Zero Day

“[Reed] knew a few privileged folks were making a fortune off the coal seams. It was just that none of them happened to live around here.”

Desperate as they are for what jobs the mine still provides, the people of Drake scrabble for scraps. Surface mining requires less manpower than older methods, leaving greater profits for the owners.

“[Puller] had never walked into combat carrying uncontrolled anger, because that made you weak. And weakness made you fail.”

Control is of paramount importance to Puller, not merely because combat requires an unclouded mind but because control is one of the rules hammered into him by his autocratic father. Over the course of the story, Puller learns that there are times when the ability to shed tears is a sign of strength, and rigid control can be a weakness.

“John Puller was not a machine, but he also could see that he was awfully close to becoming one. And beyond that he refused to engage in any further self-analysis.”

Puller is self-aware. If he were not, he would be unable to empathize with other people or to forgive their failings. At this point, however, he is not ready to confront the loss of humanity that he feels creeping up on him. Eventually, caring for Cole will enable him to overcome his fear.

“[Cole was] Probably embarrassed to have already teared up in front of him… She shouldn’t have been embarrassed. He’d seen friends die, lots of them. It never got any easier. It only got harder. You thought you became desensitized to it, but that was just an illusion. The hole in your mind just got deeper so more shit would fit inside it.”

Despite his personal discomfort with expressing emotion, Puller understands and respects vulnerability in others. He clearly feels the pain of losing people he cares for, but unlike Cole, he buries that pain where it doesn’t intrude on the forefront of his mind. A less self-aware man might genuinely believe that he is desensitized or even that he doesn’t feel his losses.

“‘My cousin’s a Marine,’ said Chubby. ‘He said they’re always first in the fight.’ ‘Marines covered my butt many times in the Middle East.’”

Puller demonstrates respect for the other branches of the military. He disarms any impulse to competition and positions himself as a respectful ally. Respect demonstrates that he is worthy of the reader’s confidence and regard.

“Puller observed the other cops for any visible reaction in dealing with a female superior. If West Virginia was anything like the Army it was still tough going for the girls even in the twenty-first century. From the looks of them it was still tough going for the ladies in the Mountain State.”

Puller demonstrates both respect and empathy for women and an appreciation of the challenges women face in heavily male-dominated fields. At the same time, he shows Cole the respect of not trying to interfere in her relationships with her subordinates. Doing so would undermine her authority and make the men’s antagonism worse. Baldacci doesn’t use the word “woman” here, and some readers may be offended by “girls” and “ladies.” They are perhaps affectionate terms coming from Puller, but they can also emphasize physical and emotional vulnerability. In either case, their use gives a sense of the narrator’s, and Puller’s, voice.

“It causes flooding and a host of other environmental issues, not to mention that blowing the tops off mountains leaves the countryside pretty damn ugly. But it’s a hell of a lot cheaper for the company to do it that way. They’re enormously profitable.”

Cole is reiterating the contradiction between the perception that mining creates jobs and the fact that the real profits don’t benefit the people who have the greatest need or who do the work of day-to-day operations. The mine’s profits depend on the labor of the individual workers, but those workers benefit the least from their own labor.

“‘He owns most of Drake. Got it cheap. Place is so polluted people just want to sell and get out. Those that remain he gets coming and going. Groceries, vehicle repair, plumbing, electrical, this restaurant, that gas station, bakery shop, clothing place. List goes on and on. They ought to rename the place Trentsville.’ ‘So he profits from creating environmental nightmares.’ ‘Life’s a bitch, ain’t it?’”

At its heart, Drake operates like the mining towns of the past where the mine owned everything from housing to company stores. Company stores were the only place for the miners and their families to purchase essential goods. The stores inflated prices, and miners were frequently paid in scrip, which was only good at the stores, rather than dollars that could be used elsewhere.

“In the Army you always covered your ass. Thus [Puller had] gotten approval for this plan from his SAC, who had covered his ass by getting necessary approvals all the way up to the one-star level. How the one-star covered her butt Puller didn’t know and didn’t really care.”

Whereas some people might find Army procedures and regulations constrictive, they offer Puller a comfortable, controlled world within which he can operate on his own terms. His responsibility is to individuals—people like the Reynoldses, who deserve justice, and the people who may yet be hurt by the murderers. Unlike his older brother, the overachiever of the family, Puller has always been the emotional caretaker, and he carries that role into his professional life.

“Two heavy-as-hell Humvees blown onto their sides like downed rhinos. Despite the underside armor four of his men are dead or mortally wounded. He’s the only one mobile. There’s no good reason why this is the case. It’s luck, nothing more. None of the dead and dying men had done anything wrong. He had done nothing particularly right.”

Despite the rule drummed into him that soldiers—and Puller men—must be in control of themselves and everything around them at all times, Puller is confronted by the reality that total control is impossible. Sometimes, you are at the mercy of fate. It is a terrifying thought. The image of the Humvees as “downed” rhinos is powerful, the more so because the author rarely employs figurative language.

“These men […] are brutal, hardened; mercy is not in their lexicon. Yet he is also brutal, hardened, and mercy has been absent from his vocabulary since the day he put on the uniform. The rules of engagement are clear and have been ever since men first took up arms against each other.”

Here, Puller is his father’s son, controlled, disciplined, and unemotional. These are the qualities he must have to defend his country from the same kind of merciless men who killed thousands in the two towers on September 11. They are the qualities that will keep his surviving men alive until help reaches them, but off the field, those same qualities isolate him from other people..

“All extraneous thought is banished. He focuses. He doesn’t think. He simply employs his training. He will fight until his heart stops.”

One reason for the Army’s emphasis on discipline, control, and rules is the necessity of soldiers under the intense pressure of combat being able to perform on reflex when conscious thought could slow them down for the fraction of a second that might get them killed—much less the time it might take an adrenaline-flooded brain to make a critical decision.

“‘I’m sick of people targeting me just because I’ve been incredibly successful. It’s pure jealousy and I’m tired of it. Hell, I’m the only reason Drake is still around. I’m the only one who creates any jobs here. These losers should be kissing my ass.’ Puller said, ‘Yeah, I’m sure your life is very hard, Mr. Trent.’ Trent’s features turned dark. ‘You obviously don’t have what it takes to build a fortune. The vast majority of people don’t. You have a small number of haves and the rest have-nots. And the have-nots think everything should be given to them without working for it.’”

Trent grossly exaggerates his own contributions. He cannot tolerate criticism, although later, he will tell Puller that he loves being hated because it makes him an underdog. He loves seeing himself as a victim. He claims that he—unlike most people—has what it takes to build a fortune, yet we will learn that Bill Strauss has been the actual brains all along. In actuality, Trent robs the community and feels entitled to his spoils.

“‘It’s nice to help the salts of the earth,’ replied Puller quietly. ‘They usually get the shaft.’”

Unlike Trent, Puller sees value in hard-working people doing their best in bad circumstances. Puller has been in their shoes in his own way—surviving the attack on his squad in Afghanistan by sheer luck and doing the best he can with what chance has given him.

“I thought I’d saved [Louisa]. Couldn’t do it. Just like my guys back in Afghanistan. Couldn’t save them either. Way it went. Beyond your control. But the Army taught you to control everything. Yourself. Your opponent. What all the training didn’t tell you was that the most important things, the ones that actually decided life and death, were almost completely outside your control.”

Loss of control is the thing Puller fears most. Accepting that he can’t control the most important things goes against all his training and upbringing. Saving Louisa was his way of fighting back against the fact that there is nothing he can do to help his dying father. He thought he had at least been able to save one person, but he failed even at that.

“Puller looked the other way and watched as kids of Pentagon personnel played inside the fence of a daycare center within the Pentagon grounds. He guessed that was what the military was always fighting for, the rights and freedoms of the next generation.”

This is what makes Puller’s career matter to him, and it matters on an individual level. He leaves the big picture to his superiors because he needs to serve flesh and blood people. He sees that the brass often forget that the salt of the earth aren’t an abstraction or “collateral damage.”

“On the field Puller Sr. had never let the buck of responsibility pass him by. He took the credit and the blame. Off the field, though, it had been another matter. His father had been a finger pointer. He laid blame on the most unlikely of places. He could be petty and vindictive and callous and unfair, brutal and unyielding. These personality traits could also be applied to his description as a father.”

Puller Sr. performs well in the public eye, but in private, his ego is fragile, and he can’t regulate his own emotions without abusing others. He places the blame for his professional disappointments on others, failing to recognize that his own personality flaws earned him enemies and are thus the reason he never received a fourth star or the medal of honor he coveted. Somehow, Puller succeeded in becoming everything his father was not—generous, fair, empathetic, and forgiving.

“‘Well, if [Dickie] gets killed that second chance will have come at a big cost.’ ‘Most second chances do. And most of the time they’re worth it.’”

Puller believes in the importance of second chances for people who deserve them. Dickie was willing to risk his life to serve his country before. To him, the opportunity to do so again might well be worth the same risk. Cole’s prediction comes true, and Dickie does pay that ultimate price. His death is as pointless as his original discharge. He never has the chance to give Puller the information that might have cracked the case sooner.

“I bet you’re a hotshot soldier. Probably were in combat in the Middle East. Got a slew of medals. […] Yeah, I bet it was rough over there. But let me tell you what real combat is like. Business is combat. And to win you’ve got to be an asshole. No marshmallows make it to the top in business. It’s kill or be killed.”

“Hotshot” implies flash without substance. Trent is self-involved to the point of delusion. He describes business as a deathmatch as if it is comparable to Puller’s military service. His likening business to combat foreshadows his death. For him, it turns out that business is indeed life or death, and Trent is nowhere near as skilled as he imagines.

“‘You’re asking me to decide between my country and my people.’ ‘I’m not asking you to do anything, Cole. I’m just telling you what they told me. I don’t like it any better than you do.’ ‘So what would you do?’ ‘I’m a soldier. It’s easy for me. I just follow orders.’”

This is the downside of Puller’s respect for rules, orders, and chain of command. His choices are limited to what is permissible within his structured worldview. One of his strengths is that he is able to find a balance between regulations and personal values.

“[Cole] said, ‘What if I decide to raise the alarm?’ […] ‘It’s up to you,’ Puller said again. […] ‘In fact, I’ll back you up. […] It’s the right thing to do. […] Sometimes the brass forgets about that little detail.’”

Puller has found a loophole in the rules. He has handed the decision over to someone with local authority, who has the moral right to make the decision. If she decides to take the safer option, he can back her up. In the end, Cole trusts herself and Puller enough to believe that together, they can achieve both ends—saving the town and catching the terrorists.

“‘So what if Drake, West Virginia, went radioactive? It was already dead.’ ‘It has over six thousand people, Joe.’ ‘A lot more people than that die in traffic accidents every year. A hundred thousand people die every year in hospitals because of mistakes. In that context the collateral damage was pretty damn small.’”

Mason regards human beings as numbers. That attitude is bad when the top brass are weighing the few thousand lives in Drake against possibly hundreds of thousands if the terrorists escape and go after another target. Mason, however, is prepared to kill 6,000 people for his own profit. The same is true of Bill Strauss, who hardly cares about the death of his son and leaves his wife behind to die in the anticipated explosion of the bomb in the Bunker.

“A person could explain [Puller’s survival] away by saying it just wasn’t his time yet. Puller had done it himself after dodging death on the battlefield. Other guys had died. He hadn’t. But for him that wasn’t explanation enough. Not this time. He wasn’t sure why it was different in this instance, but he just knew that it was.”

Cole’s death is no less random or senseless than those of any of the men Puller lost in the Middle East, but before she died, she reached the cold, closed-off part of him where he buried his other griefs. The fact that he feels a difference demonstrates his growth. The fact that he doesn’t understand the difference shows that he still has a distance to go.