Game of Blogs : Story Weavers (Part 4 of the story)

Team Name: Story Weavers

Read the first part of the story here.

Read the previous part of the story here.

At Hotel Continental sitting in the corner of the penthouse, Cyrus Daruwala was hyperventilating. He wished he had a paper bag to breathe in. This wasn't happening. It couldn't. He was only here to do case study on the ongoing hearings of Abdullah-Al -Asiri. This was supposed to be an easy, quick and clean case. Abdullah was the one of the culprits in 26/11 attacks. Everything was settled. Abdullah was to be sentenced tomorrow morning in Supreme Court. 

This wasn't good.

-x-

"We need to break in!" Tara said as soon as Jennifer stepped out of the Auto rickshaw.

"Yeah right. And would you like fries with that?" Jennifer replied in almost bored tone. "By the way good to see you too!"

"I am serious Jenny! We need to get inside the hotel to get what other media people can't get." Tara said frantically, shuffling on her feet.

"But you can't be serious? It's dangerous what you are talking about!" Jennifer tried reasoning with Tara, but one look said how much difficult this was going to be. "OK!  How about you don't break in yourself but let a professional or a semi-professional, who isn't a mere journalist, to do the work?"

"Like who?" Tara asked skeptically. "Who are you implying here?”

"You're forgetting whom I engaged to." Jennifer winked.

"He can't act on our whims! He has to follow the official protocol!" Tara exasperated.

"But he taught me his tricks honey. A semi-trained adventurer is better than a whimsy journalist any day."

"You don't mean what I think you do?" horrified Tara stared at her friend, looking both ways hoping no one heard their wild discussion.

"I certainly do" Jennifer replied putting on her sunglasses with an air of the one in command.

-x-

Roohi wasn't scared for her life. She had read too many books to be unaware of what was going on. She remembered reading something like this in 'Over the edge', except it was a plane being hijacked and the girl didn't have a phone in her backpack.

She looked up towards the man who had his big gun pointed on her teacher. Miss Daisy was trembling, she could feel it in the finger she held in her hand. She wanted to hug Miss Daisy and tell her they were going to be fine. But she wasn't sure it was true.

-x-

Shekhar was still framing a plan of action in his mind while reaching New Delhi in helicopter, when his satellite phone beeped. He answered both in relief and fear, relief to finally know she was fine, fear because of what was to come now. "Roohi! Beta, can you hear me?" He said loudly over the noise of chopper but couldn't hear any reply. Pressing the phone closer to his ear he tried again "Roohi! Say something beta!"  He could only make out a low rustling sound. And then someone spoke.

"You kid! Stay put or this time my bullet won't miss its target!" This was a voice of a man. It didn’t take rocket science to figure out what kind of man.

Shekhar again tried listening to the phone he held in his hand. There were faint noises of footsteps and few clear noises of someone crying. He knew his baby kid wasn’t a crier. It was so like her to be clever even in situations like this, to use the phone he had given her to not only save herself but trying to save a lot many people along with her. He only hoped she would put herself in more danger than she already is and god knew how much danger she already was in.

-x-

Anti-Terrorist Squad had taken position around the Hotel Continental and the New Delhi station when Shekhar reached his destination. After doing a reconnaissance around the station he located the possible break in points to be used when the command to go ahead was issued by the authority. A negotiator was called from army who had done quite a number of negotiations in previous hostage situations, but so far he too wasn’t able to extract a demand or figure from the captivators inside the station.

Indian authority had given them a deadline till the 2300 hours of that day to get the terrorists to speak their demand, if not, they were to break-in while the night was dark. There were already too many causalities since the attack. He hoped against hope that didn’t got worse by the deadline.

Still keeping a close concentration on the phone in his left hand, he started training his team and laying out the course of action for the night, if it came to that. Every now and then he would try listening for any clues in the phone, trying to gauge the situation on the inside. His little devil might not even know how she was helping her father. God bless her!

-x-

“Ok keep your eyes open and concentrate on that TV. Write what you see while I go in there and sneak into the service entry of the hotel kitchen” Jennifer instructed Tara while she adjusted the button-hole camera on the denim shirt. Pulling her hair in a messy bun she jumped thrice warming up for the action ahead.

“Are you sure you’ll be safe?” Tara inquired apprehensively. She didn’t want to put other’s life in danger and yet she was helping Jenny get ready to jump into the suicide well.

“Oh yeah! Never been better!” Jennifer grinned pulling out a small, palm sized gun from her sling bag and pushing it under her belt.

“Is that licensed?” Tara asked with wide eyes, pointing at the metal thing peeping out of her shorts.

“Yes of course. My fiancé got me this as our engagement present.”

“Gun as an engagement present. Mine wrote me a poem on our wedding.” Tara replied still in daze.

“That’s why I get to break in baby” Jennifer winked and moved past her towards the back entry of the hotel.

-x-

Read the next part of the story here.

“Me and my team are participating in ‘Game Of Blogs’ at BlogAdda.com. #CelebrateBlogging with us.”