8.30 PM

Once Naqeeb came out of shower, he and Victor went through all their preparatory work once again, making sure they covered all their bases. Even though, they were chatting, they kept checking the time, waiting for their unknown friends and finished the left over snacks.

It felt like longest hours of wait for Vijay aka Fayiz aka Victor. He was chatting with Naqeeb but his mind was elsewhere. He and his team had taken every precaution, every step necessary to ensure this operation would be run without bloodshed, gunfire or any harm to the civilians surrounding the apartment. But now was the moment of truth. He didn't have the luxury of wearing a bullet proof vest either, but that was the least of his worries. A lot of this mission was riding on his shoulders.

It had been a long journey, which started from the moment RAW team began to intercept a pattern of international money transfers to Naqeeb's account. Deeba and his other informers in Nakhonay confirmed what he had feared, that Naqeeb had indeed joined IS. US intelligence based in Kandahar intercepted some calls from Naqeeb's and other suspects in that area and alerted RAW that IS was planning a major terror attack in India. The IS Cell in Afghanistan was not significant and the US didn't want to spare any resources to track anyone, as their focus was more in Syria.

RAW immediately alerted Government of India and thus began a new mission, and Victor volunteered to go back to Afghanistan and revive the ghost of Fayiz Khan.

He charmed Naqeeb with renewed vigour and poured out his heartfelt zeal for the IS cause, enough to convince Naqeeb and his mentor, to earn a place for himself in the recruitment cell of IS in Afghanistan.

He loved this new challenge, living dangerously on razor's edge, to behave and convince hardcore fascists and terrorists that he was one of them, ready to do anything for the Caliphate. He loved the Adrenaline rush, the mind games he had to play to climb the ladder within the Cell, the challenge of keeping a façade, where a tiny slip up could have cost him not just his life, but the failure of the whole mission. He loved every bit of it. Once he and Naqeeb arrived in India, on their supposed mission, he got full support from RAW and the Intelligence Bureau, that too on his terms. Except a select few like Ashwin and his ex-boss and mentor J P Nanda, no one knew how he looked, and he wanted to maintain that anonymity.

Under the joint command of his mentor J P Nanda, Deputy Director of Intelligence Bureau, and his current boss in RAW, Sanjay Mathur, a special task force was set up. He lead a team of investigators, analysts and local police to continuously monitor and report on every activity of Naqeeb and the mission they were part of.

None of his team knew how he looked. Be it the information on their supposed mission or instructions to his team, to prepare for the counter attack, Victor conveyed only through text messages from his special secure phone, and stayed away from the surveillance at Green Towers.

To gain further trust in the IS hierarchy, he lied to them that he had local contacts in neighbouring regions of Delhi who can provide guns and triggers and even got them delivered on time. The triggers that he carried today were dummies of course, thus ensuring that the whole mission would be a complete failure. He had to come here today, because he realized that the identity of other IS operators would only be revealed once the triggers were ready. And that was the information his whole team was waiting for. His team knew that he would arrive at the apartment in Fayiz Khan's disguise, and they were instructed not to interfere with his movements at any cost.

Till now, the only risk he faced was managing the secrecy of his identity, be it with Naqeeb and his brothers at IS Cell or his taskforce team. But now the safety and success of his entire team was at stake, and Victor felt a hitherto unknown pressure. This is exactly why he hated to work as part of a team, even though he knew they could never have pulled this off, without the contribution of all the members involved.

Once this job finished, he would go back to his happy old life of a lone field officer. The very thought brought a relieved smile on Victor's face.

"What are you smiling about? I was talking about the back entrance to the New Delhi Airport. How was that funny?" Naqeeb asked confusedly.

"No, not funny. It's just that..." before he could complete, Naqeeb's mobile rang.

He spoke briefly and hung up.

"They will be here in ten minutes."

"Great!!" Victor's face beamed and within the next moment, he swore loudly and got up.

"What happened?"

"As you saw,  the trigger devices are tiny but the bloody packing is so heavy. I couldn't fit all the triggers in my backpack. There was another small bag of triggers and like an idiot, I left that in my car. Let me go and get it before they arrive. We will look like fools if we supply these things without the correct triggers. I couldn't find parking anywhere nearby so I had park the car in the next street."

Victor left in a hurry.

10.30 PM

Naqeeb looked around, and tried to clean up some of the mess on the floor by clearing the books and shoes.

Soon, there were multiple knocks on the door and Naqeeb opened the door, unsure whether it was Fayiz or the new visitors.

Two tall and lanky guys in their mid-twenties and a stocky older guy stood at the door and Naqeeb welcomed them inside warmly, and closed the door, wondering why it was taking so long for Fayiz to return.

He hugged his brothers, Farooq Hussein, Youssef Khalil and Bashir Al-Assad and introduced himself.

"My name here is Ashish but I think you know my real name, right?"

"Of course, Naqeeb. But where is your friend Fayiz?" asked Youssef, as he looked around the apartment.

"He will be here any moment. He went to get something from his car." Naqeeb smiled.

Outside, Victor was in an empty apartment, in the opposite block, binoculars glued to his eyes, which zoomed onto Naqeeb's apartment.

The suburban street was almost empty, when most families were at home.

10.40 PM

Victor sent one message.

NOW

Ten Commandos surrounded the apartment block stealthily, and five more joined the RAW agents Mohsin Khan and Priya Joshi at the door of the ground floor apartment.

Inside, Naqeeb and his new friends heard the same knock, multiple times in quick succession. Naqeeb smiled at them and announced as he opened the door. "Fayiz is here now." The smile on Naqeeb's face faltered  to find his neighbour Kunal, and before he could register why  Kunal Vadra was in a bullet proof vest, 5 commandos stormed inside. Neither Naqeeb nor his friends had any time to gather their weapons. More commandos joined them, once they ensured that there were no other accomplices outside that apartment.

It was over within five minutes.

All the four IS operators, gagged, handcuffed and tied-up were carried with a calm precision to a special vehicle which took them to a secret location, where they would go through interrogation by intelligence officers from India and if necessary, US.

Most of the residents of that suburb never knew what exactly happened, until much later.

****

Interrogation Room, somewhere near New Delhi.

Naqeeb had completely broken down but the interrogating officers weren't having much luck with the other three men from Syria. They got tied up, beaten, put in separate rooms, brought together, subjected to all the usual practices of interrogation but still...

A voice crackled on the radio they were carrying. "Would you mind leaving the room? I want to have a go." One of the officers recognized the voice and nodded his head.

Victor entered the dark room once the interrogating officers left.

He stood behind Youssef Khalil, the tallest of them, who refused to make eye contact with anyone, his eyes and head stubbornly pointed to the ground. Victor rolled his sleeves up and ran his left hand along back of Youssef's neck. Youssef took a long breath, preparing himself for the oncoming ordeal. A minute later, loud screams reverberated through the long corridor outside. The  interrogating officers tried to rush back into the room but found it bolted from inside. They looked at each other, unable to decide what to do.

There was a momentary silence broken only by supressed cries and then the agonising screams resumed, but from a different voice this time.

"We must call J P Nanda Sir. He is the only guy who can control Victor." One of them said and rushed out to make the call.

The other one stayed on. He had been interrogating terrorism suspects for a long time, but at that moment, a cold chill gripped his heart, as he heard more blood curling screams. He walked away. Inside the room, Victor's phone buzzed. He ignored it as he was busy writing down the info he extracted from the terrorists on the notice board hung at the wall.

The phone rang again and this time he was ready.

"What the hell are you doing? Have you gone mad..." J P Nanda's outburst was cut short by Victor.

"Sir I got the exact locations of their cells in Pakistan and at Baghouz, near the Syrian- Iraqi border and a few other details."

"Come to my office, right now." Barked Nanda and hung up the phone.

***

J P Nanda's office
Intelligence Bureau, New Delhi.
----------------------

"Sir, I knew we didn't have a moment to lose, and had to get this information from them right now. It has already been few hours since we arrested them, and if their mentor realizes that we caught his little soldiers, our whole operation would be a waste."

"But that doesn't give you the right to use unauthorized methods. That first guy, he looks as if he had become paralytic, what did you to him?"

"Nothing sir, it is a little trick I learnt in Kerala. Ask the guys to bend both his arms backwards once, he will be fine. These guys were ready to blast off kids, innocent people and you are shouting at me because I broke a few fingers off them, seriously Sir, you need..."

"Don't tell me what I need to do Victor. I appreciate everything you did, I sincerely do, but sometimes you push my limits too far. I am sending a recommendation to your boss Sanjay Mathur to send you on a compulsory 3 month leave. And after the completion of leave, you are going to join IB and will work under me on a domestic job. Is that understood?"

Victor stood still, his eyes blazing, too incensed to say anything that he might regret later.

"Victor, please understand that I have nothing but your welfare at heart. You trained under me and was one of my best agents in IB, but when you wanted to move to RAW, I gave my full support as we wanted to fully utilise your terrific infiltration and ex-filtration skills. You have just completed a brilliant job leading your team from the front.  What else do you want? Is there no off button  for you?" Nanda's eyes blazed.

"You have been living the life of a terrorist for the past year and another ghost like chameleon character for many years before that. You need to break away, from this image of Victor. When was the last time you spoke to anyone as a person, and not as an agent? You need to unwind, relax, and embrace normal life. Otherwise you might end up with long term psychological damage. And you are too valuable to me and the team. This constant craving for danger and adventure is never good. You might not like what I am saying right now, but you will thank me later. And don't even try to do something on the sly, because I will find out,  one way or another." Nanda's voice mellowed a bit but gaze was as severe as before.

Victor bent his head down and sighed. He couldn't refuse Nanda Sir's order or request. He knew his ex-boss always cared for him. When he lifted his gaze again towards his mentor, there was nothing but respect and understanding in his eyes. He nodded once and left the room.

While the rest of the world spent the next few days just as usual, the US forces were busy in destroying two major IS cells in Pakistan and Syria along with the small cell in Afghanistan where Victor and Naqeeb trained, thanks to the intelligence gathered by Victor as Fayiz, and the confessions he extracted from the captive terrorists. Victor felt a rare satisfaction, once he learnt that the capture of IS operators and their young recruits by US forces in those cells helped prevent many further terrorist attacks that IS was planning.

***

Victor spent the next few days cleaning his dusted apartment that he owned in a sleepy suburb of Moti Bagh in New Delhi. As he returned from the local supermarket after purchasing some essential groceries, his phone beeped an alert which indicated that one of his informers, Deeba was trying to contact him. He had already sent her the money that he normally paid all his informers long ago. Did she not receive it?

As he walked along the pavement, deep in his thoughts, wondering what Deeba wanted to tell him, long after the chapter in Nakhonay had been wound up, he accidentally bumped into someone, almost making her fall off the pavement into the oncoming traffic. With his well-trained reflexes, his hand stretched and caught the falling girl and pulled her closer. Only then he noticed that beautiful features of that face, long thick eyelashes that framed soft eyes, quivering lips which looked....

"Oy! Are you blind? I could have fallen under that car!" Her yelling broke the bubble.

He let go of her hand.

"If I was blind, I wouldn't have pulled you off and saved your neck." He walked past her, ignoring how her nostrils flared.

She caught up with him and put her hand out, stopping him. He looked up at her, annoyed.

"Apologise!" she demanded.

"For what? Your clumsiness?" He tried to walk away again, but stopped, once he noticed she had begun to follow him again.

"If you take one more step towards me, I will make sure you fall right under that truck this time." He pointed to the heavy truck on the road. Finally, she stopped, probably scared by the intensity in his eyes, and he proceeded towards his apartment.
Something in that girl's eyes disturbed him.  But he dismissed that thought and focused his mind back on more important things.
As he arranged the groceries neatly in the kitchen, he called Deeba.

"Hello Sir, how are you?"

He ignored her nervous greetings.

"Is everything okay?"

"I am sorry if I worried you with my message Sir, we are all quite okay here, thanks to you. It's just that, after working under your guidance for so long, I too picked up a few of your tips."

"Come to the point."

"Hmm...there was a strange man in this area last week, enquiring about Sadiq and Naqeeb Sir, and even you.  I mean not you directly Sir, but he asked if there was a stranger on the day Sadiq  died. And... and he spent the night with one of my girls here. As he was leaving, a letter fell out of his pocket. My girl picked it up and she looked at the strange writing. Before she could hand the letter over to him, he grabbed it and hit her so hard that she fell on the floor. He was so wild with fury sir, he kept yelling at her. We all rushed to the room and rescued her of course. He just ignored us and tore up the letter in a hurry and threw the pieces in the fireplace.

Once the girl told us what happened, my men tried to get him, but he was too quick  and escaped. He was from India Sir, he was speaking in one of those native languages. I don't know what was so important in that letter. Most of the letter got burnt but we managed to save two tiny scrapes of it. One tiny scrap which had the beginning of the letter which said Hi DJ. The other one, those letters, they look strange Sir. Maybe you can understand it. Can I send the picture Sir?"

"How is she?" Victor asked abruptly.

"Sir?" It took her a moment to understand what Victor was asking. "Oh she is much better now Sir. Her skin has come back to normal colour now." Her voice trembled.

"Send me the picture now. Could be nothing related to us. I will transfer some money into your account today. Take all your girls for a treat, okay?"

His mobile beeped again indicating the mms he received.

"Oh no sir, there is no need for that." Deeba tried to protest but Victor's attention was no longer in the call as he read the message on the scrap of paper.

"I will talk to you later." He cut off the call and read the words again.

No wonder neither Deeba nor anyone could recognise the letters. It was written in Malayalam, the language spoken by the people of Kerala, a state in South India.

Having spent a major part of his childhood in Kerala, Victor could understand the exact meaning and from the slang he could roughly understand which region within Kerala the writer was from.

It said
āyudhaṅṅaḷ matiyākuṁ pakṣē veṭiyuṇṭakaḷ matiyākilla

which meant

"Guns are enough but the bullets will not be enough!"

Victor pursed his lips.

Who was this DJ and why was someone from Kerala complaining to him that there aren't enough bullets? Why did that guy panic so much about that letter?  Who was this person enquiring about Sadiq and Naqeeb? Was he some rogue operator in arms trade, just like Sadiq was? But Sadiq was more into selling pure opium and related drugs than arms. So,  was he after drugs? And what made him suspect that there was a stranger on the day Sadiq  died?

He suddenly felt like a small kid asked to solve all his favourite puzzles. A slow smile spread on Victor's face. Perhaps he would enjoy his second stint in the Intelligence Bureau after all!!

^============^

So.... What did you guys make of the second part?

In the previous chapter we saw the events from Naqeeb's POV and in this, we found out how Fayiz fooled him and the IS Cell operators,  and then lead his joint force team to help breakdown those very cells breeding terrorists like Naqeeb.
It's a never ending war but every success is important if it saves innocent lives,  right?
From Next chapter onwards the real story starts as Victor chases the writer and recipient of that mysterious letter.

I want to thank my MIL on Twitter and dear friend DJ aka Deepti for her help in confirming that I got the correct malayalam phrase for what I was trying to convey.

As a dutiful DIL, I decided to name my villian as DJ after her, to show my respect. 😝😝  
Just kidding :-)  Love you DJ and thanks once again. :-D

Sesi