The Lagos Directive

Port Harcourt – 20:00 Hours

The night air pressed heavy as Ogun crouched behind a closed POS kiosk, eyes fixed on Prime Meridian Advisory. Officially a consulting firm. In truth, Etim’s secret clearinghouse for the Obsidian Circle’s affairs.

For six nights, Ogun watched, patient, methodical. He tracked routines, shadowed blind spots, and logged every shift in posture and pace. Sanusi’s intel had been precise: six militia posted inside the compound, three contractors on perimeter patrol, two stationed in the gatehouse.

They moved like Falaye’s cleanup squad from a year ago, same gear, same rhythm. General Isa’s men weren’t just muscle. They were the Circle’s echo team.

At 20:07, darkness fell across the compound. Sanusi had predicted this with detailed intel. NEPA cut grid power to the local district.

Ogun moved.

He slipped into the drainage culvert he’d prepped days before. Rusted grate already loosened, the tunnel swallowed him whole. In silence, he slid through the gutter and emerged inside the compound, cloaked by the blackout. Guards cursed NEPA, as they waited for the backup generator to kick in.

It would take eighty-seven seconds before the generator automatically turned on. He kept count from his reconnaissance the nights before.

As Ogun slipped past a garage shed, movement flickered at the corner of his eye. A lone guard, off-pattern, cutting back early.

Ogun reacted instantly.

Before the man could react, Ogun exploded forward, closing the gap in a heartbeat. A brutal Krav Maga takedown, arm snaked tight around the guard’s neck, crushing his airway. The guard thrashed desperately, then slumped.

Ogun dragged the body behind a fuel drum next to the garage shed. He knelt, stripped the guard’s earpiece with practiced fingers. Clipped it on. A hiss of static greeted him, voices layered and close.

A curve-ball that has accelerated his timeline. Time to move.

Seventy-five seconds, Ogun ghosted up external stairs, into service corridors where only emergency lights flickered. The backup generator roared to life behind him, but too late. He was inside.

Every step was deliberate. His suppressed pistol hung loose in his hand, breath steady, mind cold.

Ogun reached the archive and froze. A keypad. Digital. Damn. This wasn’t in Sanusi’s intel, and the clock was bleeding seconds. Picking it wasn’t an option. He recalibrated.

He shifted quickly. Above, he pried open a vent grate he’d marked from the intel as backup. Tight and claustrophobic. Ogun crawled ahead with stealth and precision.

Inside the archive, he descended like smoke.

The air smelled of diesel and old paper. He worked fast. His gloved hands found Etim’s financial ledgers in a row of cabinets. He slid in the forged sheet, a phantom payment trail linking Etim and General Isa to an off-grid funding. Not proof. Just a seed of distrust.

Objective finished.

But the facility’s heartbeat had changed.

The non-report from the guard he’d taken down earlier was now echoing across all comms.

There was a sudden shift in radio traffic. Not alarms, but controlled queries. They knew something was off.

He moved fast, back through the vent and slipping down into the lateral maintenance corridor. Planned exfil routes were already tightening. Guards weren’t scrambling, they were positioning. Coordinated. Deliberate.

A controlled hunt.

At the service stairs, two militia appeared ahead.

Ogun on instinct pivoted low.

His pistol whispered with two controlled bursts, center mass. Muffled cracks, no echo. Both bodies jerked, staggered, collapsed before their shouts became sound.

He kept moving.

No pause. No glance back. Just the sharp bite of adrenaline coursing through his veins.

Then a voice crackled in his earpiece, “mek sure you capture the intruder, alive!”

Ogun froze.

He knew that voice.

Ikenga.

Sanusi’s dossier flashed in Ogun’s mind: the Obsidian Circle’s black-ops enforcer. Ex-DGSE. Surgically quiet, violently effective. If he was here, the game was over. Or just starting.

Ogun hadn’t spotted him in any reconnaissance. “Something is off” he thought.

Ikenga wasn’t here for Etim’s protection. He was the Circle’s insurance.

And now, he hunted.

Ogun adjusted without hesitation. The odds had shifted. This wasn’t a fight, it was a trap. Not tonight.

Voices crackled through the stolen earpiece, commands, footfalls, grid changes. He adjusted course, cutting through narrow side halls that splintered the militia’s pursuit.

He needed a distraction to exfil.

Reaching the generator shed, Ogun cut the power. Then, fast and silent, he wired an improvised charge under the nearest fuel drum.

Boom!!!

A controlled blast ignited the generator fuel drums, flooding the night with thick black smoke and chaos. Alarms shrieked. The guards fragmented.

Ogun moved within the confusion, gliding past coughing, disoriented guards. His silenced pistol claimed two more targets silently as he surged toward his primary exfil.

Near the exfil perimeter, Ikenga stood ahead, emerging through the drifting smoke.

Tall. Calm. Weapon down. Just watching.

A predator, not yet striking.

Ogun understood instantly. Ikenga was observing him.

They locked eyes across the chaos.

Ogun didn’t hesitate. He snapped a smoke pellet at his feet—pop, hiss—and vanished into the cloud.

Ikenga didn’t pursue.

Ogun sprinted through blind spots, pivoted sharply from his original escape route. He pivoted and doubled back, slipping into the same culvert he’d used to infiltrate half hour earlier.

As security forces converged above, he crawled out behind the POS kiosk, drenched and unseen. By the time General Isa’s men swept the perimeter, Ogun was gone, folded into Port Harcourt’s maze of alleys.

Inside Prime Meridian, fires burned.

The planted ledger page waited silently among Etim’s records. Doubt was now seeded inside the Circle.

But as Ogun retreated into the night, one certainty scorched through his mind:

Ikenga had mapped him.

Next time, their encounter would be visceral.