Hilarious

“There is nothing wrong to have the gun in my hands now."

He aimed at his assistant and shot him in his head.

Then with the gun, he ran to the next room for his next target, the chief of operations, when the firing started from outside. 

Some days ago – 

Hussain was leaving the Birmingham Railway Station when he got the call from his roommate Jamal. He needs to pick up the call, because unless it was very important, Jamal will not call him, when he is at work. He parked his cab nearby, pulled down the glass between him and the passengers behind him and then he answered the call.

"Hussain, our three years wait is over. The message has arrived."

 Hussain understood exactly what he was hearing.

"Ok."

"But you need to come soon to decode the message."

"Ok. I will drop the passenger and then head to you."

They disconnected the call.

Hussain restarted his car and dropped the passengers to the city centre. He called his manager and informed that he wouldn't be able to take any more passengers for the day due to an emergency, and then directly left to his rented apartment.

On his journey back, his mind was running through his life in the past, the weapon and bomb training days in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the mental conditioning camps by the top leaders, detailed suicide attack plans, etc. Then he was sent to the United Kingdom three years back. It was only after four months, Jamal joined him. They were not sent on any specific plan to the UK, but the only thing that they knew was someday they will be executing some mission and they were ready for it.

But very recently, the communication to them was, that his group has been planning on an important mission and they will be executing a tiny part of it. And it was clear that once they have done their part of the plan, they will have to leave the United Kingdom at the earliest. He has been waiting for this day and he was happy that finally, the day has come. The happiness was not because of the action that he will be performing, but because of the reason that the wait for the last three years is getting over, but only temporarily.

When he arrived at the flat, the look on Jamal's face explained the anticipation of everything. But among these two, Hussain is a decoding expert, and being the senior, he can only do it in the shortest span. He directly went to his laptop, checked the mail from his Chief of Operations, and started to decode it.

It had only two lines, with two words per line. The first line was the actual message which itself was a code known only to their group, with words shuffled and the second line was the clue to identify the order of the shuffled words of the first line.

The tension was catching them up slowly until Hussain completed decoding the second line first. Then he applied the logic to the first line to get the new code. Then he cross-referenced the new code to his personal codes list and then finally arrived at the final message.

When he finally wrote it on the piece of paper, both were shocked.

"Are you sure that you have decoded this correctly?"

"I think I have. Let me check this again."

Hussain went through the decoding process again and again, but he ended up with the same message at the end.

"Hussain, this is not possible."

"But that is what the message says. I have double-checked it."

"But why this action now?"

"I don’t know. But the chief knows exactly what he is doing?"

"I guess so. What should we do now?"

"First we need to plan to leave this country. You take care of the arrangements. And it should be done in a couple of days."

"Ok."

"Ensure that we leave no evidence in this place. Everything should be neat and clean."

"Done. But what about this plan?"

"Yeah, let me think about it."

Hussain sat there looking at the decoded message of two words in the piece of paper.

TARGET OSAMA.

"But why him?"

"There must be a reason for that. We don’t know what is going on in the rest of the group. The leaders know exactly what and why they are doing. Our job is to execute them without any qualms or apprehensions."

"Do you have a plan, Hussain?"

"Yes, I do have one. Our role is going to be simple. We will send a postal mail to the US Intelligence office in New York with the whereabouts of the ‘target’ in Abbottabad. Then they will take care of the rest. Get it arranged soon."

After some days -

In Abbottabad, Osama was busy watching the recorded video of Rahul Gandhi’s political campaign. He was laughing over and over watching the video. His assistant, Faiz, was sitting near the bed. He wanted to watch ‘Just for Laughs Gags’ in the Pogo channel, but Osama had taken control of the television remote and was not willing to change the channel.

"Boss, you are watching this every day. I read somewhere that laughing is good for a sour mood, but too much of it can lead to increased pressure in the skull cavity, which may lead to coma or death”, Faiz said sarcastically.

Osama ignored him.

"The program will start now, boss. Please change the channel."

"You shut up and watch this, moron. This is funnier than that."

Faiz knew that Osama will not listen to him. So, he decided to do it by himself. He stood up and snatched the remote from Osama and changed the channel to Pogo.

Osama was pissed off.

"Nowadays, you people are not giving me the respect that I deserve. All of you are treating me like Manmohan Singh. No one listens to me anymore. I have become a pinhead for you all.", sulked Osama.

Then he lay on the bed, with his face over the pillow.

"It's ok, boss. You can watch Rahul Gandhi’s video anytime you want. He keeps giving such videos. So please let me watch Pogo for half an hour.", Faiz beseeched this time.

Suddenly, there was a loud noise of a few helicopters flying over them.

"Boss, some helicopters are flying over.", said Faiz.

"It must be the Pakistan Helicopters returning to the Pakistan Military Academy."

They continued to watch TV again.

Then there was noise around their house on the ground. Osama could hear people moving outside.

"Boss, did you hear the noise? Someone is outside.", Faiz said.

"Yeah, I heard it too. It must be the Pakistan Army probably beefing up our security."

Faiz went near the window and peeped out through a small gap. He was taken aback seeing the scene outside the house.

"Boss, there are few Americans outside the house, with guns."

"What??????", shouting Osama jumped off his bed.

"Yes, Boss. There are many of them. What should I do?"

"You stay where you are. Don’t move."

"Should I switch off the lights to convey that no one is inside?"

"No. They must have already seen us inside. And don’t make any noise. Where is the chief?"

"He is in the next room. Should I go and bring him here?"

"No. Don’t move to the other side of the window. Don’t show any movement inside the house."

"Should I call him in the intercom?"

"No, the ring can alert them. Switch on the computer. Let’s catch him up in our alternate social media platform"

"Ok Boss."

Osama moved slowly to the corner of the room and sat silently, while the assistant went near the computer. The computer was in standby mode. So, he moved the mouse to display the desktop screen.

"Boss, the Windows Desktop screen is hung, I think. What should I do?"

"Refresh the screen."

"Ok. But how?"

"Press F5."

Faiz did so.

"It’s not working boss."

"Ok wait, let me come over there."

Osama moved slowly near the computer. He saw his assistant pressing 'F' and the numeric character '5' together.

"What are you doing?"

"Pressing F and 5."

Osama hit his head with his hand.

"Faiz, you fool. I don’t know why I even took you as my assistant, of all the people. Now move aside."

Osama took over the computer. He went to the social media homepage.

The noise outside was intermittent, but it was evident that someone was moving outside.

He typed in the username 'littlestar@gmail.com'.

He went to the password field.

"You turn back. I want to type the password."

"It’s ok, boss. You type it."

"TURN BACK or close your eyes."

Then Osama typed his password and clicked on login.

"Boss, I found your password. It is six dots, isn’t it?", asked Faiz.

This time Osama completely ignored him and his comments.

On his social media wall, there was a message from the chief, who was in the next room.

WE ARE UNDER ATTACK.

Osama started typing.

"Chief, is it the Americans?"

"Yes."

"But, how come?"

"I don’t know."

"How did they find my secret place?"

"I don’t know, boss."

"Did you contact the Pakistan PM?"

"Yeah, I pinged him on the same platform. But he went offline, as soon as I pinged him."

"He did that? I knew he will do that."

There was a momentary silence.

"What to do now?"

"I think we are dead, boss."

"But why are they suddenly attacking us?"

"Don’t know."

"What do you know then?”

There was a pause and then Osama wrote,

"What happened to our plan to kill Obama?"

"That’s on the pipeline, Obama.” the chief typed and then exclaimed “Shit!”. After a few seconds, he typed “Sorry! Osama!” and sent.

"Why? What happened?", wrote Osama in confusion.

Chief checked his sent emails. He opened the mail that he sent to Hussain some days ago. And he knew the exact reason for the current attack. He didn’t know how to convey this to his boss.

"Boss, there was a mistake."

"Mistake? What and where?"

"I sent a wrong message to Hussain."

"Ok. But how is that related to this attack?"

There was an awkward silence for five seconds.

"Instead of sending ‘Target Obama’, I sent as ‘Target Osama’.", the chief confessed.

"WHAT!!!!!!! ", Osama almost fainted.

"A small typographical error", the chief typed hastily.

"Small error? You fool.", Osama banged the enter key.

"We need help now.", the chief said.

"I know. But where do we look for help?", Osama questioned.

"I don’t know. Otherwise, we are dead now.",

Now the assistant, Faiz, who was standing back reading all the conversations between the chief and Osama, said,

"Boss, I know where to look for help?"

"Good. At last, you have some idea. Where to look up?"

"Go to ‘Start’. There you can see ‘Help’. Click it."

Osama lost his cool now and gave his assistant a killer look and fell over his hands over the keyboard. Then he opened the nearby drawer and took out the pistol.

"With people like you, I cannot even run a Terrorist Organization. My enemies are not outside, they are inside with me, in the house. It is not the Americans who are going to kill me today, it is you idiots and fools.”, he took a deep breath and continued, 

“There is nothing wrong to have the gun in my hands now."

He aimed at his assistant and shot him in his head.

Then with the gun, he ran to the next room for his next target, the chief of operations, when the firing started from outside.