Daylight

Chapter 30

Puller jumped back on the metro and rode it to the Reagan National stop, where he had left his personal car in long-term parking. He drove south on Interstate 95 to his apartment, where he found his cat, AWOL, lounging on the kitchen counter, his tail flicking back and forth like a furry metronome.

He leaned against the counter and spent ten seconds rubbing AWOL’s ears, which was the length of time AWOL allotted him before wanting to be left alone. An elderly neighbor came in and took care of the cat while Puller was away. And with Puller’s schedule, the neighbor probably saw more of AWOL than he did.

AWOL suddenly turned his luminous green eyes toward the window. Puller was on the second floor of an apartment building not that far from Quantico. CID headquarters was located there on Telegraph Road in the same complex as the Marine Corps base. He watched as AWOL crept over to the kitchen window and looked out. The cat’s tail went down and its back went up. Puller heard AWOL hiss.

Puller had been in the Middle East where the most innocuous sounds often led to the most deaths and destruction. Because of that, his internal antennae had been fine-tuned to such an extent that what he could hear and discern from it was almost otherworldly. He would use a different phrase for it.

It makes you a soldier who survives.

And it really helped when you had a cat with even better antennae than a human would ever have.

His M11 came out of its holster and he nudged AWOL with the pistol’s butt. The cat leaped off the counter, landed silently on the floor, and disappeared into another room.

There was only one door into and out of the apartment. There were two windows facing the street. There was no outside deck. It was just nine hundred square feet of a typical American apartment. Puller’s government salary was good, higher than the median pay, though far lower than he would have made in the private sector. He could have afforded a more luxurious place, but why pay for something he barely used? And it wasn’t like AWOL cared what his accommodations looked like.

He slipped over to the side of one of the windows and eased the curtain back. It was dark outside, but his eyes had been trained to see in the dark.

In the lighted parking lot were lots of darkened cars. But there was one where he could see steam rising off the hood because the motor was on and the falling rain was being heated. The car’s lights were out, so why sit there with the engine running?

Then he saw two shadows about fifty feet from the car and moving toward the building. They were moving slowly. That was a telltale sign because it was raining, and normal people hurried to get out of the rain. These were obviously not normal people.

He moved across the small space to his front door, opened it a crack, and peered out.

Stealthy footsteps scraped the steps.

Puller grabbed a to-go knapsack that he kept in the closet by the front door and threw it over his shoulder. He eased out of his apartment and closed the door behind him. He moved noiselessly down the outside corridor and took up position behind an ice-maker unit.

He took aim and waited.

The first figure appeared at the top of the stairs, stopped for a moment to look around, and then motioned to his partner to follow him up. They reached Puller’s door just about the time that Puller pushed two sound mufflers into his ears.

They checked the lock. Puller hadn’t left it open. He didn’t want to make it too easy for them. The first man pulled something from his pocket and worked away at the lock while the second man kept watch.

The lock was defeated, and the first man pushed the door open an inch at a time. A few moments later both men disappeared inside. Puller moved from his position, pulling something from his knapsack as he did so. He put on a pair of night-vision goggles right as he reached the door. He peered inside the front room and saw the backs of the men. He pulled the pin on the object he was holding, held it for two seconds, and then tossed it inside. He stepped away and placed his back flat against the outside wall.

The flashbang did exactly what it was designed to do. The blinding flash robbed both men of their vision. The simultaneous bang robbed them of their senses. Puller heard both men cry out and fall to the floor.

Puller waited two seconds and then stepped inside.

The men were writhing and moaning on the floor of the small kitchen. When one tried to get up, Puller tapped him rather hard on the back of the neck with his fist, and the man went down for the count. The other fellow tried to raise his gun, but Puller quickly disarmed him and then laid him out with an M11 slap to the head.

He was about to call the police when a burst of machine-gun fire from the front-door area made him dive for cover behind a couch. The guys he had already dealt with were apparently only the advance team.

Both M11s were out now and he fired back at the doorway. Another burst of bullets tore into the couch, and a second after it ended Puller sprinted to the right, kicked open his bedroom door, and slammed it shut behind him.

He dove to the floor right as more machine-gun rounds shredded the door and ripped into the far wall. He flipped on his back, and with both pistols he fired back through the torn-apart door. Next second he heard the sirens. Machine-gun fire that wasn’t happening as part of an exercise at Quantico drew the attention of the legion of military and FBI personnel who called this place home. Still, Puller was thinking:

What the hell took them so long?

He slammed in spare mags, moved to the left, listened to the sounds of slight movement, and then emptied one mag through the thin drywall connecting up with his front room. He was rewarded with a grunt and someone falling and hopefully dead.

He dove into the small attached bathroom as multiple bursts of gunfire tore through the wall and ripped his bedroom to shreds.

Then he heard feet stumbling from the front room, a door being banged open, and now running feet rushing away.

He got up, went back into his bedroom, and cautiously peered out.

There was no one in the room. He ran over to the window and saw men running toward the vehicle with its engine on and lights off. They were half-carrying another man, who might have been the one Puller had shot. They climbed into the SUV and the driver hit the gas.

Puller slid his window open, took aim, and fired his other M11 at the fleeing vehicle until his hammer clicked dry. At this range, he couldn’t have expected to stop it with a pistol shot.

In another few seconds the SUV had turned the corner and was gone.

As the sounds of the sirens drew closer, Puller went in search of and found AWOL. He was on the top shelf of the closet, behind a plastic bin where Puller had kept some of his winter clothing. There was a bullet hole right through the bin.

An unhurt AWOL meowed and jumped down onto Puller’s shoulder. Puller left the closet and sat on his destroyed bed while he tickled AWOL’s chin. The cat didn’t budge. He apparently didn’t want to be alone.

Puller couldn’t blame the feline.

He surveyed what was left of his apartment. The two guys he had laid out were gone. Their buddies must have revived them and they had fled in the SUV.

He glanced down at his twin empty M11s and let out a long, relieved breath.

I thought I left the Middle East behind.