Justification For Killing (15 page)

Little did these young
girls and the Sisters realize they would be the last of President
Kennedy’s adoring public to have the privilege of touching him.
Tragedy was quickly approaching.

The left turn off of Main
Street onto Houston occurred at 12:28:30.

The Secret Service
agents that had dismounted to control the crowd at the corner of
Main and Houston were now jumping back onto their follow car. One
of them thought,
By God, I hope all of
these open windows in those buildings have been checked.
All along the right side of the motorcade route
and directly to their front were tall buildings with people leaning
out screaming, taking pictures and waving. One of these buildings
immediately in front of the Dallas Police Chief’s white Ford lead
car was the Texas School Book Depository. The entire building was
full of people including some hanging out windows. An immense crowd
had also gathered around the front entrance.

Did anyone in the security
force look up toward the TSBD sixth floor? If they did, would they
have seen something unusual? Maybe they would have, some
did.

Approximately ten to
fifteen minutes before the motorcade made the turn into Dealey
Plaza, Arnold Rutland along with his wife saw a man, with something
resembling a rifle, on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book
Depository.
"I noticed on the top floor of
the building on the corner of Elm and Houston. I saw a man standing
back from the end; he was not at a window. He was standing up, I
could see him from the waist up and I saw, what we thought was a
rifle. This appeared to me to be a fairly high-powered rifle
because of the scope and the relative proportion of the scope to
the rifle, you can tell about what type of rifle it is. The man was
holding the rifle in a "port arms" military position, with the
barrel at a 45-degree angle downward across his body.”

On the Tenth of
December 1963, Mr. Rutland had made a report to the FBI:
“
At about 12:25 p.m., I saw a man with,
what looked like, a rifle with a scope, on the roof of the Texas
State Book Depository Building. He was crouching at the southwest
corner of the building. I am certain this was right since the
southwest corner was the corner nearest the triple overpass. I just
assumed this person was a security guard or a Secret Service agent,
and tried to show him to my wife, but it was too far for her to see
because she had left her glasses laying on the car seat.”

At approximately the
same time, Mr. Rudy Herderson reported to the FBI:
“I know I saw two different men with rifles on
the School Building, one with a rifle on the top floor and the
other was on the roof. Down close to end closer to the overpass. He
had dark skin, not a Negro, maybe a Mexican or
such.”

Just a couple of
seconds before the motorcade entered the plaza, Mrs. Susan Wallace,
standing on the west side of Houston Street, about fifty or sixty
feet south of the Depository building on Elm Street,
“noticed two men on an upper floor of the
Depository, one of the men was holding a rifle in his
hands.”
She described the rifle as having
a long barrel, but she was never asked if both men had been on the
same floor of the Texas School Book Depository, or if one might
have been on the roof. Neither Mr. Herderson nor Mrs. Wallace was
called to testify before the Warren Commission.

Two additional witnesses,
a Robert Townsend and William Belue said they saw a man in a tan
coat on the roof of the Depository just seconds before the
shooting. A man matching the one Townsend and Belue witnessed, also
wearing a tan raincoat, was seen, by two other witnesses. Their
sworn statements indicated the ‘raincoat man’ quickly walking
around the side of the Depository just after the shooting. He
walked around the west end of the building and got into a grey Nash
Rambler station wagon on Elm and sped away. Belue further said this
unknown man seemed to signaling with his arm as he drove off, to
someone in the vicinity of the Grassy Knoll.

Chapter
Eleven

PEGASUS IS ABOUT TO
RIDE

Captain Scarburg was,
“locked and loaded.” The safety harness had been securely strapped
into place; his helmet was snug and fastened. The internal headset
was working perfectly. Mr. Rousseau had been relaying all the
‘flight’ countdown information and all steps seem to be progressing
on schedule.

A few seconds before
‘launch’ Mr. Watkins via the intercom quickly warned the Captain
about the setting on the internal flight computers. In addition to
his job as Chief, Flight Prep Crew, he was the man who prepared and
input the GPS coordinates to the on board computers. He told the
Captain he was to land at 12:29:30 p.m. Friday November 22, 1963.
Thirty seconds before the Kennedy assassination, but, it was
critical, under no circumstances could he miss the 12:29:30 p.m.
Saturday November 23, 1963 departure window. “It is impossible to
re-set your computers on site - they have to be synchronized with
our master computer here within our lab to the exact micro-second -
miss the date, and the exit window shuts and I mean, for good. Not
only does the window shut, but also
Pegasus
will disappear and may be
gone forever. Where will it go? Your guess is as good as mine.” He
further said, “If, for some reason, you are not in
Pegasus
and miss the
return flight, you will live in a world forty-nine years earlier
than the present, but your age will still be the same as your age
is today. Your age clock does not get turned back. If you get back
to the present, you will be over a hundred years old!! Don’t miss
that departure Captain Scarburg!”

Over the intercom,
the Captain heard the Flight Director,
“Six - Five - Four - Three - Two - One. Molecular separation
sequences begin...”

Captain Scarburg felt
nothing... no movement... no noise on the intercom... nothing;
except he was experiencing a slight tingling sensation. “By-ned’
(the Captain’s usual swear word), this darn thing, didn’t work
again. Another billion dollars of good ole American taxpayer’s hard
earned money shot up a wild hog’s rear end. Hey Rousseau, can you
hear me? What is happening? Did something go wrong? Rousseau?
Rousseau you there?” He yelled into the headset.

The four inch thick
porthole located directly in his front was smoky. He could not see
out. “Rousseau? Watkins? I see smoke... is everything okay?
Is
Pegasus
on
fire? Someone talk to me... what’s happening.”

DEEP IN A COW PASTURE IN
THE HEART OF TEXAS

Suddenly there was a
bright flash of white light. Later the Captain would say it
reminded him of a thousand flashes of lightening going off at the
same time. That was the last thing he saw - he blacked out. How
long he was out he did not know. When he awoke the bright light was
gone, the tingling sensation had stopped, and the smoke or fog was
beginning to disappear from the porthole, but something was wrong.
Everything seemed tilted. He felt as if he were sitting on the side
of a steep hill.
Oh, I was afraid of this
- this shift in the space/time continuum has caused a blood vessel
to pop inside my head - I’m having a stroke! I must get out, get
out,
he thought
.
I only have a few seconds to disrupt the potential assassin. Got to
get this hatch open and get out onto the roof!
Looking around the inside of the interior nothing was in
color - it was as if he were watching a black and white
movie.
What’s happening? What’s wrong with
my eyes? A stroke, yes, that must be it, a stroke. And what is that
sound... it’s music... not exceptionally loud, but yes that IS
music... say I recognize the song... I’ve heard that before...
listen... listen... yes that’s... that’s “Amazing Grace.” Where in
the world is that music coming from?
By
the time the Captain had recognized the soft sounding, beautiful
song the bagpipes and drums abruptly stopped.

Flipping the
“OPEN”
switch the hatch
automatically swung wide open, “What the...,” he said out loud as
he surveyed the landscape. “This sure isn’t the roof-top of the
Texas State Book Depository!”

The time was... was...
well Captain Scarburg honestly did not know.

The sight that
greeted him was one of trees, grass, dirt, a number of old pumped
out oil wells and cows. Dozens of cows with white faces, well, he
thought,
they looked white, and he was
sure they were cows.
In fact, he had
stepped from
Pegasus
down to the ground into a fresh pile of cow manure.
By-ned - got this contraption finally to work,
and I’m still in deep do-do!! Not only am I in a pasture full of
cow dung I landed on a tree stump - that’s what caused the tilted
feeling inside.

Taking a 360-degree
look around he could see nothing - well there were cows and old oil
wells, trees and two small ponds, which appeared to be built by
beavers. No signs of life, or a house of any kind. With the
exception of an old, dilapidated, barn-looking structure, a few
hundred feet off toward the north, there was nothing else.
I Wonder where I am?
He
thought. Remembering one of the dials inside the time machine was a
GPS indicator he reasoned it would be a good idea to check it out.
Before moving he removed his digital camera from his pocket, and
snapped a couple of pictures. He had to prove to that genius Ryan
Rousseau his computer program was off just a tad.

Searching the sparse
winter ground, he found a clump of grass and attempted to remove as
much cow manure from his boot as possible, without much success.
The five-minute time limit on the hatch closing was about to
expire. This forced him to abandon the effort to clean his boot for
the moment and climb back inside his traveling abode. Once safely
inside he searched the instruments for the GPS dial.
Oh yeah, here you are
,
he said to himself. The reading on the dial was 32 degrees, 64
minutes, 47 seconds North, 96 degrees, 48 minutes, 30 seconds
West.
That’s not right... no, something is
wrong... I have the coordinates written down on a piece of paper in
my pocket just for safekeeping,
he
thought, wiping his boot on a white towel embossed with the letters
S.C.A.R. Before finding the information on his note pad, he tossed
the soiled towel over into a corner of
Pegasus
’ flight
deck.

Withdrawing the
scrap of paper, yes, here it is. The numbers written were 32
degrees, 46 minutes, 47 seconds North 96 degrees, 48 minutes, 30
seconds West. The 46 minutes had been changed to 64 minutes, slight
difference in numbers but a long distance in miles.
Where in the blazes am I? I must be in Texas it’s
too darn flat and full of cows and oil pumps to be anywhere else.
But, which way do I go, and by-ned I’ve, probably, missed the
shooter on the roof!

Pressing the
interior hatch release button there was a swishing noise suggestive
of escaping air. The hatch swung open, and the Captain slipped out
once again to the grass and dirt. In his hand, he carried his old
Army Model 1911 .45 automatic pistol with him. Originally, when the
concept of time travel had been discussed SCAR made a draft of
rules that time adventurers should observe - one was no modern
firearm would be transported back in time. It was too dangerous -
the modern ballistic technology could fall into the wrong hands.
The Captain knew this rule, but chose to ignore it. He reasoned he
might have use of a gun on the roof to dissuade the shooter if need
be. Now he needed to hide it. The hatch on
Pegasus
had closed, and he couldn’t
be discovered walking around with a loaded handgun in his pocket.
He walked over to a nearby tree and sat down. He leaned back;
resting his back against the rough bark he pondered his
situation.
Okay,
he thought to himself,
I’ve got a
few things to figure out. Where am I? And, which direction do I go
to get out of here? And most importantly why was the GPS setting
wrong? I wonder if this is the 22nd day of November? It might be,
but in what year?
He looked as his
calendar watch, but of course, it was useless the time was 2:30.
The date was 21, and the month was November. His watch was still on
the time and date when he left, and besides the crystal was cracked
and broken, and the watch was not running. Today was supposed to be
November 22nd and the time should be around 12:30... or was
it?

Thinking, he tried
to analyze the GPS data carefully
. Let me
think now. If 32 degrees, 46 minutes, 47 seconds North 96 degrees,
48 minutes, 30 seconds West, is Dallas, then that would make 32
degrees, 64 minutes, 47 seconds North north of Dallas. How much?
Then 64 minutes minus 46 minutes means I am 18 minutes north of
Dallas. If I remember correctly back to my old Army days a minute
of latitude, was roughly 1 to 2 miles at 32 degrees latitude. So 64
minutes minus 46 minutes equal 18. So I guess I am somewhere
roughly 20 to 40 miles north of Dallas. Hmmm... I didn’t miss the
Texas School Book Depository rooftop much! But on the bright side -
at least I AM here...I just don’t know where HERE is.
Captain Scarburg didn’t know at the time,
but
Pegasus
had
plopped itself down in a cow pasture a mile or two northwest of the
little Texas town of Celina. Celina was exactly 42 miles
north-northwest of Dallas.