CLAD

2

In thirty minutes, I was there. Clara, two officers from the EFCC and a DSS officer were waiting for us. The EFCC and the DSS had to pair on this one. They were on to the mysterious Odogwu Dynasty a notorious multi-dimensional crime network that had been plaguing Nigeria for a decade.

They were responsible for about all the kidnapping you heard of in the country. They pressed the wrong button when they kidnapped the CBN governor and released him for a two hundred billion naira ransome.

These guys were unlike anything that had tormented Nigeria in the past. They were awesomely good at acquiring every plasmid that further mystified an enigma,  which was their major strength. The EFCC had tried to crack them so many times before but had ceded. Their mole was murdered just before he got close enough to being an actual mole.

"They're here!"

I voiced out as I heard the engine of the taxi break the silence after we'd been waiting for about ten minutes.

Aisha and Bode carried him in and placed him on the metal table at the centre of the room which was fixed to the ground.They tied him up before the effect of the Zemuron he was injected with waned.

"Well, y'all could have been a little less late." Clara barked

"You may have forgotten that he is a member of the human species having an inherent desire and ability to be free as long as it depends on his strength."

Aisha replied sarcastically not losing focus of what she was doing. Clara flung Aisha a "no-she-didn't-just-say-that" look.

"The onset of action of the drug was delayed for him and we had to war it out with him till he came."

Bode quickly said before Clara had found the right words to lambaste Aisha with.

Another laudable peculiarity of Aisha was the ability to react to Clara's darts in ways that made her feel stupid. And you can tell that Clara wasn't a fan of Aisha's sharp-mouth. I'm sure she had fantasised countless times how she would kick Aisha off the team. But she couldn't. I mean, when you're good, you're good. There's no controversy.

You could say The Den was our simulation of pre-hell. Located on the outskirts of town. It looked like a large warehouse from the outside but you didn't want to be inside as a criminal. It was where we squeezed juice out of our prey before sending them off to face the real hell with the DSS.

Clara was a specialist in torture and juicing. Annoying however was the fact that only Clara supposedly had access to most of the juice. We were only told what we needed to know. Which means we had to leave once we were done setting up. As expected, Aisha had her way about getting us the juice everytime. Turns out Clara wasn't all that secretive. Aisha was the one who told us all Esther had said after she listened to the recordings. She couldn't have gone to be bait without knowing what she was in for.

I shifted my gaze to him as he lay helpless on the table. Obinna Ambrose was his name. He was at the lower caste of the Odogwu Dynasty but very well connected. He supplied women to the bigwigs in the human trafficking business who had gone international.  Odogwu Dynasty was on his clientele.

These women were made to believe that he was their one and only door to greener pastures. There were also those who were kidnapped and forcefully sold.

Esther was told that she would make a good career modelling in Libya. Her only mistake was believing this. She was confused when the guards at the hell hole she was camped manhandled her like garbage as Obinna had left her in the company of a fake agent, who turned out to be the woman in charge of camping the women to be sold. It was on seeing her fellow victims that it dawned on her that she had boarded the wrong plane.

She had been coerced into prostitution on arriving Libya and was put under subjection for five years till a fire broke out at the brothel.

She ran as fast as her legs could carry her. Her international passport had been confiscated by her slave masters so it took her another two years and a half to save up enough money,from shuttling between jobs to make enough money for the journey back home. She was going to keep all these to herself and move on but she couldn't.

She went to the Division of Women Affairs and later found herself talking to Clara. Her testimony was timely as the EFCC and DSS were painstakingly scouring for leads on the case. Clara, our super smart boss sent in an application for a spot on the team with our new lead as a ticket. So, here we were.

They were done with tying him up. Aisha picked up the metal bucket of water on the right side of the table and emptied its contents on Obinna, who gasped in horror and began shouting on top of his voice for help.Smiling satisfactorily, she put the bucket down and dusted her hands to show that she was done.

"You can leave now. We'll take it from here!" Clara snapped

"Don't tell me what to do. I'm not your baby sister."

Aisha curtly replied, hands akimbo like she was ready for a showdown.

"So, we'll be on our way?"

I chipped in with a slight chuckle which made me look and feel weird.

I was trying to fix the already spoilt atmosphere. That was me typically - Bisola, the almost dumb one. I think Clara would have kicked me off the team if I wasn't able to think faster than all of them when they needed me to. We were the perfect team- Clara, the one who got the jobs; Bisola, the one who could figure out the most potent plans (with so many sister-plans should the first fail) to get the job done, Aisha who had the balls to get the job done, Bode who had very artistic abilities and a flawless stalking skill and the others who really didn't know much about anything we did.

I started towards the door and Aisha followed me looking Clara in the eyes and walking with her back facing the door. We were out in like thirty seconds and then we got into the car. Aisha was to take the car home tonight and she was to drop me off at Ifeoma's. Bode was to take care of returning the taxi.

"I don't understand how women could play the fool for a guy like that. I mean, his face screams CROOK!" Aisha said with a puzzled expression as she reversed the car.

" I know, right."
I said shaking my head. But we couldn't blame them.

"All a hungry person needs to know is that at the end of whatever discussion you are having with them a meal is coming. These women were told what they were dying to hear..." I continued before Aisha's bizzare ringtone cut me off sharply.

"Yeah! It's my baby!" She said looking at me, smiling and dancing to the weird ringtone before she placed the phone between her left shoulder and ear.
"Hello, baby!" She said so drunkenly you could tell she was high on Usman's love.

I couldn't understand why a grown man could enjoy being referred to as baby. It felt weird probably because I had never been in a relationship. Usman was in the army and had been seeing Aisha for four years. Theirs was a special kind. I often wondered how he was able to put up with Aisha's theatrics and sarcasm. He had to have been really strong, courageous and loving. I had met him twice; once when he came to pick her up from the office and another time at the mall.
He was about an inch shorter than Aisha was but was too manly for his height to be a problem with her. He was very dark and his hair looked like a tightly woven spiderweb flattened on his head. His pupils were brown and the white of his eyes reddish like one who was high on weed. Aisha said he didn't smoke.

As Aisha giggled incessantly on the phone I felt my tummy wamble. I had only taken Akara and Pap since morning. I started to imagine possible delicacies that awaited me at Ifeoma's house. I was very hungry and tired and all that was on my mind was to take a cool bath, eat and sleep.

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Hello guys,

I hope you enjoyed this chapter. I planned to publish it earlier but lost some parts which I later recovered. Drop your comments, share and Watch out for chapter 3😉 .

P.S. Akara is bean cake, tastes amazing.

Thank you!

Photo credit : Wikipedia