No Man's Land

by David Baldacci

  He ate with his face pointed down. He was hungry, but he could survive without eating for a long time. He could survive without liquids for a long time too although the average person would become dehydrated and die fairly quickly. The same with lack of sleep. You don’t sleep for two weeks, you hallucinate and then you die, your brain and other organs all going wacky on you before they shut down and the lights go out forever.

  Yet it was all physiological. It was all about slowing things down, lessening the internal burn. Like animals hibernating, everything went from flat-out to glacial. Humans could learn a lot from animals about survival, because animals could do it far better than humans.

  And I’m not a human anymore. I’m a fucking wild animal. Maybe the most dangerous of all, because I’ve got a human brain to go along with the “wild” part.

  He finished his meal, sat back, and rubbed the spot on his head.

  He took a sip of coffee and then his face screwed up. The pain came and went without warning.

  He let out a tortured breath. It was the one pain that he could not ignore. The wound on his arm didn’t bother him. He had never even felt the bite of the knife.

  But the pain in his head was different. It was special, apparently. They had never fully explained that one. It was his brain after all. The most important organ he had. It was what made him him. Or not him, in Rogers’s case.

  He paid the bill and walked back to his car. He drove to another part of the small town, parked, and settled down for the night.

  As the hours passed and the darkness deepened, Rogers lay there and stared at the ceiling of the car. It was stained and faded and generally worn out.

  He was stained, faded, and should have been worn out. But his energy level had never been higher.

  It was only during his last year in prison that certain parts of his mind had become fully accessible to him. And that was why he had marshaled all of his strength and determination and sat in front of the parole board and said all the right things. His remorse. His learning from his mistakes. His wanting to lead a good, productive life going forward. He was being sincere—well, mostly. He had learned from his mistakes. He did want to be productive going forward. He had even forced some tears.

  But he felt no remorse, because he was incapable of the emotion.

  He had only one goal now. And it lay, he hoped, about five hundred miles from here.

  He was going back to the beginning to get to the end.

  But the remnants in his head? That previously inaccessible spot? He focused on that.

  The man was young, not yet twenty. Good-natured. Trusting.

  That had been his mistake. The trusting part.

  It was the same old story: a strange man in a strange land. No friends, no allies, no one to turn to for help.

  He had come to this place for a better life, as had millions of others.

  He had not found a better life. He had found a very different man at the end of the day living inside his body. He knew this and yet could not fully control it. To change himself back to what he was. He had tried. Over the last year when he had finally punched through that wall, he had desperately tried to uncurl the fist. To banish from his mind the desire to maim, wound, or more often kill.

  But he had made a little progress.

  The punk back at the construction site was fortunate that Rogers had somehow managed to walk away with sarcastic words instead of a lethal jab.

  It had been a little thing, certainly.

  But it had felt empowering nonetheless.

  That was why he had smiled.

  I can exercise some control. I don’t have to strike every time. I can walk away.

  In prison, after his encounter with the men who wanted to force their will on him, Rogers had been placed in a cell by himself. Better that he be completely alone, for none of the guards wanted to have to intervene in another fight involving Paul Rogers.

  Thus there was no one to antagonize him. No one to bring out the monster that lurked just under his skin.

  But as Rogers closed his eyes for the night, his thoughts held on that young man just recently arrived in this country with another name and a far different ambition for his life. A nice young man. A young man with a future, one would say.

  Now that man was long gone.

  The monster was all that was left.

  And the monster had one more thing to do.

  Chapter

  6

  PULLER SAT IN the chair and stared over at his father, who was still sleeping.

  Colonel Shorr and Agent Hull had been gone for a while.

  The VA hospital they were in was quiet, all activity ratcheting down as everyone tucked in for the night. Puller had come back here and sat down and stared at his father because he couldn’t think of what else to do.

  When his father had first come here his moments of lucidity had been fairly frequent. Not enough to allow him to live by himself. He might have burned his house down by putting a metal can of soup in the microwave or using the gas stove to heat his kitchen.

  Puller had acted out a game with his father in those earlier days. He’d been his father’s XO, or second in command. He would report in for duty and let his father order him around. He’d felt like an idiot for doing so, but the doctors here thought, other things being equal, that the charade might allow his father an easier transition to his next stage in the disease.

  So Puller had played along. Now it wasn’t necessary to do that. His father had reached the next stage in his disease. The doctors said there was no going back.

  It was a humble future for a three-star who should have been awarded one more star, along with the Medal of Honor. But politics, which existed in the military as it did in the civilian corridors of power, had prevented the additional star and the nation’s highest military honor from being bestowed.

  Still, Puller Sr. was a legend in the military. “Fighting John Puller,” captain of the basketball team at West Point, where the term “Pullered” had come into vogue. They had never won a championship while his father played, but every team that beat them went home probably feeling as though they had actually lost the battle. That was what every conflict was to Puller Sr., whether it occurred on a battlefield or on a basketball court. You would know you’d been in a war when you went up against the man.

  He had gone to West Point after the end of the Korean War and lamented that it was over before he could go fight in it.

  As a combat leader in Vietnam he had almost never lost an engagement.

  His division, the 101st Airborne, known as the Screaming Eagles, consisted of ten battalions of airmobile light infantry, plus a half dozen battalions of artillery supported by three aviation battalions of gunships and transports. It had fully arrived in Vietnam in 1967 and had fought its way across the Central Highlands. One of its most famous engagements was the battle for Hill 937, more famously known as Hamburger Hill. Puller Sr. had been right in the middle of the fight commanding his regiment in some of the most difficult terrain imaginable against an entrenched foe. He had been wounded twice, but had never once left the field of battle. Later, as they were stitching him up, he was barking orders over the radio detailing how the next engagement should be fought.

  Throughout his tours in Vietnam, Puller Sr. had accomplished whatever had been demanded of him by his commanders and more. Once he gained ground he did not give it up. He had been nearly overrun multiple times by an enemy that valued dying in battle as a great honor. He had killed and nearly been killed—sometimes by his own side as errant bombs exploded dangerously close to his positions. He gave no quarter, asked for none, and expected his men to perform at ever higher levels.

  The 101st was the last division to leave Vietnam and did so with over twenty thousand men killed and wounded during the course of the war. This was more than twice the division’s losses in World War II.

  Seventeen members of the 101st won the Medal of Honor in Vietnam. Many thought Puller Sr. should have made i
t eighteen, including every man who had served under him.

  Yet he never had.

  Despite this, he had risen through the ranks swiftly. As a two-star he had gone on to command the illustrious 101st. He had left a mark bone deep on that fighting division that had stood the test of time. He had earned his third and final star and the rank of lieutenant general before his sixtieth birthday.

  He was remembered as a soldier’s general. He took care of his men but drove them as relentlessly as he drove himself.

  As relentlessly as he drove his sons, thought Puller.

  His men loved and feared him. Perhaps more fear than love, now that Puller thought about it.

  And maybe that was just as true for the sons as the men under his father’s command.

  And now he lay sleeping in his bed at the VA. His world of command was gone, his sphere of influence nonexistent, his allotted time on earth winding down.

  Puller turned to something that was deeply troubling him.

  What his brother had said to him had been nearly as astonishing as what Hull and Shorr had told him.

  How could he have misremembered the last day he had seen his mother?

  His mother had been at that window. She had a towel wrapped around her head. Then she was gone.

  But now Bobby had told him they’d had dinner together. And his mother had gone out. That the neighbor’s daughter had come over to watch the boys. Puller didn’t recall any of that.

  He remembered that he had woken the next morning and his mother was not there. He remembered the MPs coming to the house. Then his father charging into the officers’ quarters where they lived at Fort Monroe, bellowing at and bullying all those within striking distance.

  And his father had lied to the police?

  He stared over at the sleeping man.

  Why would he have done that?

  Because he had actually murdered his wife and Puller’s mother?

  It was pretty much unthinkable.

  And yet Puller had seen enough in his career at CID to know that people were capable of just about anything.

  He thought back to his early years with his parents. They had argued, but not to an excessive degree. The old man was harder on his sons than on his wife.

  And Jacqueline Puller, known to all as Jackie, did not possess a submissive personality. If anything she was more than a match for her husband. The old man would be away and then he’d come home and try to change the rules of their lives that Jackie Puller had carefully constructed. As the boss of men rushing into combat, Puller Sr. evidently thought he was qualified and entitled to run everything. His wife had not been in agreement on that point.

  So there had been arguments, words spoken in anger. But didn’t most if not all marriages have that?

  Puller didn’t know for sure, never having been married. But he had conducted many investigations involving married couples. And he glumly recalled that more than a few involved one spouse murdering the other.

  He left and went to his car. He got in and punched in the number.

  “Shireen?”

  “Puller? How’s it going?”

  Shireen Kirk had formerly been a JAG, or Judge Advocate General’s, lawyer representing those in uniform. She had recently left the military and gone into private practice in northern Virginia. She had the rep of being a scorched-earth lawyer. And that’s exactly what Puller required.

  “I need a lawyer.”

  “Okay, so I guess it’s not going too well.”

  “Well, my father needs one.”

  “I thought he was in a care facility with Alzheimer’s?”

  “Dementia, but yes, he is.”

  “If he did something that someone found out of bounds I think he’d have a pretty solid diminished capacity defense.”

  “It’s not like that. This is from about thirty years ago when he was still in the military.”

  “Okay, what happened?”

  Puller filled her in on the situation and the letter that Demirjian had sent to CID.

  “That really sucks. You say they want to interview your father?”

  “Yes.”

  “If he’s been diagnosed with dementia he should have counsel there with him. I could even make a case that they can’t question him because of his condition. He’s liable to say anything and we don’t want him to inadvertently incriminate himself.”

  “No, we don’t.”

  “I can take the case.”

  “That’s great, Shireen. But can they even charge him if he’s not competent?”

  “They can charge anybody, Puller. Competency is a matter for a court to determine. And even if he’s not competent to stand trial they can hold the prosecution in abeyance until he becomes competent, if that ever happens. But that may be worse than him being tried for the crime.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “At least if he’s tried he can defend himself and maybe be acquitted.”

  Puller slowly nodded. “But if he’s not tried because he’s incompetent, people may assume he’s guilty and is just getting off because he has dementia.”

  “Exactly. Being tried in the court of public opinion is often far worse than having your day in court. At least in the latter you get a judgment one way or the other. What’s the name of the CID agent on the case?”

  “Ted Hull out of the Twelfth MPs, JBLE.”

  He could hear her writing this down. “I’ll contact him and tell him of my representation. I’ll need you to sign a retainer agreement if your father can’t. And I’ll need to meet with your father at some point.”

  “I’m not sure how helpful that will be.”

  “I still need to do it. I can’t rep someone without meeting them.”

  “Okay, I’ll arrange that.”

  “Are you his guardian, Puller? Do you have a power of attorney?”

  “Yes. We did that when my dad came to the VA hospital.”

  “Good, that simplifies matters. I’ll have to request the CID file from the investigation they did back then. They must have talked to people, and I can get those statements, plus information on any theories or leads they might have been trying to run down.”

  “I want a copy of it when you do.”

  “Why?”

  “Why do you think?”

  “You shouldn’t go there.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that before.”

  Her next statement surprised him.

  “Did you ever look at any of the case files when you got to CID?” she asked.

  “I tried to, but they wouldn’t let me access them. Because of my personal connection to the case.”

  Puller had just told the woman a lie. He had never tried to access the case files. And right now he didn’t really know why.

  Shireen interrupted these thoughts. “What does your brother think of all this?”

  “He’s more analytical about these things than I am.”

  “Meaning he doesn’t necessarily believe your father didn’t do it?”

  Puller had no response to that.

  “I have some forms I need you to fill out so I can get going on this,” she said. “I’ll email them to you and you can sign and email or fax them back, okay?”