Zero Day

That afternoon, following the interview with Strauss, Puller goes to the Pentagon to talk to Colonel Reynolds’s superior at the Defense Intelligence Agency, Brigadier General Julie Carson. According to Carson, she saw Reynolds right before he was headed back to West Virginia for a weekend with his family. She didn’t think he seemed troubled; he was happy, with no money or personal problems and no dark secrets. None of Colonel Reynolds’s coworkers seem to know why he might have been murdered. After hours of fruitless questioning, Puller gets an anonymous text message reading, “Army Navy club downtown tonight 1900 I’ll find you” (231).

Before the appointment, Puller visits his father at the hospital. John Puller Sr. is brooding over the idea that Robert’s conviction for treason is the reason Puller Sr. never got the fourth star that he always wanted. Puller knows his father retired years before Robert’s court-martial, and the reason he never earned the fourth star was because he got on the wrong side of too many people during his career. Puller recalls that, off the battlefield, his father always blamed other people for his own failures and disappointments. Angry at the injustice, Puller walks out on his father.