The Escape (14 page)

P
ULLER AND KNOX
were standing at the entrance to the Sherman Gate into Fort Leavenworth. They had already been to the Hancock Gate and had struck out. Mesic had not left that way. However, the two guards stationed at the Sherman Gate well remembered the Croatian officer.

The first guard said, “He wasn’t looking too happy. When I asked him what was the matter he said he was sorry to be going. He liked it here.”

“Why did he talk to you at all?” asked Puller. “He had an access cred. He could have flashed it and driven on.”

“He could have,” said the second guard. “But we’d seen him around the base. Even played some pool with him at one of the local bars. He was a nice guy. So he stopped his car and talked for a bit. There wasn’t anyone behind him. Light traffic that time of the day.”

Knox said, “What exactly was the time?”

The first guard’s brow furrowed. “I’d say around twenty hundred hours. Most people who were leaving the post were already gone. Everybody else had finished chow time and were probably back in quarters. He said he had a flight to catch out of KC. He’d be back in Croatia after a few stops in between. At least that’s what he said.”

“No nonstops between KC and Zagreb,” said the other guard, grinning. “He was an okay dude, never had a problem with him,” he added.

“Anything out of the ordinary strike you when he was leaving?” asked Puller.

“What do you mean?” asked the first guard.

“Something odd,” added Knox.

“No, nothing odd. I mean, he pulled his usual.”

“What was his usual?” asked Puller.

“He forgot something,” said the first guard. “He was always forgetting stuff.”

“And what did he do when he forgot stuff?” asked Knox.

“He’d come hightailing it back here,” said the second guard who cracked a smile.

“And he forgot something that night?” asked Puller.

“His passport of all things,” said the first guard. “He looked like he was going to throw up. He’s not getting out of the country without his passport, right?”

“And you let him back in?” said Knox.

“Sure. He had his access pass.”

“How far had he gone before he turned around and came back?” asked Puller.

The first guard looked down the road a bit. “Probably around the curve.” He paused and stroked his chin with his fingers. “I mean, he was out of sight. I don’t remember seeing him until he came tearing back in here. Said he’d forgotten his passport. Had left it in his quarters. He went back in to get it.”

Puller looked down the road where it curved. Any car turning the curve would be out of sight of the post’s entrance.

“You didn’t search his car, either in or out?” asked Puller.

“No. Vehicles without creds get searched at the Grant Gate at Metro and Seventh. Not here. The main gate is where they do the searches. Most people with CACs don’t use the main gate.”

“And when he came back out the second time that was the last you saw of him?”

“Yep,” said the first guard, and his mate nodded in agreement.

“Thanks,” said Puller, and he started walking off down the road toward the curve.

The guards looked at Knox curiously. “So what is all this about?” asked the second guard.

“When we figure it out you definitely
won’t
be the ones we tell,” she said, and hurried after Puller.

She caught up to him about a hundred feet later and their long legs ate up the distance between them and the curve.

“So what do you think, Puller?” she asked.

He didn’t answer until he’d reached the curve and cleared it. Then he turned and looked back.

“Completely out of the sightline of the guard shack. And it would have been fairly dark.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning our guy could have been waiting there and when Misec comes out the first time the guy climbs into the trunk and Misec drives him onto the base. He gets out and lays low with his riot gear until the call comes from DB. Then he joins the four platoons, rides over there, and ends up dead in my brother’s cell.”

“Where exactly would he lay low on an Army base and not be noticed? Particularly if he were wearing riot gear.”

“Probably had the gear in a duffel. This base has thousands of soldiers. To a certain extent they look alike, particularly in uniform. And there are plenty of places here to hide. And I’m sure that Mesic had scoped one out for him and probably drove him right to it. Maybe one of the base churches. That time of night it might have been empty.”

Knox looked unconvinced. “This is all quite a leap of logic. We don’t even know if this Mesic guy is involved.”

“He left early? Orders from home? What could be that important in Croatia to call him back early? And coincidentally on the day the storm was forecast and all hell broke loose at DB?”

“And if the guy did infiltrate the response team, why? What was his motive for going into DB?”

“I’ve been giving that some thought.”

“And?” asked Knox.

“And it seems to me his mission was to kill my brother.”

“Whoa, where the hell did that come from? And you said
mission
?”

“That’s right. This was all carefully planned with a lot of moving pieces. This guy didn’t just walk into this. He was sent here to kill my brother.”

“But he ended up dead.”

“Because my brother killed him first.”

“I don’t see where you’re getting all this.”

Puller said, “Before the power went out my brother was sitting in his cell reading a book. I read his body language. It wasn’t hard. For him this was a night like any other night he’s spent here. He wasn’t tense. He wasn’t anticipating anything more than falling asleep once he’d finished reading.”

“And then the power went out,” said Knox slowly.

“And all hell breaks loose. Sounds of gunfire and a bomb going off, when neither thing actually happened.”

“And your brother?”

“He’s smart beyond smart. I think he figured out what was coming and was ready when the guy burst into his cell to kill him.”

“Snap-crackle-pop,” said Knox. “So you
did
teach him that move.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“But if what you say is true, your brother still willingly escaped from DB. He took the guy’s clothes, climbed onto a truck, rode it back to Leavenworth, and then walked away.”

“Look at it from his point of view. He’s just killed a guy. He doesn’t know the man isn’t an MP. But he somehow knows the guy was trying to kill him. But who’s going to believe that? He stays at DB and they find the dead guy, my brother is probably looking at a guaranteed death penalty. And while they haven’t executed anyone there since the 1960s, I think they’d make an exception for something like that.”

“But they’d know the dead guy wasn’t an MP,” Knox pointed out.

“Who cares? He’s still dead. And maybe you don’t know this, but there were some in the military community who thought my brother should have been put to death for treason after his court-martial. I heard plenty of scuttlebutt afterward. This would give them the perfect opportunity to push for it again.”

Knox considered all this and finally said, “I admit, I can’t find an obvious flaw in your logic, but there’s still a ton that doesn’t make sense to me. And how does this tie in with Daughtrey’s death?”

“It may not.”

“And why would a Croatian military man be involved in sneaking an assassin onto a U.S. base?”

“I wish Mesic were around so I could ask him. If he’s even still alive.”

“You don’t think he made it back to Croatia?”

“Oh, I don’t think he was ever headed to Croatia. Now let’s take a ride. I have something I want to show you, Knox.”

“Is it important?”

“Very.”

P
ULLER WAS SITTING
on the hood of his car in the parking lot of the Fort Leavenworth National Cemetery. To the immediate east was the Missouri River, and on the other side of the river was the state of Missouri. A bit north of here the river began its long bend, shaped much like a bell curve. Inside this curve were Sherman Airfield and Chief Joseph Loop.

Knox stood next to the car looking curiously at Puller.

“What are we doing here?” she asked, gazing around at the white tombstones under which lay over thirty thousand dead.

“Lincoln established this cemetery back in 1862, when the Union was losing the Civil War. It was the first of twelve national cemeteries he set up.”

“Okay, and the reason for this history lesson?”

Puller slid off the hood and his feet hit the ground. “He knew it was going to be a long and deadly conflict. But losers don’t establish national cemeteries. A president presiding over a fractured country doesn’t set up a national anything unless he truly believes he’s going to win the war and the country will be reunited.”

“Lincoln was nothing if not confident, I guess,” said Knox, who still looked perplexed by Puller’s words.

“People who lack confidence rarely win anything,” he noted.

He strode into the cemetery and she followed. He walked the rows of tombstones before stopping and pointing at one.

“Read the inscription,” he said.

Knox glanced down. “Thomas W. Custer. Two Medals of Honor. Captain 7th Ohio Cavalry.”

Puller said, “He was the first of four double Medal of Honor winners in the Civil War, and one of only nineteen in American history. Both of his medals came from charging enemy positions and capturing Confederate regimental flags. With the second one he took a shot right to the face, but grabbed the regimental colors and rode them back to his line with blood all over him.”

She looked up at Puller. “Wait a minute. Custer? Was he—”

Puller knelt on his haunches in front of the tombstone. “He was George Armstrong Custer’s younger brother. He died at age thirty-one with his big brother and a battalion of men from the 7th Cavalry at Little Big Horn. Also killed was their younger brother, Boston Custer. From a tactical perspective George Custer blew it. He knowingly split his force and refused additional soldiers and firepower. He went up against an opposing force that dwarfed his in number of men and guns, and also held the better ground. But his brother Tom won a pair of Medals of Honor. He was a good soldier. Maybe a great soldier. He’d been in innumerable battles and he could see what his brother could see. And more.”

Knox’s brow furrowed as she thought about this. “But he still went into battle with his brother…even though he knew they would…lose,” she said haltingly.

“Even though he might’ve known they were going to be
massacred
,” amended Puller.

“So family trumps brains?” said Knox.

“Family just is,” replied Puller.

“Are you saying you’re Tom and Robert Puller is George? You’re following your older brother blindly to disaster?” Her voice rose as she spoke.

He glanced up at her but said nothing in response to her statement.

She looked at him sternly. “And your objectivity? Your role as investigator searching only for the truth, regardless of where it takes you? Or regardless of who is ultimately held accountable?”

Puller suddenly stood, towering over her. She took a step back as he stared fiercely down at her. “I gave an oath when I put on the uniform, Knox. Bobby is my family, but so is the United States Army. I will follow this investigation objectively and I will hold people accountable.
All
people.”

“So what was the point of bringing me here, then?” she asked, looking mystified.

“To remind you that I’m willing to sacrifice my brother or anybody else if it means doing my job and seeing that justice is done.” He paused, but only for a moment. “So what are
you
willing to sacrifice?”

Her eyes widened. “What the hell are you talking about? How did this get turned around to
me
?”

“Are you willing to sacrifice your loyalty to INSCOM, NSA? And whoever else you work for?”

“Puller, I thought we already had this discussion. You dressed me down and I said I’d work with you. So what’s the problem?”

In a voice like a drill sergeant he barked, “I asked you whether the 902d Military Intelligence Group stationed here had ties to the NSA. And your response was, ‘I’m afraid I can’t get into that.’”

“Look, you’re pissed and maybe you have a right to be, but bringing me to a cemetery is a little melodramatic, don’t you—”

Puller interrupted, “So I’m asking you for the last time, do you have my back under all conditions? Because if you don’t then you are useless to me, Knox. And we’re just going to go our separate ways.”

There was a long moment of silence before she broke it. “Puller, I told you I hate deceiving people like you. And I meant that.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“What do you want from me?”

“All I want is an answer to my question. It’s that simple.”

“I can give you an answer, just not the one you so obviously…want,” she said, her voice dying out at the end.

He said, “Well, that’s answer enough.” He spun on his heel, marched back to his car, and drove off, leaving her still standing on the final resting place of Thomas Custer, loyal brother extraordinaire.

R
OBERT PULLER SAT
in his motel room and stared down at the image he’d drawn, photographed, and then transferred onto glossy paper. It was the dead man back in his cell. Puller had gotten no hits on any database that he could hack into. He had finally stopped trying. The man was definitely not in the military. He was not in the federal bureaucracy. He was not a government contractor with a security clearance. He was not in law enforcement. He was not on a terrorist watch list. They would all be in a database somewhere. These days everybody was in a database somewhere.

So who the hell was he? And how did he end up in my prison cell?

Puller moved his face closer to the photo. He had spent years of his life examining the smallest details, looking for something of value, sometimes just a speck within a mountain of digital data. He was a twenty-first-century gold prospector, only his equipment was a computer and a bandwidth pipe the size of New Jersey.

Then his eye caught something, transmitted that something to his brain, and his brain retrieved the necessary information from memory. He looked down at the image with renewed energy and a fresh perspective.

I got the jawline wrong. It was dark in the cell, but that’s no excuse. I still got it wrong and I can’t afford mistakes. It was more angular. And the eyes, they were more sunken, the forehead a bit fuller, the nose a touch sharper.

On a sketchpad he made the necessary adjustments in the face. Finished, he sat back and stared down at the new image.

No wonder he didn’t show up in any database. Any American database.

Puller had examined many such faces during his career. He had become an expert at reading people’s origins in their features. The man was from Eastern Europe. Maybe as specific as the Balkan region. But clearly not Greek, Turkish, or Albanian. He must be a Slav. Could be a Bosnian, Croat, or Serb. So how did a Slav end up as part of an MP response team to a crisis situation at America’s only maximum-security military prison?

He sat back and closed his eyes. In his mind’s eye he took a trip through Fort Leavenworth, a place he had been to often in his career. Even though he was Air Force, his particular specialty made working with the other armed forces branches mandatory. And the 902d Military Intelligence Group was stationed there.

His photographic memory clicking away, Puller kept up his mental stroll until he came to the answer. He opened his eyes.

The foreign military school at Leavenworth. The man had to have come from there. He thought about it a bit more. But that couldn’t be right. He had heard nothing in the news about the dead man being identified. If he had been enrolled in the school at Leavenworth his face and prints would be on a database somewhere. Either he had been identified that way and the news not publicly released, or he hadn’t been identified, which meant Puller had missed something in his deductions.

He closed his eyes once more. No, there was another possibility. The foreign military student would have an access card to the fort that would allow him to avoid the main gate. That meant no vehicle searches. That meant the student could have transported onto the base the man who had ended up dead in his cell.

The man had been sent to the DB to kill him. Puller had known this as soon as the cell door had opened. It was dark, to be sure. But he had suspected something was wrong from the very beginning. The main power might go out because of a storm. But the backup power too? He knew it was fed from natural gas lines buried deeply underground and thus invulnerable to the storm’s power.

No, the odds of both systems failing at the same time were colossally long. And then there had been the actions of the man. He had come into the cell and closed the door behind him. That was the first suspicious sign. The second was the man taking out a knife. Puller had seen that in the illumination of the man’s helmet light.

But Puller had not given the man the opportunity to stab him. He had disarmed him, grabbed him by the neck.

And, well, the end had come quickly.

Thanks to the teachings of his little brother.

Apparently the Slavs had never heard of snap-crackle-pop.

It was fortunate that he was close to my height and build, yet they never thought of the possibilities there. Not for one second. I’m certain of that. They never imagined that I would end up killing him and taking his place to escape.

The questions, though, were numerous, and Puller was not finding any ready answers.

Why kill me now? Who would want to? And who could have orchestrated such an event at DB?

Puller sat back feeling distressed. He knew that the part of the brain that triggered emotions brought on by pain was the anterior cingulate cortex. Interestingly enough, it didn’t distinguish between emotional and physical pain. Thus it could be set in motion as easily by a broken heart as by a damaged limb.

He closed his eyes and started concentrating, turning slow-moving alpha waves into beta waves that cycled through his mind at twice the speed of the alphas.

Eastern Europe.

Foreign military student.

Assassination attempt at Leavenworth more than two years after he had been imprisoned there.

What had been the catalyst? Simply the time for planning? He doubted that. It would take time to do so, but hardly more than twenty-four months. What had occurred in the interim?

All the rest, the power outage, the noises of guns and bombs, even the man sent to kill him, were all part of the “effect” of the cause and effect. They were just filler. Now he needed to get past the fluff and zero in on the root of it all.

His initial instinct had been to set out for a location connected to his old position at SRATCOM. That was still his inclination, but he didn’t have the luxury of gallivanting off to multiple places. He had to narrow it down.

So what had been the trigger for all this? If he could find that, he could narrow the number of places to which he might have to travel.

While in solitary confinement, he had had access to the news. He had read as many newspapers as they would provide him. He had seen the TV. He had no Internet access but he had listened to the conversations of the guards. And his brother had brought him news as well during his visits.

Daughtrey had joined STRATCOM four months ago. The man was now dead. Had his joining STRATCOM been the reason for what had happened at the DB?

There was also talk that the intelligence community was going to be undergoing some radical structural changes, bringing more order and a streamlined approach to a sector that had been sorely lacking in those areas. Was that the reason for the events at the DB that had nearly claimed his life? But he had no connection to that world anymore.

He kept blasting the problem with cycles of beta waves.

Five minutes later he slammed his fist against the wall in frustration. His brain, the one thing that had never failed him, just had.