Last Man Standing (3 page)

Web screamed out the names of his teammates one by one. No answer. No movement. No moans, no body twitches to show that life
was still out there somewhere. And still Web yelled out their names again and again, like some insane roll call. Everywhere
around him garbage cans exploded, glass burst, walls of brick were being eroded as if bludgeoning rivers were carving canyons.
This was Normandy Beach, or more aptly Pickett’s Charge, and Web had just lost his entire army. Alley vermin fled the slaughter.
That courtyard was as clean of such rodents as it ever had been. No city inspector had ever done as good a job as rhythmic
.50-caliber ordnance did that night.

Web didn’t want to die, but every time he looked at what was left of his team, a part of him wanted to join them. The family
fought and died together. It held some appeal for Web. He actually felt his legs tense for such a leap to eternity, yet something
stronger took hold and he stayed hunkered down. To die was to lose. To give up was to let everyone perish in vain.

Where the hell were X-Ray and Whiskey? Why weren’t they fast-roping to the rescue? The snipers on the buildings overlooking
the courtyard couldn’t come down without getting ripped apart, though, yet there were other snipers on the roofs of the buildings
along the alley Charlie had come through. They could rope down. But would TOC give them the green light? Maybe not, if TOC
didn’t know what was going on, and how could they? Web didn’t even know what the hell was going on, and he was right in the
middle of it. Yet he couldn’t exactly hang around waiting for TOC to make up their mind until a stray round made it a clean
sweep of Web’s team.

He felt a thin layer of panic settle over him despite years of training designed specifically to banish that weakness from
his psyche. Action, he needed to be doing something. His bone mic lost, Web snared his portable Motorola from its shoulder
Velcro patch. He pushed the button, yelled into it. “HR fourteen to TOC, HR fourteen to TOC.” No response. He changed to the
backup frequency and then to a general purpose one. Still nothing. He looked at the radio and his spirits sank. The front
was smashed from where he had fallen on it. Web slithered forward until he reached Cal Plummer’s body. When he tried to grab
Plummer’s two-way radio, something hit Web’s hand and he pulled it back. A ricochet only; a direct hit would’ve taken his
hand off. Web counted five fingers still there, and the intense pain made him want to fight, to live. If for no other reason
than to destroy whoever had done this, although Web’s bag of tricks was almost empty. And for the first time in his career
Web wondered if the opposition he now faced was actually better than he was.

Web knew that if he stopped thinking he still might leap up, firing at nothing that could be killed. So he focused on the
tactical scenario. He was in a carefully confined death zone, automatic firing arcs on two sides, forming a ninety-degree
angle of destruction and providing no human agent that could be stopped. Okay, that was the field situation. Now what the
hell was he supposed to do about it? What chapter was that in the manual? The one that read, “You’re screwed”? God, the sounds
were deafening. He couldn’t even hear his heart pounding. His breath came in short gasps. Where the hell were Whiskey and
X-Ray? And Hotel? They couldn’t run any faster? And yet what really could they do? They were trained to gun down human targets
at both long and close range. He screamed out, “There’s nothing for you to shoot!”

Chin tucked hard to his chest, Web started in surprise as he saw the little boy, the shirtless one from the chunk of concrete.
Hands over his ears, the kid was crouched at the edge of the corner, along the alleyway Web and company had come from. If
he moved out into the courtyard, Web knew the boy’s body would be going into a morgue bag—probably two morgue bags, because
the .50 rounds could actually cut the kid’s skinny body in half.

The boy took a step forward, nearing the end of the brick wall and almost at the courtyard. Maybe he was intending to come
help. Maybe he was waiting for the gunfire to stop so he could strip the bodies of any valuables, snagging their weapons for
later resale on the streets. Maybe he was just flat-out curious. Web didn’t know or really care.

The guns stopped firing, and just like that there was quiet. The boy took another step forward. Web screamed at him. He froze,
obviously not expecting the dead to yell at the living. Web inched up his hand, called to him to keep back, but the gunfire
started again and drowned out the end of his warning. Web slithered on his belly under the hail of fire, shouting at the boy
with every twist and thrust of his pelvis. “Stay back! Get back!”

The kid didn’t flinch. Web kept his gaze on him, which was difficult when you were double-timing on your gut, afraid that
if you raised your head another centimeter you would no longer have a head. The boy finally did what Web thought he would
do: He started to fall back. Web crawled faster. The kid turned to run and Web yelled at him to stop. Shockingly, he did.

Web was almost to the edge of the alley. He was going to try and time this just right, for there was now a new element of
danger for the child. During the last pause in the firing Web had heard synchronized footsteps and shouts in the distance.
They were coming. Web thought it must be everybody: Hotel and the snipers, and the reserve unit that TOC always kept back
for emergencies. Well, if this didn’t qualify as an emergency, nothing ever would. Yes, they were hustling to the rescue,
or so they thought. What they were really doing though was running blind with no reliable intelligence.

The problem was the kid heard them coming too. Web could tell the boy knew exactly what and who they were, like a scout sniffing
the earth and deducing from that the location of great buffalo herds. The boy was feeling trapped, and for good reason. Web
knew that for the alley kid to be seen around people like Web was a death sentence here. The powers that be would just assume
he was a traitor and deposit his body in the woods as his reward.

The child twitched, looked behind him even as Web picked up his pace. Web lost half his equipment whipping along the rough
asphalt like that, a two-hundred-pound serpent on speed. Web could feel the blood coming from a dozen scratches on his legs,
hands and face. His left hand stung like a couple thousand wasps were partying there. The body armor was so damn heavy now,
his body ached with each thrust of his arms and legs. Web could have dropped his rifle, but he still had use for it. No, he
would never let go of the damn SR75.

Web knew what the kid was going to do. Retreat cut off, he was going to go for it, race across the courtyard and then disappear
into one of the buildings on the far side. The boy could hear the bullets as well as Web could. Yet he could not
see
the lines of fire. He could not dodge them. And yet Web knew the boy was about to try.

The child jumped out of the blocks, and Web leapt off his belly at the last possible second so that the two met right at the
fringe of safety in a collision Web would win ten times out of ten. The child kicked at Web; his knotty fists struck him about
the face and chest as Web’s long arms wrapped around him. Web went back farther into the alley, carrying the kid. Kevlar was
not easy on the hands, and the boy finally stopped punching and looked at Web. “I ain’t do nothing. Let me go!”

“You run out there, you die!” Web yelled over the gunfire. He held up his bloody hand. “I’m wearing body armor and I can’t
survive out there. Those bullets will cut you in half.”

The boy calmed as he studied Web’s injury. Web carried the kid farther away from the courtyard and the guns. Now they could
at least talk without shouting. From some odd impulse, Web touched the bullet wound on the boy’s cheek. “You’ve been lucky
before,” Web said. The boy snarled and jerked away from him, breaking free of Web’s grip. He was up, ferretlike, before Web
could blink and had turned to run back down the alley. “If you go at them in the dark,” Web said, “your luck runs out. They’ll
blow you away.”

The kid stopped and turned back. For the first time his eyes truly seemed to focus on Web. Then he peered beyond to the courtyard.

“They dead?” he asked.

In answer Web slipped the big rifle from his shoulder. The boy took a step back at the sight of the intimidating weapon.

“Damn, mister, whatcha gonna do with that?”

“Stay here and keep down,” Web said. He turned back to the courtyard. Sirens were everywhere now. The cavalry was coming,
too late, as the cavalry always did. The smartest thing to do would be nothing. Yet that just wasn’t going to cut it. Web
had a job to finish. He ripped a piece of paper from the notebook he carried on his belt and scribbled a quick note. He then
pulled off the cap he wore under his helmet “Here,” he said to the kid. “Walk, don’t run, back down the alley. Hold up this
cap and give this note to the men coming this way.” The boy took the items, his long fingers curled around the cloth of the
cap and the folded paper. Web pulled his flare gun from its pouch and loaded in a flare. “When I fire, you go. Walk!” Web
said again. “Don’t run.”

The boy looked down at the note. Web had no idea if he could even read. Around here you didn’t assume that children received
the fundamentals of education that other kids took for granted. “What’s your name?” Web asked. The boy needed to be calm now.
Nervous people made mistakes. And Web knew the charging men would cremate anyone who came rushing at them.

“Kevin,” the boy answered. As he said his own name, he suddenly looked like the frightened little kid that he was, and Web
felt even guiltier about what he was asking the boy to do.

“Okay, Kevin, I’m Web. You do what I say and you’ll be okay. You can trust me,” he said, and then felt guiltier still. Web
pointed the flare gun to the sky, looked at Kevin, nodded reassuringly and then fired. The flare would be their first warning.
The note carried by Kevin would be their second. The boy moved off, walking, but walking fast. “Don’t run,” Web yelled. He
turned back to the courtyard and slid his thermal imager onto the rifle’s Picatinny rail and locked it into place.

The red-colored flare bloodied the sky and in his mind Web saw the assaulters and snipers stop and consider this development.
That would give the boy time to reach them. Kevin would not die, not tonight anyway. When the next pause in the wave of fire
came, Web burst out from the alley, rolled and brought the rifle up as he assumed a prone firing position and flipped down
the rifle’s bipod, pressing the weapon’s butt flush against his shoulder. The three windows dead ahead were his first targets.
He could see the muzzle flashes with his own eyes easily enough, but the thermal allowed him to draw a bead on the heated
outlines of the machine guns. That’s what he wanted to hit. The SR75 roared and one machine gun nest after another exploded.
Web rammed in another twenty-round mag, aimed the rifle and pulled the trigger, and four more machine guns were finally silenced.
The last gun nest was still firing when Web crawled forward and lobbed a concussion grenade into its throat. And then there
was silence until Web emptied both of his .45s at the now-silent window openings, ejected cartridges tumbling out of the weapons
like parachutists from a plane’s belly. When the last shot was fired, Web doubled over, sucking in precious air. He was so
hot he thought he might spontaneously combust. Then the clouds opened and the rain came down hard. He looked over and saw
an armor-coated assaulter cautiously edge into the courtyard. Web tried to wave to him, but his arm wouldn’t follow through;
it just hung limply by his side.

Web surveyed the shattered bodies of his team, his friends spread over the slick pavement. Then he sank to his knees. He was
alive and he didn’t really want to be. The last thing Web London remembered from that night was watching drops of his sweat
fall into the blood-tinted pools of rain.

R
andall Cove was a very big man endowed with great physical strength and also remarkable street instincts that he had further
honed over many years of working them. He was an FBI undercover agent and had been one for nearly seventeen years. He had
infiltrated Latino drug gangs in LA, Hispanic crews on the Tex-Mex border and heavyweight Europeans in south Florida. Most
of his missions had been startling and, at times, nail-biting successes. He was currently armed with a .40 semiautomatic chambering
hollow points that would collapse to small pancakes when they entered a body, wreaking internal havoc and probably death.
He also had a sheathed knife with a serrated edge that he could use to slash vital arteries in a blur. He always prided himself
on being professional and reliable in his work. Right now some ignorant people would condemn him as a vicious criminal who
should be locked up for life or, better yet, executed for his terrible sins. Cove knew he was in serious trouble and he also
realized he was the only one who could get himself out of it.

Cove crouched low in the car and watched as the group of men climbed in their vehicles and headed out. As soon as they passed,
Cove rose, waited a bit and then followed them. He pulled his ski cap tighter over his newly shorn head, the dreadlocks all
gone, and about time too, he had decided. The cars stopped up ahead and Cove did too. When he saw the group of men emerge
from the vehicles, Cove pulled a camera from his backpack and clicked away. He put away the Nikon, pulled out a pair of night
binoculars and adjusted the distance magnifier. Cove nodded to himself as he tallied the men one by one.

He inhaled and let go of one last deep breath and took a fast-forward reel on his life thus far as the group disappeared into
a building. In college Cove had been a bigger, faster version of Walter Payton; a consensus All-American from Oklahoma, every
NFL team was throwing bales of cash and other perks at him. They were, that is, until a ruptured ACL in both knees during
a freakish spill at the scouting combine had reduced him from a supernatural guaranteed number-one pick to a man with merely
normal abilities who no longer excited NFL coaches. Millions of potential dollars had disappeared instantly and the only way
of life he had ever known had vanished along with them. He had moped for a couple of years, looking for excuses and pity,
and his life had spiraled downward until it had nowhere else to go, and then he had found her. His wife had been a divine
intervention, he had always believed, saving his miserable, self-pitying carcass from oblivion. With her help, he had straightened
himself out and fulfilled a secret dream of his to be a real-life G-man.