Read an Excerpt
Chapter 1
Web 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
1.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 equa-tion;
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 bar-bell
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 gunsor 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.
For months at a time Web had lain in steamy swamps with
pissed-off water moccasins crawling over him. Or else been
wedged into wind-gusted clefts of frigid mountains with the custom-
built rifle stock's leather cheek pad next to his own as he
sighted through his scope and provided cover and intelligence for
the assault teams. As a sniper he had developed many important
skills, such as learning how to very quietly pee into a jug. Other lessons
included packing his food in precise clusters so he could
carbo-load by touch in pitch-darkness, and arranging his bullets
for optimal reloading, working off a strict military model that had
proved its worth time and time again. Not that he could easily
transfer any of these unique talents to the private sector, but Web
didn't see that happening anyway.
The life of a sniper lurched from one numbing extreme to another. Your job was to achieve the best firing position with the least
amount of personal exposure and oftentimes those twin goals
were simply incompatible. You just did the best you could. Hours,
days, weeks, even months of nothing except tedium that tended to
erode morale and core skills would be sliced wide open by moments
of gut-wrenching fury that usually came at you in a rush of
gunfire and mass confusion. And your decision to shoot meant
someone would die, and you were never clear whether your own
death would be included in the equation or not.
Web could always conjure up these images in a flash, so vivid
were they in his memory. A quintuplet of match-grade hollow
points would be lined up in a spring-loaded magazine waiting to
rip into an adversary at twice the speed of sound once Web's finger
pulled the jeweled trigger, which would break ever so sweetly at
precisely two-point-five pounds of pressure. As soon as someone
stepped into his kill zone, Web would fire and a human being
would suddenly become a corpse crumbling to the earth. Yet the
most important shots Web handled as a sniper were the ones he
hadn't taken. It was just that kind of a gig. It was not for the faint-hearted, the stupid or even those of average intelligence.
Web said a silent thank-you to the snipers overhead and raced on
down the alley.
They next came upon a child, maybe all of nine, sitting shirtless
on a hunk of concrete, and not an adult in sight. The approaching
storm had knocked at least twenty degrees off the thermometer
and the mercury was still falling. And still the boy had no shirt on.
Had he ever had a shirt on? Web wondered. He had seen many examples
of impoverished children. While Web didn't consider himself
a cynic, he was a realist. He felt sorry for these kids, but there
wasn't much he could do to help them. And yet threats could come
from anywhere these days, so his gaze automatically went from
the boy's head to his feet, looking for weapons. Fortunately, he saw
none; Web had no desire to fire upon a child.
The boy looked directly at him. Under the illuminated arc of the
one flickering alley lamp that somehow had not been shot out, the
child's features were outlined vividly. Web noted the too-lean body
and the muscles in shoulders and arms already hard and clustering
around the protrusion of ribs, as a tree grows bark cords over a
wound. A knife slash ran across the boy's forehead. A puckered,
blistered hole on the child's left cheek was the unmistakable tag of
a bullet, Web knew.
"Damn to hell," said the child in a weary voice, and then he
laughed or, more accurately, cackled. The boy's words and that
laugh rang like cymbals in Web's head, and he had no idea why;
his skin was actually tingling. He had seen hopeless kids like this
before, they were everywhere around here, and yet something was
going on in Web's head that he couldn't quite figure. Maybe he'd
been doing this too long, and wasn't it a hell of a time to start
thinking that?
Web's finger hovered near his rifle's trigger, and he moved farther
in front with graceful strides even as he tried to rid himself of
the boy's image. Though very lean himself and lacking showy
muscles, Web had enormous leverage in his long arms, and strong
fingers, and there was deceptive power in his naturally broad
shoulders. And he was by far the fastest man on the team and also
possessed great endurance. Web could run six-mile relays all day.
He would take speed, quickness and stamina over bulging muscles
any day. Bullets tore through muscle as easily as they did fat. Yet
the lead couldn't hurt you if it couldn't hit you.
Most people would describe Web London, with his broad shoulders
and standing six-foot-two, as a big man. Usually, though, people
focused on the condition of the left side of his face, or what
remained of it. Web had to grudgingly admit that it was amazing,
the reconstruction they could do these days with destroyed flesh
and bone. In just the right light, meaning hardly any at all, one almost
wouldn't notice the old crater, the new rise of cheek and the
delicate grafting of transplanted bone and skin. Truly remarkable,
all had said. All except Web, that is.
At the end of the alley they stopped once more, all crouching low.
At Web's elbow was Teddy Riner. Through his wireless Motorola
bone mic, Riner communicated with TOC, telling them that Charlie
was at yellow and asking permission to move to greenthe "crisis
site" of the target, which here was simply a fancy term for the front
door. Web held the SR75 with one hand and felt for his custombuilt .45-caliber pistol in the low-slung tactical holster riding on his
right leg. He had an identical pistol hanging on the ceramic trauma
plate that covered his chest, and he touched that one too in his pre-attack
ritual of sorts.
Web closed his eyes and envisioned how the next minute would
play out. They would race to the door. Davies would be front and
center laying his charge. Assaulters would hold their flash bang
grenades loosely in their weak hand. Subgun safeties would be off,
and steady fingers would stay off triggers until it was time to kill.
Davies would remove the mechanical safeties on the control box
and check the detonator cord attached to the breaching charge,
looking for problems and hoping to find none. Riner would communicate
to TOC the immortal words, "Charlie at green." TOC
would answer, as it always did, with, "Stand by, I have control."
That line always rankled Web, because who the hell really had control
doing what they did?
During his entire career Web had never heard TOC reach the end
of the countdown. After the count of two, the snipers would engage
targets and fire, and a bevy of .308s firing simultaneously was
a tad noisy. Then the breach charge would blow before TOC said
"one" and that high-decibel hurricane would drown out even your
own thoughts. In fact, if you ever heard TOC finish the countdown
you were in deep trouble, because that meant the breach charge
had failed to go off. And that was truly a lousy way to start the
workday.
When the explosive blew the door, Web and his team would invade
the target and throw their flash bangs. The device was aptly
named, since the "flash" would blind anyone watching, and the
"bang" would rupture the unprotected eardrum. If they ran into
any more locked doors, these would yield quickly either to the impolite
knock-knock of Davies's shotgun or to a slap charge that
looked like a strip of tire rubber but carried a C4 explosive kicker
that virtually no door could withstand. They'd follow their rote
patterns, keying on hands and weapons, shooting with precision,
thinking in chess maneuvers. Communication would be via touch
commands. Hit the hot spots, locate any hostages, and take them
out fast and alive. What you never really thought about was dying.
That took too much time and energy away from the details of the
mission, and away from the bedrock instincts and disciplines honed
from doing this sort of thing over and over until it became a part of
what made you, you.
According to reliable sources, the building they were going to hit
contained the entire financial guts of a major drug operation headquartered
in the capital city. Included in the potential haul tonight
were accountants and bean counters, valuable witnesses for the government
if Web and his men could get them out alive. That way the
Feds could go after top guys criminally and civilly from a number of
fronts. Even drug lords feared an IRS full frontal assault, because
seldom did kingpins pay taxes to Uncle Sam. That was why Web's
team had been called up. They specialized in killing folks who
needed it, but they also were damn good at keeping people alive. At
least until these folks put their hands on the Bible, testified and sent
some greater evil away for a very long time.
When TOC came back on, the countdown would begin: "Five,
four, three, two..."
Web opened his eyes, collected himself. He was ready. Pulse at
sixty-four; Web just knew. Okay, boys, pay dirt's dead ahead. Let's go
take it. TOC came through his headset once more and gave the okay
to move to the front door.
And that's precisely when Web London froze. His team burst out
from the cover heading for green, the crisis site, and Web didn't. It
was as though his arms and legs were no longer part of his body, the
sensation of when you've fallen asleep with a limb under your body
and wake up to find all the circulation has vacated that extremity. It
didn't seem to be fear or runaway nerves; Web had been doing this
too long. And yet he could only watch as Charlie Team raced on. The
courtyard had been identified as the last major danger zone prior to
the crisis site, and the team picked up its pace even more, looking
everywhere for the slightest hint of coming resistance. Not a single
one of the men seemed to notice that Web was not with them. With
sweat pouring off him, every muscle straining against whatever
was holding him down, Web managed slowly to rise and take a few
faltering steps forward. His feet and arms seemingly encased in
lead, his body on fire and his head bursting, he staggered onward a
bit more, reached the courtyard, and then he dropped flat on his
face as his team pulled away from him.
He glanced up in time to see Charlie Team running hard, the target
in their sights, seemingly just begging them to come take a
piece of it. The team was five seconds from impact. Those next few
seconds would change Web London's life forever....