Justifiable Homicide: A Political Thriller (Robert Paige Thrillers Book 1) (50 page)

They opened up, hitting him six times in the torso. The impact drove him backwards, but he was large and kept standing long enough to pump two shots into Tomás, critically wounding him. Then he turned his gun toward Paige, but before he could squeeze off a round, Paige shot him in the head, causing it to jerk backward. He dropped to the deck.

Paige bent down over Tomás, who was on his back, gurgling blood. “Hang in there, buddy, we’re going to get you to a hospital.”

“No. It’s too late. They’re coming to get me.” Tomás started talking to someone, but it wasn’t Paige. “I don’t want to go. I have to get back to Teresa and Julio. No … Oh, okay … Wow! … Wow!” His eyes rolled up. He was gone. Paige felt a chilly breeze for a second or two. Then the temperature in the room returned to normal. It was a hot Miami night.

Wanda was standing over them, just staring, not knowing what else to do. Paige stood up and looked at her. All of a sudden, her look of puzzlement turned to one of fear. He could tell by looking into her eyes that she thought he was going to kill her.

“Don’t worry. I’m one of the good guys. I’m not going to hurt you.” She looked relieved to hear him say it.

“We have to get out of here. Your prints are probably all over this place. We don’t have time to wipe it down. If you don’t want a visit from the police and the FBI, we have to get rid of the boat.” She just nodded, not knowing what to say.

“Do you know how to start this thing?”

“Yes. He showed me how. Sometimes he lets me steer it.”

“Good. Let’s take it out to Biscayne Bay.”

Paige went up on deck and removed the ropes that kept it tied to the dock. She started the engines. After they pulled out of the marina, Paige set course and cranked it up to 12 knots, which was fairly fast, but not fast enough to attract any attention.

The sun had gone down. It was a beautiful night. There was a three-quarter moon. The neon lights of South Beach were clearly visible. The cool ocean breeze brushed against their faces. Under normal conditions, it would have been a romantic scene.

After they were about a half mile out, Paige picked up their guns and shell casings and tossed them overboard. He dragged their bodies to the deck, weighted them down with some heavy objects he found in the cabin so they would sink, and stabbed them each about 50 times with one of the knives he got from the galley so their body gases would escape as they decomposed. Otherwise, they might float to the surface and be discovered. He didn’t want that to happen. It was a trick they taught him while taking a course in Langley. Then he slipped them over the side.

As he dumped Tomás’s body overboard, he felt sad that Teresa and Julio would never see him again, and would wonder what happened to him, but he didn’t have a choice. He had to get rid of the evidence.

When they reached Biscayne Bay, he dropped anchor and went about preparing the yacht for its final voyage, to the bottom. Wanda had remained silent, watching him.

“Gather up your personal belongings. We’re going ashore. Don’t leave behind anything that they could use to identify you.”

He looked out the starboard side and saw the magnificent Miami skyline, along with the outlines of a few sail boats and several other yachts. It was a good place to park on a Saturday night in Miami.

The yacht came equipped with two jet skis and a dingy. “Feel like taking a ride?” She nodded. He lowered one of the jet skis into the water, then went below deck, where he disengaged the water pumps that cooled the engines, and set the engines on fast idle, which would cause them to heat up quickly. Then he loosened the fuel line. When the engines got hot enough, they would ignite the leaking fuel, causing a fire that would spread quickly, causing the yacht to blow up and sink.

They had to leave. There was no telling how long it would take for the fuel to ignite, but they couldn’t stick around to find out. Paige got on the jet ski and started it. Wanda got on behind him, and they took off toward the shore.

About ten minutes later, as they approached the shore, they heard a big explosion behind them. Paige swung the jet ski around to take a look, just in time to see a second, then a third explosion. Then he swung back around and headed toward the shore.

He beached the jet ski on one of the hotel beaches. They got off and started walking toward the hotel. “Act like we belong here. We’re going to walk around the side of the hotel, then take separate taxis.” She just nodded.

When they got to the street, he gave her instructions. “OK, this is what we’re going to do.” He pointed to the right. “We’re going to walk in this direction and we’re going to walk for about five minutes. Then we’re going to look for a place where we can get a taxi.”

“Why can’t we get a taxi from here?” She looked puzzled.

“I parked the jet ski at this hotel. At some point, they’re going to wonder whose jet ski it is, and they’ll likely be able to trace it back to the yacht. When that happens, they might check taxi records to see who picked up a taxi at this hotel and where they got dropped off. We don’t want them to be able to track us, so we’re going to take taxis from a different location.”

“Oh, OK. Have you done this before?”

“No, I saw it in a movie.”

After about five minutes, they came to an upscale restaurant that was attached to a hotel. While they were still on the sidewalk, Paige reached into his pocket and took out the wad of cash he had removed from Thorndike’s wallet before tossing him overboard. “Here. Take this and get yourself a taxi. Tell the driver to drop you off someplace, but not at your home. Pick some place that’s a five or ten or fifteen minute walk from your house. Or take a second taxi.”

She looked at him, knowing it would be for the last time. “OK. So, I guess this is it, huh?”

“Yeah, this is it.”

“I don’t know what to say. You saved my life tonight.”

“Yeah, I suppose I did. But you saved my life, too. If you hadn’t stomped on his foot, we’d probably both be dead.” She smiled, and looked at the ground, then looked up at him.

He looked into her eyes. “You know you can never tell anyone about this, don’t you?”

“Yes, I know.”

“Do you think you can keep a secret?”

She smiled. “I usually have a problem keeping secrets, but I guess I’ll have to.”

He didn’t completely believe she would be able to keep her mouth shut, so he wanted to give her a little extra incentive. “You know, you probably committed several felonies tonight.”

She looked surprised at his comment. “What do you mean? What did I do?”

“Well, for one, you helped me cover up a crime scene. And you helped me dispose of two bodies. That’s three felony counts right there. Then you helped me destroy millions of dollars of government property. And you took a ride on a stolen jet ski that belonged to the government. And the taxi fare I just gave you is stolen property, so you’re in receipt of stolen property.”

“Do you really think they’d prosecute me? Couldn’t I just blame it all on you?”

“Maybe you could. But you helped me dispose of the body of an FBI guy who’s pretty high up on the food chain. The feds would give your case top priority, and they’d be looking for someone to blame. They might think you’re part of a conspiracy. Even if you prove yourself innocent, you’d have to spend your life savings on an attorney, so even if you win, you’d lose.”

He continued. “Then there’s the distinct possibility that the people he was working with would want to silence you, just to be on the safe side, in case he might have told you something that could lead back to them.”

“But he didn’t tell me anything. I didn’t know about any of this until you came on the boat.”

“Yeah. I know that, and you know that, but do you think they would be willing to take a chance?”

“Well, I guess I’d better keep my mouth shut.”

“I was hoping you’d say that.”

“Well, I guess I’d better say good-bye, then.”

“Yes. Perhaps you should.”

“Bye.” She turned around and walked toward the restaurant’s entrance, where a valet was opening doors for people and putting them into taxis. Paige turned and walked down the street.

As Paige walked away he wondered whether it was really over. He thought about how horrible it’s going to be when John’s wife and kids came home to find their husband/father and the others dead on the floor, but there was nothing he could do to avoid it. He couldn’t clean up the mess and he couldn’t call the local police so they could clean up the crime scene because all their phone calls were recorded. He didn’t want them to record his voice.

He felt bad about it. He and Tomás had made three widows today. He had lost a friend, although Wellington might better be classified as a fair-weather friend, since he had planned to kill Paige. Then there was Tomás, who had been his friend, if only for a few hours.

Was it murder or justifiable homicide? That thought crossed his mind. Will he have to pay for what he has done, either in this life or the next? The question brought to mind a book his brother gave him years ago on the Akashic Record, which discussed how your life flashes in front of you at the moment of death and you see all the things you’ve done and all the things that have been done to you.

That brought to mind a book he read that was written by a former army assassin who got struck by lightning and was clinically dead for a few minutes before coming back to life. While he was clinically dead, he not only saw his life flash before him but also experienced everything his victims had experienced. He recalled one case discussed in the book where the author put a bullet through the brain of a North Vietnamese army officer with a high powered rifle. When his Akashic Record came to that part of his life, he experienced what it felt like from that officer’s perspective. He felt the bullet going into his head and also the grief felt by his relatives when they heard the news that he had been killed.

Would Paige have to experience what John, Jim, Santos and Thorndike had just experienced, plus all the feelings their families had when they learned the news of their deaths? Would his experience with the Akashic Record be the same regardless of whether it was murder or justifiable homicide?

It didn’t seem right that the experience would be the same whether what he did was murder or justifiable homicide. He felt he shouldn’t be punished for doing the right thing, if, indeed, he did the right thing. Yet if the Akashic Record merely causes you to experience what you did from the perspective of the people you did things to, it seems like the experience would be exactly the same regardless of whether you did a good or bad thing. He wasn’t looking forward to learning the answer to that question. He tried not to think about it as he got in the taxi.

Sarah called John from Orlando to say hello. He didn’t answer his cell phone, which was unusual because he always answered his cell phone, or at least got back to her when she left a message. She got worried but couldn’t do much about it because she and the kids were in Orlando, which was a 4 or 5 hour drive from their place in Miami.

The other wives also became worried when their husbands didn’t come home for dinner. Maria called Santos but he didn’t answer his cell phone, so she called John’s house because he told her he would be at John’s. No one answered, so she called Sarah on her cell phone. That got Sarah worried.

Teresa called Tomás and Ana called Jim. No one was answering and no one was returning calls. The wives were all starting to get worried.

Ana decided to pay a visit to John’s house to see what was going on. She arrived after dark. All the lights were out but there were several cars in the driveway, including her husband’s. The crickets were chirping. She decided to go in to see if anyone was there. Perhaps they were watching television in the back room.

She entered through the breezeway and turned on the light.

“Jim? John? Is anybody home?”

She walked into the next room and gasped at what she saw on the floor. John and Jim were lying on the other side of the table, in pools of blood. A small cache of firearms was in the corner of the room.

As she walked toward Jim’s body, she started to tremble and sob. She never thought she might be in danger herself. She never thought that the people who killed Jim and the others might still be in the house or might come back. Her eyes were glued on Jim. She bent over to caress his hair. Her shoes were getting stuck in the sticky, congealed pool of blood.

After she gained her composure, she pulled out her cell phone and called 911. She didn’t know what else to do. She told the dispatcher what had happened as best she could and gave the address. The police and several ambulances arrived in less than ten minutes. A forensic team arrived a half hour later.

The forensic team took dozens of photos of the crime scene, including the MOSSAD scrawl John had apparently made with his own blood. When the multiple killings were announced on the television and radio, that item was not mentioned. The newspapers didn’t mention it, either.

When the crime scene people investigated the scene, they paid close attention to the blood samples splattered around the room. They were able to match all but one to the victims. One drop of blood belonged to someone who was not at the scene, a white male.

DNA technology had advanced to the point where analysts could tell where a person’s ancestors had come from. This sample indicated that this person’s ancestors had come from Ireland and the Azore Islands. The drop had been found a few feet from Santos Hernandez’s body. They checked their databases but whoever it was, wasn’t in any of them.

A few days later, the results were in on the ballistics tests conducted on the weapons found at the scene. The police determined that some of the guns found at the scene were used in the Sons of Liberty assassinations. They also found John’s computer. The hard drive contained all the messages the Sons of Liberty had sent to the press.

The police considered the Sons of Liberty case to be solved. They closed the case, although they weren’t sure if all the members of the group had been killed or if some of them remained at large. Tomás was missing, and so was Thorndike, although they couldn’t tie Thorndike directly to the assassinations. Time would tell.