Tarasha

"h.e.l.lo," Chief Rikau"s gruff voice sounded through the loud speaker.

Tarasha did not reply his call but busied herself with the Android device, trying to determine the man"s location.

"h.e.l.lo," the man"s voice sounded again. Tarasha remained quiet, the processing of the location was almost done.

It finished processing in three seconds and the location appeared, she read it to herself and finally ended the call on the smaller phone. She paused for a few seconds to read the location again, the man was close to the Vice President"s office. He was supposed to be with the police at the Vice President"s office, so she wondered what he was doing at metro street, few kilometres away from the expected location. But that didn"t matter to her, she wasn"t disturbed about where to meet him, all that mattered was capturing him that night.

She started the car engine and pulled her seatbelt, then she drove out of the dark place where she had hidden the car and entered into the road.

_____

"Are you sure she"s the one?" Stainless asked Stone from the backseat where he was seated with Aisha, staring at her amusingly.

"Yea, I heard her phone conversations, the first one with the person she intends to communicate with through the mouthpiece and the second conversation with someone else who seemed to be advising her." Stone replied. He bent slightly sideway to pick something on the pa.s.senger"s seat and stretched it backwards to Stainless. "She looks so different right?"

"Yea," Stainless replied as he collected the picture from Stone. For the next ten seconds, he kept staring at the photo and at Aisha"s face. He used one of his finger tips to touch the tip of his tongue, then he touched Aisha"s cheek with the finger tip, trying to clean off the makeup covering. "Aisha, is this you?" he asked in a mocking tone and added an annoying giggle.

She hit his hand away and gave him a look of disgust, "What are you guys doing?" I was coming to your boss already."

Stainless stared at her silently with a crooked smile for the first ten seconds, then he stretched his hand and reached out to her neck. She hit his hand away again.

"Hey! Calm down, you need to take off that mouthpiece else we won"t make progress today," Stainless said pointing to her neck, but still using his eyes to search for the spot where the mouthpiece was attached.

Aisha gave him a defensive look and clenched her fists. Stainless smiled mockingly on seeing her changed demeanour. He moved closer to her and placed his left leg on her laps, he grabbed her arms with his strong arms and tightened them together with his left hand before he reached for neck with his other hand. He paused and landed her a heavy slap as she tried to struggled to stop him, her struggling seized and he was able to find and detach the blue coloured tiny and wireless mouthpiece which had camouflaged with her gown. He released her and crushed the device with his fingers as he returned back to his position. Aisha was staring at him angrily and panting heavily but there was nothing she could do against Stainless at the moment. He was stronger than her physically and also had a partner in the same car. She took a glance at her bag which had fallen to the floor by her side but it would also be an unwise attempt if she tried to take out anything from it. She also considered her parents, doing anything radical could put them into more danger.

Stainless stared back at her face with a wicked smile lurking around his lips. He released the crushed material from his palm outside, through the opened window and rested back properly. "Your disguise is a very nice one," he said as he b.u.t.toned back his shirt which had loosened due to the struggle properly. "How in the world did you recognize her?" he asked Stone.

"I didn"t recognize her, I only decided to give it a try since I was aware of her possible tricks. I saw her looking to and fro when she stepped out from the gate, she refused to beckon on other taxi drivers. I didn"t know she would call me, all I wanted to do was to go nearer and have a closer view. But she stopped the cab and even requested to be taken to Bolevian Garden, that was how I confirmed that she is our target."

Stainless flashed his teeth again at Aisha, she didn"t return his look. He decided to taunt her by touching her face, she wriggled his hand away and tried to slap him with the back of her palm but her hand could not touch him well.

"Come on babe, why are you taking it all hard on yourself?"

"What exactly do you want? I was coming to meet Don at the garden already," she snapped in a loud voice.

"You should not complain, you went against the rules. You didn"t come to Lagos without telling your boss and you also brought someone else along, I guess he is that Don"s former boy that went with you to your new master." Stainless snapped back.

_____

"Oga, can you lend me your car for today? I"ll pay for it," Cole said to the cab man after some minutes of indecisiveness. He would have loved to use force and hijack the car without pleading with the man to borrow him but he decided not to since he had seen his boss always use a gentle approach first.

"I should lend you?" the cab man asked as if he didn"t hear properly. He took a quick glance at the backseat.

"Yes, " Cole replied.

"I don"t really lend people my car, but I can only drive you anywhere you want me to." he replied.

"Humn… I don"t think you can drive me everywhere I"ll like to go and at the speed at which I want it."

"I can, as far as it is somewhere within Lagos and you"re ready to pay me well."

Cole decided to maintain silence for the moment until he really needed to use the car. He moved his focus to his device, he turned on the screen and inputted the pa.s.sword. The phone unlocked and he clicked on the menu icon, he selected the tracking app and waited for it to load. It finished loading in ten seconds and a list of devices showed on the dashboard. Two of the devices with long system autogenerated names moved from the positions below to the top, a green bar showed by the side of the two names that moved upwards. Cole made a long click on the first device name, a list of four options displayed, he selected "rename" and typed in "AISHA" into the dialog box that popped up. The device was renamed. He clicked on the name again twice and a blank page appeared, then in few seconds, a map covered the blank page. It zoomed in and the Ikeja area was shown. He placed his eyes focus on a tiny moving dot on the map. The distance from the moving dot to his was not up to a kilometre.

"Can you speed up a bit?" he raised his head briefly and said to the cab driver. The man responded and began to drive faster than he was doing before. "I"ll tell you when to reduce your speed," Cole added.

"Hmm, Oga, but you"ve not told me exactly where we are going, you just said I should keep driving straight."

"Humn… Okay, we"re going to Bolevian garden right now." Cole replied. The driver nodded in response and added to the speed of the vehicle again. "Hey! I didn"t ask you to speed up," Cole cautioned.

"Oh! Sorry," the driver apologized and slowed down.

"Just maintain this until I give the next instruction," Cole said.

"Hmm Oga, your money is increasing o."

"I"ll pay you, I told you to lend me the car already." Cole said, returning his gaze to his device. His facial expression changed and he looked stunned for a second, "Why is the direction changing?" he muttered to himself.

"What did you say?" the driver asked.

"I wasn"t talking to you," Cole replied, with his eyes still fixed to the screen. Aisha"s direction which was towards the Bolevian Garden had now changed to somewhere else completely. He took out the phone he used to receive the previous call and quickly dialed back her number.

______

"The call is coming again," Chief Rikau said to Rex in an alarmed tone, stretching out his neck through the window from the backseat of the car. He couldn"t see what Rex was doing outside at the front of the car as it was dark already. Rex had instructed him not to step out of the car.

"Maybe she"s closer now," Rex said, standing from where he was squatting and doing something on the ground. "Answer the call," he said on getting to the door side where Chief Rikau was seated.

"h.e.l.lo," Chief Rikau spoke after answering, he placed it on loud speaker.

"Hi Inspector General, " a lady"s voice sounded. "Where are you when your friend, the Vice President is in trouble?"

Chief Rikau stared up at Rex"s face, expecting Rex to supply him the right reply. Rex gave him a nod and signified with his eyes that he should answer the question by himself.

"Who the h.e.l.l are you?" Chief Rikau blasted after Rex"s go ahead signal.

"Come on, don"t be silly. Of course you know who you"re speaking with," Tarasha replied calmly with a brief chuckle. "How many people are listening to this conversation?" she asked with a changed tone.

"Huh?" Chief Rikau stared at Rex again. Rex replied with a crooked smile this time.

"D--n it!" the Inspector General cursed, annoyed at Rex"s behaviour.

"What did you say?" she seemed to have heard him curse.

"Whoever you are, I promise you your end is near."he framed up a thick voice again.

"Oh! Shut up, just get ready, I"m attacking him tonight." she said and the connection ended immediately.

"Nice," Rex"s smile broadened while Chief Rikau stared at him confused.

"I thought you were supposed to be giving me answers but you kept quiet all through," Chief Rikau complained.

"That would make her suspect something unusual, she would know you"re not the one giving the answers."

"Well, but how did she know someone else was listening?"

"Come on, the Inspector General shouldn"t ask such a dumb question. The call was placed on loudspeaker, she would detect that. But the good thing is that she would think you"re with some of your colleagues."

Chief Rikau felt insulted by his remarks, but he knew demanding for respect now wouldn"t help matters with Rex. But she has no business with me, she"s going to kill the Vice President."

Rex stared at him for a few seconds, then a crooked smile appeared on his face again. "She"ll be here in few minutes time, make sure you stay in the car" he said boldly and turned to return to the where he was squatting.