WA&R

Chapter 7

Dubai;

8th May; 7 am

Umar woke up, tied to a chair in an unknown place. With his hands and legs tied with a tight rope, there wasn't much he could do except shouting cuss words. The Five gathered around his chair staring right into eyes. Umar spitted on the ground, disrespecting them in the only way he could. Pranav laughed and said," He can't even spit!" To which everybody started laughing. Umar's anger tipped off but sadly he couldn't do anything. "Hahaha, fools", Hassan started "You are messing with very dangerous men, you will later regret-" but he was cut short by Pranav saying "Haan, Chal Chal, apne bap ko mat sikha". Umar's attitude kept growing with his temper. He started abusing by the agent's mothers and sisters. That's when Nakul said "Aditi. Let's Go." The other 4 left the basement and Aditi picked up an iron rod. When Nakul walked back in the basement after an hour, Umar was missing 4 teeth, bleeding from everywhere and his attitude was shattered. "That's women power", said Nakul and Umar remained mum, staring into nothingness.

"Now tell me what you know about Bakhtiyar," Nakul said.

Umar continued to stare into Nothingness.

"ADITI!" Nakul shouted from the basement.

"No, No, No, Please No, I'll tell you whatever you want. Bakhtiyar who?"

"The one Shoaib reports to"

"I report only to Shoaib. I know of nothing else."

"Goddammit," said Nakul as he sat in a chair and held his head in his hands.

After a more detailed interrogation, Umar was released and he fled. He caught a taxi and went to the first place he could think of. Shoaib's office. As soon as he was in the car parking of Shoaib's parking he called Shoaib and asked him to come down. Shoaib was coming down from the glass elevator, looking at the blood-smeared and panicked Umar. One car behind Umar's car, Pranav pressed a button and covered his eyes with his hands as Umar exploded into pieces in the parking lot. Shoaib looked down and was hurriedly pressing the lift buttons to go up again. The message was clear. We are coming.

Zoya scrolled through Shoaib's tourist site hoping to find something. She found 3 tours of Europe, 2 tours of Australia, 4 tours of USA and 1 tour of India. The interesting thing about the India tour was that Shoaib was only leading that specific tour. The tour details were sent to Bipin. The daily schedule of Shoaib was found out. They knew the security of Shoaib was going to be very very tight considering recent events. The only plus point was that The Five's cover had not been blown. Or so, they thought.

Shoaib woke up at six in the morning every day. Was Home the entire morning and left for the tourist office with a bulletproof car at noon, after lunch. He reached home from the office at four in the evening. Thereafter, he was home only. Apart from his daily routine, he leads a tour of India once a year and leads domestic tours to Abu Dhabi once a month.

Nakul was informed by Aditi that RAW was helpless on home turf and they couldn't do anything when Shoaib was in India. Besides, they couldn't possibly wait for 6 more months to catch Shoaib.

"I'll think of something," Nakul said and his mind began racing, trying to find a chink through which the arrow could pierce the armour.