CHAPTER
23
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.
“I need you down here. You can get them in line. Always count on you, XO.”
Puller had joined the military on the tail end of his father’s illustrious career. They had never served together. But the old man had kept a close eye on his youngest son’s accomplishments. Things had not been made easier for him because of his connection to the lieutenant general. In fact, they had been made infinitely harder.
“Thank you, sir. But as I said, I’m on another mission.” He paused again, checked his watch. He was behind schedule. He didn’t like to use this card, but he did when he had to. “I saw Bobby the other day. He told me to tell you hello.”
The line immediately went dead.
Puller closed the phone and slipped it into its holder on his belt. He sat there for a few more seconds, gazing down at his boots. He should go, he really should. Instead, he slid his wallet out of his pocket, flipped the photo out.
The three Puller men were all in a row. All tall, but John Jr. was the tallest, beating his old man out by a bare half inch. The general’s face was carved from granite. The old man’s eyes had been described as hollow-point ordnance with max loads. You could do pull-ups on his chin. He looked like Patton and MacArthur rolled into one, only bigger, meaner, and tougher. He’d been a son of a bitch as a general, and his men had loved him, died for him.
As a father he’d been a son of a bitch too. And his sons?
I love him. I would’ve died for him.
Senior had been the captain of the Army basketball team at West Point. They’d never won the championship during his father’s four years. But every team they played went home bruised and battered. And those that ended up beating his father’s team still probably felt like they’d lost. “Getting Pullered” was an expression often used back then. On the basketball court. On the battlefield. To the old man it was no doubt the same thing. He simply kicked the shit out of you until the buzzer sounded.
Or the armies ran out of ammo and bodies to throw at each other.
Puller’s gaze held briefly on the spot in the photo just to the left of his father. There was no one there, though there should have been.
There should have been.
He put the photo away, gunned up and slipped on his CID jacket, and locked the door behind him.
The past is just that.
Gone.