Дэвид Балдаччи - The Escape

He sat up and grabbed the phone. The number on the screen was different. It wasn’t the hospital.

It was his CO, Don White.

“Yes sir?” he answered.

“Puller, there’s a situation. Maybe you haven’t heard.”

Puller blinked and then tied his CO’s ominous statement to the calls from the hospital. His father. Was he really dead? It couldn’t be. Fighting legends didn’t die. They just… were there. Always.

His voice dry and scratchy, he said, “Heard what, sir? I just got back in town from Fort Sill. Is it my father?”

“No, it’s your brother,” said White.

“My brother?”

His brother was in the most secure military prison in the country. Now Puller’s mind turned to other possibilities involving his sibling.

“Has he been injured?” Puller didn’t know how that could be. There were no riots at the DB. But then again, one of the guards had slugged Bobby once, for a reason he had never shared with his brother.

“No. It’s a little more serious than that.”

Puller drew a quick breath. More serious than that? “Is he…is he dead?”

“No, apparently he’s escaped,” White answered.

Puller drew another quick breath as his mind tried to come to terms with this statement. But one didn’t escape from the DB. It would be like flying to the moon in a Toyota. “How?”

“No one knows how.”

“You said ‘apparently.’ Is there some confusion on the point?”

“I said ‘apparently’ because that’s what DB is saying right now. It happened last night. I can’t imagine they wouldn’t have found him by now, if he were still on the premises. DB is big, but it’s not that big.”

“Is any other prisoner missing?”

“No. But there’s something else. Equally troubling.”

“What could that be, sir?”

“That could be an unidentified man found dead in your brother’s cell.”

An exhausted Puller could barely process these words. Even with ten hours of sleep behind him he doubted he could have done much with them.

“An unidentified man? Meaning not another prisoner, guard, or other person working at the prison?”

“Correct.”

“How exactly did he escape?” asked Puller.

White said, “Storm knocked out the power and then the backup generator failed. Reinforcements from the fort were called in to make sure order was maintained. They thought everything was fine until they did the head count. One head was missing. Your brother’s. And then another head was added – the dead guy. The Army Secretary, I’m told, just about had a coronary when he was briefed.”

Puller was only half listening to this as another disturbing thought pushed into his tired mind. “Has my father been informed?”

“I didn’t call him, if that’s what you’re asking. But I can’t speak for others. I wanted you to know as soon as possible. I was just informed myself.”

“But you said it happened last night.”

“Well, DB didn’t exactly give a shout-out that they had lost a prisoner. It went through channels. You know the Army, Puller. Things take time. Whether you’re trying to storm a hill or bang out a press release, it all takes time.”

“But my father could know?”

“Yes.”

Puller was still in a daze. “Sir, I’d like to request a few days’ leave.”

“I thought you might. Consider it granted. I’m sure you want to be with your father.”

“Yes sir,” said Puller automatically. But he preferred to be involved with his brother’s dilemma. “I suppose CID is handling the case?”

“I’m not sure about that, Puller. Your brother is Air Force. Was Air Force.”

“But DB is an Army prison. No territorial fights there.”

White snorted. “This is the military. There are territorial fights over the men’s room. And considering your brother’s crime, there may be other interests and forces at play here that might trump all the usual interbranch bullshit.”

Puller knew what the man meant. “National security interests.”

“And with your brother on the loose any number of responses might be triggered.”

“He couldn’t have gotten far. DB is smack in the middle of a military installation.”

“But there’s an airport nearby. And interstate highways.”

“That would mean he’d need fake IDs. Transportation. Money. A disguise.”

“In other words he’d need outside help,” added White.

“You think he had that? How?”

“I have no way of knowing. But what I do know is, it’s quite a coincidence that both the main power and the backup generator failed on the same night. And how a prisoner was able to simply walk out of a max military facility, well, it makes one wonder, doesn’t it? And tack on the fact that a dead guy was in his cell? Where the hell did he come from?”

“Do they have a cause of death?”

“If they do, they haven’t shared it with me.”

“Do they think Bob – my brother killed the man?”

“I have no idea what theories they’re entertaining on that score, Puller.”

“But you think he had inside as well as outside help?”

“You’re the investigator, Puller. What do you think?”

“I don’t know. It’s not my case.”

Don White’s voice rose. “And rest assured, it will never be your case. So during your leave, you stay the hell away from this sucker. You do not need that over your head. One Puller in trouble is enough. You hear me?”

“I hear you,” said Puller. But he thought, I don’t necessarily agree with you.

Puller put the phone down and watched as his fat tabby, AWOL, glided into the room, jumped up on the bed, and rubbed her head against Puller’s arm. He stroked AWOL and then picked up the cat, holding her against his chest.

His brother had been at the DB for more than two years. The trial had been swift and he’d been convicted by a panel of his peers. That was just the military way. You were never going to take years to try a case like that, nor were there endless appeals. And the media had been kept largely at arm’s length. Fancy civilian lawyers more interested in million-dollar payoffs and selling book and film rights than actually achieving justice had no place at such a trial. The uniforms had handled it all and the wagons had circled early and effectively. Sure, you had dirty laundry in uniform, but it was never going to be hung on a clothesline for all to see and smell. It was going to be buried in a landfill masquerading as a prison.

Puller had not even been at the trial. He’d been thousands of miles away on CID deployment in the Middle East, where half the time he was playing soldier again and toting a rifle against the enemies of the United States. The Army didn’t care about his family problems. He had a mission to perform and perform it he would. By the time he’d gotten back stateside his older brother was already at the DB, where he would be staying for the rest of his life.

But maybe not now.

Puller stripped off his clothes and took a shower, letting the water beat down on him as he rested his forehead against the moist tile wall. His breathing was usually slow and steady, like the tick of a clock. Now it was erratic and too fast, like a wheel freed from a car, bouncing crazy-ass down an embankment.

He could not accept that his brother had escaped from prison, for one compelling reason – that meant he truly was guilty.

This was something that Puller had always been unwilling to believe or accept. It just wasn’t apparently in his DNA to do so. Pullers weren’t traitors. They had fought, bled, and died for their country. Puller had relatives going back to George Washington’s day who had taken musket balls to the chest to be free from England. Corporal Walter Puller had died repelling Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg. Another ancestor, George Puller, had been shot down while flying a British Sopwith Camel over France in 1918. He’d parachuted out and survived, only to die four years later in a training accident while flying an experimental aircraft. At least two dozen Pullers had served in all military branches in the Second World War, with many not coming home again.