MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE

BLOOD ON THE LAKE

The gunshot was louder than Tunde expected.

In movies, gunshots in big rooms echo. In real life, they c***k. They split the air and your skull at the same time. For half a second, nothing made sense. Just the sound, and the way the chandelier above them shivered.

Then the glass exploded.

The massive floor-to-ceiling window behind the conference table didn’t shatter inward. It blew outward. A second shot. From outside. From the lake.

“Down!” Tunde yelled.

He grabbed the food cart and flipped it. Metal screamed on marble. Ayo was already moving, dragging Nnamdi down with him. Kunle hit the floor and rolled under the table, butter knife still in his hand like it mattered.

The Queen fired again. Not at Tunde. At the laptop.

Ayo saw it coming. He dove. His shoulder hit the table leg. The laptop skidded, but the USB stayed in. Emeka’s evidence kept playing. The video of Makinde in Cotonou was still looping on the 20-foot screen, his voice echoing: “Use the Adeyemi name if you have to.”

“Kill the feed!” the Queen screamed. “Kill it!”

Two of Makinde’s men went for the laptop. Nnamdi beat them to it. He came up from the floor, grabbed a crystal decanter, and smashed it across the first guy’s face. Glass and blood. The second guy got a chair to the knees from Ayo.

“Amaka!” Nnamdi shouted into his mic. “Are we still live?”

Static. Then her voice, shaky but there: “Yes! 4.1 million! They’re trying to jam us but I’m bouncing through 6 servers! Keep it up!”

Outside, another bullet hit. This time the window near the door. Spiderweb cracks.

Makinde hadn’t moved. He stood at the head of the table, watching. Calm. Like this was a board meeting and the gunfire was just bad catering.

“You idiots,” he said softly. “Do you know who you just shot at?”

Tunde stood up from behind the overturned cart. His ears were ringing. There was blood on his chef whites. Not his.

“The world just saw you,” Tunde said. His voice was steady. “The world saw everything. You’re done.”

Makinde smiled. “Am I? Geneva doesn’t work like Lagos, Director Adeyemi. Here, we call the police before the crime is finished.”

As if on cue, sirens. Far away. But getting closer. Swiss police.

The Queen wasn’t listening. She was staring at the screen. At herself, shaking hands with a Nigerian senator. At the bank transfers with her signature.

“You’re going to prison,” she said. But she wasn’t looking at Tunde. She was looking at Makinde. “You said this was clean.”

Makinde finally looked at her. And for the first time, he looked tired. “It was. Until your ego made you want to arrest them publicly.”

The sirens were closer.

Ayo was at the window, peering through the broken glass. “Boat,” he said. “Black. No lights. Coming fast. 100 meters.”

“Extraction?” Kunle asked from under the table.

“Or cleanup,” Ayo said.

Tunde made a decision. “We’re not waiting for Swiss police. Not with this evidence. Not with them.” He pointed at Makinde and the Queen. “Nnamdi, can you download it?”

Nnamdi was already yanking the USB out and plugging it into his own drive. “30 seconds.”

The door handle rattled. Locked. Then a voice, in German and French: “Police! Open the door!”

Makinde raised his hands. “We’re hostages,” he called out. “Armed men. They have a bomb.”

The Queen looked at him, betrayal flashing across her face.

“You’re lying,” she said.

“I’m surviving,” Makinde said. He pulled a small device from his pocket. A remote. He pressed it.

The lights died.

Total black.

Someone screamed. Someone else fired. Tunde felt air move past his face as a bullet went by.

“Lights!” Ayo yelled.

“I’m trying!” Nnamdi said. “They cut the main!”

In the dark, Tunde could hear it. Boots on the dock outside. More than one. Heavy. Tactical.

“Amaka, talk to me,” Tunde whispered.

“I’m here,” she said. “Police are 2 minutes out. But the boat... it’s at the dock now. 4 men. Masks. Guns.”

Kunle crawled to Tunde. “Director. We have 12 hostages in this room who aren’t us. We can’t fight in here.”

He was right. The other 8 board members were on the floor, crying, praying. They weren’t the target. But they would die if this turned into a shootout.

Tunde made the call. “New plan. We take Makinde and the Queen. We run.”

“How?” Ayo asked. “Police at the front, mercs at the back?”

Tunde looked at the broken window. At the lake beyond it. Cold. Black. 40 feet down.

“The lake,” he said.

The lights slammed back on. Blinding.

In that second of white, chaos.

The door blew inward. Not police. Mercenaries. 4 of them. Masks. Rifles. They swept the room, looking for targets.

Tunde didn’t think. He moved.

He tackled Makinde. They went down behind the table. Makinde fought, but Tunde was younger and angrier and had spent a year learning how to kill without killing.

“Get the Queen!” he shouted.

Ayo was already there. He had her by the arm, twisting the gun from her hand. She kneed him in the ribs. He didn’t make a sound.

Nnamdi had the drive. “Got it!”

Kunle grabbed one of the crying board members and threw him at a mercenary. Distraction. It worked.

“Go! Go! Go!” Tunde yelled.

They ran. Not to the door. To the window.

Tunde went first. He grabbed the frame, ignored the glass cutting his hands, and rolled through. Cold air hit him. Then nothing.

He fell 40 feet.

The water of Lake Geneva was like ice. It knocked the air out of him. He surfaced, gasping. Behind him, Ayo. Then Nnamdi. Then Kunle, dragging the Queen by her hair. She was cursing in three languages.

Gunfire from above. The mercs were at the window now.

“Swim!” Tunde shouted. “Away from the dock!”

They swam. Hard. The cold was a weapon. It made your muscles lock. Tunde could feel it in his shoulders.

Behind them, the boat engine roared. The black boat was turning, spotlight sweeping the water.

“Police!” A voice from the shore. “Drop your weapons!”

The Swiss police had arrived. But they were at the front gate. Not at the lake.

A bullet hit the water next to Kunle’s head. He didn’t flinch.

“Left!” Tunde said. “Toward the trees!”

They made it to a small rocky outcrop 50 meters from the villa. Covered in shadow. Breathing hard.

Makinde was gone. In the chaos, he’d slipped away.

The Queen was in Ayo’s grip, dripping and furious. “You don’t know what you’ve done,” she spat. “You think this is over? You think 4 million views matters? We own the servers.”

“No,” Nnamdi said. He held up his drive. Water dripping from it. “We own the proof now. And Amaka owns the internet.”

From the villa, they could hear shouting. Swiss police. Mercenaries. Sirens.

Tunde looked at his team. All of them bleeding. All of them freezing. All of them alive.

Ayo was holding his ribs. “Baba was right,” he said through gritted teeth. “Cut off the head.”

Tunde looked across the lake. The PYTHON I was pulling away from the dock. Fast. And on the deck, he could see a figure in a grey suit.

Makinde. Looking back at them.

He raised a hand. Not a wave. A promise.

Then the boat disappeared into the dark.

It took 20 minutes for the police to find them. By then, they were wrapped in emergency blankets, sitting on the rocks. The Queen was in cuffs, still cursing.

Captain Mueller of the Geneva Police was not happy. “You entered Switzerland on false documents. You broke into a private residence. You discharged a weapon.”

“We prevented a terrorist network from operating,” Tunde said. His teeth were chattering. “And we have evidence of trafficking, money laundering, and 14 murders.”

Mueller looked at the drive in Nnamdi’s hand. Then at the live stream still playing on a cop’s phone. 6.8 million views.

He sighed. “You’re lucky the Federal Prosecutor is watching that stream too.”

Two hours later, they were in a police station. Dry clothes. Hot coffee. Lawyers.

The news was already everywhere. GENEVA RAID EXPOSES GLOBAL TRAFFICKING RING. SWISS POLICE ARREST PYTHON QUEEN. CEO O.M. MAKINDE MISSING.

Chief called at 4am Lagos time.

“You did it,” he said. His voice was weak but proud.

“We didn’t get Makinde,” Tunde said.

“You got the head,” Chief said. “He’ll run. But he’s running with no money, no network, and the world watching. That’s a different kind of prison.”

Tunde looked at his brothers. Ayo asleep in a chair. Nnamdi typing on a police laptop, making sure the evidence was backed up 12 times. Kunle eating a sandwich that was definitely not his.

“Bring each other back,” Chief had said.

They had.

At 6am, Captain Mueller came back. “You’re free to go. The prosecutor wants to talk, but you’re witnesses, not suspects. For now.”

Outside the station, Geneva was waking up. Clean streets. Clean air.

Amaka was waiting in the car. She got out and hugged all of them. Even Kunle.

“You broke the internet,” she said. “Emeka’s name is trending worldwide.”

Tunde nodded. He looked at the lake in the distance. Calm again.

“The hunt,” Tunde said. “For the Jackal King.”

Because somewhere out there, on a boat or in a bunker, O.M. Makinde was alive. And men like that don’t run. They regroup.

But that was tomorrow’s problem.

Today, they were alive.

Today, they had won.