Last Man Standing (4 page)

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.

W
eb 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.

O
utside 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.