~~~~~~~
5pm, same day
Dakolo, Henry and Sylvester stood in a large room, staring into a screen on the wall in silence. Except for their three chairs which they had abandoned behind to stand closer to the screen, the white painted room was empty of any other materials or furniture.
The large screen of 100cm by 150cm was inbuilt into the wall, it was displaying a DVD selection menu of fifty options, each showing the captured sections and parts of the streets. From time to time, Sylvester would swipe up the screen, revealing another different DVD selection menu and they would look into it again. Occasionally, they would see a violent or deadly scene as a part of the options and select it, only for them to find out that the police were already aware and in charge of such situations.
They were beginning to get fed up but they remained quiet in hope that they would find something useful. After twenty five minutes of constant swiping and changing, Henry was first to express his dissatisfaction.
He gave a slight hiss and returned to his seat, Sylvester and Dakolo took a glance at him and turned back to face the screen.
'Don't you think it's a waste of time?' Henry finally spoke, making them turn their gazes at him. 'There are still hundreds of thousands options to see. How do you think we won't get weary watching all of them? Is it even possible to watch all? It's not! We can't watch up to a quarter of it.'
Dakolo moved back and sat on the seat beside Henry, still looking at the screen.
'They took off the signals for three hours and returned it on their own will, it means that they must have finished whatever they wanted to do' Henry continued, he took out an handkerchief and cleaned the water formed in his eyes as a result of tiredness and several yawnings.
The day had been a bad one for Henry, it was the first time he would experience such failure and defeat. Well, it wasn't really a failure, the program be created did not fail, it had done the job he built it for only that those he wanted to trap with it used an higher method.
'I think you're right' Sylvester joined in, turning back against the screen. 'It's better we leave it for the regional, city and streets offices to monitor'
Sylvester faced the screen again and turned it off, he picked a white board from the floor and covered the screen with it, concealing it in a way that someone else wouldn't know that there was a screen there. He turned and joined Dakolo and Henry, he sat on the third seat.
After some minutes of silence, Dakolo's phone rang. He answered the call and spoke with the caller for about two minutes.
'Another murder case has been reported, this time in Benue state' Dakolo said as he returned the phone into his pocket. 'But none of these murders have involves a top profile person. Samantha Osman's group always goes for top citizens'
Henry and Sylvester listened without giving any response. Dakolo turned his chair to face the both of them and looked to their faces one after the other. 'Tell me' he finally said, staring at Henry calmly. 'What happened today? I thought we had it in control already'
Henry wiped his face with his hand and licked his lips heaving a sigh. He began to speak reluctantly, 'we thought we had it in control but they outsmarted us'
'How?' Dakolo asked, squeezing his face.
'The ware I developed was meant to locate them when they intercept our transmission again and to be able to retrieve the transmission' Henry began to explain. 'But they did not intercept our transmission this time, they stopped at trying and did something else'
Dakolo narrowed his gaze. 'What did they do?'
'They halted the whole system operations' Henry stated. 'Previously, they would only redirect the transmission of the area under attack from our server but what they did today was different. They crashed the whole process. All the street security cameras in the nation did not work for three hours'
Dakolo's mouth was left agape as he let out a deep breath and shook his head. 'Unbelievable, an assassin group is terrorizing a whole nation' he exclaimed.
'We underestimated the technical power of this assassin group. They are very intelligent and always ready. I believe they have several alternatives, so when we block a way, another way is opened immediately' Henry lamented.
'I didn't underestimate them' Dakolo spoke slowly after some brief seconds of silence. 'I always knew they were technical giants. I once asserted in a meeting that their technical ability was far greater than their physical abilities and artillery. But nevertheless, something has to be done to stop this deadly group.
'We still need to do more work. And I mean more serious work. The assassin group is far ahead of our team'
Dakolo narrowed his gaze at Henry. He didn't believe that there could be someone who was ahead of Henry in respect to hacking and software engineering in Nigeria. He smiled briefly. 'So you mean someone can be ahead of you in hacking?'
Henry stared at him for a while. 'Yes, there are lots of people that could be ahead of me, they've not just been given a voice like I've been. They've not been discovered. And by the way, I just started work in the NSCC few weeks ago'
'It's okay' Dakolo cleaned his face with an handkerchief. 'So what's the way forward now? The NSCC plays a major role in the nation's security'
'What we need to do is to be ahead of the group. We need to block all their possible ways'
'How do you intend to do that?'
'We need more hands' Henry stated.
'More hands?'
'Yes, we need more programmers to join us. More ideas from experts are needed. I believe a combination of several expert ethical hackers and programmers would form a formidable team against the assassin group' Henry expatiated.
'Huh?' Sylvester who had been listening in silence joined in.
'Yes Mr Sylvester. The NSCC needs to hire more hands.'
'But...'Sylvester stammered. 'We hired you because of this, we are expected to have produced results'
'We've produced results sir' Henry retorted, turning his focus to Sylvester, it was Dakolo's turn to be silent now. 'We've produced results, but the assassin group's result seems to be far greater than ours'
'Damn! There's no way we can hire more people now, the government is not releasing enough funds to us'
'Then you have to convince them to release more to you because we need more hands to make this work' Henry continued with confidence. 'You can't employ me as one man and expect me to tackle a group, an expert assassin group at that. And furthermore, we need to be on the attacking side and not defence. We need to develop bugs to attack their operations. If all we do is keep making ways to defend their attacks, they'll keep changing their mode of attack.'
Sylvester's phone interrupted with its loud ring tone. He took out his phone hurriedly to end the call but had to calm down when he saw the caller's ID.
'It's Sir Rikau' he whispered to Henry and Dakolo, gasping lightly. He stood up from his seat and walked closer to the door to answer the call. He returned to the seat a minute later. His countenance had changed.
'So who are those you want us to hire? Can you give us names of experts? We need to contact them by tomorrow' Sylvester cut into their discussion.
Henry and Dakolo were surprised at his sudden change of heart. It looked like the phone call had done a miracle.
'You want to get in touch with them as soon as tomorrow?' Henry asked again to be sure of what he heard.
'Yes, is that not what you suggested?' Sylvester answered with a rhetorical question. 'See, the IG just called now and he told me that I'll be having a meeting with the President and other security staffs this Friday. I need to present tangible results, else I may lose my job'
Henry could not hold his laughter at Sylvester's mention of 'job' again. 'So it's about losing your job again?'
'No o, we just have to find a solution to this problem'
Henry shook his head, unconvinced by Sylvester's words. He began to think of expert hackers who could be called on immediately, those who were creative enough. His mind suddenly drifted to Omotara again, he remembered how she cloned the Canadian number; that was something that he himself could not do perfectly, that means she or the person who did it for her was a sort of a good hacker, although unethical.
He hoped that it was Omotara who cloned the number by herself, that would also give him the opportunity to help her get her decent job and make her be of more use to the nation.
~~~
8pm
There was nothing much to do in the new Lodge in Asokoro. Although it was a flat with three rooms like the previous one, it was moderner, finer, more comfortable and neater. It hadn't been deserted for long also, the rooms were also larger and air conditioned. All they did was to remove the cobwebs from the walls, sweep and mop the tiled floors, Tarasha and Aisha took care of the cleaning while Benny and Cole went to dispose off the firewoods they had bought to escape.
After all was done, Tarasha sat in the living room on the three seater black leather sofa, her both legs placed on the chair while her back rested on the right armrest. Her laptop was on her laps, she was gathering information about their new targets.
END OF CHAPTER THIRTEEN
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