Last Man Standing

3

Randall 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.

He had bounced here and there in the Bureau. It was a time when opportunities for black men were still severely limited. Cove had found himself pushed toward drug undercover work, because his superiors had bluntly informed him that most of the “bad dudes” were people of his color. You can walk the walk and talk the talk and you look the part too, they had said. And he couldn’t argue with that, really. The work was dangerous enough to never be boring. Randall Cove had never easily tolerated being bored. And he put away more crooks in a month than most agents put away in their entire careers, and these were big fish, the planners, the true moneymakers, not the nickel-and-dime streetwalkers one bad snort from a pauper’s grave. He and his wife had had two beautiful children and he was thinking seriously of calling it a career when the bottom had dropped out of his world and he no longer had a wife or kids.

He snapped back as the men came out, climbed in the cars, drove off and Cove once more followed. Cove had lost something else that he could never get back. Six men had died because he had messed up badly, been snookered like the most green agent there was. His pride was hurt and his anger was molten. And the seventh member of the shattered team deeply intrigued Cove. The man had survived when he should have been dead too and apparently nobody knew why, though it was early in the game yet. Cove wanted to look the man in the eye and say, How come you’re still breathing? He didn’t have Web London’s file and he didn’t see himself getting it anytime soon. Yeah, Cove was FBI, but yeah, everyone was no doubt thinking he had turned traitor. Undercover agents were supposed to live right next to the edge, weren’t they? They were supposedly all head cases, right? What a thankless job he’d been doing all these years, but that was okay because he had done it for himself, nobody else.

The cars pulled into the long drive and Cove stopped, took some more pictures and then turned around. That was apparently it for tonight. He headed back to the only place he could be safe right now, and it wasn’t home. As he rounded a curve and sped up, a pair of headlights seemed to appear out of nowhere and settled in behind him. That wasn’t good, not on a road like this. Attention from his fellow man was not something Cove ever sought or encouraged. He turned; so did the car. Okay, this was serious. He sped up again. So did the tail. Cove reached down to his belt holster, pulled out his pistol and made sure the safety was off.

He glanced in the rearview mirror to see if he could tell how many folks he was dealing with. It was too dark for that, no street-lights out this way. The first bullet blew out his right rear tire, the second bullet his left rear. As he fought to keep control of the car, a truck pulled out from a side road and hit him broadside. If his window had been up, Cove’s head would have gone right through it. The truck had a snowplow on its front end, though it was not wintertime. The truck accelerated and Cove’s car was pushed in front of it. He felt his car about to roll and then the truck pushed his sedan over a guardrail that had been placed there principally to protect vehicles from plummeting down the steep slope that the curve of road was built around. The car’s side smashed into the dirt and then rolled, both doors popping open as the sedan continued its cartwheeling, finally landing in a heap at the rocky bottom of the slope and bursting into flames.

The car that had tailed Cove stopped and one man got out, ran to the twisted guardrail and looked down. He saw the fire, witnessed the explosion as fuel vapor met flames and then ran back to his car. The two vehicles kicked up gravel leaving the scene.

As they did, Randall Cove slowly rose from the spot where he’d been thrown when the driver’s door had been ripped open by the first impact with the ground. He had lost his gun and it felt like a couple of ribs were cracked, but he was alive. He looked down at what was left of his car and then back up at where the men who had tried to kill him had raced off. Cove stood on shaky legs and started slowly making his way back up.

Web clutched his wounded hand even as his head seemed primed to explode. It was like he had taken three quick slugs of straight tequila and was about to reflux them. The hospital room was empty. There was an armed man outside, to make sure nothing happened to Web—nothing else anyway.

Web had been lying here all day and into the night thinking about what had happened, and he was no closer to any answers than when they first brought him here. Web’s commander had already been in, along with several members of Hotel and some of the snipers from Whiskey and X-Ray. They had said little, all of them reeling in their personal agony, their disbelief that something like this could have happened to them. And in their eyes Web could sense their suspicions, the issue of what had happened to him out there.

“I’m sorry, Debbie,” Web said to the image of Teddy Riner’s widow. He said the same to Cynde Plummer, Cal’s wife and also now a widow. He went down the list: six women in all, all friends of his. Their men were his partners, his comrades; Web felt as bereaved as any of the ladies.

He let go of his injured hand and touched the metal side of the bed with it. What a sorry wound to bring back with him. He hadn’t taken one round directly. “Not one damn shot did I get off in time,” he said to the wall. “Not one! Do you realize how unbelievable that is?” he called out to the IV stand, before falling silent again.

“We’re going to get them, Web.”

The voice startled Web, for he had heard no one enter the room. But of course a voice came with a body. Web inched up on his bed until he saw the outline of the man there. Percy Bates sat down in a chair next to Web. The man studied the linoleum floor as though it were a map that would guide him to a place that held all the answers.

It was said that Percy Bates had not changed a jot in twenty-five years. The man hadn’t gained or lost a pound on his trim five-ten frame. His hair was charcoal-black without a creep of white and was combed the same way as when he first walked into the FBI fresh from the Academy. It was as though he had been flash-frozen, and this was remarkable in a line of work that tended to age people well ahead of their time. He had become a legend of sorts at the Bureau. He had wreaked havoc on drug operations at the Tex-Mex border and then gone on to raise hell on the West Coast in the LA Field Office. He had risen through the ranks quickly and was currently one of the top people at the Washington Field Office, or “WFO,” as it was called. He had experience in all the major Bureau divisions and the man knew how all the pieces fit together.

Bates, who went by Perce, was usually soft-spoken. Yet the man could crumple a subordinate with a look that made one feel unworthy to be occupying a square foot of space. He could either be your best ally or your worst enemy. Maybe that’s how a man turned out after growing up with a name like Percy.

Web had been on the end of some of the classic Bates tirades before, when he had been under the man’s direct command in his previous professional life at the Bureau. A good deal of the abuse had been deserved, as Web had made mistakes as he learned to be a good agent. Yet Bates did play favorites from time to time and, like everyone else, sometimes went searching for scapegoats to pin blame upon when things went to hell. Thus, Web did not accept the man’s statements right now at face value. Nor did he accept the subdued tone as a token of peace and goodwill. Yet the night Web had lost half his face in the fury of combat, Bates had been one of the first people by his bedside, and Web had never forgotten that. No, Percy Bates was not a simple equation, not that any of them were. He and Bates would never be drinking buddies, yet Web had never believed one had to do shooters with a guy to respect him.

“I know you’ve given us the prelims, but we’ll need your full statement as soon as you’re able,” said Bates. “But don’t rush it. Take your time, get your strength back.”

The message was clear. What had happened had crushed them all. There would be no outbursts from Bates. At least not right now.

“More scratches than anything,” Web mumbled in response.

“They said a gunshot wound to your hand. Cuts and bruises all over your body. The docs said it looked like somebody had taken a baseball bat to you.”

“Nothing,” Web replied, and then felt exhausted by saying the word.

“You still need to rest. And then we’ll get your statement.” Bates rose. “And if you’re up to it, and I know it’ll be hard, it would help if you could go back down there and run us through exactly what happened.”

And how I managed to survive? Web nodded. “I’ll be ready sooner than later.”

“Don’t rush it,” Bates said again. “This one ain’t gonna be easy. But we’ll get it done.” He patted Web on the shoulder and turned to the door.

Web stirred, trying to sit up. “Perce?” In the darkness the whites of Bates’s eyes were really the only things visible of him. To Web they were like a pair of dice hanging, showing deuces somehow. “They’re all dead, aren’t they?”

“All of them,” Bates confirmed. “You’re the only one left, Web.”

“I did all I could.”

The door opened and then closed, and Web was alone.

Outside in the hallway, Bates conferred with a group of men dressed exactly as he was: nondescript blue suit, button-down shirt, muted tie, rubber-soled black shoes and big pistols in small clip holsters.

“This will be a media nightmare, you know that,” said one of them. “It already is, in fact.”

Bates stuck a piece of gum in his mouth, substitute for the Winstons he had given up for the fifth time now and counting. “The needs of suck-wad journalists are not high on my priority list,” he said.

“You have to keep them informed, Perce. If you don’t, they’ll assume the worst and start making it up. There’s already been stuff on the Internet you wouldn’t believe, that this massacre is tied to either the apocalyptic return of Jesus or something to do with a Chinese trade conspiracy. I mean, where do they get this crap? It’s driving the media relations people nuts.”

“I can’t believe anybody would have the guts to do this to us,” said another man, who had grown gray and plump in the service of his country. Bates knew this particular agent had not seen anything other than the top of his government desk in more than a decade but liked to act as though he had. “Not the Colombians, the Chinese or even the Russians could have the guts to attack us like that.”

Bates glanced at the man. “It’s ‘us’ against ‘them.’ Remember? We try to cram it down their throats all the time. You think they don’t want to return the favor?”

“But my God, Perce, think about it. They just slaughtered a squad of our men. On our home turf,” the old fellow blustered indignantly.

Perce looked at him and saw an elephant without tusks, just about ready to drop and die and become dinner for the jungle carnivores. “I didn’t realize we had laid claim to that part of D.C.,” said Bates. He had last slept the day before yesterday and was now really starting to feel it. “In fact, I was under the impression that that was their home turf and we were the visiting team.”

“You know what I mean. What could have prompted this sort of attack?”

“Shit, I don’t know, maybe because we try so damn hard to pull the plug on their billion-dollars-a-day drug pipeline and it’s starting to really piss them off, you idiot!” As he said this, Bates backed the man into a corner and then decided the guy was far too harmless to be worth a suspension.

“How’s he doing?” asked another man, with blond hair and a nose red from the flu.

Bates leaned against the wall, chewed his gum and then shrugged. “I think it’s messed more with his mind than anything else. But that’s to be expected.”

“One lucky guy is all I can say,” commented Red Nose. “How he survived it is anyone’s guess.”

It took barely a second for Bates to get in this man’s face. He was obviously taking no prisoners tonight. “You call it luck to watch six of your team get ripped right in front of you? Is that what the hell you’re saying, you dumb son of a bitch?”

“Geez, I didn’t mean it like that, Perce. You know I didn’t.” Red Nose coughed a good one, as though to let Bates know he was sick and in no shape to fight.

Bates moved away from Red Nose, thoroughly disgusted with them all. “Right now I don’t know anything. No, I take that back. I know that Web single-handedly took out eight machine gun nests and saved another squad and some ghetto kid in the process. That I do know.”

“The preliminary report says Web froze.” This came from another man who had joined their ranks, yet he was one who clearly stood above them all. Two stone-faced gents were in lockstep behind the intruder. “And actually, Perce, what we know is only what Web has told us,” said the man. Though this person was obviously Percy Bates’s superior in official rank, it was equally apparent that Bates wanted to bite his head off yet didn’t dare.

The man continued. “London’s got a hell of a lot of explaining to do. And we’re going into this investigation with our eyes wide open, a lot more wide open than last night. Last night was a disgrace. Last night will never, ever happen again. Not on my watch.” He stared hard at Bates and then said with sarcasm driven home with a sledgehammer, “Give London my best.” With that, Buck Winters, head of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, stalked off, followed by his two robotic escorts.

Bates gazed with loathing at the man’s back. Buck Winters had been one of the principal frontline supervisors at Waco and had, in Bates’s opinion, contributed to the eventual carnage with his ineptness. Then, in the funny way of big organizations, Winters had received promotion after promotion for his incompetence until he had reached the top of WFO. Maybe the Bureau was just unwilling to admit it had messed up and believed that promoting from the ranks of the leadership of the Waco fiasco was a strong message to the world that the Bureau considered itself blameless. Eventually, many heads had rolled because of the flameout of David Koresh in Texas, but Buck Winters’s head was still firmly attached to his shoulders. For Percy Bates, Buck Winters represented much that was wrong with the FBI.

Bates leaned against the wall, crossed his arms and chewed his Wrigley’s so hard his teeth hurt. He was certain that old Buck would be running off to confer with the FBI director, the attorney general, probably even the President. Well, let him, so long as they all kept out of Percy Bates’s way.

The group of men slithered away singly and in pairs until just Bates and the uniformed guard remained. Finally Bates moved off too, hands in his pockets, gaze fixed on nothing. On the way out he spit his gum into the trash can. “Assholes and idiots,” he said. “Assholes and idiots.”