John Puller 02 - The Forgotten

by David Baldacci

  This same process was repeated on the man.

  The figure stood on the sand a few inches from the water and scanned the breakers, probably making sure the bodies were not going to be swept back to shore. Then the figure turned and was gone the way it had come.

  He kept his body flat to the stretch of beach even as he felt shame for not coming to the couple’s assistance. But it had happened so quickly that he doubted he could have prevented their deaths.

  And sometimes God was busy with other things. This he knew to be true. God had often been busy when he had needed him. But then many people needed God. He was just one of billions who asked for divine assistance from time to time.

  He waited until he was certain the shooter was gone. He had no idea why the couple had been killed. He had no idea who had killed them. It was not any of his business.

  He could not remain on the beach now. He made his way to the boardwalk, and spotted a bicycle chained to a post. He ripped the post out of the ground, freeing the chain. He wound the chain around the frame, climbed onto the bike, and set off.

  He had the city’s streets mostly memorized. He had a place to go, to stay, where he could change his clothes, rest, eat, hydrate, and then he could begin his quest, the real reason he had come here.

  As he disappeared into the night, he began to mumble again, to pray for forgiveness for not helping the couple by killing their attacker. He was good at killing, perhaps the best. But that did not mean that he liked it, because he did not.

  He was a giant, but actually a gentle man.

  But even gentle giants could be moved to violence for the right reasons.

  He had such reasons.

  He had them in abundance.

  He was no longer going to be gentle. Not while he was here.

  It was the sole thing driving him. Indeed, it was the only thing really keeping him alive.

  He rode on as the two corpses were pulled slowly out to sea.

  CHAPTER 5

  John Puller took a sharp left-hand turn and drove down the narrow two-lane road. In the backseat of the car was his cat, AWOL, who had wandered into his life one day and would probably leave him just as unexpectedly. Puller was in the Army, formerly a Ranger, and currently a CID, or Criminal Investigation Division, special agent. He was not investigating any cases at the moment. Right now he was just returning from a protracted road trip with his cat, allowing himself a bit of R&R after a hellish experience in a small West Virginia coal-mining town that had nearly ended with him and many other people dead.

  He pulled into the parking lot of his apartment complex. It was near Quantico, Virginia, where the Army’s CID headquarters was located along with the 701st M.P. Group (CID), the unit to which Puller was attached. This made for an easy work commute, although he rarely spent much time at Quantico. He was more often on the road investigating crimes that involved a person who wore the uniform of the United States Army and yet was doing bad things. And unfortunately, there were a lot of cases to work.

  He parked his car, a trim Army-issued Mal- ibu, grabbed his rucksack from the trunk, opened the back door, and waited patiently for AWOL, a fat orange-and-brown tabby, to mosey out. The cat followed him up to his apartment. Puller lived in six hundred square feet of rigid lines and minimal clutter. He had been in the Army for most of his adult life and now, in his mid-thirties, his personal aversion to junk and clutter was irreversibly established.

  He got food and water out for AWOL, snagged a beer from the fridge, sat down in his leather recliner, put his feet up, and closed his eyes. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually gotten a full night’s sleep. He decided to do something about it right now.

  The last few weeks had not been especially kind to Puller, who was nearly six feet four and a normally solid 232 pounds. He had not gotten any shorter, but he had lost about ten pounds because his appetite had abandoned him. Physically, he was still doing okay. He could beat any test the military might offer related to strength, endurance, or speed. Mentally, however, he was not doing very well. He wasn’t sure he ever would be doing well mentally again. Some days he thought he would, others not. This was one of the other days.

  Puller had gone on the road trip to try to get his head back on straight after the ordeal in West Virginia.

  It had not worked. If anything, he was even worse. The time away, the miles driven had only provided him with far too much time to think. Sometimes that was not good. He didn’t want to think anymore. He just wanted to be doing something that would carry him into the future instead of transporting him to the past.

  His phone buzzed. He looked at the readout on the screen.

  USDB. That stood for the United States Disciplinary Barracks. It was located in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. It was the Army’s prison for its most important—that is, dangerous—criminals.

  Puller knew it well. He had visited there often.

  His older brother and only sibling, Robert Puller, would be stationed there for the rest of his natural life, and maybe even beyond, if the Pentagon had its way.

  “Hello?”

  “Please hold,” an efficient-sounding female voice said.

  The next moment a familiar voice came on the line.

  It was his brother, formerly a major in the Air Force before being convicted at court-martial for treason against his country for reasons that Puller neither was privy to nor would probably ever understand for as long as he lived.

  “Hey, Bobby,” said Puller dully. His head was starting to ache.

  “Where are you?”

  He said irritably, “Just got back. Just put my feet up. What’s going on?”

  “How was your road trip? Get things figured out?”

  “I’m good.”

  “Which means you didn’t and you’re just blowing me off. That’s okay. I can take it.”

  Normally, Puller looked forward to talking to his brother. Their calls and visits were infrequent. But not this time. He just wanted to sit in his recliner with his beer and think of exactly nothing.

  “What’s going on?” he said again, a little more firmly.

  “Okay, I read you loud and clear. ‘Get the hell off the phone, I don’t want to talk.’ I wouldn’t be bothering you except for the call I got.”

  Puller sat up in his recliner and put his beer down.

  “What call? The Old Man?”

  There was only one “Old Man” in the Puller brothers’ lives.

  That would be John Puller Sr., a retired three- star and a fighting legend. He was an old bastard from the Patton Kicking Ass and hospital suffering from short but intense bouts of dementia and long and even more intense episodes of depression. The dementia was probably because of age. The depression was because he no longer wore the uniform, no longer commanded a single soldier, and thus felt he had no more reason left to live. Puller Sr. had been put on earth for one reason only: to lead soldiers into combat.

  More to the point, he had been put on this earth to lead soldiers to victory in combat. At least that’s what he believed. And most days both his sons would have agreed with that assessment.

  “People on behalf of the Old Man from the hospital. They couldn’t reach you, so they tried me. I can’t exactly up and visit the Old Man.” “What did they call about? Is he failing mentally again? Did he fall down and break a hip?”

  “No on both counts. I don’t think it has to do with him personally. They weren’t entirely clear what the issue was, probably because Dad wasn’t entirely clear with them. I believe that it involved a letter that he received, but I can’t swear to that. But that’s what it seemed to be about.”

  “A letter. Who from?”

  “Again, can’t answer that. I thought with you being pretty much right there you could go over and find out what’s going on. They said he was really upset.”

  “But they didn’t know what was in the letter? How can that be?”

  “You know how that can be,” replied Robert. “I don’t care how old
or out of it Dad is. If he doesn’t want you to read a letter he has, you ain’t reading it. He can still kick ass even at his age. There’s not a doctor in the VA system who could take him or would ever want to try.”

  “Okay, Bobby, I’ll head over now.”

  “John, all bullshit aside, you okay?”

  “All bullshit aside, no, Bobby, I’m not okay.” “What are you going to do about it?”

  “I’m in the Army.”

  “Meaning what exactly?”

  “Meaning I’m going to soldier on.”

  “You can always talk to somebody. The Army has lots of specialists who do just that. You went through a lot of shit in West Virginia. It would screw anybody up. Like PTSD.”

  “I don’t need to talk to anybody.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure about that.”

  “Puller men don’t talk about their troubles.” Puller could imagine his brother shaking his head in disappointment.

  “Is that family rule number three or four?” Puller said, “For me, right now, it’s rule number one.”

  CHAPTER 6

  As he walked down the hall at the VA hospital Puller wondered whether he would end up in one himself when he got older. As he looked around at the elderly sick and disabled former soldiers his spirits dropped even more.

  Maybe a shot to the head when the time comes would be better.

  He knew where his father’s room was and so bypassed the nurse’s desk. He actually heard his old man long before he saw him. John Puller Sr. had always possessed a voice like a bullhorn, and age and his other infirmities had done nothing to lessen its power. Indeed, in some ways, it seemed even more strident than before.

  As Puller approached the door to his father’s room it opened and a frazzled-looking nurse stepped out.

  “God, am I glad you’re here,” she said, staring up at Puller. He was not in uniform but she apparently had easily recognized him.

  “What’s the problem?” asked Puller.

  “He’s the problem,” she replied. “He’s been asking for you for the last twenty-four hours. He won’t let it go.”

  Puller put his hand on the knob. “He was a three-star. It’s always personal and they never let anything go. It’s in their DNA.”

  “Good luck,” said the nurse.

  “It’ll have nothing to do with luck,” said Puller as he walked into the room and shut the door behind him.

  Inside the room he put his broad back to the door and gazed around. The place was small, maybe ten by ten, like a prison cell. Actually, it was about the same size as the place his brother would be calling home at USDB for the rest of his life.

  The room was furnished with a hospital bed, a laminated wood nightstand, a curtain for privacy, and a chair that did not look comfortable and felt just how it looked.

  Then there was one window, a tiny closet, and a bathroom with support bars and panic buttons all over the place.

  And then, lastly, his old man, John Puller Sr., the former commander of arguably the Army’s most famous division, the ioist Airborne Screaming Eagles.

  “XO, where the hell you been?” said Puller Sr., staring at his son like he had him lined up over iron gunsights.

  “On assignment, just got back. Hear there’s something up, sir.”

  “Damn right there is.”

  Puller moved forward and stood at ease by the side of the bed where his father lay, wearing a white T-shirt and loose-fitting blue scrub pants. Once nearly as tall as his son, the old man had been shrunken by age to a little over six-one— still tall, but not the near giant he had once been. A white fringe of cottony hair ran around the rim of his head, with nothing else on top. His eyes were ice blue and went from flashing fire to vacant, sometimes in the span of a few seconds.

  The doctors weren’t quite sure what was going on with Puller Sr. They wouldn’t officially call it Alzheimer’s or even dementia. They had begun to say simply that he was “getting old.”

  Puller just hoped his father had enough lucidity left today to tell him about the letter. Or at least to allow him to see it.

  “You received a letter?” he prompted. “Top- secret communication? Maybe from SecArm?” he added, referring to the Secretary of the Army.

  Although his father had been out of the Army for nearly two decades, he didn’t seem to realize that was so. Puller had found it better to keep the military subterfuge going, in order to put his father at ease, and also to move conversations forward. He felt silly doing it, but the doctors had persuaded him that this was a preferable course, at least in the short term. And maybe the short term was all his father had left.

  His father nodded and looked grim. “Not bullshit, at least I don’t think so. Got me concerned, XO.”

  “Can I get read in, sir?”

  His father hesitated, stared up at him, his expression that of a man who was not quite sure what or who he was looking at.

  “Think I can get read in, General?” Puller asked again, his voice quieter but also firmer.

  His father pointed to his pillow. “Under there. Had me concerned.”

  “Yes, sir. May I, sir?”

  Puller indicated the pillow and his father nodded and sat up.

  Puller stepped forward and pulled up the pillow. Underneath was an envelope that had been torn open. Puller picked it up and gazed at it. The address was written in block letters. His dad. At this VA hospital. Postmarked from a place called Paradise, Florida. The place sounded vaguely familiar. He looked at the name in the top left- hand corner of the envelope.

  Betsy Puller Simon. That’s why it sounded familiar.

  That was his aunt and his father’s sister. She was older than her brother by nearly ten years.

  Lloyd Simon had been her husband. He’d died many years ago. Puller had been on deployment in Afghanistan back then. He remembered getting a note from his father about it. He hadn’t thought about his aunt very often since then and suddenly wondered why. Well, now he was totally focused on her.

  She’d written to her brother. The brother was upset. Puller was about to find out why, he supposed. He hoped it wasn’t about a missing pet, or an unpaid bill, or that his elderly aunt was getting remarried and maybe wanted her younger brother to give her away.

  There was no way that was happening.

  He slid the single sheet of paper out of the envelope and unfolded it. It was heavy stock with a nice watermark. In five years they probably wouldn’t even make this stuff anymore. Who wrote letters by hand these days?

  He focused on the spidery handwriting sprawled across the page. It was written in blue ink, which made it jump off the cream-colored paper.

  There were three paragraphs in the letter.

  Puller read all three, twice. His aunt had ended by writing, “Love to you, Johnny. Betsy.”

  Johnny and Betsy?

  It made his father seem almost human.

  Almost.

  Puller could now understand why his father had been upset after reading the letter. His aunt had clearly been upset while writing it.

  Something was going on down in Paradise, Florida, that she didn’t like. She didn’t go into detail in the letter, but what she had written was enough to get Puller interested. Mysterious happenings at night. People not being who they seemed. A general air of something not being right. She had named no names. But she had ended the letter by asking for help not from her brother.

  She asked specifically for my help.

  His aunt must’ve known that he was an Army investigator. Perhaps his father had told her. Perhaps she had found out on her own. What he did for a living was not a secret.

  He folded the letter back up and put it in his pocket. He looked at his father, who was now gazing across at the little TV set connected to the wall by way of a hinged arm. On the screen was The Price Is Right. His father seemed intrigued by the goings-on. This was a man who, in addition to having led the ioist, had commanded an entire corps composed of up to five divisions, totaling nearly a hu
ndred thousand highly trained soldiers, in combat. And he was now intently watching a TV show where people guessed the prices of everyday stuff in an attempt to win more stuff. “Can I keep the letter, sir?” he asked.

  Now that Puller had been summoned and had the letter and matter seemingly in hand, his father no longer seemed interested or upset. He waved his hand in a vague symbol of dismissal.

  “Take care of it, XO. Report back when the matter is resolved.”

  “Thank you, sir, I’ll do my best, sir.”

  Even though his father wasn’t looking at him, he performed a crisp salute, spun on his heel, and exited. He did this because the last time he’d seen his father he’d walked out on him in both disgust and frustration, leaving the old man to scream after him. Apparently that memory no longer resided in his father’s mind. Along with a lot of other things. But it had remained in Puller’s mind, stark and fierce.

  However, as his hand hit the door pull his father said, “Take care of Betsy, XO, she’s the real deal.”

  Puller looked back at his father. The old man had turned and was staring at him. His ice blue eyes appeared to hold as much lucidity as they ever had. He was no longer in Price Is Right land.

  “I will, sir. Count on me.”

  On the way out Puller ran into his father’s primary-care physician. Balding and slight of build, he was a good doctor and labored here for far less money than his medical degree from Yale could have earned him elsewhere.

  “So how’s he doing?” asked Puller.

  “As good as can be expected. Physically, he’s still an amazing specimen. I wouldn’t want to arm-wrestle him. But up top things seem to be continuing to slip.”

  “Anything that can be done?”

  “He’s on the meds typically prescribed for his condition. There is no cure, of course. We can’t reverse things now, though the future holds some promise for that. I just think it’s going to be a long downward spiral, John. And it might speed up as time goes on. Sorry it’s not better news.”

  Puller thanked the doctor and headed on. He knew all of this, but still asked each time he was here. Maybe part of him thought the answer might one day turn out to be different.