Last Man Standing (2 page)

For months at a time Web had lain in steamy swamps with pissed-off water moccasins crawling over him. Or else been wedged
into wind-gusted clefts of frigid mountains with the custom-built rifle stock’s leather cheek pad next to his own as he sighted
through his scope and provided cover and intelligence for the assault teams. As a sniper he had developed many important skills,
such as learning how to very quietly pee into a jug. Other lessons included packing his food in precise clusters so he could
carbo-load by touch in pitch-darkness, and arranging his bullets for optimal reloading, working off a strict military model
that had proved its worth time and time again. Not that he could easily transfer any of these unique talents to the private
sector, but Web didn’t see that happening anyway.

The life of a sniper lurched from one numbing extreme to another. Your job was to achieve the best firing position with the
least amount of personal exposure and oftentimes those twin goals were simply incompatible. You just did the best you could.
Hours, days, weeks, even months of nothing except tedium that tended to erode morale and core skills would be sliced wide
open by moments of gut-wrenching fury that usually came at you in a rush of gunfire and mass confusion. And your decision
to shoot meant someone would die, and you were never clear whether your own death would be included in the equation or not.

Web could always conjure up these images in a flash, so vivid were they in his memory. A quintuplet of match-grade hollow
points would be lined up in a spring-loaded magazine waiting to rip into an adversary at twice the speed of sound once Web’s
finger pulled the jeweled trigger, which would break ever so sweetly at precisely two-point-five pounds of pressure. As soon
as someone stepped into his kill zone, Web would fire and a human being would suddenly become a corpse crumbling to the earth.
Yet the most important shots Web handled as a sniper were the ones he
hadn’t
taken. It was just that kind of a gig. It was not for the fainthearted, the stupid or even those of average intelligence.

Web said a silent thank-you to the snipers overhead and raced on down the alley.

They next came upon a child, maybe all of nine, sitting shirtless on a hunk of concrete, and not an adult in sight. The approaching
storm had knocked at least twenty degrees off the thermometer and the mercury was still falling. And still the boy had no
shirt on. Had he ever had a shirt on? Web wondered. He had seen many examples of impoverished children. While Web didn’t consider
himself a cynic, he was a realist. He felt sorry for these kids, but there wasn’t much he could do to help them. And yet threats
could come from anywhere these days, so his gaze automatically went from the boy’s head to his feet, looking for weapons.
Fortunately, he saw none; Web had no desire to fire upon a child.

The boy looked directly at him. Under the illuminated arc of the one flickering alley lamp that somehow had not been shot
out, the child’s features were outlined vividly. Web noted the too-lean body and the muscles in shoulders and arms already
hard and clustering around the protrusion of ribs, as a tree grows bark cords over a wound. A knife slash ran across the boy’s
forehead. A puckered, blistered hole on the child’s left cheek was the unmistakable tag of a bullet, Web knew.

“Damn to hell,” said the child in a weary voice, and then he laughed or, more accurately, cackled. The boy’s words and that
laugh rang like cymbals in Web’s head, and he had no idea why; his skin was actually tingling. He had seen hopeless kids like
this before, they were everywhere around here, and yet something was going on in Web’s head that he couldn’t quite figure.
Maybe he’d been doing this too long, and wasn’t it a hell of a time to start thinking that?

Web’s finger hovered near his rifle’s trigger, and he moved farther in front with graceful strides even as he tried to rid
himself of the boy’s image. Though very lean himself and lacking showy muscles, Web had enormous leverage in his long arms,
and strong fingers, and there was deceptive power in his naturally broad shoulders. And he was by far the fastest man on the
team and also possessed great endurance. Web could run six-mile relays all day. He would take speed, quickness and stamina
over bulging muscles any day. Bullets tore through muscle as easily as they did fat. Yet the lead couldn’t hurt you if it
couldn’t hit you.

Most people would describe Web London, with his broad shoulders and standing six-foot-two, as a big man. Usually, though,
people focused on the condition of the left side of his face, or what remained of it. Web had to grudgingly admit that it
was amazing, the reconstruction they could do these days with destroyed flesh and bone. In just the right light, meaning hardly
any at all, one almost wouldn’t notice the old crater, the new rise of cheek and the delicate grafting of transplanted bone
and skin. Truly remarkable, all had said. All except Web, that is.

At the end of the alley they stopped once more, all crouching low. At Web’s elbow was Teddy Riner. Through his wireless Motorola
bone mic, Riner communicated with TOC, telling them that Charlie was at yellow and asking permission to move to green—the
“crisis site” of the target, which here was simply a fancy term for the front door. Web held the SR75 with one hand and felt
for his custom-built .45-caliber pistol in the low-slung tactical holster riding on his right leg. He had an identical pistol
hanging on the ceramic trauma plate that covered his chest, and he touched that one too in his pre-attack ritual of sorts.

Web closed his eyes and envisioned how the next minute would play out. They would race to the door. Davies would be front
and center laying his charge. Assaulters would hold their flash bang grenades loosely in their weak hand. Subgun safeties
would be off, and steady fingers would stay off triggers until it was time to kill. Davies would remove the mechanical safeties
on the control box and check the detonator cord attached to the breaching charge, looking for problems and hoping to find
none. Riner would communicate to TOC the immortal words, “Charlie at green.” TOC would answer, as it always did, with, “Stand
by, I have control.” That line always rankled Web, because who the hell really had control doing what they did?

During his entire career Web had never heard TOC reach the end of the countdown. After the count of two, the snipers would
engage targets and fire, and a bevy of .308s firing simultaneously was a tad noisy. Then the breach charge would blow before
TOC said “one” and that high-decibel hurricane would drown out even your own thoughts. In fact, if you ever heard TOC finish
the countdown you were in deep trouble, because that meant the breach charge had failed to go off. And that was truly a lousy
way to start the workday.

When the explosive blew the door, Web and his team would invade the target and throw their flash bangs. The device was aptly
named, since the “flash” would blind anyone watching, and the “bang” would rupture the unprotected eardrum. If they ran into
any more locked doors, these would yield quickly either to the impolite knock-knock of Davies’s shotgun or to a slap charge
that looked like a strip of tire rubber but carried a C4 explosive kicker that virtually no door could withstand. They’d follow
their rote patterns, keying on hands and weapons, shooting with precision, thinking in chess maneuvers. Communication would
be via touch commands. Hit the hot spots, locate any hostages, and take them out fast and alive. What you never really thought
about was dying. That took too much time and energy away from the details of the mission, and away from the bedrock instincts
and disciplines honed from doing this sort of thing over and over until it became a part of what made you,
you.

According to reliable sources, the building they were going to hit contained the entire financial guts of a major drug operation
headquartered in the capital city. Included in the potential haul tonight were accountants and bean counters, valuable witnesses
for the government if Web and his men could get them out alive. That way the Feds could go after top guys criminally and civilly
from a number of fronts. Even drug lords feared an IRS full frontal assault, because seldom did kingpins pay taxes to Uncle
Sam. That was why Web’s team had been called up. They specialized in killing folks who needed it, but they also were damn
good at keeping people alive. At least until these folks put their hands on the Bible, testified and sent some greater evil
away for a very long time.

When TOC came back on, the countdown would begin: “Five, four, three, two . . .”

Web opened his eyes, collected himself. He was ready. Pulse at sixty-four; Web just knew.
Okay, boys, pay dirt’s dead ahead. Let’s go take it.
TOC came through his headset once more and gave the okay to move to the front door.

And that’s precisely when Web London froze. His team burst out from the cover heading for green, the crisis site, and Web
didn’t. It was as though his arms and legs were no longer part of his body, the sensation of when you’ve fallen asleep with
a limb under your body and wake up to find all the circulation has vacated that extremity. It didn’t seem to be fear or runaway
nerves; Web had been doing this too long. And yet he could only watch as Charlie Team raced on. The courtyard had been identified
as the last major danger zone prior to the crisis site, and the team picked up its pace even more, looking everywhere for
the slightest hint of coming resistance. Not a single one of the men seemed to notice that Web was not with them. With sweat
pouring off him, every muscle straining against whatever was holding him down, Web managed slowly to rise and take a few faltering
steps forward. His feet and arms seemingly encased in lead, his body on fire and his head bursting, he staggered onward a
bit more, reached the courtyard, and then he dropped flat on his face as his team pulled away from him.

He glanced up in time to see Charlie Team running hard, the target in their sights, seemingly just begging them to come take
a piece of it. The team was five seconds from impact. Those next few seconds would change Web London’s life forever.

T
eddy Riner went down first. Of the two seconds it took him to fall, the man had been dead for one of them. On the other side
Cal Plummer fell to the ground like he’d been pole-axed by a giant. As Web watched helplessly, up and down the compact lines
heavy ordnance impacted with Kevlar and then flesh, and then there was nothing else. It didn’t seem right for good men to
die so quietly.

Before the guns started firing, Web had fallen on his rifle and it was wedged under him. He could barely breathe; his Kevlar
and weapons seemed crushed against his diaphragm. There was stuff on his mask. He couldn’t know, but it was part of Teddy
Riner, throw-off from the monster round that had blown a hole the size of a man’s palm through his body armor and sent part
of Riner flying back to where Web lay, dead last of Charlie Team and, ironically enough, the only one still living.

Web still felt paralyzed, none of his limbs responding to pleas from his brain to move. Had he suffered a stroke at age thirty-seven?
Then suddenly the sounds of gunfire seemed to clear his head, the feeling finally returned to his arms and legs and he managed
to rip off his mask and roll on his back. He exhaled a gush of foul air and screamed in relief. Now Web was staring straight
up at the sky. He saw spears of lightning, though he couldn’t hear even the belly rumbles of the thunder over the gunfire.

He had a powerful if insane urge to lift up his hand into the maelstrom above him, perhaps to confirm the presence of the
bullets racing past, as though he were a youngster told not to touch a hot stove and who would then, of course, think of nothing
else. Instead he reached down to his belt, undid the latch on a side pouch and pulled out his thermal imager. On the blackest
night the TI would pick up an entire world invisible to the unaided eye, zeroing in on the core heat signature that burned
in just about everything.

Though he was unable to see them even with the TI, Web could easily sense the vapor trails thrown off by the net of bullets
zipping across above him. Web also observed that the dense gunfire was coming from two separate directions: the tenement building
dead ahead and a dilapidated structure to the immediate right. He looked through his TI at the latter building and saw nothing
but jagged glass. And then Web observed something that made his body tense even more. The muzzle flashes were erupting at
the same time at each of the shattered windows. They moved across the apertures, stopped for a few seconds, and then moved
back across, as the gun barrels he could not see yet knew were there completed their controlled firing arc.

As the gunfire began anew, Web rolled over on his belly and stared at the original target building through his imager. Here
too there was a line of windows in the lower level of the target. And the same muzzle flashes were occurring with the exact
same synchronized arc of movement. Web could now make out the long barrels of the machine guns. Through the TI the silhouettes
of the guns were brick-red, the metal molten hot from the amount of ammo they were spraying. No human outline, though, came
up on his thermal, and if any man had been in the vicinity, Web’s imager would have nailed him. He was for sure looking at
some kind of remote-controlled firing post. He now knew that his team had been set up, ambushed, without the enemy putting
a single man at risk.

The slugs ricocheted off the brick walls behind and to the right of him, and Web felt bits of shrapnel hitting all around,
like hardened raindrops. At least a dozen times the deflections had skimmed his Kevlar, but most of their speed and lethality
had already been depleted. He kept his unarmored legs and arms tight to the asphalt. However, not even his Kevlar could withstand
a direct hit, for the machine guns were almost certainly doling out .50-caliber ordnance, with each round as long as a butter
knife and probably armor-piercing too. Web could gauge all this from the supersonic cracking sound made by the guns and the
signature muzzle flash. And the vapor trail of a .50-caliber was also something pretty damn unforgettable. In fact you
felt
the snap before you even heard the round. It raised every hair on your body, as lightning did right before its fatal blow.