Last Man Standing

by David Baldacci

  so I didn’t. If it makes you feel any better, while you were unconscious, I shooed away some brothers who came sniffing around your carcass.”

  “Thanks, because I’m not done with this carcass yet.”

  “We need to talk, but not here. Some of Big F’s boys might still be hanging around. And this place ain’t safe, not even for armed lawmen.”

  Web looked around. “Where, then? They knocked your old office down.”

  Cove smiled. “You been talking to Sonny, I know. I guess if old Sonny Venables thinks you’re all right, you’re all right. Boy’s got a nose for bad meat like the best hound dog I ever had me in Mississippi.”

  “There’s a lot of shit going on. You been in touch with Bates lately?”

  “We talk, but neither one of us is telling the other everything, and that’s cool. I know where Perce is coming from and he knows where I’m standing.” He handed Web a slip of paper. “Meet me here in thirty minutes.”

  Web looked at his watch. “I’m on special assignment. I’ve got to get back.”

  “Don’t worry, it won’t take long. Oh, one more thing.” He climbed inside Web’s car and searched for a few moments before coming back out holding something.

  “Satellite-based tracking device. Good as the stuff we use,” said Cove.

  “They’ve got a satellite,” said Web. “That’s comforting.”

  “It’s got a wireless communicator too.”

  So Web had been correct in deducing how they had relayed the directions to him after crossing over the Wilson Bridge.

  Cove switched the device off and pocketed it. “Evidence is evidence. Surprised they didn’t take it,” he added before disappearing into the woods.

  Sufficiently recovered to keep both eyes open at the same time and seeing only double instead of in gauzy triplicate, Web put the car in gear and headed out. He met Cove at the Mall downtown, at a bench near the Smithsonian Castle. When Web sat down there, he heard a voice but didn’t react. All that had been on the paper. Web reasoned that Cove was behind a set of bushes near the bench.

  “So Bates said he filled you in on me.”

  “He did. I’m sorry what happened to your family.”

  “Yeah,” was all Cove said to that.

  “I found the news clipping at your house, about you and Bates.”

  “You are good. That hiding place has worked for years.”

  “Why hide it?”

  “Red herring. Somebody searching your house, it gives them something to find that really means nothing. Anything really important I keep in my head.”

  “So the clipping was just a dodge? Nothing important?”

  Cove didn’t respond, so Web said, “Bates said you were on the butts of some big-time dealers, that they might have set up my team.”

  “That’s right. But this story is a long way from over. And I heard Westbrook tell you about the tunnels. I never figured that one. Good way to get the computers out and the guns in.”

  “I’m going to fill in Bates on that one ASAP and we’ll go take a look. You want in?”

  Cove didn’t answer and it took a second for Web to figure out why. Across the street a man was walking by. He was dressed like a homeless person, was staggering slightly as though he were drunk and he could very well have been both. However, Web couldn’t take any chances and obviously neither could Cove. Web reached for his gun and realized again that it was empty. He had a spare mag in the trunk of the car, but that was parked a good hundred feet away and he had forgotten to get the ammo out, idiot that he was. As though in answer to his thoughts, Web felt something slide next to him through the back support of the bench. He gripped the pistol that Cove had just handed him, whispered a thank-you and sat there, the gun held at his side, its muzzle following each move of the man across the street until he moved off.

  “You just never know what riffraff’s going to come on by,” Cove said.

  “Bates said that you might have been working through one of Westbrook’s guys, maybe Peebles or Macy, and that they might’ve set you up.”

  “Macy and Peebles weren’t my inside connection. I think my guy was dealing straight with me, at least mostly, but I think he was set up.”

  “So if the guy was shooting straight with you, any chance we can use him to get to the truth?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “How come?”

  “Because my inside guy was Toona.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “Big F’s guys skim all the time. That was just bullshit he was feeding you. He killed Toona for the ultimate sin, working with the cops.”

  “Did Toona think there were others involved besides Westbrook?”

  “Toona was basically muscle, but he had some brains. I’ve been working with him for about six months. We nailed him on some small stuff, but he’d already done four years in prison early on in his career and didn’t want to do any more. He told me about this new group coming in that was handling some of the local crew’s distribution and even cleaning up their dirty money through some legit operations. The service didn’t come cheap, but most of the crews apparently signed on—except Westbrook. He doesn’t trust anybody that much. But even drug crews get tired of shooting each other up. And consolidation of operations and cost-cutting works just as well in illegal businesses as it does legitimate ones. I’d been digging deep on this group but couldn’t crack it. My undercover identity was as a point man for a drug crew looking to relocate from Arizona to rural Virginia. We’d heard about this group and I got myself invited to look over their operation. At first I thought it was connected to Westbrook’s piece. But when I saw what was there, I knew it was big-time stuff.”

  “Bates mentioned the Oxycontin piece.”

  “That’s what makes this one special. I think the product this group was principally supplying the locals with were prescription drugs like Oxy, Percocet and the like. Low risk and huge profit margins. Now, Toona wasn’t in the ops side of the business, but he seemed to think that too. It’d be a whole new paradigm in the District’s drug trade. And this new group wasn’t stopping at D.C. I believe they’re moving the stuff up and down the East Coast.”

  “Oxy started out rural.”

  “Yeah, you heard of Rocky Mountain high? Well this is Appalachian high. But the Appalachian Mountains touch on about twenty states, from Alabama all the way up to the Canadian border. And there’s lots of room there to carve out a new homegrown drug empire on the backs of legitimate drugs. That’s why I called in WFO as soon as I realized the operation in that warehouse was a lot bigger than Westbrook. Now, I could have kept digging and maybe got some more stuff, but I ran the risk of them pulling out. I figured if we could get the bean counters to testify, we could bring this whole Oxy crew down. Man, I look back at it now, and you know what I think?”

  “That it was too good to be true?”

  “You got it.” Cove stopped talking for a moment. “Look, Web, I’m sorry what happened to your guys. I never in a million years smelled the setup. But I’ll take the responsibility because it was my screwup. And I’ll sacrifice everything I got left, even my life, to make it right.”

  “What you do for a living, I never could. I don’t know how you guys do it.”

  “Funny, I was thinking the same thing about you. Now you go to those tunnels and figure out how they got that stuff in and out. And maybe you’ll see something that’ll tell you who. And I’m not thinking that it’s Westbrook. There’s somebody else out there, having a nice laugh at our expense.”

  “You got any firmer thoughts on that?”

  “I’m still feeling my way. Whoever it is, they are wired in tight somewhere important, because they seem to be able to keep one step ahead of everybody.”

  “Wired tight to who, somebody at the Bureau?”

  “You said it, I didn’t.”

  “You got proof of that?”

  “My gut. You listen to yours?”

  “All the time. I take it you fee

l like the odd man out.”

  “What, you mean everybody and their brother thinking I turned traitor and helped burn a bunch of my own? Yeah, it has occupied my thoughts of late.”

  “You’re not alone there, Cove.”

  “Hey, Web, we’re blood brothers in a way. Branded traitors for something we didn’t do, and some people just don’t want to hear it.”

  “Is that why you’re not coming in?”

  “See, the bottom line is, I got taken, snookered, suckered, whatever you want to call it. I’m no traitor, but I messed up, that’s almost as bad as jumping sides in my line of work.”

  “We are blood brothers, then, because I did the same damn thing.”

  “Well, maybe we’ll both be standing at the end of this dance, what do you say?”

  “I say I’ll give it my best shot.”

  “Keep your head down, London, these mothers shoot low.”

  “Hey, Cove?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Apology accepted.”

  Web drove to DuPont Circle. He grabbed a spare mag for his pistol from the trunk and put the gun Cove had given him in the rear of his waistband and then took a cab to the WFO. Bates had long since gone home and Web decided he would wait until morning to contact him. The guy could probably use a good night’s sleep and those tunnels weren’t going anywhere. Instead of checking out another set of Bucar wheels, Web decided to do something really crazy. He was going to go get his very own car.

  The press army wasn’t parked outside his house anymore, yet Web still did not take any chances. He entered the house from the rear, slipped inside the Mach, opened the garage doors and eased the car out, its lights off. He waited until he was down the street before he turned on the lights, then he stepped on the gas, all the while looking in his rearview mirror. Nothing. He headed back to East Winds.

  34

  When Web got back to the carriage house, Romano wasn’t there; Web even checked the antique cars downstairs in case his partner had crawled into one to admire it and had fallen asleep. It was almost four o’clock in the morning and his partner was probably prowling around outside. As a sniper, Romano had been restless with too much natural energy despite all their training to take things slow and methodically unless drastic circumstances dictated otherwise. Yet when it was time for action, just about everybody took a backseat to Paul Romano. Since Web’s cell phone was out of operation, he used the phone in the house to call Romano and breathed a sigh of relief when the man answered.

  “So how’d your appointment go?” asked Romano.

  “Boring. I’ll fill you in later. Where are you?”

  “Everything was secure, so I’ve been poking around the place. There’s an old watchtower on the west side. See for miles in every direction.”

  “I know; I’ve been there.”

  “Well, I’m there right now. Felt like a little jog.”

  “That’s a bit of a hike, Paulie.”

  “Walk in the park. You might want to come out here and bring out a pair of NVs.”

  “What are you spying on?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Web left the carriage house from the rear, slipped on his headgear, attached his ambient light source night-vision binoculars to it, powered up and fixed the relief to his eyes. The world instantly became an ethereal, fluid green. You couldn’t use the contraption for very long because the goggles were heavy enough that you would get a piercing pain in your neck, followed by a headache that would make you forget the neck ache. Web always kept one eye closed when scanning through the goggles even though this distorted your depth perception even more; if you didn’t keep one eye closed, when you stopped looking through the goggles all you’d see would be a brilliant orange ball in each eye. And at that point a ninety-year-old in a wheelchair could get the drop on you.

  As a sniper, one had to use various pieces of equipment to get the job done, from high-tech to the lowest tech of all: camouflage. Web coveted his Ghillie suit, a concoction of burlap and cordura material that he had patiently covered with animal excrement and other foul substances to allow it to blend into a rugged forest or jungle environment. Each HRT sniper gave his Ghillie his own personal stamp and Web had spent years improving on his by defiling it even more. The Ghillie had been originally designed by the Scots over four hundred years ago in the course of waging countless guerrilla wars against those seeking to conquer them. It worked just as well now as it had then. Web had lain under his Ghillie in the middle of a jungle in Central America with dope dealers toting submachine guns walking all around him, and they never knew Web was there until he stuck his gun in their backs and read them their rights.

  He moved forward again and pushed and then clicked the NV to IR status, which caused an internal light source to come on and vastly intensified the field of vision. Web wanted to make sure the equipment worked, for NV goggles batteries were notorious for failing right when you needed them to work. He didn’t like to use the IR for very long, because it had one major drawback. For anyone watching him with night-vision goggles, the IR magnifier gave off a light beacon, like a large flashlight in one’s face. Web would be a sitting duck. He clicked off the IR and put the headgear away in his backpack. He would rely on merely his eyes from now on, something he had done with every shot he had ever taken. Sometimes you couldn’t improve on nature.

  The air was crisp and the sounds of the farm and surrounding woods many and varied. Web set a good pace and he covered the ground to the watchtower in enviable time. It was good to know he was still in decent shape. After eight years of relentless training you didn’t lose it all in a short period of time, he reasoned. He liked the forest in the darkness; it felt as comfortable to him as a La-ZBoy and a big-screen TV would to the average American male.

  He sighted the watchtower and stopped. Since he didn’t have a cell phone, Web put his hands up to his face, formed a rude bugle of sorts and let out a call, the same signal he and Romano had used when they were sniping. It could either be a gust of wind or a bird commonly found just about anywhere. Web was sure Romano would remember, and a few seconds later he heard the answering message. All clear.

  Web broke from the tree line and hustled to the watchtower, gripped the wooden rungs and climbed silently up. Romano greeted him at the little hinged door in the floor of the observation space. Web knew Romano couldn’t see Web’s fresh injuries courtesy of Toona and Big F, and that was just as well, because he didn’t want to waste breath right now explaining them. And of course Romano would give him a hard time about it. He could just hear the words Shit, you let them do that to you? passing through the man’s lips.

  Web looked at Romano as he pulled out a ten-power Litton scope that was normally attached to a .308 sniper rifle.

  “Anything good on?” asked Web.

  “Check this out, right through that break in the trees to the northwest.”

  Web looked through the scope. “I take it I’m looking at the Southern Belle.”

  “Interesting stuff going on, for a horse farm.”

  Web adjusted the scope to his eye and sighted through it. There was indeed a nice break in the trees, which revealed a fine view of the neighboring spread.

  There were two sizable buildings that looked relatively new. Large trucks were parked next to them and Web watched as men with walkie-talkies raced in different directions. A door opened on the side of one of the buildings and Web saw that whatever was going on inside required a lot of light. A tractor-trailer was backed up to a warehouse-type roll-up door and men were bringing large boxes out on hand trucks and rolling them up inside the truck’s trailer.

  “Something big is going on,” said Web. “Auto chop shop, drugs, stolen aviation parts, spies, technology pirates or lots of other things. Damn.”

  “Fascinating neighborhood. And here I was, thinking Virginia horse country was just a bunch of old duffers riding around drunk chasing little foxes while the little women had tea in the afternoon. Boy, have I got a lot to learn.” He looked at Web. “So what do you think?”

  “I think with all we got going on, the Southern Belle will have to keep. But if something pops at least we’ll be right here to do something about it.”

  Romano grinned, obviously happy with the thought of coming action and possible mayhem. “Now you’re talking my language.”

  35

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