In The Land Of The Blind

Four

Four.

"Are you sure?" Master Sergeant Theo Ballantyne asked his boss.

"Yes, I'm sure. They must be holed up at Bumi." Captain Scott Rossouw replied. He was convinced that they had not gotten away. All flights had been grounded within hours of their abduction and SOU radars had not picked up any water vessels leaving Bumi that night. The only way out was over land, and they could catch them if they had gone that route.

Mark was still unconscious, having only just been operated on by one of Theo's field surgeons. Scott himself now had over forty stitches in his chest and neck, neatly administered onboard Theo's main boat. The field surgeon was really rather excellent, Scott thought, and he deserved the recommendation Scott would give him when he was back in the office.

They were soon to rendezvous with Bongoro, the SOU main ship in Kariba, 10kms North East of Bumi hills. There, they would question the blonde, Sally, and get some answers.

Under the constitution of Zimbabwe, torture was illegal. But the members of the countries CIO, or Criminal Investigation Organization, had used torture to gain information from terrorists for decades. It had gotten to the point where there was now a bylaw that authorized members of the CIO to use drastic means to procure information, especially if that information was paramount to the nation's deemed security. Even so, torture was not something the SOU looked upon favourably.

However, in this particular instance, Scott and Theo recognized the need to put the fear of God into this blonde woman, and it was for this very reason that most SOU units had at least one member of the CIO in the ranks. Tendai Mkudzi had worked for the CIO for fifteen years, and had been assigned to the Kariba SOU unit for the past eight months, acquiring the rank of Specialist. And it was for precisely this sort of situation that he was stationed with the PMC.

They were on shore now, having motored across the Sanyati bay to Tetse Island. They had tied Sally to a live Mopane tree, her hands behind the tree and her feet tied together.

"You will tell me who you work for." Tendai had an almost lyrical voice, resonating on a note that should have belonged in a musical, Theo thought.

"No." Sally said defiantly. Her eyes though, already betrayed her, and Tendai could tell already that hardly any force would be needed to make her talk, if any at all.

"Yes, you will. For you see, you yourself are an artist in torture. You know how to extract information using the perfect amount of pain and suffering."

Tendai's English was perfect, for he had spent two years at Cambridge university in England when he was a young man.

"I, on the other hand, am not nearly as skilled. The wounds that I will inflict on you will be crude and heavy." Tendai pulled his bayonet from its sheath on his leg. The sound it made as it was drawn was enough to make Sally weak at the knees. Yes, just as Tendai thought, this blonde woman, despite her skill at admistering pain, could not take it.

Tendai touched the tip of the blade on Sally's cheek, gently running it across her face to her other cheek without cutting her. But the cold touch of the steel was enough, and Sally's conviction to keep quite went out the window as quickly as her courage.

Amy van der Linde sat on the main deck of Bumi hills watching the sun rise. She had hardly slept at all, her handler making sure of that. She also knew that the mission was far from over. She had long gotten over any sense of guilt that these operations might have generated.

It truly is a beautiful place, she thought as she watched the magnificence of the African dawn, a spectacle that could not be appreciated until seen.