Best Laid Plans

Best Laid Plans

His heart was pounding. That was a close call. The sweat he felt under his own armpits was not just attributable to the humid conditions of the day. It was always hotter where he came from and he was used to that already. This heat was from the realisation of this brush with the netherworld. But for the need not to seem suspicious, he could have stopped, found somewhere to sit out this pounding of his heart before it ruptured something vital and consign him to what could have been his fate just now. No. He was not going to stop. He had to quickly leave town. Much earlier than scheduled. If only this rapid heartbeat will give him a break. It was already affecting his nerves and his fingers couldn’t be steadied however hard he tried. No one must notice, he cautioned himself.

He need not have worried. This was Lagos and in as much as there may have been a scene of pandemonium around the area from where he was beating a retreat, people around his current location had more on their minds than to take any cognizance of his hasty motion or the unsteady fingers he was battling to gain control over. If he had been confident enough to look around, he’d have seen it. No one cared to notice him.

But, he didn’t. The pang of a guilty conscience.

He tried to imagine how he got it wrong. But there must have been more blood pumping into his brain at the moment to allow for any rational engagement with the grey matter. It was when the okada man in front of him, who was impatient with the lost-looking soul before him, voiced his impatience that he came to. He’d walked (or ran-walked, if that was possible) all the way to the T-junction of the road he was on without any consciousness of that happening. He was still tongue-tied and quite incapable of any rational response when the okada man brushed him aside so that he did not obstruct other more vocal passengers with some idea of where they were headed. He quickly engaged his brain again and was fortunate to get a fragment of a response this time. He was going to take a bike to the expressway, head towards Berger and board a bus out of Lagos. Fast.

He was well on the way out of Lagos when a semblance of reality dawned. Things had not gone according to plan. All things considered, this mission should have run like clockwork. He’d rehearsed each aspect more times than he could remember. He could have done it with one arm tied behind him, both legs in shackles and a blindfold and he’d have pulled it off. That fact was why he was chosen to do it and why, when he demanded to do it alone, even with the associated risk, he was allowed. That was how highly he was thought of. And it was not unmerited. Comparatively, this was one of the easiest tasks he was assigned and the other two were in areas of higher risks and tighter security apparatuses. So, why? What went wrong.

He rehashed every step he took up to the point where the pandemonium broke and for the life of him, could not pinpoint where he erred and lost the goal of the mission. Hard as he tried, he only came up with blanks. That, together with other factors, sealed his fate. He never was one for suicides and seven virgins. He thought those fantasies were for illiterate fanatics who require such otherworldly pleasures to pursue a cause. For him, it was more of a duty borne out of a conviction that his spiritual leader gave him a mandate which was divinely ordained for him to perform. He was fortunate to have been the chosen one and took pride in doing them gratefully. He checked, double-checked and did it all over again like the divine assignment it was. But how he had failed beat him. The mission laid not only unaccomplished but for no reason. It was inconceivable that he’d return to report such overwhelming failure.

He caressed the ampoule that held the portion he knew was going to be his end. He’d alighted off the road not too far from the first town on the expressway. He did not allow his mind to wander into thoughts of both his wives and the children the family had been blessed with. That was only going to make leaving them behind simply more painful. Only fools suffer themselves that. The portion was little, a spoonful maybe. The size belied its potency. It was brought from the Amazon, he was told and contained venom from the reptiles that dot the vegetation. He recoiled in agony as the effect of the poison kicked in. His screams only worsened the pain as his lungs constricted making it too much effort to even draw breath. The heart that was pounding earlier began to stultify. That earlier pounding seemed such a long time ago now. He thrashed alone on the grass around the place he picked to end his sojourn here. The muscles around his face twitched as his entire frame was seized by sporadic spasms. Contractions occurred almost throughout his body and he wished it will just end. Did they not have easier ways to knock one’s self off? Why such tortuous finale? The pain was reaching levels that seemed impossible for the human body to endure and raising those levels ever higher. He prayed for the grim reaper, if he was even possible, to come quicker.

And like it is said, that things become clearer just before you go, he realized his error. The bomb was to be placed in the car, primed to go off at 9pm, when everyone will be home, at the residence of a critic of their movement and a pillar of the government in Lagos. It was to shock and awe, to let Lagosians know they are not safe in the embrace of their luxurious houses and posh environs, that the deaths in the North East was being brought to them in the comforts of their acclaimed centre of excellence, for if such highly-placed individuals can be targeted and successfully hit, who was safe? That was the mission and it was perfectly planned. He’d placed the device and latched the timer. It was all set at a quarter to 9 in the morning, so he parked some distance far from his niece’s house in Lagos and went to visit her. He did not want to draw attention to the car nor answer any questions. He was on his way back when the car exploded and pandemonium ensued. He realised now, that the timer must have interpreted the hour he set (9) as AM by default as he did not remember to change it to PM as planned. It was such a little detail but could have been more fatal if he had been inside. He felt now that had he realised the fault earlier, he may have been able to argue out his error and rectify it with a return mission that he will personally finance. But all that was history, he sighed as death finally arrived.

His last thought was that at least his group will claim responsibility for the act and place the Lagos government where they wanted them as they had succeeded to do in Abuja.