“Let me come up and get you.”
Shaw looked at her curiously.
“I just think it’ll be easier that way. We can drive straight out to the main road.”
“And Waller won’t know anything about it, you mean?”
“That’s right.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“I’m sure you can, Bill.” She paused. “And so can I.”
CHAPTER
37
WALLER PLACED a sticky patch connected to a long thin cable against the side of Abdul-Majeed’s neck. Then he connected the line to a small battery-powered monitor that he turned on.
“What is that?” asked Abdul-Majeed nervously.
“It is nothing to worry about. It just measures your pulse. I do not have enough electrical power here to shock the truth out of you, my Muslim friend. But there are other ways.” Waller placed a cuff around the man’s arm and then plugged the cord running from the cuff into the same device as he had for the pulse reading. “And that of course measures your blood pressure.”
“Why do you need that?”
“Because I want to make sure I stop the pain before I kill you, of course.”
Abdul-Majeed tensed and began to chant under his breath.
“So your god is great, Abdul-Majeed?” said Waller, translating the words. “We will see how great he is to you.”
Abdul-Majeed did not answer, but kept up his chanting. Waller checked the readout of his vitals on the screen. “Your pulse is already at ninety-eight and your blood pressure is elevated, and I have not even started. You must relax your breathing; calm your nerves, my friend.”
“You will not break me!” the captive said defiantly.
Waller took duct tape out of his box and wound it around the man’s forehead, chin, and shoulders and around the table several times. The result was that Abdul-Majeed could not move his head or upper torso even an inch away from the wood.
“Do you know why I do this?” Waller asked. “It is so you will not be able to render yourself unconscious when the pain becomes too great. I have known men to crack their own skulls in order to escape it. I made that mistake once, but never again. Torture does not work if one cannot feel the pain.”
Waller pulled more items from his box, placed one in his pocket, and came back over to the table. “They say that the agony of a single kidney stone passing through one’s body is even greater than that experienced giving birth. I have never given birth, of course, but I have passed kidney stones and the pain is indeed severe.” He slipped on latex gloves, looked down at Abdul’s private parts, and then held up a thin glass tube twenty centimeters in length.
“This will have to serve as my kidney stone. Now take a deep breath. And then relax.”
Instead the man’s breathing accelerated and his cheeks bulged out as though he were tensing before the killing blow fell. “You will not break me!” he screamed over and over.
Waller methodically worked the glass tube up the man’s penis, using a rubber hammer to finish tapping it in. Abdul shrieked in pain with every millimeter it was thrust inside him.
“It is no more than a catheter, really. Now, this, this is the painful part.”
He slipped the vise grips from his pocket and looked at him. “All I require are names.”
“Go to hell!” screamed Abdul.
“Of course, very original of you.” Waller set the tension on the grips, lowered them into position, and snapped them into place, crushing the glass tube inside the man.
This time the scream was far louder than before. Waller’s men, who were waiting outside but near the door, looked at each other and then nervously moved away from the sounds. Only Pascal stayed close to the doorway, ever alert.
“You are bleeding in a place you would not like, Abdul,” said Waller, peering down at his work.