Zero Day (John Puller, #1)(103)

“Because it’s been given with good intent.”

Trent laughed. “You’re a real funny guy.”

“Not really, no. And if things play out the way I think, you’re going to need more than one Marine to keep you safe.”

“Are you threatening me?” bellowed Trent.

“You’re smart enough to know that the threat won’t be coming from me, Roger.”

Trent climbed back in his Bentley and drove off.

Apparently Puller had struck out again. He had to hope that Dickie would have something more useful to report.

CHAPTER

73


IT WAS NEARLY ten o’clock when he arrived. The neighborhood was quiet. No one was outside. Puller could hardly blame them. It was hot, humid, and the mosquitoes were out in force. It was a night to stay inside the walls, not frolic outside them.

He steered his Malibu through the network of surface streets, following the path that he and Cole had earlier. He made one more turn and the firehouse was up ahead. No lights on, but he didn’t expect there to be. No electricity here. That’s probably why they all went home when it started to get dark. The overhead doors had been pulled down. Puller wondered if they were locked too. He stopped his car, got out, looked around, and sniffed the air. A mosquito buzzed in his face. He swatted it away. That would only signal more comrades to come, he knew. He’d trained in enough swamps to understand that.

He locked his Malibu using his remote fob. He’d parked it close to the building. He had decided to keep his car as close to him as possible from now on. He walked up to the overhead door, reached down, and tugged. It slid up easily on oiled tracks. He looked around again, could see no one. Still, his right hand sat on top of his forward M11. He’d grabbed his Maglite from the trunk and popped it on. The beam cut through the darkness as he moved inside.

While he was waiting for Dickie, he wanted to check out a theory.

There were two Harleys parked side by side to his right, their front wheels chained together. To his left was a rolling toolbox with a big padlock. It appeared that the members of the Harley club didn’t completely trust their neighbors. Both Harleys had large saddlebags. They had locks on them. Not unheard of, and in fact Puller had expected to find them.

He picked the locks and probed the interior of the bags with his light. In the third bag he found what he was hoping for—a bit of plastic, an edge of duct tape, and a few nearly invisible shiny flakes. In another saddlebag he found a few crumbly brown grains. The shiny flakes were pure crystal meth. The brown flakes were an impure version of meth called peanut butter crank. Illegal drugs were more of a problem in the military than the brass liked to let on. Over the years Puller had seen just about every type of illicit drug there was.

So he had found the distribution pipeline for Eric Treadwell’s modest meth operation. The Xanadu bike club put it in their saddlebags and delivered it to their customers. And in impoverished areas where people wanted to forget about their reality because it was so bad, drug dealers had easy prey.

So Treadwell and Bitner had been small-time drug dealers. That wasn’t why they were killed, he was sure of that. He would let Cole know about this, but it didn’t get him any closer to stopping the terrorists.

He went through the storage lockers on the left side of the wall. Nothing. Mostly filled with stuff from the Harley riders. When he attempted to access the lockers on the right, he found them locked tight. He picked the lock of one of them and found nothing. He did two other lockers and found the same: nothing. He didn’t waste time on the others.

He checked his watch. He had gotten here purposely early just in case Dickie wasn’t playing straight with him and someone had set up an ambush. He had some more time to kill. He decided to employ it by searching this place. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that folks who distributed meth could be persuaded to do something far more heinous, even if it meant hurting their country. Maybe folks around here felt their country had already abandoned them, so what did it matter?

There was another room off to his left. He went in there, the shadows devolving to cavelike darkness, for there were no windows in here. It was empty. He backed out, his ears straining for the sounds of anyone drawing near.

He ventured up the stairs. There was a kitchen that looked like it was being used by the club. He opened some cabinets and found cans of soup and cereal boxes.

There was another room adjacent to the kitchen. He opened the door and peered inside, his light cutting into the dark. This must’ve been the fire chief’s office, he thought. Old desk, old file cabinets, shelves, and a couple of rusty chairs. He looked through the file cabinets but they were empty, as were the shelves. He sat down behind the desk and started opening drawers. He found nothing until he dipped his hand farther back in one of the drawers after his light hit on something.

He looked at the yellowed piece of paper. It had the date 1964 on it.

The heading said “FIA.” He didn’t know what that meant.

He read the body of the document. It dealt with procedures in the event of a fire at the facility. There was nothing in it that revealed to Puller what the facility did. Maybe this had to do with what Mason had told him. About the bombmaking component work.

He eyed something written in the margin. The ink had faded but he could still make it out.

The numbers 92 and 94.

He put the page in his pocket and rose.