WA&R

Chapter 19

Flight 782 to Mumbai;

way before that, in 2008, ISRO our space agency had been attacked. RAW was to blame for it as they could not provide the intel beforehand to avoid it. Bipin who is the current chief of RAW was a mere analyst then. He figured there was a 5th person involved in the attacks who was their leader and would come out once the deed was done. The rest of the government thought he was mad and refused to accept the theory. Bipin used funds from RAW and put me in Dubai to gather intel on Bakhtiyar. After some years, we gained a small lead and my team- Victor, Zoya, Pranav and Aditi flew to Dubai. We took out Bakhityar's two main men but we got burnt in the process. The others flied off to they respective locations while I became under ground here. I spent 6 months on a boat with one room and barely enough room to stretch my hands. No internet connectivity was given."

"I see" replied Rachel, churning in her seat as she gained interest.

"I was 4 months down on being under ground and the mafia and police could neither trace me nor locate me. That's when things began.

I was looking out of the one small crack I had next to my bed- uh, mattress at 5 am as I like to wake up early.

That's when I heard whispers. I caught the footsteps of 3 to 4 men, armed to the teeth from the reverberations on the ground due to their increased mass.

I had no weapon on me but luckily there was only one entrance to the boat I was living in, the door. I slipped behind the door and made no noise. I knew they would follow the 2-2 formation. 2 would come in while 2 sat outside, their guns pointed at the door."

Nakul, heaved a big sigh before continuing "When the first guy came in, i punched him in the nose and he rolled on the floor, writhing in pain while I took his gun. The nose is a very sensitive part. Not moving from behind the door, I kept steady. When the second man came in, I shot him in the knee. Taking the first man as my body shield, I made my out from the tiny wooden boat. The other 2 bulls waiting with their aim on the door, fired as soon as they saw something coming out, killing one of their own.

The boat was docked on the shore and now, I was out of it. For the first time in 4 months but I had no time to appreciate Mother Nature considering the current circumstances. I managed to jump off on the shore from the tiny boat and hide behind a tree, in cover from the two men who were now shooting frantically in whichever direction something moved.

I realised I couldn't outwit two of them, not with one watching to the left of the tree and the other covering the right.

I removed the laser sight attached in the gun and slowly, placed it in the grass such that it was prominent. When one of the goons realised that the gun was aiming at him, thanks to the laser pointing at his chest, he panicked. They felt as if I had backup and a sniper was perched someway far.

They whispered something over their comms and began to leave. I quietly slid to another position to make sure they left. As soon as they left, I called my boss aka Bipin."

Nakul took a sip of the coffee he had said yes to and continued.

"I moved away to a safe house on the outskirts of Dubai. It is RAW's property and used for missions only. The only person, who knew my location was Bipin."

"One afternoon at 4pm, I heard an engine shut down nearby. I could hear 4 men get out of it and trying to surround the warehouse. Luckily, due to the prior attack, I had some safety measures with me. I could not manage to get a gun, but I had some smoke bombs which creates a smoke around the area making it rather impossible to look through it.

I there a smoke bomb on their car while crouching to go forward to prevent being seen. As soon as the men burst open the doors of the warehouse to come in, I slid into their car and boosted it to run away."

"I thought you could fight anyone, huh?" Mocked Rachel, still rather angry.

"Knowing when to take a fight and when to retreat is the hallmark of a successful agent." Nakul laughed back.

"Why did you put a smoke bomb on the car if they didn't see you anyways?" Rachel retorted back

"You can't risk being seen. Plus if they would have seen me, they wouldn't hesitate to shoot or follow me. I also punctured the tyres of the nearby cars so that they won't follow me."

"In the car, I thought about why Bakhtiyar wasn't affected when we caused the downfall of two of his main men. Maybe he has moles inside the Indian Agencies. That also explains why he hasn't been caught. So I began looking at some CCTV clippings Zoya had sent me before I had gone rogue. In those, I saw a clip in which a man acting to be blind collided with Shoaib and passed him a slip of information on the Abu Dhabi tour on which my team was. Right after the collision, Shoaib left the tour halfway.

I kept repeating the clip to guess the man but he was well aware of the camera and did not show his face at any point of time in the whole clip. However, there was a split second in which I could see the neck. Now, Avinash had a similar birthmark on his neck."

"You and Avinash were childhood friends or what?"

"Nope, I just met him once"

"Then how did you know this piece of information?"

"You get used to it after becoming an agent. Observation skills are an integral part of our jobs.

Anyways, so I did a full analysis on Avinash and got to know he was getting paid heavily by Bakhtiyar for passing on important pieces of information. Hence, I had to eliminate him. After that, I learnt that Ravi Biswas, head of Morgen Stern was handling the Nuclear Defence Department for India. Soon, I found out that Biswas was rigged too. He was getting paid by Bakhtiyar for giving him the Nuclear codes and the exact locations of the Nuclear weapons. And, because this guy was making a hole in the plate that he ate from, I had to get rid of him."

"But then, why are you not getting your team in on this?"

"As much as this hurts me to say, I suspect there is an Imposter Among Us."