Last Man Standing

Last Man Standing by David Baldacci is a thriller novel starring Web London, a member of the elite FBI Hostage Rescue Team whose troubled past causes him to freeze at an inopportune moment, causing the rest of his team to be killed. The book follows Web through a handful of dangerous missions, from the urban to the rural, while he tries to uncover the psychological reasons he froze, finding a way to come to terms with his actions. The book, published in 2001, is Baldacci's seventh stand-alone novel for adults.

Web London and his branch of the Hostage Rescue Team, called the Charlie team by members of the FBI, are waiting for the go-ahead to ambush a local drug operation in Waco, Texas. The team has received intel from an undercover agent that a prominent drug kingpin waits inside. As the team moves toward their target, they are startled to find a little boy in a dark alley near the entrance to the kingpin's lair. The boy looks at the team, utters the words, “Damn to hell,” at them, and then laughs maniacally. Disturbed by the boy's words and behavior, Web tries to ignore him and continue on with his mission.

Finally, the team gets the final go-ahead from the mission control center at the FBI headquarters, and they proceed toward their target. However, at the last moment, something strange happens to Web. He finds that he can't move forward. After years on the job, this has never happened before, and he doesn't understand why his body won't let him move. Finally, after forcing himself to take a few unsteady steps, Web falls to the ground. His team proceeds without him; one by one, Web watches them take shots and fall. In a matter of seconds, he is the only one left alive.



After the mission, which Web is sure was an ambush to take out his team, he becomes a pariah among his fellow team members and is harshly critiqued by the media. For members of elite FBI teams like his, being the only man to come out alive is something to be ashamed of – it means he didn't do his duty, and he put his team members lives on the line. The widows and grieving children of his team members resent him for surviving, and in only hours, Web goes from being a hero to being an outcast. In order to save his reputation and figure out who ambushed Charlie team, Web takes it on himself to independently investigate what happened with the boy in the alley, literally and psychologically, through reconnaissance missions and appointments with a psychiatrist, Claire Daniels.

With Claire, Web remembers forcing himself to crawl over to the boy in the alley and handing him a note about the ambush to give to the FBI team waiting nearby. However, the boy disappeared before the FBI could talk to him. The undercover agent who gave them the information about the kingpin's lair is also missing; the two incidents seem to be related. Things become even stranger when a judge, prosecutor, and defense counsel are all killed within days of each other, in what the police determine are unrelated incidents. Web knows better – the people killed were involved in a mission in which a boy named David Canfield died in front of Web's eyes. He still thinks often of David and feels guilty.

On the other side of the coin is Francis Westbrook, or Big F, a drug dealer whose territory was targeted during the Charlie team raid but who had no affiliation with the apparent drug den that the team was trying to capture. Big F is looking for his younger brother, who happens to be the boy Web met in the alley, and is willing to find him at any cost. He also knows that one of his top dealers is a traitor, and he suspects there may be a connection between the violent ambush, his brother's disappearance, and this man who is working with people on the outside.



Web encounters Big F and a number of other gangs of criminals in his mission to discover what happened the day of the Charlie team ambush. He meets a group of white supremacists engaged in terror activity, and his investigation eventually leads him to a secret drug and terrorist operation that could be the key to all of the recent deaths. Through psychoanalysis and hypnosis, and his own investigative skills, Web discovers the secret that ties these events together – but not without risking his own safety in the process.

David Baldacci is an acclaimed author primarily of thriller novels. Many of his books involve high-level government and law enforcement officials, including his first novel Absolute Power. He has six series of thriller novels and a dozen stand-alone books, which include two novellas published in 2012 and 2014. Four of his books have been adapted into TV shows and feature-length films. He has also written six books for children, including one book in the highly acclaimed 39 Clues series.