Last Man Standing

9

At Arlington National Cemetery, Percy Bates walked from the visitors’ center up the paved road that led to the Custis-Lee House. After Robert E. Lee had chosen his native state of Virginia and leadership of the Confederate forces over a similar offer from the Stars and Stripes at the outset of the Civil War, the federal government had responded to this rebuff by confiscating Lee’s home. Anecdotal history stated that the Lincoln Administration had offered the property back to the Confederate general during the war. All he had to do was come and pay the back taxes. In person. Lee, of course, had not taken Lincoln up on the offer and his estate had been turned into what was now the country’s most prestigious national cemetery. That bit of history had always made the Michigan-born Bates smile, although the mansion was now a memorial of sorts to Lee and was popularly known as Arlington House.

Bates reached the front of Arlington House and looked out over what many considered the finest view in all of Washington and perhaps the country. From here, the entire capital city lay at your feet. Bates wondered if old Bobby Lee ever thought this as he got up each morning and looked out.

The cemetery covered over six hundred acres of grounds and was dominated by simple, uniform white headstones. There were also some very elaborate memorials to the dead, erected by survivors or other grateful parties; however, the sea of white headstones, which at the right angle created the illusion of snow-covered ground even in summer, was what most people remembered from their visit here. Arlington National was the final resting place for American soldiers killed while fighting for their country, five-star generals, an assassinated President, seven Supreme Court justices, explorers, famed minorities and many others who qualified to be interred at this national shrine. There were well over 200,000 dead buried here and that number increased at the rate of eighteen bodies every weekday.

Bates had come here numerous times. On several occasions he had attended funerals of friends and colleagues. Other times he had come as a tour guide of sorts when his family had company in town. A favorite thing to do was watch the changing of the guard by members of the U.S. Third Infantry, who maintained around-the-clock vigil over the Tombs of the Unknowns. Bates checked his watch. He would be just in time if he hurried.

As he arrived at the tombs area, Bates could see that the crowd was already gathering, mostly out-of-towners with their cameras and kids. The guard on duty was performing his excruciatingly precise routine of marching twenty-one steps, pausing for twenty-one seconds, switching his rifle to his other shoulder and then marching back along the same narrow path.

Bates had often wondered if the rifle the guards carried was even loaded. However, Bates believed that if anyone ever tried to pillage or defile one of the tombs, he would be met with a swift and painful response. If there was sacred ground for the military in this country, this was it. Arlington Cemetery ranked right up there with Pearl Harbor.

As the changing of the guard started and the crowd grew and moved in for their photo opportunities, Bates glanced across to his left and then started working his way through the rows of tourists and down the steps. The changing of the guard was an elaborate ceremony and would take some time to fully complete. The spectacle drew just about everyone in the cemetery, but not Percy Bates.

He walked around the large Memorial Amphitheater that was situated adjacent to the tombs area. Bates continued strolling, crossed over Memorial Drive and walked around the Challenger Space Shuttle Memorial. Then he turned back and entered the amphitheater. He walked down to the stage area with its large columns, pediments and balustrades; moved over to a wall there and pulled out a map of the cemetery, held it up and studied it.

The man was hidden from Bates’s or anyone else’s view. He had a pistol in a belt holster and one hand rested on its grip even as he drew nearer to where Bates was standing. He had shadowed Bates around most of the cemetery, making certain that the FBI agent was alone. He moved closer.

“Didn’t think you were going to show until you gave me the high sign back there,” said Bates. The map completely hid his face from whoever might be watching.

“Had to make sure conditions were right,” said Randall Cove. He remained in hiding behind a section of wall.

“I made sure I wasn’t followed.”

“Whatever any of us can do, somebody out there can do better.” “Can’t exactly argue with that. How come you always like to meet in a cemetery?”

“I like the peace and quiet. I rarely get it anywhere else.” Cove paused and then said, “I got set up.”

“I figured as much. But I’ve got six men dead and the seventh one is a question mark right now. Did your cover get blown from the inside? Instead of killing you, did they feed you bad stuff to set up HRT? I need details here, Randy.”

“I was in that damn building myself. Went in as a potential player with those folks and wanted to check out their operation. I saw desks, files, computers, geeks running around spouting numbers, cash, product, the whole nine yards. With my own eyes I saw it. I don’t call up you guys on something like that unless I’ve seen it for myself. I’m no rookie.”

“I know that. But that building had zip in it when we got there. Other than eight trashed machine guns.”

“Right. Trashed. Talk to me about London. You trust him?”

“As much as I trust anybody.”

“What’s his story? Why is he still kicking?”

“I don’t think he knows. He says he froze.”

“Damn good timing on that.”

“He shot those guns up. Saved a little kid in the process.”

“That’s a real special little kid. Kevin Westbrook.”

“So I know.”

“Look, we went into this thing hunting the elder Westbrook ’cause the higher-ups thought it was about time to bring him down so they could toot their own horn. But the more I got into it, the more I realized he’s small fish, Perce. He makes a good living but not a great one. He doesn’t shoot up neighborhoods, keeps a low profile.”

“But if not him, who?”

“There’re about eight main street sellers in this town and Westbrook is just one of them. Collectively they sell a ton of the shit. Now, you multiply that action by every major metropolitan area from here to New York and south to Atlanta, and you got yourself a real heavyweight.”

“What, are you saying one group controls all that flow? That’s impossible.”

“No, what I’m saying is that I think one group is controlling the flow of Oxycontin from rural areas to metropolitan areas up and down the East Coast.”

“Oxycontin, the prescription drug?”

“Right. They’re calling it hillbilly heroin, because the illegal trafficking started in rural areas. But now it’s moving to the cities. See, that’s where the real money is. The hicks in the mountains don’t have the kind of cash the city folks do. It’s synthetic morphine, for chronic pain or for the terminally ill. Abusers crush it, snort it, smoke it or inject it, and they get popped like something close to heroin.”

“Yeah, except it’s time-released, so you do a whole pill like that, bypassing the time release, you could kill yourself.”

“A hundred deaths and counting so far. It’s not as potent as heroin, but it’s got double the kick of morphine and it’s a legal drug, and that makes some people believe it’s safe even if abused. You even got old people selling one pill on the street to cover the cost of the rest of their prescription because their insurance doesn’t. Or else you get docs to write up bogus prescriptions or you burglarize pharmacies or homes of patients using it.”

“It’s bad,” agreed Bates.

“That’s why the Bureau and DEA ran their joint task force. And it’s not just Oxy, you got the older stuff like Percocet and Percodan too. Now you can get ‘Perks’ on the street for ten to fifteen bucks a pop. But they don’t pack the wallop of Oxy. You’d have to take sixteen tablets of Percocet to get the same high as one eighty-milligram Oxy pill.”

During this discussion Bates had looked around casually several times, to see if anyone was observing him, yet there was no one. Cove had picked a good place to meet, actually, Bates concluded, since no one could see him, and the way Bates was facing the wall and holding the map up, he appeared simply to be a tourist in need of directions.

Bates said, “Well, the government watches dispensation of controlled narcotics, of course, and you get a doc and a pharmacy dispensing tens of thousands of the same pills, it raises red flags, but you also don’t have to worry about getting it over the border.”

“Right.”

“How come I didn’t know this Oxy angle, Randy?”

“’Cause I just figured that part of it out. I didn’t know I was dealing with an Oxy pipeline when I first stumbled into this. I just thought it was your run-of-the-mill coke and heroin. But then I started seeing and hearing stuff. Most of the drug seems to be coming in from little pockets up and down Appalachia. For the longest time it just used to be little mom-and-pop operations, mostly by people hooked on the drugs themselves. But I’m sensing a single force out there that’s putting all this together and shipping it to the big cities. See, that’s the next step. This could be the mother of all gravy trains and somebody’s figured it out, at least around here. Bringing it up to the standards of a real drug operation but with profit margins triple what the cartels or anybody else is doing and with a lot lower risk. That’s the people we want. That’s actually who I thought was operating out of the building HRT hit. I thought we could crack this thing wide open if we got to the bean counters. And it’d make sense to hide your money clearinghouse in a big city.”

“Because in the rural areas that sort of thing would stick out,” Bates completed his thought.

“You got it. And they have plenty of incentive. Say you work up to moving a million pills a week with a street value of a hundred mil; well, you get my point.”

“But whoever’s driving the product, they’d have no incentive to waste an HRT unit. That’ll bring them grief they just don’t need. Why would they do that?”

“All I can tell you is the operation I saw in that building was not Westbrook’s. It was huge. Lots of activity, way more than his business could generate. If I thought it was just Westbrook, I would have said no-go on the HRT hit. We would’ve gotten a little fish, but the big one would’ve just floated away. With that said, I think Westbrook is distributing the product in D.C. and so are the other crews. But hard proof of that I don’t have. The guy’s real smart and he’s seen it all.”

“Yeah, but you got to someone in his crew. That’s valuable.”

“Right, but snitch today, dead tomorrow in my line of work.”

“So somebody really put on a damned Broadway production for us by loading up that warehouse to make it look like a big-time drug operation. Any thoughts on that?”

“Nope. After I passed along the intel to you guys and the hit was set, whoever snookered me didn’t need old Randall Cove anymore. I’m figuring I’m lucky to be alive, Perce. In fact, I’m wondering why I am alive.”

“So is Web London. I guess after a massacre there’s always a lot of that going around.”

“No, I mean somebody tried to waste me after the HRT hit. Cost me my Bucar and a couple of cracked ribs.”

“Jesus, why didn’t you let us know? You have to come in, Randy. Get fully debriefed, so we can figure this out.”

Bates looked around once more. This was taking too long. He would have to move on soon. He could only look at the cemetery map for so long without arousing suspicion. But he didn’t want to leave without Randall Cove.

“No way in hell am I doing that, Perce,” replied Cove in a tone that made Bates lower his map. “I’m not doing that because this shit hits way too close to the bone.”

“Meaning exactly what?” said Bates with an edge to his voice.

“Meaning that this shit stinks from the inside and I’m not putting my life in somebody’s hands unless I know they’re going to play fair with me.”

“This is the FBI, Randy, not the KGB.”

“Maybe to you it is. You’ve always been an insider, Perce. Me, I’m about as outside as somebody can get. I come in now, without knowing what happened, then all of a sudden they might not ever find me again. I know a lot of folks uptown think I was behind what happened to HRT.”

“That’s crazy.”

“Crazy as six dudes getting wiped? How’d they manage that without inside info?”

“That crap happens in our line of work.”

“Okay, you telling me you haven’t noticed stuff falling down everywhere? Blown assignments, two undercover agents getting killed in the last year, Bureau strike teams showing up to do their thing and finding nobody home to play, major drug busts going down the tubes because folks got tipped off. I think there’s some big, stinking rat right in the Bureau selling a lot of folks down the river, including me!”

“Don’t go conspiracy theorist on me, Randy.”

Cove’s voice grew calmer. “I wanted to let you know I wasn’t in on it. You got my word because that’s all I got to give right now. I hope to have more later.”

“So you’re on to something?” said Bates quickly. “Look, Randy, I believe you, okay, but I’ve got people I’ve got to answer to. I understand your concerns, a lot of bad things have been happening, and we’re trying to find the source, but you’ve got to understand my concerns too.” He paused. “Damn it, come on, I’ll give you every assurance that if you come in now, I will watch over you like it’s my father on his deathbed, okay? I hope you feel that you can trust me, after all we’ve been through together. I’ve gone to bat for you before.” There was no answer from Cove. “Look, Randy, tell me what you need to come in and I’ll see what I can do.” There was still no answer. Bates swore under his breath and darted behind the wall. Across the space he saw the door leading out from the other side. He went to it, but it was locked. He ran back around the amphitheater and out into the open. The guard ceremony was breaking up and large crowds had spilled out onto paved walkways and cemetery ground. As Bates looked everywhere, he knew he had already lost him. Despite his large physical size, Cove had spent many years learning how to blend in with any surroundings. For all Bates knew, he was dressed as a groundskeeper or possibly a tourist. Bates threw his map in the trash and trudged off.