Like you were never gone

Chapter 8

<<Current time, Five days ago>>

It had been 10 years since that night. Everyone had grown older, wiser. Pathan had moved on from being a RAW agent to forming his own team called JOCR. Over they years, he had still kept in touch with Avinash, or Tiger as people knew him now. Pathan always wanted to, but out of the fear of risking her safety, they never talked about her.

The day started slow at the JOCR's international HQ in London. Things had cooled down a bit after the last high octave mission, and the team was finding it's bearings under new leadership. Pathan wasn't a desk guy so he had requested Col. Luthra to find a new chief for the team.

Col. Luthra had brought in Rohan, and Pathan was more than happy to work with his friend again.

By mid-afternoon, Rohan had gathered everyone in the conference room for an impromptu high priority meeting. They had a new mission, about an old foe.

"What is the mission sir?" Chirag, one of the new joiners asked.

"What I'm about to show you now, cannot leave this room. An old enemy of the organisation has resurfaced-"

Sharma looked at Pathan as he spoke. Pathan straightened his posture, a little tense now. They had enough enemies as is. Sharma pushed a couple of files towards the team and began to pull up the surveillance pictures on the screen.

"His name is Victor Sams." Pathan looked up sharply at the screen.

"Pathan, you've had a brief brush with him in the past. Would you like to brief the team about that mission?" Sharma directed his attention at Pathan, all eyes turning to him.

"10 years ago, one of our agents was sent undercover to keep an eye on Victor Sams. Sams was just a potential suspect at the time. However, she found out some evidence about a bio weapon named "Rabbit's foot", that was specifically designed to mass kill. But unfortunately she fell pray to the same weapon. It's a small chip that's inserted in your brain through your nasal cavity and it can be triggered if you are within the detonators range." Pathan took a pause before continuing,

"We laid a trap and caught Sams. But he had connections, probably some inside help too. He managed to walk free. It's been quite for a while now, but we've been secretly trying to track any gossip about the Rabbit's foot ever since." He cleverly left out the other important part of the past. The lesser the people knew the better.

"Thank you Pathan. Two days ago, our IT cell tracked some encrypted messages on the dark web about resurrection of an old bio weapon. We kept an eye on it and two days ago, we found its source to Victor Sams. We were able to trace his location. He is here, in London." Sharma added.

"Rohan, if we were able to track him, it's probably because he wanted us to." Pathan interjected.

"Yes. It appears so. Victor, has changed his M.O. this time."

Rohan clicked the remote to pull up a new image on screen. It was the front door of one of the well know buildings in the city.

Victor Sams was standing next to a woman, her head was covered with black bag, her hands tied in front of her. Two armed guards standing behind them.

"He has a captive with him this time. And this morning, we received a communication from Victor Sams himself." Sharma pulled up the message on screen.

"Hello, Samar." It read. Memories of the events all those years back flashed through Pathan's mind.

"You know what this means right Samar?" For the first time, Rohan regarded Pathan by his real name.

"Do we know who the woman is? Were we able to track that?" Pathan asked moving closer to the screen.

"We can check the flight logs. If they came into the country by air, they probably used aliases. We can run through them all. We need to find out who she is." Priya, another new joinee who was reading the file spoke up.

Pathan scanned the photo on the screen carefully. The woman was wearing a red tank top and jeans. He couldn't tell her age, but she was roughly 5 ft 3 maybe 4. He looked down at her bound hands, she wasn't wearing any bracelet or watch, but he could see a band around her left ring finger. So he zoomed in on the image, he had his doubts but he hoped he was wrong.

He was not.

It was a toy ring with a sunflower on it.