The Escape (John Puller, #3)(4)

“My job is to bring you in, not pass judgment.”

“This is the middle of nowhere, man. Need some juice to get by. I’m a city guy. I don’t like cows. And I’m not the only one.”

“You’ve got a good record in the Army, Rogers. That’ll help you. And if it was self-defense and the jury believes you, you’re home free.”

Rogers shook his head stubbornly. “My ass is gone. You know it, I know it.”

Puller quickly thought of some way to defuse the situation. “Tell me something, Rogers. How many drinks did you have in the bar?”

“What?”

“Simple question. How many drinks?”

Rogers tightened his grip on the pistol as a bead of sweat ran down his left cheek. “Pitcher of beer and a shot of Beam.” He suddenly yelled, “What the hell does that matter? You messin’ with me? Are you messin’ with me, *!”

“I’m not messing with you. I’m just trying to explain something to you. Will you listen to what I have to say? Because it’s important. It’s important to you.”

Puller waited for him to answer. He wanted to keep Rogers engaged and thinking. Thinking men rarely pulled triggers. Hotheads did.

“Okay, what?”

“That’s a fair amount of alcohol you’ve had.”

“Shit, I can drink twice that and still drive a Paladin.”

“I’m not talking about driving a Paladin.”

“Then what?” demanded Rogers.

Puller continued in a calm tone, “You’re about a hundred and seventy pounds, so even with the adrenaline spike I’m guessing that your intoxication level is about a point one, and maybe higher with the shot of Beam. That means you’re legally too drunk to drive a moped, much less a twenty-seven-ton howitzer.”

“What the hell’s that got to do with anything?”

“Alcohol impairs fine motor skills, like the kind required to aim and fire a weapon properly. With what you’ve had to drink, we’re talking a serious degradation of marksmanship skills.”

“I sure as hell ain’t missing your ass from ten feet.”

“You’d be surprised, Rogers, you really would be. I calculate you’ve lost at least twenty-five percent of your normal skill level in a situation like this. On the other hand, my aim and fine motor skills are perfect. So I will ask you once more to put down your weapon, because a twenty-five percent reduction pretty much ensures that this will not end well for you.”

Rogers fired his gun at the same time he yelled, “Fu—.” But he was unable to complete the word.





CHAPTER

3



JOHN PULLER DROPPED his duffel on the floor of his bedroom, took off his cap, wiped a bead of sweat off his nose, and dropped onto the bed. He’d just gotten back from the investigation at Fort Sill. The result had been his tracking down PFC Rogers in that alley.

And when Rogers, despite Puller’s requests for him to stand down, had started to squeeze the trigger of his Army-issued sidearm, Puller had stepped slightly to the right while narrowing his target silhouette and firing at the same time. He hadn’t actually seen Rogers start to pull the trigger. It was the look in the man’s eyes and the curse that had started coming out of his mouth—only half finished because of the M11’s punch. Rogers was true to his word—he wasn’t leaving the alley without a fight. Puller had to admire him somewhat for that. He was no coward, although maybe it was just the Jim Beam talking.

Rogers’s round had slammed into the brick wall behind Puller. The slug’s impact chipped off a sliver of brick that shot out and ripped a hole in Puller’s sleeve but drew no blood. Uniforms could be mended with thread. Flesh could too, but he’d take the hole in the uniform over one in him.

He could have killed Rogers with a headshot, but while the situation was dire, he had been in worse. He pointed his gun downward and shot the PFC in the right leg just above the knee. Shots in the torso allowed someone to fire back because sometimes they didn’t completely incapacitate. Shots around the knee region, however, reduced the toughest men to screaming babies. Rogers dropped his weapon, fell to the ground, and shrieked, clutching his damaged leg. The man would probably walk with a limp for a long time, but at least he would be alive.

Puller had triaged the man he’d shot, called in the paramedics, ridden to the Army hospital with the wounded man, and even let Rogers try to crush his hand when the pain got too bad. Then he had filled out the requisite mountain of paperwork, answered a slew of questions, and finally jumped on a military transport flight for home.

The man Rogers had shot down in the street after a drug deal gone bad now had some semblance of justice. The Rogers family back in Pittsburgh had a son and brother to support and cry over. The Steelers would still have a fan to cheer them on, albeit from an Army stockade. It shouldn’t have happened. But it had. Puller knew it was either him or the other man. Still, he always preferred to put the cuffs on instead of pulling the trigger. And shooting a fellow soldier, criminal or not, didn’t sit well with him.

All in all, a pretty crappy day’s work, he concluded.

Now he simply needed some shut-eye. All he was asking for was a few hours. Then it was back on duty, because at CID you were really never off duty, though he would be confined to a desk while an incident investigation was performed over his use of extreme force in that alley. But after that he would just go where they told him to go. Crime did not keep a schedule, at least to his knowledge. And because of that he had never punched a time clock during his Army career, because combat wasn’t a nine-to-fiver either.