The Black Wilderness

They call it the underground. A building built 12feet under the ground of Mulkansas occupied by terrorists who  are planning to strike the purple house to make their debut entrance to the crosshairs of the world. A looming darkness stuck in time like a fairy tale gone awry. Guardian of dark secrets covered up with rubies and diamonds. They are called the Cabal.

  The militants are majorly Kruslem, their leader, a skilled assassin called Yusuf Mariq. He Is well versed in the holy book and comes from one of the war-torn villages of Kurzmenhistan. He came to the United Capital with the sole aim of bringing the world to it's knees in front of his religion and he knows which particular country to begin with. He isn't the major decision maker of the canal, he is just a sharp spear launched from the curtain of darkness. 

 The Federal Investigation (FI) had been hearing from the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) that there has been an increase in the number of the religious people entering the country and vanishing from the surface like they never existed and this has given the Director cause for concern, she set up a special task force to look into the case.

 Few days later one of the investigators was found dead allegedly due to suicide, his name was Clarin Jack.

  Cause of death- Hanging, supposedly suicide.

  One of the investigators called Damian who was a friend of Jack noticed some discrepancies in his death and decided to investigate on his own while staying under radar since their cover was compromised from the beginning.

 Few weeks later after Damian started investigating he caught onto some leads which he tried to follow up with using the agencies contact but unfortunately he was not highly ranked so he could not access some information, he decided to go the Sherlock Holmes way and investigate.

The Cabal also had their eyes on him thanks to the various moles they had planted in the agency. Their hard work had began to pay off.

   ***************

       Mariq was in the middle of a Surah recitation when he learnt that the players of United Capital Football Association (UCFA) would be going to Vargus, Fiheria to play a match with the Fiheria Football Association (FFA), he sent a message to the sleeping cells in Fiheria that the players should be poisoned while on their return journey back home after the match. He then sent two of his henchmen Omar and Bilal to go and blow up a five-star hotel in the north. His reign of chaos was about to begin.

      The players after winning the match 5-nil against Fiheria were on their flight home when they started feeling funny and complained to the hostess who was afraid but had no medical skills, the players all died on their flight home after a astonishing victory. When Fiheria learnt of this news they were fearful since they couldn't defend themselves against external aggression while their internal affairs were complicated to the core and this was a major disaster since the poisoning occurred on their turf and the death happened on their airspace. After the president of UC learnt this he was ready to shed all sense of cordiality and go to war with them.

 After the waiter suicided, the investigators went to the the Capitol to give the Situation Report (SitRep) on the murder of the players to their higher-ups while Bello was worried about what had transpired between the waiter and what type of brainwashing could lead a man to suicide just to give them a dead-end.

   " Why is jovial Bello moody today?" Tunde asked just to lighten up the tensed atmosphere. 

"I am worried about kind of organization would make a man commit suicide even though he has a family, couldn't he have asked for Witness Protection. Whatever we have gotten ourselves into, this is bad news." Bello said while casting a glare at Tunji.

  " Come on, this is ridiculous and you know it, we are ghosts hiding in plain sight; how can they find us?" Okafor asked.

   Just after they got to Abuja, Bello received a call from a foreign agent

 Damian moved to the given destination and boarded the car, Bello and Damian engaged in a discussion.

   'I don't believe that those deaths were coincidental in any way and what sort of grudge could all those players have with an alleged fan they've never met before. Something doesn't add up.' Bello said.

     ' I think this are all the works of a terrorist organization that has been sending warning to us at the agency and the agency thinks everything is a coincidence, I want to have enough evidence that was why I came down here to investigate off the book, this is bigger than both of us combined.' Damian replied.

     ' I thought you would never mention something like that, meet the remaining members of the team, Uthman, Waziri, Tunji and Chima, don't worry we are all elites.' He reassured Damian.

     Before Clarin's death, he was investigating the murder of a top official in the religious society illegally and I guess he found something, that was why he had to be silenced.

 " And you guess whatever he found was so bad he had to keep quiet forever" Tunji added.

 I also found pictures of a man who appeared too frequently in his investigation profile, a man named Mariq, who went off the grid on our soil, the problem is he is too clean and the more clean he is the more messy he is.

Damian said.

   But we are in Fiheria and he is in your territory, how do we get him from here? China chipped in.

Damian smiled and replied, You guys get a vacation to explore my country of course.

   Damian boarded the Pan-Fiherian intercontinental airways which flight was going to the Capital, After landing he decided to dress inconspicuously since he came here off radar and managed to get a fake passport. When he got to the terminal, a man dressed in a coat and sunglasses bumped into him and dropped a letter and cellphone into his pocket, Damian changed course and went into the restroom to read the letter which instructed him to a number on the satellite phone; the person picked after he dialled.

  "Hello! Please is this Bello?" Damian asked.

 "Affirmative, could you please go out of the airport, you'll see a light blue sedan sitting on the curb opposite the airport, just hop in".

           ******************

   Meanwhile in a village off the coast of Rulak, the Cabal's men were going on a killing spree and flattened the whole village with no survivor.

    Weeks later, a patrol van of the United Capital marine Corps smelt charred and burnt buildings while going on a patrol in Rulak which they stopped their vehicles and came down to investigate, what they saw chilled them. They radioed in the Military Intelligence Department and informed the base of the current situation and few hours later the village was swarming with choppers, vehicles and investigators from the United Capital