a furry metronome.

  He leaned against the counter and spent ten seconds rubbing AWOL’s ears, which was the length of time AWOL allotted him before wanting to be left alone. An elderly neighbor came in and took care of the cat while Puller was away. And with Puller’s schedule, the neighbor probably saw more of AWOL than he did.

  AWOL suddenly turned his luminous green eyes toward the window. Puller was on the second floor of an apartment building not that far from Quantico. CID headquarters was located there on Telegraph Road in the same complex as the Marine Corps base. He watched as AWOL crept over to the kitchen window and looked out. The cat’s tail went down and its back went up. Puller heard AWOL hiss.

  Puller had been in the Middle East where the most innocuous sounds often led to the most deaths and destruction. Because of that, his internal antennae had been fine-tuned to such an extent that what he could hear and discern from it was almost otherworldly. He would use a different phrase for it.

  It makes you a soldier who survives.

  And it really helped when you had a cat with even better antennae than a human would ever have.

  His M11 came out of its holster and he nudged AWOL with the pistol’s butt. The cat leaped off the counter, landed silently on the floor, and disappeared into another room.

  There was only one door into and out of the apartment. There were two windows facing the street. There was no outside deck. It was just nine hundred square feet of a typical American apartment. Puller’s government salary was good, higher than the median pay, though far lower than he would have made in the private sector. He could have afforded a more luxurious place, but why pay for something he barely used? And it wasn’t like AWOL cared what his accommodations looked like.

  He slipped over to the side of one of the windows and eased the curtain back. It was dark outside, but his eyes had been trained to see in the dark.

  In the lighted parking lot were lots of darkened cars. But there was one where he could see steam rising off the hood because the motor was on and the falling rain was being heated. The car’s lights were out, so why sit there with the engine running?

  Then he saw two shadows about fifty feet from the car and moving toward the building. They were moving slowly. That was a telltale sign because it was raining, and normal people hurried to get out of the rain. These were obviously not normal people.

  He moved across the small space to his front door, opened it a crack, and peered out.

  Stealthy footsteps scraped the steps.

  Puller grabbed a to-go knapsack that he kept in the closet by the front door and threw it over his shoulder. He eased out of his apartment and closed the door behind him. He moved noiselessly down the outside corridor and took up position behind an ice-maker unit.

  He took aim and waited.

  The first figure appeared at the top of the stairs, stopped for a moment to look around, and then motioned to his partner to follow him up. They reached Puller’s door just about the time that Puller pushed two sound mufflers into his ears.

  They checked the lock. Puller hadn’t left it open. He didn’t want to make it too easy for them. The first man pulled something from his pocket and worked away at the lock while the second man kept watch.

  The lock was defeated, and the first man pushed the door open an inch at a time. A few moments later both men disappeared inside. Puller moved from his position, pulling something from his knapsack as he did so. He put on a pair of night-vision goggles right as he reached the door. He peered inside the front room and saw the backs of the men. He pulled the pin on the object he was holding, held it for two seconds, and then tossed it inside. He stepped away and placed his back flat against the outside wall.

  The flashbang did exactly what it was designed to do. The blinding flash robbed both men of their vision. The simultaneous bang robbed them of their senses. Puller heard both men cry out and fall to the floor.

  Puller waited two seconds and then stepped inside.

  The men were writhing and moaning on the floor of the small kitchen. When one tried to get up, Puller tapped him rather hard on the back of the neck with his fist, and the man went down for the count. The other fellow tried to raise his gun, but Puller quickly disarmed him and then laid him out with an M11 slap to the head.

  He was about to call the police when a burst of machine-gun fire from the front-door area made him dive for cover behind a couch. The guys he had already dealt with were apparently only the advance team.

  Both M11s were out now and he fired back at the doorway. Another burst of bullets tore into the couch, and a second after it ended Puller sprinted to the right, kicked open his bedroom door, and slammed it shut behind him.

  He dove to the floor right as more machine-gun rounds shredded the door and ripped into the far wall. He flipped on his back, and with both pistols he fired back through the torn-apart door. Next second he heard the sirens. Machine-gun fire that wasn’t happening as part of an exercise at Quantico drew the attention of the legion of military and FBI personnel who called this place home. Still, Puller was thinking:

  What the hell took them so long?

  He slammed in spare mags, moved to the left, listened to the sounds of slight movement, and then emptied one mag through the thin drywall connecting up with his front room. He was rewarded with a grunt and someone falling and hopefully dead.

  He dove into the small attached bathroom as multiple bursts of gunfire tore through the wall and ripped his bedroom to shreds.

  Then he heard feet stumbling from the front room, a door being banged open, and now running feet rushing away.

  He got up, went back into his bedroom, and cautiously peered out.

  There was no one in the room. He ran over to the window and saw men running toward the vehicle with its engine on and lights off. They were half-carrying another man, who might have been the one Puller had shot. They climbed into the SUV and the driver hit the gas.

  Puller slid his window open, took aim, and fired his other M11 at the fleeing vehicle until his hammer clicked dry. At this range, he couldn’t have expected to stop it with a pistol shot.

  In another few seconds the SUV had turned the corner and was gone.

  As the sounds of the sirens drew closer, Puller went in search of and found AWOL. He was on the top shelf of the closet, behind a plastic bin where Puller had kept some of his winter clothing. There was a bullet hole right through the bin.

  An unhurt AWOL meowed and jumped down onto Puller’s shoulder. Puller left the closet and sat on his destroyed bed while he tickled AWOL’s chin. The cat didn’t budge. He apparently didn’t want to be alone.

  Puller couldn’t blame the feline.

  He surveyed what was left of his apartment. The two guys he had laid out were gone. Their buddies must have revived them and they had fled in the SUV.

  He glanced down at his twin empty M11s and let out a long, relieved breath.

  I thought I left the Middle East behind.

  CHAPTER

  31

  PINE COULD SMELL THE STINK of her own sweat as she sat, alone, in the holding cell handcuffed to a metal bench which, in turn, was bolted to the floor.

  Never thought I’d see the world from this side of the bars.

  She was still shoeless, still covered in blood, and she was freezing.

  She looked up to see a man standing there. He was in his fifties, paunchy, balding, and holding a manila file folder. His expression alternated between grim and bored.

  “You the one who keeps saying you’re an FBI agent?”

  “I do because I am. And I’d like to make a phone call.”

  “Absolutely. We just got a few people ahead of you in the line. Busy night tonight. Must be a full moon.”

  “Wh
o are you, anyway?”

  He tapped the badge riding on his belt. “Detective Milton Barnes. Your case got dropped in my lap, lucky me. Who’s the dead girl they found you next to?”

  “I told the cops that already. And also about the guy in there who tried his best to kill me.”

  “We didn’t find any guy, but tell me about the woman.”

  “Her name, at least I was told, was Sheila Weathers. I was also told she worked at the commissary at Fort Dix.”

  “You were told?”

  “Can I get these cuffs off, clean up, and get a blanket? And what, did you not pay your heating bill? It’s like forty degrees in here.”

  “Sure. I can pay for your lawyer, too. And you’ll get a free car and a trip to Antigua if you’re acquitted of murder. What, you think this is Wheel of Fortune or something?”

  “I’m Special Agent Atlee Pine of the FBI. Take a picture of me and email it to the Bureau. They’ll confirm I am who I say I am.”

  “Where are your badge and creds? That would move things along a lot faster than a picture.”

  “I was undercover. Highly inconvenient if they’d found them on me. I didn’t even bring my phone.”

  “Uh-huh. Turned out to be dangerous anyway. For the dead lady. Your prints are all over the murder weapon, by the way.”

  “Then somebody squeezed my hand around it while I was out. Maybe the guy who was going to cut my throat. They were obviously going to frame me for her murder.”

  “Cops got a call about a fight in that building. Screams and stuff getting knocked around.”

  “Right, that was me and the guy. I broke the jerk’s arm in about six places. I gave a description of him to NYPD. Try going around to the emergency rooms. The asshole’s probably in one crying like a baby.”

  The man continued. “They go there and out you pop all covered in blood and your prints on the knife. What do you think I’m thinking? That you’re undercover FBI like you say, or you’re a killer. This ain’t TV, lady. This ain’t a plot twist, okay?”

  “Just take the picture and send it to the Bureau.” She had a sudden thought. “To Special Agent Eddie Laredo, of the New York Field Office.”

  “Okay, while we’re waiting, you can come with me.”

  He had a uniformed cop unlock the door and her cuff and led Pine to an interrogation room. The cop then pushed her down into a chair set at a table, locked her leg into a bolt in the floor, and left. Barnes sat down across from her and put the file down on the table.

  “We haven’t identified the vic yet.”

  “I told you who she was.”

  “Who you were told she was. What were you doing in that building?”

  “I was knocked out and taken there. I woke up next to the body.”

  “Where were you taken from?”

  She gave him the address of the building on Fifty-Seventh Street.

  “Ritzy neighborhood,” he said.

  “You might want to pay attention to it. You might find a lot of international crooks live pretty well there.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know. And they got twenty lawyers for every one we got, so who’s gonna win that battle? So keep talking. What happened next?”

  “I confirmed that she was dead and then kicked the crap out of the guy who’d been sent there to finish me off. And then I broke out of the room. That’s when the cops showed up and almost shot me.”

  “You’re covered in her blood, you know. They checked you for wounds and found none.”

  “My arm has twin bruises about the size of Rhode Island. What do you call that?”

  “So you beat this guy up and he just ran off? Doesn’t seem likely.”

  “Why, because I’m a girl? Give me a two-by-four and I’ll show you how hard I can hit.”

  “I’ll take your word for it. You know, we could have put all of you in a giant evidence bag. We’re going to need to take those clothes and run swabs all over you.”

  “I’m surprised you haven’t done that yet.”

  “We need the suits to paper it first. Don’t want you running around screaming about your Fourth Amendment rights being violated, do we, Ms. FBI Agent?”

  She calmed and studied him, sensing an opportunity. “You have two exceptions to the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure, at least with respect to my situation.”

  Barnes watched her closely, suddenly looking intrigued. “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

  “Plain view, which the blood on me obviously is.”

  “And the other?”

  “Search incident to a lawful arrest with a condition being the preservation of evidence. Again, a condition my situation meets perfectly. I won’t charge you for either one of those. It’s on the house. Fed to local cop. Want to return the favor?”

  Barnes sat up straighter and his confrontational look slowly dissipated. “So, what case you working, Agent Pine?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “What was that name again at the FBI?”

  “Eddie Laredo. So now you believe me?”

  Barnes stood. “You said you were a cop and I gave you the chance to prove it. Plain view and incident to with all necessary criteria laid out just like it is on the detective’s exam? You passed with flying colors. Only a cop’s going to know that stuff.”

  He left and was gone far longer than a minute. Pine had actually put her head down on the table and fallen asleep. Whatever they had used on her to knock her out had really kicked her ass.

  She woke up when the door opened.

  “Well, well, so we meet again.”

  FBI Special Agent Eddie Laredo looked down at her, an incredulous grin on his face.

  As Pine looked up at him, she was both extraordinarily happy to see him, but also wanted to strangle him just to wipe the smirk off his features.

  It might have been a very good thing that she was bolted to the floor.

  CHAPTER

  32

  THIS SOUNDS LIKE SOME SERIOUS CRAP you’re involved in,” said Laredo as he drove Pine back to Newark where her car was. It was late the following morning, and Pine had spent much of the ride filling Laredo in on what had happened.

  Pine had given her statement to the NYPD, turned over her clothes for evidence, had photos taken of the blood spatter on her body, and then been released. They had given her blue hospital scrubs and flip-flops in place of her clothes, and she had left the precinct with Laredo.

  “Story of my life, Eddie.”

  “And this CID guy you’re working with?”

  “John Puller, yeah.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “I haven’t talked to anyone, other than Carol Blum on your phone.”

  “All this pushback you’ve been getting from the locals and the feds, that’s really troublesome, Atlee.”

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  “And this lowlife Tony Vincenzo playing with the big boys in that penthouse? How does that make sense?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe they like to keep the foot soldiers happy. Hell, it’s probably empty except when they let the riffraff come up to play. But it is bizarre.”

  “Well, I wish you luck. Sounds like you’re going to need it.”

  He dropped her at her car, where Blum was going to meet her.

  As Laredo pulled away, Blum drove up in an Uber. She got out, walked over, and gave Pine a hug.

  When Blum stepped back, Pine saw the other woman’s strained features. “I’m fine, Carol, I really am.”

  “I know,” Blum said in a hushed voice. “But it was close, wasn’t it?”

  “It was,” she conceded.

  She held up a spare set of car keys for the rental. “Now, let’s get you back to the hotel and cleaned up.”

  They drove back to the hotel and Pine did just as Blum had suggested. The hot water took off the blood and grime. She stood in the shower for at least thirty minutes, letting both the stink and another woman’s blood flow off her. As
she watched the red swirl down the drain, she leaned her forehead against the tile of the shower wall and started to sob. She wasn’t sure why—no, maybe part of her did know.

  Lindsey Axilrod played me like a fiddle. And Sheila Weathers is dead because of it.

  She toweled off, dried her hair, and changed into fresh clothes after throwing the scrubs and flip-flops into the trash.

  Starving, she took the elevator down to the lobby and walked into the hotel restaurant, where she ordered coffee and a sandwich. She pulled out her phone to check her messages. There were three from Puller in her mailbox.

  She quickly called him. “Everything okay?”

  “I guess it didn’t warrant the national news pipeline,” he said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Puller filled her in on the attack at his apartment.

  “Oh my God. How did you get out of that alive?”

  “My cat alerted me.”

  “Wait a minute, you have a cat?”

  “AWOL. He sensed them before I did. Not sure how, but I pay attention when he gets riled. So when they came in, I wasn’t there. I was waiting outside my apartment with flashbangs and my M11s. Got the jump on them. But some reinforcements showed up and they all got away.”

  “Thank God for AWOL.”

  “I’ve been trying to get ahold of you,” he said.

  Her coffee and sandwich arrived, and she took a sip of her drink. “You got a few minutes? I had my own little adventure.” She filled him in on what had happened to her the previous night.

  “You’re lucky to be alive, too,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “So this Lindsey Axilrod was a setup?”

  “Yes.”

  “I gave you her name. So this is on me.”

  “You had no idea. I’m normally suspicious of everyone, but Axilrod played it just right. She put me off my guard with her dumb-girl routine, and letting me think I was leading her around, when it was actually the reverse. I can tell you I’m never getting into another Uber again.”

  “So the odds are very good that Axilrod does not show up for work today.”