David Baldacci - Daylight

“Yeah?”

“You did very well there. You became quite the leader of men.”

His father just grunted at this.

Fighting John Puller had never lost a battle. He had taken enormous risks, thrown out the Army playbook when it suited him, demanded everything from his men and given even more of himself. He pissed his superiors off beyond belief, and then handed them one improbable victory after another to take credit for. There were two generations of warriors in this country who would fling curses at the mere mention of the name “Fighting John Puller,” and those who would go anywhere he would lead them, convinced of victory because of the man at the helm.

And the two groups would be one and the same.

“The men respected you, sir. We . . . we all do.”

Another grunt was the response to this. And then his father curled up and fell back asleep while his son was standing at attention next to him.

Puller would take the father he remembered, the screamer, petty and vindictive at times, relentlessly pushing his sons when he was home, which was almost never, the iron man of the Army, but also the man of smiles and encouragement and moments of pride in his sons, over this disoriented shell of a man.

Puller covered up his father with a blanket and then marched out with his heart split right in half. But with his face unblemished by tears, his spine still straight, and his focus back on the mission at hand. Coming to grips with the fact of his rapidly failing father was the only enemy John Puller had ever been afraid to face.

CHAPTER

40

PULLER VALETED HIS CAR at the front entrance to the Army and Navy Club on Seventeenth Street in northwest DC and headed inside. The building was old, with architecturally classic lines that mirrored the interior he was just about to enter. It was run efficiently and quietly by a devoted team, with many serving here for decades. There was a large dining room on the main floor, private meeting rooms and more intimate dining areas on the second, and, because this was a military outpost of sorts, a bar. Of course.

He checked his watch. He was early, which he always wanted to be. A Confederate Army general had once said that you almost always win if you get there first with the most. There was definitely some truth in that. And maybe the person he was meeting here had thought the same thing. He went to the glass doors of the bar and peered through. Three men and two ladies were seated at the bar. Only two were in uniform. One woman and one of the gents. The man was a lieutenant colonel in the Army, the woman a Navy commander, an O-5, which meant she and the man were of equal rank. But Puller was looking for an O-6, a Navy captain, right below a rear admiral lower half. That had been what his brother had meant by the term “salt.”

A captain in the Navy was of equal rank with a major in the Army, a senior officer.

Puller headed up to the third floor, where there was a library. And in the library was a table that was full of bullet holes from when it was used as a shield by American soldiers during a firefight in Cuba over a century ago. This was Robert Puller’s reference to Remember the Maine. That ship had been blown up in Havana Harbor, prompting the Spanish-American War. The military led the world in historical props, Puller knew. And they made more of them with every battle.

He looked around but saw no one, until a voice broke the quiet.

“I see you like to be early, too, Chief Puller.”

From behind a high-back chair turned away from him rose a woman. She was medium height with her dark hair done in a ponytail. Her dress whites rode well on her trim physique. Puller put her age at about forty, which was young for a captain. It normally took twenty years from graduation at Annapolis to get the four bars and a star and the full eagle spread on your uniform. That also explained Robert Puller’s reference.

She walked over to him and put out her hand. He shook it and felt the strength in her grip as he looked down at her from nearly a foot gap.

“Captain . . . ?”

“Gloria Miles, Chief Puller.”

“Please, make it John.”

“Then you can call me Gloria. My father was a master sergeant in the Marine Corps. He named me. You know what his nickname for me was?”

Puller shook his head.

“Glory.” She smiled but her eyes held a wistful look. “Can you imagine the teasing and bullying I got with that one?”

He looked her over. “It seems to have made you stronger. And if you’re as young as I think you are, then an overachiever as well.”

“Right on both counts. I made O-6 three years early. But it felt six years longer than that.”

“I can see that. How is your father?”

“No longer with us. How is your father?”

To that question Puller almost always answered, Hanging in there . But there was something about Miles that made him say, “He’s seen better days, unfortunately.”

“It’s hard to see your father grow old,” said Miles. “It’s harder still when your father was a soldier, a leader, tough as nails. You expect him to live forever.”

“Where are you deployed now?” asked Puller.

“For now, I’m working out of the Norfolk Naval Station, so I can oversee my baby being born.”

Puller looked confused for a moment and glanced at her unadorned ring finger.

She noted this and laughed wistfully. “I’m waiting to take command of a Freedom-class LCS they’re just about to launch, the USS Seattle ,” said Miles, referencing the acronym for a Littoral Combat Ship. “That’s my baby .”

“Yes ma’am. That must be quite a thrill.”

She glanced over his shoulder. “Why don’t we find a private place to talk?”

Puller turned to see a group of suits and uniforms come into the library and take up seats.

They found an empty room at the end of the hall on the third floor. Puller closed the door behind them, and they sat across from each other in fold-up chairs. Miles placed her cap on her lap, Puller did likewise with his.

She ran her gaze over his rows of ribbons and her eyebrows hiked. This was the military’s equivalent of bragging rights. Guts and glory on full uniform display on one’s chest. The earning of them had been anything but uniform. Puller had endured violent intrusion of metal into his body and been thrown into hellish situations that no human being should have to endure. In other words, just a day’s work for a soldier.

“The DSC, Purples, Bronze, twin Silvers, along with everything else. Very impressive, John. You’ve served your country faithfully and well.”

“I do my duty, like everybody else.”

“There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging exceptionalism.”

“Why would my brother contact you?”

“I think he contacted a number of people who he thought might be helpful to you.”

“But you’re the only one he asked me to meet with.”

She nodded. “I think my relevance to your investigation has nothing to do with my being in uniform.”

“Okay.”

“It has a lot to do with someone I know quite well.”

“Okay.”

“As I alluded to, I have no children. But I am a godmother to someone.”

“Who is that?”

“Jeff Sands.”

“I don’t know who that is.”

“He’s the grandson of Peter Driscoll.”

“Peter Driscoll, the Senate majority leader? Why would that knowledge be of use to me?”

“Jeff just turned twenty-one years old. Because of his grandfather’s connections he got into Georgetown, where he’s a junior. He could not have gotten in on his own merit.”

“Okay. Still not getting what this has to do with my case.”

“Jeff is a drug user. He is also probably a drug dealer. I don’t know that for sure, but that is my best guess.”