Kamil was already running before the last echo of the gunfire faded. He was running madly.He vaulted over a fallen street vendor's cart, dodged a hanging tarpaulin, and burst into the open just as the pickup roared down the road.
"Anaya, I need a route!" he barked into the earpiece.
"I'm on it , street cams are patchy in that sector of the city. Head south; they're taking Burns Road," she replied, fingers clattering over her keyboard miles away.
Burns Road at this hour was a tight, congested artery of food stalls and late-night trucks, provided a perfect route for losing a tail. Kamil sprinted to the edge of the street, flagged down another motorbike taxi, and shoved a crumpled note into the driver's hand.
"Follow that white pickup. Fast," he said.
The driver didn't need a second explanation, Karachi's chaos had a way of normalizing strange requests. They weaved through honking rickshaws and fish carts, the smell of grilled kebabs briefly masking the stench of diesel.
The pickup's taillights blinked as it made a sharp right into an alley. The bike driver hesitated and they lost sight of pickup. It was not good for Kamil.
"Shortcut," Kamil ordered, pointing toward a parallel lane. They tore through a cluster of parked vans, bouncing over potholes until they cut into the alley from the far end, but it all was in vain.The pickup was gone and he had no clue how to find it again.
Kamil cursed under his breath.
"Anaya," he said, "they just vanished."
"Negative," she replied. "Thermal drone feed shows them entering a gated compound near the old railway warehouse. Sending coordinates."
Kamil's mind raced. That warehouse had been abandoned for many years and it was official. But Karachi's underworld is known for its bad reputation and had a habit of repurposing forgotten spaces. When he reached there seemed to be silence everywhere.
He ditched the motorbike, slipped into the shadows, and approached the compound. The rusted gate hung slightly ajar, but the darkness beyond it wasn't silent, faint clinks of metal and muffled voices carried on the warm night air.
Through a gap in the corrugated sheet fencing, Kamil caught sight of them. The masked men were unloading the vials into an insulated container the size of a coffin. A fourth man stood watching. He was tall, broad-shouldered, wearing civilian clothes but holding himself with military stillness. It seemed he is a retired military person.
He wasn't masked.
Kamil felt his pulse spike. He knew that face.
It was Major Rafiq, an ex-intelligence officer presumed dead in a roadside bombing two years ago. The same man who had trained some of the agency's best field operatives, and who had vanished without a trace. Every agent and military intelligence looked for him but could not find a clue to his existence. before reappearing tonight.
"Anaya," Kamil whispered, "we've got a ghost in the flesh."
"What do you mean?"
"Major Rafiq. Alive. And working with them."
There was a pause, then Anaya's voice came back, low and controlled.
"Kamil… Rafiq had Level 5 clearance. He would've had access to everything including our ops list. If he's the mole's contact, this goes far deeper than we thought."
Kamil watched as Rafiq closed the container and sealed it with a coded lock. One of the masked men handed him a phone. Rafiq spoke briefly in a language Kamil didn't recognize. His voice was sharp, clipped syllables and before nodding and walking toward a black SUV.
The bio-agent wasn't going to stay in Karachi. This was just a waypoint.
Kamil's options narrowed quickly, follow Rafiq now and risk being burned, or pull back and call for a full intercept. But with the mole still inside the agency, the latter could tip off the enemy before they even moved.
He exhaled slowly. "No more shadows. We go direct."
Pulling the small silenced sidearm from his satchel, he melted into the compound's darkness.