Last First Chance (Al-Ameen Family Spin-Off)

Surveillance

Hope everyone had a blessed Ramadan and a lovely Eid 💜🌙

PRESENT DAY

"With surveillance, the results are in the small details. You can be watching someone on a camera for hours but it's useless until you pay attention to changes for example in their walk, or their breathing, the position of their bodies, and so on. Patrick's team had almost 16 people when I was working with them in Dubai tracking the Italian Mafia," Naina sat down beside me. "Each person who was from the surveillance team was assigned to one area. They got into the mainframe or whatever, had each camera broadcasting on the screens around the room, and they watched like a hawk for what we were looking for. They are integral in us field agents being able to do what we do."

"Sixteen?" my eyes go wide.

"Yup. Sixteen. But when you have big operations, that's just how it is. It will be best for us to have you practice with smaller cases so you can get the hang of things. Actually, why don't we test you," she stands up again suddenly with a grin.

"Oh I don't know about that," I babble nervously. "I'm not warmed up, I haven't studied the case-" but she was already out the door.

A second later, she comes back in with a Hasan who looks like he'd rather be six feet under than in this room with us. She tells him to sit at the conference table where we had settled and he does so across from me, neatly placing some files and his laptop in front of him.

"Maheen, let's help Hasan with this case. He is tracking a street dealer who is mixing illicit fentanyl with Adderall. Hasan, brief her," she leans back in her chair, swivelling towards him.

He clears his throat and opens his laptop. "We don't have much information except the pattern of his street runners. But they're just stupid kids. We need to get to the source. In a short amount of time, this peddler has really infiltrated the market," his laptop casts all the data he has on the projection screens at the front of the room.

"Okay Maheen, with all the information you have here, what's next?" Naina asks, her voice levelled.

I hesitate, my eyes skimming over everything on the screen frantically. I had so many thoughts but everything was just jumbling together in my head.

"Trust your instincts," Hasan says to me quietly, his eyes boring into mine.

For a second, I felt like we're kids again, taking risks and making waves in the world.

I open my laptop, heading to my mapping software. I plug in all the data I see on Hasan's laptop, and the two of them watch quietly as my fingers fly across the keyboard.

Once my screen loads to where I need to be, I share it on the projector as well. "Okay, here is a map of all the movement of the runners."

"What do you see? Look for patterns or anomalies. The answer is always in the smallest of details," Naina's gentle voice guides me.

I study it hard, scanning each and every thing. It's like a muscle that's being stretched after a long time, and I feel the energy course through me. Hasan slides a paper over to my side of the table. More information.

"Anything else you hiding over there?" I mutter. He rolls his eyes.

I map over the extra information he just gave me and then things become more clear.

"You'll find who you're looking for in this borough. All the movement lines intersect in only one place, in this 20 kilometre radius. My actual suspicion is here," I zoom closer on the map.

"Why?" Naina's on the edge of her seat, watching the screen.

"Based on the timings of when surveillance caught the runners, it is likely they are meeting the dealer around lunch time. This area is too busy for people to find secretive spots to meet, and based on the ages of the runners, they are likely all university students, which checks out because there's a university here," I circle my mouse around the university campus on the map. "This seems to be an easy location, it is busy and not somewhere people would stop for long. It's smack dab in between Tube lines, coffee shops, the uni campus," I ramble off, my mouse pointer flying across the screen. "Not to mention Adderall equals students."