Last Man Standing (9 page)

McCarthy thought about this. “I remember him sitting on a trash can. By that time, everybody was showing up.”

“Did you see any suits take custody of the kid?”

McCarthy thought again. “No, I sort of recall Romano talking to somebody, but that’s all.”

“Did you recognize any of them?”

“You know we don’t interface with the regulars that much.”

“How about DEA?”

“That’s all I can tell you, Web.”

“You been talking to Romano?”

“A little.”

“Don’t believe everything you hear, Ken. It’s not healthy.”

“Including from you?” McCarthy asked pointedly.

“Including from me.”

As Web drove away from Quantico, he realized he had a lot of ground to cover. This was officially not his investigation, yet
in some ways it was more his than anyone else’s. But he had to take care of something else first, something even more important
than finding out who had set up his team. And finding out what had happened to a little boy with a bullet hole on his cheek
and no shirt to his name.

S
ix funerals. Web attended six funerals over three days. By the fourth one, he couldn’t muster a single tear. He walked into
the church or the funeral home and listened to people he mostly didn’t know talk about fallen men he knew better than he understood
himself in some ways. It was as though all of his nerves had been boiled away, along with part of his soul. In a way he felt
incapable of reacting as he was supposed to. He was terrified he would start laughing when he should be mourning.

At the services half the caskets were open, the rest not. Some of the dead men had fared better with the size and placement
of the wounds that had killed them and thus had open caskets. However, staring at pale, collapsed faces and rigid, shrunken
bodies in metal boxes, inhaling flower fragrance and hearing the sobs of all those around him made Web wish he could just
lie down in a box too and be put away in the ground to hide forever. The funeral of a hero; there were far worse ways to be
remembered.

He had wrapped his hand back up in the layers of gauze because he felt guilty walking among the bereaved without a trace of
a wound. It was a pathetic thing to be concerned with, he knew, yet he felt like a walking slap in the face to the survivors.
All they really knew was that Web London had somehow gotten off with barely a scratch. Had he run? Had he left his comrades
to die? He could see those questions in some of the people’s faces. Was that always the fate of the sole survivor?

The funeral processions had passed between endless lines of men and women in uniform and hundreds of others dressed in the
neat suits and sensible shoes of the FBI. Motorcycles led the way, citizens lined the streets and flags everywhere flew at
half mast. The President and most of his Cabinet came, along with many other VIPs. For a few days, the entire world talked
of nothing else except the slaughter of six good men in an alley. Not much was said about the seventh man, and for that Web
was mostly grateful. Still, he wondered how long that moratorium could possibly last for him.

The city of Washington was deeply stricken. And it was not entirely over the fate of the slain men, for the broader implications
were troubling. Had criminals really become so brazen? Was society coming apart at the seams? Were the police not keeping
pace? Was American law enforcement’s crown jewel, the FBI, losing its luster? The Middle Eastern and Chinese news services
were having a particularly delicious time reporting yet another example of Western mayhem that would one day bring arrogant
America to its soft knees. Cheers were no doubt racing up and down the streets of Baghdad, Teheran, Pyongyang and Beijing
at the thought of the old USA falling apart one miserable media-fueled crisis at a time. The pundits on American soil were
spouting so many absurd scenarios that Web no longer even opened a newspaper or turned on a TV or radio. If anyone had asked
him, though, he would have said that the whole world, and not just the United States, had been screwed up for a long time.

There had been some relief from this crossfire, though its catalyst was another appalling tragedy. A Japanese commercial jetliner
had crashed off the Pacific Coast, so the newsmongers had chased after that story and left the alley and its dead behind for
now. A single news truck was still there, but scraps of three hundred bodies floating in the ocean was a far bigger draw than
a days-old story about a team of dead FBI agents. And for that Web was also grateful.
Leave us alone to grieve in peace.

He had been debriefed “uptown” at the Hoover Building and at the WFO on three different occasions, by several teams of investigators.
They had their pads and pencils, their recorders and some of the younger agents even had laptops. They had asked Web many
more questions than he had answers for. However, when he told each group that he didn’t know why he had frozen and then fallen,
the pencils had stopped scribbling on paper, fingers had stopped clacking on keyboards.

“When you say you froze, did you see something? Hear something to make you do that?” The man spoke in a monotone, which, to
Web, was one imperceptible inflection short of incredulity or, worse, outright disbelief.

“I don’t really know.”

“You really don’t know? You’re not sure if you froze?”

“I’m not sure. I mean, I did. I couldn’t move. It was like I was paralyzed.”

“But you moved after your team was killed?”

“Yes,” Web conceded.

“What had changed to allow you to do that?”

“I don’t know.”

“And when you got to the courtyard, you fell?”

“That’s right.”

“Right before the guns opened fire,” said another investigator. Web could barely hear his own answer. “Yes.”

The silence that followed these meager responses came close to dissolving Web’s already bludgeoned insides.

During each debriefing, Web had kept his hands on top of the table, his gaze steady on each questioner’s face, his posture
in a slight forward lean. These men were all professional, seasoned inquisitors. Web knew that if he looked away, sat back,
rubbed his head the wrong way or, worse yet, crossed his arms, they would instantly conclude he was a lying sack of shit.
Web wasn’t being untruthful, but he wasn’t telling all of the truth either. Yet if Web started talking about how the vision
of a little boy had had a weird effect on him, perhaps inexplicably caused him to freeze, thus saving his life—or about then
feeling weighed down as though encased in concrete and then seconds later being able to freely move—he would be finished at
the Bureau. The higher-ups tended to frown on field agents making insane comments. Yet he had one thing going for him. Those
machine gun nests didn’t disintegrate by themselves. And his rifle rounds were embedded in all of them. And the snipers had
seen everything, and he had warned Hotel Team and saved the boy on top of it. Web made sure he said that. He made sure all
of them knew that.
You can kick me while I’m down, friends, just not too hard. I’m a damn hero after all.

“I’ll be all right,” Web had told them. “I just need a little time. I’ll be all right.” And for one awful moment Web thought
that might be the first actual lie he had told all day.

They would call him back in as needed, they told him. For now, they just wanted him to do nothing. He was to take plenty of
time to get himself together. The Bureau had offered the assistance of a counselor, a mental health professional, in fact
they had insisted on it, and Web said he would go, although there was still a stigma at the Bureau for those seeking such
help. When things looked okay, Web was told, he would be assigned to another assaulter or sniper team, if he so desired, until
Charlie could be rebuilt. If not, he could take another position within the Bureau. There was even talk of allowing him to
burn an “office of preference” transfer that would allow him to proceed directly to “Go” in the form of an office he would
retire from. That sort of treatment was usually reserved for senior-level agents and symbolized that the Bureau was really
unsure of what to do with him. Officially, Web was in the middle of an administrative inquiry that might well blossom into
a full investigation, depending on how things shook out. Well, no one had given Web his Miranda rights, which was both good
and bad. Good because Web getting his Miranda warning would mean he was under arrest, bad in that anything he said during
the inquiry could be used against him in civil or criminal proceedings. The only thing he had done wrong, apparently, was
having survived. And yet that was a source of guilt far stronger than anything the Bureau could charge him with.

No, really, whatever he wanted, Web was told, he could have. They were all his friends. He had their full support.

Web asked how the investigation was going and didn’t get an answer in return. So much for their full support, Web thought.

“Get better,” another man had told him. “That’s
all
you need to focus on.”

As he was leaving from his last debriefing, he got one final question. “How’s the hand?” the man asked. Web didn’t know the
guy, and although the question seemed innocent enough, there was something in the fellow’s eyes that made Web want to deck
him. Instead, Web said it was just fine, thanked them all and left.

On the way out from the last session he had passed the FBI’s Wall of Honor, where hung plaques for each of the FBI personnel
killed in the line of duty. There would be a major addition coming to the wall, the largest single one in the history of the
Bureau, in fact. Web had sometimes wondered if he would ever end up on there, with his professional life compacted into a
chunk of wood and brass hanging on a wall. He left Hoover and drove home, besieged by many more questions than he wanted to
confront.

FBI also officially stood for Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity, and right now Web didn’t feel he possessed any of these qualities.

F
rancis Westbrook was a giant of a man, with the height and girth of a NFL starting left tackle. Regardless of the weather
or season, his clothes of choice were silk tropical short-sleeved shirts, matching slacks and suede loafers with no socks.
His head was bald, his large ears were covered with diamond studs and his enormous fingers were festooned with gold rings.
He wasn’t a dandy of any sort, but there simply weren’t that many things he could spend his drug earnings on without the law
or, even worse, the IRS sniffing around. And he also liked to look good. Right now Westbrook was riding in the backseat of
a large Mercedes sedan with black-tinted windows. To the left of him was his first lieutenant, Antoine Peebles. Driving was
a tall, well-built young man named Toona, and in the passenger seat was his chief of security, Clyde Macy, the only white
guy in Westbrook’s entire crew, and it was easy to see that the man carried that distinction with great pride. Peebles had
a neatly trimmed beard and Afro, was short and heavyset, but he wore his Armani and his designer shades well. He looked more
like a Hollywood exec than a high-level drug entrepreneur. Macy looked like a breathing skeleton, preferred his clothes black
and professional-looking and with his shaved head could easily have been mistaken for a neo-Nazi.

This represented the inner circle of Westbrook’s small empire and the leader of that empire held a nine-millimeter pistol
in his right hand and seemed to be looking for someone to use it on. “You want to tell me one more time how you lost Kevin?”
He looked at Peebles and clutched the pistol even tighter. Its safety was in the grip and Westbrook had just released it.
Peebles seemed to recognize this and yet didn’t hesitate in responding. “If you let us keep somebody on him twenty-four and
seven, then we’d never lose him. He goes out sometimes at night. He went out that night and didn’t come back.”

Westbrook slapped his enormous thigh. “He was in that alley. The Feds had him and now they don’t. He’s mixed up with this
shit somehow and it happened in my damn backyard.” He smacked the gun against the door and roared, “I want Kevin back!”

Peebles looked at him nervously, while Macy showed no reaction.

Westbrook put a hand on the driver’s shoulder. “Toona, you get some of the boys together and you gonna hit every part of this
damn town, you hear me? I know you already done it once, but you do it again. I want that boy back nice and safe, you hear
me? Nice and safe and don’t come back till you done it. Damn it, you hear me, Toona?”

Toona glanced in the rearview mirror. “I hear you, I hear you.”

“Set up,” said Peebles. “All around. To put the blame on you.”

“You think I ain’t know that? You think ’cause you went to college that you smart and I’m stupid? I know the Feds coming after
my ass on this. I know the word on the street. Somebody’s trying to get all the crews together, almost like a damn union,
but they know I ain’t joining shit and it’s messing up their plan.” Westbrook’s eyes were red. He hadn’t slept much in the
last forty-eight hours. That was just his life; surviving the night was usually the big project of the day. And all he could
think about was a little boy out there somewhere. He was getting close to the edge; he could feel it. He had known this day
might come, and still, he was not prepared for it.

“Whoever got Kevin, they gonna let me know it. They want something. They want me to jump my crew in, that’s what they want.”

“And you’ll give it to them?”

“Anything I got they can have. So long as I get Kevin back.” He paused and looked out the window, at the corners and alleys
and cheap bars they were passing, where his drug tentacles slithered. He did a brisk business in the suburbs too, where the
real money was. “Yeah, that’s right. I get Kevin back and then I kill every one of the mothers. I do it myself.” He pointed
the pistol at an imaginary foe. “Start with the knees and work my way up.”

Peebles looked warily at Macy, who still showed no sign of any reaction; it was as though he were made of stone. “Well, nobody’s
contacted us so far,” said Peebles.