Last Man Standing

43

Web drove Claire home, where she packed some clothes and other things, and then he took her to her car and followed her to a hotel, where she checked in. After they’d promised each other to keep in touch with fresh developments, Web rushed back to East Winds.

Romano was at the carriage house. “The Canfields are in the house. I don’t know what happened, but something’s shook them up. White as sheets, both of them.”

“I know what did it, Paulie,” and Web explained about the videotape.

“You know there was nothing you could do, Web. I’m just pissed I was overseas at the time, I would’ve loved to hit those guys.” He snapped his fingers. “Oh, before I forget, Ann Lyle called and said she really needed to talk to you.”

“How come she didn’t call me directly?”

“I talked to her a couple of days ago. Just checking in. I gave her the phone number here, just in case we needed a hard-line contact.”

Web pulled out his phone, and while he was dialing Ann he asked Romano, “So, how’d Billy like your ’Vette?”

“Sweet, man, sweet. Said he had an opportunity to buy one a couple of years ago for—are you ready for this?—for fifty thousand dollars. Fifty big ones.”

“Better not let Angie find out about that. I see four wheels and a ragtop becoming new furniture and college accounts.”

Romano paled. “Shit, I never thought of that. You gotta swear you won’t tell her, Web. You gotta swear.”

“Hold on, Paulie.” Web spoke into the phone. “Ann, it’s Web, what’s up?”

Ann’s voice was very low. “There’s something going down here. That’s why I’m here so late.”

Web tensed. He knew what that meant. “An op?”

“The guys built a new target in the practice area two days ago and have been going over it like crazy. The assaulters have been going through their equipment today seven ways from Sunday and the commander’s doors been closed all morning, and some of the snipers have already been deployed. You know how it is, Web.”

“Yeah, I know. You have any idea what the target might be?”

Ann’s voice dropped even lower. “A tape from a surveillance camera came in a few days ago. It shows that a truck was parked at the loading dock of an abandoned building near where the shooting occurred. The tape wasn’t at the best angle, I understand, but I believe it shows the guns being unloaded from the truck.”

Web nearly tore the phone in half. Bates had kept this from him.

“Who was the truck registered to, Ann?”

“Silas Free. He’s one of the founders of the Free Society, Web. Pretty stupid of him to use his real name.”

Son of a bitch. They were hitting the Frees. “How are they getting there?”

“Military aircraft from Andrews to an old Marine Corps airfield near Danville. They’re heading out at O-twelve-hundred. The trucks have already been sent down via semi.”

“What’s the assault force?”

“Hotel, Gulf, X-Ray and Whiskey.”

“That’s it? That’s not full strength.”

“Echo, Yankee and Zulu are out of the country on VIP protection detail. There’s no Charlie Team. And on top of that, one of the Hotel assaulters broke his leg during a training exercise and Romano’s with you on special assignment. We’re a little thin right now.”

“I’m on my way. Don’t let the train leave without me.”

He looked at Romano. “Get the guys at the gates to collapse around the house and take over protection detail.”

“Where are we going?”

“It’s time to bang ’em and hang ’em, Paulie.”

While Romano called the perimeter guards, Web ran outside, popped the trunk of his Mach and checked what he had. The answer was he had plenty. The life of an HRT operator required that he keep several days’ worth of clothes in his trunk along with a variety of other items essential for when you were called out of the country for a week or a month with virtually no notice. Web had supplemented this “normal” allotment with lots of goodies he had taken from the HRT equipment cage and the stash he kept at home, which included a formidable arsenal. Even with his FBI creds, he’d have a tough time explaining this cache to a state trooper on a routine traffic stop.

When Romano came back, Web said, “Bates kept it from me, the little shit. They found direct evidence tying the Frees to the hit on Charlie, using the damn tip I gave him. And he wasn’t even going to invite us to the party. Probably thinks we’ll freak and pop people unnecessarily.”

“You know,” said Romano, “that really offends my sense of professionalism.”

“Well, tell your sense of professionalism to shake a leg, we don’t have much time.”

“Well, why didn’t you say so?” He grabbed Web’s arm. “If speed is what we need, we ain’t taking that hunk of junk.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Five minutes later the big-block ’Vette loaded down with weaponry blew through the open gates at East Winds and hit the main strip.

It was mostly back roads down to Quantico, but Romano kept the ’Vette on seventy pretty much the whole way, going around curves so fast Web felt himself grabbing the edge of his seat and hoping Romano didn’t notice. When they got to Interstate 95, Romano smoothly shifted gears and popped the clutch. Web watched the speedometer swiftly move to triple digits. Romano slid in an eight-track tape, of all things, and revved up the music. The best of Bachman-Turner Overdrive was soon shattering the night air, because they were driving with the top down. While Romano drove, Web checked their guns. Even with the highway lights, it was very dark, but his fingers knew every inch of the things.

He looked over at Romano, who was smiling and singing along with BTO as they were “taking care of business.” The guy was bobbing his head like he was back in high school and banging at a Springsteen concert.

“You gotta strange way of preparing yourself for combat, Paulie.”

“What, like you and the rubbing you give your pistols for luck?” Web looked at him in surprise. “Riner told me. He thought it was a hoot.”

“I guess nothing’s sacred,” muttered Web.

They cruised into Quantico in record time. They both knew the sentry posted at the east entrance off the Bureau Parkway, and Romano didn’t bother to slow down.

“Triple eight, Jimbo,” he yelled out as he roared by, referring to the crisis page of three eights that told HRT members to get the hell to Quantico.

“Go get ’em, guys!” yelled back Jimbo.

Romano parked the car; they pulled their gear and hauled it to the admin building. Romano used his security card to open the gate, and they headed to the front door, where a video surveillance camera was watching them. In front of the entrance, six trees had been planted in memory of the fallen members of Charlie Team. Inside, they passed Ann Lyle’s office. She came to the door, and she and Web exchanged a glance but not more than that. Strictly from the rule book, Ann shouldn’t have called and told Web about the assault. And he would never do anything to get her in trouble. But they both knew that what she had done was the right thing to do, rule book be damned.

Web met his commander, Jack Pritchard, in the hallway. The man looked in astonishment at Web and Romano with all their gear.

“Reporting for duty, sir,” said Web.

“How the hell did you even know about it?” demanded Pritchard. “I’m still a member of HRT. I can smell these things a mile away.” Pritchard didn’t push it, though he did glance in the direction of Ann Lyle’s office.

“I want in,” said Web.

“That’s impossible,” said Pritchard. “You’re still on SRB leave, and he”—he pointed at Romano—“got his ass taken off on special assignment that I wasn’t even made privy to. Now shove off.”

The commander turned on his heel and headed back to the equipment room. Web and Romano shoved off, right after the man. The assaulters and snipers who hadn’t already been deployed on the mission were gathered here, going over last-minute details. The snipers were checking to make sure they each had restocked a numbered lot of match-grade ammo. They were updating logbooks, tightening trigger assemblies and cleaning scopes and barrels. The assaulters were inspecting their own weapons and breaking out their breaching gear, tactical bags and body armor. The personnel in the logistics cell of HRT were running around loading gear into the trucks and trying to remember everything the mini-invasion would need to succeed. They all stopped doing what they were doing when Pritchard and then Web and Romano barged into their space.

“Come on, Jack,” said Web, “you got teams all over the damned place, and not even counting Paulie, you’re short a guy on Hotel, you can use the extra hands.”

Pritchard whirled around. “How the hell did you know we were short a guy?” The HRT chief obviously had had enough of leaks.

Web looked around the room. “I can count. And I count five assaulters on Hotel. Add me and Paulie and you’re at full strength.”

“You haven’t been briefed, you haven’t worked the mock target and you haven’t even been training for a while. You’re not going.”

Web moved in front of the man and blocked his way. Jack Pritchard was about five-ten and Web had him by at least thirty pounds and about five years, but Web knew if it came to a fight that he would be in for one. But he didn’t want to fight, not his own man anyway.

“Brief us on the way over. Show us the attack points. We’ve got our own equipment and all we need are Kevlar, a flight suit and a helmet. How many of these have Paulie and me done, Jack? Don’t treat us like some clueless bastard right out of NOTS. We don’t deserve that.”

Pritchard stepped back and stared at Web for a very long minute. The longer it went on the more Web thought Pritchard might actually throw him out of the place. HRT, like other quasi-military units, frowned on such insubordination.

“I tell you what, Web, I’ll leave it up to them.” He pointed at the assaulters.

Web hadn’t been expecting that sort of decision. But he stepped forward and looked at each of the Hotel and Gulf guys one by one. He had fought side-by-side with most of them, first as a sniper and then as one of their own, an assaulter. His gaze finally settled on Romano. The men would accept Paulie back without question. But Web was damaged goods, the guy who had frozen at the worst possible moment, and every man in this room was wondering if he would do it again and cost them their lives.

Web had saved Romano’s life during a raid on a Montana militiamen site. Romano had returned the favor a year later during a VIP protection detail in the Middle East when a foot soldier from a fringe rebel group had tried to run their party down with an empty bus he had stolen. The rebel would have succeeded in getting at least Web, but Romano had pushed Web out of the way and popped the driver between the eyes with a round from his .45. Yet despite all that, and their recent time together, Web had never really been able to read the man. As he looked around the room, it seemed that the men were looking to Romano to settle the issue, and despite the guy having driven Web here to take part in the assault, Web had no clue what he would say now.

He watched as Romano put a hand on Web’s shoulder. Looking at his teammates, Romano said, “Web London can cover my back anytime, anyplace.”

And in the alpha male society of HRT, a man like Paul Romano— who was feared even by some of his teammates—saying that was all it took. After they finished suiting up, Pritchard called all the men into the small meeting room. He stood at the front staring at them, and they stared back. It seemed to Web that the commander spent more time gazing at him than at any of the others.

“It goes without saying,” began Pritchard, “that this mission is critical. All our missions are critical. I know that each man here will conduct himself in the utmost professional manner while still doing his job to the best of his ability.” Pritchard’s tone was stilted, the man looked nervous, and he had done enough dangerous things in his life that Web had long assumed the man had no nerves.

Web and Romano exchanged glances. This sort of pep talk was a little out of the ordinary. They weren’t a bunch of high school kids getting ready to play football.

Pritchard’s stern demeanor collapsed. “Okay, let me cut the official crap. The folks we’re going after tonight are suspected of doing in Charlie Team. You all know that. We hope we’re going to hit them by surprise. Short and sweet and no shots fired.” He paused and looked up and down the ranks once more. “You know the orders of engagement. This Free Society has come our way before, down in Richmond. That was Charlie Team too, and some think that what happened in that courtyard was an act of revenge by the Frees.

“There are no known hostages. The ground logistics are a little tricky, but we’ve handled far worse. We fly in, the trucks will be waiting and we execute.” Pritchard was pacing now, and then he stopped. “If you have to take a shot tonight, you do it. If they fire back, I don’t have to tell any of you what to do. But don’t be stupid about this. The last thing we need is for the media to be screaming tomorrow morning about HRT wiping out guys who don’t need to be wiped out. If they were involved in Charlie’s getting ripped, let’s bag them and let the legal process work its course. Don’t, and I repeat don’t, fire because you’re thinking about what these guys might have done to six men who belonged to us. You’re better than that. You deserve better than that. And I know you’ll come through.” He paused once more and seemed to search each of his men’s faces, once again lingering the longest, it seemed, on Web.

Pritchard finished with, “Let’s hit it.”

As the men filed out, Web walked up next to Pritchard.

“Jack, I hear where you’re coming from, but if you’re that concerned about somebody going off the deep end, why have HRT do this hit at all? You said there aren’t any hostages, so an FBI SWAT team could handle this with backup from the locals. Why us?”

“We’re still part of the FBI, Web, although you wouldn’t know it from the way some people act around here.”

“Meaning orders from uptown for HRT to do this gig?”

“That’s the procedure, and you know that as well as I do.”

“Because of the circumstances, did you request a pass on this one?”

“Actually, I did, because I personally don’t think we should be doing it. Not this soon after losing our guys. And I agree with you, a SWAT team could go easy enough.”

“And they turned you down?”

“Like I said, we’re part of the FBI and I do what I’m told. Now you wanted in on this, are you backing out now?”

“See you at the O.K. Corral.”

A few minutes later they were on their way to Andrews Air Force Base, ready to go to war.

The Bureau, Web had learned from one of his HRT colleagues, had contemplated executing a search warrant on the Frees’ compound but had decided that they would let HRT secure the place first and then execute the search. The last thing the Bureau wanted was a couple of agents getting killed while trying to serve the search warrant. Besides, video of machine guns used to kill federal agents being unloaded from a truck rented by Silas Free was pretty damning.

On the short bumpy flight down in a military transport jet, Web went over the five-paragraph operations order and he and Romano were filled in on specific details. There would be no negotiation with the Frees and no warnings to come out with their hands up. The memories of the school incident in Richmond and the massacre of Charlie Team had precluded those options. Fewer people would die tonight if HRT just hit them without warning, at least that’s what the powers-that-be had decided, and Web was perfectly fine with that decision. The fact that there were no known hostages made things easier and also more complicated. Complicated in that Web was still wondering why an FBI SWAT team hadn’t been called in to handle this. He hoped it was a combination of the reputation the Frees had for being extremely dangerous and well armed, and the fact that even the good guys were entitled to exact sweet justice some of the time. But something just didn’t feel right about this.

Intelligence gathered by WFO over the last several months put the Frees at a compound they had created a decade earlier about forty miles west of Danville, Virginia, in a very remote part of the state with woods on three sides. Snipers from Whiskey and X-Ray had set up surveillance twenty-four hours before with WFO agents and had been feeding valuable intelligence back ever since. The plans for the target had actually been in the HRT database for a while now. HRT had rebuilt the interior of the school on its back lot and practiced with something more than the unit’s usual vigor and determination. While there wasn’t an HRT member who would consciously open fire unless he, another team member or an innocent person was in danger, there wasn’t a single HRT operator who wasn’t at least partly wishing that the Frees would try and fight back. Maybe, Web thought, that group would include Commander Jack Pritchard too, despite his passionate speech to the contrary.

They landed, climbed in their trucks, which had just been offloaded from a special truck transport, and drove to the preliminary staging area and interfaced with the local police and folks from WFO who were spearheading the effort. Web turned his back and fiddled with some of his gear when he saw Percy Bates appear from one of the Bucars and talk to Pritchard. Web didn’t really need a run-in with Bates right now for a lot of reasons, the main one being he didn’t know if he could trust himself not to punch the guy’s lights out for not telling him about the assault. Bates was probably just trying to protect Web, maybe from himself, but Web would have preferred to make that decision on his own.

They drove to the last staging point and received a final set of orders. Now it was time to hit the road to the target. They moved quickly through the darkened rural roads. Hotel Team was in one Suburban and was approaching the Frees’ compound from the rear, while Gulf was going in the left side. The topography would require the assault teams to navigate through the dark, dense woods. That wasn’t really a problem, since they had night-vision optics. Just before the truck doors popped open, Romano crossed himself. Web almost said what he had always said to Danny Garcia, that God didn’t come around here and that they were on their own, but he didn’t. Yet he wished Romano hadn’t done the sign of the cross. This was all beginning to seem way too familiar, and for the first time Web started to wonder if he was in any shape to participate in the assault. The doors popped open before he could think any more on this and they poured into the woods and then came to a stop, crouching and surveying the terrain ahead.

Through his bone mic Web listened as the snipers filled them in on what lay ahead. Web recognized Ken McCarthy’s voice from X-Ray. McCarthy’s call sign was Sierra One, meaning he held the snipers’ highest observation post. He was probably straddling a thick branch of one of the big oaks that ringed the perimeter around the compound, Web figured. That would allow him to see the entire area, get a good firing lane and provide maximum defilade, or position of cover and concealment. The Frees were definitely inside the compound. Most of them lived there, in fact. The snipers had counted at least ten of them inside. There were four buildings constituting the fenced compound. Three were living quarters and one was a large warehouse-style building where the men held their meetings and did whatever work they did while there, such as making bombs and plotting how to kill innocent people, no doubt, thought Web. There were often dogs at outposts like this. Canines were always a problem—not so much a personal danger to HRT members, since even the fiercest dog couldn’t bite through Kevlar or withstand a bullet, but they were terrific early warning sentries. Fortunately—thus far, at least—there were no dogs here; maybe some of the Frees were allergic. The weaponry they’d seen were mostly pistols and shotguns, although one young lad of about seventeen, McCarthy said, was carrying an MP-5.

There were two sentries outside, one in the front and one in the rear, armed with pistols only and bored expressions, McCarthy wryly noted. As was customary with HRT, the sentries were given identification names by the sniper that had first spotted them. The guard in front was named Pale Shaq, because he bore a passing resemblance to the big basketball center but, of course, was white, since the Frees were definitely not going to have persons of another color around. The one in the rear was christened Gameboy, because McCarthy had noted a Gameboy player sticking out of his front pocket. The snipers had also observed that both sentries carried cell phones that had a walkie-talkie feature. That posed a problem, since they could quickly signal trouble to their confederates inside.

Hotel Team spread out and moved through the woods with great caution. Over their flight suits they wore IR camouflage, green smocks with visual patterns that broke up each man’s night profile. Thus, even if the Frees had night-vision optics, they wouldn’t get a clean visual. Though the compound was not yet in sight, in the dense foliage the Frees might have posted either additional pickets or even booby traps that had escaped the eyes of the snipers, unlikely as that might be. Web’s NV goggles made night into day, but he kept one eye closed still and assumed all the oth- ers were doing the same thing to avoid the orange burn later. They hit another stop spot and Web pulled the goggles up and blinked quickly to reduce the effects of the high-tech optics. His head was already starting to hurt. On the actual assault Romano would be point man and Web would bring up the rear. Though Romano hadn’t practiced this hit with the team, he was still the best assaulter they had. Web slid his hand down the short barrel of the MP-5 subgun he was carrying. He wasn’t toting his usual SR75 rifle because, after using it in that courtyard, he had found he couldn’t pick the damn thing up again. He first touched the .45 pistol in his tactical holster and next the twin gun riding in his cross-draw shoulder rig that hung across his trauma plate, and he smiled tightly when he saw Romano watching him do this and giving him a thumbs-up.

“Now we’re bulletproof, big guy,” said Romano. The man was probably still doing BTO turns in his head, thought Web.

Web’s heartbeat was not yet at sixty-four and he was striving mightily to get it there. He rubbed his fingers against his palm and was surprised to feel sweat, for it was a chilly night. Yet sixty pounds of gear and body armor made for a nice little personal sauna. He had pistol mags hanging from his gun belt and spare MP-5 ammo in his thigh pads, along with flash bangs, slap charges and other goodies that he might or might not need tonight, you just never knew. Still, he hoped the sweat didn’t signal nerves that could cause him to screw up right at the moment he needed to be perfect.

They moved forward again and neared the edge of the woods. Through his goggles Web could clearly make out the Frees’ compound. To ensure that communications were short and that everyone was working off the same page, the first floor of a target, in HRT parlance, was always designated Alpha, the second, Bravo. The front of the building was white; the right, red; the left, green; and the rear, black. All the doors, windows and other openings was given sequential numbers beginning with the farthest port to the left. Thus Gameboy was stationed on the outside of the fence at roughly Alpha level black port three, while Pale Shaq was at Alpha level white port four. Web checked out Gameboy through his goggles and quickly summed the guy up as untrained as well as downright careless. The accuracy of this opinion was reinforced when the guy pulled the Gameboy from his pocket and actually started playing it.

There were lights on in the main building of the compound. The lights must have been powered by portable generators, because there were no overhead electrical lines evident. If there had been, HRT would have found the transformer supplying the power and shut it off just before the assault. Going from light to dark was disorienting and would have given HRT the slight edge it needed to prevail without loss of life.

Since there were only two assault teams, snipers were standing by to jump into their blacks, or Nomex flight suits, and help in the attack. Each sniper carried, in addition to his sniper rifle, a CAR-16 auto assault rifle with a three-power Litton night scope. The plan was to hit from the front and the side in blitzkrieg style and contain the Frees in the main building. At that point the regular FBI would come in, read rights, execute search warrants and the next stop for the Frees would be court and then prison.

There was just enough to make this interesting, thought Web. The Frees had to know that the FBI was watching them. This was a very rural area and word of strangers got around, and the Bureau had had them under surveillance for a while now. HRT had to assume that their chief weapon, the element of surprise, would at least be diminished in this case.

Having learned something from the Charlie Team debacle, they had brought along two very bulky but very powerful thermal imagers. Romano fired one up and performed a sweep of each building on their side of the compound. Gulf was doing the same from the front. This thermal imager could look through darkened glass and even walls and nail the heat-filled image of any person lurking there with a slingshot or a mini-gun. Romano completed his surveillance and gave the all-clear. No automated sniper nest this time. All buildings except the main one were empty. It might go very clean.

Through his NV goggles Web looked around and noted the lights winking through the jumble of trees. These light pulses represented snipers who were wearing fireflies, infrared glow plugs the size of a cigarette lighter. The flies would blink every two seconds in a light spectrum visible only with night optics. This way the snipers could keep in touch with one another without giving away their position. If a target was suspected of having night optics as well, the flies weren’t used, for obvious reasons. Assaulters never used them. Each wink of light represented a friendly body with a .308 suppressed rifle backing him up. It was comforting when you weren’t sure whether you were walking into an ice-cream parlor or a hornet’s nest. Web assumed tonight that it would be the latter.

With a flick of his thumb, Web put the fire selector on his MP-5 to multiple-round bursts and then worked on getting his pulse rate down to the proper zone. There were the sounds of wildlife all around—squirrels, mostly—and birds flitting from tree limb to tree limb, disturbed by the men crouched in their space with all this fancy gear. The padding of animal paws and the flapping of bird wings was somehow comforting, if only to reassure Web that he was still on planet earth, still connected to living, breathing things, though he had potential killing on his mind.

The plan here was a little dicey. The snipers were not going to open fire on the sentries. Gunning down folks in cold blood who had yet to be convicted of anything was not something law enforcement types got to do very often; Web certainly never had. It would take a very high-stakes hostage situation to justify that sort of approval from Washington. The director and probably the attorney general would have to bless that sort of operation. Here they were going to flank the guards, jump them and make sure they had no time or opportunity to warn their comrades inside of the coming attack. The assaulters could have employed a diversionary explosive, or perhaps drawn the guards into the woods somehow to be met by assaulters in Ghillies waiting to jump them, but the flanking plan had been devised based on prior intelligence gathered on the Frees. That intel had proved correct in the careless nature of the sentries. It might just work, thought Web.

If the exterior breach points were locked, they would be blown, of course. That would warn the rest of the Frees, but by then HRT would be inside and the battle would pretty much be over, barring something extraordinary occurring, which Web could no longer rule out, ever again. Hotel was going to hit from the rear, Gulf from the side, in a very explosive way. Assault teams always tried to hit from angles, never front-back or side-side, to avoid friendly fire casualties.

Web tensed as Romano asked TOC for compromise authority and quickly got it. Now Web took one last cleansing breath and assumed the total focus of an assaulter with one of the most elite law enforcement teams ever put together. Pulse at sixty-four, Web really did just know his body’s inner workings.

Romano gave the high sign and he and Web went to the left and the other two operators slid to the right. A minute later they were on both flanks of Gameboy, who was still intent on his video screen, apparently having a great time whipping the computer’s ass. By the time he looked up, there were .45 pistols stuck in both of his ears. Before he even had a chance to say, “Shit,” he was down on the ground, Peerless cuffs around his hands and ankles, and a plastic chain strap tied the cuffs together so that he was fully immobilized like a tethered calf during a roping contest. At the same time a strip of adhesive was placed over his mouth. They took his pistol, cell phone and a knife they found in a sheath tied to his ankle. Web did leave the man his precious Gameboy.

They passed the living quarters of the group and moved to the crisis site, the exterior rear door of the main building, and crouched low. Romano touched the door gingerly, then grasped the door handle and tried it. Through his mask, Web could see him grimace. It was locked. Romano called up the breacher, who quickly moved forward, laid his four-hundred-grain flex linear charge, rolled out his cable and readied the detonator, while the rest of the team watched his back even as they took cover.

At that point Romano informed TOC that they were at phase line green and Web listened to TOC’s confirmatory response. Thirty seconds later, members of Gulf did the same thing, so Web knew they had successfully bagged Pale Shaq out front and then gone to the side of the building for their very special assault. TOC stated that it had control, and the line rankled Web even more now than it had before. Yeah, that’s what you said to Charlie, wasn’t it?

Three snipers joined the Gulf boys on the side and Ken McCarthy had come down from his Sierra One position and become an instant assaulter, along with two other Whiskey snipers who joined Web and Hotel Team. When Ken saw Web, Web couldn’t see the man’s expression, but Web was sure it was a surprised one. They all took off their NV goggles, since muzzle flashes and explosives made them useless anyway and would actually leave you blind and defenseless in such a light-filled environment. From here on, everyone had to simply use their ordinary five senses, and that was okay was Web.

The countdown began. Web’s heartbeat seemed to slow even more with each number. When TOC reached three, Web was fully in the zone. At the count of two, every HRT operator looked away from the crisis site so that the blast wouldn’t blind them. At the same moment each man’s fingers also slipped off his weapon’s safety once more; and then index fingers slid to triggers. Here we go, boys, Web thought.

The charge blew and the doors fell inward and Web and company roared through.

“Banging,” called out Romano as he drew a flash bang from his stretch cordura holder, pulled the pin and lobbed. Three seconds later a hundred-and-eighty-decibel explosion screamed through the hallway with a million-candlepower flash in its wake.

Web was to the right of Romano, looking for threats from any source, his gaze going first to distant corners, then pulling back. There was a small interior room with a hallway heading left off that. Their intelligence, confirmed by their thermal imagery, had told them that the Frees were gathered in the main room in the left rear of the building. It was a large space, maybe forty-by-forty, and mostly open, so they didn’t have to worry about lots of nooks and crannies for resistance to hole up in, but it was still a large space to secure, and there would no doubt be furniture and other equipment to hide behind. They dropped off one guy to hold the room they had first entered. The rules of engagement were that you never gave back ground you had taken, and you never allowed yourself to be rear-flanked. The rest of the strike force raced on.

So far, they had seen no one, although there were shouts up ahead. Web and the rest of Hotel flew down the hallway. One more turn and they’d hit the double doors to the target space.

“Banging,” yelled Web. He pulled the pin, lobbed the flash bang around this last turn. Now anybody looking to ambush them from up there would have to do so while blind and deaf.

When they reached the double doors, no one bothered to check whether they were locked. Romano quickly placed a slap charge on the doorjamb. The explosive consisted of a length of tire rubber one inch wide and six inches long with a strip of C4 explosive called a Detasheet. At the bottom of the device were a shock tube and a blasting cap. The men stood back, and Romano whispered into his mic. A few seconds went by and the slap charge blew and the doors collapsed inward.

At the exact same moment the side wall of the main room exploded inward and Gulf Team charged through the opening. They had placed a flex-linear charge—a V-shaped strip of lead and foam, loaded with explosives—around the wall. It had completely taken out the wall, throwing debris into the room. One of the Frees was already on the floor, holding his bloodied head and screaming.

Hotel charged in from the main doors and blitzed the danger zones that were basically any space where somebody with a gun could take cover and do HRT harm.

“Banging,” called out Romano as he raced down the right side of the room. The flash bang explosion sounded seconds later. The room was filled with smoke and blinding light and the shouts and screams were deafening as the Frees fell over each other trying to escape. However, there were no shots and Web began to think that this might just end peacefully, at least by HRT standards. Web followed Romano, his gaze sweeping the area, looking to the farthest corners for threats and then reeling back. He saw both young and old men hiding under overturned chairs, prone on the floor or pushed against the walls, all covering their eyes and holding their ears, all of them stunned by the carefully crafted assault. The overhead lights had been shot out by HRT as soon as they entered the room. They were all operating in darkness now except for the occasional flash bang.

“FBI! On the floor. Hands behind your head. Fingers interlocked. Do it! Now! Or you’re fucking dead!” Romano screamed all this out in a Brooklyn-accented, staccato roar.

That mouthful even got Web’s attention.

Most of the Frees in Web’s line of sight began to obey the instruction, semi-incapacitated as they were. That’s when he heard the first shot. And that was followed by another shot that hit the wall right next to Web’s head. From the corner of his eye Web saw a Free coming up from the floor holding an MP-5 and pointing it his way. Romano must have seen the same thing. They fired together, both their MP-5s on multiple-round bursts. All eight shots hit the man either in the head or torso and he and his gun went back down to the floor and stayed there.

The other Frees, blinded and disoriented but also angered by the death of one of their members, pulled their weapons and opened fire from behind whatever bulwarks they could find. HRT did the same. However, it was pistols, shotguns, flesh and overmatched men playing soldier against body armor, subguns and men trained for battle and killing. The gunfight did not last very long. The Frees foolishly looked at the eyes of their opponents. Web and his men calmly keyed on the hands and the weapons held there as they fired round after round, moving forward, staying on their marks. Aim-point red laser dots from the finders bolted to their subguns were directly on their targets. They maintained their fields of fire, shooting around and over each other as though they were performing a superbly choreographed dance. The frantic Frees shot wildly and with no discipline and missed badly. HRT aimed with precision and scored hit after hit. Twice HRT operators were shot, more out of luck than skill, but they were torso hits, ordinary pistol ammo running right into the latest-generation Kevlar; and while the impacts of the bullets stung like a bitch, the only result was a deep bruise. HRT aimed for the head and chest and each time a round impacted, another Free died.

With the rout clearly on, Web had had enough of this carnage and he flipped his MP-5 to full auto and raked the tops of the cheap tables and chairs, blowing chips of particle board and wood veneer and strips of metal into the air and filling the opposite walls with lead as his weapon threw out slugs at the rate of almost nine hundred a minute. HRT did not fire warning shots, but there was nothing in the manuals or in any other training Web had done that said you had to slaughter an outclassed enemy for no reason. The remaining Frees were no danger to anyone anymore; they just needed some extra persuasion to officially give up. Romano did likewise with spray from his gun. The resulting blizzard of destruction had the opposition flat on their bellies, hands over their heads, their thoughts of fighting and perhaps winning obviously gone. In unison Web and Romano slapped in fresh ten-millimeter ammo stacks with machinelike movements and speed.

They opened fire again, once more aiming just over the heads of the cowering enemy, and poured it on until the last of the Frees still alive finally made the only sensible choice. Two crawled out from the debris of dead bodies and destroyed chairs and tables, their hands in the air, their weapons on the floor. They looked shell-shocked and were sobbing. Another Free just sat there staring at his hands, bloody from touching a large, seeping wound on his leg, and there was vomit on his shirt. An operator went over to him, cuffed him and then laid him gently back, slapped on surgical gloves and mask and started ministering to the wound; a gunman suddenly turned lifesaver of his enemy. Paramedics were called up from the medic truck that accompanied every HRT assault to tend to the wounded. The guy would probably live, Web concluded, after checking out the bloody leg, if only to spend the rest of his life in prison.

As Romano and another assaulter cuffed the first two Frees to surrender, several other operators went quickly around the room making sure that the dead actually were. The men on the floor were just bodies now, Web felt certain. Humans were not built to withstand one shot to the head, much less half a dozen.

Web finally lowered his gun and took a deep breath. He surveyed the battlefield, looked over the survivors. Some didn’t even appear old enough to drive, dressed in oversized farm jeans, T-shirts and dirty boots. One of them had a peach-fuzz goatee; another even had acne. Two of the dead men looked old enough to be grandfathers and maybe had recruited their grandsons to join the Frees; and die as one. They hardly qualified as worthy opponents. They were just a bunch of stupid people with guns and screwed-up lives who had run into the realization of their worst nightmares and foolishly chosen the wrong course of action. Web counted eight dead bodies, the blood flowing thick and absorbing fast into the cheap carpet. And, though the Frees would contest it, all blood, regardless of ethnic or racial background, flowed red out of the body. At that level, everybody was the same.

He leaned against the wall even as he heard the sirens coming. It hadn’t been a fair fight. Yet it had not been a fair fight last time either. A part of him should have at least felt some level of satisfaction. However, the only thing Web London felt was sick to his stomach. Killing was never an easy business and maybe that’s what separated him from men like the Ernest B. Frees of the world.

Romano came up to him. “Where the hell did those shots come from?”

Web just shook his head.

“Well, shit,” said Romano, “it ain’t exactly how I figured this going down.”

Web noted the large bullet hole in Romano’s cammie smock that revealed the Kevlar underneath. The hole was near his belly button. Romano followed Web’s gaze and shrugged it off like it was a mosquito bite.

“Another inch lower and Angie’d have to get her kicks somewhere else,” said Romano.

Web struggled to recall exactly what he had seen and what he had heard and exactly when. Web knew one thing for certain: they were all in for a lot of questions and none of those questions held easy answers. Pritchard’s warning came hurtling back to him. They had just annihilated numerous members of the Frees, the group suspected of wiping out a team of HRT. What Web and the others had really done was open fire and wasted a bunch of young boys and old men because shots had come from a source they weren’t sure of and because Web had seen one of them lifting up his gun and pointing it his way. Web was completely justified in doing what he did, but it wouldn’t take a master spin doctor to whip that set of facts into something that smelled to high heaven. And in Washington, D.C., they had more spinmeisters per capita than anywhere else on the planet.

Web could hear feet pounding toward them. The regulars would be showing up soon, the Bates’s of the world. They would take over the task of figuring out what the hell had happened. Like Ro- mano had said, HRT was just in the business of banging and hanging. Well, they just might have hung themselves this time. Web started to feel something he never had when the bullets were flying: fear.

There was movement over a thousand yards away in the woods to the rear of the compound and behind the perimeter set up by HRT. The ground seemed to rise up and a man crouched there, his sniper rifle with attached scope held in his right hand. It was the same rifle he had used to kill Chris Miller outside Randall Cove’s house in Fredericksburg. The FBI probably thought that Web London had been the target, but they would be wrong. Miller’s death was just another way to bring further misery to Web London. And what the man had just done, instigating the fight between the hapless Frees and HRT, was simply another method of adding to London’s mounting troubles. The man laid aside the cloth that was covered with dirt, mud, animal feces, leaves and other things designed to help him blend in with the surroundings, his very own Ghillie suit. He had long ago concluded that one should only copy from the best. And, at least for now, HRT was the best. And Web London was supposed to be the best of this elite group. That distinction put him squarely in the man’s sights. This was personal to him. Very personal. He folded the material and hooked it to his backpack, and Clyde Macy quietly made his escape. Despite his normally stoic nature, the man just had to smile. Mission accomplished.