THE LAST INSURGENT

Seventeen

“What is going on?” He asked.
“Amir needs you now.”
“Just a moment.”
“He said now.”
Mufty eyed the man who was talking.

“I know you are acting on orders but be careful how you talk to me.”
The man smirked.
“I would have been scare a few months ago. You have lost it Mufty. You are no more the dangerous Mufty but a soft pillow…..”
Boob!

Mufty threw a punch straight to his eye and the man yelled. Before anyone could stop him, he grabbed a short metal pole and slammed it on his head.
“Stop it!” a thick loud voice echoed.
It was Jahl.

Mufty’s eyes had gone red and vicious. The man was rolling on the ground, screaming, “my eye, my eye, my eye, my head….”
He was bleeding profusely.
Jahl smiled. This was a good sign. The violent potential was still in him. The mercilessness could be seen in his eyes.

“Ashiru, take him to the medics.” Jahl said. “Come here Mufty.”
Mufty was still breathing hard. He walked after Jahl.
Jahl stopped before the door to a room he called Palace.
“When was the last time you saw your wife?”

Mufty frowned.
“The day I went on the failed mission.”
“Hmmmm….it was you who failed but not the mission. Allah was with us and the enemy was taken but I still gave you the credit. I can see that you have bounced back. The Nigerian government knows we are serious now and the military have become more serious. But they can never win us. In fact, the military fear us.

While you were down, we attacked an area in Maiduguri and we killed twelve military men. We had a one million man march through the town and they could not do shit. Can you see that god is with us?

I want to make my first video tonight and I want you to be there. No more hiding! I only fear Allah. We have established the jihad and it is high time they knew who we are. But there is a big problem. A problem that makes me doubt your loyalty and you know what disloyalty brings, right? Beheading or slaughtering.”

Mufty said nothing. There was no scintilla of fear in him. Jahl had wondered if there was anything that ever scared him. Sometimes, he felt Mufty just wanted to be killed. That was a good quality of a jihadist.
“Come inside.”

He followed Jahl inside and got a shocker.
There was no doubt; the girl tied up like an armed robber about to face a firing squad was Leena.
************

Kamal sat behind a desk going through some files. He was confused. He had interrogated virtually all of the girls that escaped five months ago but got a similar story. They could not locate the camp but it was in Kabari Forest.

It was one of the biggest forests in Nigeria. It would take years to explore that place. Then the man who was said to have facilitated their escape worried him. From the girls’ perspectives, he was a nice guy

.But to the law, he was a potential suspect. How did he find them? Why did he not report to the appropriate authorities? Who was he? Where was he? Why did some of the insurgents address him as ‘sir’ before he killed them? Where did he get the truck he had used? Why was he wearing a mask?

Then the latest report he just got which he none of the girls ever told him before: he made the rest escape and took two along with him. The description of one of the girls match
And when Leena was found, she was with another lady, her child and an infant.

Leena had said they walked to that place. That was a junction close to the main road and the insurgents would never have a camp close to that place.
Had someone dropped them in a car? Was it the man who had saved them? Why would the girls refuse to talk about him? Did he threaten them?

Out of the girls that escaped. Leena interested him most after his latest discovery.
He picked his phone and dialled.
“Hey Derrick.”
“Captain. What’s up?”