The Ransom Dealers

The Operation

Abdul was tense. He sat in his cubicle, waiting for what he knew was about to happen. Today was D-day, and the carefully planned operation that was to make them twenty million naira richer, was now in the laps of the gods.

He and Dele have crossed all the t's and dotted all the i's. With an operation that entailed such high risk and lucrative reward, one thoughtless mistake and they would all be handcuffed and sent to jail. He broke out in a sweat just to think of it.

He consoled himself with the thought that although it was a kidnap operation, they still had an escape pod should the whole operation turn sour. He glanced nervously at his watch. The time was 11:27AM. Any moment from now, all hell would break loose.

He was so immersed in his thoughts that he failed to notice the policeman standing in front of his cubicle.

"Hello", the policeman said, "Good morning".

Abdul glanced up to see the police inspector standing and watching him with his police x-ray eyes. His heart stopped, then began to race. What the hell is the police doing here? he asked himself. Has Dele been arrested?

But he needn't have worried, the inspector was there to enquire about his damaged ATM card. Abdul directed him to the right staff that would fix his problem.

His phone vibrated. Abdul opened his w******p and saw the much awaited message from Dele: The eagle has landed.

Abdul typed back: Copy

Sure enough, Hajia Munu walked into the banking hall, heading towards Abdul. He was the staff that initially opened the savings account for her, so she always came to him to solve any problem to do with her account.

"Abdul how are you?" She greeted him cheerfully.

"Ina kwana Hajia? I am fine, how is Alhaji and your children?", asked Abdul.

"Everyone is fine, thank you. Abdul someone called the he is your staff, and he wants to regularize my account to prevent fraudsters from hacking it", she said.

"Yes, it's a serious problem. Only yesterday they hacked and stole about 100 million naira from one of our customers. The IT department has been tasked with fixing all our customers' accounts", he told her.

"Okay", she said. "I came with the phone, so what do you need?"

"I'll need the phone for some minutes to receive and input the OTP. It will be sent numerous times as we work on securing your account. If you could just wait in the coffee room, our staff will bring you some tea", Abdul informed her.

She frowned at this suggestion, reluctant to leave her phone for that long. But she shrugged and decided to go ahead, since she did not have anywhere else to be.

"Please notify me in case there is a call", she said.

"No problem Hajia. Let me take you to the coffee room", Abdul said.

Immediately he left her in the coffee room, Abdul headed directly to the rest rooms. He checked all the other doors to be sure he was alone, then removed a handkerchief to cover the mouthpiece of Hajia Munu's phone. He then dialed her husband.