The Escape (7 page)

J
OHN PULLER HAD
his marching orders. He had asked Daughtrey, Schindler, and Rinehart a few more questions and gotten a few more answers that might or might not lead to something. But at least he had the authority to operate out in the open. An email had come through from his CO empowering him to work on this investigation with the accompanying and necessary electronic trail of higher signatories. The suit and the stars definitely had the juice they claimed to have. He felt like he had just been rebadged.

He didn’t like slinking around trying not to be noticed. He wanted people to know he was on the case. He wanted to intimidate. Intimidated people with a guilty conscience often made mistakes. The only difference here was that the target of his investigation was his brother. Robert Puller was brilliant. Was he going to make mistakes? Didn’t he know John Puller Jr. better than anyone?

He knows how I think. How I tick.

But then I know the same about him.

However, these thoughts didn’t make him feel good. They made him feel sick.

He cleared security at the DB and walked up a flight of steps to the visitors’ room. He asked to see the officer in charge, displaying his credentials and relaying his purpose for being here.

The woman met Puller in her office. She was Captain Lenora H. Macri, in her thirties, short, trim, with salt-and-pepper hair worn in a bun. She looked wound as tight as a coil of wire and her expression did not appear cooperative in the least. This was not particularly good for him, because she was now the DB’s acting commander.

“What can I do for you, Chief Puller?” she began curtly.

“I’m investigating the escape of Robert Puller.”

“Right. Your
brother
.” She left the statement there, with all its inherent complications and insinuations. Then she added, “I find it extraordinary that you’re involved in this case in any way at all. I have duly noted my misgivings with the appropriate channels.”

“Which you have every right to do.”

“And which I don’t need you to tell me,” she retorted. “Blood is thicker than water, and what we need is objectivity. I fail to see how you can bring an unbiased perspective to this investigation.”

Puller shifted in his seat. “I’m a CID agent. My mission is clear, Captain Macri. Bring him back, brother or not. I’ve been authorized to do this. If you have a problem cooperating with me, I need to hear it now.”

She held his gaze. “I have no problems, Mr. Puller. I think any potential problems will rest largely with you. Now, how can I help?”

She had done that rather neatly, thought Puller. Not only covered her ass with the “appropriate channels” but also put the onus on him to disprove her opinion of his being involved at all while at the same time appearing cooperative. Only a captain now, but she must be bucking hard for her next promotion.

Aren’t they all?

Puller went over the facts as he understood them and asked for her confirmation of them.

“They’re accurate,” Macri said. “Except for the shots fired and the explosion.”

Puller blinked at her. “Shots and an explosion? No one mentioned that.”

“Well, maybe you didn’t ask the right questions. I’m volunteering that information in the interest of full disclosure. The shots and explosion prompted the calling in of reinforcements from the fort.”

“Did you determine the origins of the shots?”

“No.”

“And the explosion?”

Macri said, “I said explosion because that’s what it initially sounded like.”

“You were on duty?”

“Yes, I was. But many people heard the noises. They were quite distinct.”

“So it wasn’t really an explosion?”

“As I just said, it
initially
sounded like one. However, we found no evidence of one actually going off.”

“Then perhaps it was the same deal with the shots.”

“It probably was, because we also found no evidence of any shots fired.”

“So just sound effects, maybe?”

“Actually, that’s the only explanation that fits. As you probably know, guards do not carry weapons inside the prison. Thus no shots could have been fired by them. All prisoners were searched. No gun or contraband of any kind was found.”

“Except for the escapee. You couldn’t search him, because he was gone.”

“Correct,” conceded Macri.

“But then some device had to make those noises.”

“I agree with you. We just couldn’t find out what it was. But the investigation, as you know, is ongoing.”

“Were the guards searched?”

Macri looked blankly at him. “The guards?”

“If the prisoners didn’t cause it, maybe one of the guards?” Puller looked at her expectantly.

“Why would a guard do that?”

“Well, if they’d been searched and the device found, you could have asked that question directly.”

“I refuse to believe that one of my personnel was involved in this. It’s unthinkable.”

“Well, Captain Macri, if nothing was found on the prisoners and nothing was found in the prison and unless you’re randomly allowing folks in here to plant devices to cause a panic, it had to be one of the guards.”

She bristled at this, but said nothing.

“And the status of your CO?”

“Colonel Teague is on temporary leave.”

“Meaning he’s the fall guy for this?” said Puller.

“Meaning he’s on temporary leave.”

“Have you done an investigation of your own, Captain?”

“A preliminary one has been conducted. As you well know, there are others here currently doing their own: MI, CID other than you. Some folks from Washington. Lots of cooks in the kitchen.”

“And what did your ‘preliminary’ investigation reveal?”

Macri said, “That Robert Puller escaped in a manner as yet undetermined.”

“And the dead man?”

“What about him?”

“Has he been identified?”

“Not yet,” replied Macri.

“Anyone missing from the prison? Guards, support staff, civilians? And how about Fort Leavenworth? Everyone accounted for there?”

“A thorough accounting has been done. There are no missing personnel at either place.”

“But there’s a federal pen here as well. And the Midwest Joint Regional Correctional Facility. All folks accounted for at those locations?”

She seemed taken aback by this query. “I don’t see how personnel at those facilities are relevant. If a prisoner had escaped from there we’d know about it. And it’s not like guards at those institutions could just walk into the DB.”

He stared at her pointedly. “You’re with the 15th MP Brigade.”

“I know I am.”

“Composed of the 40th and 705th MP Battalions.”

She said impatiently, “And your point?”

“The 15th MPs are responsible for the operation of DB
and
the Midwest Regional. Colonel Teague was the commandant at DB and also the commander of the 15th. MPs from the 15th responded to the situation at DB and restored order. In addition, the 40th Battalion was largely created because the 705th was deployed to the Middle East to run the prisons over there. So the prison
is
guarded by the 15th and both its battalions. So are you telling me that they don’t overlap in guard rotations? That no guard at DB ever works at the regional prison? Or vice versa?”

She seemed flustered now. “No, I’m not saying that or implying it.”

“Then the personnel at those facilities
are
relevant to my investigation, correct?”

She finally nodded. “I guess that’s correct. I’m sorry if I misinterpreted your request.”

“How do you explain the dead man in my brother’s cell?”

“I can’t explain it. That’s why investigations are ongoing.”

He decided to change direction. “I’ll need to see the body.”

She pursed her lips. Puller knew that despite any animosity she might have toward him, Macri could not refuse this request. A murder always carried with it a body. And for him as a CID agent authorized to investigate this murder, an examination of the body was always required and access never denied.

“I’ll make arrangements. They have him at Fort Leavenworth.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she said curtly.

“I’ll also need to check with the crews who restored the electrical power and repaired the backup generator.”

“I can also arrange that.”

“I’ll also need to look at surveillance footage from the night in question.”

“We lost power.”

“But the cameras have battery backups.”

“The ones in hallways and general areas do. The ones in the prisoners’ cells don’t.”

“Why not?”

“It was not designed that way. I can only imagine that if the main and backup power went out, the only problem would be prisoners attempting to flee from where the cameras could monitor them. They weren’t concerned that they remain in their cells in such a scenario. As you probably know, at DB it’s one prisoner to a cell.”

“I know that. But still quite the blind eye when you think about it.”

“No design is perfect. And I would imagine from this point on, cameras in the cells will also have battery backups.”

“I thought the system was set up so that if the power failed the cell doors automatically locked. And yet you had to call in the MPs. Why?”

Macri’s features were suddenly pained. “It seemed we were hacked.”

“Hacked? How?”

“As you said, our system is set up such that cell doors automatically lock when the power fails. That didn’t happen. The cell doors
unlocked
instead.”

“And a hacker caused this? How could that have happened?”

“Unfortunately, some of our personnel bring in their personal devices, phones, iPads, and on their computers here there is occasional breach of protocol as people log on to outside networks. It’s not supposed to happen, but people are people.”

“Leaving a way for a hacker to get in and rewrite your code so the cell doors opened when the power failed.”

“Yes.”

“Any leads there?”

“No.”

“But you’ve confirmed the hack occurred?”

“Technically, that is still speculation, but I see no other way for it to have happened.”

Puller thought,
Oh, I see at least one other way it could have gone down.
“I’ll need to see all the footage you have,” he said.

Her lips pursed once more. “I can arrange that as well.”

“And the MP reinforcements from Leavenworth? I’ll need to talk to the people involved in that.”

She gave a curt nod.

“Just to be clear, are you sure you haven’t formed any theories, Captain, as to what happened?”

“No, I have not.”

“Not even any hunches?”

“I don’t like hunches, Mr. Puller. They often lead to mistakes. And mistakes often lead to the end of military careers.”

“Well, I’ll let you get on with
your
career, then, as soon as you make the arrangements we just discussed.”

Macri gazed at him intently and then picked up her desk phone.

A
N HOUR LATER
Puller was leaning against a fifty-gallon oil drum in a workshop facility near the DB. The man he was talking to, Al Jordan, had been the crew chief for the group that had repaired the blown transformers. He was in his early fifties, with pewter gray hair and a barrel chest set atop skinny legs.

“So it was definitely the storm that fried the transformers?”

Jordan wiped his hands on a rag and then lifted his cap and wiped sweat from his brow. “That’s sure what it looked like to me. The two transformers were part of a small substation. Encircled by a chain-link fence that was locked. The station had lots of safety devices built in, but that storm had enough power to do just about anything it wanted to. You can’t trump Mother Nature.”

“And the transformers were connected to DB?” asked Puller.

“Yep. Along with other facilities around here. We got them back up and running as fast as we could. We didn’t even wait for the storm to stop.”

Puller understood this. The military was mission first, not safety first.

“So anything unusual you might have noticed?”

Jordan considered this. “I can’t say that there was. Those transformers just blew. Probably hit by the lightning. They were all burned up.”

“Isn’t it unusual that they
both
blew?”

“Well, they’re connected. One gets hit, there’s gonna be an effect on the other as well. Too much juice, anything can happen.”

“You said they had lots of safety devices built in. Don’t they ground them?”

“Yes, in addition to other protections like an arrestor for secondary induced surges, but none of them are perfect. You get a direct hit with enough power I don’t care what you’ve done to avoid damage. That sucker is going. A lightning bolt can carry one hundred and twenty million volts or more. You slam that into a transformer in a millisecond, well, can you say ‘boom’?”

“So, like an explosion?”

“Very much like one.”

“Could it have been a bomb?”

Jordan looked at him in surprise. “A bomb? In a transformer?”

“Yes. It could have taken out both transformers.”

“What, to knock power out to the prison, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“But they got backups,” protested Jordan.

“They failed too. And a prisoner escaped. Which is the only reason I’m here.”

Jordan scratched his cheek. “I don’t know if it was a bomb. I guess people who know bombs can check it out.”

“Have they?”

“Don’t know.”

“You talked to anyone else who’s investigating this?”

“I have. They asked the same sort of questions you did.”

“But not about a possible bomb?”

“What makes you say that?” Jordan asked suspiciously.

“Well, you were surprised when I asked you about the possibility of a bomb. If they had asked you as well, I don’t think you would have been surprised when I did.”

“Oh, right. Well, they didn’t ask about a bomb, as a matter of fact.”

“Where are the transformers that blew?”

“They took them away.”

“Who took them away?”

Jordan shifted his stance a bit. “Some people.”

“Those people have names or credentials?”

“They outranked me. That’s all that mattered.”

“So no names?” Puller persisted. “No releases signed? You had to cover your butt somehow.”

Jordan shrugged. “I just took it on faith, I guess.”

Puller gave the man an incredulous look. “Then you should reconsider your faith.”

The next stop for Puller was the backup generator. It was housed in a concrete bunker about a hundred yards to the rear of the DB. The gas lines powering it ran underground. The bunker was also partially underground and surrounded by a ten-foot-high fence topped with concertina wire. There was a guard stationed there. Puller had called ahead and two men were waiting for him.

He climbed out of his car and approached. They were in uniform and carried the ranks of E-4 specialists. With their glasses and scrawny builds they looked to him like nerds playing soldier. He gave a detailed explanation of why he was there, and they led him into the bunker and down a short flight of stairs until they arrived at three mammoth generators.

“I thought there’d only be one of them,” said Puller.

“The electrical load requirement for DB is very substantial,” said one of the E-4s. “These generators are run in parallel but with sophisticated control features. It’ll provide the load required but not more, so the waste is minimal.”

“What was the cause of the failure?” asked Puller.

One specialist looked at the other, who cleared his throat. “It was a fuel problem.”

“Fuel? I thought the fuel it ran on was natural gas.”

“These are bi-fuel systems,” said the other E-4. “Natural gas and diesel.”

“Why two fuels?”

“Natural gas puts us at the control of the utility. Army doesn’t like that. Something happens to the gas flow, we’re shit out of luck. The way the system works, the main power fails, the diesel fuel component to the generator comes on and runs the system initially. Then the natural gas feed will be introduced by the system’s controller into the fuel mix after certain criteria are satisfied—the requisite electrical load acceptance, for example. The diesel also serves as the pilot light for the natural gas, which has an ignition temperature of about twelve hundred degrees Fahrenheit. That way if the natural gas flow is interrupted we have on-site fuel under our control. The system will typically run on a seventy-five to twenty-five gas to diesel mixture.”

“So what happened to cause it to fail? You said there was a fuel problem?”

“The best we can tell, there was either a diesel oxidation degradation problem or a microorganism contamination issue.”

“In English?” said Puller patiently.

The E-4 explained, “Diesel can degrade over time. Oxidation can occur in the first year of storage, forming sediment and gum. When introduced into the system they can clog fuel filters and injectors, just like gunk in a car engine. Now, microorganisms are introduced via water condensation in the fuel lines, which promotes bacteria and fungi. They feed on the fuel. They can form colonies that clog the lines as well.”

“But I presume you have protocols in place that would prevent those problems from happening.”

When the men said nothing, Puller exclaimed sharply, “The Army has procedures for toilet paper usage. Are you saying they had none for maintenance of a power system for the military’s most important prison?”

The same E-4 said hastily, “No, no, they do. Lots of them. But it might have still happened. There was a lot of rain this year and we got some underground seepage into the bunker. That could have caused excessive condensation buildup. And these generators are very near the end of their useful life. In fact, they should have been replaced about two years ago.”

“Sequestration cuts brought the hammer down on that,” pointed out the other E-4. “And the Army also bought some bad diesel that’s been working its way through the system.”

“Okay. So you checked out the generator and found the lines all, what, gummed up, with microorganisms, sediment?”

“That’s pretty much what we did find, yes sir.”

“And that caused the generator to fail?”

They both nodded. One added, “And without the diesel serving as the pilot light, you can’t ignite the natural gas. So, no fuel source connection. That means no power.”

“And a prison with no locked doors,” said Puller as he stared at both men. “So you two are the principal caretakers of this equipment?”

“Yes sir,” they said together.

“Well, you might want to make alternate plans for your future.”

“Meaning exactly what, sir?” asked one of them anxiously.

“Meaning that the Army, in its infinite wisdom, must affix blame for this clusterfuck. And you two are as likely candidates as any I’ve seen so far.”

The E-4s exchanged a shocked glance as Puller headed out of the bunker and back to daylight.