Zero Day (John Puller, #1)(83)

“They might, but they won’t. What else do they have to do?”

“I saw him.”

For the Puller brothers this was not so subtle code. There was only one “him” in their lives.

“Okay. How’s he doing?” Robert’s voice had quickly turned serious.

“Not all that great, actually. Things tend to wander.”

“In and out of the stars?”

“Right. Exactly.”

“Otherwise?”

“Healthy. Live to be a hundred.”

“What else?”

“A beef he has.”

“With whom?”

“Blame game. Still the stars, he thinks. But trajectory shot all to hell.”

Puller didn’t care if the monitors figured out they were talking about their father. Unless their conversations were deemed to be criminal or inappropriate in any way, this call was confidential. And military careers could be curtailed and even destroyed if it was shown that any part of a prisoner’s conversation was revealed in an unauthorized way, particularly when a highly decorated combat vet was on the other end of the line.

“One guess,” said Robert.

“Right,” said Puller.

“He really believes that? The timing is way off.”

“Not in his mind.”

Puller heard his brother give a long sigh.

Puller said, “Thought about not telling you.”

“As in what does it matter?”

“Something like that. Maybe I shouldn’t have told you.”

“No, no, you should have, little brother. I appreciate it.” He paused. “Working on anything interesting?”

“Yes and no. Yes I am and no I can’t tell you about it.”

“Well, good luck. My money’s on you.”

They spoke for another thirty seconds on innocuous matters and said their goodbyes. When Puller clicked off he stared down at his phone imagining his brother being walked back to his cell. Nothing to do but wait for the next day when he would get out of his cage for an hour. Wait for the next phone call from his brother. Or the next visit. Totally out of his control. There wasn’t one segment of his life in which he had real input.

I’m all he has left.

I’m all the old man has left.

God help me.

And them.

CHAPTER

58


EARLY THE NEXT MORNING the jet lifted off from Dulles Airport and climbed smoothly into the sky. Puller drank a bottle of water and spent most of the short hop staring out the window. He checked his watch. Nearly 0600. He had tried to sleep some last night, but even his Army training failed him as his mind continued to whir about as fast as the plane’s engines.

The plane landed in Charleston less than an hour later and he retrieved his Malibu from the parking lot. He arrived in Drake in time for breakfast. He met Cole at the Crib Room after calling her on the drive in. He drank two more cups of coffee and had the biggest breakfast platter the Crib offered.

She stared over at him as the mounds of food disappeared.

“Don’t they feed you in the big city?” she asked.

He took a bite of eggs and pancakes. “Not this trip they didn’t. Not sure the last time I ate, actually. Maybe breakfast yesterday.”

She sipped on her coffee and tore a bit of toast off and ate it.

“And was your trip productive?”

“It was. We actually have lots to talk about. But just not here.”

“Important?”

“Wouldn’t waste your time otherwise. Anything on your end?”

“Got the court order faxed.” She slid out several sheets of paper. “And I got the results of the soil testing.”

Puller put his fork down and eyed the paper. “And?”

“And I’m not a scientist.”

“Let me have a look.”

She slid the report across.

As he picked it up she said, “The first two pages are legal mumbo-jumbo basically covering their ass if their report is wrong or they did a test incorrectly, or the results ever end up in court they are one hundred percent not liable.”

“That’s comforting,” muttered Puller.

He flipped to the third page and settled in to read. After a minute he said, “I’m not a scientist either, but while I see terms like apatite, rutile, marcasite, galena, sphalerite, and other stuff I’ve never heard of, I also see uranium, which I definitely recognize.”

“Don’t get your shorts in a wad. There’s coal in fifty-three of the fifty-five counties in West Virginia, and pretty much where you find coal, you find uranium. But the levels of radioactivity are low. People breathe in uranium particles all the time and do just fine. And the level of the parts per million on the uranium shown on that report means it’s naturally occurring.”

“You’re sure about that? You said you weren’t a scientist.”

“As sure as I am that coal is more a rock than a mineral. Since it’s formed from organic remains it technically doesn’t qualify as a true mineral. It’s actually made up of other minerals.”

“Everyone in West Virginia knows this stuff?”

“Well, not everyone, but a lot of folks do. What can you expect from a state whose official mineral is a lump of bituminous coal?”