Justifiable Homicide: A Political Thriller (Robert Paige Thrillers Book 1) Read online

  “No, I haven’t heard.”

  Bennett perked up at the mention of Debbie Waterstein, the local congressional representative. Bennett or a member of his staff was sometimes assigned to protect her when she appeared at a public event in the Miami area. He had gotten to know her over the years, and he didn’t like her. She was a phony, someone who would smile to your face and slip a knife in your back when you turned around. As she gained seniority in the House of Representatives, the power had gone to her head. She treated Bennett and his people like servants and barked orders at them. She never said please or thank you. She acted like a master rather than a public servant.

  Carl sat down in the chair next to Seth. “Yeah, they’re calling it the Patriot Reading Act. They’re targeting anything that’s anti-patriot—books, web sites, newspapers, anything in print. If it provides aid and comfort to the enemy, they want to shut them down. Any bookstore that sells anti-patriotic books would get shut down for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Any credit card company that finances the sale would get shut down. Any advertiser that pays for an ad on an online web site that spouts anti-patriotic crap—shut down. The same with Facebook. Shut ‘em down and arrest their owners.

  Bennett started to smile, not because he approved of the proposed legislation, but because it showed that Debbie had gone over the edge. “It sounds like our friend Debbie is totally out of control. She’s become drunk with power, much like Caligula and the other Roman emperors in the late phase of the empire.”

  Carl nodded in agreement. “Yeah, only she wears expensive designer clothes instead of a toga and drives around in a limo instead of a chariot. Senator Garrett says that if the bill passes in the House, he’ll make sure it passes in the Senate. He’ll have a voice vote on it, so the senators won’t have to go on record as being for it. He’ll declare that the ayes have it, regardless of how many votes it gets.”

  Bennett’s smile turned into a smirk. “Ah, Senator Garrett. Now there’s a prime example of rat puke rising to the top.” He shifted his attention to Seth. “Seth, let’s say that I assigned you to guard Debbie Waterstein or Senator Garrett the next time they were in town, and somebody tried to assassinate them. Would you step in front of them and take the bullet?” Bennett winked at Carl after he said it.

  Seth squirmed in his chair and looked at the carpet. “Yes, I suppose I’d have to. It’s my job.”

  “Well, then, you’re the one who’s going to get that assignment.”

  Carl and Bennett laughed. Seth did not.

  The phone rang. Bennett swiveled around and picked it up.

  “Jim? John Wellington. Can you talk?”

  “Guys, sorry. I have to take this call. Seth, close the door on your way out.” A few seconds later, he was alone. “Hi, John. What can I do for you?”

  “I’d like you to stop by my office before you go home tonight.”

  “Which one? You have three of them.”

  “I’m at the downtown office today.”

  “Great. You want me to drive to downtown Miami at rush hour.”

  “Don’t worry. Everyone else will be going in the other direction.”

  “Right. Until it’s my turn to leave.”

  “Give me a call a few minutes before you arrive. I’ll meet you in the lobby.”

  “I know the procedure. See you around five.”

  17

  4:57 p.m.

  Commerce Department

  Bennett arrived a few minutes early. He called Wellington as he drove into the parking garage down the street. He didn’t want to have to wait long in the lobby. His appearance—just under six feet with an athletic build and brown hair—made him standout in a crowd, especially in Miami, where most of the locals were short, and many were overweight.

  Bennett walked through the front doors and saw Wellington on the other side of the lobby. He gripped a cloth bag in his left hand, which appeared unusual for someone who looked like an Indiana prep school graduate.

  Wellington started walking toward Bennett. “Jim. Glad you could make it. I hope the traffic wasn’t too bad.”

  “Not any worse than usual for five o’clock in Miami.” Bennett wasn’t used to being summoned to offsite locations. He was usually the one who did the summoning.

  Wellington placed his hand on Bennett’s shoulder and motioned toward the door with a nod of his head. “Let’s go to my other office.”

  They went outside and turned left. A few moments later they turned left again, into the alley that separated the Commerce Department building from the one next to it. After going about fifty feet, Wellington stopped and turned toward the street, and Bennett.

  “Here are some things our friend, Professor Paige, gave me this afternoon. He wants ‘my guys’ to process it.” He related the story to Bennett. “Do it off the books. I don’t want any paper trail.”

  “Got it. Do you want me to give you a written report?”

  “Yes, but put it directly into a flash drive. Don’t use your office computer at all. I want to show it to the boys and point out how they screwed up. Don’t bother processing the DNA samples. We already know who they are.”

  Bennett smiled. “It’s a good thing Paige didn’t take it to the local police.”

  “Yeah, that could complicate our lives. Well, yours, at least.”

  18

  Miami International Airport

  “A hallmark of soft totalitarianism is the subjugation of the individual, all done in the name of personal freedom.”

  Atavus Ataraktos (John William McMullen, Utopia Revisited)

  Santos Hernandez could be described as a lump of muscle on two legs. He was short, barely 5’ 8”, with massive arms and a chest that barely fit into his shirts. He had a round head with dark brown hair that was too short to comb. His neck was not clearly visible. It appeared that God set his head directly between his shoulders. He had the thick, full lips that women liked to kiss, although the only women he’d been kissing lately were his wife, Maria, and their nine year-old daughter, Rosa. On the surface they appeared to be a typical, hard-working Hispanic Miami family. But Santos had a dark side that even Maria didn’t know about.

  The dark side had remained hidden throughout high school and the two years he spent at Miami-Dade College. It didn’t emerge until shortly after John Wellington recruited him to be a part-time CIA asset. Wellington thought he might be a useful asset because of his physical attributes and his job at the Miami International Airport, where he worked as a TSA agent. He was the CIA’s eyes and ears at the airport. He wasn’t the CIA’s only airport asset, but occasionally he did provide useful information and he had access to records that allowed Wellington to get information without going through official channels. It saved time and avoided the necessity of answering questions that Wellington didn’t want to answer, since some of the projects he worked on were off the books.

  It had been two weeks since he killed Raul Rodriguez and Gabriella Acosta. The public had mostly forgotten about it and moved on, but Santos Hernandez had not. The image of her face just before he pulled the trigger still haunted him. He wondered if he would ever be able to forget.

  It started like a typical Tuesday afternoon at the gate entrance. The citizenry lined up like sheep, patiently waiting to go through the warrantless search process they had become accustomed to after 9/11. Santos watched a female TSA agent caress the breasts of one of the better looking female passengers, a job well suited for lesbians with deviant sex syndrome because it allowed them to legally grope hundreds of female passengers every day, and they could select the ones they wanted to grope. Before 9/11 it would have been considered sexual assault. Since then it had become just standard operating procedure in the fight against terrorism.

  The passenger being groped reminded him of Gabriella. He still thought of her at least once a day. He couldn’t forget the look of terror she had on her face as she realized she was about to die. He felt bad that he’d had to kill her.

  Santos experience
d a rare sense of guilt when he read her obituary. She’d left behind a son, a brother, and two parents. He could relate to that. He had a family, too. Usually when he snuffed someone he didn’t think of them as a human being, just a target that needed to be eliminated. He preferred killing men.

  An elderly woman in a wheelchair set off an alarm. Santos snapped out of his daydream about Gabriella and looked in the direction of the commotion. The TSA agent closest to the woman went into action.

  “Ma’am, let’s go over here.” The female TSA agent motioned for her to go off to the side so that the other passengers could proceed to pick up their carry-on luggage. The woman looked startled. The man pushing her wheelchair chimed in. “She has dementia. She doesn’t understand what’s going on.”

  The agent blocked his advance with her right arm. “Sir, you have to wait here.”

  The physical contact caught Santos’s attention. The man appeared to be in his early sixties. A little on the pudgy side, average height, thinning brown hair, pasty white skin and rimless glasses. From his appearance, one could guess that his ancestors came from Northern Europe or Ireland.

  A second female agent roughly pushed him aside, startling the man. “We’ll take it from here.” She took control of the wheelchair, propelling it off to the right, toward the search area. The wheelchair slammed into a table. The tube connecting the elderly woman’s urine bag and catheter caught on the edge of the table, causing the catheter to get ripped from her crotch. She screamed. Yellow liquid splattered onto the floor as blood began to ooze from her crotch.

  The man who had been pushing the wheelchair started to protest. “That’s my mother. She’s got dementia. I need to go with her.”

  His mother turned around as best she could when she heard his voice. She couldn’t see him because he stood behind her and the agent blocked her view. She had a pained look on her face. The blood continued to ooze. A few drops splattered on the floor. The TSA agent continued to push the wheelchair toward the search area.

  “James!”

  The large female TSA agent tried to calm her down. She bent forward and spoke into her left ear. “That’s all right, ma’am. This will only take a minute.”

  “James!” she exclaimed again, getting frantic.

  Santos continued to watch as events unfolded. He noticed James becoming visibly upset by his mother’s repeated calls. As James started toward her, the larger of the two female agents stepped in front of him, blocking his advance with her body. He continued to try to walk toward his mother, who was bleeding and screaming.

  “James!”

  By now, everyone in the screening area was watching the events as they unfolded.

  The large, black female agent pushed him back as best she could, but she had trouble restraining him. Santos noticed, got up from his chair and walked toward them, briskly.

  Santos grabbed him by the left arm and slammed him into the wall. He shouted, “You can’t go in there! That’s a restricted area!”

  James resisted by raising his left arm. He broke the hold Santos had on him, accidentally slapping Santos in the face. Santos responded by slamming his right fist into his ribs, followed by a left to his face. The force of the second blow caused James’s head to fly back. He hit the wall with a thud. Blood spurted from his nose as he slid to the floor.

  The other passengers in the line gasped, unable to believe what they had just witnessed. Several of them took out their cell phones to record the event.

  Santos could see that James no longer posed a threat, but he didn’t stop. He kicked him, once to the face, then to the ribs. He could feel several of them break as his foot connected.

  “You dumb fuck! I told you to stop!”

  The other TSA agents watched as the event unfolded. Two of the male agents ran toward Santos and grabbed him before he could do any more damage. They eventually were able to restrain him. One agent handcuffed James. Santos and another agent lifted him up, causing his broken ribs to jab him in the side. He let out a scream. They led him away, dragging him past the line of passengers. He bled profusely from the face.

  One of the passengers standing in line took a close-up photo of his bloody face and bulging eyes as the TSA agents dragged him past the line of gasping onlookers.

  The two female TSA agents had stopped what they were doing to watch the altercation. His mother couldn’t see what was going on, but she could hear the commotion. She tried to turn around to see, but the wheelchair pointed in the opposite direction.

  The larger of the two female agents grabbed the wheelchair handles, rushed her into the screening room and closed the doors behind her. As the door closed, passengers could hear her screaming – “James! James! … Get your hands off me!”

  19

  The Olive Garden

  “Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? … I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

  Patrick Henry

  “Robert, did you hear what happened at the airport yesterday?” Sveta and Paige just sat down for lunch at the Olive Garden restaurant on Biscayne Boulevard and 181st Street in Aventura, a north eastern suburb of Miami. They liked eating there because of the salad and because of its closeness to her office. Michelle, their favorite waitress, placed the salad and bread on the table and left.

  “Yes, I couldn’t help it. The photo someone took of him being dragged away with a bloodied face made the front page of the Miami Herald. Did you see the pain on his face?”

  “Yes. And someone took a video and posted it on the internet. I saw the whole thing on YouTube this morning. I heard it went viral.”

  Sveta took a sip of her ice tea. “I think it was terrible what they did to that man. Did you see it when that TSA agent kicked him in the face and the ribs? That’s something they would do in Russia, but not in America.”

  “Yes. I heard the FBI questioned the person who took that photo of his bloody face. They’re trying to decide whether to charge him with a crime because it puts the government in a bad light.”

  “Why would they go after him? All he did was take a photo.”

  “Yes, but publishing it makes it look like the government is more of a threat than the terrorists. It weakens their argument that no cost is too great to fight the war on terrorism.

  The newscaster interviewed the TSA agent’s boss. He said the investigation has already been completed and that the agent had been acting properly, just following procedure. They’re going to prosecute the passenger for assault. The FBI is trying to get the YouTube video taken down because he said it provides aid and comfort to the enemy. They’re also trying to find out who posted it.”

  “What enemy, Robert? Who is the enemy?”

  “It’s difficult to find one. I’m beginning to think the government poses more of a threat than the terrorists.”

  “I am thinking so too, Robert, but what can anyone do about it?”

  “I don’t know. Whenever some politician goes on TV to talk about national security, they all say the same thing: we need more funding, we need stricter laws, we need more surveillance cameras. It doesn’t matter whether they’re Democrats or Republicans.”

  “Robert, the condo board started putting more cameras in my building. Jason told me they got a federal grant to pay for it.”

  “Yeah, I read that there is a lot of government money for cameras. Did you notice there are now a lot of cameras all up and down Biscayne Boulevard?”

  “Yes, and a lot of other streets too. The camera takes a photo whenever the light turns red. Hitler and Stalin could only dream of such a thing. I heard a news report a few weeks ago about somebody shooting out a few of them around 70th and Biscayne. I only heard it once, though. I wonder if the police pressured the TV station not to report it.”

  “I wouldn’t doubt it. They’re probably afraid of copycats. A lot of people don’t like those cameras. I’ve read on the Internet that the government is put
ting pressure on the media not to report things that touch on national security.”

  Sveta stopped fumbling with her salad. “What do cameras on Biscayne Boulevard have to do with national security?”

  “Nothing. That’s the point. If the government can pressure radio and TV stations not to report on a few vandalized cameras, there’s no telling what else they can do.”

  “They sound paranoid. People used to think like that in Russia too. You always had to be careful what you said or did. Before you know it, they’ll be installing cameras inside our homes.”

  “They’ve already started to do that. A few months ago, one of the local newscasters reported on an incident at a local high school. The high school had issued computers to its students, paid for with a federal grant. The computers had cameras. The vice principal used to monitor them from home in the evening. Mostly they were just conversations between students talking about whatever teenagers talk about, but once in a while a student would leave the computer on when they undressed at night. On more than one occasion, he observed a student masturbating, mostly guys, but a few girls too.”

  “Robert, I’ve often wondered about that. Do guys masturbate a lot? I had a friend in Moscow who said her brother did it all the time. They lived in a two-room apartment that had thin walls and she could hear him doing it practically every day.”

  “Yes, it’s not that unusual. It’s almost part of their daily routine.”

  “Robert, did you masturbate a lot when you were a teenager?”

  “Sveta, you’re embarrassing me.”

  “I’m sorry, Robert, I was just curious.”

  “Actually, I got more sex when I was in the tenth grade than I do now, but I never had a partner in those days.”