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was under the impression that that was
their
home turf and we were the visiting team.”
    “You know what I mean. What could have prompted this sort of attack?”
    “Shit, I don’t know, maybe because we try so damn hard to pull the plug on their billion-dollars-a-day drug pipeline and it’s
     starting to really piss them off, you idiot!” As he said this, Bates backed the man into a corner and then decided the guy
     was far too harmless to be worth a suspension.
    “How’s he doing?” asked another man, with blond hair and a nose red from the flu.
    Bates leaned against the wall, chewed his gum and then shrugged. “I think it’s messed more with his mind than anything else.
     But that’s to be expected.”
    “One lucky guy is all I can say,” commented Red Nose. “How he survived it is anyone’s guess.”
    It took barely a second for Bates to get in this man’s face. He was obviously taking no prisoners tonight. “You call it luck
     to watch six of your team get ripped right in front of you? Is that what the hell you’re saying, you dumb son of a bitch?”
    “Geez, I didn’t mean it like that, Perce. You know I didn’t.” Red Nose coughed a good one, as though to let Bates know he
     was sick and in no shape to fight.
    Bates moved away from Red Nose, thoroughly disgusted with them all. “Right now I don’t know anything. No, I take that back.
     I know that Web single-handedly took out eight machine gun nests and saved another squad and some ghetto kid in the process.
     That I do know.”
    “The preliminary report says Web froze.” This came from another man who had joined their ranks, yet he was one who clearly
     stood above them all. Two stone-faced gents were in lockstep behind the intruder. “And actually, Perce, what we know is only
     what Web has told us,” said the man. Though this person was obviously Percy Bates’s superior in official rank, it was equally
     apparent that Bates wanted to bite his head off yet didn’t dare.
    The man continued. “London’s got a hell of a lot of explaining to do. And we’re going into this investigation with our eyes
wide
open, a lot more wide open than last night. Last night was a disgrace. Last night will never, ever happen again. Not on my
     watch.” He stared hard at Bates and then said with sarcasm driven home with a sledgehammer, “Give London my best.” With that,
     Buck Winters, head of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, stalked off, followed by his two robotic escorts.
    Bates gazed with loathing at the man’s back. Buck Winters had been one of the principal frontline supervisors at Waco and
     had, in Bates’s opinion, contributed to the eventual carnage with his ineptness. Then, in the funny way of big organizations,
     Winters had received promotion after promotion for his incompetence until he had reached the top of WFO. Maybe the Bureau
     was just unwilling to admit it had messed up and believed that promoting from the ranks of the leadership of the Waco fiasco
     was a strong message to the world that the Bureau considered itself blameless. Eventually, many heads had rolled because of
     the flameout of David Koresh in Texas, but Buck Winters’s head was still firmly attached to his shoulders. For Percy Bates,
     Buck Winters represented much that was wrong with the FBI.
    Bates leaned against the wall, crossed his arms and chewed his Wrigley’s so hard his teeth hurt. He was certain that old Buck
     would be running off to confer with the FBI director, the attorney general, probably even the President. Well, let him, so
     long as they all kept out of Percy Bates’s way.
    The group of men slithered away singly and in pairs until just Bates and the uniformed guard remained. Finally Bates moved
     off too, hands in his pockets, gaze fixed on nothing. On the way out he spit his gum into the trash can. “Assholes and idiots,”
     he said. “Assholes and idiots.”

4
    W eb, dressed in a set of blue surgery scrubs, carried a bag with his