Free Last Man Standing by David Baldacci Page A

HRT would reconstruct it on-site here and train within exact parameters.
     The last set they had built here was for the operation where Charlie had ceased to be. As Web studied this configuration,
     it hadn’t occurred to him that he would never see the insides of the actual target for real. They had never even gotten to
     the front door. He hoped they would tear out the guts of this place soon, get it ready for the next operation. The result
     couldn’t be any worse, could it?
    The rubber-coated walls here absorbed the slugs, for HRT often practiced with live fire. Stairways were made of wood that
     would not allow ricochets; however, the team had discovered, fortunately without serious injury, that the nails in the wood
     could catch a bullet and send it on to unintended places. He passed by the aircraft fuselage mockup that had been constructed
     so they could practice on skyjacking scenarios. It hung from the rafters and could be raised or lowered for training purposes.
    How many imaginary terrorists had he shot down in here? The training had paid off, for he had done it for real when an American
     airliner had been stormed in Rome. The terrorists had ordered the plane flown to Turkey and then on to Manila. Web and crew
     had gone wheels up at Andrews Air Force base within two hours of learning of the skyjacking. They had followed the hijacked
     plane’s movements from their airborne perch in an USAF C141. On the ground at Manila where the jetliner was being refueled,
     the terrorists had tossed out two dead hostages, both Americans, one of them a four-year-old girl. A political statement,
     they proudly announced. It was the last one they would ever make.
    The hijacked plane’s takeoff had been delayed first by weather and then by mechanical failure. At around midnight local time,
     Web and his Charlie Team had boarded the plane disguised as mechanics. Three minutes after they got on the plane, there were
     five dead terrorists and no more slain hostages. Web had shot one of them with his .45 directly through the diet Coke can
     the guy had been holding up to his mouth. To this day he still couldn’t drink the stuff. Yet he never regretted pulling the
     trigger. The image of an innocent little girl’s body on the tarmac—American, Iranian, Japanese, it didn’t matter to Web—was
     all the motivation he would ever need to keep pulling the trigger at rank evil. These guys could claim all the geopolitical
     oppression in the world, call upon all the grand and omniscient deities in their religious warehouses, make every half-assed
     justification they wanted to, so they could detonate their bombs and fire their weapons, and none of it meant a damn thing
     to Web when they started killing innocent people, and in particular kids. And he would fight them for as long as they wanted
     to perform their perverted little dance of sin and mayhem across the globe, for wherever they could go, so could he.
    Web moved through small rubber-walled rooms where posters of bad guys pointing guns at him hung on support poles. He instinctively
     drew a bead with his finger and blew them away. With an armed person you always keyed on hands, not the eyes, because no one
     in history had ever been killed by a pair of eyes. As he lowered his “gun,” Web had to smile. It was all so easy when no one
     was actually firing at you. In other rooms were the heads and upper torsos of dummies on poles, their “skin” and bulk replicating
     that of a real human. Web threw side kicks to their heads followed by a series of paralyzing kidney punches and then moved
     on.
    From inside one room he heard some movement and looked in. The man there had on a tank shirt and cammie pants and was wiping
     the sweat from his muscular neck, shoulders and arms. Long ropes dangled from the ceiling. This was one of the rooms where
     the men practiced their fast-roping skills. Web watched as the man went up and down three times with graceful, fluid motions,