CHAPTER FOUR
Anthony motioned me to keep still and quiet as the car cruised steadily over us, exposing us to the harsh conditions we put ourselves into; the cold dark night weather the and darkness of men that weren't so pleased with us making them look grossly incompetent and who would like to reciprocate the gesture. Luckily, the gross darkness blanketed us making us sort of invisible and besides, the stressed security guys had looked away since they couldn't have imagined we could be under a car they had just stood by, so they moved back into the generator house where they had more pressing needs to attend to and a thorough explanation to narrate on how they allowed two sneaky teenagers to move in and out unnoticed when they were supposed to be on guard as earlier instructed by their superiors. It wasn't totally their fault actually, we were just too hot for them to handle. It would take more than two unserious, unfocused and unarmed men-in-uniform to stop the brains, brawn and synergy of anyone whosoever in the UFC!. That's how perfect we saw ourselves.
Everyone had already gone to bed when we got back to the orphanage or it looked like it due to the absolute quietness we were approached with. The gate was left unlocked: we had assigned Liz the enormous daring duty of unlocking the gate some moments after head matron Mrs Elizabeth had observed her routine daily surroundings patrol check after which she would then lock the gate by 9pm, she was so security conscious and had always warned us that never under any circumstances should we leave the orphanage after light out; flaunting her orders wouldn't make any sense though, why would any of us be out at that time anyways?, so we stuck to her orders except on few unavoidable occasions like today. We dropped the bike and the board near the huge cashew tree in the compound, dusted our clothes and made to sneak back in through the front door: the back door was supposed to be the ideal entry route but was definitely not an option due to reasons best known to us. The first reason was that in case word got out about Blackout ,the furious matrons would certainly poise themselves at the kitchen near the back door awaiting us while we awaited our doom!, but that wasn't so common among us 'cos we do not have snitches or moles amongst us and besides we do our planning so well that we've never been caught by the unsuspecting matrons, not even once!. The other reason was that Miss Danielle; the ebony Ghanaian matron studied in the kitchen sometimes at night since she enrolled at an online school last year and would always put her education first...well after us though. After studying for hours, she would then stay up to prepare breakfast for the house before retreating back to bed. The final and most crucial reason we do not use the back door is because it makes a rather loud creaking sound when it's pushed opened: well that's not even the issue, the real deal is that kitchen is right beside Mrs Elizabeth's room and she's the last person you would wanna see up when you're trying to sneak back into the house after 9pm!.
"Nice outfits boys", the light bulb came on, right after we sneaked in,"and nice stealth mode". At first we were shocked, I felt Anthony shiver when we heard the voice, we stood rooted to the ground hoping and praying we hadn't broken our 'not-getting-caught' streak but then the voice played in my head again and I recognized it; Liz.
Elizabeth was her christian name given to her by the orphanage like most of the rest, we all call her Liz with the exception of the matrons who call her by her full name most especially her namesake. She is five foot two with the body of a model and a very likable personality. Her story?. Liz was nine when she joined the oprphange seven years back and the reason why she's here comes with a long funny story. Liz's father was or lemme say is a comfortable businessman who had lost his wife, Liz's mother to cancer four years after Liz was born and after the incidence, he promised himself he wasn't going to remarry but three years later, he gave in to pressure from everyone: his friends, his work colleagues and most especially his aged parents who all advised him to forget the past and 'move on'. Caroline was the lady he was to move on with and according to Liz, 'she is the worst woman you would want as a wife not to talk of having her as a mother!'. She was the devil's right hand woman and she didn't hide it. After taking in a measure of insults, disappointments, maltreatment and frustration for years, Liz, being a smart crafty girl then decided to end the whole marriage stuff between her dad and Caroline. Firstly, she approached her dad and tried her best to convince him but even though he saw her point, he decided to continue with Caroline anyways probably because he wasn't the one getting most of the maltreatment. Then since plan A failed, she switched to plan B, having up to plan D. Plan B involved frustrating her stepmother which she did tirelessly: she burnt Caroline's work documents, clothes and even her copy of the marriage certificate!.
Once at a family dinner comprising of distant relatives and Caroline's work friends, Liz emptied the whole salt, chilli and other spices containers into the medium size pot of stew Caroline had earlier prepared. The guests weren't so much pleased at her; Caroline not Liz and they expressed their displeasure in form of embarrassing insults that continued weeks after the dinner. I'm sure they must have swore not to ever eat anything Caroline cooked if they still needed their mouths. Liz was dealt with for weeks but was undaunted; she knew what she wanted. On another occasion when Caroline was to travel to Singapore for some official duties, Liz sneaked into her room the night before her flight and hid her travel documents in a place she would never find them again; flushed down the toilet!. Caroline was furious that she lost her flight and almost lost her job but she didn't suspect Liz because she believed Liz couldn't be that desperate, so she overlooked it and Liz won that battle just because of someone's ignorant assumption. Well, there wasn't anyway she could approach or apprehend Liz since there was no evidence. It went on and on and the battle between Caroline and Liz only grew stronger but after a while, Caroline gave in and decided to end the marriage. One would have imagined it was game over for Caroline and sweet victory for Liz but Caroline determined she wasn't going down without a fight so she decided to play a fast one on Liz's dad by implicating him in a financial case that got a lot of people including, the affected company, the media, the press and the anti-corruption agencies involved. Failure of to win the case would mean jail time and hell for Liz's dad and Liz respectively.
Liz figured it was the handiwork of the devil; her stepmother, but there wasn't any means she could pin her and exonerate her dad. Then she implemented plan C. She went the extra mile of breaking into Caroline's new house since she had seperated with Liz's dad but at the long run, her efforts were running down the drain. With only one week to the court hearing, Liz decided to make one last move which she made sure she planned to perfection. A day to the hearing when everyone was getting busy, Liz sneaked out of her father's bungalow straight to Caroline's home where she climbed over the low fence to gain entrance:she knew what the risk involved in the move she was making but she did it anyways. The plan was quite easy but tasking for eight year old Liz; it didn't require her entering the main house. She located the water tank that supplied water for all domestic functions including drinking that was sitting on a 20 -foot metal structure lined wtih iron ladders and made for the top. When she arrived at the top, she skillfully opened the plastic lid of the tank and emptied bottles of strong alcohol into the full tank, after making her way down, she punctured the four tyres of her 'guest' saloon car and escaped unnoticed. Caroline was 'unavoidably absent' in the court the next day according to her lawyer and since she was the main witness testifying against Liz's dad, the hearing was adjourned. The first phase of Liz's plan was successful, now the second phase had to be planned carefully since the hearing was delayed by a month; so she had a lot of time to execute her plan perfectly. The second phase involved the prosecuting lawyer who was in possession of the documents containing the evidence against Liz's dad. As a eight year old, it was too much for her to handle alone so she persuaded her best friend, Mike to help her and weighing the odd, he decided to help. They worked on their plan, day and night, applying number of changes to improve their chances of victory. A whole month almost passed and two days to the next hearing, the plan was placed in motion!
The second phase was a lot more difficult for both of them and strenuous but unlike Caroline, Liz and Mike were focused. They've located the lawyer's house and observed him the time he went out and came in. So 48 hours to the judge's decision, Liz's dad got so busy that he was absolutely ignorant of the time Liz snuck out to initiate her plan. Liz and Mike went to the lawyer's duplex and stayed at the gate awaiting his car. By 9pm, when the lawyer arrived at his home, he was shocked to find two stray kids he couldn't recognise sitting at the front of his gate. So being a benevolent bachelor, he offered them a room in his house since they explained they had no where to spend the night. After offering them dinner, Liz took his phone with the excuse of using it to call a relative but found out it required a pin to access it. Now what?, they needed his phone for the majority of their plan. So at night, Mike caused a distraction by pretending he was asthmatic to get the lawyer's attention, it worked and while the lawyer was trying to call the hospital, Liz saw him input the pin to unlock his phone and boom!, step one was successful. The hospital didn't respond so he decided to take Mike to the hospital himself leaving both his phone and Liz at home. He arrived with Mike hours later, frustration written all over his face the moment the doctor informed him nothing was wrong with Mike. Mission successful. We left the next morning, thanking him for his hospitality, he even offered us money but we rejected it; what we accomplished was far more than the worth of money!.
The next day, the newspapers headlined this lawyer and Caroline; their shady deal was exposed and the funny aspect was that it was from the lawyer's phone the cat escaped from the bag. His post on all social media platforms consisted of the chat and messages between himself and Caroline during which she offered him money for him to 'take down' her ex-husband by supporting the false evidence she had cooked up. The bank alert messages which were proof of the 'illegitimate' money transfer and which was also part of the deal was pasted on all the media platforms. The question that most people kept asking which remained unanswered was, "why did he decide to expose himself..... by himself?". So that incidence heralded victory for Liz and her disturbed dad, he was fully exonerated and was paid a large sum of money as compensation while the lawyer and his alias were sentenced to jail on account of several charges including defamation of character. The taste of victory is definitely sweet!
But as they say, life is surely full of ups and downs, three months after their victory, they also tasted the down side of life. Liz's dad had an fatal accident that caused him to completely lose all his memory and since he couldn't recognize Liz anymore and none of his relative offered to help him take care of his only daughter, Liz who did not want to experience another round of maltreatment from another 'Caroline' left home and kept running, living in uncompleted houses for a start, doing domestic chores for various house owners for survival before she heard of UFC. At first, she was reluctant to join due to her prior stereotyped knowledge about how orphans are being treated in orphanages but was convinced weeks after she joined. "You can not have a better life experience aside the one offered at UFC", her words, not mine.
"Don't do that again Liz!", Anthony whispered, "what you did with the light and your voice, don't do it again, you almost scared us to death, what do you think you were trying to do?,....give us a heart attack?". We tiptoed to our bedroom and sat on one of the vacant beds, Liz was still on her feet.
"You guys took long with the op, you scared the rest of us to sleep!", Liz started, "I was beginning to worry about your welfare. Were you caught?"
"If we were, we wouldn't be talking to you now.", I chipped in.
"Alright then, since you weren't, what took you so long, Dan was getting worried too. He believed you shouldn't be doing all these for him."
"Daniel!", Anthony reacted, "where is he?, how is he feeling now?"
"He's fine.."Liz responded rapidly, "for now at least, his temperature is a lot better after the wet towel that Miss Kike used to dab his body. He's asleep now"
Anthony brought the drug out of his jacket, "here's the prize guys, mission accomplished, well done Nisi, you literally almost took a bullet for UFC, !"
" Forget that brother, for UFC. He would start his dose tomorrow morning ASAP!", I added. Liz glanced at both of us looking confused, she must have thought what did Tony mean by 'literally taking a bullet'?
"Get something sleep guys, tomorrow is the big day, you would be needing all the energy you can get, you especially Nisi" Anthony said, facing me.
"I know right", I said with zero touch of excitement. I looked down ,my shoulders came down, it seemed like the cloak of responsibility just landed on my shoulders. I did not want to dissapoint any of them.
"Alright Nisi, let's go through the plan again according to sequence, Dorcas would do the distraction of the two security men, I would take out the cameras, Bingo's down already courtesy of Nisi and Mary. Your mission since you've chosen to accept it is to slide under his car, get to his kitchen through the air vents and across the ceiling and empty his 'trash', nothing more, nothing less. Remember, make minimal noise when you are up there, you wouldn't want to annoy Mr Collins!. The ceilings should be sturdy and firm enough to hold your weight without causing any distraction. When you are up there, take the first left turn then move straight ahead until you get to the outlet right above the kitchen, then carefully raise the ventilator and slip right in. Mr Collins should be anywhere but the kitchen: he rarely enters there or uses it. The amount of food delivery he orders from EatUp proves this, so you shouldn't have the problem of scare or interruption. The freezer shouldn't be out of sight when you are down, make sure you take what you're sure you can lift back into the ceiling; as much as possible though. Use the large marble centre table in the middle of the kitchen to climb back into the ceiling and wait for the moment when you get our signal, you can then come back to your entry point and leave the rest to us, we will take care of extraction". Anthony reeled out the plan once again, touching every detail. Sounds easy and adventurous when it's being said by mouth, I thought.
The atmosphere became silent again before Liz let out a silent giggle. Anthony and I looked at her with that 'what-the -hell' question face. Why would she be laughing when everywhere was so tensed and still like this?. Before anyone could say anything, Liz broke the silence to justify her funny action.
"It was the way you guys sneaked in for me..", she laughed again, this time a little louder, imitating how we sneaked in on the edges of our feet.
Anthony stared at her, looked at me and looked away. I just hissed. What does she know?...