0x2000400

Location: New Delhi

The four thieves had completed giving away the deadly trophies to half the mass. Everyone was now holding their life in their own hands, quite literally.

With the exception of the Singhanias of course, who were holding on to each other’s as well.

Jay was pretty darn sure that Bruno Mars did not have this in mind while writing one of his well-known chartbusters.

Radhe knew that they had to head to the vault now. But for that, he needed all the manpower he could get. His problem was again solved by the memory of the phone call from that woman. She had surely planned this out with a lot of thought.

Radhe could bet on his (low?)life that a female with such a sexy voice and such fantastic brains was bound to be great with looks too.

Perhaps as beautiful as that chick, he thought, looking straight at Neha. He had not been able to take his eyes off ever since he had spotted her. Her shoulder length hair flowing even in the lightest of aerial currents, her shapely body and the figure hugging clothes that did total justice to her sensuous curves. Her face, that seemed to radiate even more beautifully now that he was completely concentrated on her. And how the fear seemed to accentuate her features.

If there is paradise on earth . . . it is this . . . it is this chick . . . it is this chick on a bed . . .  

A certain body part of his began to respond as he started fantasizing about the things he would do to her, and the things that he would make her do. He was so lost in his erotic dreams that he hadn’t noticed Jay watch him in silence.

Jay did not need the mind-reading powers of Edward Cullen or Patrick Jane to figure out what the leader of this small group was thinking. He had seen him glancing repeatedly at Neha and the sly, repulsive smile lines that filled the corners of his eyes, easily visible through the holes in the black mask he was wearing. He saw him shift in his position, a clear indication that his underwear was tightening up. Jay wanted to shove both the grenades inside him, one down his throat and the other up his ass. That ought to teach him some manners.

Neha had not been oblivious to the facts either, but being a woman and spending all of her life so far in a place like Delhi, she was used to being the lead in other men’s fantasies and knowing it full well. But she was more worried about the only guy who had never thought about her that way (Actually he had; she just didn’t know about it). Jay’s body was rigid, his posture defensive. He could lose it any moment and throw both the death eggs in their hands towards the beasts. When it came to her, he didn’t care about anything; not even himself.

She held his hand tight through the grenade, and whispered in a soothing voice ‘Calm down, its fine.’

‘What the fuck is fine here?’ Jay said loud enough for the neighboring hostages to hear, who seemed to be agreeing with him. ‘That son-of-a-bitch . . .’

The hostages quickly lost interest as soon as they realized it was a family affair and nothing about the greater good.

Neha could almost hear Jay’s thoughts. She tried to figure out a way of comforting him, but drew a blank. She could still feel Radhe’s gaze on herself.

Bastard. Complete Bastard. She thought.

  -/0/-

  0x2000401

Sawant had seldom looked as surprised to his colleagues as he did now. The SUVs that had added to the recent hullabaloo were, in one word, weird. The license plates had been removed, the glass was heavily tinted; even the tires looked contemporary – they were covered by some kind of black armor that protruded through the rims.

The doors in all the cars flew open at almost the exact instant of time. Men wearing black suits, black shirts and shades appeared from them like ghosts in moonlight. They started talking to each other in low, eerie whispers, as if they did not want anybody listening in on them.

Sawant approached them ‘Oye! You don’t have the authority to be here, MOVE!’ But the ghosts, so to speak, took no notice. Only one of them saw up from the laptop he was operating on, and said in a casual, passive voice ‘Back up, this is our case now.’

The chief of police could not believe his ears. He ferociously replied ‘What do you mean your case? This is my area.’

The leader restarted working on the computer, ‘Couldn’t be further from the truth.’

Sawant had the machismo to silence even his superiors, and he had absolutely done so on many occasions. But the other cops could see that his courage seemed to betray him now. Something about these men seemed to scare him. The way they moved, the way they talked, even the way they worked while being perfectly still. It was like they were trained, like they were dangerous, like they knew they could get away with anything they wanted.

Like they were . . . untouchable.

Sawant kept thinking what to do. He approached the leader once again ‘At least answer one of my questions. Tell me your name.’

The man looked up, his sunglasses piercing through Sawant. He looked hard at him; at least that’s what he appeared to do. If he were to work here, the local cops could prove a hindrance; he had to comfort them in some way. ‘Kevin One’ he replied.

Sawant was still confused as to whether the man had made a joke, or that these guys were so discrete that they did not even want to share their real names. ‘Seriously? Whom do you work for?’

The man kept his shades trained on him ‘The deal was for one question.’ With that he went back to whatever he was doing on his laptop.

Shubhank Mandal, the trainee cop who had been sent to fetch the bank’s blueprints, was sure that these men were completely independent of the normal system to which cops belonged. Hell, half the regular cops didn’t even have semi-automatic weapons. He tried to steal a glance at the computer this Kevin One was holding, and was rattled even deeper this time to his core.

It was high-tech. Mandal could not think of another word. Just high-tech. The keyboard was one continuous piece of rubber, its buttons aglow with a faint white backlight. The touchpad was on one corner, and contained two buttons below it just like other laptops. But the touchpad itself had a green radiance about it, which gave it the feel of a biometric scanner. The screen was large and covered almost all the area of the upper folding half of the notebook, except for the upper left corner which contained a camera and a small red LED.

The screen was illuminated with a large diagram of some sort, but as Sawant and the others looked at it more carefully, they noticed that it was more like a 3D map of an area, similar to Google Streetview. The man called Kevin One was streaming through it with swift hand movements of his hands on the keyboard and touchpad, and occasionally, by the use of the high-grade touch screen. It had a floor-like structure, neatly detailed to the smallest visible objects on the screen. Sawant felt like a faint hint of recognition hit him. He had seen it before, and not on the internet. He tried to rack his mind a little, and to his surprise, found the answer in just a moment. It wasn’t a map.

It was a blueprint. Nexus India Bank’s blueprint. And at least one of the hardcopy blueprints was the exact same as the one this guy was viewing right now.

‘Hey! Where’d you get that?!’ Mandal blurted out.

Kevin One looked at him, a light frown visible on his forehead. ‘Get what?’ he said, as he clicked something on the keypad and the screen went blank. His hand then reached under his blazer. Sawant looked at his face, completely expressionless. Then he looked at his computer, completely blank, still high-tech. And after that he looked at his hand, completely motionless, yet poised onto whatever he was hiding.

Or maybe . . . holding.

Sawant came up with another question, his tone a little softer due to obvious reasons ‘I think your laptop is equipped with the floor plans of this bank. If you could share them with us, maybe we could help each other.’

Kevin’s frown disappeared to be replaced by something that resembled a suppressed smirk, ‘We don’t need your help.’

Sawant had had enough of this, he raised his voice again as he issued an ultimatum ‘Give us those bloody maps or else . . .’

What happened next was enough to send goosebumps down Sawant’s spine.

In one swift movement, Kevin pulled out the gun he was holding under his coat. Something clicked and he trained it right in the center of Sawant’s forehead, ‘Or else what?’

The few police officials who saw this happening tried saving their superior’s life by pulling out their guns. They weren’t halfway to pointing their third grade machines of malice at someone, anyone to be exact, when all the other agents of this mysterious coven flunked out their own weapons.

Sawant, now a little more composed, watched these soldiers in silent bewilderment. They each had a mini Uzi-like gun – Uzi like, but visibly high end – complete with a perforated silencer on its barrel and a small scope on its top. The magazines looked longer than the standard version. Then he noticed the most important feature in handheld artillery, the safety, which was off. That was what had clicked.

Their hardware has improved, Sawant thought dully.

Mandal spent a brief moment trying to differentiate as to who was in more danger, the hostages on the inside of the bank, or the cops on the outside of it.

‘O-k-a-y,’ said Sawant, the only word he could come up at the moment, ‘Let’s calm down for a moment, shall we?’

Kevin stared hard at him for one more second before nodding to his men, who immediately pocketed their armaments and went back to working on their respective equipment as calm as day, like nothing had happened. The few of Sawant’s men, who had thought that this was their last day on this job, and world, now took a deep breath to lower the adrenaline levels of their body. Two of them walked as fast as they could to the nearest cop car; they did not want anybody to see the wet patches on their pants.

Sawant tried to make conversation one more time, a considerable amount of sugar in his voice ‘With all due respect sir, you’ve proven your point. You are well trained, well equipped and well informed about the situation. But this is still a bank robbery. We would like to think that we are capable enough of handling this circumstance. And we work for the government too, maybe you could tell us which agency you work for.’

Kevin still gazed at him from behind his shades. Finally he answered ‘Classified.’

Mandal was stunned into silence. Again. Classified Indian organizations with foreign liaisons? Sawant tried to make Kevin respond again ‘Alright . . . What’s your post?’

‘Classified.’

‘Your real name?’

‘Classified.’

‘Marital status?’

‘Classified.’

‘Education?’

‘Classified.’

Sawant was getting more and more irritated at each “classified” he heard. But he refrained from another outburst, anxious that history might repeat itself and he might not be lucky enough to survive through it again. ‘Sir please, you may be working for an ultra-secret bureau or something, but we need some answers too.’

‘Everything you want to know is classified.’

Cut off yet again, Sawant finally thought that maybe he should try a different approach. He tried to converse again ‘Okay fine! But as I said before, we are quite capable of containing the present situation. After all it’s a bank, right?’

Kevin, or whatever his name was, gazed at him. He then folded his notebook PC, got up, and marched out with a smart hike. Sawant turned towards him and shouted ‘It’s a bank, right?’

Kevin kept on walking without looking back.

‘HEY!! IT IS A BANK, RIGHT?!’

The intense shout managed to grab Kevin’s attention. He turned on his heel swiftly, his eyebrows raised. Sawant had his hands to his sides, raised at a slight angle in a questioning gesture. Kevin kept looking at him, weighing his options, fully aware of the reluctant attention the other cops and his fellow agents were giving him. It was more than obvious now; he let out just one word.

‘Classified.’