The Lagos Directive

Raffia Palm Depot

Engines rolled in, low and rough. The depot’s roof rattled under the torque. Headlights knifed through the front gate, blades of light slipping through metal gaps.

Ogun felt the net tightening.

Makx’s growl rumbled first, a quiet warning in her chest. Then it flattened out as she steadied. Her eyes burned in the dark.

His mind mapped the depot in a single breath.

East fence. Bale stacks. Kernel-press corridors. Rear gate.

All his prior steps turned from reconnaissance into weapon.

“Move,” he said, low.

Makx slipped ahead and vanished between raffia stacks. Her body language was signal and code; every pause, every flick of her ears, a report from the perimeter.

At the depot’s south side, three men snaked in, armour light, weapons heavy. Their formation was confident but loose, mercenaries, not soldiers.

Ogun stepped back into the shadow of a press station as boots hit concrete.

“Alpha, sweep the interior. Find Sanusi and OW-T,” the lead murmured.

Assured. Confident. Predictable.

Makx reappeared at his knee, shoulders tight, nose tilted toward the corridor. Three scents. First team.

“On me,” Ogun whispered.

They ghosted toward the kernel-press corridor. The air shifted from damp sugar to raw metal, shadows from kernel-presses stretching like rusted sentries across the floor.

He heard them before he saw them. Cloth whispers. Floor creaks.

Ogun didn’t charge. He waited.

One stepped past the gutted press. Two.

The third man was his.

Ogun’s left hand hooked under the man’s rifle, wrenching it up. His right forearm crushed his throat as he drove him into the wall. Skull met concrete with a loud wet crack. Before the body dropped, Ogun pivoted.

The second operator turned, muzzle swinging. Ogun slipped inside the arc, palm locking the barrel. Three fast K-bar strikes tore into his arm, heart, and neck. The man instantly folded.

The team lead barely finished turning when Makx hit him.

She tore in low, jaws locked on his calf, teeth sinking through flesh to fibula. He screamed and crashed down. The rifle clattered away.

Ogun whistled once. Makx released instantly, stepping back but pinning him with her stare, a growl coiled just behind her teeth.

Ogun stepped over him, calm as rainfall.

“How many of una?”

The man spat blood. “You’re done, OW-T. You and your dog.”

Ogun smirked, eyes cold. “Ikenga sent multiple teams for a mutt and me, just to be sure. That’s not strategy. Hin dey fear.”

The man tried to speak. Ogun’s heel came down, crushing his throat in a single, decisive pulse of force. The body jerked once, then stilled.

Ogun stripped the dead man’s comms unit, thumbed the transmit key.

“Bravo team, report,” he said, voice a clean imitation of the team lead’s clipped cadence.

Static hissed, then a voice: “Moving on your last mark. East corridor. We heard screams.”

“Hold,” Ogun said. “You’ll choke my angle. Shift to the yard. Cover the rear gate. I’ll flush them out. Alpha Two’s down. That useless dog.”

“Roger. Moving to the gate.”

He kicked the comms aside.

“Makx,” he murmured. “Gate.”

They slipped through the depot, weaving between raffia stacks and rusted machines until the yard opened ahead. Bravo team, three strong, fanned into a spearhead toward the rear gate. One climbed the bale stack. One slid along the wall. The third advanced centre in a low, tactical crouch.

Better formation. Smarter angles.

Makx’s ears twitched. She caught their scent, read their spacing.

Ogun snatched up a dropped rifle. He weighed it once. Then, he angled himself behind a tower of bales. This position gave him a diagonal line on the elevated man.

“Two breaths,” he whispered.

On the second, he stepped out, firing a short, controlled burst. The man on the stack jerked, chest hammered, body tumbling off the bales like a dropped sack.

“Contact!” shouted the wall-hugger, dropping to a knee and firing toward the muzzle flash.

Ogun was already behind cover. Rounds chewed raffia, coughing dust and fibres into the air. A round kissed concrete near his boot, spitting stones across his calf. It stung. Nothing more.

“Three-angle cross,” he murmured. “We break it.”

He tapped Makx’s flank and pointed. She darted left, vanishing behind a low stack, circling wide.

The centre man advanced, methodical, muzzle sweeping, controlling his field. The wall man locked a hard lane, waiting for Ogun to peek.

Ogun leaned slightly. He threw a burst toward the wall man, not to hit, but to drive him deeper into cover. The man shifted. His eyes were full of dust and adrenaline. Makx slipped out of the far side like a blade from a sheath.

She went for the wall man first. Her weight smashed into his ribs, knocking him sideways. Her jaws clamped on his forearm as he tried to bring the rifle to bear. He screamed, firing blind into the night as his weapon swung uselessly away.

The centre man pivoted toward the sound.

Ogun broke cover, running a low, fast line toward him. The operative saw him and fired, rounds sparking off concrete centimetres from Ogun’s path.

Ogun dropped into a slide, one knee skimming the ground, and fired a tight salvo that slammed into the man’s plate. The first burst thudded into armour; the second slipped into the gap at the side. The man staggered.

Ogun rose in front of him, close enough to smell cordite and sweat. He sized the ballistic helmet, then drove a finishing shot through the exposed throat seam. The body went limp.

Makx still had the wall man pinned. He’d managed to draw a sidearm with his free hand, muzzle shaking toward her flank.

Ogun lifted his rifle and put a single round through his temple. The gun dropped from dead fingers.

Bravo team: cleared. Smarter, but not enough.

He listened.

Engines were roaring from afar. Whatever Ikenga was sending next would not be three-man teams. Next would be trucks you could hear from a mile away, or the Enforcer himself, walking the lane like he owned it.

Ogun knelt by Makx, running a quick hand over her ribs and legs. No blood that was hers. She looked up at him, eyes hot, breathing controlled.

“Good girl,” he said softly. “Last line.”

They cut back through the interior toward the kernel-press corridor. By the time they reached the far end of the depot, the shape of the trap was clear.

East fence on his left. Yard open to his right. Lane running straight out under the water tank.

The third team had learned, angles tight, ego stripped out.

Three men again, but this time they used the environment to their advantage. One just outside the gate, crouched behind a low concrete block, covering the lane. One fifty metres downlane, using a parked van as hard cover. Third somewhere high. Ogun picked him out on the water tank, a darker shadow against the sky.

Angles overlapping. Kill box facing the gate. Anyone stepping out would get torn apart.

For the first time that night, Ogun paused. Not from fear. Calculation.

He checked Makx’s line of sight. She could reach the closest man, maybe pressure the second, but the man on the tank complicated everything.

“Bad angles,” he murmured.

A bright cone of flashlight swept across the inside of the gate, probing.

“OW-T,” a voice called. “Walk out slow, hands out. Maybe your dog lives if you cooperate.”

Makx growled, low and dangerous.

Ogun stayed behind the wall, back resting briefly against cold metal.

“Three teams for one man and a dog,” he said, loud enough to carry. “Ikenga dey fear?”

The voice replied. “This is your final warning.”

He needed a distraction big enough to crack the box.

Instead, the distraction came to him.

Gunfire ripped down the lane from the far side, sharp, precise bursts. The man behind the van jerked and fell, armour catching nothing. The man on the tank shifted, trying to find the new shooter. A second burst stitched across the tank’s edge. The man dropped backward, weapon clattering off the metal.

The operative at the gate spun toward the new threat, torn between angles.

Ogun didn’t waste the opening.

He kicked the gate wide and stepped through with brutal, unhurried precision, rifle already up. One round to centre mass, another to the head, gate man down before he could finish his turn.

Makx flowed past him, taking position at the concrete block, scanning for movement.

Downlane, Sanusi stepped out from behind a rusted container, rifle braced, muzzle tracking past Ogun as he checked for second shooters. His blue shirt was dark with sweat and dust.

“You took your time,” Ogun said, walking toward him.

“I was busy saving your life,” Sanusi replied. “Third team almost had you for salah.”

Ogun’s gaze flicked to the rifle Sanusi held.

“I borrowed it from the one with the crushed throat,” Sanusi added, jerking his chin back toward the kernel-press corridor.

Ogun glanced at the fallen bodies across the depot, then up at the water tank.

“Time to move,” he said. “Ikenga will escalate.”

Charlie team: silenced.

Ikenga’s turn.