Justifiable Homicide: A Political Thriller (Robert Paige Thrillers Book 1) (47 page)

He felt bad about what he was about to do, but he realized it was the only possible solution. Paige had to go, and he had to go today. Waiting until Tuesday might be too late. He couldn’t be trusted. He might alert Steinman and the others if he were allowed to live. Tomás had to go, too. He couldn’t be trusted. Allowing a team member to opt out of an assignment would set a bad precedent. He couldn’t allow it.

He thought briefly about how Santos and Jim might react when he whacked Paige and Tomás in front of them, at close range. Depending on where they sat, some of their blood might splatter onto one or both of them. He also wondered if they could be trusted to just sit there and let it happen. He didn’t think that whacking Paige would be a problem, since they didn’t like Paige anyway, but killing Tomás was a different matter. They liked Tomás. Their families had had picnics and barbecues together. They had been on a number of assignments together since he joined the team a few years ago. They might have second thoughts about letting him kill their friend. He tried to put any unpleasant possibilities out of his mind as he thought about what he had to do.

As he set the chairs in their appropriate places he thought about his first encounters with Paige when he was an MBA student in Paige’s financial accounting class. Paige had recruited him, and they had become friends, although he never completely trusted Paige, who seemed too idealistic and principled. He wasn’t practical enough to suit Wellington. He believed that Paige didn’t seem to realize that it was sometimes necessary to ignore the Constitution in order to do what needed to be done.

He decided he would do it as soon as Paige and Tomás were both in the room. He wouldn’t wait. There was no point in waiting. He would be nervous until it was over.

Jim picked Santos up at his house a few minutes before three o’clock. Maria, his wife, and Rosa, his nine-year-old daughter, said good-bye to him.

“Bye daddy. I love you.”

“I love you, too, sweetie. I’ll be back in a few hours.”

“Bye honey.” Maria was at the door, wearing dark blue shorts that were covered by an apron.

After pulling out of the driveway, Jim broke the silence. “On the way over, I was thinking about how we would do it. If all three of them are there, we’ll hit them as soon as we come through the door. If one of them is missing, we’ll wait until they’re all there.”

“What if the Boss doesn’t come? John said he might not be able to make it.”

“If the Boss isn’t there when we arrive, we can ask John if the Boss is coming. If he says yes, we’ll wait. Otherwise, we’ll just start shooting.”

A big grin appeared on Santos’s face. “If Tomás is there, he’ll shit when we start opening fire.”

Bennett pondered the likely scenario. “Yeah. I sort of hope he is there, just to see the expression on his face.”

“Me, too. How should we do it? Can I shoot Paige? I really don’t like him. He’s just like the other professors we’re going to get on Tuesday.”

Jim paused before answering. He looked out the window and thought about it. “Naw, I think we should do Paige last. He’s the least dangerous. He’s probably not even carrying. John’s probably the most dangerous. We should do him first, then the Boss if the Boss is there. We can let Paige watch, then we can do him together.”

Santos approved. “OK. That sounds like a good approach. We’ve got all the bases covered.”

They arrived at 3:52. The only one there was Wellington. Tomás arrived a few minutes later.

Tomás was sitting on the couch, in his living room, watching television with Teresa and Julio. Actually, his eyes were open and he was looking in the direction of the screen, but he was thinking about what he had to do that day. It was Saturday.

He looked at his watch. Three o’clock. Time to go. It would take about an hour to get to Wellington’s house on the edge of the Everglades. His gun and two extra mags were already in the car.

“Teresa, I have to go now.”

“OK. Have a good time and don’t stay out too late.” He had told Teresa he was getting together with the boys for a card game and a few beers. As he walked to the car his legs felt a little wobbly. Although he had killed before, he had always killed enemies, people he didn’t know, and usually from a distance. Today would be different. He would be terminating friends, up close and personal. He was nervous, but he knew he had to do it. The alternative was unthinkable. He couldn’t let them snuff innocent people.

On the drive to Wellington’s, he thought about how to do it. He’d wait until Wellington, Santos and Jim were all there. If he was lucky, the Boss would also be there, but if not, he would start without him. Or maybe he would wait until the Boss arrived. He decided that, if the Boss wasn’t there when he arrived, he would ask Wellington if the Boss was going to come. If yes, then he would wait. If not, then he would start shooting.

He couldn’t decide whether to wait for Paige to arrive. It didn’t really matter, since he wasn’t going to snuff Paige, although he’d have to explain his actions to Paige after he killed the others.

As he approached Wellington’s house, he started to have second thoughts about not snuffing Paige. Although he sensed that Paige was not happy about assassinating professors, if he didn’t kill him, he might go to the police and implicate him if he let him live. Or he might go to the Boss if he knew how to contact him. He decided to wait and see Paige’s reaction when he executed the others.

He pulled into the driveway, turned left onto the grass, and pointed the car toward the street, just in case he had to make a quick escape. He walked into the entryway, then into the family room, and saw Wellington, Santos and Jim sitting at the table, looking at him. He could sense something was wrong, but he couldn’t tell what. He thought that maybe it was just his nerves. Paige wasn’t there.

“Is the Boss going to be joining us?”

Wellington leaned forward, and replied, “I don’t know. He said he was going to be extremely busy today but might be able to sneak away for a few minutes.” As he said it, his right arm dropped below the table. He appeared to be reaching for something.

“If it is to be, it is up to me.”

Unknown

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

Barack Hussein Obama

“To survive it is often necessary to fight and to fight you have to dirty yourself.”

George Orwell

Saturday. The time had come. Someone was going to die today. The question was who?

It was about an hour’s drive from Paige’s condo in Sunny Isles Beach to Wellington’s place at the edge of the Everglades. Wellington’s nearest neighbors were about a half mile down the road. They probably wouldn’t hear the shots, and even if they did, they probably wouldn’t pay much attention to them. Lots of people went to the everglades for target practice to avoid the fees that ranges charged.

Sarah and the kids were in Orlando, visiting her parents. They wouldn’t be back for a few days. The meeting was scheduled for 4pm. Paige planned to arrive around 4:15. That way all four of them would be there, hopefully, and he could start blasting right away, since he didn’t know if he could just sit there like nothing was about to happen while waiting for everyone to show up.

He hoped the Boss would also be there, but realized that was unlikely, since the Boss had gone out of his way to be secretive and John refused to reveal the Boss’s identity. Paige wondered whether executing all four of them would end the plan or whether the Boss would merely replace them with another team. It probably wouldn’t be difficult to recruit a new team, given the fact that so many people thought the same way as the present team members.

Paige couldn’t sleep. He got up early and paced back and forth in his living room. His stomach was queasy. He didn’t know if he could do it. John had become his friend of sorts. He felt responsible, since he recruited John when he was an MBA student. Then there were Jim, Tomás and Santos. He had met their families. They had a lot in common. They all loved America and what it stood for. They were all patriots. The problem was that their patriotism was misplaced and un-American. Assassinating people who were gnawing away at the Constitution was one thing. Executing people merely because they exercised their rights of free speech and press was something else. What they were doing was destroying freedom in America. Intellectually, he knew he was doing the right thing, but emotionally it was tearing him apart.

Then there was the possibility that he would fail and that they would kill him instead, or that he wouldn’t be able to get away with it and that either the feds or the local police would come to get him at some point, at which time they’d either kill him or take him into custody with no possibility of escape. Or maybe the Boss would send someone to get him, if the Boss suspected he was the one who executed the team members.

If he survived Saturday, he could spend the rest of his life in jail, unless he could convince a jury that what he did constituted justifiable homicide and that it was necessary to save freedom in America. Then there was the possibility that he wouldn’t even get a chance to have a jury trial. Some laws passed after 9/11 allowed the government to ignore the right to a trial by jury if the person was an alleged terrorist, even if he was an American citizen, all in the name of national security. Having an open jury trial would allow classified information to escape, which would help the enemy, or at least that’s what the government could argue. Or they might argue that having a jury trial would give aid and comfort to the enemy, a phrase that had become over-used in recent years. Therefore, a jury trial might not be allowed. All that was necessary to avoid a jury trial would be for the government to argue that there were national security issues involved. It puzzled Paige that more Americans weren’t outraged by this government policy, which clearly violated the Constitution.

That was another reason why Paige thought he must succeed. Taking away the right to a jury trial pushed the country one step closer to tyranny. Or maybe the country had already arrived at that destination and the citizenry just hadn’t realized it yet.

Paige always liked the phrase,
Live Free or Die
, but he never thought he would actually have to make the choice. No matter what happened today he wouldn’t be totally free. Even if he succeeded in his self-imposed mission, he would only be winning a skirmish in a war that could go on for years without any clear resolution in sight. But it was his only option. He had to think globally but act locally.

At 3:15 he strapped on his Glock 17, making sure there was a round in the chamber, which would give him 18 rounds before he had to reload. If he needed more than that, he would be in trouble, but he took along two extra mags, just in case. He grabbed a pair of latex gloves and put them in his pocket. If he had to touch something, he didn’t want to leave any prints. His Boy Scout training taught him to be prepared, but his Boy Scout leaders probably had something quite different in mind when they beat that slogan into his young Catholic head.

He became increasingly nervous as he got closer to John’s house. He hoped they would all be there. When he was about 200 feet away, he noticed there were only three cars in the driveway, John’s, Jim’s and Tomás’s. Apparently, Santos hadn’t arrived yet.

Shit! He thought of his options. He could circle the block and hope that Santos would show up, except that he was out in the country and there really weren’t blocks in the city sense of the term. He could keep driving for a few miles, then turn around. Or he could abort the mission, which he knew he couldn’t do. Or he could just go in and start blasting whoever was there, then wait for Santos to show up.

He decided to go in and start blasting. His nervousness increased as he pulled into John’s driveway. His hands started to shake. He could barely take the keys out of the ignition and put them in his pocket. He took a deep breath. He said a short prayer to his guardian angel to give him the strength to do what he needed to do and to do the job right.

He still prayed to his guardian angel like the nuns taught him, even though he abandoned Catholicism years ago. Although he firmly believed that organized religion was bullshit, he still believed there were other realms of existence and that there were both good and evil spirits. He hoped it would be a good spirit guiding his hand, although he never really thought about the possibility that a guardian angel might help him execute four misguided patriots.

He got out of the car and walked toward the breezeway. The door would be unlocked, so he could just walk in without ringing the door bell or announcing his presence. From there it was a short walk to the family room, where they would be working out the final details.

He walked into the room. All four of them were there, seated at the table. Apparently, one of them had given Santos a ride. He felt relieved, although he was so weak in the knees that he had difficulty walking normally.

As he entered, John looked up and said, “Hi Bob. Come on in. Join the party.”

They all looked nervous. Paige could sense it. Something was wrong.

As Wellington looked Paige in the eyes, he started to rise slowly from his chair. He raised his pistol and aimed it at Paige as Santos, Jim and Tomás looked on. When Tomás saw what was about to happen, he jumped up, whipped out his pistol, aimed it at Wellington and squeezed the trigger four times. The first two shots hit him in the chest, causing him to fly backwards. The third shot, ripped into his left shoulder, causing him to turn slightly to the left. The fourth one grazed his chin as he dropped to the floor.

The sound of the four shots in rapid succession - BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! – were loud, made louder by the acoustics in the room, which caused the sound to bounce off the walls.

They served to calm Paige down. His knees were no longer wobbly. He became totally focused and in control of his body. He could hear his own breathing as he inhaled deeply.