Page 85 - Musings 2022

saddened him. Deep in his thoughts, a sudden deafening noise baffled him. BOOM! It was

clear it was coming from the outside. Panic-stricken, his first instinct was to enquire what had
happened, but his expertise told him not to leave his post. Using his communication devices,

he conversed with the police force stationed outside. It was crystal clear now. A bomb had
exploded outside the building and the security protocol had made it mandatory to shut the

building down from the outside in case of such an incident. So, they had been shut inside the

building with a possible infiltration on their hands. There was no way for the police force to
enter the building as the entire building had gone to permanent lockdown. The override

sequence could only be accessed after an hour and constituted the biometrics of some high
ranked officials in the embassy.

John now knew he had only two layers of security to depend on. Sweating profusely more out

of anxiety than fear, he tried to get in touch with layer 2 security. “Layer 2, do you copy, I
repeat, do you copy?” he asked. “Yes sir, awaiting your orders, sir!” came the reply. “Do not

abandon your positions, I repeat do not abandon your positions!! You have permission to open
fire on any suspicious person or activity. One of you should report whatever happens without

a second’s delay.” “Yes sir!” was the reply. Everyone patiently waited, as the entire building

became filled with pin-drop silence. An officer abruptly reported that one of the officers was
shot. John’s heart started to beat frantically. “Any idea how or where he was shot from? I need

Intel ASAP”, shouted John, “none saw the shooter, sir”, they replied. We just heard the noise

and instantly one of our men dropped dead. Apparently, it had been a clean headshot. They
concluded that the shooter had done his fair share of research.

From level two onwards everyone had a bulletproof vest and the only way they could have
been killed was a headshot. “The killer has to be an expert marksman,” John murmured to

himself. He made up his mind to leave his post and go check the CCTV footage to get to know

more about the nature of the killing. He was shaken to the core. From the place from which the
man had been shot, there were only two ways in which he could have been killed and both

ways would have exposed the killer to the camera. Yet there was no sign of even a shadow, let
alone a man. As John was looking at the CCTV footage, he heard another gunshot. Suddenly

shifting to live feed, he witnessed another officer falling to the ground. Reviewing the footage

led to the same conclusion; somehow the killer managed to evade the camera while shooting.

Thinking of any fathomable way in which the perpetrator could have executed this, John got

back to his post. Bang! Bang! Another officer was killed. All of them headshots. 3 of the 6

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