The Escape

by David Baldacci

  Robert aimed his gun at Reynolds, who was still on the floor.

  When Puller looked over at the desk, Schindler hadn’t moved a muscle. He still just sat there. Puller’s jaw went slack as the truth hit him.

  Knox pointed her pistol at Schindler. “You’re under arrest. Get up! Now!”

  “Knox!” Puller called out. “Something’s way off.”

  Knox shot him a glance. “What?”

  The glass behind Schindler shattered as the high-powered round crashed through it.

  The Pullers and Knox dropped to the floor.

  “That shot came from the building across the street,” yelled out Puller.

  Another shot shattered a second section of glass. Then more high-velocity rounds poured through these openings, slamming into walls and the floor. One hit the light fixture and it exploded, throwing them into near-complete darkness.

  “What the hell is going on?” shouted Knox from behind the chair where she had taken cover.

  “Just stay down,” Puller called back.

  “Wait a minute, where’s Reynolds?” cried out Robert.

  They all looked around the darkened room.

  “I think I heard the elevator when the shots were going off,” said Robert.

  They looked around but no one moved. Puller waited for more shots to be fired, but none were.

  A moment later Puller rose cautiously and peered at the shattered windows. When Knox started to get up he said sharply, “Stay down. The shooter might still be out there.”

  Robert had crawled over to the desk to examine Schindler, who still had not moved, even when the shots had started. “John!” he said frantically.

  Puller shot across the room to kneel next to his brother. “What is it?”

  Robert pulled back Schindler’s jacket.

  As soon as Puller saw it he grabbed his brother and pushed him toward the elevator. “Go! Go!”

  He next shouted at Knox. “Run, Knox!”

  The three sprinted for the elevator, but when Knox hit the button it did not light up.

  “Reynolds might’ve disabled it,” said Robert.

  Puller looked left and then right and spotted the door at the end of the vestibule. It was locked when he tried the handle. He pulled his M11 and shot the lock off.

  “What is it?” yelled Knox before Puller pushed her through the opening and then did the same with his brother.

  “Move!”

  He closed the door behind him and sprinted down the steps toward the first landing. Knox and Robert reached it first, turned, and headed down the stairs to the second landing.

  Puller had almost reached the first landing when the detonation occurred. The concussive force blew the door to the stairs off its hinges and the compressed air surged downward like a million-mile-per-hour tidal wave.

  When it hit the two-hundred-and-thirty-pound Puller he was lifted off his feet as though he were weightless.

  The last thing Puller remembered was tumbling headfirst down the stairs. Then he hit something very hard.

  And then there was nothing more.

  CHAPTER

  64

  WHEN PULLER OPENED his eyes all he saw was darkness. At first he thought he was dead, but then wondered how he could still see. Or think.

  Then the darkness lightened and he was able to make out a silhouette.

  Then he heard a voice.

  “Sucks being blown up, doesn’t it?”

  The silhouette slowly transformed into something more solid. And familiar.

  Knox was smiling at him, but the concern was evident in her eyes and wrinkled brow. She dabbed his forehead with a wet cloth.

  Next to her he saw his brother, looking just as anxious, with no accompanying smile.

  Puller tried to sit up, but it was Knox’s turn to put a hand on him to hold him down. He was lying on a bed in a small, dimly lit room.

  “You got knocked cold, Puller.” She held up three fingers. “How many?”

  “I’m fine, Knox.”

  “How many?”

  “Three!”

  “Okay, your head must be even harder than I thought.”

  He looked around. “Where are we?”

  “In Virginia, near Gainesville. Reynolds left her car in the garage and I still had the keys. We drove back to get my car, left her car there, and then we drove around until we found this place,” said Knox. “We’ve been sitting here waiting for you to wake up.”

  Puller rubbed his head and winced at the lump on the back of it.

  “Couple of times we came close to taking you to the hospital,” said Knox. “That would have required some problematic explanations. But if you started going downhill fast we would have.”

  Puller glanced at the window, where he could see the dusk gathering outside. “The whole thing happened last night?”

  Knox nodded.

  “So what exactly happened?” he demanded.

  “You remember the explosion?” asked Knox anxiously.

  “I’m not suffering from memory loss, if that’s what you’re asking,” said Puller. “I saw the detonation belt around Schindler. We ran for it. We were in the stairwell. The bomb went off and then I was flying through the air. And hit something very hard.”

  “That would be the wall, Junior,” said Robert.

  “It felt more like an Abrams tank.” He glanced around at the space. “What is this place?”

  “Motel room,” said Knox.

  “So how did we get out of the building Reynolds took us to?”

  “Fortunately, your brother and I had made the turn going to the second landing. You got far more of the blast than we did, although we got knocked around too. It’s a good thing your brother was there. He carried you out over his shoulder. I never would have had the strength.”

  Robert said, “I haven’t had to carry you that much since you were four years old. And you weigh a hell of a lot more now.”

  “Cops show up?”

  “I’m sure they did. But we managed to get out first.” She rubbed his face again with the cloth. “How are you really feeling?”

  “Better than I have a right to, I guess.”

  She sat back and sighed. “Best-laid plans. I’ve been working undercover on this case for two months, I finally get to who I think is the bigwig, and find out Reynolds suckered me.”

  “She suckered us all,” pointed out Robert. “She obviously trusts no one.”

  “But I delivered you right to her. I acted my part really well. I almost deafened you to gain her confidence.” She touched Robert’s arm. “I’m sorry about that. It was an ad-lib. I had to sell that I was really a traitor.”

  “I understand. And it seems that most of my hearing is back.”

  Puller now sat up a bit, and she didn’t try to stop him. “Why didn’t you bring us in the loop before we went after Reynolds?” he said, scowling.

  She shook her head. “Trying to get you up to speed on the fly right before the op? No way. You wouldn’t have been prepped well enough. You would have said something or done something or made the wrong look, and Reynolds is too sharp. She would have picked up on it. I had to let you act exactly how you felt: convinced that I had betrayed you.”

  “Well, I bought your act,” said Puller grumpily. “But you took a risk by not telling me. I might have shot you.”

  “I had to take that risk. I worked too hard on this sucker. But when I saw Schindler, I was stunned. I didn’t figure him for it at all. But there he was.” She glanced at Puller. “But it was all a façade. A trick. How did you know?”

  “I could see it in his eyes. Up closer they were glassy. And he hadn’t moved a muscle.”

  “He was already disabled,” added Robert. “They probably used a paralytic.”

  Puller said, “Reynolds was obviously testing your loyalty. That’s why she moved to shoot Bobby. If you were really on her side, you’d let that happen. You weren’t and you didn’t.”

  “So she was able to get me to blow my
own cover.”

  “I’m glad you did,” said Robert. “Otherwise I wouldn’t be here. I could see the look in her eye. She was going to pull the trigger.”

  “But why all the shots fired through the window?” asked Knox, who immediately answered her own question: “So Reynolds could get away.”

  Puller nodded. “It was slickly done, I have to admit.”

  She sat back and folded the cloth into a square. “This was my only shot to get them, Puller. They’re long gone now.”

  “I’m surprised you got as far as you did with them,” he replied. “It wasn’t easy. When we were tipped off about Robert, that he might be innocent, we went back over his case in detail. One thing stuck out for us: Susan Reynolds.”

  “But how did you approach her?” asked Robert.

  “I didn’t. I let her approach me. We had set up my cover quite convincingly. I was passed over for a promotion. There were certain irregularities in my record, the accusation of a bribe. She could have gained access to this information quite easily. One day she called me out of the blue.” She looked at Robert. “I told your brother that we had received an anonymous tip about you. It said that you were innocent and that a co-worker of yours was not the loyal person they claimed to be.”

  “When did you get the tip?” asked Robert.

  “About four months before all hell broke loose at DB and the attempt was made on your life.”

  “So that was the catalyst,” said Robert.

  Puller interjected, “I think it might have been Niles Robinson. Guilty conscience.”

  “As I told Puller, unfortunately, we were probably the ones who almost got you killed. We obviously had a leak at INSCOM. Word got out we were looking into your case. We believe that prompted the assassination attempt on you.”

  “Well, it also gave me the opportunity to escape.”

  “So we decided to lay a trap for Reynolds. I was with INSCOM. I was possibly damaged goods. I could be helpful to them. It took two months, because she was very cautious. Then she made contact. A phone call, an email, a text. A face-to-face in an out-of-the-way place. Then things started to heat up quickly. I had no idea about the hit at DB on you, Robert. I wasn’t in the circle on that one. I already told Puller that. But when it happened and you escaped, Reynolds met with me again. She needed me to be part of the investigation.”

  “Why not just pull the plug on her right then?” asked Puller.

  “Because we might get her but no one else. And we still didn’t know what the endgame was. It couldn’t just be the murder of your brother. We needed to know what they were after. If we pulled the trigger too soon, we’d never find out what that was.”

  “So you became part of the investigation,” said Puller.

  “And from there I teamed with you, which she loved because she was convinced that your brother would seek you out. And the sooner they nailed him the better.”

  “But why was I so important to them?” asked Robert.

  “First, she loathes you. I think you represent for her every promotion she didn’t get. Every superior she didn’t impress. Every opportunity that went to someone else. She thinks she’s smarter than you. And she will do anything to prove it. You were the golden child wherever you went. And when your career carried you to her part of the world, you made a very dangerous enemy. When they needed to get you out of the way before you transferred to ISR, she was more than happy to do it. And that was the second point. They had Daughtrey in hand. He needed to get the job, not you. And we now know he was blackmailed.”

  “Any idea what they’re up to now?” asked Puller. “Reynolds said we hadn’t seen anything yet. When she said what they were planning would be memorable, I took the woman at her word.”

  “That’s the rub. Not a clue. I was hoping to learn more about it last night. But she outmaneuvered me. I underestimated the woman, and I guess I overestimated my own cleverness.”

  Robert said, “Do you think they’ll go forward with whatever they’re planning?”

  “We can’t assume that they won’t,” said Knox. “In fact this might accelerate their hand.”

  “But Reynolds can’t operate in the open anymore, not after last night,” said Puller.

  “We haven’t talked to the police,” said Knox. “They’ll eventually ID Schindler’s remains through DNA. But I have no idea whose apartment that was, or who was firing the shots through the window.”

  “And I can’t talk to the police, for obvious reasons,” added Robert.

  “But we can, Knox,” said Puller.

  “It would be our word against hers. We don’t have proof. And if they bring Reynolds in she’ll tell them about Robert being with us. Then our choice is either to lie or tell the truth, neither of which is a good option if we don’t want to go to prison. And knowing her she’ll come up with some quite plausible tale that we orchestrated her kidnapping and had a hand in killing a prominent member of the NSC.”

  “This is ridiculous,” snapped Puller. But then he drew a long, calming breath. “If that’s the case then we need to focus everything we have on finding out what they’re really planning.”

  “Reynolds has to be intimately involved in whatever it is, because they’ve taken such great steps to protect her,” pointed out Robert.

  “That’s true,” said Knox. “But is it in her official capacity with DTRA, or in her capacity as a spy?”

  Puller and Robert looked at her blankly for a few moments. Obviously none of them had the answer to that question.

  Knox said, “They only had two motel rooms available. This one and the one next door. I thought you and your brother could have this one, and I’ll take the other one.”

  “I’m going to grab my duffel from the car,” said Robert.

  After he left, Knox turned to Puller. “She beat me, Puller.”

  “She kicked my butt too. Again. I’m starting to get a real inferiority complex.”

  “She took it to one more level. I wasn’t anticipating that.”

  “Then we have to take it to a level she’s not anticipating.”

  “But my cover is blown, Puller. We have no way in.”

  “The three of us will get this done.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “Without a doubt,” said Robert, who had come back in and overheard this part of the conversation.

  He put his duffel down and sat on the edge of the bed. “They gave us some real intelligence without meaning to do so, of course. They thought we’d be dead by now, so my seeing her meeting with Malcolm Aust didn’t trouble Reynolds too much.”

  “Do you think you know why they were meeting?” asked Knox.

  “Aust is smart, sophisticated, and rich. But I’m sure Reynolds seduced him. I saw them in the restaurant. It was sexual on his part. It was totally business on hers.”

  “But what is her business interest in Aust?” asked Knox.

  Robert hunched forward. “For want of a better term, Aust is the secret keeper.”

  “Secret keeper? I thought he hunted WMDs?” said Puller.

  “That’s part of it. But only part. He’s an investigator, an overseer, and an inspector. A confidant. Depending on the situation he will adopt a different role.”

  “Why would his role vary depending on the situation?” asked Knox. “Like Puller said, his job is to ferret out illegal WMDs.”

  “Oh, it’s actually far more complex than that,” said Robert matter-of-factly “Take Israel, for instance. Their official stance is they have no WMDs. But they’re our staunch ally and thus we would never call for an inspection into what they have or don’t have. But for strategic purposes we need to know privately what their capabilities are. In steps Aust. Now, Pakistan has nukes. We worry about some of them going rogue because of lax security. The same with Russia. Neither of those countries are true allies of ours, but to call for an inspection of their