But how?
“Baby,” Hartline said, a very slight and somehow strange smile playing across his lips, “you’re not yourself tonight. What’s wrong?”
Something in his voice caused her to turn around and look at him as he lounged in an easy chair. His smile was filled with sarcasm. And suddenly she knew-knew- he had been playing her for a fool. She had underestimated the man from the beginning. Everything he had told her, and she had told Lois, had been false information. Those people from the local resistance, those people who had been picked up …
Her fault.
“You goddamn son of a bitch!” she cussed him.
He laughed at her. “Whatever in the world is the matter, sweetmeat?”
“Bastard!”
He rose from his chair with the fluid motion of a man in superb physical condition, and Hartline was all of that. He walked toward her. “Honey, don’t you think I know what a house nigger is? My grandpappy came from Alabama. All us Hartlines fought for the Gray way back then. Seems like you coons would wise up after a time. You shines blew it, baby. Everything that’s coming at you jungle bunnies, you folks did to yourselves.”
Peggy could not believe her ears, could not believe what Hartline was saying.
“History proves you niggers aren’t as good as white people. And history is seldom wrong. That’s what’s the matter with the world, why it got in the shape it’s in. Folks just refused to study the mistakes of the past. They just kept repeating them.” He grinned at her. It was not a pleasant sight. “Strip, baby.”
“W-what?”
“You heard me, sweetmeat: strip! Get bare-assed. Shuck your clothes. Do it.”
Hartline was overpowering to almost all who met him. He was big and tough and quick and mean. He was powerful, immensely strong. And he enjoyed hurting people. Peggy had heard stories about his methods of torture.
“Dealing with male prisoners,” Hartline began his lecture to a group of government agents, “is quite different from dealing with female prisoners. Man is and has been traditionally the protector of the home, the strong one. You must handle the male roughly-right from the beginning. You must assault his male pride, his virility, his manhood, his penis power. You take the clothes from him by force and leave him naked and feeling defenseless before you. He will immediately lose much of his arrogant pride.
“With a woman it is quite different. Use physical force with a woman only as a last resort. You order her to remove her own clothing. You demand it. Make her disrobe. By doing that her dignity has, from the beginning, rotted. That is a very important first step in dealing with a woman prisoner.
“Don’t allow them sleep. Interrupt a prisoner every few moments while they are trying to rest in their cell. They will be imagining all sorts of dire and exotic tortures lying in wait for them. Lack of sleep disturbs the brain patterns-disrupts the norm, so to speak.
“I will give you gentlemen an example.” Hartline motioned toward a man standing by a closed door.
The door opened and two of Hartline’s men pushed a young man out into the large meeting room. The man was in his mid-twenties, unshaven, red and bleary-eyed. He was pushed onto the small stage.
“Good morning, Victor,” Hartline said cheerfully. “Did you sleep well?”
Victor said nothing.
“Remove your clothing, Victor.”
“Fuck you.”
Hartline laughed and motioned toward the two burly men. They wrestled the young man to the floor and ripped his clothing from him. They pulled him to his feet to stand naked, facing the roomful of strangers.
“You see, Victor,” Hartline said, “you are a baby. I can do anything I wish with you, anytime I choose to do so. Remember that, Victor, it might save you-or someone you love-a lot of pain. Now then, Victor, who is the leader of your cell?”
Victor refused to reply.
Hartline shook his head and clucked his tongue in a scolding manner. “Victor, why are you doing this? You know you’re going to tell me-sooner or later.”
“If you’re going to torture me,” the young man said, “get it over with.”
Hartline laughed, exposing strong, white, even teeth. “Oh, Victor! I’m not going to torture you, my boy. Oh my, no.” He cut his eyes to the man waiting by the closed door.
The door opened and a young woman was dragged into the room. Both Victor and the young woman had the same pale eyes, delicate features and skin coloration.
They were brother and sister.
“Rebecca!” Victor yelled. He tried to get to her. Strong hands held him firm. “You son of a bitch!” he cursed Hartline.
The mercenary laughed at him. “Tie him into that chair over there,” he said, pointing. “Hands behind the back, ankles to the legs.”
Hartline looked at the woman. Something evil and perverted touched his eyes. “Now, my dear, you may disrobe.”
“No, I won’t,” she said defiantly, holding her chin high.
Hartline chuckled. “Oh, I think you shall, Rebecca. Yes, I believe you shall.”
He picked up a small cattle-prod and adjusted the level of voltage. He walked to Victor’s side, then lifted his eyes to the woman. “Take off your clothing, dear.”
“No,” she whispered.
Hartline touched the battery-operated prod to Victor’s bare arm. The young man jerked and screamed in pain.
“Don’t do it, sis,” he yelled. “I can stand it.”
Hartline laughed and touched the prod to Victor’s penis. The man screamed in agony and thrashed against his bonds, his jerking toppling over the chair.
“All right,” Rebecca said. “Don’t hurt him. I’ll do what you say.”
“Good girl,” Hartline told her.
As she disrobed, Hartline walked around her, commenting on her figure: the slender shapeliness of her legs, the firmness of her breasts, the jutting nipples, and finally the mat of pubic hair.
The agents in the room whistled and made lewd remarks. Hartline smiled. “You see, boys. There are benefits to be reaped from all this. Or should I say raped?”
The men laughed.
Hartline ran his hands over the young woman’s naked flesh, lingering between her legs, his middle finger busy. He laughed at her embarrassment as his finger penetrated her. He glanced at Victor, now righted in his chair. “The name of your cell leader, young man. For I assure you, game time is over.”
Rebecca urged her brother not to tell him. “We’re not worth anything to him dead, Victor.”
“How astute of you, dear,” Hartline said. “But sometimes death is preferable to living.”
Doubt sprang into her eyes.
“Oh yes, my dear. I have seen human beings reduced to madmen, every inch of skin stripped from them-and still they lived, begging and praying to die. I have seen, ah, I do so hate to be crude … various objects forced into a man’s anus, including rather large penises. I have seen what happens to a man when a thin, hollow tube of glass is inserted into the penis and tapped lightly with a club. The pain is quite excruciating-so I’m told.”
She spat in his face.
Hartline wiped the spittle from his cheek and chin. “You’ll pay for that.” He looked at Victor. “Talk to me, Victor baby.”
Victor shook his head.
Hartline leaned down and kissed one nipple, running his tongue around the nipple, thoroughly wetting it. He straightened and placed the cattle prod on
Rebecca’s breast. “One of you will,” he said.
The rape had been going on for more than two hours. Victor watched as the tenth man mounted his sister as if she were a dog. He could no longer tolerate her screaming. She was bleeding from vagina and anus.
“All right,” the young man said. “I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
