Last Man Standing
__________
Absolute Power
Total Control
The Winner
The Simple Truth
Saving Faith
Wish You Well
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
LAST MAN STANDING
. Copyright © 2001 by Columbus Rose, Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including
information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may
quote brief passages in a review.
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ISBN: 978-0-7595-2647-1
A hardcover edition of this book was published in 2001 by Warner Books.
First eBook Edition: November 2001
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.
Contents
To all the wonderful teachers and other volunteers across the country who have helped make the All America Reads project a
reality.
__________
This book is also dedicated to the memory of
Yossi Chaim Paley
(April 14, 1988–March 10, 2001)
The bravest young man I ever met.
“A wrongly accused man is always vilified
by the ignorant masses.
Such a man should fire at will,
he is bound to hit something.”
—A
NONYMOUS
__________
“Speed, surprise and violence of action.”
—H
OSTAGE
R
ESCUE MOTTO
W
eb London held a semiautomatic SR75 rifle custom built for him by a legendary gunsmith. The SR didn’t stop at merely wounding
flesh and bone; it disintegrated them. Web would never leave home without this high chieftain of muscle guns, for he was a
man steeped in violence. He was always prepared to kill, to do so efficiently and without error. Lord, if he ever took a life
by mistake he might as well have eaten the bullet himself, for all the misery it would cause him. Web just had that complex
way of earning his daily bread. He couldn’t say he loved his job, but he did excel at it.
Despite having a gun welded to his hand virtually every waking moment of his life, Web was not one to coddle his weapons.
While he never called a pistol his friend or gave it a slick name, weapons were still an important part of Web’s life, though
like wild animals guns were not things easily tamed. Even trained lawmen missed their targets and everything else eight out
of ten times. To Web, not only was that unacceptable, it was also suicidal. He had many peculiar qualities, but a death wish
was not one of them. Web had plenty of people looking to kill him as it was, and once they had nearly gotten their man.
About five years prior he had come within a liter or two of spilled blood of checking out on the floor of a school gymnasium
strewn with other men already dead or dying. After he had triumphed over his wounds and stunned the doctors tending him, Web
started carrying the SR instead of the submachine gun his comrades-in-arms toted. It resembled an M16, chambered a big .308
bullet, and was an excellent choice if intimidation was your goal. The SR made everyone want to be your friend.
Through the smoked-out window of the Suburban, Web eyed each fluid knot of people along the corners and suspicious clumps
of humanity lurking in darkened alleys. As they moved farther into hostile territory, Web’s gaze returned to the street, where
he knew every vehicle could be a gun cruiser in disguise. He was looking for any drifting eye, nod of head or fingers slyly
tapping on cell phones in an attempt to do serious harm to old Web.
The Suburban turned the corner and stopped. Web glanced at the six other men huddled with him. He knew they were contemplating
the same things he was: Get out fast and clean, move to cover positions, maintain fields of fire. Fear did not really enter
into the equation; nerves, however, were another matter. High-octane adrenaline was not his friend; in fact, it could very
easily get him killed.
Web took a deep, calming breath. He needed his pulse rate to be between sixty and seventy. At eighty-five beats your gun would
tremble against your torso; at ninety ticks you couldn’t work the trigger, as blood occlusion in veins and constricted nerves
in shoulders and arms combined to guarantee that you would fail to perform at an acceptable level. At over one hundred pops
a minute you lost your fine motor skills entirely and wouldn’t be able to hit an elephant with a damn cannon at three feet;
you might as well slap a sign on your forehead that read KILL ME QUICK, because that undoubtedly would be your fate.
Web pushed out the juice, drew in the peace and for him there was calm to be distilled from brewing chaos.
The Suburban started moving, turned one more corner and stopped. For the last time, Web knew. Radio squelch was broken when
Teddy Riner spoke into his bone microphone or “mic.” Riner said, “Charlie to TOC, request compromise authority and permission
to move to yellow.”
Through Web’s mic he heard TOC’s, or Tactical Operations Center’s, terse response, “Copy, Charlie One, stand by.” In Web’s
Crayola world, “yellow” was the last position of concealment and cover. Green was the crisis site, the moment of truth: the
breach. Navigating the hallowed piece of earth that stretched between the relative safety and comfort of yellow and the moment
of truth green could be quite eventful. “Compromise authority”—Web said the words to himself. It was just a way of asking
for the okay to gun down people if necessary and making it sound like you were merely getting permission from your boss to
cut a few bucks off the price of a used car. Radio squelch was broken again as TOC said, “TOC to all units: You have compromise
authority and permission to move to yellow.”
Thank you so very much, TOC.
Web edged closer to the cargo doors of the Suburban. He was point and Roger McCallam had the rear. Tim Davies was the breecher
and Riner was the team leader. Big Cal Plummer and the other two assaulters, Lou Patterson and Danny Garcia, stood ready with
MP-5 machine guns and flash bangs and .45-caliber pistols, and their calm demeanors. As soon as the doors opened, they would
fan out into a rolling mass looking for threats from all directions. They would move toes first, then heels, knees bent to
absorb recoil in case they had to fire. Web’s face mask shrunk his field of vision to a modest viewing area: his miniature
Broadway for the coming real-life mayhem, no expensive ticket or fancy suit required. Hand signals would suffice from now
on. When bullets were flying at you, you tended to get a bit of cotton mouth anyway. Web never talked much at work.
He watched as Danny Garcia crossed himself, just like he did every time. And Web said what he always said when Garcia crossed
himself before the Chevy doors popped open. “God’s too smart to come ’round here, Danny boy. We’re on our own.” Web always
said this in a jesting way, but he was not joking.
Five seconds later the cargo doors burst open and the team piled out too far away from ground zero. Normally they liked to
drive right up to their final destination and go knock-knock-boom with their two-by-four explosive, yet the logistics here
were a little tricky. Abandoned cars, tossed refrigerators and other bulky objects conveniently blocked the road to the target.
Radio squelch broke again as snipers from X-Ray Team called in. There were men in the alley up ahead, X-Ray reported, but
not part of the group Web was hunting. At least the snipers didn’t think so. As one, Web and his Charlie Team rose and hurtled
down the alley. The seven members of their Hotel Team counterparts had been dropped off by another Suburban on the far side
of the block to attack the target from the left rear side. The grand plan had Charlie and Hotel meeting somewhere in the middle
of this combat zone masquerading as a neighborhood.
Web and company were heading east now, an approaching storm right on their butts. Lightning, thunder, wind and horizontal
rain tended to screw up ground communications, tactical positioning and men’s nerves, usually at the critical time when all
of them needed to operate perfectly. With all their technological wizardry, the only available response to Mother Nature’s
temper and the poor ground logistics was simply to run faster. They chugged down the alley, a narrow strip of potholed, trash-littered
asphalt. There were buildings close on either side of them, the brick veneer blistered by decades of gun battles. Some had
been between good and bad, but most involved young men taking out their brethren over drug turf, women or just because. Here,
a gun made you a man, though you might really only be a child, running outside after watching your Saturday morning cartoons,
convinced that if you blew a large hole in someone, he might actually get back up and keep playing with you.
They came upon the group the snipers had identified: clusters of blacks, Latinos and Asians wheeling and dealing drugs. Apparently,
potent highs and the promise of an uncomplicated cash-and-carry business cut through all troublesome issues of race, creed,
color or political affiliation. To Web most of these folks looked a single snort, needle nick or popped pill from the grave.
He marveled that this pathetic assemblage of veteran paint hackers even had the energy or clarity of thought to consummate
the simple transaction of cash for little bags of brain inferno barely disguised as feel-good potion, and only then the first
time you drove the poison into your body.
In the face of Charlie’s intimidating wall of guns and Kevlar, all but one of the druggies dropped to their knees and begged
not to be killed or indicted. Web focused on the one young man who remained standing. His head was swathed in a red do-rag
symbolizing some gang allegiance. The kid had a toothpick waist and barbell shoulders; ratty gym shorts hung down past his
butt crack and a tank shirt rode lopsided across his muscular torso. He also had an attitude several miles long riding on
his features, the kind that said,
I’m smarter, tougher and will outlive you.
Web had to admit, though, the guy carried the rag-look well.
It took all of thirty seconds to determine that all but Bandanna Boy were looped out of their minds and that none of the druggies
were carrying guns—or cell phones that could be used to call up the target and warn them. Bandanna Boy did have a knife, yet
knives had no chance against Kevlar and submachine guns. The team let him keep it. But as Charlie Team moved on, Cal Plummer
ran with them backward, his MP-5 trained on the young back-alley entrepreneur, just in case.
Bandanna Boy did call after Web, something about admiring Web’s rifle and wanting to buy it. He’d give him a sweet deal, he
yelled after Web, and then said he’d shoot Web and everyone else dead with it. HA-HA! Web glanced to the rooftops, where he
knew members of Whiskey Team and X-Ray were in their forward firing positions with rounds seated and lethal beads drawn on
the brain stems of this gaggle of losers. The snipers were Web’s best friends. He understood exactly how they approached their
work, because for years he had been one of them.