Last Man Standing (62 page)

He leaned against the wall even as he heard the sirens coming. It hadn’t been a fair fight. Yet it had not been a fair fight
last time either. A part of him should have at least felt some level of satisfaction. However, the only thing Web London felt
was sick to his stomach. Killing was never an easy business and maybe that’s what separated him from men like the Ernest B.
Frees of the world.

Romano came up to him. “Where the hell did those shots come from?”

Web just shook his head.

“Well, shit,” said Romano, “it ain’t exactly how I figured this going down.”

Web noted the large bullet hole in Romano’s cammie smock that revealed the Kevlar underneath. The hole was near his belly
button. Romano followed Web’s gaze and shrugged it off like it was a mosquito bite.

“Another inch lower and Angie’d have to get her kicks somewhere else,” said Romano.

Web struggled to recall exactly what he had seen and what he had heard and exactly when. Web knew one thing for certain: they
were all in for a lot of questions and none of those questions held easy answers. Pritchard’s warning came hurtling back to
him. They had just annihilated numerous members of the Frees, the group suspected of wiping out a team of HRT. What Web and
the others had really done was open fire and wasted a bunch of young boys and old men because shots had come from a source
they weren’t sure of and because Web had seen one of them lifting up his gun and pointing it his way. Web was completely justified
in doing what he did, but it wouldn’t take a master spin doctor to whip that set of facts into something that smelled to high
heaven. And in Washington, D.C., they had more spinmeisters per capita than anywhere else on the planet.

Web could hear feet pounding toward them. The regulars would be showing up soon, the Bates’s of the world. They would take
over the task of figuring out what the hell had happened. Like Ro- mano had said, HRT was just in the business of banging
and hanging. Well, they just might have hung themselves this time. Web started to feel something he never had when the bullets
were flying: fear.

T
here was movement over a thousand yards away in the woods to the rear of the compound and behind the perimeter set up by HRT.
The ground seemed to rise up and a man crouched there, his sniper rifle with attached scope held in his right hand. It was
the same rifle he had used to kill Chris Miller outside Randall Cove’s house in Fredericksburg. The FBI probably thought that
Web London had been the target, but they would be wrong. Miller’s death was just another way to bring further misery to Web
London. And what the man had just done, instigating the fight between the hapless Frees and HRT, was simply another method
of adding to London’s mounting troubles. The man laid aside the cloth that was covered with dirt, mud, animal feces, leaves
and other things designed to help him blend in with the surroundings, his very own Ghillie suit. He had long ago concluded
that one should only copy from the best. And, at least for now, HRT was the best. And Web London was supposed to be the best
of this elite group. That distinction put him squarely in the man’s sights. This was personal to him. Very personal. He folded
the material and hooked it to his backpack, and Clyde Macy quietly made his escape. Despite his normally stoic nature, the
man just had to smile. Mission accomplished.

S
ince he hadn’t been able to get a handle on the origin of the group supplying Oxy and other prescription drugs to the D.C.
area, Randall Cove had changed strategies and decided to hit it from the receiving instead of the supply end. He had used
what the informant T had told him to latch on to a drug crew, who T had told him had lately been dealing these narcotics.
It was amazing the results you could get from a snitch when you held him upside down over a hundred-foot drop. Cove figured
at some point they would have to pick up more of the product. This new tactic had brought him here tonight, and he hoped it
would produce some huge dividends.

The woods were thick and Cove moved through them as quietly as a human being was equipped to do. He stopped near the tree
line, squatted low and surveyed the terrain. The vehicles were parked on a dirt road that snaked through these woods near
the Kentucky–West Virginia border. If Cove had had any backup to call, he would have. He had thought about bringing Venables,
but Sonny had done enough and he also had a wife and kids and was getting ready to retire. Cove was not going to mess with
that. Cove was a brave man, well used to being in dangerous situations, but still there was a fine line between courage and
idiocy and Cove had always kept on the right side of that flimsy divider.

Cove ducked down as several men gathered around one of the vehicles. He slipped out his NV monocular for a closer look. The
plastic-wrapped items the men were carrying confirmed Cove’s suspicions. Not coke bricks but what looked to be tens of thousands
of pills. He pulled his flashless camera and took some pictures, and then Cove debated what to do next. There were at least
five men that he could see, and all of them were armed. He couldn’t really execute an arrest without putting himself in serious
jeopardy. While he was contemplating his next act, Cove didn’t notice, but the wind changed slightly. He didn’t realize it,
in fact, until the dog that had been lying on the other side of the truck, and out of Cove’s line of sight, came tearing around
the vehicle and directly at his position.

Cove swore under his breath, turned and fled through the woods. The dog was gaining, though, with each step, and Cove’s battered
knees just weren’t up to this anymore. And he heard something else that didn’t provide him with much hope either. There were
two-legged animals coming his way.

They cornered him in a swampy section of earth. The dog came at Cove, fangs bared, and Cove aimed his pistol and shot it dead.
That was the last time he would fire, as an array of pistols were leveled at him. He put his gun up in the air in surrender.

“Drop it,” said one of the pursuers, and Cove dropped it.

The men came forward and one of them frisked Cove and found the other gun he kept stashed in his coat sleeve and also took
his camera.

Nemo Strait knelt next to the dog and touched it gently. Then he looked up at Cove like the man had just slit his mother’s
throat. Strait raised his pistol and stepped forward.

“I had Old Cuss for six years. Damn good dog.”

Cove said nothing. Another man punched him in the back with his gun but only got a grunt from Cove.

Strait drew closer and spit in Cove’s face. “Damn me for not making sure you were dead when we shoved your car down that slope.
You should’ve just called that your luckiest day on earth and got yourself out of town.”

Cove said nothing, but he took one tiny step closer to Strait. He glanced at some of the other men. The buyers of those prescription
drugs were from the city and all were black. Cove didn’t look to his own race for help here. Money trumped everything else
in the criminal world.

Strait looked over his shoulder, toward where the horse trailer with Bobby Lee was, and then looked back at his prisoner and
smiled.

“Man, you always got to be in other people’s business? Huh?” He tapped his gun against Cove’s cheek and then slapped it hard
with the metal. “Answer me when I ask you a question.”

Cove’s response was to spit in the man’s face.

Strait wiped off his face and put his gun against Cove’s temple. “You can just kiss your ass good-bye.”

The knife came out of the same sleeve that Cove’s second gun had. He had never had anyone check for weapons in the same spot
where one had already been found. He aimed for the heart, but Cove’s foot slipped in the mud, and Strait was a bit quicker
than Cove had anticipated, and the knife plunged deeply into Strait’s shoulder. Strait fell back into the swampy water, the
knife still in his shoulder.

Cove stood there staring at the men surrounding him.

For a split second every sound in the world seemed to stop for Cove. In his mind he could see his wife and children running
to him from across a field of nothing but beautiful flowers, and their smiles and anticipated hugs carried away every foul
thing that had ever happened to him in his whole life. And there was a great deal to wash away.

And then the guns opened fire. Cove was struck several times and went down. At the same instant all the men looked to the
sky because they could hear the drone of a chopper. Seconds later, lights appeared over the treetops.

Strait jumped up. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Even with his injury, the powerful Strait was able to cradle his dead dog and carry it off. In less than a minute the place
was empty. The chopper soared on, its crew apparently unaware of what had happened down below. Strait had been wrong—the chopper
was merely ferrying a group of businessmen back from a very late meeting.

As the sounds of the night resumed, there came a groan out of the darkness. Randall Cove tried to get up, but as strong as
he was, he couldn’t make it. The body armor he was wearing had absorbed three of the five shots. The two shots that had hit
him directly had taken their toll though. He dropped back to the ground as his blood turned the water red.

C
laire Daniels was in her office, working very late. The outer door was locked and the building had security, so she actually
felt safer here than at the hotel where she was staying. Her pharmacist friend had gotten back to her on the odd-looking pill
that she had taken from Web. Claire had assumed it was some powerful barbiturate because she still thought it possible that
a bad drug interaction with a delayed effect had incapacitated Web in that alley. At some level it might seem far-fetched,
but it did cover the facts as she knew them, and right now nothing else came close. The phone call had changed all that.

“It’s a placebo,” her friend had told her. “Like they use for control groups in drug tests.”

A placebo?
Claire was stunned. All the other pills were what they had appeared to be.

As she sat in her office now, Claire tried to figure it all out. If it wasn’t a drug interaction, what could it be? She refused
to believe that Kevin Westbrook had placed a curse on Web with the words “damn to hell.” And yet, clearly, the words had had
an effect on him. Had he just cracked?

Claire looked at some of Kevin’s sketchbooks that Web had allowed her to keep. The one with Kevin pointing the remote control
had gone right to the FBI, and there were no other drawings like that in any of the other sketchbooks. Claire studied the
drawings she had, many of them quite expertly done. The boy had considerable artistic talent.

Nowhere in the sketchbooks were the words “damn to hell” written. It couldn’t be that easy, Claire supposed. She wondered
again about the words. Old-sounding—Civil War, maybe before. “Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead,” or something like that
Admiral Farragut had reportedly said during a naval battle in the War Between the States.

Claire wrote the words on a piece of paper. Civil War–era, Web had thought. Slavery. Black and white. White supremacists.
Her brow wrinkled as she thought about it, but then it dawned upon her. Yet Claire’s next thought was that it couldn’t be.

The Free Society? Damn to hell. She looked at her computer. It was just possible. A few clicks of the mouse and a few minutes
gave her the answer. The Free Society had a website. A disgusting, hate-filled propaganda tool that they presumably used to
recruit the ignorant and demonic into their ranks. When she saw it, the breath froze in her throat.

At that very moment her office went completely dark. The timing of the blackout coupled with what she had just learned caused
her to cry out. She immediately picked up the phone and called the front security desk.

The reassuring voice of the guard came on the line and she explained what had happened. “It’s not the building, Dr. Daniels.
We’ve got lights down here. Probably a tripped circuit breaker. You want me to come up?”