The Hole in The Wall - Season 1 - Episode 32

Episode 4 years ago

The Hole in The Wall - Season 1 - Episode 32

The bullet hit Olivia in the knee. One second she was running and the next she was on the floor. The pain was like nothing she’d ever experienced before, save for child birth but even that was a beautiful pain. This was nasty.
She struggled to stand but the minute she put a little strain on her right foot she collapsed and cried out in pain.


” I hear you used to be a cripple before….well let me reunite you with your wheelchair” The voice was bitter and she bent over Olivia, placed the muzzle of the gun on her left knee and fired again.


Olivia cried out in pain, but the pain was nothing compared to the heart ache she felt when the woman stood over Emma and picked her up.
She carried the baby and headed for the door without a word. When she got to the door she felt something pull at her leg.


Olivia had somehow managed to crawl on her belly and held her by the trousers. The grip was very weak.

“please don’t do this….she’s just a child, i’d do whatever you want anything”
The woman looked down at her for some seconds. Then suddenly gave her a viscious kick to the head which knocked her out temporarily.
:::

When she came to, they were gone. The woman had taken her baby. Her baby was stolen!


Hysteria threatened to spill over but the unbelievable pain in both legs kept it in check. She glanced down and saw the trail of blood she had spread when she belly crawled. It was a lot of blood.

She saw her phone under the bed where it must have fallen during the struggle. With agonizing pain she moved slowly, inch by painful inch until her hand could reach the phone.

She called her husband, struggling to stay conscious. She feared if she passed out, she would pass on.

“Hello”
“Emma….Emma has been taken!” she began sobbing as the hysteria broke loose. Her heart was broken in a billion pieces.

On the other end of the call, Rex had gone as white as snow and still like a statue.


::::::::::::::::::::::

“Rex!…..Rex what is it? What’s going on…..Rex, Rex Rex REX……”

That’s what Bami had to be saying because his lips were moving but I couldn’t hear anything but the buzzing in my head.
Emma was stolen! Kidnapped! My Emma, gone.
Olivia was weeping hysterically over the phone and I noticed her voice was weak and faint.
“Olivia, where is everybody, are you okay? Where are you? How did it happen? Are you hurt?”


She didn’t reply but continued wailing. I guess she was hearing her own buzz in her head.
I tried to get a grip on myself. Control was needed now, I didn’t know what had happened or how it had happened but it had happened and now I had to deal with it.
“Olivia…..honey, its going to be ok, I’ll get her back I promise” and I meant it. “Now just hold on, I’d call someone to come and check on you right now”
“The blood…..so much blood…..” She stammered and the line went dead.

In my young life, I’ve had the misfortune of going through situations when time stopped still, I have stared death in the eye countless times, been plagued by fear and worry, paranoia and regret. But never in my life and I mean never, had I felt the way I felt that minute when the line got disconnected. The worst of my worst fears, fears I didn’t know I had was happening. The fear that I had lost it all.
“Olivia…..Olivia….!” I shouted into the phone
phone.

Still no reply.

I snapped myself out of it and glared at Bami.
“Where are the agents we attached to Olivia for security?!”
“Clyde and Buzz? They are still there, although the status dropped from red hot when the shadow was murdered”
“Jesus Christ! This is my bleeping family…. if anything happens to my wife or daughter I’d kill you all!” I shouted like a mad man.
“What happened-”
“Tell them to get their asses to my house, Emma has been kidnapped!”
“My God!” Bami gasped but he was already whipping out his phone. “Where are you? What! are you people mad! Get in there immediately the baby has been kidnapped, under your noses…it just happened, find out what’s happening and find her!” He yelled into the phone.

Terry rushed out “What’s going on?”
No one answered him, infact no one heard him. Bami was still yelling into the phone and I was listening to Olivia’s phone ring without reply.
My heart was in my throat. It tasted salty.
Oh, that was the tears flowing from my eyes. I didn’t even know I had been crying.
I tried my Mum next, my dad, my sister- nothing! No reply.

My body began to shake.
I punched the wall with so much force, it scrapped my knuckles. I punched it again and again and again until Bami held me.
I broke down. I was a broken man.
“Rex take it easy, we’ll find her….Buzz and john are just down the street they’re going in now”

“My God your knuckles are bleeding” Terry said.
“Give me your keys” I said to Bami standing straight and pushing him away.
“Where are you going”
“My family needs me and your’e asking where I’m going? Give me the keys!”
He raised his hands “I don’t know where it is…you drove here”
He was right, i touched my pocket and sure enough there it was.

“It makes no sense to start driving to Jos by 10 in the night, its a twelve hour journey from here, it would make more sense to fly there early tomorrow.”
“Nothing makes sense anymore” I said and hurried out of the lab.

Everything was a blur, The stairs, the hallway, the curious looks cops sent my way. IT Was colourless, it was grey and it didn’t matter. There was too many things occupying my grey matter. Next thing I knew I was in the hilux. I managed to start the engine before I rested my head on the steering and cried like a baby.
After a while, Bami appeared. He tapped the glass signalling I unlock the door. I had pinned the central lock.

It took me forever to push the button. I stared straight ahead looking into the darkness while he kept on tapping the glass.

When I finally unlocked the car, Bami didn’t enter immediately. He stood staring at me through the window for some minutes before he entered the truck.

He joined me in staring into the darkness without a word. My eyes were closed but beneath My eyelids, a projector displaying a slideshow of my family was running.
Finally he said. “Rex….after you left Clyde called me, they found Olivia….”

I looked at him weakly expecting the worst.
“She lost a lot of blood but she’s in the hospital now….the bastard shot her kneecaps men, she went through a hell of a pain” Bami said with his voice coated with emotion.
I closed my eyes and tried not to imagine Olivia going through that kind of pain. Not again. That was wicked, plain wicked.
When I spoke up however, my voice was calm. “And my parents?”
“They’re fine….they are all sleeping, it seems they were drugged because they refused to wake up, every one of them”
“Jesus”
“But Clyde said the doctor adviced to let them sleep it off”
I rubbed my eyes tiredly. How had things gotten to this point?
It began to drizzle.

The soft patter on the roof of the car was the only sound as Bami and I wallowed in silence.
Finally I looked at him. “Fome is behind this, she’s the mystery woman and she wants revenge”
“Revenge? What exactly did you do…its not like you did anything to her”
“Really? How about causing the death of her sister and whoever the old crooner was to her.” It was evident they cared for each other. I frowned at Bami “And you and your trigger happy thugs finished it. You didn’t even call for them to surrender you just assasinated them!”


Bami was quiet. “They were both armed” he said weakly.
“And how about releasing the gas that blew her up, that’s More than enough reason to hate me.”

” I thought we agreed that she fired her gun, besides she didn’t die”
he said more weakly.
“Bami,” I frowned at him “what do we do?”

“We’ll get her back, I promise”
Those were the same words I said to Olivia earlier while she was bleeding and lying in
a pool of her own blood. I shuddered as the image was projected beneath my eyelids.
“How?” I asked again.

“something happened two years ago, like I told you there was enormous pressure from up to catch Fome’ she was tagged a threat to National security. I admit I was really blinded by the promotion I was sure to get if I brought her in.” He shook his head.

“and when she kept getting away I became a little obsessed. I wasn’t inside the house but you were there Rex think back, there might be something important that happened that you didn’t notice.


I buried my face in my hands and when my head pushed against the steering and blasted the horn I didn’t jump like before instead I shut my eyes and tried to remember the fateful night. Or unfateful night if such a word exists.
“I had buried and suppressed the memory under blankets of shame, regret, self loath, and finally hope when I met Olivia. Now to dig out the memory I had to uncover each blanket.
The hope was now despair, Fear for my wife and daughter, I loathed myself because I was the cause of it, the one who put them in danger.
I regreted my actions that night, from the gas trick to pointing the gun at her later upstairs.
And I was ashamed, ashamed that I couldn’t do anything to help but had run like a coward while the chief was chilling in an airconditioned jeep watching the house burn.


Finally I retraced my steps to the moment I had taken control of the gun. When the Chief’s son Emenike had delivered a yoko gerri type karate kick on the old crooner’s wrists.
I replayed the events from the night that seemed like decades ago.
At the time I had thought it was just about the 250 million, that Fome and the old crooner had linked up to get the money, 250 mil was more than enough to sway an assasin who was contracted 500k. But that was before I found out about the coordinates but the sisters had wanted something, the coordinates? sure but something else? Fome had threatened him asking for ‘the documents’ if I remember correctly.


Later on after Mona put me on the widows initiative track with her dying breath, I concluded whatever their mission had been that night had been related to to the initiative but what if there’d been something else.
I had been on a wild goose chase then, believing I was being hunted by terrorist groups and a strike team from the isreali intelligence agency also known as mossad.
“Are you getting anything?” Bami asked.
I ignored him and shut my eyes tighter.
I remembered the night clearly, At a point the chief had said ‘you know why I’ve been lowering my voice all along? because this house is bugged’

On reflecting the events later, I dismissed it as a ruse to get me worked up as he scared me with threats about the efficiency of both killing parties, warning me of the danger from both sides. Something like the devil and the blue sea and yours truly had been stuck in the middle.
But what if he had been serious then? what if the house had been bugged? The question is by who?

I opened my eyes and looked at Bami. i couldn’t see a thing, my eyes tried to adjust but there was nothing to asjust to.
“Did you bug the chief’s house, the operations house?”

“No…..I was close enough to him as his personal body guard…there was no need for that”

“hmmm….” I shut my eyes again.
Another memory popped out from nowhere. The Chief had been dying to find the coordinates which was in Mr X’s possession so he didn’t have it in the house yet when I mentioned the gas, he was the most vocal. fearing a gunshot not so much for his life but for his daughter and his important documents”
And……one more thing, he had asked his son something about ‘red letters’. Told him to secure the red letters. That Had been his immediate reaction when he became aware of the gas.

What else happened? Mona came in and we had a tense stand off till she surrendered her weapon. Then the frag grenades had come sailing through the windows.