The darkness covered his high-stepping through the last few breakers until he reached the sugar-white sand of the Emerald Coast in Florida’s Panhandle. He looked right and left up the beach for any late-night beachcombers. Seeing none, he dropped to his knees, rolled onto his back, and drew in long deep breaths as he stared at a sky so clear there seemed to be no space between the billions of visible stars. Paradise was a small town with long beaches, but its downtown area was built right along the sand. The central business district was farther down and to the west. And luckily it was so late that there was no one out on the boardwalk that ran parallel to the beach where he was.
He thanked God for allowing him to live. So many hours of swimming, and then being picked up by the boat. In the vastness of the Gulf, what were the odds of that without divine intervention? The sharks had also miraculously left him alone. He had to attribute that to his prayers as well.
His captors had not come after him.
Prayer again.
Thankfully, the beach was deserted.
Well, not quite.
God must have missed that one.
He hunkered down in the sand as he heard the people coming.
Then he flattened himself to the beach and burrowed in, allowing his over six-foot-six-inch, 290-pound frame to blend into the white grit that people from around the world came to lie on during the course of a year.
It was two people. He could tell by the different voices.
One man. One woman.
He lifted his head a bare inch and stared in their direction. They were not walking a dog.
Prayer, again. A dog would have found his scent by now.
He would not act unless they spotted him. And even then, they might just assume he was simply lying on the beach enjoying the evening. He hoped they would not see him, and that if they did they would not panic. He knew that after his long journey at sea he must look pretty bad.
He tensed his body, waited for them to pass by.
They were within forty feet of him. The woman looked in his direction. The moonlight was not strong, but not weak either.
He heard her exclaim and then say something to her companion.
But then he realized that she was not actually looking in his direction.
As he watched, a lithe figure came out from behind the cover of sand dunes.
There was one pop and the man fell. The woman turned to run, but there was another pop and she fell too, hitting the compacted sand with a thud.
The figure put the gun away, gripped the woman’s hands, and dragged her into the water a good ten feet. The tide took over from there and the body quickly sank beneath the water and was swept out.
This same process was repeated on the man.
The figure stood on the sand a few inches from the water and scanned the breakers, probably making sure the bodies were not going to be swept back to shore. Then the figure turned and was gone the way it had come.
He kept his body flat to the stretch of beach even as he felt shame for not coming to the couple’s assistance. But it had happened so quickly that he doubted he could have prevented their deaths.
And sometimes God was busy with other things. This he knew to be true. God had often been busy when he had needed him. But then many people needed God. He was just one of billions who asked for divine assistance from time to time.
He waited until he was certain the shooter was gone. He had no idea why the couple had been killed. He had no idea who had killed them. It was not any of his business.
He could not remain on the beach now. He made his way to the boardwalk, and spotted a bicycle chained to a post. He ripped the post out of the ground, freeing the chain. He wound the chain around the frame, climbed onto the bike, and set off.
He had the city’s streets mostly memorized. He had a place to go, to stay, where he could change his clothes, rest, eat, hydrate, and then he could begin his quest, the real reason he had come here.
As he disappeared into the night, he began to mumble again, to pray for forgiveness for not helping the couple by killing their attacker. He was good at killing, perhaps the best. But that did not mean that he liked it, because he did not.
He was a giant, but actually a gentle man.
But even gentle giants could be moved to violence for the right reasons.
He had such reasons.
He had them in abundance.
He was no longer going to be gentle. Not while he was here.
It was the sole thing driving him. Indeed, it was the only thing really keeping him alive.
He rode on as the two corpses were pulled slowly out to sea.
CHAPTER 5
John Puller took a sharp left-hand turn and drove down the narrow two-lane road. In the backseat of the car was his cat, AWOL, who had wandered into his life one day and would probably leave him just as unexpectedly. Puller was in the Army, formerly a Ranger, and currently a CID, or Criminal Investigation Division, special agent. He was not investigating any cases at the moment. Right now he was just returning from a protracted road trip with his cat, allowing himself a bit of R&R after a hellish experience in a small West Virginia coal-mining town that had nearly ended with him and many other people dead.
He pulled into the parking lot of his apartment complex. It was near Quantico, Virginia, where the Army’s CID headquarters was located along with the 701st M.P. Group (CID), the unit to which Puller was attached. This made for an easy work commute, although he rarely spent much time at Quantico. He was more often on the road investigating crimes that involved a person who wore the uniform of the United States Army and yet was doing bad things. And unfortunately, there were a lot of cases to work.
He parked his car, a trim Army-issued Mal- ibu, grabbed his rucksack from the trunk, opened the back door, and wa
ited patiently for AWOL, a fat orange-and-brown tabby, to mosey out. The cat followed him up to his apartment. Puller lived in six hundred square feet of rigid lines and minimal clutter. He had been in the Army for most of his adult life and now, in his mid-thirties, his personal aversion to junk and clutter was irreversibly established.
He got food and water out for AWOL, snagged a beer from the fridge, sat down in his leather recliner, put his feet up, and closed his eyes. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually gotten a full night’s sleep. He decided to do something about it right now.
The last few weeks had not been especially kind to Puller, who was nearly six feet four and a normally solid 232 pounds. He had not gotten any shorter, but he had lost about ten pounds because his appetite had abandoned him. Physically, he was still doing okay. He could beat any test the military might offer related to strength, endurance, or speed. Mentally, however, he was not doing very well. He wasn’t sure he ever would be doing well mentally again. Some days he thought he would, others not. This was one of the other days.
Puller had gone on the road trip to try to get his head back on straight after the ordeal in West Virginia.