The Escape

by David Baldacci

  “And now he’s escaped. You don’t escape from DB without help. It’s impossible.”

  “I know.”

  “And so you probably know something else.”

  “Yeah, that my brother was guilty. And maybe he killed the guy they found in his cell. So he’s a traitor and a murderer.” As he said these words, Puller felt a sharp pain in his chest, his breathing grew shallow, and sweat appeared on his brow. He knew he wasn’t having a heart attack.

  But am I having a panic attack?

  He had never panicked, not once in his life. Not while bullets were flying and bombs were bursting all around him. He had been scared then, as any sane person would be. But that was not the same as panicked. It was actually the difference between surviving or not.

  “John, are you okay?”

  “I’m good,” he said curtly, though he really wasn’t.

  My brother, a traitor and a murderer? No, I am definitely not good.

  “So I guess that answers my question,” she said.

  “What question?”

  “You thought your brother was innocent, didn’t you?”

  “Maybe I did.”

  “I can understand that, John. It’s natural.”

  “Is it?” he said heatedly. “It doesn’t feel natural. None of this does.”

  “So what are you going to do?” asked Carson.

  “My CO gave me some leave time.”

  “And he also told you to stay away from this sucker.”

  “And I’ve got an NSC suit and two generals maybe wanting me to take a whack at it.”

  “But they gave you no direct order to do so, not that they were even authorized to give one. And you might have misread their intent. On the other hand, your commanding officer explicitly told you to stand down. So the answer is easy. You stand down.”

  “He’s my brother, Julie.”

  “And you’re a soldier, John. Orders are orders. You don’t really have a choice.”

  “You’re right, I don’t. He’s my brother.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Doing what?”

  “Putting this much pressure on yourself.”

  Puller took a long breath and then said again more forcefully, “He’s my brother!”

  “It doesn’t matter if he’s your brother. That ship has already sailed, Puller. He’s an escaped prisoner. The best you can hope for is that he’s captured safely and returned to DB promptly.”

  “So that’s it, then?”

  “What more could it be? Look, I know how you must feel. But your brother made his choices. His career and life are over. Are you telling me you want to put yours in jeopardy? And for what possible reason?”

  “Everything you’re saying makes perfect sense.”

  “But you’re not buying any of it.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You didn’t have to.” She took a deep breath. “So, again, what are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. And I wouldn’t tell you if I did know. That would just put you in an even more awkward position.”

  “I’ve been in those with you before.”

  “And you almost died, Julie. I’m never going to do that to you again. Never.”

  “I showed up in Florida voluntarily. You didn’t ask me to come down there.”

  “But I didn’t tell you to go back home either.”

  “I survived.”

  “Barely.”

  “And I don’t want anything to happen to you, John. Even if I am in Texas now. I still care about you.”

  Though they were not face-to-face, Puller could imagine the look that Carson was displaying right now. Tender and concerned.

  “Not worried about fraternization rules?”

  “They don’t apply to us. They apply to officer and enlisted. We’re both officers. I’m a general, and even though you started out in the ranks, you’re a chief warrant officer. And you’re not under my command.”

  “So you checked?”

  Her voice rose over the phone. “Yes, I checked. So you can understand if I feel a little proprietary toward you. You can’t tank your career over this. You just can’t!”

  “I can’t sit on the sidelines. I’m sorry.”

  “John, please think about the consequences.”

  “I’ve done nothing but think about them. But it hasn’t changed my decision.”

  He heard her draw a long breath. “Well, then I wish you the very best of luck. And I guess I can’t say I’m surprised. After Florida I understand quite clearly that Puller blood is thicker than even the Army green variety.”

  “Thanks for understanding.”

  “I didn’t say I understood. Just that I’m not surprised. Take care of yourself, Puller. And consider that a direct order from a two-star.”

  “That means a lot, Julie. It really does.”

  Puller put down the phone, sat back, and closed his eyes. He had never thought that Julie Carson would be the one. She was a general on the rise. He was a chief warrant officer pretty much topped out. He cared for her, but professionally they were like oil and water. But they could and would remain friends. And he would always care about her. Always.

  Loyalty mattered to John Puller. Almost as much as family did. And sometimes they were the very same damn thing.

  CHAPTER

  7

  WI-FI WAS UP and working. And so was Robert Puller. While the enormous machinery of the United States military, along with the even bigger intelligence octopus that spread outward from the CIA and the NSA, was searching for him, arguably the most wanted man in America was sipping an unleaded grande Americano with raw sugar mixed in and pounding away on his Apple MacBook Pro with fingers as nimble as a teenager’s. And he’d been here doing this for most of the day.

  It was a bit tricky, because as most Americans with an Internet connection or cell phone knew these days, they were watching. And they could come and get you anytime they wanted.

  But Robert Puller knew his way around computers and every known way to trace, hack, or spy on their users. And his laptop had been expressly programmed and loaded with software and unique protections not available to the public. There were no back doors for the NSA to pixel-creep up on him. There were no back doors period. Except the ones he had planted in other databases before he went to prison, and was now exploiting to the fullest. Being at STRATCOM all those years had left him in a unique position to hack everybody. And to do it with style, he admitted to himself as he finished off the grande and looked over the other patrons of the Starbucks, where fancied-up java was not merely a beverage but also a way of life. He had already read all the news stories related to his escape. He had been lucky, that was for sure. But it hadn’t been all luck.

  The news reports were full of facts. No real details on the hunt, beyond the painfully obvious. Checkpoints, house-to-house searches, watching airports, bus and train stations, asking the public for help, etcetera, etcetera. Pictures of him were all over the Web. If nothing else, they were a stark reminder of how much his appearance had changed overnight. The MPs he had passed earlier at the diner would have had his mug imprinted on their genes. And yet the one guy who’d looked directly at him hadn’t even troubled himself with a second glance.

  Also posted all over the Web was his past history. The brilliant academic career where he had topped the lists at every institution he’d attended. The meteoric military career. His far-reaching fingers in all the intelligence pies. The systems he’d developed, the software he’d coded, the farsightedness he’d displayed in arenas of which the public only had a vague awareness. And then the tumble from the high pedestal, the arrest, and the charges aimed at him like a fifty-caliber machine gun set to blow him into little pieces. Then the court-martial. Then the verdict. Finally, the imprisonment for life.

  And now the escape.

  All of this he read and digested, but it was ultimately meaningless to him.

  There was one angle to the story that had so
cked him right in the gut.

  His father and his brother had both been mentioned throughout numerous articles. The fighting legend now laid low by dementia. And there was dirt dredged up and regurgitated about the reasons why he had never gotten the fourth star, and why the Medal of Honor had never been draped around his thick neck.

  And then there was his brother, the highly decorated combat veteran turned CID agent who was building himself into an Army legend. But underlying the articles were the visits John Puller Jr. had made to the DB. How close they were as brothers. The lawman and the lawbreaker. No, the law-crusher, for he wasn’t a mere criminal—he had committed treason, saved from the death penalty by who knew what in the military tribunal process.

  But are they implying that my brother somehow helped me escape?

  He didn’t know where John had been yesterday, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t in Leavenworth. That would have to come out in the papers. His brother would have to be fully cleared of any involvement with the escape. He had to be! Still, he knew that even the hint of suspicion could come close to breaking his kid brother, as strong as he seemed. Personal honor meant everything to John Puller Jr.

  And what about John Puller Sr.?

  Well, despite his affection for the old man, he just hoped that his father was so far out of it now that nothing could penetrate the dense cloud the dementia was solidifying around his once extraordinary mind.

  He set all this aside and tapped his computer keys with renewed vitality. It had been part of his life for so long before it had been taken from him. Yet hacking was like riding a bike. He hadn’t forgotten anything. The codes had changed. The security was better. But it wasn’t infallible. Nothing was. There were new hacking techniques invented every day and the good guys simply could not keep up.

  He was a natural hacker, because part of his duties had been to hack his own side, to test defenses that he had helped create. If he, their inventor, couldn’t crack them, it was assumed that no one else could either. Sometimes they’d been right, sometimes wrong. And sometimes Puller had held back just a bit, because he never played the short game.

  His gaze trailed off the screen and ventured to the street where a Humvee puttered by. Inside were soldiers in their cammie uniforms, their methodical gazes sweeping the area.

  So they still think I might be around here? Interesting.

  He really didn’t believe this. The Army was simply covering its ass. The DB had just suffered its first setback. A presence on the street was to be expected. He returned his gaze to the screen and kept typing away, creating his version of a symphony, built note by note, measure by measure, and movement by sly movement.

  When the contents of the screen dissolved and then reemerged as something entirely new, he closed his laptop and stood. What he had just gained access to was not meant to be read at the neighborhood Starbucks.

  And while he had used plain-Jane Wi-Fi that was basically open to anyone, his laptop was firing off scramblers of such strength that any punk with an electronic mitt trolling for credit card numbers and accompanying PINs would be left with something so garbled that it would look like a trillion-piece digital puzzle without a handy picture to go by.

  But still, there were protocols. And though he no longer wore the uniform, Puller intended to abide by these rules to the extent he could. It was part of who he was, who he would always be. They said the uniform made the man. Well, actually, it did. But that statement had nothing to do with clothing. It was all inside of you.

  Now was the time for exploration and perhaps a drive. For that he needed wheels. He wasn’t going to do a rental. He was going to write a check for a 2004 Chevy Tahoe pickup in the lot of a used-car dealer the next block over. He’d looked at it earlier while taking a break from his hacking.

  It took an hour of dickering and filling out the paperwork. Then he climbed into his new ride, started it up—the eight-cylinder power plant sparking gloriously to life—and drove off. He flicked a wave to the salesman, who’d probably cleared enough of a commission to splurge on a nice meal for himself and the missus, photos of whom Puller had been shown during the course of their negotiation, probably to soften him up.

  It hadn’t worked. Prison did not soften you up. It made you a piece of rock.

  Next mission: obtaining quarters. Where he could read in peace.

  And then he could get this thing rolling.

  Robert Puller dearly hoped it had been worth the years-long wait.

  CHAPTER

  8

  JOHN PULLER KNEW that flying was out, because ticket purchases by credit card could be traced, and he figured a number of computerized eyeballs would be pointed his way. Trains were out of the question for the same reason, not that there were any convenient ones anyway that would take him where he needed to go in a timely manner. A bus might have worked, but he would need wheels locally, and getting a rental left an electronic trail as well. That limited his options to a car—his. Well, his military-issued sedan. But he would pay for the fuel.

  His destination in Kansas would take about twenty hours if he stopped along the way, which he intended to do to see if anyone was following him. The suit and stars might have wanted to make him their hunting dog for any number of reasons, ferreting out an escapee instead of a quail. But Puller didn’t want to be stupid about it, or put himself at unnecessary risk.

  He packed up his duffel and his cat and left at midnight. This was not unusual for him. He often headed out at odd hours, mainly because soldiers didn’t tend to commit major crimes on a strict timetable. Most of them, in fact, were done at night, often after too many beers and too many insults. Turning the other cheek had been strictly left out of all Army manuals.

  The important point was that any persons tailing him now would have to show themselves by their headlights. He saw none over the first two miles on meandering roads and quickly made his way to the interstate and started his trip due west. He stopped to eat twice, first breakfast at a Cracker Barrel in Kentucky and then dinner at a packed roadside grill named The Grease Bowl somewhere in Missouri.

  He was not in uniform and didn’t plan to be while he was on leave. He had his ID and official credentials, to be sure. He had his weapons, because if he didn’t have his weapons then he must be dead and someone had forgotten to tell him. And he had some investigative tools that had made their way into his duffel, along with some fresh clothes and other travel essentials. What he didn’t have was a good idea of what he hoped to accomplish by going to the scene of his brother’s escape.

  Escaped prisoners from an Army installation could certainly be within the purview of the CID regardless of which branch they’d been in. Technically, his brother was no longer a member of the military. Along with his conviction had come a dishonorable discharge—standard procedure. Bad guys didn’t get to wear the uniform anymore.

  Yet because Robert Puller had been convicted of national security crimes, responsibility for his case fell largely to the special agents of Army Counterintelligence and the FBI. However, Puller had worked on parallel investigations with both agencies and considered them highly capable. Good for them, perhaps bad for his brother. But he had to stop thinking that way. What was bad for his brother was good for him and the rest of the country.

  Easy to think, harder to execute, because the brothers had been inordinately close all their lives, due to their father’s all-consuming military career and a largely absent mother. John Puller had looked to his older brother for advice on all important decisions in his life, from asking a girl out to what position to play on the high school football team, from much-needed help on a physics exam in his junior year of college to the most appropriate way to approach their father about his decision not to go to West Point and become an officer. It was Bobby’s advice, all of it good and on point and well-intentioned, that had helped make Puller what he was today, for better or worse. And now that mentor was suddenly his enemy?

  The first time he had visited Bobby at the DB i
t had seemed as though an enormous mistake had been committed, but that it would be corrected in the near future. The two brothers, both tall and well built, though John was the taller and stronger of the two, had sat across from each other in the visitors’ room and Puller had talked and Bobby had listened. And then Bobby had talked and Puller had listened. Then as the visits had continued over more than two years, and his brother’s status in prison had gelled to a permanency that seemed unshakable, Puller increasingly could think of nothing to say. It was as though the man he was facing had his brother’s face but that was all. The person he’d known all his life could not be in there. He could not be in this place convicted of treason. Yet there he was.

  When they had last parted company, Puller had shaken his brother’s hand, but had felt no connection to him at all. It was an impersonator, he had thought at the time. It had to be.

  This simply could not be his brother.

  It was true that Bobby had helped his little brother, via phone,