The frustration was evident on Neil’s face and James blew through his attempt to reason with James, to not drive off into the dark woods next to the already dark path they were on. James’ mind was made up, and it had not just happened at lunch he never had a doubt about what had to happen and just how important it was that the requests were followed to the letter.
Well before sunset they were watching Brandt’s cottage. They watched the old man sit on the porch, smoke a cigarette, and have a drink. The air was slightly chilly and Brant was wrapped up well in a large blanket. They watched as the sun dipped below the horizon and the long shadows became darkness, the orange glow from the inside of the small building made it look so isolated, made the night around it seem that much more dark.
They sat, waiting a sky full of stars above them, the Milky Way looked close enough to touch in the high mountain air. James and Neil remarked to each other about its beauty, both recalling nights not much different from this in the Balkan Mountains and the Alps of northern Italy. Then as the lights went out in the cottage before them there was silence.
James looked at the duffle of supplies to his right, touched it lightly with his hand, and looked to Neil. Neil was screwing a suppressor on to the barrel of his .32 caliber revolver. James pulled a blackjack from his coat pocket secured in around his left wrist and pulled a suppressed pistol of his own from inside his coat. He motioned to the cottage. The two moved slowly to the little cabin, as quietly as the breeze softly pushing against their faces.
The porch on the cottage wrapped around two thirds of the north and west sides, they paused at the steps both of them feeling the familiar change in their pulse and the focus of their thoughts. Neil crept onto the porch first, pistol out, working diligently to minimize the noise made by the porch slats, he stopped and crouched left of the door, and James traced his path stopping at the right of the door. James reached up and turned the door knob, it turned and the door lightly swung inward.
Neil reached out with his left hand and pushed the door open the rest of the way slowly, to his surprise the door opened with almost no noise. With his small revolver up he entered the cottage, a large room with a kitchen adjoined to it, straight in front two doors and a door on the wall to the left. The interior was lightly illuminated mainly from starlight, there was no moon. Despite this the two were able to see well enough to navigate with in the room.
Neil looked to the door on the left wall, and looked back to James, James nodded, and Neil moved slowly to the door. Swinging the door open centered on the far wall was a neatly made bed with a single night stand, and an armoire, other than that the room was bare. The two backed out of the room and focused on the next door clockwise from their location.
Neil first again opened the door, he was low as he moved with his right foot first, another bed visible directly in front of him he could see the covers were disturbed and just as he noticed the covers were turned back and the bed was empty he paused. It was that pause that saved him from a fractured skull, an axe handle missed him by fractions of an inch, but swept the cap from his head. He recoiled taking a half step back and the figure with the axe handle stepped in front of him. Neil raised his pistol it was aimed at the torso reflexively, again Neil paused as he changed direction, he made a well-placed shot to Brandt’s left shin and the figured dropped, Neil moved forward making way for James to enter the room behind him. James’ blackjack made a sick wet slap as it hit the right front of Brandt’s skull and the old man was out.
***
Neil bandaged the man’s shin and James went to the kitchen for a chair, when James returned Neil ran back outside and to their hide and returned with the duffle full of gear. The two hoisted the small man’s body into the chair and securely tied him to it.
“I’m going to check this room next door.” James said as he was leaving the bedroom.
Neil heard the door swing open and then silence, they were both still using small penlights at the time and Neil was startled by the sudden appearance of flooding light that was spilling out of the room next door, “James?”
“You need to come over here Neil.”
Neil stood up after tying the last knot and walked to the room next door, the light was more than he was ready for and he shielded his eyes from it. When he had adjusted he looked around the room, “What the fuck is this?”
“I’d say old habits die hard.”
The room was well lit, lights hung at each corner, the windows had been covered over and the walls were obviously at least twice as thick as normal, a peek at the door and it was clearly over a foot thick. Chains were suspended from the ceiling, leather cuffs dangling just above head high. Two large pythons were in a glass tank on the wall to their right, a table with various knives, cleavers and saws neatly lined and gleaming in all their surgical glory. A hose was coiled on the far wall and two drains in a floor covered in stainless steel told a gruesome tale.
“I don't think we are going to need the tarp James.”
“Sounds like you might be over your misgivings about the bonus money?”
“Yea, I think that sounds pretty accurate, let’s get that fuck over here.”
***
James and Neil waited, Brandt was still unconscious, but they had removed him from the old wooden kitchen chair and suspended him from his own chains. Brandt’s feet only just touched the ground, his hands were red where the cuff bit and the weight of his body pulled at them. James looked at his Omega, “Let’s wake him up.”
Neil nodded and took two loops of hose down from the wall aimed the nozzle at Brandt and gave him a good spray in the face. Brandt’s hair washed down over his face and he coughed and thrashed as he broke the surface of consciousness.
“Ah, guten Abend Herr Brandt.” James shouted to the struggling old man.
“Wie nett von Ihnen, diesen raum für uns gesetzt.”
Brandt coughed water, “Sie ficken”
James smiled, “No need to be so rude dear Wolfram, I was simply complimenting your room here, this is going to make things so much easier for us.”
“Piss auf Sie.”
“I suspect you will piss yourself yes, I hope not to get any on me though. If you would be so kind and smile for my partner here, he needs to take your picture.”
Neil placed the now wound clock on a table behind Brandt and lined up a shot with the Leica and took a picture.
“You see Herr Brandt, sometimes the things we do in life come back to get us. That’s why we’re here.”
Brandt spit at James, and began thrashing against his chains swearing in German, trying to work himself loose. James wiped the spittle from his jacket, “Don't trust your own handy work? Think you can get out of your own little play room?”
“Mich im Stich gelassen.” Brandt screamed, red in the face he flopped like a fish on shore trying to get back to the water.
“Okay, well if you're ready we can get started.” James smiled.
Neil grabbed the rope they had tied around his ankles and fed through the pulley on the wall and pulled his feet out from under him. Brandt was now suspended stretched out like a hammock.
James grabbed a long slender steel rod from the table, and swung it back and forth, it gave a vicious swish as it cut through the air. Brandt’s eyes widened. The first strike landed across the ribs, blood welling just below the skin quickly turned the area a dark crimson. Brandt rolled and howled, he arched his back and the angle of the ropes turned him arms stretched back behind his head, chest out.
The milky whiteness of his feet made a target James was unwilling to resist. James doled out three quick blows to the bottoms of Brandt’s feet. The third broke the skin and blood was lightly streaming out.
“Genug.” Brandt screamed then, “Genug.” again more of a pant, and he sobbed, blubbering streams of saliva and mucus that stuck in his beard.
“No.” Neil said, “It is not enough, and it won't ever be enough, but we are going to give it our best shot.” He punched the man in
the face.
They lowered his feet back to the floor and James went back to work with the steel rod working around the midsection, concentrating on the ribs and the back this time. Occasionally he would strike the hamstrings or the calves. Brandt was bleeding in a dozen places, long narrow bands of blood where the rod had hit just right to split his skin open. Somewhere in the flurry Brandt had indeed pissed himself and James took some satisfaction that he did not have any on him. “Let’s get some pictures Neil.”
Neil snapped some pictures trying to get the clock in the background of most, the close ups were impossible to have the clock but they told a story all of their own. Pictures had been a condition of the bonus as had the clock.
The group wanted to make sure it was a lengthy process of suffering, they had agreed and considered his age and general health, and had decided they would be happy with a minimum of eight hours but, were willing to be flexible.
James could sense he was going to have to slow down, the old man was not a picture of fitness, and he motioned to Neil that they should leave the room. He was going to give the injuries some time to swell a bit, let some of the endorphins flush from his system so he could get back to work with some new pain for the old sadist.
Neil closed the door behind him, “That little rod does some nasty work.”
“Indeed it does, I’ll bet that stings real good, nice warm up for that bastard, we’ll give him twenty minutes or so, I’d like to get him down and into that chair he has in there.”
“I’m going to smoke, get some air.”
“Neil, that look to you like he had used that room yet?”
“Don't know, hard to tell why?”
“Just like to think that we are the first ones to put it to use, it would make it that much more satisfying to know that all his hard work and he’s the one bleeding on the floor.”
“You always were an optimist James.” Neil stepped out the front door.
***
Back in the room, Brandt’s legs had given way and he was hanging from the cuff around his wrists, his fingers were purple and he was breathing in hitches. The marks that the rod had left were rising into nice welts, the blood was coagulating and had formed some crusty streaks down into the old man’s boxers.
James worked the pulleys to let Brandt down into a rugged steel chair Neil guided him to it, he screamed out in pain as they pushed him back up into the chair and secured the bindings around his chest to hold him upright.
“Ich kann Sie zahlen, Ich habe Gold,” Brandt mumbled, and then again.
Neil pulled the last wrist binding tight, “Pay us, you're going to pay us alright. It won't be the way you think, and I don't want your Nazi gold.”
Brandt’s eyes opened, his good eye staring at Neil, "Juden. Du arbeitest für die Juden. Devils".
Neil reached to the table, and with his right hand grabbed a scalpel, at the same time he was forcing Brandt’s head back with his left, peeling that good eye open wide. When Brandt saw the scalpel coming to his one good eye he screamed in pure horror. Neil brought the blade in close, let the blade drag along the cheek, blood ran out quickly from the cut. Brandt shrieked. Neil would have liked to cut the eye from the socket right there but there was still so much to do and he wanted this demon to see it.
James took pictures of Brandt in the chair, ever present clock in the back ground. He took the hose and washed the blood from the man’s body, the deep bruising becoming that much more apparent. More pictures.
Now Neil worked on the right side of his face, a few hits with his fist and two teeth came out. Blood was oozing out of his mouth in stringy clumps with every breath. Very quickly the milky dead eye was swollen shut. They let Brandt catch his breath and calm down.
James grabbed a set of hemostats from the table, clamped down on one of the thick yellow toenails on a toe bent and twisted from a lifetime of wearing the boots of a soldier. With the hemostats securely clamped to his toenail, James placed two fingers in the handles and pulled.
And so it went like that for the rest of the night. The two of them traded back and forth one resting while the other worked.
For nine hours they continued, and Brandt was a bloody swollen mess, they had snapped through three rolls of film. The two had taken great care to stay away from his left eye making sure he would see them right up to the end.
Finally the two had decided this work had gone on long enough. James unbuckled Brandt's wrists from the chair arms and secured them into the ceiling cuffs again. The two removed the rest of the chair's bindings and hoisted Brandt vertical.
Neil cut off the blood, urine, and feces stained boxer shorts. Neil was happy once again for convenience of the hose. Brandt only murmured as they moved him about.
They stood back and took another round of photos, James looked at Neil and Neil at James, and they shared a moment of unspoken discomfort. Neil backed up a step, “You know, you are the president, and I think this one should be all you.”
“You do? Maybe I should delegate.”
Neil shrugged, “Fuck it, I’ll do it. We’ve come this far, done this much.”
“No, this is mine to do, I made this deal. Tie his feet.”
James picked up a pair of hemostats from the table, he turned them over, picked up the scalpel. He turned and looked at Brandt, beaten and bleeding, his body hanging limply from his wrists.
The old man was done, and James was glad, he was tired himself, this had been a long process for all of them, and he was certain Neil was physically and mentally shot also. This was so far beyond what they had been accustomed to doing.
James walked up to Brandt, “Wolfram, there are just two things left to do, one you will not like very much, the other I suspect you will welcome.”
James knelt, he affixed the hemostats to Brandt’s foreskin, the old man came to life, first murmured, and his eyes came open as he began to realize what was happening. “Nein! Nein! Nein! Nein! Nein!” He shouted.
He began to move back and forth, straining against the chains, pulling the rope at his feet, trying as hard as he could to get away from James.
James had the hemostats clutched tightly in his left hand, they were doing damage all on their own as Brandt struggled. James looked the man in the eye, and he looked down, Brandt became still and his good eye followed James’ gaze down.
James had moved his right hand slightly, and it was holding the scalpel that in the hours before had taken Brandt’s ear, his nostril, his nipple, and one toe. James moved it quickly and it sliced off Brandt’s penis.
Brandt howled, he moved and bucked with no regard for the other pain his body had endured. Blood ran from his crotch and streaked down his legs, the floor became more slick and he struggled to support his own weight. James placed the severed member in a tin and poured salt in on it. Neil took another series of photos.
James watched as Brandt continued to writhe and scream, he slapped him and Brandt settled to a whimper, “Wolfram, you have taken advantage of the weak and the helpless, inflicted pain to more people that I care to know. You are an embodiment of evil. I hope that this is only the beginning of the hell that waits for you.”
“Fuck y...” Brandt started, but was interrupted by Neil, as he had placed the barrel of his pistol against the lower right edge of Brandt’s ribs and fired a downward shot into his liver.
Brandt was coughing blood as Neil took two more pictures, and the two gathered what little they had from the room, the dark crimson blood almost black ran down his side, his head was down and he was sobbing as Neil turned off the lights and closed the door, leaving him to die.
***
July 4, 1976
Now standing alone on the front step of Julia’s house Gary was trying to piece together what was going on. The car that had just picked her up and been occupied by what Gary saw as two very real corporals from the Air Force. He massaged at his temples with the thumb and middle finger of his left hand, he could hear sirens off in the distance.
H
e looked out into the yard and across the street, there were people on their porches they were looking east. Gary stepped off the step and into the yard, he turned east. He could see a dark plume rising, a thunderstorm, the thought at first, but then he backed up, it only took a second for him to realize the formation in the sky was not some thunderhead building, it was the cloud off of an explosion, he had seen enough of them to know something big had been leveled, and someone had used a lot of explosives to do it.
Gary looked over his shoulder, there was a couple standing in their front yard, Gary yell over to them, “You guys have any idea what happened?”
“TV said it was Rosenblatt, some kind of explosion.” The woman answered.
“The baseball stadium you said?”
“Yea, they think it might be some kind of gas line problem, they are evacuating a big area down there I guess.”
“Hell of a deal.” Gary answered back as he began to walk away from the couple and down the street.
Gary needed a phone, and he needed one quickly, he began to run, it was just a few blocks back to the park and there was a pay phone there on the street. His mind was racing with the possible scenarios playing out across town from him.
***
In just the few minutes it took him to run the six blocks he could tell there were more sirens coming in from other directions now. He took two breaths and dropped a quarter into the slot, and dialed. It rang once and it was answered.
“Yes?” asked a voice through the line.
“Call me back, now.”
Gary waited, he watched the seconds go by on the Omega, he knew that there was switching that had to take place to get a secure outgoing line, fifteen seconds, seemed so long, and his fingers were tingling. He tapped his foot leaning against the phone booth, head on a swivel up and down the street, forty-five seconds now. His hand was on the receiver white knuckled waiting, it rang, half a ring and he had it picked up and to his ear, “We good?”
Killing Sanford (Gary Cannon Book 1) Page 14