His superiors, including Percy Bates (when Web had been transferred to the Washington Field Office after several years in
the Midwest), had filled his personnel file with commendation after commendation, impressed with his dedication, his physical
and mental skills and his ability to think on his feet. He had worked outside the rules at certain points, yet most of the
really good agents did, he thought, because some of the Bureau rules were just plain stupid. That was also something Percy
Bates had taught him.
Web parked, got out of the car and headed into HRT’s building, which would never be termed beautiful by anyone who could actually
see. He was welcomed with open arms, and tough, hardened men, who had seen more death and danger than the average citizen
could possibly imagine, broke down with him in private rooms. HRT was not a place where anyone rushed to show his vulnerabilities
and emotions. No man wanted to be firing guns and risking his life next to the shy, sensitive type. You left your warm fuzzy
aura at the door and just brought your alpha male kick-ass side to work. Everything here was based on seniority and ability;
those two attributes usually, though not always, paralleled each other.
Web returned the flag to his commander. Web’s chief, a lean, muscular man with salt-and-pepper hair and a former HRT operator
who could still outwork most of his men, accepted the flag with dignity and a handshake that dissolved into an embrace in
the privacy of the man’s office. Well, thought Web, at least they didn’t hate his guts.
The HRT’s admin building had been built to hold fifty personnel, yet now a hundred people called it their home away from home.
There was a two-holer for all those folks, so the pee lines were long even for elite crime-busting Feds. There were small
offices behind the reception area for the commander, who was at the rank of an ASAC, or assistant special agent-in-charge,
and his down-the-line chain of command that consisted of one supervisor for assaulters, and one for snipers. The HRT operators
had honeycomb cubicle areas across the hallway from each other, split between snipers and assaulters. There was only one classroom
in the building, which also doubled as a conference and briefing room in the space-challenged complex. There was a line of
coffee mugs on a shelf on the rear wall of the room. Whenever the choppers landed here, the force of the blades would make
the mugs vibrate. Somehow that sound had always been very soothing to Web. Team members coming home safe, he supposed.
He stopped by to see Ann Lyle, who worked in the office. Ann was sixty, much older than the other women who worked in administration,
and could be truly termed the matriarch and unofficial mother hen of the hardcore lads who called HRT home. The unwritten
rule was that you did not curse around Ann or use any other sort of uncouth language or gestures. Both rookie and veteran
operators who ran afoul of this policy quickly found themselves the target of retribution ranging from glue in their helmets
to taking a particularly hard shot during a training drill, the kind that left you wondering if one of your lungs had fallen
out. Ann had been with HRT almost since its inception after working at the WFO for many years and had become a widow during
that time. Childless, she let her entire life revolve around her work, and she listened to the young, single agents and their
problems and doled out sensible advice. She also served as HRT’s unofficial marriage counselor and had on more than one occasion
prevented a divorce. She had come to Web’s hospital room every day while he was waiting to get his face back, far more often
than his own mother had bothered to. Ann regularly brought home-baked goodies to the office. And she was known as the primary
information source for all things having to do with the Bureau and HRT. She was also a whiz at navigating the Bureau’s requisition
morass, and if HRT needed something, no matter how big or small, Ann Lyle made sure they got it.
He found Ann in her office, closed the door and sat across from her.
Ann’s hair had been white for several years now, and her body had lost its shape, but her eyes were still youthful-looking
and her smile was truly beautiful.
Ann rose from her desk and gave Web a much-needed hug. Her cheeks were wet from tears. She had been especially close to the
members of Charlie Team, who took great pains to show her their affection for all she did for them.
“You don’t look good, Web.”
“I’ve had better days.”
“I wouldn’t wish this on anybody, not even my worst enemy,” she said, “but you’re the last person in the world this should
have happened to, Web. Right now, all I want to do is scream and never stop.”
“I appreciate that, Ann,” said Web. “I still don’t know what happened, really. I’ve never frozen like that before.”
“Web, honey, you’ve spent the last eight years of your life getting shot at. Don’t you think that adds up? You’re only human.”
“That’s just it, Ann, I’m supposed to be more than that. That’s why I’m at HRT.”
“What you need is a good long rest. When’s the last time you took a vacation? Do you even remember?”
“What I need is some information and I need you to help me get it.”
Ann accepted this change in subject without comment. “I’ll do what I can, you know that.”
“An undercover named Randall Cove. He’s MIA.”
“That name sounds familiar. I think I knew a Cove when I worked at WFO. You say he’s gone missing?”
“He was the inside guy on the HRT hit. Guess he was either in on it or else got his cover blown. I need whatever you can find
on him. Addresses, aliases, known contacts, the works.”
“If he was working in D.C., his home won’t be around there,” said Ann. “There’s an unofficial twenty-five-mile rule for UCs.
You don’t want to run into one of your neighbors while you’re working your shift. For big-time assignments they might even
bring the agent in from another part of the country.”
“Understood. But twenty-five miles out still leaves a lot of possibilities. Maybe we can get a record of phone logs, communications
with WFO, that sort of thing. I don’t know how you manage it, but I really need whatever you can get.”
“UCs mostly use disposable phone cards with low amounts on them to call in with. Buy them at convenience stores, use them
up, chuck them and buy another. No record of anything that way.”
Web’s hopes dimmed. “So there’s no way to trace?” He had never had to track down an undercover agent before.
Ann smiled her beautiful smile. “Oh, Web, there’s always a way. You just let me dig around a little.”
He looked at his hands. “I’m feeling kind of like a guy at the Alamo that the Mexicans somehow missed.”
Ann nodded in understanding. “There’s some fresh coffee in the kitchen and a chocolate walnut cake I brought in. Go help yourself,
Web, you’ve always been too skinny.” Her next words made Web look up into that wonderfully reassuring face. “And I’m watching
your back here, honey, don’t think that I’m not. I know what’s what, Web. I hear everything, uptown or down. And nobody, and
I mean nobody, is going to pull anything on you while I’m sitting here.”
As he walked out, Web wondered if Ann Lyle would ever consider adopting him.
Web found an empty computer terminal and logged on to HRT’s database. It had occurred to him, as he was sure it had to others,
that his team’s annihilation might have been a simple case of revenge. He spent considerable time going through past cases
where HRT had been called up. Memories came flooding back to him of chest-thudding victories and heart-wrenching failures.
The problem was that if you added up all the people who had been affected by an HRT mission and factored in family and friends,
along with fringe crazies chasing any cause they could get their demented hands around, the numbers ran into the thousands.
Web would have to leave that to somebody else to run down. He was certain the Bureau computers were crunching that data right
now.
Web passed down the main hallway and lingered in front of the photo displays of past HRT operations. Here there were visual
images of many stunning successes. The credo of hostage rescue was, “Speed, surprise and violence of action,” and HRT put
big-time action to those words. Web looked at a photo of a terrorist on the most-wanted list who had been plucked from international
waters (“grabs,” they called them) like an unsuspecting crab taken from a sand hole and whisked away to stand trial with a
lifelong prison term to follow. There were photos of a joint international task force operation on a drug farm in a Latin
American country. And finally there was a picture of a very tense hostage situation in a high-rise government building in
Chicago. The result was all hostages were saved, with three of the five hostage-takers dead. Unfortunately, it didn’t always
work that way.
He walked outside the admin building and observed the lone tree there. It was a species of the state tree of Kansas, planted
there in memory of the HRT operator who had been killed in a training accident and who had hailed from there. Each time Web
had passed that tree he had said a silent prayer that it would be the only one they would ever have to plant. So much for
answered prayers. Soon they’d have a damn forest here.
Web really needed to be doing something, anything that would make him not feel like a total failure. He went to the equipment
cage, snagged a .308 snipe rifle and some ammo and headed back out. He needed to calm down and, ironically, firing guns did
that for him, as it required a precision and focus that would block out all other thoughts, however troubling.
He passed the HRT’s original headquarters building, which was narrow and tall and looked like a glorified grain silo instead
of home for an elite law enforcement unit. Then he stood and looked out at the sheered-off hillside where one of the shooting
ranges was situated. There was a new thousand-yard rifle range, and work crews were in the process of leveling an adjacent
forest in order to add to the HRT’s ever-growing complex, which also included a new indoor shooting range facility. Behind
the outdoor shooting range, the trees were leafy green. It had always seemed an odd juxtaposition to Web: nature’s beautiful
colors serving as a backdrop to where he had stood for so many years learning better ways to kill. Yet he was the good guy,
and that made it all right. At least that’s what the bill of goods that came with the badge had very strongly implied.
He set up his targets. Web was going to play a game of sniper’s poker. The cards were slightly fanned out across the target
holder such that only the tiniest portion of each card, other than the front card, was visible. The goal was to build a winning
hand. The trick was you could only count a card that you hit cleanly. If your round even nicked another card, you couldn’t
claim the card you were shooting at. And you only got five shots. The margin of error was impossibly tiny. It was just the
sort of nerve-wracking task to relax a person, if that person happened to be an HRT grunt.
Web set himself up a hundred yards away from the targets. Lying flat on the ground, he placed a small beanbag under the .308’s
stock to support his upper body weight as he settled in. He aligned his body with the recoil path to minimize muzzle jump;
his hips were flat against the ground, his knees spread shoulder-width and ankles flat to the ground to shrink his target
profile in case someone was aiming at him. Web dialed the proper settings on the scope’s calibration wheel and figured in
wind too. The humidity was high, so he added an extra half-minute click. As a sniper, every shot he had ever fired during
a mission had been recorded in his log. It was a very valuable record of environmental effects on bullets fired and also might
explain why a sniper had missed a target, which was the only time anybody gave a damn. When you hit your target you were just
doing your job, you didn’t get a key to the city. There was no detail too small when it concerned killing at long range. A
hint of a shadow across your objective lens could easily make the less-than-vigilant shooter wipe out a hostage rather than
the person holding him.
Web lightly squeezed the pebbled pistol grip. He pulled the stock to his shoulder, pressed his cheek to the stock, set the
proper eye relief and gripped the butt pad with his weak hand to steady the .308’s bipod. He sucked in a breath, eased it
out. No muscle could come between Web and his sniping. Muscle was erratic; he needed bone on bone because bone didn’t flinch.
Web had always used the ambush technique when sniping. This entailed the shooter waiting until the target entered a predetermined
kill zone. The sniper would plant his crosshairs just ahead of the target and then count the mil-dots in the reticle to calculate
distance to target, angle of incidence and speed. You also had to judge elevation, wind and humidity and then you waited to
kill, like the proverbial spider in the web. You always shot into the skull for a very simple reason. Targets shot in the
head never fired back.
Bone on bone. Pulse at sixty-four. Web let out one last breath; his finger slid to the trigger and he fired five shots with
the precise motion of a man who had done this very thing well over fifty thousand times. He repeated the process four more
times, three times at a hundred yards, and the last hand of poker was played out at two hundred yards, which was the outer
reaches of distance for sniper’s poker.
When he checked the targets Web had to smile. He had a royal flush in spades on two hands, aces with king high on two others
and a full house on the hand at two hundred yards; and not one mark on any other card. And not one round thrown either, which
in Bureau parlance meant not a shot missed. This allowed him to feel good about himself for about ten seconds and then the
depression came roaring back.
He returned the weapon to the equipment cage and continued his stroll. Over at the adjacent Marine Corps facility was the
Yellow Brick Road, which was a hellish seven-and-one-half-mile obstacle course with fifteen-foot rope drops, bear pits with
barbed wire just waiting for a slip and fall and also sheer rock cliffs. During his HRT qualification days, Web had run that
course so many times he had memorized every single disgusting inch of it. Team events had involved fifteen-mile runs, loaded
with upward of fifty pounds of gear and precious objects carried, such as bricks that must not touch the ground lest your
team lose. There were also swims through icy, filthy water, and fifty-foot long ladders pointed straight to God. That had
been followed by a trek up “heartbreak hotel,” a mere four-story jaunt, and the optional (yeah!) leap off the gunwale of an
old ship into the James River. Since Web’s joining HRT, heartbreak hotel had been tamed somewhat, with guide wires, railings
and nets. It was undoubtedly safer but, in his opinion, a lot less fun. Still, those with a fear of heights most definitely
need not apply. Rappelling from choppers into thick forest really separated the men from the boys, where if you missed your
brake point a hundred-foot oak got to know your insides far too well.