Foreign and Domestic

by Scott Blade

  Rowley had called him from Air Force One begging to see his daughter, begging for Lane to spare her, and begging for Lane to swap her for a guy named Cameron—not Jack Reacher but supposedly the next best thing, his son. In a way, it was much more fitting to kill the son of the guy who had killed his brother rather than killing Jack himself since Lane’s little brother had been his responsibility. Ever since they were children, Lane had looked after his little brother like he was the parent.

  Of course, killing Reacher’s son wouldn’t be as satisfying because supposedly Jack didn’t even know he had a kid. So he’d probably never know that Lane had killed his only son. But he enjoyed the idea nevertheless.

  Rowley had called with the proposition that they trade Cameron for Raggie, but Lane quickly dismissed that. Then Rowley had begged him to reconsider, and he’d replied that he wasn’t interested. Lane countered with proof of life from Raggie as well as the promise to extend the original demand by an extra day. But he had no intention of extending it. He was on a deadline. The president would be dead on TV by the end of the day. And Raggie would be dead no matter what by the end of the day.

  This guy Cameron, however, wouldn’t be dead until he told Lane where the hell Jack was. Lane texted Mr. Jekyll’s burner phone: It worked. Cameron is on his way to me. Thanks for the bonus. Our employer will wire you the rest of your money when POTUS is retired. I’ll send you payment personally when Cameron is in my hands.

  Lane set his phone down and turned in his chair to look at the monitor that had night vision lenses. He watched a grainy and greenish live video feed of Raggie in the other room as she tried to kick at the pipes of a sink used to clean animals. She kicked and kicked, and the sink rattled. He wasn’t sure what the hell she was trying to do. Maybe trying to make the pipes burst and leak water everywhere. Or perhaps, since she was a surfer, water was a security blanket. Lane wasn’t sure.

  It didn’t matter. The pipes were switched off. They had done that before locking her in there. Lane had been in the abduction business for quite a while now, and he knew it was good to give the captive something to do. The only time you needed to take away all hope was when you wanted to scare them. And she had already been scared enough when Grant popped her in the face before filming the video for her parents.

  Grant had a great talent for that sort of thing. He hadn’t hit her hard. Not enough to really hurt her. It was intended more to scare her and leave a bruise.

  Jekyll had asked that they not hurt her too badly. No reason to hurt the girl any more than necessary. Of course, Lane didn’t really care what Jekyll wanted. Jekyll had some misguided notion that she was still important to him. Like his own family or something. Probably because he’d known her for her whole life. He harbored the false idea that he might still be a good guy. It was an illusion that came with being a US soldier. Lane knew because he’d fallen for that same propaganda when he was young—and so had his dead brother. But, unlike Lane, his little brother had had a much longer career in the military machine.

  Lane turned away from Raggie’s video and stood up. He was in good shape for his age. And it wasn’t his military background that had kept him in good shape. It was his time in prison. Ten years in an African prison was a long time. He had expected every day that the guards would come and take him to his death—or worse, to some sick and twisted fate like losing an appendage or being burned until he was unrecognizable. He’d heard stories of guys being set on fire and then put out and treated so they’d live.

  And then there were a couple of guys who used to work for his little brother. They’d been captured in a country next to West Ganbola, which was where Lane had spent his nine-year stretch. The guys who worked for his brother had suffered a fate much worse than Lane. One of them had survived after years of having body parts amputated. Lane’s fortune was different because Sowe’s government wanted to keep him healthy in case they needed him. They liked to take pictures of him every so often, but he never knew what for. He suspected they were sending the pictures to the US embassy in Accra, Ghana, which was the closest one. He figured they were taking the pictures to use as bargaining chips with the US government, to show the US they weren’t savages like their neighbors. It was Sowe’s way of exploiting the fact that the US government had tried to have him assassinated and showing the world that Sowe’s government was more humane. After all, he kept his prisoner fed and alive and in decent accommodations.

  Lane had seen Army prisons, and he knew that his accommodations were far from US standards, but by West Ganbola standards, they were the Ritz.

  He’d stayed in that hellhole for nearly ten years until one day his employer showed up in his cell. He remembered that the guy who had walked in had looked completely different from the last time he’d met him. This time, the guy had no right arm. It was completely gone from the shoulder, which was something he sort of had in common with Raggie. Except this guy also had no ears. He could hear but not very well. His external ears were completely missing. They’d been severed from his head by means of a dull knife. And it had to have hurt like hell. That was something Lane was sure of.

  The man who’d freed him was a man he’d known only briefly, but he was now in a position of power within Sowe’s government. In fact, some believed he was running it behind the scenes because Sowe was losing his grip on reality. As the old dictator grew closer to his golden years, he’d slip in and out of senility. Sometimes it wasn’t a big deal, but other times he’d have entire days where he couldn’t grasp executive decisions. One such event that had taken place had saved Lane’s employer’s life.

  After years of being tortured—starvation and sleep deprivation at first, and then later mutilation and so on—Lane’s employer was surprised at being given a chance at a new life by Sowe. He was provided a document granting his release from prison if he renounced his old ways and joined Sowe’s ranks. It was something he might’ve rejected years earlier, but after spending years experiencing the worst imaginable tortures by your enemy, change sounded good. And that was what happened to Lane’s employer.

  The perspective of the man with no ears and no right arm had changed immensely. The change was so drastic that he’d even sided with Sowe on a number of issues. The main one being that Sowe wasn’t really his enemy. Sowe wasn’t the one who had betrayed him. In fact, Sowe had always remained steadfast about who he was and what he represented. He was the dictator of West Ganbola, but he was also a strong leader who had protected the country and prevented invasion by its neighbors. Invasion was an actual threat. The small country’s neighbor to the north were butchers. That was Lane’s employer’s opinion.

  Sowe’s elite torturers had spent years convincing Lane’s employer that Sowe was the rightful leader of West Ganbola, and eventually he believed it to the point that he was willing die for Sowe. They had effectively brainwashed Lane’s employer into believing in Sowe and hating the United States.

  Although Lane didn’t care about Sowe or his regime or his tiny country, he still had something in common with his employer, and through him, with Sowe. Lane hated the United States. He hated the American president. He hated Gibson Rowley and the other men who had left him for dead in West Africa.

  But the one man he hated most was Jack Reacher, and now he hated Cameron, too.

  Chapter 31

  THE FIVE MEN ON LANE’S PAYROLL sat waiting in an apartment in DC, not far from the White House and the Capitol Building. It was the Lansburgh building, located in the Penn Quarter of DC. It was located just north of Pennsylvania Avenue, midway between the White House and the United States Capitol. The cityscape views were amazing and came at a hefty price. Lane’s penthouse apartment was two stories and doubled the regular price of rent.

  The actual owner who lived there was a man named Marden Smith. He lived in Washington the state, far from DC, and there was no chance of him returning anytime soon. He had been paid rent six months in advance and had never met Lane in person, so there was no need to get rid of
the guy. He knew nothing.

  The mercs sat around, enjoying some light drinking and talking like they were out in the desert around a forward operating base, preparing for a mission.

  They weren’t a real unit—they were a private one and not a military one. They had no loyalties to each other in the sense of a brotherhood, like guys they’d been in the field with. Their loyalty was exclusively to money, and they were getting plenty of it.

  John Lane was their leader because he had recruited them, but the guy who was paying them was top secret. There was no official chain of command other than John Lane first. But if there had been a second in command, it would’ve been Grant.

  Grant said, “Not too much of that bottle.”

  Silverti was the one who’d been drinking the most. He was an ex-Marine, short and grayed around the temples and completely bald on top. He looked at Grant and started to make a rebellious gesture but then saw the look in Grant’s eyes and decided to refrain. Better not to piss off one of the scariest guys he’d ever worked with. Silverti had known Lane for a year and respected him even though he wasn’t too keen on their mission. But money was money, and he had plans for his future. He had plans to drink and live on a South American beach. Valentine had the same plans. They all did, probably.

  Except for Grant. His plans were a mystery to Silverti and to the other guy. He probably planned on continuing on with Lane to the next thing. He probably planned on never retiring. He was one of those guys who believed in dying a good death—like he couldn’t wait to meet the man who’d give him his final blow.

  That wasn’t Silverti’s way. His way was to kill the guy who stood between him and getting paid.

  Suddenly, Grant’s cell phone rang, and Silverti looked up just after the other guy. They had all been bored, but that was a part of the lives they’d all led once upon a time. Waiting was the biggest part of military life when you were out on a mission. Especially for Special Forces. Whenever they were training or participating in missions, they were waiting.

  Grant answered his phone. It was Lane.

  Lane said, “The deal is going down at sundown. We’ll meet them at the subdivision at five o’clock.”

  Grant said, “Okay. Same plan?”

  “Yes. They all die. Cameron comes in alive.”

  “Okay.”

  “Come pick me up. We’ve to meet him at the airport.”

  “Do we have time?”

  “Yeah. His plane arrives in an hour.”

  “Is it safe for him to be here?”

  “He’s safe here. No one’s looking for him. It was more dangerous for me to come into the country than him. The government probably thinks he’s dead. Rowley certainly does. The look on his face when he sees us kill his daughter on video will be priceless.”

  Grant said, “How’ll he see it? Won’t they kill him after he kills the president?”

  “Let’s hope not. Let’s hope they arrest him. That’s what the politicians and the American people will want. They’ll want to keep him alive so he can stand trial.”

  Grant said, “What about the Secret Service agents?”

  Lane said, “Oh, they’ll shoot him. Without a doubt. Let’s hope he survives. Either way, his wife will see it. That’ll be good enough for our client.”

  “Okay. Should I bring the guys?”

  “Bring Silverti. He can babysit the girl. Tell Valentine to take the Range Rover and set up. Wait for us.”

  “Are you gonna tell him to keep his hands off her?”

  “He’s more scared of you than me. Not that I really care, but our Secret Service friend does. So for his peace of mind, do it. I don’t want to anger our pal. We still need him.”

  Grant asked, “For what?”

  “In case things go south, or in case Rowley gets cold feet. Our friend is keeping a close eye on him.”

  “Is Rowley really going to do it?”

  Lane said, “He tells our friend he won’t. He tells Cameron he won’t. But our friend says not to worry—he will when he thinks he has no other choice. He will. After we kill the rest of his crew and take Cameron, then he’ll do it.”

  Grant said, “Okay. I’m headed over.”

  The phone went dead in his ear, and he clicked it off. Then he slipped the phone back into his pocket and got up off of the sofa. He gave Valentine his instructions, and he told Silverti to come with him.

  They left the Lansburgh, one at a time. They each waited several minutes before exiting, not wanting anyone to spot them. Valentine went to the Range Rover, which was parked down the street. Grant and Silverti met on a street corner and walked into a parking garage and got into a silver Mercedes GLE with legally tinted windows.

  They drove off, and no one watched them.

  Chapter 32

  AT THE DULLES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, plane engines roared as they powered and propelled huge passenger planes down runways and into flight. An equal number of planes landed on designated runways. The planes arrived from all over the world, from cities like Zurich, Vienna, Moscow, Seoul, Tokyo, Bogota, and even cities from the Middle East. Some of the flights had origins from African cities—Dakar and Johannesburg.

  One flight on a Boeing 777-300ER, which was a long-range wide-body twin-engine jet, had originated in Dubai, but passenger 88 had not. He had originated in Accra, Ghana and had a layover in Dubai before traveling eleven hours to the US.

  He was a man of unimportant height and race, but he was remarkable in several other features. He was an African man who weighed a hundred and fifty pounds at best and stood five foot ten inches. His right arm was missing, removed at the shoulder. If a doctor examined it up close, he would note that it hadn’t been removed in the surgical sense of the phrase. He would describe it as hacked off. The instrument used would’ve been something dull, and the procedure would’ve been time-consuming. It had probably been done with a hatchet or a machete. But the only person who really recalled the incident would be the man himself. And he wasn’t going to relive the experience to relay the information to anyone.

  Passenger 88 was a man of little words. He hadn’t always been that way, but hard time in an unimaginable, dark prison would do that to any man. Some men found religion. Some men found redemption. But those types of men weren’t really in prison. Not in the same kind of reality that passenger 88’s prison life had been. Those types of men had the opportunity for such ideologies, but not passenger 88. He hadn’t been given this type of prison life. His was one of immense suffering and terror, and he was left with only two choices—die or join.

  Now he was in the enemy’s backyard. He was in America to ensure that the man who had betrayed him would now betray his own master.

  Passenger 88 walked off of the plane, down the corridors with wall to ceiling windows, and into the terminal. He walked past the Starbucks, the Burger King, and the duty-free store. He didn’t go to baggage claim because he had no baggage. He had checked a bag, but it wasn’t filled with his belongings. It was filled instead with some random clothing and toiletries he’d purchased just to pack them. He didn’t want to draw attention from customs or the TSA or the security forces in Dubai by not checking bags on a one-way trip to the United States.

  A single passenger with no bags on a long flight to the United States wasn’t a person who planned to return to Africa and, even more disturbing, wasn’t a person who planned anything that made any real sense. No one traveled from a far-off place like Africa to the United States without a return ticket and with no luggage. That would’ve raised red flags with the authorities that, at the very least, the passenger was traveling and not planning to return. Nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand times out of a million, that would’ve been the case. Immigration would’ve been notified about the eccentricity of the traveler. They’d confront him to find out exactly what his plans were, and most of the time, they’d be deporting this person back to his country of origin.

  But that one time out of a million, they’d be dealing with a person with
alternative plans. They’d be dealing with a man with dangerous plans. And one time out of ten million, they’d be dealing with a dangerous man with revenge as a motive. The chance of catching a man like this was small, but the chances of a man like this planning to commit acts of terrorism were almost one hundred percent.

  Passenger 88 was no different, but he wasn’t stopped by the authorities nor was he bothered by airport personnel. His passport was a perfect forgery, and he had a credible identity to go along with it. He was confident that his fake documents would work without any problems because he’d paid a fortune for them, and their creator was reputable. There was a complicated network of forgers, hackers, and corrupt bureaucrats who needed to supplement their incomes because governments didn’t pay well enough. Why should their bosses and counterparts in other countries make so much more money?

  When the immigration agent stamped his passport with the official seal of the United States, passenger 88 didn’t smile. He didn’t show any sign of relief to have fooled them. Not until he walked through the end of security and past the terminal onto official US soil did he crack a smile. And when he walked right past baggage claim and beyond all the other passengers who had stopped to wait for their bags, his smile widened. He walked to the end of baggage claim and had an overwhelming urge to look back. He pictured himself turning back and seeing his one lone decoy bag going around and around the carousel, no one noticing it and no one picking it up. He thought that when Rowley pulled a gun on the president on live TV and pulled the trigger, he’d have a flashback of his lone piece of luggage going around and around, a forgotten symbol of how the US security forces had failed at their jobs.

  He stopped and looked back, but there was no luggage on the carousel. It was what he should’ve expected. Never in the history of his flight experiences had he ever seen the baggage arrive before the passengers.