Hello, Mr. Major General (1)

Chapter 173 - Obliterated

The car came to a halt with an ear-piercing screech.

Sourav and Kirat, who had not fastened their seat belts, were tossed out of their seats from the inertia. Their foreheads collided with the back of the front seats.
“Do you even know how to drive?! You’re fired!” Sourav yelled at the driver as he rubbed the bruise on his forehead.

“What the hell are you doing?! You’re the deputy secretary-
general of the Indian Government Secretariat—couldn’t you have afforded better tires? What a joke!” Kirat spat from between clenched teeth as she got up from the floor of the car. She ran her fingers over her own swollen forehead.

The driver clutched the steering wheel, his face white as a sheet. He trembled all over in the driver’s seat, and stammered, “Secretary Reddy, the tires didn’t burst on their own. Someone shot them out!”

“What?!” Sourav looked out the window, but could not see what had happened to the tires.

Rohit’s men had attached silencers to their sniper rifles. The bullets had been quick and precise; the two snipers, positioned on either side of the road, had fired at the same time, each taking out two tires.

Sourav’s car was soundproof, which made it practically impossible for the people sitting inside to hear the silenced bullets. It had not occurred to Sourav and Kirat that someone had shot out their tires, but their driver knew better.

This driver had previously served in the military as an army
driver. After leaving the army, he had joined the Indian Government Secretariat as a driver-cum-bodyguard for
government officials. He was not as skilled as a professional
bodyguard, but he was the best bodyguard among all the drivers on the government payroll. The inverse was also true: of all the bodyguards, he was the one with the best driving skills.

As soon as the car sank to the ground, the driver had rapidly
analyzed the tremors he had felt, and concluded that the tires had been shot out.

Sourav pounded the seat beside him in irritation. “Open the door. I’m going out to check the tires.”

The driver was reluctant to leave the car. He nervously said, “Secretary Reddy, we’re in a restricted military area. This is
serious. They have the right to shoot you dead if you don’t
comply with their orders!”

“Nonsense! They wouldn’t dare touch a hair on my brother’s head!” Kirat said confidently.

When Kirat first met Sidharth more than a decade ago, he had seemed to her to be an exceedingly polite, disciplined, and taciturn young man who never overstepped his boundaries.

He had joined the military several years after their first
meeting, which only strengthened her belief that he would never do anything reckless or out of the ordinary: soldiers were highly disciplined, rule-abiding men, weren’t they?

Sourav did not share his sister’s confidence, however. He supported himself on the seat before him and asked the driver uneasily: “…They’ll shoot us?You’re joking, right?”

He was woefully ignorant of military law: he did not usually
deal with the military, and the few men he knew in the military always went out of their way to accommodate him.

“Why would I lie to you?” The driver gave a wry laugh. “Stay
here, sir. I’ll get down and ask them to let us off the hook. We’ll retreat.” With that, he opened the door and got out of the car with his hands up. He said loudly, “I am the driver of Deputy Secretary-General Reddy, from the Indian Government Secretariat. I would like to talk to your commander!”