Last Man Standing (60 page)

“It goes without saying,” began Pritchard, “that this mission is critical. All our missions are critical. I know that each
man here will conduct himself in the utmost professional manner while still doing his job to the best of his ability.” Pritchard’s
tone was stilted, the man looked nervous, and he had done enough dangerous things in his life that Web had long assumed the
man had no nerves.

Web and Romano exchanged glances. This sort of pep talk was a little out of the ordinary. They weren’t a bunch of high school
kids getting ready to play football.

Pritchard’s stern demeanor collapsed. “Okay, let me cut the official crap. The folks we’re going after tonight are suspected
of doing in Charlie Team. You all know that. We hope we’re going to hit them by surprise. Short and sweet and no shots fired.”
He paused and looked up and down the ranks once more. “You know the orders of engagement. This Free Society has come our way
before, down in Richmond. That was Charlie Team too, and some think that what happened in that courtyard was an act of revenge
by the Frees.

“There are no known hostages. The ground logistics are a little tricky, but we’ve handled far worse. We fly in, the trucks
will be waiting and we execute.” Pritchard was pacing now, and then he stopped. “If you have to take a shot tonight, you do
it. If they fire back, I don’t have to tell any of you what to do. But don’t be stupid about this. The last thing we need
is for the media to be screaming tomorrow morning about HRT wiping out guys who don’t need to be wiped out. If they were involved
in Charlie’s getting ripped, let’s bag them and let the legal process work its course. Don’t, and I repeat don’t, fire because
you’re thinking about what these guys might have done to six men who belonged to us. You’re better than that. You deserve
better than that. And I know you’ll come through.” He paused once more and seemed to search each of his men’s faces, once
again lingering the longest, it seemed, on Web.

Pritchard finished with, “Let’s hit it.”

As the men filed out, Web walked up next to Pritchard.

“Jack, I hear where you’re coming from, but if you’re that concerned about somebody going off the deep end, why have HRT do
this hit at all? You said there aren’t any hostages, so an FBI SWAT team could handle this with backup from the locals. Why
us?”

“We’re still part of the FBI, Web, although you wouldn’t know it from the way some people act around here.”

“Meaning orders from uptown for HRT to do this gig?”

“That’s the procedure, and you know that as well as I do.”

“Because of the circumstances, did you request a pass on this one?”

“Actually, I did, because I personally don’t think we should be doing it. Not this soon after losing our guys. And I agree
with you, a SWAT team could go easy enough.”

“And they turned you down?”

“Like I said, we’re part of the FBI and I do what I’m told. Now you wanted in on this, are you backing out now?”

“See you at the O.K. Corral.”

A few minutes later they were on their way to Andrews Air Force Base, ready to go to war.

The Bureau, Web had learned from one of his HRT colleagues, had contemplated executing a search warrant on the Frees’ compound
but had decided that they would let HRT secure the place first and then execute the search. The last thing the Bureau wanted
was a couple of agents getting killed while trying to serve the search warrant. Besides, video of machine guns used to kill
federal agents being unloaded from a truck rented by Silas Free was pretty damning.

On the short bumpy flight down in a military transport jet, Web went over the five-paragraph operations order and he and Romano
were filled in on specific details. There would be no negotiation with the Frees and no warnings to come out with their hands
up. The memories of the school incident in Richmond and the massacre of Charlie Team had precluded those options. Fewer people
would die tonight if HRT just hit them without warning, at least that’s what the powers-that-be had decided, and Web was perfectly
fine with that decision. The fact that there were no known hostages made things easier and also more complicated. Complicated
in that Web was still wondering why an FBI SWAT team hadn’t been called in to handle this. He hoped it was a combination of
the reputation the Frees had for being extremely dangerous and well armed, and the fact that even the good guys were entitled
to exact sweet justice some of the time. But something just didn’t feel right about this.

Intelligence gathered by WFO over the last several months put the Frees at a compound they had created a decade earlier about
forty miles west of Danville, Virginia, in a very remote part of the state with woods on three sides. Snipers from Whiskey
and X-Ray had set up surveillance twenty-four hours before with WFO agents and had been feeding valuable intelligence back
ever since. The plans for the target had actually been in the HRT database for a while now. HRT had rebuilt the interior of
the school on its back lot and practiced with something more than the unit’s usual vigor and determination. While there wasn’t
an HRT member who would consciously open fire unless he, another team member or an innocent person was in danger, there wasn’t
a single HRT operator who wasn’t at least partly wishing that the Frees would try and fight back. Maybe, Web thought, that
group would include Commander Jack Pritchard too, despite his passionate speech to the contrary.

They landed, climbed in their trucks, which had just been offloaded from a special truck transport, and drove to the preliminary
staging area and interfaced with the local police and folks from WFO who were spearheading the effort. Web turned his back
and fiddled with some of his gear when he saw Percy Bates appear from one of the Bucars and talk to Pritchard. Web didn’t
really need a run-in with Bates right now for a lot of reasons, the main one being he didn’t know if he could trust himself
not to punch the guy’s lights out for not telling him about the assault. Bates was probably just trying to protect Web, maybe
from himself, but Web would have preferred to make that decision on his own.

They drove to the last staging point and received a final set of orders. Now it was time to hit the road to the target. They
moved quickly through the darkened rural roads. Hotel Team was in one Suburban and was approaching the Frees’ compound from
the rear, while Gulf was going in the left side. The topography would require the assault teams to navigate through the dark,
dense woods. That wasn’t really a problem, since they had night-vision optics. Just before the truck doors popped open, Romano
crossed himself. Web almost said what he had always said to Danny Garcia, that God didn’t come around here and that they were
on their own, but he didn’t. Yet he wished Romano hadn’t done the sign of the cross. This was all beginning to seem way too
familiar, and for the first time Web started to wonder if he was in any shape to participate in the assault. The doors popped
open before he could think any more on this and they poured into the woods and then came to a stop, crouching and surveying
the terrain ahead.

Through his bone mic Web listened as the snipers filled them in on what lay ahead. Web recognized Ken McCarthy’s voice from
X-Ray. McCarthy’s call sign was Sierra One, meaning he held the snipers’ highest observation post. He was probably straddling
a thick branch of one of the big oaks that ringed the perimeter around the compound, Web figured. That would allow him to
see the entire area, get a good firing lane and provide maximum defilade, or position of cover and concealment. The Frees
were definitely inside the compound. Most of them lived there, in fact. The snipers had counted at least ten of them inside.
There were four buildings constituting the fenced compound. Three were living quarters and one was a large warehouse-style
building where the men held their meetings and did whatever work they did while there, such as making bombs and plotting how
to kill innocent people, no doubt, thought Web. There were often dogs at outposts like this. Canines were always a problem—not
so much a personal danger to HRT members, since even the fiercest dog couldn’t bite through Kevlar or withstand a bullet,
but they were terrific early warning sentries. Fortunately—thus far, at least—there were no dogs here; maybe some of the Frees
were allergic. The weaponry they’d seen were mostly pistols and shotguns, although one young lad of about seventeen, McCarthy
said, was carrying an MP-5.

There were two sentries outside, one in the front and one in the rear, armed with pistols only and bored expressions, McCarthy
wryly noted. As was customary with HRT, the sentries were given identification names by the sniper that had first spotted
them. The guard in front was named Pale Shaq, because he bore a passing resemblance to the big basketball center but, of course,
was white, since the Frees were definitely not going to have persons of another color around. The one in the rear was christened
Gameboy, because McCarthy had noted a Gameboy player sticking out of his front pocket. The snipers had also observed that
both sentries carried cell phones that had a walkie-talkie feature. That posed a problem, since they could quickly signal
trouble to their confederates inside.

Hotel Team spread out and moved through the woods with great caution. Over their flight suits they wore IR camouflage, green
smocks with visual patterns that broke up each man’s night profile. Thus, even if the Frees had night-vision optics, they
wouldn’t get a clean visual. Though the compound was not yet in sight, in the dense foliage the Frees might have posted either
additional pickets or even booby traps that had escaped the eyes of the snipers, unlikely as that might be. Web’s NV goggles
made night into day, but he kept one eye closed still and assumed all the oth- ers were doing the same thing to avoid the
orange burn later. They hit another stop spot and Web pulled the goggles up and blinked quickly to reduce the effects of the
high-tech optics. His head was already starting to hurt. On the actual assault Romano would be point man and Web would bring
up the rear. Though Romano hadn’t practiced this hit with the team, he was still the best assaulter they had. Web slid his
hand down the short barrel of the MP-5 subgun he was carrying. He wasn’t toting his usual SR75 rifle because, after using
it in that courtyard, he had found he couldn’t pick the damn thing up again. He first touched the .45 pistol in his tactical
holster and next the twin gun riding in his cross-draw shoulder rig that hung across his trauma plate, and he smiled tightly
when he saw Romano watching him do this and giving him a thumbs-up.

“Now we’re bulletproof, big guy,” said Romano. The man was probably still doing BTO turns in his head, thought Web.

Web’s heartbeat was not yet at sixty-four and he was striving mightily to get it there. He rubbed his fingers against his
palm and was surprised to feel sweat, for it was a chilly night. Yet sixty pounds of gear and body armor made for a nice little
personal sauna. He had pistol mags hanging from his gun belt and spare MP-5 ammo in his thigh pads, along with flash bangs,
slap charges and other goodies that he might or might not need tonight, you just never knew. Still, he hoped the sweat didn’t
signal nerves that could cause him to screw up right at the moment he needed to be perfect.

They moved forward again and neared the edge of the woods. Through his goggles Web could clearly make out the Frees’ compound.
To ensure that communications were short and that everyone was working off the same page, the first floor of a target, in
HRT parlance, was always designated Alpha, the second, Bravo. The front of the building was white; the right, red; the left,
green; and the rear, black. All the doors, windows and other openings was given sequential numbers beginning with the farthest
port to the left. Thus Gameboy was stationed on the outside of the fence at roughly Alpha level black port three, while Pale
Shaq was at Alpha level white port four. Web checked out Gameboy through his goggles and quickly summed the guy up as untrained
as well as downright careless. The accuracy of this opinion was reinforced when the guy pulled the Gameboy from his pocket
and actually started playing it.

There were lights on in the main building of the compound. The lights must have been powered by portable generators, because
there were no overhead electrical lines evident. If there had been, HRT would have found the transformer supplying the power
and shut it off just before the assault. Going from light to dark was disorienting and would have given HRT the slight edge
it needed to prevail without loss of life.

Since there were only two assault teams, snipers were standing by to jump into their blacks, or Nomex flight suits, and help
in the attack. Each sniper carried, in addition to his sniper rifle, a CAR-16 auto assault rifle with a three-power Litton
night scope. The plan was to hit from the front and the side in blitzkrieg style and contain the Frees in the main building.
At that point the regular FBI would come in, read rights, execute search warrants and the next stop for the Frees would be
court and then prison.

There was just enough to make this interesting, thought Web. The Frees had to know that the FBI was watching them. This was
a very rural area and word of strangers got around, and the Bureau had had them under surveillance for a while now. HRT had
to assume that their chief weapon, the element of surprise, would at least be diminished in this case.

Having learned something from the Charlie Team debacle, they had brought along two very bulky but very powerful thermal imagers.
Romano fired one up and performed a sweep of each building on their side of the compound. Gulf was doing the same from the
front. This thermal imager could look through darkened glass and even walls and nail the heat-filled image of any person lurking
there with a slingshot or a mini-gun. Romano completed his surveillance and gave the all-clear. No automated sniper nest this
time. All buildings except the main one were empty. It might go very clean.