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After the beds had been made and the home straightened, Kara checked the time, attempting to figure out when the children would be coming down for lunch. She went into the kitchen and assembled peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches with supplies from the pantry and the massive refrigerator.
By noon, Kara finished making two lunches and placed them in paper bags for each child. Within each bag, she inserted two ziplocked sandwiches, an apple, and for dessert she added two Rice Krispies bars she found in the walk-in pantry. She added two juice boxes to each bag to complete their lunches. In total, she’d made enough for two lunches each.
She hoped the teacher didn’t come down with his students. That would complicate her plan. Kara didn’t want to have to explain why she had replaced their normal housekeeper today. She knew the languages of Urdu, Punjabi and Pashto, having been bestowed with the gift to easily learn and speak dozens of languages. Unlike individuals native to this area of the world, she didn’t feel confident speaking it like a Pakistani native. Her pronunciations and dialect would give her away, yet another eventuality she would rather avoid. Just in case, she left a sharp knife on the counter.
Her plan was to go ahead with Plan A unless the teacher or the guards interfered. Plan B: Use the expedient of killing the teacher if he became a problem. If the guard in the backyard saw her killing the teacher through the window, then a revision would be made on the fly. Plan C: Kill both guards as well as the teacher. Plans B and C were messy. If it came down to executing Plan C, the proverbial shit would have hit the proverbial fan and it would turn into an all-out war. Kara killed innocents as a last resort. The children (God forbid), teacher, or the guards might need to be eliminated based on the RAMEY SCALE, which she used as her own moral compass. However, the banker, Mr. Shallah, was a different story. He had brought nothing but misery to the world and needed to be put down.
Five minutes ticked by before she heard little feet on the hard stairs. The kids strode into the kitchen and looked expectantly at the kitchen table for their lunches. Kara waited a moment to see if the teacher had trailed the kids, but to her relief he had not. The kids sat at the table, looking somewhat confused. Kara assumed that their lunches had always been waiting for them, and now they were wondering why the change in their schedule. They looked at Kara strangely as well. Her green eyes looking out at them from her black scarf were very, very different from their housekeeper’s dark brown eyes. Kara could tell they knew she was someone else, but they didn’t seem alarmed by that fact. They sat, quiet and still, patiently waiting for food to be served.
In her best Punjabi, Kara said, “It’s a beautiful day outside. How would you like to have a picnic lunch?”
The word picnic was an uncommon word, and Kara hoped the kids understood. The boy and girl appeared to get the gist of what she had said. Their eyes brightened and they smiled.
“Yes!” they chimed enthusiastically.
Kara grabbed both the lunch bags and told them, “This will be fun. Let’s go outside.”
Prior to leaving the kitchen, Kara also grabbed the pink backpack. The trio then headed toward the front door. Once outside, the pair looked back at Kara expectantly like they were waiting for Kara to select a spot to eat. Instead, Kara walked over to the housekeeper’s car and opened the back door.
“Let’s eat at the park. Doesn’t that sound fun?”
The kids smiled, giggled a little, and piled into the back seat.
Kara looked around to see if she was being observed. “Put your seat belts on,” she instructed.
She opened the trunk. Her backpack was the only item she needed for now. She set the pink backpack in the trunk, pulled out her heavy pack, and quietly closed the trunk lid. Scanning the yard and seeing no one paying her any attention, she climbed in behind the wheel.
Inside her pack, she located a short electronic wand. As the kids were buckling up, she turned on the device, craned over the back of the seat and scanned both passengers for the presence of embedded tracking devices. She watched the sensitive meter and listened for the audible chirp the machine would make if it detected a tracking device on (or in) the kids. It was a crazy world out there, and it was common for rich people who had a lot to lose to place tracking chips on not only items but also the people they didn’t wish stolen. Kara heard nothing, and the wand’s LED meter stayed in the green, indicating no tracking devices. Kara put the wand back in her pack and pulled out a 9-millimeter Beretta. She slid the gun behind her backpack, which was set next to her on the car’s bench front seat. Kara practiced getting to the gun a few times to ensure it was easily accessible. Again, she looked out her window to see if she had garnered any attention. Still nothing. The guard in the backyard was probably still there.
With a single turn of the ignition, Kara was relieved to hear the old car come to life. Driving unknown vehicles was unnerving. You never knew their history. It would be just her luck the battery would die. Kara put the car in gear and slowly drove toward the front gate. Twice more, she practiced accessing the gun behind her pack. The pack was too close to her, jamming her right arm from easily accessing the gun, so she moved the pack further away for faster retrieval. She made sure the gun was still hidden behind it.
She came to a full stop at the arm separating her from freedom.
The guard slid open a window so he could talk to her.
“What are you doing?” the guard asked in Punjabi, noticing the children sitting in the back seat.
Kara was certain the guard would notice her green eyes, so she attempted to avert her eyes.
She responded, “I’m taking the children to the park for a picnic lunch.”
The guard hesitated as if he required time to process the information.
“You know the rules. The children are never to leave the residence.”
Kara quickly replied, “I’m just taking them to the park for lunch.”
Kara didn’t look at the man, but she could feel his eyes tunneling into the side of her head.
“Who are you?” he finally asked, his voice loud and ominous.
Kara had two choices. Try to talk it out or run. She felt that the time for talking was over. Without saying another word, she pegged her right foot to the floor, jamming it on the gas pedal. The little car shot forward. The windshield snapped the arm off with a resounding crack. Kara took a sharp right onto the main road, leaving the surprised guard rushing for the parked SUV.
There was no traffic, but the car was old. The road was full of hills and curves. In less than a minute, the rear-view mirror showed the big SUV closing in on her. The kids were being bumped around in the back seat, but they were laughing like they were on their first amusement ride. Given the information she had just gleaned from the guard, this might be their first fun ride.
Kara told the kids, “There is a blanket on the floor. Cover yourselves with it. See if you can hide from me.”
The boy reached down and pulled up the blanket. He placed it over their heads and they scrunched down, giggling.
The SUV was riding Kara’s bumper. The guard beeped the horn and Kara saw him hold up a handgun. Coming up on the left, Kara saw a piece of red material tied to a bush. She purposely put on her left blinker, and the guard began to slow. The old car slowed to a little under 20 mph, and Kara pulled onto a little dirt road. The SUV followed closely. Carefully, Kara made a point to drive slightly to the right, centering her driver’s side tires in the middle of the road and the passenger side tires on the outer edge. The SUV made no such correction, its driver unaware of the boobytrap ahead.
Kara stepped down hard on the accelerator and blasted down the hill. It was imperative she put an increasing distance between her vehicle and the SUV. As she reached the bottom of the hill, her car fishtailed wildly, and she counter-steered into the turn, the car skidding to a stop. She got a glimpse of the SUV leaving the ground in her side mirror. The concussive explosion rocked her vehicle, and the kids stopped laughing. The SUV puffed out like a marshmallow cooking in a microwave. In midair, the vehicle disintegrated into a ball of fire and black smoke. The thick black roof skyrocketed into the air. All four wheels and flaming tires bounced down the hill. The fireball looked almost alien, alive yet absent consciousness.
The children’s heads bobbed well below the level of the seatbacks, and Kara threw herself sideways, protecting her head from potentially flying debris. Rocks and bits and pieces of the SUV peppered the little car’s rear windshield, but surprisingly, the glass didn’t break. Kara had expected the glass to shatter from the shock wave alone.
After she felt the danger was over, Kara sat back up and looked out the back window. The vehicle that had given Kara chase no longer resembled an SUV. It appeared more like a carcass of a demolition derby car. The Suburban’s fuel tanks had emptied their contents. A massive fire consumed everything left of the vehicle that could burn. Off in the distance, the wheels and tires had laid down and died. Black smoke billowed into the air as the rubber burned off the rims.
Kara understood one thing was sure. If the second guard was in pursuit, he wouldn’t have difficulty following them. He would follow the smoke. Kara put the car in gear and put more distance between her vehicle and the smoldering wreckage, not wanting to subject herself or the children to more danger. She completed half of the looped road and waited at the bottom of the hill.
One hundred yards separated her from the main road, but she still needed to wait until the coast was clear. Fortunately, she didn’t have to wait long. Two minutes after Suburban #1 had exploded, she saw SUV #2 pull onto the top of the dirt road. The guard driving this vehicle was not in a big hurry. He cautiously inched his Suburban forward after having seen his co-worker’s vehicle blow up in front of him. She knew the guard could see her vehicle down in the shallow valley below. She had parked there to serve as bait.
Having reached the burning pile of rubble that had once been his co-worker’s car, the guard pulled off the road to the left to place a considerable distance between him and his dead friend.
“That works for me,” Kara whispered to herself.
The sound of the second explosion reverberated from the surrounding hills. He’d fallen into her trap. Kara wasn’t going to stick around for the show. She had witnessed the aftermath of the first SUV and didn’t care to watch an instant replay. There was a good chance that Pakistani police and possibly troops might arrive on the scene at any moment. The small car puttered to the top of the hill. Kara looked both ways, and without a vehicle in sight, she turned left onto the main road.