Last Man Standing (18 page)

Under the transplanted skin were lumps of plastic and metal that had replaced destroyed bone. The titanium in his face set
off the airport detectors just about every damn time.
Don’t worry, guys, it’s just the AK-47 I’ve got stashed up my butt.

Web had endured numerous operations to bring his face back to this point. The docs had done a good job, though he would always
be considered disfigured. At last the surgeons had told him they had reached the end of their professional skills and even
their medical miracles, and they’d wished him well. It had been a more difficult adjustment than he had thought, and to this
day he couldn’t say he was actually through it. It wasn’t the sort of thing you ever really got over, he supposed, since it
stared back at you in the mirror every day.

He cocked his head a little more, inched down his shirt collar and the old bullet wound on the base of his neck was fully
revealed. It had come in above his armor line, and how it missed all vital arteries and his spine was nothing short of miraculous.
The wound resembled a cigar burn, a big-ass cigar burn on his skin, he had joked when lying in the hospital bed with one side
of his face missing and two large holes in him. And all the guys had laughed with him, though he had sensed the nervousness
amid all the chuckling. They were reasonably sure he was going to make it, and so was he. Yet none of them knew what physical
and emotional nightmare lay under those bandages. The plastic surgeons had offered to cover up the bullet wounds. But Web
had said no. He had had enough with doctors stealing skin from places on his body and gluing it to others. This was as good
as old Web was going to get.

He touched his chest where the other “cigar burn” was in full, blooming glory. It had entered his body and exited at the back
of his shoulder, somehow skirting his Kevlar on both ends, and still had enough kick left to erase the head of a guy behind
him who was about to cleave Web’s skull with a machete. And who said he wasn’t lucky? Web smiled at himself in the mirror.
“Lucky is as lucky does,” he said to his reflection.

HRT had always held Web in the highest possible regard for the heroism he had shown that night. It had been the school hostage
situation in Richmond, Virginia, executed by the Free Society. Web had recently switched from sniper to assaulter and was
still feeling his way a bit, eager to show his mettle in the front lines. The explosion had occurred from a homemade concoction
thrown by one of the Frees. It would have hit Lou Patterson if Web hadn’t leapt and knocked him out of the way. The fireball
caught Web dead on the left side of his face, knocking him down and melting his shield against his skin. He had ripped the
shield off along with a good part of his face and kept fighting, the adrenaline that always came with battle the only thing
blocking out the horrible pain.

The Frees had opened fire and Web had taken a bullet through his torso, and the second round had tagged his neck. Many innocent
men would have died but for what Web had done
after
receiving these injuries. Instead of weakening him, the shots seemed to have energized him, for how he had fought, how he
had killed men trying to kill him and his team! He had dragged injured comrades to safety, including the late Louis Patterson,
who had taken a round through the arm a minute after Web had saved him from the flames. The acts Web performed that night
had far surpassed what he had done in that courtyard; for he had been so badly wounded at the time, no mere hand scratch that
time, no simple Band-Aid that day. To both veteran and new operators at HRT, Web was a legend. And at the highly competitive
alpha male agency, there was no better way to elevate oneself on the pecking order than bravery and skill shown in the heat
of battle. And all it had cost him were a few vanity points and most of the blood in his body.

Web didn’t even remember the pain. But when the last bullet had been fired and the last man had fallen, he too had slumped
to the ground. He had touched the open wound on his face and felt the blood pouring out of him from the two wounds, and Web
knew it was finally his time to die. He had gone into shock in the ambulance and by the time the doctors at the Medical College
of Virginia got to him he was almost flat-line. How he had come back that night was anyone’s guess, Web certainly didn’t have
an answer. Never a religious man, he had started to wonder about things like God.

The recovery had been the most painful thing Web had ever done. Though he was a hero, it was no guarantee that Web would be
able to rejoin HRT. If he couldn’t carry his full weight, they wouldn’t want him, hero or not—it was just the way things were.
And Web would never have wanted the terms to be anything else. How many weights lifted, how many miles run, walls climbed,
choppers rappelled from, rounds fired? Fortunately, the wounds to his face had not affected his eyesight or aim. Without perfection
there, you were gone from HRT. The psychological battering of his recovery, however, had been even worse than the physical
cramming. Could he fire when called up? Would he freeze in a crisis and place his team in jeopardy? Well, no, he never had,
at least not until that damn courtyard came along. He had come back, all the way back. It had taken almost a year, but no
one could say he didn’t deserve to return on his own, with no corners cut. Now what would people say? Would he make it back
this time? The trouble wasn’t physical this time; it was all in his head and thus was a hundred times more terrifying.

Web made a fist and put it right through the mirror, cracking the drywall behind it. “I didn’t let them die, Julie,” he said
to the shattered glass. He looked at his hand. It wasn’t even bleeding. His luck was holding, wasn’t it?

He opened the smashed medicine cabinet and took out the bottle of mismatched pills. He had collected them over time from a
variety of sources, some official, some unofficial. He used them to help him sleep occasionally. He was careful, though, because
he’d almost become addicted to the painkillers while they were rebuilding his face.

Web flicked off the light and Frankenstein was gone. Hell, everybody knew monsters were more comfortable in the dark.

He went downstairs and carefully laid out all his bottles of booze and sat in the middle of them, like a general with his
aides going over a battle plan. Yet he didn’t open a single bottle. The phone rang every few minutes, but Web never answered
it. There were knocks on the door; he let them go. Web sat there and stared at a wall until it grew quite late. He rummaged
through the mismatched pills and took out a capsule, looked at it and then put it back. He leaned back against a chair and
closed his eyes. At four
A.M
. he fell asleep on the floor of the basement. Web still had not bothered to wash his face.

S
even in the morning. Web knew this because the mantel clock was chiming when he lifted himself groggily off the basement floor.
He rubbed at his back and neck; as he sat up, his foot hit one of the bottles of wine and it fell over and cracked slightly
and Chianti leaked across the floor. Web threw the bottle away, grabbed some paper towels and cleaned up the spill. The wine
stained his hands red, and for a dazed moment his sluggish mind told him he’d been shot in his sleep.

The noise outside the rear lower window made him race up the stairs and grab his pistol. Web went to the front door with the
intent of circling around back and getting the drop on whoever was out there. Maybe it was just a stray dog or squirrel, but
Web didn’t think so. Human feet trying their best to keep quiet just had a certain sound to them if you knew how to listen,
and Web knew how to.

When he opened the door, the surge of people toward him almost caused Web to pull his gun and fire. The reporters were waving
microphones and pens and sheets of paper and calling out questions so fast, they cumulatively appeared to be speaking Mandarin.
They were screaming for him to look this way or that way so they could take his picture, film his video, as though he were
some celebrity or, perhaps more apt, an animal in the zoo. Web looked past them to the street, where the media ships with
their tall electronic masts now were docked outside his modest rancher. The two FBI agents assigned to watch over his house
seemed to be attempting to hold back the masses but were clearly losing the battle.

“What the hell do you people want?” Web cried out.

One woman wearing a beige linen suit, her blond hair sculpted, pushed forward and planted her high-heeled feet on the brick
stoop bare inches from Web. Her heavy perfume made Web’s empty stomach turn queasy. She said, “Is it true you’re claiming
that you fell down right before the rest of your squad was killed but can’t explain why? And
that’s
why you survived?” The hike of her eyebrows signaled exactly what the woman thought of that preposterous story.

“I—”

Another reporter, a man, shoved his microphone near Web’s mouth. “There have been reports that you didn’t actually fire your
weapon, that the gunfire stopped on its own somehow and that you were actually never in any danger. How do you respond to
that?”

The questions kept coming as the bodies pressed closer. “Is it true that when you were at the Washington Field Office you
were put on probation for a shooting infraction that resulted in the wounding of a suspect?”

Web said, “What the hell does that—”

Another woman elbowed him from the side. “I have it on good authority that the boy you ‘allegedly’ saved was actually an accomplice
to this whole thing.”

Web stared at her. “An accomplice to what? To who?”

The woman gave him a penetrating look. “I was hoping you could answer that.”

Web slammed the door, raced to the kitchen, grabbed the keys for the Suburban and headed back out. He pushed through the crowd
and looked at his fellow agents for help. They came forward, yanked and pulled on a few people, yet to Web it seemed their
hearts clearly were not in it, and they refused to meet his gaze.
So that’s how it’s going to be,
Web thought.

The crowd suddenly surged closer, sealing off the path to his truck.

“Get out of my way,” Web yelled. He looked around. The entire neighborhood was out watching this. Men, women and children
who were his friends or at least his acquaintances were staring at this spectacle with wide eyes, open mouths.

“Are you going to respond to Mrs. Patterson’s charges?”

Web stopped and looked at this questioner. It was the same reporter from the memorial service.

“Are you?” the man said grimly.

“I didn’t know Julie Patterson had the authority to bring charges,” said Web.

“She made it abundantly clear that you either acted with cowardice or were somehow involved. Paid off.”

“She didn’t know what she was saying. She’s just lost her husband and unborn child.”

“So you’re saying the charges are false?” the man persisted and pushed the microphone closer. Somebody jostled him from behind
and his arm jerked forward and the microphone hit Web in the mouth, drawing blood. Before he knew it, Web’s fist had shot
out and the man was lying on the ground holding his nose. He didn’t appear to be all that upset. In fact, he was screaming
to his camera unit, “Did you get that? Did you get that?”

They all pressed forward more, and Web, being in the middle of this circle, was pushed around by the sheer weight of the crowd.
Cameras were snapping in his face, blinding him. Fat video machines were feeding away, dozens of voices were jabbering at
once. As the knot of people and machines jostled him around, Web’s feet got tangled in a cable and he went down. The crowd
moved in, but he pushed his way back up. This was far past being out of control. Web felt a bony fist hit him in the back.
When he turned, he recognized the attacker as a man who lived down the street and who had never cared much for Web as a neighbor
or human being. Before Web could defend himself, the man ran off. As Web looked around, it was clear that the crowd was not
filled just with reporters ravenous for a Pulitzer. This was a mob.

“Get the hell away from me,” Web screamed. He yelled at the two agents, “Are you guys going to help or not?”

“Somebody call the cops,” said the perfumed blonde, pointing at Web. “He just assaulted that poor man, we all saw it.” She
bent down to help up her fellow reporter while a slew of cell phones appeared from out of pockets.

Web looked around at a level of chaos he had never before experienced, and he had seen more than most. But he had had enough
of this. Web pulled his pistol. The FBI agents saw this and were suddenly interested once more. Web pointed the pistol straight
up and fired four shots into the air. On all sides of him the mob now was in full retreat. Some dropped to the ground, crying
out, pleading for him not to shoot them, that they were just doing their job, miserable though it might be. The perfumed blonde
let her dear reporter friend drop back to the muddy earth and turned and ran for her life. Her heels sank in the soft grass
and she ran right out of them. Her fleshy bottom made a nice target if Web had been so inclined. The reporter with the bloody
nose was crawling on his belly shouting, “Are you getting this? Damn it, Seymour, are you getting this?” Neighbors swooped
up their kids and fled to their homes. Web put his pistol away and walked to his Suburban. When the federal agents moved toward
him, all he said was, “Don’t even think about it.” He climbed in the truck and started it up. He rolled down the window. “Thanks
for the assist,” he told the two men, and then drove off.

A
re you out of your mind?” Buck Winters stared over at Web, who stood by the door of the small conference room at the Washington
Field Office. Percy Bates was next to Web. “Pulling and firing your gun, in front of a bunch of reporters, no less, and them
taping the whole damned thing. Have you lost your mind?” he said again.