David Baldacci - Zero Day

The IED had packed some serious punch. The terrorists were getting better. Americans armor up, so the turbaned bombers make a bigger boom to compensate.

He sprays the area with his assault weapon, empties two mags, drops it, shakes free his pistol, and fires off the extended mag on that. He’s not really looking to kill the enemy with the barrage, only to get their attention. To let them know he’s still around. To let them know that they can’t come and just take him and his men. That it won’t be easy. Or smart to try.

The next weapon he pulls from the wrecked Humvee is his favorite. The Army bolt-action sniper rifle. This time he will fire with more deliberation, with far more care. He uses the metal skeleton of the Humvee as his support. He wants them to know he is serious.

He fires off one round merely to warm his rifle barrel. No matter how good a shot you were, a bullet traveling down a cold barrel often misses its target. Snipers normally had spotters, but he doesn’t have that luxury right now. Thus he counts his mil dots, gauges angles, distance, ordnance drop, ambient temp, and wind among other factors and dials in the necessary adjustments on his scope. He does this automatically, without really thinking, like a computer executing a tried-and-true algorithm. The longer the shot, the greater small mistakes in calculations add up. An inch off here or there meant you missed your target by yards over a great distance. He is chasing breathing figures performing horizontal sprints across the street. These men are all lean and can run all day. Not an ounce of Western fat on them. They are brutal, hardened; mercy is not in their lexicon.

Yet he is also brutal, hardened, and mercy has been absent from his vocabulary since the day he put on the uniform. The rules of engagement are clear and have been ever since men first took up arms against each other.

He relaxes his breathing and then lets out a long exhale, reaching his cold zero point of physiological perfection for a sniper. Between heartbeats to minimize barrel motion, he executes a long, sure, and unhurried trigger pull using the ball of his finger to avoid a sideways pull on the weapon. The shot impacts its targets and spins the Taliban runner like a ballerina. He hits the Afghan soil at the mid-street point. He lies still for all time, his brain disintegrated by Corporal John Puller Jr.’s heavy round.

He exercises the bolt on his weapon and slides home another 7.62 shell.

A split second later comes another run by an even taller, leaner Taliban.

Puller performs his kill algorithm at lightning speed, his synapses traveling far faster than even the bullet he’s about to deliver. Another trigger pull and then there occurs a second spin of Afghani flesh and bone with essential brain parts missing. The target twirls with grace, with utter finality. There are no second acts on the desert stage. This Taliban, like the first, doesn’t even realize he’s dead, because the brain is slow on the uptake in such situations. The howls of his comrades rip the air. Racks on weapons pull back.

They are pissed.

His preliminary mission is accomplished. Upset people never fight well.

Yet there will be some caution, for they know he is a force to be reckoned with. He looks at his men. He triages from a distance as blood pours out of his own body from multiple points. Three of his guys are dead, already burned nearly beyond recognition because the fuel and ammo loads have blown up in their laps. No chance for any of them. One man has been thrown clear of the fire but is dying nonetheless. A chunk of his chest and right leg are missing and as Puller watches something bursts inside the wounded man and superoxygenated arterial blood sprays over him like a horrific fountain of red. He’ll be dead in seconds. Yet there are four injured men he can still save. Or die trying.

Shots come his way. The Taliban aren’t running anymore. They take cover, raise their weapons-often their American-made weapons, from the Russian invasion decades ago-and do their best to end Puller’s life.

They are determined.

So is he.

They have fellow warriors they are fighting for.

So does he.

There are many more of them. He has called in for backup. It will take longer to get here than he probably has to live. To get out of this he will have to kill them all.

John Puller is prepared to do just that. In fact, he expects to do just that.

All extraneous thought is banished. He focuses. He doesn’t think. He simply employs his training. He will fight until his heart stops.

Total focus. This is it. All those years of sweat, of agony, of having someone screaming that you can’t do something but actually expecting that you will do it better than anyone ever has. All for the next three minutes. Because that’s probably how long it will take to declare a winner in this one encounter between desperate men. If you multiply all these individual fights to the death by a factor of a million it will add up to something called a war.

He lets their gunfire pass. The rounds ping off American Humvee armor. Others rip past his head sounding like miniature jet fighters. One grazes his left arm, a totally unremarkable wound among all the others. He will find out later that another rifle round whipsawed off the armor plates on his flak jacket, ricocheted off the toppled Humvee, reversed course, and found purchase in his neck after losing most of its juice. To the docs it will look like a big metal zit, right underneath the surface of his skin. Right now, he doesn’t even notice. Doesn’t care.

And then John Puller raises his weapon once more…

As always, Puller didn’t jerk awake. He simply eased off his thin mattress at Annie’s Motel. He was in control, his movements measured, steady. He was not on the outskirts of Kandahar fighting turbaned killers. He was in American coal mining country looking for perhaps homegrown killers.

He didn’t have to check his watch. His internal clock told him what he needed to know: 0430. He showered and took an extra thirty seconds under the hot water to lift the stench of a years-old memory. But it didn’t work. It never did. He was just going through the motions. He dressed in what had quickly become his uniform here: jeans and CID polo shirt, but he substituted an old pair of his beige Army jump boots for the sneakers. It was already hot outside. It likely never grew cool overnight. But no matter how hot it ever became, nothing could come close to Afghanistan or Iraq in summer. That was a heat that was impossible to forget. Especially when it was fueled by diesel fire. By the screams of men burning to death. Turning black and raw and then disintegrating right in front of you.

His cell phone rang. The office. Or maybe Cole. Maybe something else had happened. He checked the ID on the screen. His expression changed from one of alertness to something else, something diminished.

“John Puller.”

“You never called me back, XO.”

“Out on a mission.” He paused, but only for a second. “How you doing, General?”

John Puller Sr.’s voice was like the bark of a large, big-chested dog. It was an Army myth that the man could kill men simply with his voice, by making their hearts seize up with fear.

“You never called me back, XO,” he said again, as though he hadn’t heard Puller’s reply.

“Was going to today, sir. Problems?”

“My command is going to shit.”

Puller’s father had had his sons later in life. He was seventy-five now and in failing health.

“You’ll whip them back into shape. Always do. And they’re good men. They’ll respond. Rangers lead the way, General.” Puller had long since given up trying to reason with his father, tell him that he no longer had a command of any kind. That he was old and sick and dying far faster than he believed. Or it might be the old warrior didn’t think he was ever going to die.