Justifiable Homicide: A Political Thriller (Robert Paige Thrillers Book 1) (48 page)

As he grabbed for his Glock, Santos rushed him, knocking him to the ground and causing him to drop his gun. Tomás turned toward Jim and shot him twice in the head as he was drawing his gun.

Paige managed to get up and break away from Santos’s strong grip. He rushed Paige again, throwing a punch with his right, which Paige managed to partially deflect by stepping to the right and blocking with his left arm.

It was an automatic response, gained from all those years of sparring in Kimura’s dojo and Brown’s dojahng. He felt Santos’s fist glance off his mouth but it didn’t hurt. His adrenalin was pumping too fast to feel any pain.

Santos’s forward rush with that muscular body caused Paige to partially lose his balance. Tomás tried to draw a bead on Santos but couldn’t get a clear shot. They were both moving too fast.

As Santos rushed at him a third time, Paige was able to recover sufficiently to throw a jumping side kick into Santos’s solar plexus, causing Santos to fly backwards against the wall.

As he bounced off the wall, he charged Paige a fourth time, but he was off balance. His head was projecting forward, almost parallel with the floor, his feet barely touching the ground. It looked like he was going to tackle Paige rather than punch him.

Paige let loose with a karate punch to his nose, causing the cartilage to snap like a twig and rattling his brain enough to throw off his equilibrium. Santos dropped to the floor, face down.

He was temporarily out of commission, unable to get up, but he was still a threat. If it were an alley fight with a street punk, Paige would have the option of running away, but he didn’t have that option now. He knew he had to finish him off. If he let Santos get up, he would be in trouble.

He leapt off the floor and came down on Santos, the heel of his left foot slamming into Santos’ third cervical vertebra. He could feel Santos’ neck snap. It was over.

Paige let out a sigh of relief. He could taste blood in his mouth. Apparently, the one punch that Santos was able to land had cut his lip.

He was breathing heavily from all the physical activity. As he gulped air, he turned toward Tomás, who was standing about ten feet away, the gun still in his hand, pointed toward the floor.

“I suppose I should thank you for saving my life. What happened just now?”

“Wellington was going to snuff you. He got the order from the Boss. Santos and Jim wanted to whack you, too.”

“So why didn’t you let them? You’re one of them, too, aren’t you?”

“I used to be, but I drew the line when they started assassinating journalists and professors. I had to stop them before Tuesday. Exterminating termites like Debbie Waterstein, Senator Tom Garrett and Daniel Frumpton is one thing. Executing people just for criticizing the government is something else. I decided I wasn’t going to let that continue to happen.”

“Well, I’m glad you decided not to kill professors.” Paige smiled as he said it. Tomás reciprocated.

“Where do we go from here? Is the Boss supposed to be at this meeting?”

“I don’t know. John said he might be able to stop by for a few minutes, but I wouldn’t count on it.”

Paige touched his lip, which was starting to swell. “We have to get him, you know. This thing won’t be over until he’s out of the picture.”

“Yeah I know. I think we need to get him today. If we wait, he’ll find out about what just happened, and he’ll come after us.”

“I agree. We’ll have to get him in the next few hours.” Paige bent over to pick up his Glock.

Tomás thought for a few seconds. “I know where he lives and where he works. He probably won’t be in the office today, so we can start with his home.”

“Who is the Boss, anyway? I’ve been trying to pry the information out of John for years, but he always evades my questions.”

“His name is Hank Thorndike. He’s the southeast regional head of the FBI, but he also has CIA connections. I don’t know the specifics. John kept us pretty much in the dark, too, although we have met him a few times. One time I copied down his license plate number and did a little searching on the internet. He lives in Coconut Grove.”

“Let’s start there, and hope he’s home. If he isn’t, I guess we’ll have to wait for him.”

“Not necessarily. He has a boat at the marina on South Beach. He might be there. It’s Saturday.”

Paige smiled and looked him directly in the eyes. “I see you’ve done your homework.”

“Sometimes I get curious.” He bent over and started picking up his shell casings.

Paige looked around the room, and at the dead bodies on the floor. “We’ll have to leave this mess. We don’t have time to clean it up.”

“Yeah. We need to get out of here.”

Paige turned toward the door. “OK. Let’s go. You go first. I’ll follow you in my car.”

“We should probably go in one car. It would make things easier. Let’s drop your car off at your place and take mine. I know where the Boss lives.”

“OK. Do you know where I live, too?”

“Of course.” They both smiled.

As they started to leave, Paige turned around, walked back into the room and put one of the latex gloves on his right hand. He walked up to Wellington’s corpse, which was lying face down, grabbed John’s right hand, dipped Wellington’s index finger in his blood, and scrawled MOSSAD on the floor.

Tomás saw what Paige had done. “Why did you do that?”

“Just think of it as a love letter to Rachel Karshenboym.”

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”

Thomas Jefferson

After dropping off Paige’s car at his condo, they engaged in conversation as Tomás drove them to Coconut Grove.

Paige was curious to learn more about his new best buddy. “How did you get involved in this business?”

“John recruited me. He heard about my computer skills and the work I did in Iraq and Afghanistan and he contacted me. He didn’t tell me where he got the information, but he knew a lot about me, so it must have been someone I worked with, probably in Afghanistan, because that was my last mission before getting out of the army.”

Paige got a smile on his face. “Do you know that I’m the one who recruited John?”

“No, I didn’t know that. John was very closed mouthed about that kind of thing.”

“As he should be. It’s not a good idea to go blabbing about who recruited you or how they did it. The funny thing is that, since John recruited you and I recruited John, I’m sort of responsible for recruiting you, since there’s a direct link in the chain between you and me.”

“I don’t know whether I should thank you or kick you in the balls. If you hadn’t recruited John, we wouldn’t be in this predicament. Or at least I wouldn’t be.”

They both laughed. Tomás continued. “How did they recruit you?”

“I can’t talk about that, although I can tell you they did it when I was working with the Finance Ministry in Armenia.”

“That sounds interesting. You really can’t tell me more?”

“I suppose I could. I’m not feeling very loyal to the Company at the moment.”

Tomás turned his head to the right to look at Paige. “Well, technically this isn’t a Company assignment. It’s more of a freelance thing. Some American patriots saw something wrong and decided to do what they could to fix it.”

“I hear you. When you can’t get rid of the political trash by the electoral process, the people have to do it on an ad hoc basis.”

Tomás smiled, exposing his teeth, which looked even whiter because of his brown skin, black hair and black eyes. “Yeah. That’s what the Second Amendment’s all about. It’s not about protecting the rights of hunters. It’s about protecting the people from their government. The problem is, where do you draw the line?” Tomás had taken two political science classes in college, which was just enough to pique his interest in the relationship between the people and the government.

Paige had thought about this relationship, too, especially in recent months. “I think it’s impossible to draw a bright line to determine who should be killed and who shouldn’t, but I think it is possible to establish some general guidelines.”

He continued. “I think the people who have earned the honor of being put on the hit list are the ones who have done the most damage to the country, the ones who have engaged in overt acts that result in violations of property rights or Constitutional rights.”

Tomás chimed in. “Most members of Congress would fall into that category. They sponsor legislation that violates the Constitution and property rights. They pass laws that take the property from those who’ve earned it and give it to those who haven’t. They pass laws that violate our right to privacy. The Boss refers to them as termites. They gradually gnaw away at the Constitutional and property rights structure, chipping away at our rights gradually. Nobody seems to notice until the structure starts collapsing. By then it’s too late to do much about it.”

Paige thought about what Tomás had just said. “That’s a good analogy. I think I’m starting to like good old Hank. It’s too bad we have to kill him. What about the Frumpton hit? Who thought of that one?”

“Hank did. He thought of most of them. I feel funny calling him Hank. He always wanted us to refer to him as the Boss, or Sir. He didn’t want us to get informal with him.”

“I can understand that. It’s part of the discipline and chain of command thing. I perceive he’s a bit of a tight ass, huh?”

“You could say that. I never felt comfortable when he was in the room. But he’s not all bad. He understands what has to be done and how to get America back on track. The problem is that he’s gone over the edge. He’s starting to put people on the hit list who don’t belong there.”

“Like journalists and professors?”

“Yeah. Some of them are damaging America by spouting collectivist crap, but I don’t think that’s justification for killing them. Executing people for their views stifles free speech and press, and that’s bad for America. Snuffing them would destroy freedom in America faster than letting them continue to spout their gibberish.”

“Tell me about his reasoning for the Frumpton hit. I read the press reports, but you know how the press is. They slant things and often leave out the best parts.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean, but the press did a pretty good job of reporting on our hits. I think it’s because they published the blurbs John sent them after each hit.”

Tomás looked at his watch. Six o’clock. They still had a few hours of daylight, which could help or hinder them, depending on how they planned their hit.

He continued. “But getting back to this Frumpton thing, Hank wanted to expand the list to include people who abused the Constitution even if they weren’t politicians. Abusers of the eminent domain laws were at the top of his list. Hank had read about some families who had their homes confiscated by the government so that private developers could build on their property. I remember the first time he talked about it at one of our meetings. He got enraged whenever he spoke about it. He wanted Congress and the various state legislatures to repeal the eminent domain laws, since they gave the government the authority to confiscate private property, but he didn’t see that as a realistic possibility, so he decided to do the next best thing – execute anyone who used the eminent domain laws to confiscate private property.

“He didn’t limit it to just the developers. He thought we should include anyone involved in the chain of confiscation because they were part of the problem. The attorneys for the developers, the judges and local politicians who approved the confiscations were all part of the problem. He figured if he could exterminate enough of them, it would send a message that engaging in eminent domain actions could be harmful to your health. He wanted to create a chilling effect that would alter behavior.”

Paige thought about the television and press reports following the Frumpton hit. “I guess he was at least partially successful. I recall reading about some real estate board declaring eminent domain activities to constitute unethical conduct, something that agents and brokers could lose their real estate license for. Some banks announced they would quit financing eminent domain projects.”

“Yeah, Hank was really thrilled when he heard those announcements. He offered them as evidence we were making a difference.”

“I think he was right. If I were a real estate developer, I’d sure as hell think twice before starting an eminent domain confiscation, especially if it was in Miami. It’s too bad we have to liquidate him.”

“Yeah, he’s made some contributions toward restoring freedom in America, but he’s gone over the edge. Besides, if we don’t kill him, he’s going to kill us.”

They had been on the road for what seemed like a long time, driving from Wellington’s home near the Everglades to Sunny Isles Beach to drop off Paige’s car, then to Coconut Grove. They were within minutes of their destination.

“Hank’s house is just a few blocks from here. How do you think we should proceed?”

“Let’s do a drive by. I want to see what the neighborhood looks like and how his house is situated. Is he married? Does he have kids living at home?”

“He’s divorced. The kids lived with their mother after the divorce, but I think they’re all grown and out of the house now.”

“So he lives alone?”

“I think so. He never talks about his personal life.”

“I don’t want to kill any civilians if we can help it.”

“I don’t either. I think he’s usually armed, so we have to be careful. And fast. He’ll probably go for his gun as soon as he sees us.”

“Then let’s make sure he doesn’t see us.”

Paige turned his head toward Tomás. “I think we should approach so the house is on the right side. That way, if he’s visible, I can shoot him from the passenger side while you drive. Can you do that?”

“Yeah. He lives on a two-way street. It’s set back about 50 feet from the road. Do you think you can hit him from that far away?”

“I don’t know. I guess we’ll just have to find out.”

“Is that a Glock you’re carrying?”

“Yeah, it’s a Glock 17. It holds 18 rounds if you put one in the chamber. Do you think that will be enough?” He said it half jokingly.