****This story is pure fiction and the characters and setting here are not real****



THE ANTIVICE SQUAD

Ahmed was panting like a dog when he met me trying to open my door. We had just rounded off the Squad’s activities for the night and that was less than five minutes ago. I had turned to look at him when I heard his frenetic footsteps behind me and, he must have felt my bewilderment, which prompted him to fumble through his breast pocket and whip out a piece of A4 paper.
‘Read this!’ he spluttered, drawing in great gulps of air as he handed the paper to me. I took my hands off the door knob and took it from him. His dead pan expression gave nothing away about the content of the paper. I unfolded it slowly, looking suspiciously at him for signs but when I saw none, I panned my eyes to the now stretched out paper in my hands and zoomed on the content in one fell swoop.
‘Wetin be dis?’ I muttered disparagingly as the message hit home. ‘Who give you dis kin nonsense? How did you get it?’ The questions streamed out of me as I vigorously shook the paper, now held between my finger tips, like soiled toilet roll in his face.
‘Na one man like dat for Okada troway de tin give me, come run fiam wit im Okada’, Ahmed said, with this faraway look on his face that told you he was working at the problem at hand.
‘Did you get the plate number?’
‘No. He just threw the paper at me and sped off. All I could do was read the message and my next impulse was to come to you.’ Then as if suddenly roused from slumber, he drew his full height up close and said,
‘See, Sule, no bagga, no bagga, I say’, he was pointing to his chest, ‘can try me in dis town.’ Then he stepped back a bit, looked into my eyes and still pointing to his chest and seething murmured, ‘Dan buruba, na me and dem for dis town’. He swiped at the air with his right hand. I had scornfully thrown the paper on the ground but bent down to pick it up again.
‘Sule please look who signed it.’ I looked at the paper again and shaking my head in disgust mockingly read aloud the neatly typed script which obviously was taken straight out of James Hadley Chase’s ‘The Executioner’.
It read,
DO YOU WANT TO STAY ALIVE? FOLLOW THIS ORDER IMMEDIATELY. RESIGN AS THE HEAD OF ANTIVICE SQUAD TODAY. UNLESS OF COURSE, YOU’D RATHER BE DEAD BY WEEKEND. POLICE PROTECTION? ASK MAI ANGWA. SIGNED. THE BLACK MAMBA.
‘Black Mamba!’ I exclaimed. ‘Who is it?’
‘Yes, Sule, I don’t know but we will find out,’ he said assuredly. ‘At least now we know who shot dead Mai Angwa. Black mamba my foot!’ He spat out.
‘Come inside, Ahmed,’ I said, as I opened the door.
We got in and Ahmed sat down while I opened the windows to let in fresh air and sun light since there was no power supply as always.
‘Now Ahmed,’ I said, sitting opposite him, ‘we’ll call an emergency meeting of the Squad and map out strategies to eliminate this new threat.’
‘Yes Sule which is why I came running to you. We must not give in to these disgruntled elements.’ I smiled inwardly because he had just used his favourite word for describing criminals, ‘disgruntled elements.’
‘So what next, Ahmed?’
‘We’ll, send text messages to squadron members and let us meet by 7pm today before guard activities start.’
‘It’s ok. 7pm then.’ I said as he stood up to leave. ‘Meanwhile, Ahmed, watch your back,’ I said with a slight pat on his back.
‘Na today?’ he said, with that confident tone of someone who had seen dangerous action over and again. ‘Don’t worry Sule. I can take care of myself. You just make sure the Squadron meets this evening.’
‘I’ll do that,’ I assured him as I saw him to the gate of my compound and waved goodbye. I looked at him, admiringly, for a while as he swayed with a feigned limp in his characteristic gait.
As head, we called him Shugaba and he rightly earned this title out of the sheer respect and awe each member of the 25 man group had for him. A natural leader, he was built like a top notch NBA player, stoutly towering at six foot seven, with thick set, chiseled muscles. He came back to our home town six months ago after being expelled from the Military Academy. The story he told was that he had missed a Roll Call that was crucial to his career and the authorities viewed it as ‘gross indiscipline unbefitting of a future officer and gentleman.’ So he was asked to leave. His coming back home coincided with the worst period in the history of crimes committed in our small town, which was a closely knit community. On a daily basis we had atrocious stories of the rape of toddlers and elderly women alike, armed robbery, kidnappings and vices never heard of in our town. At this point, the police outpost in the town was as useless as its dilapidated station. The untrained and ill motivated officers were like boy scouts in the face of the marauders who had besieged our town from within and without.
Ahmed couldn’t stand the sight of these vices being committed in ‘his very before’ as they say in my part of the country. He felt he had to do something, so he decided to act. His military training gave him a good stead in this regard. He called together like-minded youths in the town and after deliberating on the situation, they decided to form a vigilante group. They called the group, The AntiVice Squad. I was among the founding members of this group.
After the mandatory permission from the moribund police and the civil authorities, Ahmed gave us military training and weapon handling exercises. These exercises were shattering endurance tests, but we all enjoyed it because we were all volunteers and were working for the security of our hometown. I remember the first training session we had, when he made us run a five kilometer marathon race. I didn’t complete that race but I got an idea of the type of men he wanted in his squadron. We persevered and after six weeks of an intensive and harsh training period, he felt we were ‘good to go’. The community helped in getting permission from the police for us to use arms and ammunition. We were ready for our first operation which we code named ‘Operation Chukii’. The target of the operation was to fish out the known and unknown criminal elements in the community and hand them over to the police.

TO BE CONTINUED

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