They got Andries on his stomach, Dan got the paracord out and tied the man’s hands behind his back, then he and Martin lifted him up. Dan showed his friend how to put his straightened left arm through Andries’ arms, bend him over and hold on to his right shoulder, then walked him to a tree about 75 meters away while Dan was three steps behind and to the left, ready to blow out his back. There they made the guy sit and move his hands under his rear, then to the front. After that, they stood him up and tied his lifted arms around the wrists to the tree trunk and then his feet. When they were done, Dan said “Marty, you guys don’t wanna be here for this. Take your family to that cover on the right and don’t look back no matter what you hear.” Martin understood and did as his friend had asked him. When they were alone, Dan stared Andries straight in the eye and said “You will talk. The only difference is whether it’s with or without pain. If you tell me the truth, you’ll be given the chance to join us and maybe see the end of this. If you lie, I’m gonna cut the fuck out of you and leave you to die in agony tied to this here tree. Your choice.” Then Dan smiled and began to ask his name, where he was from, what he did for a living, what his favorite color was and so on. He did that to get a baseline for responses and when he asked Andries about his favorite color, there was a fleeting look of understanding in his eyes, which rang Dan’s bells- this was a guy who knew about interrogation.
The answers came, but a lot of them sounded rehearsed. Eye and limb movements were under pretty good control, but some subtle twitches came through and indicated deception. Tired of the bullshit, Dan took out his knife, approached Andries and cut into the man’s right palm starting with the web between the index and middle fingers, going downwards while he held his hand clamped over the guy’s mouth. Andries screamed, tried to bite Dan’s hand, tears and snot began to flow and he pissed himself. Dan took three steps back, looked Andries in the eye once more and said “Stop lying or this will get worse and you will know agony ten times worse than your mother experienced when she pushed out the pineapple now standing before me”. “Now tell me, what is your name?” “Andries van der Merwe” came back tearfully. “Bullshit!” growled Dan and moved in once more. This time he put the tip of his knife under the left kneecap and pushed in slowly. Andries’ eyes got as big as they could, he wriggled furiously and managed to knee Dan in the groin with his right. It didn’t connect too well, but Dan kicked him in the nuts with his steel-toed safety shoe, and that made Andries vomit. Tired of the nonsense, Dan opened his pack and took out a rag and a roll of tape, then moved in once more, saying “From now you’re gonna have to super glue sunglasses above where your ears used to be…” When he heard that, Andries said “Enough! I’ll talk, just stop this!”
He talked. In fact, he wouldn’t shut the fuck up. His name was Werner van der Mescht and he was a reservist in the Military Police in Upington. When he wasn’t playing weekend warrior, he worked for a security company as occasional undercover operative to catch people stealing from their employers. Given what he’d seen, that made sense to Dan. It turned out he’d been grabbed when the president had activated all military units and somebody had the bright idea to use him as bait to lure fleeing whites to a kill house. That place was on a farm about three clicks away. It was usually run by a section (10 troops) which was led by a lieutenant and sometimes a captain from Military Intelligence. The phone was to send messages that he was on his way with a group of whites and when Dan checked it, there was no record of any numbers of Werner’s friends, just one. The cell networks weren’t down as such, it was just that the government only allowed certain numbers to have access while they barred the others. The guy wasn’t doing this for the fun of it or out of some Stockholm Syndrome-type of psychological bullshit. They’d grabbed his wife (no kids) and were holding her hostage in Upington while he did this. He only got a 5 minute call to her after he handed over a group, which wasn’t very often. He and his friends would’ve been the third such group in over a month. Dan had seen this kind of thing before, when otherwise good South African men (Afrikaners in his experience) would turn on friends who’d bled by their side because of their wives, so he bitterly said “Must’ve been some good pussy to make you turn race traitor, cock sucker!” Werner bristled a little at that, but kept quiet. Eventually, it seemed there was nothing useful coming out because Werner began to repeat himself, so Dan told him “Well, a promise is a promise. You got a minute to say your prayers and then I’m gonna put one in your head. I don’t know about those whom you betrayed, but rest assured you won’t see it coming.” The guy tried to plead, started crying again, begging for his life. Unmoved, Dan said “Quit fuckin’ around. Get right with Jesus, time’s wasting.”
Werner closed his eyes and began to pray. A promise is a promise, thought Dan. He took a step to the right and stuck his knife diagonally in the left side of Werner’s neck where it met the shoulder. He twisted the blade, then pulled it out. Just like he’d once read, he’d cut an artery and blood poured into Werner’s lungs. The man’s eyes flew open, he began to wriggle and tried to scream, but all that came out was a spray of blood. In 30 seconds he was very weak, and then with a final gasp and rattle, his head fell forward. The job wasn’t quite done yet, so Dan loosened Werner’s belt and pulled down his pants together with his underwear, reached for his crotch and began to cut. In seconds he held the man’s dick and balls, which he stuck in the corpse’s mouth. After that he taped the head to the tree, washed his hands with water from the dead man’s canteen, wiped his knife on the man’s jacket as a final insult and walked to his friends. He told them about the farm further ahead and said “This ain’t ISIS and we ain’t sand niggers looking to get laid in the next life, so we’re gonna move out now, way the fuck around those assholes. We gotta put at least 5 kilometers between them and us. Let’s cross the road and move left, at least two clicks out. It’s gonna be a long goddamned day…”
End of Part 20. To be continued…
Mircea Negres
Port Elizabeth
South Africa
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