ONE WEEK LATER.
POLICE STATE COMMAND, PORT HARCOURT, RIVERS STATE.
The Rivers State police commissioner sauntered into his office with one of the daily newspapers he loved reading every morning he came to work. It has become a habit.
He was always curious to know what the media and the masses were thinking and saying about him and the entire Nigerian Police Force, that was why he often requested newspapers on his way to work everyday. He didn't know why it mattered so much to him, but he just liked reading the public's opinion about him.
Sometimes, he even went as far as googling his name.
He finally got to his seat and plopped down heavily before opening the newspaper. His eyes scanned the newspaper headlines. As usual, about thirty percent of the headline was about the military and their 'exploits'.
Another chunk of the headline meandered about the corrupt state of the politicians, both ruling and latent, while the remaining part of the newspaper's front page was about foreign affairs, sports and the evil that was being perpetrated in the society.
His scan proved fruitful when his eye came upon something that grabbed his attention. It was about the Kano State police commissioner. His curiosity soared.
115
KANO STATE POLICE UNCOVERS LAIR OF WANTED CRIMINALS, ARREST MANY. THE
POLICE STATE COMMISSIONER SPEAKS ON THE OPERATION.
That woman!
He re-read it three times before finally flipping over to the page where the full story was written.
As he read the whole news, he discovered that a much-sought criminal hideout in Kano had been discovered.
Twenty-three of those miscreants were arrested, while two cunningly escaped during the whole jamboree. The commissioner had already sent highly trained search teams for the two escapees and they were following every trail.
"Wow, nice job," the commissioner mumbled under his breath in admiration after reading about the efforts of the Kano State police.
What were the Kano State police force doing? How were they getting it right?
The commissioner looked at his counterpart's picture that was attached to the newspaper headline. There was nothing spectacular about the plain-faced woman, who wore a flowery black and silver hijab under her official uniform, staring back at him with an expression of purpose. He shook his head in wonderment. These days, she seemed to be the only one getting things right.
That didn't come as a surprise, the commissioner thought, seeing how dedicated she was, both to her job and her religion.
116
Being just a Muslim by religious affiliation, Abubakar had never been devout to the tenets of Islam. By the looks of it, his colleague's piety was aiding her efforts and making her tenure so prosperous. He made up his mind to change his ways and become more pious. He'd make sure he prayed five times a day, facing Mecca on his prayer mat. Maybe Allah would see his sincerity and smile on him.
His eyes shifted to another headline that wrote about the police still not being able to capture the leader of the highest crime syndicate in Nigeria. As expected, the Inspector-General of police had given his remark on that headline.
The rest of the headlines about the military was mostly about the Nigerian army and Boko Haram, bandits and kidnappers.
Even after he moved on to other headlines, the police commissioner's mind still hovered about the report on the crime syndicate now popularly known as, 'Alpha Shadows'.
The Nigerian police, especially the River State police force, had exhausted every possible lead to capture the leader of the syndicate and stop their operations in the country, but all to no avail.
What else were they to do? The commissioner thought deeply as the lines on his forehead wrinkled in confusion.
What was left out? What strategy? What weaponry? Why wasn't the equation balancing itself as it was meant to?
117
These questions and more ran in consecutive sequence in his mind, but instead of receiving the answers he expected, they only led to more and more arduous questions. Maybe spending a whole day or a whole week doing nothing and asking only these questions might provide an answer. Who knew?
The commissioner could feel that somewhere beneath these piles of questions, the answers were lurking. It was just within arm's reach. If only he could just reach out and grab it. But as of now, the answer was slippery and gliding out of his reach, even at moments when he thought he'd gotten a grip on it. And it was frustrating.
---
Savior calmly sat on a steel-frame chair in a dark-lit room in one of his hideouts. He held his phone in his hands to place an anonymous call to the Rivers State Commissioner of Police.
There were seven days remaining before he embarked on his next operation. According to his plan, it was the perfect moment to involve the police to work full-time with him.
When he called them, as soon as they agreed to his terms and conditions, he knew he would be fully committed.
No looking back. He must be careful and cunning. Thankfully, that was his thing. He knew better than to allow those police guys to wriggle out any lead on who he truly was. Now wasn't the time.
His gaze darted to the coffee table in front of him. And there, on that table, lay the blueprints which he had carefully and meticulously drafted, for himself and the Nigerian Police Force.
118
The blueprint did not just show how they would bring about the annihilation of Alpha Shadows, but also how they could track down other crime syndicates in the country.
I hope you are ready, Tiger, it's time to flush 'em away from society for good.
Once the police had agreed—with the odds tipped in his favor, of course—once he was all in, he knew this was going to be a full-scale war.
Fighting against evil in the country. It gave him the feeling of true fulfillment and triumph. Like a secret superhero who has to disguise as a villain to capture the crooks.
All those people, like his father, who were on the good side, fighting and dying all because of the evil that goaded the land, were collateral damage.
With his plan set in motion, evil would never prevail over good. It was a law that governed their universe, one that had been established perpetually.
And with a mandate ringing in his heart, he pulled out the commissioner's private number and called it.
His call went unanswered the first two times, but he wasn't surprised or worried about it. He knew why the commissioner wasn't taking his calls. But he also knew one other thing: the commissioner would eventually answer.
119
And when he finally answered, Tiger would not bother muffling or changing his voice. He would speak normally as though he was either speaking to a friend or business associate. He knew that he had programmed his phone to make his voice sound differently to the person on the other side of the call.
---
Still in his office, Abubakar gazed wide-eyed at the unknown phone number that was calling one of his phone numbers. It was his private number, inaccessible to the public. It was only his immediate family, select relatives and not more than eight close friends that had it. Even so, they barely called him via that number, except for extreme cases of emergency.
Each time an unknown number called him, it was either because one of his daughters urgently needed his help but couldn't get through to him through her mobile phone. After they had finished calling their father through those unknown numbers, just as he'd instructed, they would immediately delete the number from the phone's call log before returning the phone back to the owner.
Looking at the unknown number that was now calling for the third time, he wondered what had gone wrong this time around.
Mumbling a quick prayer for his family, he immediately tapped the answer button on this special phone just a few seconds before the third call would have gone unanswered.
But as he drew the phone to his left ear, the voice he heard sent cold chills down his spine.
120
Then, without warning, he began to sweat and his body trembled involuntarily.
"What is this? Get a grip, Abubakar," the commissioner chided himself mentally.
"Hello, Abubakar Abdulrahman!"
He didn't recognise the husky voice that had just said hello to him and called him by his full name. The controlled tone was hard to pin to any face he knew.
At that point, panic began to set in as he feared for the safety of his wives and daughters.
Had the Alpha Shadows figured out that he was on their trail and finally got to his family first? It was no news to Nigerians and these crime syndicates that the Nigerian police were after them. Could it be that the Nigerian Police Force were finally on to something, and so, the syndicate decided to abduct his family as a warning message to the Nigerian police to back off.
He stopped panicking and regained control of himself.
"Yes, Abubakar speaking. Who is this?" the commissioner asked, willing the tremor coursing through him not to show in his voice. Since this person had somehow gotten his private number without his consent, and if they were currently holding his family, there was no need to play hide and seek with them.
He heard the slow and heavy breathing of the man on the other side of the phone before he finally spoke up.
121
"Do you really want to know who I am, Abubakar?" the voice asked carefully.
"Are you a maniac or something? Stop your silly game with me and come out clean," the commissioner warned, trying to sound tough.
A light chuckle from the caller, a slight pause and finally, a whisper.
"I can be anything you want me to be to you."
"Listen here and listen well. I don't have time for your silly games. Don't you ever call this number again or else I'll track you down and deal with you severely."
"I can be your greatest friend or your worst enemy of all time," the husky voice continued, unperturbed by his threat.
The commissioner swore loudly and prepared to cut the call in annoyance.
122