Petrichor to his Heart

9.2

Day 1, The city of events: 12:20 AM, India: 4:45 AM

She was starting to feel a sheen of perspiration under her dress shirt with the nervousness and fear when the bus kept moving for some three hours as her watch told her and the men whom they had taken as the security personnel sitting in the front and back along with the driver didn't answer them clearly about the delay.

The nightmare turned real when they were forced to enter one of the basements on a nearly barren building in the chilly night... she could feel the cold seeping through her flesh to her bones. The light meal supposed to be a flight meal had long been digested and in this cold night she needed something warm to keep her fears and the cold at bay... she was sure Madhulika and all others from the flight crew were feeling the same but thy were told to keep quiet and keep walking in a queue.

The dim-lit stairs were taking them somewhere down and those creepy flicks she used to enjoy in the safety of her dark but the warm room started coming back to her... she was sure a cold-blooded killer was waiting for them down there, the damp walls were filled a strange smell of pungency as if the walls were soaked of blood for so long.

Madhulika's hands had found her hands and she could feel the poor girl's terrified soul in that cold touch, she pressed her fingers around hers to assure they were together in this.

The stairs ended to another dim-lit corridor where they could see two doors far from each other to some 10 o 12 feet, one of the personnel knocked on the door and spoke something in a language she didn't understand.

The doors opened and Pallavi along with everyone were surprised to see the faces who were behind the door. This was absolutely not what they were anticipating, actually, everything that they have assumed had ended up in a bizarre scenario here.

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Day 2, India, 4:30 PM, The city of events, 11:50 AM

the white screen in front of them was still showing the terrains and situations they were going to face there, the meeting had lasted for 4 hours and now they were left to have this 40 minutes times to understand everything very well.

General Vajpeyee had this typical way to deal with operations, he used to leave the team members going for mission alone after discussing the strategy. in his opinion, it was best that officers took some time to get all the information regarding the missions inside their system, and a few minutes of peaceful concentration often helped than days-long discussions.

Raghav had closed his eyes for concentrating better and make a note of how they were going to handle the hostage situation there, a good number of 32 people including all three flight crew and the government officials among them some were top diplomats had been taken.

All 15 of them were the best but this city was an unknown place for them, even after their briefing, the mission would start only after they met the Polish team going to accompany them after the landing.

It had been nearly 6 hours since he had received the call and it would still take another four to five hours for them to land in the foreign land, Even after they were being given top priority in the sky... a six-hour journey was cut short to 3 and a half it was already more than they could ask for in such situation... the hostages were in captivity for some 8 hours now, he hoped all of them were fine but he knew he was not allowed to hope anything when such a war was raging and one of the nuclear powers was involved.

"Sir, this is the list of hostages..8 women, two of them are pilots and others the flight attendants, remaining are men."

"how many diplomats ...and any minister?" Raghav took the list extended to him and did some maths with the details given there.