Foreign and Domestic

by Scott Blade

  Tears filled his eyes.

  Biyena knew in that moment it was bad news. No—it was the worst kind of news. He had never before seen anything rattle his eldest son, and he would never again see it because, at that moment, Nikita pulled a Colt M1911 from under his suit coat. It had been stuffed in the inside left pocket. And now it was gripped tightly in Nikita’s right hand.

  The barrel stared at Biyena, a single, eyeless, black socket. The gun, a matte black, looked gloomy and dark in the bright morning sunlight. It was the type of gun that made a statement. It said, “Your time has expired.”

  Nikita wielded the gun, pointed it at his father’s center mass, and, in three quick strides, he closed in on his father’s position at the front of the stage,

  Biyena froze in utter terror. Confusion filled his mind at first, but then he had a split second of absolute clarity. He was going to die, and his oldest son would be the one to deliver this final message. The worst thing a parent can witness is the death of his own child, but the reverse is also true.

  Nikita pulled the trigger. Once. Boom. Twice. Boom. Three times. Boom.

  The sound was deafening in the silence, and the flash was a bright, fiery orange. The muzzle climbed as the first shot rang out. The bullet hit where Nikita had been aiming—more or less. It ripped through Biyena’s upper chest. Red mist burst out and colored the air in front of him.

  It was the timing of the second bullet that set Mrs. Biyena off into a howl of frantic screaming. The second bullet blasted upward and to the left, sending it on a trajectory that ripped through Biyena’s right upper side, where the shoulder joins the neck. The third followed but deviated on a slightly higher path and completely missed. It fired off into the air over the crowd of spectators and rocketed another sixty-four and a half yards before crashing through an office window and embedding itself into the back of a thick wooden shelf that held reference books on regional logistics.

  Nikita never got the chance to fire a fourth bullet because Biyena’s personal guards had drawn their own weapons and shot him dead. Two guards firing a pair of classic M9 Berettas killed him. The 9mm Parabellums fired through his back. Rupturing his pancreas. Collapsing his lungs. Severing his spinal cord. The guards were well-trained and overzealous. They fired into his major organs until he fell, face forward. It was overkill. But the job was done.

  The life drained from him as his mother watched. She was on her knees, almost perfectly centered between the two dead men.

  She wailed and screamed. Then she looked out at the crowd and saw the news cameras. All the major stations from West Ganbola were there, and the ones from neighboring nations. Al Jazeera was there and one American station—CNN International.

  Chapter 2

  A PHONE CALL SKIPS THROUGH SEVERAL CARRIERS and lines and bounces across the planet until it is rerouted back to the United States. To remain untraceable, even the cell phones being used were burners.

  But none of that bothered the man known only to one other man in the world by the codename Jekyll. He wasn’t concerned about anyone listening to his conversation. The government didn’t scare him. Even if some flunky from the National Security Agency had stumbled upon his phone conversation, none of it mattered now. The mission was already done.

  The only thing that really scared him was the man known to only a handful of people in the world as Hyde.

  Hyde answered the phone, his voice dark and calm. No urgency. It was a shadowy voice that sent chills down Jekyll’s spine—and Jekyll was not a soft guy. He’d had plenty of training and was a formidable adversary, but Hyde was the scariest guy he had ever known. So he maintained a certain level of caution when communicating with him.

  “The mission is completed,” Hyde said.

  “I know. I saw it on the news. They’re playing it everywhere here like it happened on American soil,” Jekyll said.

  “They may be playing it where you are, but it’s not getting much attention in Middle America where we want it to.”

  “What did you expect? Americans don’t care about Africa. They won’t care until it happens here.”

  Hyde said, “That’ll be soon enough.”

  “How did you get him to do it?”

  “The same way we’ll do it there.”

  “How’s that?”

  Hyde asked, “Does it matter?”

  Jekyll said, “I guess not. Just curious.” But I want to know how far you expect me to go, he thought.

  Hyde said, “We used leverage.”

  “Leverage?”

  “The children. We abducted his children. Told him if he didn’t kill his father in front of the camera, then we’d kill them. And not quick.”

  Jekyll swallowed, and Hyde heard it.

  Jekyll said, “Obviously he believed you. How’d he not know it was a bluff?”

  Silence fell over the line, and then Hyde said, “He believed us because there was no bluff. We were serious. We made him understand that.”

  “How?” Jekyll asked before he could stop himself. Like a reflex.

  Hyde said, “He had three children.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Now there are only two.”

  Jekyll swallowed hard again. He had no confusion about the kind of man he was. He knew he wasn’t a good guy—or even a decent one. And after the second mission was completed, he’d be seen as a traitor. He’d probably have to leave the US, which he’d already been planning to do. He’d bought his plane tickets with false identification and made his travel arrangements. Of course, he wasn’t flying out of the US. That was far too risky—and would be almost impossible for him afterward. In movies, it always worked. The bad guy wore a disguise and showed up at the airport, boarding pass in hand. No problem. Movies never explained how he got it in the first place. Because they couldn’t. There was no getting tickets with fake identification. Not in the United States. Those days were long gone.

  Jekyll had procured his tickets in Mexico. Much safer. After the mission was done, he’d ride in the back of a hollowed out gas truck all the way to Georgia. Then he’d get out and stay the night in a safe house. Next, he’d hop on a bus and meet a new contact in Texas who’d drive him across the border in a company transport van for an American oil company. He’d be a part of the working crew, a bunch of guys who were paid to keep their mouths shut. They were already well-versed at smuggling people across the border, both ways.

  All of this was okay with Jekyll—the mission, the risk, and certainly the money. But one thing he wasn’t crazy about was killing children. And that was the difference between him and Hyde. Jekyll was in it solely for the money. No question about it. But Hyde was in it for other reasons—reasons that bordered on psychotic. Hyde and his whole crew were unhinged. No question about that either.

  Hyde asked, “Are you having second thoughts?”

  “Of course not,” Jekyll said without hesitation. Any hesitation with this guy would’ve gotten him killed.

  “Good.”

  The sound of Hyde’s voice when he spoke that one word doubled the chills that ran down Jekyll’s spine.

  Hyde asked, “Then you’re ready to do this? On American soil?”

  Jekyll was no patriot, but he was still an American. And going against your own country could make you feel like a traitor. He didn’t want to think about it, so he didn’t respond to the question. Instead, he said, “So far, the media still thinks the son was acting alone. They’re buying the motive we put in place. The jealous son thing.”

  “Of course, they’re buying it. They’ll swallow it whole. I knew they would.”

  “So what now?”

  “Now we move forward with our real target. No more third world bullshit.”

  Jekyll said, “I think I’ve got an answer to that. To our problem.”

  Hyde paused a beat and then asked, “A patsy? Who?”

  Jekyll said, “It’s personal.”

  “How so?”

  “To you, I mean.”

  Another long p
ause, and then Hyde asked, “You found him?”

  Jekyll said, “I think so. I found a guy who fits the description. A drifter. A big guy. A passerby. A nomad. His last name isn’t Reacher, but he shows up on paper in the very place that Reacher’s records end. In Mississippi. Gotta be him, right?”

  Silence fell between them. Jekyll could hear deep breaths on the other end of the line as if Hyde had closed his eyes and was imagining all the horrible things he had planned for this Reacher guy—things that made even Jekyll wince, things that he would be just as happy not to know about.

  Hyde asked, “Where? How?”

  “He’s coming here. To DC. You can pick him up soon.”

  Hyde smiled and said, “Good. Tell me the when and where.”

  Jekyll said, “I’ll call you tomorrow. At midnight. I’ll know more then.”

  In one swift motion, Jekyll clicked the burner cell phone off and slipped it back into his pocket. He stood on the perimeter of a big Victorian house in a rich, elite Virginia neighborhood. A place where only the most elite senators, congressmen, and their families lived. A place that was guarded better than Rome had been, watched over by the most elite guards in the world—the United States Secret Service. Each house on the block appeared to be normal, but the difference between them and all the other homes in America was that most of them had a Secret Service presence. One guy or several, but they were there.

  Jekyll had snuck out to take a smoke break, only he wasn’t only taking a smoke break but was instead making his scheduled phone call—checking in. He looked around the street and saw that most of the other houses were pitch black except for the occasional flicker of late-night TV through the curtains of several upstairs windows. The only people awake at this hour on this street were the night owls who couldn’t sleep, lying in their beds and watching their TVs without a care in the world. They certainly didn’t care about him. The United States Secret Service was as ubiquitous to them as the neighborhood garbage man. They were present, armed, and ready to die for them. Ready to take a bullet if necessary. But the people locked safely in their houses were used to that. Therefore, they were complacent. It was business as usual. Nothing special. The people in the houses worried about nothing. That was something that Jekyll was going change, but for now, there was nothing for them to worry about and nothing for him to worry about.

  He looked back at the large house he had just left. No one watched him. No one had listened in on his conversation. No one had even taken notice that he’d left his post.

  Nestled under his left arm and holstered in a shoulder rig was a SIG Sauer P229. It was chambered with a .357 SIG round, eleven more in the magazine. He kept the gun chambered and ready for use at all times.

  Jekyll scanned the yard, the street, and the other houses one last time before tossing his cigarette onto the driveway and letting it burn down to a dull, smokeless nub. Then he turned and walked back toward the quiet house. Back toward the sleeping family, back to the people who thought they knew him. Back to the people who trusted him.

  Chapter 3

  JACK CAMERON SAID, “COFFEE. I TAKE IT BLACK.”

  He sat at a small, posh coffee bar inside a busy airport. Posh because it had chrome trim, chrome railings, and glass dividers between the guests and the staff. The seats were tall swiveling apparatuses that belonged in a nightclub and not a coffee bar. But Cameron didn’t complain—all he cared about was that a coffee bar had coffee, and probably good coffee at that.

  Behind the attendant standing in front of him, a flat screen TV was mounted on the back wall above the coffee bar. It was a newly bought, newly installed LED TV with high-definition and no buttons visible on the front or the side panels.

  CNN International played a muted report about the Confederate flag being removed from a distant, southeastern state—one of the Carolinas, which Cameron hadn’t been to, not yet. He wasn’t paying attention to the news, but if he had been, he would’ve seen a news crawl scrolling on the bottom of the screen showing headlines from across the world.

  One headline, creeping by too fast for anyone who wasn’t focusing, read: African son kills father, President.

  A YEAR AGO, Cameron hadn’t been a fan of coffee. He never had been, not in his whole life, until one day he sat in a booth in a diner in Austin, Texas. It was a generic diner with generic white countertops and high generic stools attached to it at the bottom by a long black bar with a second long bar for resting feet. Wall-length windows were nestled in the walls flanking the booths, like the one at which Cameron now sat with his back to the wall. He faced the door and the other guests, which was the way he liked it. He didn’t like to turn his back to an entrance—any entrance. You couldn’t see who was coming at you if you had your back turned. Not that he was paranoid or thought that bad guys were coming for him. Not that he thought everyone was out to get him, Cameron was a cautionary optimist by nature. He was a lot of things by nature. But one thing he wasn’t was a paranoid person. He didn’t believe that people were out to get him—the same way he didn’t believe that people were not out to get him. As a result, he remained vigilant and always on the defensive, which was a good habit to have. It was defensive living—like defensive driving.

  Of course, in his experience so far, trouble seemed to find him no matter where he was. He had bad luck when it came to getting mixed up with trouble—a family curse. After learning as much as he could about Jack Reacher’s life so far, he had concluded that his father was full of bad luck and trouble. He had also concluded that his father’s bad luck had become his bad luck.

  In the old days, before Cameron knew anything about his drifter father, there was a zero percent chance that someone had been out to get him. But in all honesty, he had made some enemies this last year. And even though he thought there was probably no one out to get him, he figured it was best to make himself difficult to locate. He believed it was better to err on the side of caution. “Hope for the best, but plan for the worst” had been a family motto, preached by his father and handed down to him from his mother.

  Of course, his mother also used to tell him was that the best defense was a good offense—contrary to what he had learned in sports and gained from common wisdom. Her opinion was that it was better to get your offense in first than to wait for the other guy. A swift offense was the fastest way to ensure no defense was required.

  Having been on the road for the better part of a year, Cameron had adopted many new philosophies. Some of them were his own, and some of them weren’t. Most were from one of his two parents. He had always thought his mother had been the original source of all the things she’d taught him. But he was learning, in different ways, that while she was his mother, she had also tried to be his father. In doing so, she had passed on some of his father’s opinions to him.

  In the diner in Austin, Texas, a waitress had brought him coffee. Black. He had said nothing about it. No complaint. No request for something different. Instead, he had let curiosity get the better of him, and he had taken a sip. That sip had turned into a swig, and that swig turned into a gulp. Somehow that cup of coffee turned into an addiction, and he was now a full-blown addict. It had started somewhere deep in his organs, bones, and sinews—an urge he couldn’t explain pulling at him like a shark dragging him into the dark, black ocean depths. He stood little chance against it. And now he loved coffee, just like his father did.

  Like father, like son. Cause and effect.

  Three things had changed Cameron’s life forever. The first was the death of his mother way back in Mississippi, way back in a different time, and the second was the quest that she had set him on from her deathbed.

  “Get Jack Reacher,” she had said.

  The third thing was far subtler to the untrained eye, the passerby, the uncaring man, but it was of great consequence to Cameron. It was life-changing to him because he now knew exactly who he was. Or at least he knew a significant part of himself that he had never anticipated, and that was that he was a full-b
looded addict—not to drugs or booze, but to coffee.

  Pure. Black. Coffee.

  Fiend was a better word to use to describe who he was when it came to coffee. Fiend. He was a coffee fiend—he loved it like an alcoholic loves vodka.

  Chapter 4

  RAGGIE ROWLEY WAS KNOWN to her friends and family as Raggie and not by Nicole Marie Rowley, which was her real name. Not that there was anything wrong with the name Nicole, and not that she had any specific grievance against the name. In fact, it was a good name. Not too common but far from uncommon enough for her to get picked on by her friends. And the name Nicole wasn’t cliché at all. Not like some other names she thought were overused or overhyped as her friend, Claire, would say.

  Claire had been her best friend since they were seven years old. They’d met in an after-school dance class both Claire’s and Raggie’s mothers had forced them to attend. The two young girls had entered, hating the idea of joining a dance class. Neither of them wanted to learn dance, ballet or otherwise. And they especially loathed the idea of learning to dance with boys. It wasn’t what the class was about, but to Raggie, the endgame of learning to dance was so that she could grow up one day and dance at her wedding with an old man who would be her husband. Of course, she hadn’t considered that, at that point, she’d be old herself. Not really old, but to a seven-year-old, everyone over fifteen was old.

  Claire and Raggie had been best friends until Raggie had gone off with her family to live in South Africa. Raggie’s father had a very important job. He was a secret agent. At least, that’s what he used to tell her, but the real truth was that he worked for the United States Secret Service. He was the team leader for a temporary advanced unit, sent out to secure locations before the arrival of the president.

  Back when Raggie was still called Nicole, and back when she was twelve years old, she’d had to say goodbye to Claire and the rest of her friends because her mother and father had decided that the family was spending too much time apart. But now, they were all going to be together. Gibson Rowley had been assigned to a vacancy not very popular among his coworkers. He was to head the advance team for the southern region of Africa. This meant he would be responsible for prompting a protection plan within forty-eight hours for any location in his region.