The Standoff Read online

  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 held up little black and yellow flags to show their support. He watched as the flags waved 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 the majority of the onlookers couldn’t afford suits or ties or decent shoes, they were dressed in the finest clothes that they did own. 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 nice shoes to wear but rather 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 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.

  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 that 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 walked to the center of the stage with no sense of urgency. He wanted to savor this moment. He earned it after all. 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 first-born son, Nikita.

  Nikita was his pride and joy. He had grown into a successful in his own right and he was the father of three children of his own. 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 capitol 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 a cogent look of concern on his face. He was normally the only 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 like an old-timey radio station might have. It was called a Vintage Shure microphone, but Biyena didn’t know that, and it didn’t matter. He did know 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 was his campaign manager’s idea. 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’d just won a similar election battle, or, maybe, it was meant to make him look like 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 that 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 off the stage 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 like they were at a sporting event.

  The smallest sons were picked up by their fathers and held high on shoulders. Mothers hugged their daughters. Brash cheers filled the square, echoing past the low buildings, canvasing over the corrugated iron roofs, and dipping down the other side to fill the ears of people standing further 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 out 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 only had batons and stun guns as they weren’t authorized to carry guns—Biyena’s orders.

  He made it clear that this was an unwavering policy. He strongly believed in it. It was his opinion that guns created a temptation for violence, and the last thing that Biyena wanted was for his police force to be tempted to fire their guns.

  The days of cops haphazardly shooting off their guns was over, as far as he was concerned.

  Shooting guns into a crowd of civilians was the kind of measure his predecessor would’ve taken, and had taken many, many times. It was not the kind of image Biyena wanted to project for the new direction of his country. So, he had forbidden guns for most of the police. The only guys with guns were the snipers, Biyena’s personal bodyguards, who stood in the wings offstage, and the soldiers that stood guard on the outskirts of the capital in case of an external
threat.

  Unfortunately, the armed soldiers were necessary.

  Biyena’s predecessor was nowhere to be found at the moment. It seemed he was hiding out in one of the many Presidential Houses—some of which were secret from the public.

  No one knew how he would respond to being beaten by Biyena. In fact, no one had seen him in almost seven hours, since it looked like Biyena would win.

  The soldiers were a precaution, but Biyena had no fear of the old leader returning because he had been told by his advisors that the old dictator had already fled across the border and would probably never be seen again.

  So far, the transfer of power seemed like it was going to go off without a hitch, which made sense in a way. Biyena’s predecessor was old. He had no children of his own. There were no sons to follow in his footsteps.

  He had ruled over West Ganbola so viciously that he never allowed one person to rise to second in command. No one would follow after him.

  Biyena conclude that the old guy had seen the writing on the wall and just decided to run. He was too old to fight a civil war. And he didn’t want to go to prison.

  In all likelihood, the new president would have him executed anyway. So why not just run?

  The old guy could retire somewhere warm like the coast of Brazil or Venezuela, countries he had had strong relations with, allies.

  Biyena and his advisors figured the old guy would most likely spend the rest of his life on a beach rather than in a jail cell where he belonged, but that was fine with Biyena. He could live with it as long as the old dictator never again showed his face in West Ganbola.

  Biyena looked out across the crowd and then over his shoulder at his son.

  Nikita was fighting with two of his father’s personal guards, who had stepped in after the police allowed him up the stairs to the stage.

  Biyena could see the guards trying to frisked his son, which annoyed Nikita.

  Biyena turned back to the crowd and held his hands up high and spoke into the microphone.

  “This…this is because of you. All of you. We deserve a better country. We are on our way.”

  Cheers grew as the crowd responded.

  He repeated slowly, “This is because of you. All of you.”

  The crowd cheered again, and the people continued to wave the little flags with West Ganbola’s colors, more and more, harder and harder. A sea of black and yellow flowed across his sightline.

  The spectacle kindled a sense of patriotism deep down in Biyena’s bones, igniting that sense of nationalism a man feels at his core. He felt like he was dreaming.

  He heard his son call to him.

  “Father!”

  Biyena turned and looked at Nikita. He looked into his eyes. They were laden with emotion and a look that seemed like regret and panic all at once.

  Perhaps, his son was overwhelmed with pride, and that was the look he was seeing. He wasn’t sure.

  Biyena waved at the guards to allow his son on stage and he turned back to the microphone.

  “This is because of my family. This is because of my wife. My son.”

  He glanced back at the spectators and then at his wife and his son, again.

  Nikita walked toward him and Biyena saw in his eyes that something was off.

  Suddenly, fear shot through Biyena. He didn’t know why. It was deep down in his bones like a survival instinct.

  Nikita said, “Father.”

  There was a tear in his eye.

  Biyena didn’t step back from the podium or the microphone but simply half-turned.

  “What’s wrong, son?”

  His voice was low and deep. It echoed over the crowd in a low boom from the speakers near the foot of the stage. The crowd fell silent in a cohesive hush as if listening to a sermon. A hiss from the speakers resonated over them in the dead silence. Whispers could be heard wafting through the air.

  Nikita walked past his mother without looking at her. Not a glance. Not a nod. Not a flicker of his fingers in a partial wave. Not a single acknowledgment.

  As in closed in on his father, the tears multiplied. They 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 1911 from under his jacket pocket. It had been stuffed in the inside left inside pocket of his suit jacket, and now it was out and visible and gripped tightly in Nikita’s right hand.

  The Biyena stared into the end of the barrel. It looked like a single, eyeless, black eye socket staring back at him.

  The gun was matte black. It looked black and polished in the bright morning sunlight.

  Nikita wielded the gun, pointed it at his father’s center mass, and, in three quick strides, he closed the gap between.

  Biyena froze in utter terror.

  His son was pointing a gun at him.

  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 his death to him.

  The worst thing a parent can witness is the death of his own child, but the reverse is also true.

  With tear-filled eyes, Nikita pulled the trigger as he had been instructed.

  Once. BOOM! Twice. BOOM! Three times. BOOM!

  The sounds were deafening in the silence, and the flashes were all bright, fiery orange sprays like small explosions out of the muzzle.

  With each shot, the muzzle climbed like Nikita was pulling the trigger and not squeezing it, which he was.

  He had never fired a gun before, not once, but the bullets hit where Nikita had been aiming them—more or less. That’s what usually happens at close range.

  The first bullet ripped through Biyena’s upper chest. Red mist burst out and colored the short distance between them.

  It was the timing of the second bullet that set Mrs. Biyena off into a howl of frantic screaming like a banshee.

  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 barely missed Biyena’s head. It fired off into the air over the crowd of spectators and rocketed another sixty-four yards before crashing through an office window and embedding itself into the back of a thick wooden bookshelf.

  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 the son of the president. They fired nine-millimeter parabellums straight through Nikita’s back, rupturing his pancreas and collapsing his lungs, and severing his spinal cord.

  The guards were well-trained and overzealous. They knew how to shoot their weapons and they didn’t miss. They fired into Nikita until he fell, face forward. It was overkill, but the job was done.

  Biyena died before his son, but both were lying on the same stage, dying, bleeding out.

  Biyena’s wife dropped to her knees, between them, almost perfectly centered, perfectly framed like a morbid painting about a scene right out of a Shakespearean play.

  She watched, her head traversed back and forth between them.

  First, she saw her husband gasp his final breath and then she watched the light from her son’s eyes die away to nothing.

  She wailed and screamed, never uttering a single word.

  Only once did she glance up at the crowd. That’s when she saw the news cameras. Her eyes fell on them and she stared like she was staring at a train barreling down.

  All the major stations from West Ganbola and the neighboring nations were there.

  Al Jazeera was there and one crew from an American-owned network—CNN International.

  She never spoke.

  The Nomadvelist

  Nomad + Novelist = Nomadvelist

  Scott Blade is a Nomadvelist
, a drifter and author of the breakout Jack Widow series. Scott travels the world, hitchhiking, drinking coffee, and writing.

  Jack Widow has sold over a million copies.

  Follow @

  www.scottblade.com

  Facebook.com/scottbladeauthor

  [email protected]

  Contents

  Also by Scott Blade

  Author’s Note

  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

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  A Word from Scott

  The Jack Widow Book Club

  Preview: Foreign & Domestic

  Chapter 1

  The Nomadvelist