No Man’s Land by David Baldacci

Author:David Baldacci [Baldacci, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Macmillan

CHAPTER

38

ARE YOU GOING to tell me, or are you just going to keep driving?”

Puller was staring directly at Knox.

“I’m trying to process it all in my head so I can give you an efficient version,” she replied.

“Where have you been?”

“Finding out things.”

“And did you?”

“Processing, Puller, give me a sec. I was wheels down just an hour ago. It’s still a bit garbled in my head.”

He waited until she pulled off the highway and into the parking lot of a 7-Eleven. She put the car in park, undid her seat belt, and said, “I need coffee. You want some?”

“Okay.”

She got out, went in and bought two large coffees, came back to the car, presented one to him, and took a sip of hers.

“Are you done processing?” he asked.

She nodded and sat back. “There was a lot about this case that didn’t add up. The FBI pulling out of a serial murder case? That’s unheard of. The forensics not being professionally done. Investigators getting stonewalled. No leads at all with four women dead. And the playing field being manipulated by so-called ‘higher-ups,’ which is very convenient because it lets anonymity reign.”

“Agreed on all points,” said Puller. “Just so you know, Ted Hull got reassigned and his phone number was given over to a woman from the Department of Agriculture, so no one could contact him. And I’m supposed to be on a flight to Germany because I got pulled off the case too.”

“So why aren’t you on the plane?”

“Because another higher-up intervened, this time on my behalf.”

“Which higher-up.”

“I can’t tell you because I was ordered not to disclose it.”

“Ordered, by someone in the military?”

“This isn’t a guessing game with clues, Knox. We were discussing what you found out?”

She took another sip of coffee and he saw a vein pulsing at her temple. He also saw her hand quiver just a bit as she set her coffee in the cup holder.

“We might have stumbled onto something so big I’m not sure I can even comprehend it, Puller, much less deal with it.”

“Let’s start small. Give me some details.”

“I spoke with a man named Mack Taubman. He was my mentor. He was the reason I survived my early years in the field. He served his country in the intelligence field for over forty years and did it better than anyone I know. He’s retired now, but he was square in the middle of things in the 1980s.”

“Meaning what?”

She met his eye. “Mack told me that on the Fort Monroe installation back then there were some highly classified—some might say disturbing—research projects going on.”

“By the Army?”

“You heard of DARPA?”

“Of course,” he said.

“They finance some interesting projects.”

“Like the one at Fort Monroe?”

“Yes. There was a facility there. A Building Q.”

“Sounds like a James Bond thing, “commented Puller.”

“It might have been, actually.”

“What does this have to do my mother?”

“I don’t know. All I know is a man I greatly respect didn’t want to even talk about this in hypotheticals. When I brought up the murdered women in Williamsburg, I thought Mack was going to have a heart attack.

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