John Puller 02 - The Forgotten

by David Baldacci

  He left the hospital and walked to his car. On the way he took the letter back out of his pocket. His aunt had helpfully written in her phone number in Paradise. He reached his car, sat on the hood, slid out his phone, and punched in the digits.

  Puller was not someone who liked to put off to the next minute what he could do in the current one.

  The phone rang four times and then went to voice mail. Puller left a message for his aunt and then clicked off and put the phone away.

  He gazed at the letter again as he sat there on the hood of his Malibu. Well, it actually belonged to the United States Army, but Puller was the United States Army, so maybe it was the same thing.

  A letter with troubling concerns. But then again he’d only tried to call her once. Maybe she was simply at the doctor’s. Elderly people spent much of their time at doctors’ offices. He had certainly seen that with his father.

  Puller sighed. In many important ways this was not his problem. His father had probably forgotten all about the letter. Puller hadn’t seen his aunt in a long time. She had not been a part of his life as an adult. But she had been when he was a young boy. Sort of a substitute for a mother who was not there because she couldn’t be.

  All these years later Puller still could recall vividly moments spent with Betsy Simon. She had been there for him when he needed something that he simply did not have in life. Things that little boys needed. Things that fathers could not supply, even if they happened to be around, which his father had not. He’d been too busy commanding thousands of men to do things not just the Army way, but also his way. Betsy Simon had filled that void. She was so important to him back then. He had talked to her about everything, both troubles and triumphs. She had been a wonderful listener. And Puller had come to realize that the advice she dispensed to him growing up had been couched so artfully that it seemed to be his own ideas.

  He had leave time still remaining. No one had expected him back this early. He could not walk away from this.

  Or her. And it wasn’t entirely altruism. A part of Puller wondered whether his aunt could once more help him through troubling times. And not just with his father. He had never really talked about what had happened in West Virginia with anyone, not even his brother. Yet, despite what he’d told his brother, Puller had things he needed to talk about. What he didn’t have was someone he felt comfortable doing that with.

  Maybe his aunt could be that person. Again.

  It looked like he was headed to Paradise.

  CHAPTER 7

  There were many avenues, it seemed, to get to Paradise. Puller chose a Delta flight connecting through Atlanta that got him into the Northwest Florida Regional Airport four and a half hours after he left Washington. The airport was actually on land owned by the United States government. Eglin Air Force Base was one of the biggest Air Force bases in the world, and one the Army grunt Puller had visited while in Ranger School.

  This part of Florida was on central daylight saving time, so when Puller walked to the Hertz rental car counter he took a few moments to change the time on his watch. It was now ten- thirty hours CDST. He had gained an hour. The temperature was already in the eighties.

  “Welcome to the Emerald Coast,” the woman behind the Hertz counter told him. She was short and stout with frizzy hair dyed brown from its normal gray.

  “I thought the spiel would be ‘Welcome to Paradise,’ ” said Puller.

  She looked up at him and smiled. “Well, that’s about forty minutes or so from here. And I try to mix it up. But I probably say ‘Welcome to Paradise’ about twenty percent of the time.”

  “I guess even Paradise can get a little old.” “You want a convertible?” she asked. “Everyone does when they come here. Got a beautiful Corvette that was just turned in.”

  “I don’t know, how much is it?”

  When she said the per diem price he shook his head. “Army doesn’t pay me enough to afford that.”

  “You’re in the Army?”

  “Ever since college.”

  “So is my son. He’s a Ranger.”

  “I was an instructor with the Ranger Training Brigade and then went across the street to the 75th out of Fort Benning for two years before I deployed to the Middle East.

  “Rangers lead the way.”

  “It’s what I’ve always thought despite what the Marines and the SEALs say,” replied Puller. She paused. “You still want that Corvette?”

  “Like I said, ma’am, it’s not in my budget.”

  “How much can you afford?”

  Puller told her.

  “Then it is in your budget.” She started clicking computer keys.

  “Can you do that?” he asked.

  “I just did,” she replied. “And the GPS is thrown in for no charge.”

  “I appreciate it.”

  “No, I appreciate you”

  The Corvette was a gold color, and Puller pulled out onto the road feeling pretty golden himself. He took Highway 85 south and passed places named Shalimar, Cinco Bayou, and Fort Walton Beach. Then he merged onto the Miracle Strip Parkway, crossed over Okaloosa Island, which was also part of the massive footprint of Eglin AFB, zoomed across a bridge, drove through the town of Destin, continued east, and a short while later arrived in Paradise.

  As he looked around he could see why it was named Paradise. Everything was relatively new, distinctively upscale, and clean, with postcard ocean views. There were high-rise condo buildings right on the water, a picturesque harbor with fishing boats that looked right out of a Hollywood film, chic-looking restaurants, Gucci-lev- el shopping, beautiful women wearing very little, cars that made his Corvette look cheap, and a general air of “this is as good as it gets, people.”

  He parked in a free spot, climbed out of the low-slung car—no small feat for someone his size—and looked around. He wore jeans, a loose- fitting untucked long-sleeved white shirt, and loafers sans socks. His Mu pistol was tucked into a belt holster at the small of his back and covered by the shirt. As an Army CID agent he was required to carry his sidearm with him at all times. And even if it hadn’t been required he would have done it anyway.

  Multiple tours in the Middle East just did that to a guy. You gunned up as naturally as you drew a breath. Because without guns the odds were someone would try to stop you from breathing.

  The sun was climbing high in the sky. It was hot but the breeze was nice, managing to evaporate several beads of perspiration off his forehead. Several young, curvy, and barely clothed ladies gave him long, interested looks as they passed by clutching their Kate Spade and Hermes bags and teetering in their Jimmy Choos.

  He didn’t reciprocate. He was still on leave, but this was no vacation. He was here on a mission, albeit a personal one.

  He slipped off his shoes and walked to the beach just a few steps away. It was some of the whitest sand he could remember seeing, and it was soft. Middle East sand was different, grittier. But that might have been because on that sand people had been doing their best to kill him by gun, IED, knife, or simply using their bare hands. That sort of marred the perception one had of a place.

  The water too was unique. He could now understand the appellation “Emerald Coast.” The water did look like a huge pan of luminous green stones. The breakers were calm today. The wooden board displaying the water conditions indicated yellow, which meant light surf and medium hazard. But he wasn’t here for a swim.

  When he’d done his third and last phase in Ranger school it had been conducted in Florida. But not Paradise. It was in the swamps of the Sunshine State, filled with gators, moccasins, rattlers, and coral snakes. Puller couldn’t remember a bikini-clad hottie or Gucci bag within a hundred miles. And even worse than that were the Ranger instructors, who had kicked his ass from one end of the Florida muck to the other.

  He watched as sunbathers sat under blue umbrellas or lay on towels. He had never seen so many mostly naked asses and top-down ladies in his life. And more than a few were not in the best of sh
ape. It would have been far preferable for them to dress a lot more modestly. He observed a tanned male lifeguard sitting high up in his tower, scanning the waters for trouble. Down below another tanned and buff lifeguard on a three- wheeler sped down the sand.

  Nice life if you could get it.

  Puller looked up toward the sun, snatched a few rays, and then decided his tanning time was over. The Army did not encourage loitering, whether he was on leave or not.

  He walked back to the car, rubbed sand off his feet, and slipped his loafers back on. He watched as a cop car with “Paradise PD” and palm trees airbrushed across the doors rolled by. There were two cops inside.

  The driver was a burly guy with a shaved head, wearing reflector shades. He slowed the car, checked out Puller’s ride, then gazed up at the tall man.

  He nodded.

  Puller nodded back, having no idea what the man was trying to communicate, if anything. But it was always a good idea to stay on the good side of the local police, even if they had foliage painted on their vehicles.

  Behind her shades the lady cop eyed Puller too. She was blonde and looked to be in her early thirties. Unlike her partner, she didn’t nod at him. When she looked away she said something to her partner and the cruiser sped off.

  Puller stared after them for a few moments, climbed into his Corvette, and drove off. He had plugged his aunt’s address into the car’s GPS. It said he was only five minutes away.

  Five minutes to go with no idea what he would be facing.

  It was a lot like combat.

  But in combat you usually had support, backup.

  Here he was solo.

  After going it alone in West Virginia he was beginning to find this strategy a little annoying.

  If he were lucky Betsy Simon would answer the door and invite him in for iced tea.

  CHAPTER 8

  He was a welcome addition to the landscaping company because he was as strong as three men and could outwork all of them, which he had proven beyond doubt his first day on the job.

  After fleeing the beach as the bodies of the two people slowly drifted out into the Gulf with the tide, he had ridden the stolen bike to a part of Paradise that was not as picturesque as the rest. This was a prearranged place for him to stay, rented for one month and stocked with food. It was a twelve-by-twelve room with a hot plate, yet was more living space than he had ever had before. He felt fortunate to have it. He had rested for several hours, hydrated, eaten, nursed his injuries, and contemplated his next moves.

  It was the sort of neighborhood where everyone either drove decades-old pickup trucks and cars with bald tires and smoking engines or else rode bikes or hitched rides with more affluent friends to get where they needed to go. At night, the area was not safe to go out in unless you had the protection of one of the gangs that controlled this small comer of Paradise. It was not near the water, and no one would ever come here to take tourist photos. But it was where most of the men and women lived who cut the lawns, cleaned the pools, washed the clothes, and cleaned the houses for the wealthier folks who called Paradise home.

  He had ventured out at night, but only to confirm his employment with one of the larger landscape companies. One look at his size and physique was all that the company foreman needed to pronounce him up to the task. On the walk back to his apartment he had encountered four young men who were street-level members of a gang that called themselves duenos de la calle, or the street kings.

  They had encircled him on a quiet side avenue, gazing up at his great size. It was like the bull elephant surrounded by a pack of lionesses. They were trying to decide if they could collectively take him. He could see the gun bulges under their shirts and in the streetlight the glints of homemade shivs and store-bought blades resting in their hands.

  He did not wonder if they could take him.

  He knew they would fail, armed or not.

  He had already decided how he would kill each of them if they attacked. It was not his first choice, because it would complicate his reason for being here. But he obviously couldn’t let them kill him either.

  He kept walking and they kept encircling him like a moving bubble of flesh and bone. Finally, he stopped, looked at them. They spoke to him in Spanish. He shook his head, told them in broken Spanish that he didn’t really speak it, though he did, fluently. He only did this to throw them off, make it harder for them to communicate with him. Frustration messed with the mind.

  Then he spoke in his native tongue, and this seemed to catch them off guard, which had been his intent.

  The largest gangbanger, probably in an attempt to show he was not cowed by the big man, strode closer and asked him in English where he was from.

  In answer he pointed in the direction of the water.

  This did not seem to please them.

  The smallest of them shot forward, using more courage and adrenaline than common sense, and tried to stick a knife in his gut. The man moved with a speed that was surprising for someone his size. He disarmed the smaller man and lifted him off the pavement with one arm as though he were a child. He placed the blade against his throat, where it tickled the little man’s trembling carotid. Then with a flash of movement he threw the knife and it buried point-first in a wooden door twenty feet across the street.

  He dropped the man and the gang melted away into the night.

  They were young, but obviously their stupidity had limits.

  He walked on.

  The next day had been spent in twelve hours of labor for which he received eight dollars per hour. This was paid in cash at the end of the day, but he was docked five dollars for food that consisted of a bottle of water, a sandwich, and chips. And another dollar per hour was deducted because of rising gas prices, he was told. The money was meaningless to him. He simply took it, stuffed it into his pocket, and rode in the back of a battered truck to a location near where he was staying.

  The temperature had reached ninety-eight that day, and he had been out in the sun for all of it. While even the most veteran of the company’s workers had wilted quickly in the heat and humidity and sought frequent breaks in whatever shade was available, he had worked away, as oblivious to the heat as he had been to swimming all those hours through the Gulf.

  When one had been to hell, anything less did not intimidate.

  He had sat on his bed early the next morning.

  Sweat dripped down his back because his rent did not include air-conditioning that actually worked. Part of what had been left for him in the room had included a cell phone, with certain numbers and information on it that would prove useful in completing his task.

  He moved through the phone’s screens every day going over what he needed to and deleting certain things he wouldn’t want anyone to possibly discover. Finished, he sat back on his bed and lifted a glass of cold water to his lips. He stared around the close confines of his room: four plain walls and a solitary window overlooking the street where the sounds of late-night partiers could be heard coming from the waterside, a long way from here. The closer one drew to the beach, the more it cost.

  He was supposed to have traveled here by plane. Instead, he had taken a tranquilizer dart strike to his chest when he was on the street of a Mexican border town just across the line from Brownsville, Texas, one of the most dangerous places on earth. He had been fortunate to have just been tranquilized. He had woken on a vessel at sea trussed up like a shark in a net. Shifted from boat to boat, abandoned oil platform to abandoned oil platform, he had been successful at his first real chance at escape.

  He took in a long breath and sat up against the wall as the frail bedframe squeaked and groaned trying to support his weight. His door was locked, a bureau in front of it. If someone came for him in the night he would not be surprised. He had slept palming a serrated knife. If someone came for him he would kill him. It was just his life, as he had always known it to be.

  He got up to go to work.

  CHAPTER 9

  Puller eased
the Corvette to the curb and gazed across the street at his aunt’s house. Sunset by the Sea was the name of the community, and Puller decided it was appropriate. The place was near the water and the sun did set every day just like clockwork.

  His aunt’s house was a nice, sturdy-looking two-story with a garage. He had never visited her here. She had been mostly out of his life long before he’d joined the Army. She had originally lived in Pennsylvania with her husband, Lloyd. Puller recalled that the move to Florida had come about twenty years ago, when Lloyd retired.

  There had been a few points of correspondence with his aunt over the years. His brother had been better at keeping up with Betsy Simon than he had. But then Bobby had gone to prison, their father had mostly lost his mind, and Puller had lost all contact with a woman who had been central to him as a little boy.

  That was what life did to you, he supposed. Wiped out important things and replaced them with other important things.

  He spent a few minutes sizing up the area. Nice, upscale, palm trees. No mansions here, though. He had passed a whole spate of those on the way here. They tended to be close to or right on the water, big as condo buildings—huge pools, high gates, and Bugattis and McLarens parked in circular drives with towering fountains as focal points. That sort of lifestyle was as foreign to Puller as living in Pyongyang, North Korea, would have been. And for him probably just as distasteful.

  He would never make much money. After all, the only thing he did was continually risk life and limb to keep America safe. That apparently wasn’t as important or as valued as making billions on Wall Street at the expense of the average citizen, who was often left holding the bag of empty promises that seemed to be about all that remained of the American dream.

  But his aunt had apparently done okay. Her house was fairly large and immaculate, and the yard watered and well tended. She apparently had not outlived her money.