Killer Instincts v5 (34 page)

At the time, I read nothing written on the subject of the Paggiano killings. Several years later, when I found myself in a quiet period of my life, I did some research online and dug up a number of the old articles. I read about the killing of my family, the speculation on where I was and a simple, brief statement from my uncle to the media about how I was “traveling abroad”. Apparently a number of my college friends were interviewed, with the usual bullshit statements about how they were sorry for my loss. The speculation was, of course, that it was done by the Paggiano family, but without solid evidence, nothing ever came of it, and of course, the rape and murder investigation stalled out, witnesses suddenly becoming much more “confused” about the events that occurred.

I had seen the news media coverage about Donnie and Pauly, but the stories about the Paggiano mansion “massacre” were new to me. I discovered, with mixed feelings, that the cook and the maid were both killed in the assault. I hadn’t seen them and assumed they were either not in the mansion that night, or they had somehow escaped during the shootout. I could only guess that when Jamie and I sprayed the rooms on the second floor with automatic fire, the two women were either killed outright or wounded to the point where they couldn’t escape the fire, or they’d hid until the smoke and flames made escape impossible. I felt sorry they had died. Neither of them had so much as showed their faces, as opposed to the butler. On the other hand, no one works for a family like that for so many years without knowing full well what was going on.

Reading about my uncle though, that was the hard part. He was crucified from the moment his identity was revealed, painted as a gun-crazy loner, lurking in the Maine wilderness, self-secluded from society to protect the world from his kill-crazy proclivities. Although my uncle had, at the time, never been suspected in the first two attacks against Donnie and Pauly, he was retrofitted into the investigations, his special forces training considered exactly what was needed to pull off both of the hits.

When it came to the attack on the mansion, the descriptions of the assault as “carried out like a military operation”, my uncle “returning to his days as a Green Beret” were both further from the truth and yet closer to the truth than they realized. Yes, Jamie put his experience and training to good use, but the attack was never a re-visitation of Vietnam.

At least, not until he laid bleeding and dying in Dominic Paggiano’s study.

In the end, it didn’t matter. Article after article spun a web of paranoid violence and conspiracy around my uncle. There were theories that a second shooter was involved, but rather than implicating me, the speculation was that Jamie had contacted an old Vietnam war buddy to help him. The transfers of money to mysterious accounts that led the FBI nowhere seemed to support this theory, but it was never accepted as fact since there wasn’t enough forensic evidence to support the theory, and all the ballistic evidence - ammunition casings and bullet fragments - were destroyed or rendered unusable in the fire. Some thought the money was simply spent on acquiring information and weapons, while others concocted even stranger theories. Even today, a decade later, a little investigation on the web into various true crime forums shows people still talking about the killings. Someone even tried to contact me a couple of months after the attack with a proposal to option the story and make it into a made-for-television movie, but I simply ignored the request.

After the media circus died down, my life became rather dull, and most of the month of August was spent sitting around Jamie’s cabin, listening to vintage records, leafing through his Vietnam documents and letters. I felt hollow and rudderless, all the money I could ever need, but no motive to spend it on anything or anywhere.

I didn’t hear about the attacks on September 11th for two days. I had gone hiking that morning, and when I returned on the evening of the 12th, I had simply showered, unpacked, and went to sleep after a couple of beers. Jamie didn’t have a television, and rather than listening to the radio I usually just put a record on the turntable if I wanted some music. It wasn’t until the morning of the 13th, after I drove into town to buy some groceries, that I saw the headlines plastered across every newspaper. I picked up a copy of every paper and returned back to Jamie’s cabin, turning on the radio for the first time in three months.

The news of what happened - the fall of the Towers, the crash at the Pentagon and Flight 93’s rebellion - it all sank in with a curious dullness. I was shocked at what happened, almost amazed at the scope of the disaster, but my own personal tragedies were simply too fresh, my desensitization to violence a little too thorough. I read the stories in the papers, listened to the radio news and the various commentators. In a perverse way, hearing about so much tragedy and loss helped push my own suffering into the background, a sick form of schadenfreude.

I woke up the morning of the 14th and drove into town early to pick up the paper so I could bring it home and read it over breakfast. I had just finished my coffee when the phone rang. After the initial storm of calls from newspapers and other media trying to get a statement, the calls had died down for several weeks now, so I went ahead and answered the phone.

“I hope you’ve picked up a paper or turned on the radio this week.”

It was Richard.

“Yeah, I’ve been following. Was out in the woods for the first couple of days.”

“Gone caveman, have you? Running around in the wild wearing a deerskin loincloth and carrying a spear?”

“Just getting out of the house a little. There isn’t really a booming social scene around Moosehead Lake if you’re not into fishing.”

There was a pause on the line. I could tell Richard was trying to find a way to say something.

“Just come out and say it, Richard.”

There was a quiet chuckle on the other end.

“Well, if you’re going a bit stir-crazy in the woods, maybe you’d be interested in some work?”

I thought for a moment.

“What kind of work?” I asked.

“You’re reading the news, seeing what’s happening. What do you think the fallout is going to be, after these attacks?”

“There’s going to be a lot more work for Delta Force, I guess?”

“There’s going to be a lot more work for anyone who knows how to kill people, period. This is going to make the Cold War look like the Great Depression for mercenaries and special forces types.”

“I’m still not really following you.”

“Governments everywhere are going to be throwing money at anyone who claims to be an anti-terrorist expert, or mercenary or private security groups willing to help fight terror. Money is going to be shoveled into those black book budgets in sums you aren’t going to believe. Much easier to hire freelance someone of dubious moral standards to do the CIA’s dirty work than use government agents who’ve got to fill out paperwork.”

“So what does this have to do with me?” I asked.

“I’m going to be really blunt here, son. Come work with me, put in a few weeks more training out here in Texas, and I can put you in touch with the right people. The kind of people who would pay very, very well for an operator who has, shall we say, cut some notches on his belt.”

“You mean they want someone who’s actually killed people before.”

“Aced it in one. There are a lot of posers out there in the private sector. And the buyers want to know they are getting the genuine article.”

“And you can give them that assurance, I suppose?”

“Ever since I retired, that’s been my speciality.”

“A pimp for killer mercenaries?”

“That’s one way to look at it. I do skim a finder’s fee off the top, help make the arrangements. Travel, contract negotiation, arms dealing.”

“A regular paramilitary entrepreneur, you are.”

“That’s right. That’s exactly what I am, William. And what are you? A vigilante killer, with a score of rotting bodies to your name.”

“That’s pretty cold, Richard.”

“You’re right. Downright arctic. But I’m still waiting for an answer.”

“I’m not sure this is the direction I want my life to go in right now.”

There was another long pause on the other end of the line.

“Take a
real long look
at your life right now, William. Tell me, just what is it you
do
intend on doing for the rest of your days?”

It was my turn to give pause.

“I’ve no fucking idea,” I finally said.

“Good,“ Richard replied. “Plane lands at nine tonight. Pack light.”

About the Author:

I'm a 30-something blogger, writer, and gamer living in Boston. I've got a degree in Film and a minor in Classical Studies, which has come in real handy when I watch and write about movies, but otherwise hasn't done a lot to support my current career in higher education technology management. 

Since those awkward grade school years, when all the other kids are reading
Where The Red Fern Grows
and
Charlotte's Web
and I was reading
Able Team
,
Phoenix Force
, and Vietnam War memoirs, I've had a love of the genre I've come to call "Post Modern Pulp Fiction".  This genre has influenced my writing for over 20 years.  I tend to believe there's a lot more going on behind the scenes of this genre than a lot of people believe. This novel is an attempt to tap into some of those themes and conventions and write something I hope you enjoyed.

I'm also something of a military history and technology dork.  Growing up in the wilds of Alaska during the Cold War, you had to be able to tell if those were F-15s or Su-27s flying over your town, right?  You also got pretty familiar with guns, knives, snares and traps, gutting your own wild game kills, and a lot of other disturbing childhood anecdotes that explain a lot, some twenty-five years later.

My blog, Post Modern Pulp:
http://www.postmodernpulp.com

You can find me on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/jack

.badelaire

You can also find me on Twitter: @jbadelaire

The following is an excerpt from my forthcoming World War II adventure novel
COMMANDO: Operation Arrowhead
, available for the Kindle in July, 2012.

ONE

Arras, France

May 21st, 1940

The Battle of Arras was slowly coming apart, like a ragdoll in the hands of an angry child.  Major General Franklyn’s counter-attacking force had bloodied the German advance that day, but the British forces had clearly bitten off more than they could chew, and now they were paying for that folly.

Lance-Corporal Thomas Lynch, of the 1st Battalion, Royal Irish Fusiliers, knelt at the top of a low hill and watched the deaths of British tankers.  Off in the distance, he could see the trundling forms of Matilda tanks falling back towards the British lines and dying, one by one.  88 and 105 millimeter field pieces had been pressed into service by the Germans as anti-tank weapons, and they handily accomplished the grim business that lighter 37mm anti-tank guns and the cannons of Rommel’s panzers had failed to perform.  Columns of oily black smoke marked where German guns had shattered British armor, and a new column was added to the horizon every few minutes as another tank crew met a horrible, incendiary fate.

It was time to run, to fall back as they had done time and time again for the last two weeks.  With the British advance halted, the Germans were counter-attacking in force, and Lynch could see panzers and troop transports for the German
panzershutzen
- mechanized infantry - closing in fast along the flanks.  The infantry would be sweeping ahead, hunting for British anti-tank teams and rear-guard parties screening the retreat.  Although the RIF hadn’t been part of the attack, they had been put in place to defend Arras and guard the flanks of the attacking force; now that the British spearhead was bent and blunted, the Germans would attempt to drive British flanking battalions inward and encircle the whole of Franklyn’s forces.

The RIF First Battalion began falling back by companies, leapfrogging each other and moving in two hundred meter increments.  While the battalion was making good progress, every man began to feel fear coiling in his belly as the Germans grew ever closer, and within a few hours, companies holding the line began to engage the advancing enemy skirmishers with long range rifle and Bren fire, the enemy answering with mortars, tank guns, bursts of machine gun bullets, and most dreaded of all, flights of Stuka dive-bombers called in to deliver precision air strikes and strafing runs.

Throughout it all, Lynch gritted his teeth and soldiered on.  For the most part, he didn’t waste his ammunition firing at the tiny figures in field-grey uniforms scuttling forward.  He knew they were too far away to score a reliable hit, and any casualties inflicted on the Germans would simply invite a furious retribution.  The only targets Lynch did fire on were the Stukas; any time one of the dive-bombers came within a thousand feet, Lynch took a potshot.  He knew the odds of bringing down one of the aircraft with his Lee Enfield were a million to one, but at least the act made him feel less helpless, and he wasn’t the only one; every Stuka that attacked the battalion received a ragged volley of rifle and Bren fire, to no discernible effect.

Lynch’s company had just finished holding the line, the German skirmishers unnervingly close and the enemy armor not much further away.  The better marksmen in the company, Lynch included, had fired on the skirmishers in an attempt to pin them down, but for every man in field-grey who crumpled to the ground, a dozen seemed to take his place. 

Captain Rourke, Lynch’s company commander, blew his whistle to signal the company retreat.  Lynch pushed a charging clip of five rounds into the magazine well of his rifle, closed the bolt, and began to fall back as Mauser fire cut through the air around them, punctuated by the occasional burst of MG-34 bullets scything across the ground as the machine-gunners attempted to find the correct range.  Lynch scurried towards the rear in a crouch, spine itching with the dreaded anticipation of being struck in the back by an enemy bullet.