Corporal Farhan Hosseini stepped outside of the police station into the warm summer night, wearing his standard bluish grey police uniform and body armour. The city of Bandar-e-Shah, the second largest city in the country and a popular tourist destination as Dayganistan's only beach city, would be bustling with the activity of tourists by now. But Corporal Hosseini would not be taking part in this. No, he was member of the Daygani National Police, about to begin his 12 hour patrol. He had been working night shifts the past two weeks, but this was his last before getting a week off duty, and for that he was thankful.
The tall man, sporting a short, stubbly beard walked through the police station parking lot, through the mass of green patrol cars until he reached his car, differentiated from the others by simply being marked "032-ا" on the roof and rear side panels of the car. The Corporal performed a quick walk-around of the car, performing a visual inspection to make sure nothing was out of place or damaged. Everything seemed to be in order, so Hosseini opened the door and got into the car. He did a quick check of the inside to make sure everything was in order. His patrol carbine and shotgun were securely locked into their rack between the driver's and passenger's seat and the chest rig which he used to carry extra magazines stay on the passenger seat. These were the most important because there was always the chance that he would need something heavier than his service pistol to save his life, although he never hoped it would come to that point. All of his other equipment was in order as well, although he'd probably have to get another box of surgical gloves soon as he was running low. With his inspection complete, Hosseini started the car and began to pull out of the parking lot. He didn't fasten his seatbelt. Like most Daygani police officers, he almost never did.
"Dispatch, this is Alif 32, beginning my patrol. Show me available for calls," Hosseini said into his radio as he pulled away from the station. He was responded to with a simple "affirmative" from the female dispatch operator. Hosseini was now officially on duty, but he still wasn't entirely ready to start his shift. If he was going to get through a 12 hour shift, he needed coffee and food, so he drove his car towards a nearby branch of a major international fast food chain. Once there, he parked his car and went inside, where he ordered his coffee and a hamburger. He took his food to go as he had to get back on patrol as soon as possible and would have to eat while driving.
For the first hour or so, the patrol was fairly uneventful until Hossieni was called to a disturbance at a nightclub, providing backup to the officer on scene. Two guys got in a fight over a girl, standard stuff. Both men were placed into custody and Hosseini continued on his patrol. The patrol continued to be fairly uneventful and Hossieni lost track of time. But eventually the monotony was broken when a ding came from his police computer. His license plate reader had detected something, a vehicle that was wanted for fleeing from the police had just driven past him in the opposite direction. Hosseini performed a u-turn to get behind the car. This have to be the stupidest criminals, not changing their license plate, he thought.
"Dispatch, this is Alif 32. I'm performing a felony stop on a black sedan on Massoud Street. Car appears to be occupied times three, two males and one female. Requesting an additional unit, code two." He could have stopped the car right here, but he chose to wait a few more blocks until the car was clear of an area primarily occupied by residential buildings.
"Roger, dispatching an additional unit to your location," the dispatch operator's voice crackled through his radio. By now the car was approaching the area where Hossieni wanted it to pull over. He turned on his car's police lights and quickly flicked the switch for his siren on and then off again, signalling the car to pull to the side of the road. He waited for half a minute, until he saw another police car in his rear view mirror. Hosseini and the other officer both got out of their cars, handguns drawn and aiming at the car, using the doors of their own cars as cover.
"Driver, turn off the engine and put your hands slowly out of the window!" Hosseini ordered. The engine did not turn off and the driver did not show his hands. Hosseini repeated his order. The driver still did not comply.
"Driver, this is your final warning! Turn off the engine and put your hands slowly out of the window!" The driver still did not comply, but what came next caught both officers off guard. Gunshots started to come from the car.
"Shots fired on officers!" Hosseini shouted into his radio as he fired back at the car. In a matter of seconds, he had gone from bored and almost falling asleep to being wide awake, adrenaline coursing through his veins. With the car speeding away, Hosseini got back into his own car, turned on the siren, and stomped on the accelerator, making the car's tires briefly spin before taking off and rapidly accelerating up to the fleeing sedan.
"Alif 32 is in high speed pursuit of armed suspects, southbound on Massoud Street," He said into his radio. The dispatch operator said something after, but he had shut out everything that wasn't directly related to the pursuit. In the distance he could hear more police sirens, likely coming as backup for the pursuit. The fleeing vehicle tried everything it could to lose Hosseini's patrol car, but it was simply no use. Hosseini was about to request a roadblock, but that wouldn't be necessary. The driver attempted to make a sharp turn but lost control of the car, causing it to skid and crash into another car parked alongside of the road. The two men got out of the car. Hosseini got out of his car and ran after them. Two other police cars pulled up immediately after and the officers driving those cars did the same. One of suspects fired a handgun back at the officers as he ran.
"Shots fired!" Hosseini yelled as he stopped and aimed his handgun at the man who had just fired. He squeezed the trigger three times in rapid succession, casuing the suspect to collapse to the ground. Seeing his friend collapse to the ground, the other suspect surrendered and was swiftly handcuffed by another officer. Soon after, an ambulance arrived on scene. Another police car also arrived, this one driven by a female officer. No doubt she was here because of the female that was in the car. As for the suspects, the one which Hosseini had shot was pronounced dead by the paramedics. His shift had come to an end early, he would have to go back to the station to fill out a mess of paperwork, be sent home, and have to return for a psychological evaluation in the morning.
The next morning, the local Major Case Team immediately began investigating. The girl who was in the car, they had found out, was 20 year old Gulnar Jalali. She had come from a rural village having been promised a job as a housekeeper in one of the hotels in Bandar-e-Shah. Only when she arrived, there was no job. She was forced into a car and not told where she was going. It was believed that she was linked to a string of disappearances of girls from rural and less well off regions of the country over the past several months. They were believed to be kidnapped for human trafficking, but nobody was sure who was taking them or where they were going. And now the Bandar-e-Shah detachment of the National Police were about to crack the case.
The surviving suspect from the previous night's police chase had been identified as Khushal Noorzai. Noorzai was already wanted in connection with several crimes, Now kidnapping and resisting arrest, again, would be added to his list of crimes. He had already spent the night in a jail cell and now, first thing in the morning, he had been escorted to the local police headquarters, where he had been sitting alone in the interrogation room for the past half hour. He knew he was done and was going to prison for a long time. In his mind he debated whether he should try to make things difficult for the police or whether he should cooperate, hopefully being able to get a deal so he'll spend less time in prison.
The silence in the interrogation room was interrupted when the door creaked open. A man who looked to be about in his early 40s, although a little prematurely aged due to stress, entered the room. Noorzai didn't know who this man was. This was Special Agent Babrak Dotani, the officer in charge of the Bandar-e-Shah Major Case Team. Special Agent Dotani had a long career, starting as a patrol officer in a suburb of Khanabad, eventually becoming an officer in the local narcotics force and finally applying for the Special Agent program so that he could work on a Major Case Team. After proving himself a capable investigator, he was offered a position to lead the Bandar-e-Shah team, and he has been here for the past 10 years or so.
Special Agent Dotani threw a folder onto the table in front of Noorzai, the folder labeled with Noorzai's name. "That's an impressive record you have there," Dotani began. "Multiple counts of resisting arrest and evading police, assault with a deadly weapon, armed robbery, one murder charge, and after last night you can add another count of resisting arrest and assault with a deadly weapon, and a kidnapping charge now too."
Noorzai was silent. He wasn't quite sure how to respond. "You know you're going away for a long time, you're only making it worse by not cooperating," Dotani said. "Now tell me, how many girls have you kidnapped?"
"Myself, about 10, maybe more. I'm not sure sure of the exact number. I'm not the only one who does this so I can't tell you how many are taken in total," Noorzai said.
Dotani was feeling satisfied with himself having broken a suspect so quickly. Or maybe he did actually want to cooperate. Either way, this was going a lot better than the Special Agent had expected. "Where do the girls go?" he asked.
"I don't know. I take them to a warehouse near the port, someone pays me, I have nothing to do with them after. I swear that's all I know. I don't even know the name of the guy who pays me. I don't think he's Daygani though."
Dotani handed Noorzai a notepad and told him to write down the address of the warehouse. With that done, the Special Agent left the interrogation room. All he could do now was gather his team to investigate the warehouse. He had several agents under his command, but he had a go-to team which he almost always chose for the most important assignments, and as he walked into the Major Case Team office, he could see those three agents hard at work. His go-to team consisted of Special Agent Mahmoud Alizadeh, Dotani's second in command, only a few years younger than Dotani but he had aged much better and was clean shaven, causing him to appear even more younger than he actually was. Next was Special Agent Ali Farkhani, a tall, muscular man with a thick beard in his late 20s. He had served as a Commando in the army before entering police work. He was still adjusting to police work, but his skills as an investigator were rapidly improving and it was always nice to have Farkhani around for the intimidation factor. Finally, furiously typing away at her computer, was Special Agent Tahmina Yousefzai. She had only just graduated from Khanabad National University with a master's degree in computer science two years ago and was quickly scooped up by the National Police to work as a computer expert for the Bandar-e-Shah Major Case Team. With her thick rimmed glasses, near complete lack of makeup, and black hair always tied into a tight bun with absolutely no strands out of place, she certainly looked the part of a computer nerd. But despite her preference for computers, she had also proven to be a good crime scene investigator and scored high on pistol marksmanship. Plus her computer skills seemed to become more and more useful in the field by the day.
"Alizadeh! Farkhani! Yousefzai!" Dotani shouted as he entered the office. The three agents stood up from whatever they were doing and looked in his direction. "You three, with me. We've got a warehouse to investigate.
The team pulled up to the warehouse in their unmarked car. It was a two story building, the first floor containing the warehouse area while the second floor house offices.
"Farkhani and Yousefzai, you take the offices. Alizadeh, you're with me for the warehouse," Dotani said. The team the entered through the front door, weapons up, with the two assigned to clear the offices heading up the stairs while the other two proceeded into the warehouse. Unfortunately, the warehouse itself was empty. No people, no goods, absolutely nothing.
The search of the offices didn't seem to go so well either. They had all seemed to be abandoned, except for what was probably the head office at one point. There were no documents in the office, but there was a laptop computer sitting on the desk. Special Agent Yousefzai powered up the computer, but as was always the case with more intelligent criminals, it was password protected. And if these guys were into human trafficking, she knew it would probably be a strong password and she would have to take it back to headquarters to try to gain access. With the investigation of the warehouse complete, the team headed back to headquarters, empty-handed save for the laptop.
For the next several hours, the team could do nothing but sit and wait while Yousefzai tried to work her way into the computer. Nobody dared asked her what she was trying to do or how it worked, they had all learned pretty quickly that he would start using computer terms that nobody else understands. Every so often, one of the other team members would ask if she had gotten in to the computer yet, which caused nothing but an angry glare at whoever was responsible. This continued for several hours until suddenly, the screen on the computer showed the desktop.
"I've accessed the computer." She said. Despite her relief, she didn't sound so excited to have gotten in. She wasn't one to celebrate her work until she was completely finished. The first place she navigated to was the email program, where she found a message labelled "RE: Next Shipment" She read through the email, it didn't sound good.
"This email I found said a shipment was due to leave early this morning and arrive at the port of Bagru in Arjunapur within 24 hours," She went through the other emails sent to this same address. "It sounds to me like this is human trafficking, exactly what we're looking for."
"Good work," Dotani said from his desk. "Now go call the Arjunapuris and tell them to be on the lookout at their ports."
Yousefzai picked up the phone at her desk and dialed the number for the police headquarters in Bagru. When someone answered on the other end, she explained who she was, and everything they knew so far about the case.
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Unfortunately, nobody was aware the shipment had arrived in Bagru, well ahead of schedule. The girls who had been tafficked out of Dayganistan had already been offloaded from the ship, and soon would probably be taken away from the port, leaving both the Dayganis and Arjunapuris with no leads on where they were going or who was responsible.
