CH22: END IN SIGHT

This is a passion work. So, I would really appreciate it if you leave behind a review when you're done reading.

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CH22: END IN SIGHT.

"I am your Adjudicator. I decide your life and death. You merely need to answer the questions I ask you. Remember, I only need one of you alive to answer my questions. If you want to die like that fool, I will be more than happy to send you on your way."

He stopped sharpening his blade and moved towards Glory Oyakire. He 'gently caressed' her cheeks with his blade,

"I have found that women care a lot about their face. Even the most stubborn of women tend to loosen their tongue when their face is in danger. So, what do you think? Will you loosen your tongue when I ask my questions?"

Glory, though scared, didn't say anything. She had an unyielding expression on her face.

The Adjudicator smiled fiendishly and was about to apply pressure on his blade to cut her face when Boluwatito Oguntoyinbo shouted at him,

"Are you a man?!"

Seeing the Adjudicator's hand stop, He continued,

"Picking on a woman because you know you are too inferior to get information from real men like us. Why don't you see if you can get me to break. Weak men like you disgust me." he spat in the Adjudicator's direction.

The Adjudicator turned to face Boluwatito.

"What you just did was very stupid."

He stared Boluwatito in the eyes. He could see the fear there but also something else.

He looked between Boluwatito and Glory. He realised something.

"So that's it. You are in love with her." He started to laugh.

After a while, the laughter stopped. "Unfortunately, I do not condone any acts of disrespect when I am doing my job. It seems my previous lesson was not enlightening enough. Let me use you to remedy that."

The adjudicator moved in front of Boluwatito. He raised his hand, preparing to strike down. When…

"Wike! Wike!! You are DEAD!! I'm going to kill you"

Mary and Korede heard the shout from familiar voices. It was the voices of the Alpha team members. Although Korede didn't want to be hasty, he knew something must have happened.

'We need to hurry. We don't have a choice we have to take the risk.' He thought, coming to a quick decision after seeing Mary was already getting anxious. Well, he was too. The only thing holding him back is the training the Balogun Family poured into him over the years.

"We have to move fast. Sidearm!" He said to Mary.

They switched to the suppressed pistols and made their way over to the door while maintaining cover. They got close enough and took aim.

Tuut tuut Tuut tuut. Headshot Headshot

They both shot one guard each in the head. The guards fell back on the wall and slid down which reduced the sound of them falling. Korede breathes a sigh of relief. He and Mary quickly moved to the door.

"Cover me." He said.

Korede gently and silently opened the door a little while Mary switched back to her rifle. Holding his pistol with his right hand, he counted down with his left. The moment he brought down all his fingers, they breached the room. They saw an East-Asian man raising his knife on Boluwatito. Korede quickly shot the man in the leg, causing him to fall to the ground and drop the knife, while Mary made sure there were no other hostiles in the room. Korede quickly walked up to the man and kicked him in the face when he saw him reaching for the knife. He took aim and was about to finish him off when he heard

"Korede, STOP!! Don't shoot him." Korede turned around in the direction of the voice. It was Second Lieutenant Kunle Balogun-Keshinro who had spoken. "Untie me, he's mine." Korede looked to his side and saw Sergeant Daniel Wike's body. He understood what Second Lieutenant Kunle Balogun-Keshinro wanted to do. He picked up the man's knife and used it to free Second Lieutenant Kunle Balogun-Keshinro. Once he was free, Korede offered him his pistol but the man shook his head. He took the Adjudicator's knife from Korede and walked to the man.

"Now, I am 'your' Adjudicator." Second Lieutenant Kunle Balogun-Keshinro said to him. "For the crime of killing one of my people, I sentence you to death." Second Lieutenant Kunle Balogun-Keshinro grappled the man from behind and slowly slit his throat. He cleaned the blood off the knife with the man's clothes and returned the knife to the man's pocket.

Master Sergeant Adewuyi was not satisfied, "Leader, he should have died a more painful death for what he did."

Second Lieutenant Kunle Balogun-Keshinro shook his head, "I didn't kill him for revenge. We are soldiers, we will all die sooner or later. If it is on the battlefield, I wouldn't want my team to lose itself in a quest of vengeance." The rest of the veterans including Mary didn't say anything. All of them just looked at Wike's body in silence. (A moment of silence for the dead.)

Korede stared at Second Lieutenant Kunle Balogun-Keshinro. What he just said is one of the creeds of the Balogun Family. 'If one of us is killed, we will stop at nothing to find the killer. Not for revenge, but so our other members do not lose themselves to vengeance'.

Honestly, Korede did not still understand it. To him, it sounded self-contradictory. He, however, quickly threw that to the back of his head.

"Bravo 1. come in."

"Go, Bravo 3"

"I have eyes on a package. There is a man who seems to be instructing a Haram Boys member on how to build a bomb. There is a nuclear material canister beside them."

"We have to stop them from completing that bomb. Bravo 3, Bravo 4, take out the bomb maker and his 'student'. Bravo 2, Bravo 6, Alpha team has been rescued. You have the green light to breach."

Korede turned to Second Lieutenant Kunle Balogun-Keshinro, "We have to move, all packages are in play."

In the next moment, gunfire was heard. Alpha team members quickly nodded their heads. Korede and Mary handed over the two guns they picked up to Second Lieutenant Kunle Balogun-Keshinro and Master Sergeant Adewuyi. Mary went out of the room and brought back the guns of the guards outside. She gave it to Staff Sergeant Afeez Bayero and Boluwatito. Seeing as only Glory didn't have a gun, Korede handed over his HK416 rifle to her.

Seeing Korede hand over his rifle to her, leaving him with only his sidearm, Glory was surprised and later felt petty. She was surprised because, after all she had done and said to Korede during the training camp, he still gave the more 'powerful weapon'. She felt petty because she felt she probably might have not done the same.

Unbeknownst to her, Korede never took any of the things that happened at the training camp to heart in the first place. He gave her the rifle because he was a better marksman than her. He figured he had a better chance of surviving with the pistol than her. In a battle of life and death, nothing else mattered.

The group quickly moved out. They made their way up the stairs and arrived at the ground floor.

The staircase leading to the underground floor was positioned further back into the building while the staircase leading to the upper floors was placed closer to the front door.

The group saw multiple tangos exchanging fire with Temitope and Fatima. They had the duo pinned down. Some were shooting out the window trying to prevent Abdul-Lateef and Champion from having time to aim and snipe them. It seemed like all the hostiles in the building had made their way to the ground floor trying to get the Charlies (ie Emissary and Yakubu Dongoyaro) out of the building.

The Emissary's group was closer to the door. They had Temitope and Fatima pinned down, so they could only take cover. The Haram boys group was just coming down the stairs. They were carrying three briefcases, so they must have been delayed because they went back for them.

"Move quickly, the Emissary is getting away." Korede said as he saw that Emissary's group was going to escape if they didn't help Temitope and Fatima.

The group started shooting from the back, catching the hostiles off guard. The Haram Boys group received the most 'attention' and were forced to move back up the stairs when three of the men in front died. Unfortunately though, Emissary's group had made it out of the building.

Second Lieutenant Kunle Balogun-Keshinro quickly aimed the Emissary and fired. As if he noticed something, the Emissary quickly dragged John behind just before Second Lieutenant Kunle Balogun-Keshinro fired. John took the bullet in his stead. He turned around just enough to see the person the fired at him. Second Lieutenant Kunle Balogun-Keshinro saw the Emissary's face filled with rage.

"Shoot them! Kill them!!" the Emissary shouted. His men opened fire towards the group. Staff Sergeant Afeez Bayero received a bullet in the chest. He felled down in a pool of his blood.

"BAYERO!!!" the veterans shouted.

The Emissary's men quickly push him into a car. The remaining men entered another car. The two cars drove off away from the building. Abdul-Lateef was about to aim with his Barrett Rifle when he heard the sound of a rotor engine coming towards them. He saw two helicopters, one of which had mounted machine guns coming in their direction. From their coating, he knew they were not from the military, neither were they friendlies. He had to give up shooting the car and aimed at one of the Helos. He aimed at the pilot of the helo with mounted machine guns and fired.

Bang

The pilot saw Abdul-Lateef aim his gun in their direction and tried to manoeuvre away but it was too late. The bullet travelled from the rifle, penetrated through the windshield, through the pilot's skull, and his seat. Let's not forget the Barrett rifle bullets have the anti-material property that can pierce through even tank armour. How can a windshield and human skull stop it? The guy's skull was blasted apart.

The Helo came crashing down. Luckily, it crashed into the bushes and not on the road.

The pilot of the second Helo, on seeing what happened, started evasive manoeuvres preventing Abdul-Lateef from having a clear shot.

As that was happening, Temitope and Fatima moved into the building and joined the others in engaging the other hostiles in the building. Seeing the Emissary escaping and the duo's entrance, Korede said to Second Lieutenant Kunle Balogun-Keshinro,

"You need to go after him. Bravo team will handle things here."

"You sure?" Second Lieutenant Kunle Balogun-Keshinro asked, hesitating.

"I'm sure. Go!!" Korede responded.

"Alpha team, WITH ME. Let's go get that B*stard." Second Lieutenant Kunle Balogun-Keshinro said to his team as they went after the Emissary. They were all angry about Staff Sergeant Bayero's death. Both teams worked together and pinned down the remaining hostiles in the building, forcing them to move back to the first floor. Alpha team used that opportunity to move out of the building. They got into an SUV and were about to give chase when they saw a Helo crash. They were surprised by the appearance of a helicopter but they quickly ignored it and their car sped off, pursuing the Emissary's group.

Abdul-Lateef, seeing that the Helo was making evasive manoeuvres, knew it would be difficult to make the shot. He came to a quick decision and shouted to Champion,

"We have to move. We are too exposed here."

Champion nodded his head. The Hostiles knew their location and were able to take cover in the building. Also, they were exposed to the hostiles on the helicopter.

Abdul-Lateef abandoned his rifle as its weight would slow him down. He took the M27 IAR from Champion so that he wouldn't be unarmed. They both ran towards the building while evading fire from men in the helicopter. They were fortunate that Abdul-Lateef had brought down the Helo with the mounted machine gun.

They soon got into the building and the men in the Helo had no angle to shoot at them anymore. The Helo started flying around trying to get an angle where they could shoot from, to no avail.

When the Helo was making a round back, Abdul-Lateef suddenly burst out of the building and shot at its engine. The engine blew up and the copter crashed.

Abdul-Lateef and Champion fist-bumped before joining the other members of the Bravo team in engaging the hostiles. Korede, seeing that all the members of the Bravo team were together, said,

"Let's end this." (a)

[A.N: Please, don't forget to leave a review of the work to encourage me. Your opinion really matters to me.]

AUTHOR'S NOTE/ RAMBLINGS

A Hahaha, Author also said this. This chapter is my longest one yet.

[A.N: Please, don't forget to leave a review of the work to encourage me. Your opinion really matters to me.]