FicStorm's The Chase

Chapter Six

11:58

‘Fool for you’ by Philip Philip blasting loudly from his headphones gave Tega the morale and inspiration he needed to keep running on the treadmill while at the same time reading the news online that displayed on the screen attached to it. All he had on him was a pair of knickers and a pair of snickers. His abs were visible and so also were his biceps and the scars that ran across his muscular torso. He still remembered how he got each of those scars. The ugliest of them was from a nasty knock down drag out with a crazy assassin called Abubakar and there was also a bullet wound. Being a man who had escaped death several times by a hair’s breadth had earned him the nickname ‘daredevil’. That plus the fact that he did the work everyone feared the most and went to places nobody ever wanted to go.

With his handsome features, chocolate skin and his five feet nine frame, 32 years old Tega was very good at getting the women. He was the perfect Casanova; the kind of man every woman wanted. He had the kind of eyes that penetrated deep into you like they could see your soul and know what you were thinking. Combine that with his thick eyebrows and his charming smile. He never really had to talk to get any lady. All he had to do was smile and even when he talked, his voice alone got them swooning. Despite all this, Tega was a single man and that was not because he wanted to be, but because he had lost his fiancée, Jane, to a nasty circumstance.

Tega moved from the treadmill to the bench press with memories of Jane playing in his head. Jane had been his childhood crush and teenage lover. They were separated when he was sent to study economics at Princeton University, New Jersey where he graduated summa c*m laude. Tega returned to Nigeria in 2031 and signed up to join the military after all his endeavors to find Jane were futile. Four years later, Tega was discharged from the military for selling arms and military supplies on the black market. That had led to a serious argument between him and his father, a man who never wanted his son to join the military in the first place, a no-nonsense General who decided that it was time to sever all ties with his son. After that, Tega who had never wanted to study economics or become an Economist sold his Princeton certificate to someone who needed it at an outrageous price and invested the money by using it to acquire himself everything he needed to become what he was; a gunman. He became a freelancer and what most people called ‘The Solution’. He was the right man for any job. He could implant an evidence where it was needed and could make any evidence go away. If classified information was needed, Tega was the man to call. Nothing was impossible for him and nowhere was out of reach. He became an invaluable asset to a top secret agency known as the Department of Secret Affairs (DSA) and gradually, he earned a reputation. He amassed a great fortune and bought a smart house on the island making sure to equip it with a fully loaded gym. By then, he had given up on finding Jane and even to his own surprise, he was forgetting about her. That explained why he couldn’t believe his luck when he found her at last.

Tega left the bench press and gripped an overhead bar to begin the pull ups.

Seven months ago, Tega had received a call from a client. The client wanted him to get rid of a problem. A lady possessed career threatening secrets and information about his client. Tega was meant to find her and terminate her with whatever proof she had. The client hadn’t given him room to ask too much questions. He only described the lady and told him the last place she was seen. Tega requested for her picture but the man would have none of that. He only promised to pay handsomely if the operation was a success and even had the guts to give Tega a deadline. Tega took the job and went to the lady’s last known location. He gave the description his client had given him to the people around and followed all the leads he got. It took him a whole week to find that his query had left town and as soon as he found out, he took the next flight from Lagos to Abuja. After another week had elapsed, he tracked her to a hotel. He had broken into the room and there she was, waiting for him. She mentioned that much before pouncing on him. Their fight was a very long one with neither of them getting exhausted until she had ended up with a broken nose and he with a broken rib, a broken arm, a black eye and a swollen face. It was she that recognized him first in the end and tried to refresh his memory. She was ready to deal her last blow to finish him when she bothered to take a closer look at his face.

He had called her Jane when his brain clicked, but she refuted saying that she had changed her name. Tega wouldn’t listen. To him she was Jane and she was always going to be Jane.

After she had explained to Tega that the people that sent him after her were a syndicate called ‘The Dolphins’ and that they were planning to take over the country. She went on to tell him that she was working for a top secret organization-she refused to disclose the name but assured him that it wasn’t the DSA-and that she had been sent undercover to infiltrate The Dolphins. She showed him the information she had gathered on the syndicate using 3D holographic imaging. The plan was to get Nigeria into a great debt and then ride in like a hero to rescue the country. That way, allowing them to have a large say in the affairs of the country. When she was done explaining and telling him everything she knew about the dolphins, she and Tega worked together to bring down the syndicate. They succeeded and Jane quit her job so they could be together, but that didn’t last. Three weeks ago, she had died in a ghastly attack at Tafawa Balewa Square, Onikan. A bomb had detonated in the square while Jane had gone there to close a deal with a client using the big music concert as a cover. Her body was never found. Tega had investigated the bombing himself with the help of a few friends in the DSA and in no time he found out the people behind the bombing. They were people he had worked for and with on several occasions. He was bent on making them pay, but he needed a good plan for his nemesis wasn’t just an easy adversary. He severed all ties with his clients-even the DSA-and went off radar. He stayed at home 24/7 working out and making plans to strike back.

Tega moved on to the punching bag suspended to the ceiling. He had a pair of boxing gloves, but lately, he had not been using them. He had a lot of anger in him that he needed to transfer on someone or something and the punching bag was his only alternative. Being an expert in kickboxing and karate, his movements were swift and well timed. He took off his shoes and began. Several punches followed by a kick. He kept doing that over and over again in a consistent rhythm, even thrusting in his elbow once in a while and using different styles. Before he knew it, he was having flashbacks of moments with Jane. An image of them making love followed by an image of them spending time together on the beach. That one was replaced by another in which they were fighting side by side and then they were seated in his house laughing over a joke. Images kept overlapping one another and as always, something inside him snapped. He lost control and broke his rhythmic movements, now punching the bag viciously at breakneck speed. A wave of adrenaline had taken over him and there was nobody to calm him down. He was totally oblivious to the pain on his fist and the loud beeping of his phone which he had left on the only couch in the gym. He had totally zoned out. Even the music playing from his headphones now sounded like it was playing in the distance. He was lost

It was only when the lights in the gym flickered that he snapped out. He used his hands to grab the punching bag to stop it from swaying as he looked up at the bright lights. There was a power outage and the inverter had immediately taken over.

A moment later, he was walking to the freezer in the gym, headphone in his hand, to pick a bottle of Lucozade sport. He carried that with him to the couch where he sat and dumped his headphone beside him. He had barely taken a sip from the bottle when his phone rang.

Tega was not expecting any call due to the fact that he had changed his phone number recently and he had not given anyone the new number. The caller ID displayed Private Number. Tega didn’t reach for the phone, he just drank from his bottle and let the phone ring. It rang two more times before Tega decided to pick up. But he did not say anything until the caller spoke.

“They told me a lot about you, but they didn’t tell me you take time to pick calls.”

“Who’s this?”

“Who I am doesn’t matter. What matters is that your service is needed.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Let’s not play that game right now, Tega. What I need you to do is simple.”

“You’ve called the wrong number.”

“As soon as I end this call, you’d receive a mail and then I’d call you back to dish out instructions.’ The caller said and before Tega could say anything else, the call ended.”

The caller didn’t identify himself but everything about him screamed DSA. The caller had managed to keep the call within less than thirty seconds, not giving the application on Tega’s phone enough time to fetch the caller ID and location.

Tega quickly went to his email application out of curiosity. He did not doubt that the caller had his email address. It would be a piece of cake compared to getting a number nobody else knew about but himself. The DSA had a way of getting their hands on anything. Nothing was secret to them and nothing was out of their reach.

Unsurprisingly enough, there was a new mail in his inbox and he opened it. The mail contained what looked like a resume or a bio-data. Tega skimmed through it and clicked on the attachment. It was a mug shot of a boy who could have been in his twenties. Tega’s phone rang. This time, he picked it immediately.

“His name is Richard Chase. That and everything you need to know about him is in the mail” Said the caller.

“I don’t do that anymore.”

“I’m not asking you to kill him. I want you to keep tabs on him for me.”

“I’m not a private detective.”

“I know what you’re not. I want you to make sure he’s safe.”

“Not a guardian angel either.”

There was a pause on the other end and then the caller spoke.

“I already have your account details, Tega. I’d send you part payment now and the remaining after you’ve delivered him to me without a scratch on him.”

Before Tega could protest, the call was ended. Tega always discussed a price with his clients before fixing a mode of payment, but this strange caller was already talking of paying when a price was not agreed on yet. Tega went back to the mail. The caller ID had not yet shown on the app. The call had ended in less than thirty seconds again.

The caller wasn’t bluffing when he said everything he needed to know about the boy was in the mail. Everything was there. From the boy’s favorite color to the way he walked. It was more or less a biography.

Tega was pondering over the caller when his phone beeped with a new notification. His bank account had been credited with seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. His phone rang again Private Number.

“That’s just part payment, Tega, not half. That’s just to get you started. I don’t want you wasting time sitting lazily on the couch in your gym.” The caller said as soon as Tega picked. Tega raised an eyebrow at the last sentence but assumed it was a lucky guess. There was no window in his gym as the air conditioners were in perfect working condition.

“Once you deliver the package to me, we can sit down and discuss your payment.” The caller added and ended the call. It was so brief that Tega didn’t bother to check if his application had traced the call, but he was now more curious. He knew he was dealing with someone powerful, but who? The DSA did not even have that amount of money to spend on a job so simple and if they did, it wouldn’t be money to get started but the full price itself. Who was he striking a deal with? He noticed the use of the word ‘package’. It was just the kind of word the DSA used and that could either mean the caller was formerly a DSA agent or a DSA agent who wanted some personal business dealt with.