THE NEXT TWO DAYS

Part Six

                                                           CHAPTER SIX
              The gunshots brought silence to the noisy night. The noisy owl, frogs and crickets went dead silent. And just as it started, it ended. It ended too quickly. It took the nocturnal creatures just thirty seconds after the last gunshot to resume their life but hers was in shambles. If she were to calculate the probability of Jason returning, she would have zero as her answer. Jason never listened to anyone. If only he had heeded her plea, they would have gained a great distance from the assassins. The craziest thing he did was to tell her to remain in the shelter he had made. The assassins knew her exact location, they were coming for them yet Jason had made her promise to remain in the shelter no matter what. She could not believe Jason did not make any provision for her escape if he was killed. Just the thought of Jason being dead sent a panic to her body seizing her breathe. There had not been another gunshot but she kept having the feeling that something was not right.
“Please be alive” she whispered.
She had left the shelter few minutes after Jason left. She was not breaking her promise to stay. She left because Jason must have forgotten they knew where the shelter was. A normal person was supposed to tell her to run and hide, but Jason was not even normal to start with. She should feel safe where she was standing beside a tree but her fear for him was clouding her ability to think. She tried coming up with something to distract her. She closed her eyes and instead of seeing something in the past to distract her, she felt him, the way he kissed her, the way he held her. She shook her head before opening her eyes again. That was not a distraction. She did not want to handle her confusion concerning what had just happened with herself and Jason, and it was too much to sort or comprehend.
    She did not hear nor see it coming, she just felt it. It was a knife. It missed her forehead and from the sound she heard, it must have gotten stocked in the tree. They had found her. She closed her eyes waiting for the assassin to shoot her with a gun or throw another blade that would finally penetrate. Although she was visibly shaking, her killer would never get the satisfaction of hearing her screaming or begging. She had watched enough Hollywood movies to know that it never worked, instead, it made them excited.
Five minutes must have passed yet her killer had not done anything. What game was he playing? Did someone actually throw a knife at her or was she hallucinating? She silently thought. She could not take the tension anymore. She gradually opened her eyes but the person she saw standing a little distance from her, was more confusing that she could not feel the relief of seeing him alive. He looked like Jason, but there was no way Jason would try to kill her, except she was having a nightmare or he had been possessed, but that happened only in movies. Then it must be a dream, a nightmare.
“Cindy do you know you took three years of my life?” Jason asked still standing where he was.
That statement made her turn back to confirm her sanity. She saw the knife which meant she was not insane. The snake she saw next almost at the same time she saw the knife, made her jump and scream. Jason was immediately by her side but she pushed herself and Jason further from the tree before she succumbed to the feeling of safety that came with being wrapped in Jason.
“I told you to stay in the shelter. I told you I can protect you from them but I can’t protect you from snakes” Jason said holding her close, but it was not close enough. She pushed herself further into him, burying her face on his chest.
Gradually, reality started coming back but the image of a knife piercing through the center of a snake’s head, with its tail dangling and almost touching her hair, made her whole body shake again. She felt cold.  Jason did not say another word, he just held her.
“I’m sorry, I should have listened to you” she said after a long time.
“Cindy, breathe, you are safe now, just breathe, I got you” Jason said.
She did not need an explanation to what Jason said. She just listened to him and breathed. She made up her mind to stay very close to him.
   By the time they got back to their shelter, it was already 1:30am. They sat opposite each other and for a long time nobody spoke. With reality back in full force, everything seemed weird between them.
“Are you hungry?” Jason asked breaking the long silence.
She shook her head. She had already eaten before her life suddenly turned to an action, thriller novel. She was sure if she penned down what she had gone through in just a night, readers would think she was writing a fictional story.
“Are you trying to avoid the main issue?” She asked.
“No. You can ask your questions.”
He was giving her a life time opportunity and she was going to maximize it.
“What did you promise Mum?” she asked, starting with the most important question.
“That I won’t touch you except we got married.”
So much for starting with that question. She just had to go back and ask from the simplest and less complex questions. Maybe Jason wouldn't confuse her with his straightforward answer if she did that.
“What led to that promise?” She asked after taking two minutes to construct how she would ask her question.
“I told her I had feelings for you.”
Good, at least she was getting somewhere. She just needed to go less and less complex.
“When was that?”
“Your sixteenth birthday?”
“You started having feelings for me on my sixteenth birthday or you told her you were having feelings for me on my sixteenth birthday?” she asked picking her words.
“Both.”
And it was going to be a long night.
“Jason can you please try not to be too straightforward with your answers. You are not helping” she let out her frustration.
“You have no idea how much I’m trying” he responded.
“You could try more.”
He did not respond not that she was expecting one.
“Okay. You had feelings for me and you told Mum the same day?”
He nodded.
“I know you were very close to Mum, but are you telling me Mum’s immediate response was to make you give that promise?”
He shook his head.
“What did she say?”
“That she knew it would happen.”
“Just that?”
“She had taken a decision with Dad and Pastor Sam to tell us the truth if something like this should happen.”
“Like this means we having feelings for each other.”
He nodded.
Mum told him but never told her. That was not fair, but then she remembered she never told anyone about her feelings.
“Wait, what do you mean by something like this? I did not tell you I have feelings for you?”
“You don’t need to. It’s written all over your face.”
She felt like an idiot instantly. How many times had Jason told her he could read her?  She felt like hitting herself for not saying it out for such a long period of time.
“How long have you known?”
“More than a year ago. When you came to visit George and me.”
At the mention of George, she felt a throbbing pain in her chest, her hand unconsciously touched her chest. Jason was immediately by her side.
“Cindy, I’m sorry, I'm sorry I could not save him” he said as he held her close. She never knew she was crying until Jason wiped tears from her cheek with his palm.
“So George is really dead like Mum and Dad. This is not a dream. George is gone.”
Then more tears came. Jason just held her.
“Jason please what do these people want? What is it you have with you that George had to die? That so many people had to be sacrificed?”
She did not ask with the hope that Jason would answer and was surprised when she got an answer.
“You must be current with the latest news on Biafra.”
“Yes. They blew up a power plant few weeks ago, but there were no casualty. Their leader had already announced something like that would happen on that day, so people believed and fled” she responded.
She remembered reading about it in an online news. The government had said they were bluffing but nobody went to work the day the bomb exploded. Later, the leader of Biafra had announced that another bomb would explode very soon and it would be at a massive government building in Lagos. People were warned to avoid that area. She tried to remember the date but could not. According to the online news, the Biafra leader had said he wanted a bloodless separation from Nigeria. And he wished for no human casualty. That was the reason behind the warning.
“The one people know is not their leader. There is another one who controls everything. He is called Faceless.  Nobody knows him. The one you know cannot do anything without his consent.”
“And…”
“It’s not what you are thinking Cindy, he is not the bad guy, although he is wanted.”
“How is our predicament connected to him if he is not the one after us?”
“There is a foreign company supplying him the weapons he is using. The existence of some of these weapons have not yet been announced or tested. The gadgets you saw me use today are like a child’s play. They are powerful and they have eyes everywhere. Cindy they are the ones after us.”
“But why?”
“George and I were sent on an undercover mission after Major Ahmed got an Intel that there was something fishy.” He paused but continued after a minute.
“We were able to discover that this faceless leader had his goal different from the weapon company. He wants a peaceful separation but they want war. War means money. They are using him, although he thinks otherwise. There was a recent meeting they had with his second in command, that’s the one everyone knows. We followed the trail of the weapon company’s representatives to their boss. We were able to penetrate and get a video and document of what they plan to do.” There was another long pause.
“In two days, this faceless leader alongside the known leader will go life on their website. The faceless leader is going to make a call. That call will trigger a bomb to explode at Balogun Stadium, Lagos.”
“But everybody is aware of that. I remember now. It was announced on their website that nobody should be at the stadium by 11:00pm on Friday” she said.
“That is not the only thing that will happen when he makes that call. They only know of the stadium. They are unaware that if he makes that call, bombs will explode in four more different locations. I mean residential areas. Areas where Yorubas and Hausas are more in number. If that happens, the casualties will make the last explosion that happened in Lagos to look like fireworks. Then nothing will stop a war.”
“Jason, please tell me you are joking” she said in a shaky voice.
“I’m not Cindy. The only thing that can stop this war is getting the files containing the video and documents showing the locations of these bombs. Major Ahmed already have people distributed all over Lagos. What they need now is the location so they can defuse them.”
“Can’t you email it?”
“I did that but he never received it. There are powerful people in government and military working with the weapon company. That’s why our cover got blown. Right now Major Ahmed has cut off contacts with everybody apart from my team. He trusts us with his life. Apart from that, this company has a dangerous hacker, better than me. This hacker was able to hack my email just after I downloaded the files. All my files were wiped out and my email account has been deleted. I tried using another email to send the files to Major Ahmed but he never got it. He was attacked few hours after I sent the email. The hacker had already hacked his email and was waiting for him to go online to get his location. So we did a last call and we agreed to meet at a coded location. I could tell him areas where the bombs will explode but not the exact location. They need the map.”
“This hacker must be good.”
“I’m hundred percent sure he is like me but worse.”
“So all you need to do is to deliver these documents and files before Friday. Today is Wednesday. Wait we are already in Thursday.”
“If we can locate those bombs before the deadline is another issue.”
“And if your team cannot?”
“The bombs will explode, then there will be nothing stopping a bloody war that will make the last civil war look like a fight. The weapon company will make money. Right now I’m the only one standing between them and their money and they will do anything to stop me.”
“So they want you alive?”
“Not anymore, they are too close, they want me dead. If I die, the files may be discovered later but it won’t change anything because by then it will be too late.”
At that moment he raised her face to look at him.
“Cindy, today is going to be worse than yesterday. I promise to protect you, but you have to listen to me. You must do what I say.”
She did not think before nodding.
“I promise, but don’t die Jason.”
“You need to sleep Cindy, later we can finish our discussion. We leave before dawn. They already know it was mission failed and they will be coming.”
He did not speak for a long time. When he thought she was sleeping, he spoke again.
“And I must be ready.”