Дэвид Балдаччи - No Man's Land

“I haven’t finished vetting him yet, Ms. Myers,” said Karl, glaring at Rogers.

Rogers glanced at him. “I’ll arm wrestle you, if you don’t mind a blown-out rotator.”

“I usually do a little boxing with the new guys,” snapped Karl.

“I wouldn’t advise that,” said Rogers. “It would not be a fair fight.”

“You little prick!”

Karl kicked out at Rogers, who sidestepped the thrust, clamped down on the leg, and effortlessly flipped Karl off his feet. An instant after Karl hit the floor Rogers straddled him, wrenched his arm behind his back, and put him in a chokehold that had Karl’s eyes rolling in the back of his head.

“Stop, stop!” cried out Myers.

Rogers immediately let go and stepped back.

“Do I get the job?” he said calmly.

Myers looked down at the barely conscious Karl on the floor and then lifted her gaze to Rogers.

“When can you start?”

“Tonight.”

“All right.”

She added a bit shakily, “Do you have a problem I should know about, Paul?”

“I have no problems. And I’ll do a good job for you.”

“Okay, but we don’t need you to kill anybody.”

Rogers didn’t answer her. He helped Karl to his feet and over to a chair. The big man wouldn’t meet his eye.

“I’m sorry if I hurt you,” said Rogers. “I just really need the job.”

Breathing hard, Karl waved him off.

Myers led Rogers out of the office and into what looked like a workroom at the back of the bar. She gave him a set of clothes and shoes to wear.

“This is what the bouncer wears. They should fit okay.”

“Thanks.”

She asked, “Do you have a smartphone?”

He shook his head. “I don’t have a smartphone and I don’t have the money to buy one.”

She opened a cabinet, pulled out a box, and tossed it to him. “It’s a Samsung, hooked to the Web and all ready to go. The phone number is on the front screen. It’s yours to use while you work here.”

Rogers stuck it in his pocket. “Thanks.”

“You’ll also wear a headset and comm pack when you’re on duty. I like my people to be in communication at all times.”

“You sound like you were in the military.”

“I’ll see you tonight. Get in two hours early so you can be shown how we do things, understood?”

“Yes.”

She glanced nervously at the door. “How did you do that to Karl?”

“I got a few tricks. And I figured I had to show him I got what it takes.”

“Okay, I get that. But he has nearly six inches and over a hundred pounds on you. He’s vetted a lot of bouncers a lot bigger than you, and none of them did what you just did. Karl usually had them on the floor.”

“I’m stronger than I look,” said Rogers.

“Obviously.”

He left her there staring uncertainly after him.

He walked back to his van and drove to a motel that offered a twenty-nine-dollar nightly rate. It was a firetrap, but after ten years in a prison cell he had learned not to care where he slept so long as he could walk out the door of his own free will.

He paid for three nights in cash and went to the room after parking the white van in a space directly in front.

Five hundred dollars a night, off during the days, and he would still have time after he clocked out at two to do what needed doing. It was a good scenario for him all the way around.

He locked the door behind him, dropped his duffel on the floor, hung his work clothes up in the closet and placed the shoes directly underneath.

He sat on the edge of the bed and looked down at the smartphone. He’d never used one before. They were only coming into vogue after he had gone to prison. But he quickly figured out how it worked.

He went online and did some more digging on CB Excelon Corp.

His searches becoming more advanced, he skipped from one site to another until he found something interesting.

Former CEO retires and moves to the Outer Banks .

The story was about five years old. Chris Ballard had founded and run Ballard Enterprises and its successor, CB Excelon, for many years. The “CB” obviously stood for Chris Ballard. He had subsequently turned the reins over to a new regime. Now eighty, Ballard was retiring to a more leisurely life on the sandy beaches of North Carolina.

The story went on to bullet-point some of Ballard’s successes and the work that his firm had done in connection with DARPA, the Defense Department’s research arm. The article also gave a thumbnail history of the agency.

DARPA, created in the late 1950s by President Eisenhower, had started out as the Advanced Research Projects Agency. It had come into being in response to the Soviets sending Sputnik I into orbit. The organization had changed its name several times over the decades, before settling on DARPA in 1996. With its new headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, it employed hundreds of people and managed a budget of $3 billion. Its mission was to nurture and support game-changing military technologies and to create surprises for America’s enemies, although some of its project outcomes had had significant influence in nonmilitary applications. It funded numerous areas of development in the private sector and was known to give long leashes, short time frames, and overly ambitious – some would say impossible – goals to its contractors. It had had many successes but also spectacular failures. An independent agency, DARPA reported directly to DoD senior management.

Rogers already knew this about DARPA and didn’t really care.

He found a mapping function on the phone and determined that the Outer Banks were only a couple hours from Fort Monroe.

His only lead to Claire Jericho was Chris Ballard.

North Carolina here I come .

THE CAR HAD been in the driveway.

Puller sat on the hood of his Malibu staring at the old house on the grounds of Fort Monroe. The Puller family had owned a Buick four-door sedan back then, provided by the Army.

It had been in the driveway after his mother had left that night.

They had no other car.

She had to have walked.

Puller pushed off the hood and started to head down the sidewalk. He could have gone in one of two directions, but he had chosen the way that made the most sense to him.

Sunday best.

As he walked along he could not stop himself from imagining his mother making this same journey that night. His footsteps were following that same trek. His steps were hitting where hers had hit on this very same concrete. He visualized her all dressed up, her purse perhaps clutched at her side. Her gaze directly in front of her. Some purpose in mind.

Some destination.

When he reached St. Mary’s Church, Puller stopped.

It looked the same as when he’d been a boy here. The trees around it were larger and fuller, but the church itself had remained frozen in time.

It was a beautiful little church. It would have made a great postcard picture, he suddenly thought.

Come here and worship God. It will get you in the spirit.

The Catholic church was still open and functioning. Its official name was St. Mary Star of the Sea Catholic Church. It had a school, also named St. Mary Star of the Sea, that catered to pre-K through eighth grade and was located across the causeway from the fort on Willard Avenue.

Puller had attended Mass here every Sunday with his mother and brother, and his father if he was in town. He had never gone back since she’d vanished. He had never seen the point to it, since God had ignored his teary pleas and never returned Puller’s mother to him.

He stood out in front of the church for a few minutes, trying not to be overwhelmed by all the memories that had suddenly come charging headlong at him.