Last Man Standing (76 page)

“What? You want me to incriminate myself?” Strait yelled back and laughed again.

“Look around, Nemo—I got all the evidence I need.”

“So if I do like you say, you’ll put in a good word for me with the judge, right?” Strait laughed again.

“Couldn’t hurt.”

“Well, Web, in my line of work you tend to congregate with some interesting folks. And one particular fellow had some right
definite demands, and he’s the sort of fellow you got to accommodate. This is definitely a fellow you got to keep happy, you
know what I’m saying?”

“Clyde Macy?”

“Now, I ain’t naming no names, Web. I ain’t no squealer.”

“Let me help you then. Macy is a wannabe cop. He’s just itching to prove he’s better. He was dying to dress like an FBI agent,
waltz in and take the kid right out of our hands. Just to show himself that he could pull it off.”

“Damn, Web, you’d make a good detective.”

“But maybe you weren’t as confident. You needed Kevin, and you couldn’t risk Macy not pulling it off and getting Kevin back.
You had to use Kevin in the first place in that alley to throw suspicion on Big F, and you needed Kevin later as leverage
over him. So you substituted the other kid for Kevin. That way, Macy gets to have his fun at the Bureau’s expense, and if
he fails you still have Kevin. Am I right?”

“Hell, I guess we’ll never know.”

“So where’s the other kid?”

“Like I said, I guess we’ll never know.”

Web’s walkie-talkie crackled. Romano was in position.

“Okay, one more chance, Nemo, you got five seconds to surrender.”

Web didn’t bother counting to five. He slipped his MP-5 to full auto and opened fire, strafing the horse trailer behind which
Nemo and his men had taken cover.

Strait and his men dropped flat to the ground at the same time Romano came up behind them.

One of the men saw him and turned to fire and took two MP-5 rounds between his eyes for his trouble.

“Guns on the ground. Now!” ordered Romano.

Web saw it, but Romano didn’t because his back was to it: a small bit of condensation that was rising into the air off in
the woods. Condensation caused by the cold coming up from a gun barrel. It was a classic mistake by someone who knew something
about fieldcraft and sniping, but not the small, critical details that really made the difference. As a sniper Web would use
his breath to heat his barrel and eliminate the condensation.

“Six o’clock, Romano,” he screamed.

But it was too late. The shot hit Romano at the base of his spine and the impact from the high-speed round knocked him down.

“Paulie!” yelled Web.

Another man rolled out and took aim at the fallen HRT, but Web dropped him with his .308. He wedged the MP-5 against his pec
with one hand and pulled out one of his .45s with the other.

“Romano!”

He breathed a sigh of relief as Romano started to rise. While it had penetrated his armor, the slug could not get through
Link, the third .45 he kept back there in a special holster.

Another shot hit near Web and he dropped to the ground even as Romano threw himself into the bushes. Strait took this opportunity
to race out and grab Claire and half carry, half drag her to the truck hooked to the trailer.

Web looked up and saw what Strait was trying to do. Web shot out the truck tires. Cursing loudly, Strait dragged Claire off
into the darkness.

Web snagged his walkie-talkie. “Paulie, Paulie, you okay?” Several anxious seconds went by and then Romano answered. His voice
was a little shaky, but he was the same old Romano.

“Whoever shot me doesn’t know jack-shit about bullet drop over distance. Fired too low.”

“Lucky for you. I didn’t see the barrel condensation until it was too late. I’m betting it’s Macy out there somewhere. Strait’s
got Claire. I’m going after them. Kevin Westbrook is still by the pool.”

“I got things covered here, Web.”

“You sure?”

“Hell, it’s only four against one. Go!”

Web turned and raced after Claire and Strait.

R
omano had lost his MP-5 and his sniper rifle was not going to be very efficient at such close quarters. He pulled out his
.45s and, taking a page from Web’s book, actually rubbed one of them for luck. Despite his bravado, four against one were
not good odds. He could get three of them and still be undone by number four. And there was still the shooter who had nailed
him to worry about. He squatted low and edged along the bushes that surrounded the pool area. Shots were fired, but he didn’t
fire back, because they were way off, and muzzle flashes told him where his adversaries were. He kept moving and watching.
Each time a shot was fired, he duly noted it. These guys were amateurs, but even amateurs got lucky, especially with superior
numbers. He crouched low and saw the kid by the pool. He wasn’t moving and Romano was thinking that maybe one of the shots
had found its mark. But then the kid raised his head slightly. Romano slipped on his NV goggles and now he could see what
the boy’s problem was. His legs were still tightly bound.

Romano kept moving, putting distance between himself and the enemy. He wanted to get some range so that he could use his rifle.
He had his night scope on and all he would need was a sliver of head to work with. Reduce the enemy to three or maybe even
one and then he would move in with his pistols. One on one, Romano would win every time.

His plan was textbook. Read their muzzle signatures. Keep moving. Outflank them. Then move in, pop one or two, the others
would lose their nerve and give themselves away, maybe start running and he would use his sniper rifle, wait for them to enter
the kill zone and then it would all be over.

A voice called out, “Hey, Romano, come on out now, and without the gun.”

Romano said nothing. He was spending his time getting a fix on the exact location of that voice so he could silence it. He
thought it was the farmhand he had dropped on his first day at the farm, but he wasn’t sure.

“Romano, I hope you’re listening to me. Because you got five seconds to come out or I’m going to put a bullet into the kid’s
head.”

Romano muttered under his breath as he drew closer to the source of the voice. He had no desire to let the boy die, but if
he came out of cover, the reality was that both he and Kevin Westbrook would die. Romano never played that game and his only
course of action was to try and kill them all before they got to the boy, which was going to be pretty much impossible.

“I’m sorry, kid,” he muttered under his breath as he moved forward and took up his firing position.

The man who had spoken was indeed the fellow Romano had knocked down at the equestrian center. He was crawling forward on
his belly, holding his pistol. He stopped, silently counted to five and called out once more. “Last chance, HRT.” He waited
a moment, shrugged, stood and took direct aim at Kevin Westbrook’s head from the cover of the bushes. The man was not a great
shot, but this execution would not require a high level of skill.

All of the air left the man’s body as the enormous man burst from cover and hit him so hard he landed about seven feet away
and on the pool deck. The big man raced to the boy and swooped him up in one massive arm. Then Francis Westbrook turned and
ran off into the night with his son, even as he fired his pistol back over his shoulder.

Another man jumped out from cover and took aim at Westbrook’s broad back. He was about to fire when Romano came out from cover
and shot him down. He didn’t know that the large man was Francis Westbrook, but Romano wasn’t going to sit back and let anyone
take it in the back. The only problem was that he revealed his position and he took a round in the leg for being such a nice
guy. Romano tried to drag himself off but soon found an array of guns pointed at him. He was hauled down to the pool deck
and three men stood over him.

“Well, shit, HRTs ain’t so hot after all,” said one. That one started getting Romano worked up.

“Just shoot his ass,” said another. Romano’s face turned red and his hands turned to fists.

“I say we stick his head in the water and drown the mother, nice and slow.”

Romano looked up and saw that this came from the gent whom Westbrook had drop-kicked on to the pool deck, the same guy Romano
had floored his first day at East Winds. His big gut was still sucking in huge amounts of air and there was blood around his
nose where he had skidded across the stone.

“What do you say to that, Romano?” the man asked, even as he prodded Romano in the side with his boot.

“Sounds good to me,” Romano said. He exploded forward and laid his shoulder into the man’s quivering gut and they both went
into the water. Romano took a huge breath and then dragged the man under. The two men on the pool deck did what Romano thought
they would. They fired into the water. But Romano and the other man were too deep for the bullets to do any damage.

One of the guys had a seemingly brilliant idea. He raced over and hit the button to close the pool cover. As it settled over
Romano and the man he was still struggling with, Romano, far from being concerned, knew that now he had the means to actually
survive this. He slipped out his knife and cut the man’s throat. Blood filled the water. Romano then grabbed the body around
the legs and pushed it up until he could feel the man’s head slam against the cover, as though he were bursting to the surface
for air. Then he heard what he expected to hear, the guns firing into the head. He lowered the body, moved his position and
then lifted the body up again. Again the guns fired, sending little jets of propelled water by him on either side. Now, they
no doubt thought both of them were dead. At least Romano hoped they did; in fact, he was counting on it to survive.

He lowered the body again and then let go of it. It slowly sank to the bottom of the pool to join the one already there, the
man Web had shot earlier. Now Romano had to undertake the riskiest part of this plan. He let out most of his remaining air,
floated to the top and hooked his arm into the filter opening as though he had been caught there after getting his head blown
off. As the cover opened, he was really hoping these guys did not understand the physics of freshly killed bodies in water,
namely that they sank rather than floated on the surface. If they opened fire on him now, he was dead. But they didn’t. The
cover dragged his body some and Romano didn’t move a muscle. It wasn’t time yet. When the hands reached down and pulled him
out, he still didn’t move. They laid him on the pool deck facedown. He could sense them on either side. And then he heard
it. They all did. Sirens. Somebody had called the cops.

One of the men said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

That was the last thing he would ever say. Romano erupted to his feet and hit both men dead center of their chests with backward
thrusts of the two knives he had hidden in both of his hands. The blades went in up to their hilts, piercing each of their
hearts.

They stared at him even as they dropped into the water. Romano stood up straight, surveyed the battlefield, ripped off his
shirt and used a small tree branch to put a tourniquet on his leg, fished Link, the pistol that had blocked the bullet from
hitting his back, out of the water and held up the ruined gun.

“Well, hell,” he said.

W
eb was trailing Strait and Claire as best as he could. He was alternating with his NV goggles and his own eyes, but it was
very dark here and even NVs needed some ambient light to work properly. He was relying more on his hearing than his eyes,
actually, but he couldn’t fire at anything based on that, because he could as easily hit Claire as Strait.

He approached the Monkey House, slowed his pace and finally stopped. The ruined building looked ominous during the day; now
it was completely unnerving. The problem was, if Strait was inside and Web moved past without clearing the building first,
Strait could rear-flank him.

Web kept a tight grip on his MP-5 and quietly moved forward. He entered the place from the south end and stepped over the
debris that littered the former animal prison. Shafts of moonlight came through the holes in the roof as the clouds overhead
moved past. The light eerily washed over the wrecked cages and the sight was a test even for Web’s hardened nerves.

Moving through the space without making a sound was impossible and Web’s gaze kept darting in all directions in hope that
he would see something that would give him the instant he needed to save his and Claire’s lives and end Strait’s in the bargain.
There was the issue of Macy being out there too, and that was troublesome because the man did have some tactical skill.

Web immediately sank to the floor as he heard a creak to his left. He slipped on his NV goggles and scanned the space grid
by grid.He looked overhead too because there was a catwalk up there. That’s when the garbled scream rang out.

He rolled and the shot hit right where he had been lying. He came up, his gun ready to fire. That had sounded like Claire’s
voice warning him. He heard shuffling at the far end of the building and then feet running away. He was about to race after
them when he saw the same thing he had seen before, gun barrel condensation. He dropped just before the gun fired, and the
bullet hit one of the cages and ricocheted harmlessly into a wall.