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Foreign and Domestic (Jack Widow Book 13), page 1
FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC
A JACK WIDOW THRILLER
SCOTT BLADE
Copyright © 2019.
Scott Blade.
A Black Lion Media Publication.
All Rights Reserved.
Available in eBook, paperback, and hardback.
Kindle ASIN: B0836SPSPX
Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-955924-23-8
Hardback ISBN-13: 978-1-955924-22-1
(Original KDP ISBN-13: 978-1651492581)
Visit the author's website: ScottBlade.com.
This book is copyrighted and registered with the US Copyright Office under the original ISBN. All new and alternate editions are protected under this copyright.
The Jack Widow book series and Foreign and Domestic are works of fiction produced from the author’s imagination. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination and/or are taken with permission from the source and/or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or fictitious characters, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This series is not associated with/or represents any part of any other book or series.
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Published by Black Lion Media.
ALSO BY SCOTT BLADE
The Jack Widow Series
Gone Forever
Winter Territory
A Reason to Kill
Without Measure
Once Quiet
Name Not Given
The Midnight Caller
Fire Watch
The Last Rainmaker
The Devil’s Stop
Black Daylight
The Standoff
Foreign & Domestic
Patriot Lies
The Double Man
Nothing Left
The Protector
Kill Promise
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Patriot Lies: A Preview
Patriot Lies: A Blurb
Chapter 1
A Word from Scott
The Scott Blade Book Club
The Nomadvelist
1
One thing leads to another.
Cause and effect.
A bullet leads to a target, and a democratically-elected president dies. A fragile country is thrown into upheaval, and the world changes, and somebody benefits.
Simple. Cause and effect.
A son shoots his father in front of an entire nation, and the entire world sees it, and politics shift. Power struggles happen, and a country’s destiny changes forever.
On this occasion, the equation equaled three bullets fired—two center mass and one miss, with one trigger pulled, three times, and one father killed by one son, his eldest. The son had no choice.
Three bullets. That’s all it took.
One thing leads to another: cause and effect.
Moments before he was assassinated, in the small African country of West Ganbola, President-elect George Biyena stood offstage in a freshly pressed suit with a black and gold tie—his country’s colors.
Not just on his tie, but the same colors were ahead of him on the stage, sewn into a large West Ganbola flag that waved proudly in the wind, standing next to and at equal footing with a flag of the African Union.
The African Union’s flag also waved.
A big part of Biyena’s platform had been to move West Ganbola more in line with the rest of the union’s humanitarian and democratic policies.
He was a champion of his country’s poor and impoverished.
His wife stood on a provisional platform, built the day before in preparation for his first speech as West Ganbola’s president-elect. She faced out toward his constituents. He gazed over them through a black and white curtain, surveying the crowd of hundreds of supporters, non-supporters, and the media, both foreign and domestic.
Biyena had just emerged from a vicious election cycle, fraught with back-and-forth political character assassination ads and propaganda. Some true, most lies. He had almost lost the election, but not because the other guy was more popular—or even popular at all—and not because the other guy was the sitting president. It was only because the people of his country were terrified of the other guy. He had been an extreme dictator, a warlord, categorically.
The other guy wasn’t a legitimately elected official, not in the sense of what an elected official was supposed to be. The other guy was a dictator, a military leader who overthrew a democratically-elected government fifteen years ago and then installed a fake democratic one over it. He installed what a lot of strongman-types did. They would hold elections, make it all look real, make it all look legitimate, but under the surface, the votes weren’t counted. The whole thing was staged to make it look like the other guy was mandated by his population.
It was all a scam.
The other guy was nothing more than a criminal.
Not this time. Part of Biyena’s campaign was to get the votes counted by a new third-party institution. This time, Biyena had made enough friends in government, and the other guy had made enough enemies, that the vote was counted, and Biyena had won.
He was proud of his political victory, a road fraught with more than just potential political defeat. It had been dangerous for him and his family. His path to leadership had led him through treacherous waters and political acrimony. Where so many others had failed, forced out of the previous presidential races against the incumbent socialist dictator, or they were simply the other guy’s patsies, Biyena had succeeded.
Any of his close, personal friends would attest to his patriotism. He believed his country deserved a fresh start, a new beginning. It was truly a great day for democracy and a great day for West Ganbola.
He had not appeared publicly in the three days leading up to the election because of concerns from his head of security. Death threats against him had risen the week before, and it looked as though he would legitimately win the election. This meant he had to be under close guard. He waited in secret, in a secret location, until the ballots were counted—and he won. Now he was about to give the speech that would move his country into a new era of peace.
He had rehearsed the process many times in his head. Walk up the steps. Cross the raised platform. Go over to the podium and hug his wife. Stand and recite his speech, eyes locked on his people.
Don’t show fear.
Biyena had stayed up the entire night before, practicing his speech in front of his two most trusted advisors. When they had run out of energy to continue, he had practiced it in front of a mirror at the Royal Hotel on Webiga Street, the street with the hospital that he was born in, fifty-three years ago. It was not on purpose, just one of life’s coincidences, like dying on the same street.
English was the official language of West Ganbola, but over eighty languages were used in the region. Languages other than English were especially common in the more rural areas, wh
Near the craggy mountain ranges and olive jungles to the east, you could walk into a village, hear a regional language that had originated there, and then travel a few miles inland only to hear a completely different vernacular and see completely different jungles and mountains.
He loved his country.
Biyena waited for his wife to announce him to the crowd. He heard her voice. He heard her rehearsed annunciation paying off.
She said, “I’m so proud to announce my husband as President George Biyena.”
Biyena took a deep breath and held it, and another, and held it. He felt the air go in through his mouth and expand his chest, and then he released it. He repeated the whole thing and then stepped through the curtain, releasing his breath as he did.
The crowd was already standing and chanting his name.
“BI-YE-NA! BI-YE-NA!”
It grew louder and louder as he stepped onto the stage.
“BI-YE-NA! BI-YE-NA!”
He was overwhelmed by the chants and the distant sounds of beating drums and blasting trumpets to mark his arrival, by the sea of faces, and the rows of children brought out to see him. They waved little black and gold flags to show their support. He watched as the flags swayed in the air, not knowing it would be his last time seeing them.
The children in the crowd were dressed like the adults, most of whom were dirt poor. They couldn’t afford the kinds of clothes that the richer citizens could, the ones who stood closer to the front of the crowd and on the balconies of the two- and three-story buildings lining downtown.
Even though most the onlookers couldn’t afford suits or ties or decent shoes, they were dressed in the finest clothes that they owned. Many of the children wore threadbare, button-down shirts that didn’t fit them, with long ties that belonged to their fathers. Many of them were barefoot, toes digging into the gritty dirt. They weren’t barefoot because they couldn’t afford dress shoes for the occasion, but because they couldn’t afford shoes at all. Many of them didn’t own a single pair—not all of them, but many.
Biyena noticed. There were far too many children who lived wretched lives because of how poor they were. This was one of the reasons that he’d joined the presidential race in the first place—no matter the risk, no matter the chance of losing his life. In a country filled with the oppressed and the poor, ethics mattered. Honesty mattered. That was why winning was Biyena’s only option. He had to change things.
It called to him like God called to him.
Biyena walked out onto the stage and held his arms out and open in a gesture of embrace as if to say: I’m here, my friends. I’m your new president.
The crowd never stopped chanting his name. Instead, they upped the ante and roared on.
“BI-YE-NA! BI-YE-NA!”
They repeated it over and over.
They grew louder and louder. They, too, had felt the rush of hope. Hope for a new future for their war-torn country—freedom from the political corruption and the fallacy of a government that had enslaved them into poverty instead of freeing them to enjoy a better economy and a better life. Parents hoped for a better life for their children. Grandparents hoped for a better future for their grandchildren. Wives hoped their husbands could go to work and return home with a decent wage. Husbands hoped they could pay for clothing for their children and food for the entire family.
To them, George Biyena was a beacon of hope. They wanted a nation without terrorism. Without war. Without fear. Without overwhelming crime. Without brutal poverty. Without instability.
Biyena was what they had longed for. He would change their lives and alleviate their struggles.
Biyena sauntered to the center of the stage like he was taking a stroll. He wanted to savor the moment. He earned it. He had worked hard for this victory.
The months of moving secretly from one location to the next had taken its toll on his wife and four grown boys—especially his firstborn son, Nikita.
Nikita was his pride and joy. He had grown into a successful man in his own right. He was the father of three children. He was a good husband to a good wife.
Biyena couldn’t be prouder of Nikita.
President Biyena looked across the stage and saw that, near the bottom of the steps, his son Nikita was passing through the capital police. He was waving frantically at his father.
He wasn’t supposed to come up on stage, but the policemen recognized him and let him pass. What were they supposed to do? He was the new president’s firstborn son.
Nikita wore an intense look of concern on his face. He was normally the only one of his sons who always kept his cool—nothing ever fazed him.
Whatever was worrying him must’ve been something urgent, something that couldn’t wait. Or maybe Nikita was so proud of his father’s victory that he just wanted to share the stage with him in a show of support. Perhaps he wanted to hug him tight and was worried he wouldn’t make it. Perhaps.
After all, Biyena had been so busy for months that the two had barely had any time to speak.
Biyena reached the podium and leaned in toward an old, worn-out microphone, the kind with the steel vented face that an old-timey radio station might have. It was a vintage Shure microphone, but Biyena didn’t know that, and it didn’t matter. He knew that his country had modern equipment. Just because they were a third-world nation didn’t mean they were lost in the nineteen fifties.
He wondered whose idea it had been to set up the old-style microphone. Maybe it came from his campaign manager. Maybe it was supposed to present a more traditional appearance to his constituents and countrymen. Maybe the microphone would make him look like a mid-nineteenth-century revolutionary who had just won a similar election battle, or maybe it made him resemble an American leader like Martin Luther King Jr., giving a speech that would change a nation. Perhaps his people were waiting for him to give a groundbreaking, game-changing speech that would inform his enemies that the people of West Ganbola were no longer afraid. Or perhaps it was because there was an international news crew there covering his speech. Whatever the reason, Biyena liked to be included in all decisions, no matter how small. He believed that every little detail about his televised appearance was crucial. He believed people remembered the details.
He dismissed his concern and stared at the microphone.
A black wire ran down the front of the wooden podium and offstage like a long, thin snake, disappearing below gray cedar boards that made up the platform.
Biyena leaned forward to the microphone and spoke.
“Good morning!”
His voice boomed across the crowds and city streets.
The crowd went crazy—chanting and hooraying, waving their flags, and stomping their feet as if they were at a sporting event.
The smallest sons were picked up by their fathers and held high on their shoulders. Mothers hugged their daughters. Brash cheers filled the square, echoing past the low buildings, carrying over the corrugated iron roofs, and dipping down the other side to fill the ears of people standing farther away.
Biyena asked, “How are you doing today?”
The crowd roared, repeating all the same chants and waves and stomps as before.
The capital police stood in front of the stage in a tight perimeter, preventing overzealous citizens from rushing the stage.
The cops directly in front of the stage wore body armor and antiriot gear: helmets and vests, but no guns. They had only batons and stun guns, as they weren’t allowed to carry guns—Biyena’s orders.
