Asuty and the other man now held him up as a shield. Asuty let off a few rounds from his machine gun.
Two bearded men jumped out of the brush behind Dirk Lange, guns drawn. Stone watched Lange curse and slowly stand, raising his arms. Asuty yelled at his men in Arabic to find the woman.
“Your choice,” Asuty hollered. “Lay down your gun or he dies.”
Sandra rose from the tall grass and swung her rifle back and forth from Asuty to the two men holding Lange. “Take as many out as you can,” Stone growled under his taped mouth. Do it. Do it.
Seconds passed. Finally, she tossed the Browning rifle in the grass and came forward. Stone hoped she had a trick up her sleeve, like shooting them with a hidden Glock, but she continued to walk, hands now raised, toward where Lange was held. She had her hands bound and both were marched to the boxcar.
As the three were pushed to the ground next to the wheels of the railcar, Asuty growled. “That was easier than I thought it would be. You CIA are not much of a threat after all.”
For a half hour the beatings continued until the sun had dropped below the horizon and the savanna colors faded. The blows were administered not to gain information or to avenge their dead comrade — merely for sport. Stone had read accounts from victims of jihadist torture. Always at some point the punishment administered shifted from a religious connotation — and this was from the victims’ recollections — to a sensual, even sexual enjoyment.
Stone took most of the abuse and he felt himself weakening from the assault. He tried to shift his consciousness to another realm as his Tibetan friend in Lhasa had taught him. Thank goodness he had met her and she had shared her wisdom.
No broken bones yet, but a good deal of torn flesh. Stone’s capturers repeated the blows to areas where blood appeared. Asuty enjoyed head kicks, but his attention turned to Sandra.
“Hit her stomach and legs. Do not mark her face,” Asuty ordered. “We will have fun before we kill them.”
His men became excited. Stone saw from Sandra’s expression that she understood what Asuty meant. He also knew if the opportunity arose, she would kill him.
“Remove her pants,” Asuty ordered. “And carry her over to the back of the truck.”
Stone saw the flatbed truck that had pulled up during the beatings. The jihadists lost interest in hitting him and moved over for the show. Stone flipped over on his stomach and went into a kneeling position. His feet were bound at the ankles, his hands behind his back. With his fingers he searched for the release switch on the heel of his boot. He found it and the inserted knife blade snapped out. He easily slit the duct tape around his wrists and ankles, got to his feet, and lunged toward the men carrying Sandra’s prone body.
Stone used his body as a ramming device. He and three of the assailants tumbled to the ground. The other men seized Stone and dragged him toward the boxcar. Asuty tossed Sandra aside and yelled a long succession of Arabic curses, approaching Stone with a knife.
Stone’s pants were yanked down and as Asuty placed a knife to his genitals, two gunshots stopped him. Asuty and his men froze.
“Don’t we have more important tasks at hand, Nabeel?” came a hard voice speaking in Arabic.
Another voice in English sneered, “Bloody lowlifes your men are, Abdul.”
Stone twisted his head around and through swollen eyelids saw Abdul Wahab and Dawid van Wartt standing a few feet away. Wahab had a Beretta pistol leveled at Asuty’s stomach.
Van Wartt and his companion, Bull Rhyton, took little time gathering the guns from Asuty and his men. Bull threw them in the backseat of an old Land Rover.
“Nabeel, dear friend,” Wahab said, still pointing his automatic, “you may have these back when you leave with the bomb. For now, your hands will be full moving the bomb to the truck.”
Asuty stood expressionless and Stone wondered what he was thinking. What was more interesting, months before on the Riviera, Stone had seen Wahab at a party but never heard his voice — it was deeper and had more authority than he had expected.
Wahab continued, “Shall we look at what we’ve paid for?” He motioned with the gun toward the open door of the boxcar.
Bull came over to Stone and motioned for him to stand up. When he did, he yanked up Stone’s trousers and told him to go and sit next to Lange and Sandra. Bull cradled his submachine gun and used it to wave Asuty’s men over to their flatbed truck. He knelt down next to Sandra and closed her shirt, cursing low in Afrikaans. At that point Dirk Lange made a loud sound under his taped mouth and nodded his head.
The Afrikaner rose and asked Lange if he was a Landsman. Again, Lange nodded vigorously. Stone watched the wide-shouldered man glare at Asuty’s men milling about the truck, now guarded by two of Van Wartt’s men.
Wahab, Van Wartt, and Asuty had climbed into the boxcar and were examining the bomb, which Stone now saw for the first time. Bull interrupted Stone’s attention when he reached down and carefully pulled back the tape from Lange’s mouth. Dirk’s right eye was swollen, and blood ran down his ear. He whispered a few minutes to Bull, who partially replaced the tape so that it drooped.
Interesting and encouraging, Stone thought and noted the same impression in Sandra’s eyes. His attention went back to the nuclear weapon inside the boxcar. The terrorists held flashlights that illuminated the same fat, brutish bomb that had appeared in the photographs he studied a day before in the CIA safe house. Stone had never been in the presence of a nuclear bomb. As he studied it, he tried to fathom the awesome destruction contained within the bronze-colored metal casing. Then there was the radiation leakage. How bad was it?
Wahab, Van Wartt, and Asuty seemed to be perplexed about how they were going to move the heavy object onto the flatbed truck.
Bull jumped from the boxcar and walked in the direction of Asuty’s men, who had assembled by the truck, speaking quietly. He stopped, placed the submachine gun on his shoulder, and shot a worried glanced back at Lange.
Van Wartt ordered the truck to be pulled alongside the boxcar and instructed Asuty to position his men to move the bomb while Van Wartt’s two men watched with guns ready. The makeshift crane on the flatbed truck didn’t look capable of lifting the heavy metal mass, but it could drag it. Bull climbed on the back of the truck and directed the maneuver. The crane pulled rather than lifted the bulk resting on a wooden pallet onto the flatbed, straining the truck’s suspension and flattening its rear tires. After securing the bomb with ropes, a ragged canvas tarp was thrown over it. They were ready to move to the airstrip, and Stone knew the next order of business was the disposition of him and his two companions. Would Abdul Wahab do the killing?
Asuty leaped from the truck and shouted in Arabic to two jihadists. They walked purposefully in Stone’s direction. At the same time, Stone saw that Bull was talking to Van Wartt and pointing to Dirk Lange. Bull knew that Lange was a South African and an Afrikaner. Did he suspect Lange was an intelligence officer? Van Wartt turned away, but Bull continued to speak, now gesturing with his hands.
The two henchmen approaching with Asuty had large grins. Asuty spoke as if addressing a classroom of students. “Time to die.” He waved back to the truck, enjoyment in his eyes. “This bomb is a message to your corrupt world.”
“We don’t have time for this nonsense.” It was Van Wartt speaking, aiming an automatic at Asuty’s head. Bull and Van Wartt’s men covered the jihadists standing on the truck. “Get your bloody asses on the truck. Now!”
Asuty straightened and lifted his chin. “They will die. Then we leave.” He motioned to the man next to him, who drew an automatic pistol from inside his shirt.