was he had plenty. The life of an HRT operator required that he keep several days’ worth of clothes in his trunk along with a variety of other items essential for when you were called out of the country for a week or a month with virtually no notice. Web had supplemented this “normal” allotment with lots of goodies he had taken from the HRT equipment cage and the stash he kept at home, which included a formidable arsenal. Even with his FBI creds, he’d have a tough time explaining this cache to a state trooper on a routine traffic stop.
When Romano came back, Web said, “Bates kept it from me, the little shit. They found direct evidence tying the Frees to the hit on Charlie, using the damn tip I gave him. And he wasn’t even going to invite us to the party. Probably thinks we’ll freak and pop people unnecessarily.”
“You know,” said Romano, “that really offends my sense of professionalism.”
“Well, tell your sense of professionalism to shake a leg, we don’t have much time.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” He grabbed Web’s arm. “If speed is what we need, we ain’t taking that hunk of junk.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Five minutes later the big-block ’Vette loaded down with weaponry blew through the open gates at East Winds and hit the main strip.
It was mostly back roads down to Quantico, but Romano kept the ’Vette on seventy pretty much the whole way, going around curves so fast Web felt himself grabbing the edge of his seat and hoping Romano didn’t notice. When they got to Interstate 95, Romano smoothly shifted gears and popped the clutch. Web watched the speedometer swiftly move to triple digits. Romano slid in an eight-track tape, of all things, and revved up the music. The best of Bachman-Turner Overdrive was soon shattering the night air, because they were driving with the top down. While Romano drove, Web checked their guns. Even with the highway lights, it was very dark, but his fingers knew every inch of the things.
He looked over at Romano, who was smiling and singing along with BTO as they were “taking care of business.” The guy was bobbing his head like he was back in high school and banging at a Springsteen concert.
“You gotta strange way of preparing yourself for combat, Paulie.”
“What, like you and the rubbing you give your pistols for luck?” Web looked at him in surprise. “Riner told me. He thought it was a hoot.”
“I guess nothing’s sacred,” muttered Web.
They cruised into Quantico in record time. They both knew the sentry posted at the east entrance off the Bureau Parkway, and Romano didn’t bother to slow down.
“Triple eight, Jimbo,” he yelled out as he roared by, referring to the crisis page of three eights that told HRT members to get the hell to Quantico.
“Go get ’em, guys!” yelled back Jimbo.
Romano parked the car; they pulled their gear and hauled it to the admin building. Romano used his security card to open the gate, and they headed to the front door, where a video surveillance camera was watching them. In front of the entrance, six trees had been planted in memory of the fallen members of Charlie Team. Inside, they passed Ann Lyle’s office. She came to the door, and she and Web exchanged a glance but not more than that. Strictly from the rule book, Ann shouldn’t have called and told Web about the assault. And he would never do anything to get her in trouble. But they both knew that what she had done was the right thing to do, rule book be damned.
Web met his commander, Jack Pritchard, in the hallway. The man looked in astonishment at Web and Romano with all their gear.
“Reporting for duty, sir,” said Web.
“How the hell did you even know about it?” demanded Pritchard. “I’m still a member of HRT. I can smell these things a mile away.” Pritchard didn’t push it, though he did glance in the direction of Ann Lyle’s office.
“I want in,” said Web.
“That’s impossible,” said Pritchard. “You’re still on SRB leave, and he”—he pointed at Romano—“got his ass taken off on special assignment that I wasn’t even made privy to. Now shove off.”
The commander turned on his heel and headed back to the equipment room. Web and Romano shoved off, right after the man. The assaulters and snipers who hadn’t already been deployed on the mission were gathered here, going over last-minute details. The snipers were checking to make sure they each had restocked a numbered lot of match-grade ammo. They were updating logbooks, tightening trigger assemblies and cleaning scopes and barrels. The assaulters were inspecting their own weapons and breaking out their breaching gear, tactical bags and body armor. The personnel in the logistics cell of HRT were running around loading gear into the trucks and trying to remember everything the mini-invasion would need to succeed. They all stopped doing what they were doing when Pritchard and then Web and Romano barged into their space.
“Come on, Jack,” said Web, “you got teams all over the damned place, and not even counting Paulie, you’re short a guy on Hotel, you can use the extra hands.”
Pritchard whirled around. “How the hell did you know we were short a guy?” The HRT chief obviously had had enough of leaks.
Web looked around the room. “I can count. And I count five assaulters on Hotel. Add me and Paulie and you’re at full strength.”
“You haven’t been briefed, you haven’t worked the mock target and you haven’t even been training for a while. You’re not going.”
Web moved in front of the man and blocked his way. Jack Pritchard was about five-ten and Web had him by at least thirty pounds and about five years, but Web knew if it came to a fight that he would be in for one. But he didn’t want to fight, not his own man anyway.
“Brief us on the way over. Show us the attack points. We’ve got our own equipment and all we need are Kevlar, a flight suit and a helmet. How many of these have Paulie and me done, Jack? Don’t treat us like some clueless bastard right out of NOTS. We don’t deserve that.”
Pritchard stepped back and stared at Web for a very long minute. The longer it went on the more Web thought Pritchard might actually throw him out of the place. HRT, like other quasi-military units, frowned on such insubordination.
“I tell you what, Web, I’ll leave it up to them.” He pointed at the assaulters.
Web hadn’t been expecting that sort of decision. But he stepped forward and looked at each of the Hotel and Gulf guys one by one. He had fought side-by-side with most of them, first as a sniper and then as one of their own, an assaulter. His gaze finally settled on
Romano. The men would accept Paulie back without question. But Web was damaged goods, the guy who had frozen at the worst possible moment, and every man in this room was wondering if he would do it again and cost them their lives.
Web had saved Romano’s life during a raid on a Montana militiamen site. Romano had returned the favor a year later during a VIP protection detail in the Middle East when a foot soldier from a fringe rebel group had tried to run their party down with an empty bus he had stolen. The rebel would have succeeded in getting at least Web, but Romano had pushed Web out of the way and popped the driver between the eyes with a round from his .45. Yet despite all that, and their recent time together, Web had never really been able to read the man. As he looked around the room, it seemed that the men were looking to Romano to settle the issue, and despite the guy having driven Web here to take part in the assault, Web had no clue what he would say now.
He watched as Romano put a hand on Web’s shoulder. Looking at his teammates, Romano said, “Web London can cover my back anytime, anyplace.”
And in the alpha male society of HRT, a man like Paul Romano— who was feared even by some of his teammates—saying that was all it took. After they finished suiting up, Pritchard called all the men into the small meeting room. He stood at the front staring at them, and they stared back. It seemed to Web that the commander spent more time gazing at him than at any of the others.
“It goes without saying,” began Pritchard, “that this mission is critical. All our mission
s are critical. I know that each man here will conduct himself in the utmost professional manner while still doing his job to the best of his ability.” Pritchard’s tone was stilted, the man looked nervous, and he had done enough dangerous things in his life that Web had long assumed the man had no nerves.
Web and Romano exchanged glances. This sort of pep talk was a little out of the ordinary. They weren’t a bunch of high school kids getting ready to play football.
Pritchard’s stern demeanor collapsed. “Okay, let me cut the official crap. The folks we’re going after tonight are suspected of doing in Charlie Team. You all know that. We hope we’re going to hit them by surprise. Short and sweet and no shots fired.” He paused and looked up and down the ranks once more. “You know the orders of engagement. This Free Society has come our way before, down in Richmond. That was Charlie Team too, and some think that what happened in that courtyard was an act of revenge by the Frees.
“There are no known hostages. The ground logistics are a little tricky, but we’ve handled far worse. We fly in, the trucks will be waiting and we execute.” Pritchard was pacing now, and then he stopped. “If you have to take a shot tonight, you do it. If they fire back, I don’t have to tell any of you what to do. But don’t be stupid about this. The last thing we need is for the media to be screaming tomorrow morning about HRT wiping out guys who don’t need to be wiped out. If they were involved in Charlie’s getting ripped, let’s bag them and let the legal process work its course. Don’t, and I repeat don’t, fire because you’re thinking about what these guys might have done to six men who belonged to us. You’re better than that. You deserve better than that. And I know you’ll come through.” He paused once more and seemed to search each of his men’s faces, once again lingering the longest, it seemed, on Web.
Pritchard finished with, “Let’s hit it.”
As the men filed out, Web walked up next to Pritchard.
“Jack, I hear where you’re coming from, but if you’re that concerned about somebody going off the deep end, why have HRT do this hit at all? You said there aren’t any hostages, so an FBI SWAT team could handle this with backup from the locals. Why us?”
“We’re still part of the FBI, Web, although you wouldn’t know it from the way some people act around here.”
“Meaning orders from uptown for HRT to do this gig?”
“That’s the procedure, and you know that as well as I do.”
“Because of the circumstances, did you request a pass on this one?”
“Actually, I did, because I personally don’t think we should be doing it. Not this soon after losing our guys. And I agree with you, a SWAT team could go easy enough.”
“And they turned you down?”
“Like I said, we’re part of the FBI and I do what I’m told. Now you wanted in on this, are you backing out now?”
“See you at the O.K. Corral.”
A few minutes later they were on their way to Andrews Air Force Base, ready to go to war.
The Bureau, Web had learned from one of his HRT colleagues, had contemplated executing a search warrant on the Frees’ compound but had decided that they would let HRT secure the place first and then execute the search. The last thing the Bureau wanted was a couple of agents getting killed while trying to serve the search warrant. Besides, video of machine guns used to kill federal agents being unloaded from a truck rented by Silas Free was pretty damning.
On the short bumpy flight down in a military transport jet, Web went over the five-paragraph operations order and he and Romano were filled in on specific details. There would be no negotiation with the Frees and no warnings to come out with their hands up. The memories of the school incident in Richmond and the massacre of Charlie Team had precluded those options. Fewer people would die tonight if HRT just hit them without warning, at least that’s what the powers-that-be had decided, and Web was perfectly fine with that decision. The fact that there were no known hostages made things easier and also more complicated. Complicated in that Web was still wondering why an FBI SWAT team hadn’t been called in to handle this. He hoped it was a combination of the reputation the Frees had for being extremely dangerous and well armed, and the fact that even the good guys were entitled to exact sweet justice some of the time. But something just didn’t feel right about this.
Intelligence gathered by WFO over the last several months put the Frees at a compound they had created a decade earlier about forty miles west of Danville, Virginia, in a very remote part of the state with woods on three sides. Snipers from Whiskey and X-Ray had set up surveillance twenty-four hours before with WFO agents and had been feeding valuable intelligence back ever since. The plans for the target had actually been in the HRT database for a while now. HRT had rebuilt the interior of the school on its back lot and practiced with something more than the unit’s usual vigor and determination. While there wasn’t an HRT member who would consciously open fire unless he, another team member or an innocent person was in danger, there wasn’t a single HRT operator who wasn’t at least partly wishing that the Frees would try and fight back. Maybe, Web thought, that group would include Commander Jack Pritchard too, despite his passionate speech to the contrary.
They landed, climbed in their trucks, which had just been offloaded from a special truck transport, and drove to the preliminary staging area and interfaced with the local police and folks from WFO who were spearheading the effort. Web turned his back and fiddled with some of his gear when he saw Percy Bates appear from one of the Bucars and talk to Pritchard. Web didn’t really need a run-in with Bates right now for a lot of reasons, the main one being he didn’t know if he could trust himself not to punch the guy’s lights out for not telling him about the assault. Bates was probably just trying to protect Web, maybe from himself, but Web would have preferred to make that decision on his own.
They drove to the last staging point and received a final set of orders. Now it was time to hit the road to the target. They moved quickly through the darkened rural roads. Hotel Team was in one Suburban and was approaching the Frees’ compound from the rear, while Gulf was going in the left side. The topography would require the assault teams to navigate through the dark, dense woods. That wasn’t really a problem, since they had night-vision optics. Just before the truck doors popped open, Romano crossed himself. Web almost said what he had always said to Danny Garcia, that God didn’t come around here and that they were on their own, but he didn’t. Yet he wished Romano hadn’t done the sign of the cross. This was all beginning to seem way too familiar, and for the first time Web started to wonder if he was in any shape to participate in the assault. The doors popped open before he could think any more on this and they poured into the woods and then came to a stop, crouching and surveying the terrain ahead.
Through his bone mic Web listened as the snipers filled them in on what lay ahead. Web recognized Ken McCarthy’s voice from X-Ray. McCarthy’s call sign was Sierra One, meaning he held the snipers’ highest observation post. He was probably straddling a thick branch of one of the big oaks that ringed the perimeter around the compound, Web figured. That would allow him to see the entire area, get a good firing lane and provide maximum defilade, or position of cover and concealment. The Frees were definitely inside the compound. Most of them lived there, in fact. The snipers had counted at least ten of them inside. There were four buildings constituting the fenced compound. Three were living quarters and one was a large warehouse-style building where the men held their meetings and did whatever work they did while there, such as making bombs and plotting how to kill innocent people, no doubt, thought Web. There were often dogs at outposts like this. Canines were always a problem—not so much a personal danger to HRT members, since even the fiercest dog couldn’t bite through Kevlar or withstand a bullet, but they were terrific early warning sentries. Fortunately—thus far, at least—there were no dogs here; maybe some of the Frees were allergic. The weaponry they’d seen were mostly pistols and shotguns, although one young lad o
f about seventeen, McCarthy said, was carrying an MP-5.
There were two sentries outside, one in the front and one in the rear, armed with pistols only and bored expressions, McCarthy wryly noted. As was customary with HRT, the sentries were given identification names by the sniper that had first spotted them. The guard in front was named Pale Shaq, because he bore a passing resemblance to the big basketball center but, of course, was white, since the Frees were definitely not going to have persons of another color around. The one in the rear was christened Gameboy, because McCarthy had noted a Gameboy player sticking out of his front pocket. The snipers had also observed that both sentries carried cell phones that had a walkie-talkie feature. That posed a problem, since they could quickly signal trouble to their confederates inside.
Hotel Team spread out and moved through the woods with great caution. Over their flight suits they wore IR camouflage, green smocks with visual patterns that broke up each man’s night profile. Thus, even if the Frees had night-vision optics, they wouldn’t get a clean visual. Though the compound was not yet in sight, in the dense foliage the Frees might have posted either additional pickets or even booby traps that had escaped the eyes of the snipers, unlikely as that might be. Web’s NV goggles made night into day, but he kept one eye closed still and assumed all the oth- ers were doing the same thing to avoid the orange burn later. They hit another stop spot and Web pulled the goggles up and blinked quickly to reduce the effects of the high-tech optics. His head was already starting to hurt. On the actual assault Romano would be point man and Web would bring up the rear. Though Romano hadn’t practiced this hit with the team, he was still the best assaulter they had. Web slid his hand down the short barrel of the MP-5 subgun he was carrying. He wasn’t toting his usual SR75 rifle because, after using it in that courtyard, he had found he couldn’t pick the damn thing up again. He first touched the .45 pistol in his tactical holster and next the twin gun riding in his cross-draw shoulder rig that hung across his trauma plate, and he smiled tightly when he saw Romano watching him do this and giving him a thumbs-up.
“Now we’re bulletproof, big guy,” said Romano. The man was probably still doing BTO turns in his head, thought Web.
Web’s heartbeat was not yet at sixty-four and he was striving mightily to get it there. He rubbed his fingers against his palm and was surprised to feel sweat, for it was a chilly night. Yet sixty pounds of gear and body armor made for a nice little personal sauna. He had pistol mags hanging from his gun belt and spare MP-5 ammo in his thigh pads, along with flash bangs, slap charges and other goodies that he might or might not need tonight, you just never knew. Still, he hoped the sweat didn’t signal nerves that could cause him to screw up right at the moment he needed to be perfect.
They moved forward again and neared the edge of the woods. Through his goggles Web could clearly make out the Frees’ compound. To ensure that communications were short and that everyone was working off the same page, the first floor of a target, in HRT parlance, was always designated Alpha, the second, Bravo. The front of the building was white; the right, red; the left, green; and the rear, black. All the doors, windows and other openings was given sequential numbers beginning with the farthest port to the left. Thus Gameboy was stationed on the outside of the fence at roughly Alpha level black port three, while Pale Shaq was at Alpha level white port four. Web checked out Gameboy through his goggles and quickly summed the guy up as untrained as well as downright careless. The accuracy of this opinion was reinforced when the guy pulled the Gameboy from his pocket and actually started playing it.
There were lights on in the main building of the compound. The lights must have been powered by portable generators, because there were no overhead electrical lines evident. If there had been, HRT would have found the transformer supplying the power and shut it off just before the assault. Going from light to dark was