62 pages • 2 hours read
David BaldacciZero Day
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 71-79Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapters 71-72 Summary
Puller questions Bill Strauss about who authorized the blasting on the night of the murders. Arranging blasting permits is Strauss’s job, but the actual arrangements are made by subordinates. He agrees to look into why the blasting schedule wasn’t posted in the paper.
Returning to his motel, Puller finds Roger Trent waiting for him. Trent tells Puller that Jean had nothing to do with the bomb under his car. Puller asks Trent about his financial problems. Trent is enraged but doesn’t answer the question. Puller brings up the gas pipeline and tells Trent that debt is bad but treason is worse. Trent seems taken aback. He appears to have no idea what Puller is talking about.
Chapters 73-75 Summary
Puller arrives at the firehouse early for his meeting with Dickie. He searches the firehouse and finds signs the club has been dealing meth, which is probably why Dickie clammed up when the subject arose. He also finds an old sheet of paper dated 1964. The document covers the procedure if there is a fire at “the facility.” The numbers 92 and 94 have been written in the margin.
Dickie arrives on his motorcycle. He is pulling up in front of the firehouse when Puller hears a shot, and Dickie falls off the bike, shot in the head. Puller snags his tactical gear from his car and goes hunting for the sniper. Puller intercepts the sniper and orders him to drop his weapon. The sniper calmly tells Puller that he should back off; he doesn’t know what is really going on. Before Puller can stop him, the sniper kills himself. A second man attacks Puller with a knife. Puller tries to take him alive but is forced to kill him instead. Both men were unmistakably American with military training—not Middle Eastern.
Dickie’s death has made Puller suspicious of Mason, as Mason is the only person who knew about Dickie’s involvement, but all the evidence in the case keeps pointing back to Trent Exploration, and Puller can’t see the connection between Mason and the mine. He also can’t find any link between the company and the supposed terrorists.
Chapters 76-77 Summary
When Cole arrives, she and Puller go over the situation. Cole wants to evacuate the town. Puller tells her the Feds won't help. They don’t want to spook the terrorists. Cole asks what Puller will do if she tries to warn the town. He says he would help her because it would be the right thing to do, and sometimes the brass forgets about that. Cole decides the best thing she can do for her town and her country is to concentrate on catching the terrorists before they strike. Puller tells her they don’t have to give up. They still have two days to stop the attack themselves.
Chapters 78-79 Summary
Puller and Cole go together to tell Bill Strauss about his son’s death—that he was killed while helping Puller investigate the murders. Strauss doesn’t seem distraught. Puller asks Strauss whether he checked up on the blasting authorization. Strauss says the permit was in order, but the public notice didn’t get posted in time.
Cole invites Puller to sleep on her couch, arguing that he’ll be safer there than in his hotel room. Before she leaves him to go to her room, she says, “Puller, if we make it out alive…maybe we could…”; he answers, “Yeah, I was thinking that too” (354).
Puller wakes in the middle of the night with an idea about a lead he needs to follow. Slipping out of Cole’s house, he breaks into Bill Strauss’s office, where he finds a set of blueprints for the bunker. The plans contain a warning that no blasting is allowed within two miles of the dome. This, he thinks, is what Molly Bitner and Eric Treadwell were after when Treadwell was alone in the office with the safe. He takes pictures of the blueprints and returns to Cole’s house.
Chapters 71-79 Analysis
Dickie’s death fulfills Cole’s prophecy that his second chance could cost him his life. It also confirms that Dickie knew or had learned something critical to solving the case. The fact that his killers are Americans with military training doesn’t fit with the terrorist scenario; if they were with the government, they would want Dickie’s information as much as Puller.
The suicide of the sniper suggests fanatical devotion to a cause, but he doesn’t talk like a religious or anti-American fanatic. The tone of his recommendation to Puller to back off sounds like one government agent to another. The sniper’s warning is yet another diversion, but this time, Puller refuses to be distracted from the main thrust of his investigation. He remains focused on Trent Exploration.
Puller’s professional and personal boundaries prevent him from becoming more intimate with Cole until the case is resolved, but the fact that he can contemplate intimacy with her demonstrates that his personal barriers are coming down. Puller shields himself from the risk of getting close to people by thinking of the Army as his family. In fact, because Puller Sr. identified as a general, not a father, Puller’s father literally was the Army. Puller Sr. even refers to his son as his XO or his gunnery sergeant, a subordinate officer, not a relation.
The only way the killers could know exactly when the blasting would happen is if they had inside information, and Strauss is the most obvious informant. His potential involvement is what reminds Puller of the safe in Strauss’s office and leads him to the blueprints of the Bunker. Strauss’s muted reaction to Dickie’s death indicates either that he already knew about it, possibly informed by whoever ordered him killed, or that he just doesn’t care. In that, he has something in common with General Puller: Neither man relates to other people unselfishly.
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