"Operation Desert Safari" continues...

I made it amply clear that in case we decided to raid a certain building or apartment, the final go-
ahead would be given by me.

A brief pep-talk to the boys pumped them up. Even though I was technically not their boss, they all knew that it was, at the end of the day, my operation and they were working to assist me.
They had all known me as I had served in the Delhi Police for long and was not exactly an
unpopular officer in the rank and file! Also, we had worked together on a couple of operations
earlier and met with success.

Like men possessed, more than twenty of us scattered in pre-determined directions. Since it was a Sunday, most men folk were at home watching TV or catching forty winks. The lanes and bylanes were practically deserted. Often people would step out of their apartments and eye us with suspicion. The time at our disposal was limited before somebody called up the Police Control Room and siren-wailing vans converged at the spot ruining everything.

We were drawing a complete blank. No flat seemed to match the description entirely. Word was spreading in the colony that some strangers were on the prowl. We were beginning to lose heart when out of sheer despair I broke away from the main team and went about fifty yards or so eastwards. Suddenly, another row of houses, which we had failed to notice hitherto in our keenness to keep close to the spot where the marriage function was on, emerged before me as a mirage would in the distant horizons of a desert. As I took a few steps into the lane I noticed a green net on a rooftop below which were rows of white flowerpots with beautiful red roses in full bloom. There was a car parked opposite this house covered with a canvas sheet. The red colored multi-storey building, mentioned by Thekkat to his brother, also stood to the east from where I had approached that lane.

To be continued...