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Kara drove the housekeeper’s car toward the banker’s mansion, diligently keeping her eyes on the road in order to avoid eye contact with the other drivers as much as possible. Over the last two decades, women drivers in Pakistan had increased by 60%, but the number of men who resented women drivers remained the same—100%. Kara didn’t need to get into a traffic accident this morning, so she remained hypervigilant as to her speed and the proximity of the vehicles surrounding her.
The sun had fully risen by the time she reached the clearing near the mansion where she had spent the previous afternoon digging holes. Realizing that she needed to move quickly, Kara got out of the car, opened the passenger back door, and yanked out her backpack. She opened the trunk and pulled out a collapsible military-type shovel from her backpack and placed the pack back into the trunk. She dropped the shovel next to the closest hole she had previously dug.
She removed the layer of leaves and branches she had used to hide the four land mines under the tree and picked up the first one. Holding the mine in front of her like a delicate china plate, she briskly walked toward the crest of the road to the first hole. She set the mine into its hole less than 50 feet from the main road. It was placed directly in line with the right tire of any car that might drive down the center of the road. She carefully inserted the tilt-rod fuse into the trigger-rod hole on top of the land mine. Glancing at the shovel, she decided not to use it. Now that she was staring down at the armed land mine, it made more sense to use her hands to cover up the explosive. It was delicate work, and a shovel was the antithesis of delicate. Fortunately, it didn’t take much dirt to cover the device. The thick mine used up most of the space in the hole. Kara allowed the tilt rod to stick up out of the ground, whereas normally this kind of mine would be well under the ground, and only the displacement of the soil from tons of weight above would trigger the device. Now, for anyone driving a car at a normal speed, the short gray stick would be virtually invisible, but all the car had to do was tilt the stick fuse 20° to one side and it was lights out. The M15 land mine was designed to blow up tanks, so going up against a standard vehicle would be like shooting a howitzer through a phone book.
She made short work of planting the remaining three mines before getting back into the car and driving around the rest of the loop and back up to the main road.
At the top of the road, she took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Less than a mile to her right was the banker’s mansion. It would take her about a minute to drive there and then there was no turning back.
“Here goes nothing,” she mumbled to herself, pressing the accelerator and centering the little car on the blacktop.