Read Random Violence for Free Online Page A

be glad of the pain.
    He was a strong man and, although he was pushing fifty-five, still a tough man. He’d thought he was too hard, too experienced to fall victim to an attack like this. But he’d been taken by surprise because it had been slick, so slick, and com-pletely unexpected. Done with military precision. He’d done a few years in the army way back during apartheid. He knew training when he saw it. He’d been outnumbered. And he was familiar with the brutal intent these men showed.
    They’d handcuffed and gagged him. They’d yanked his laptop from the power supply and taken his cell phone. Then they’d searched his files. He’d shaken his head and shrugged. Whatever they wanted, he wasn’t going to point it out to them. An operation like this, he was in deep shit anyway. He’d recognized the signs.
    The tall man had shouted at him and punched him in the stomach with an iron fist, so hard that he’d doubled over in agony. He’d braced himself for a brutal beating, but the man with the gun had intervened.
    “Leave him. Not here, not now.”
    “We could take the gag off and question him.”
    “And if he shouts?”
    “We need the info.”
    “It’s recent. Probably nothing’s been filed yet. Anyway, he’s all we need. And this.” He indicated the laptop.
    Then they’d marched him down to the car and, at gun-point, forced him into it.
    Slowly, fighting the gag, he’d screamed his voice away. Now his throat felt ragged and he could taste blood in the back of his mouth. Even if the gag was removed, there was nothing he could do now. He’d been stupid. He had wasted his voice.
    The cable ties that bound his hands behind his back had been too tight to begin with. His hands had swollen now, which made the thin plastic even tighter. His wrists throbbed with a hard hot rhythm in time to the panicked beating of his heart. Every time he moved, a bolt of pain shot up his arms. He wondered if he’d ever be able to use his hands again. Then he realized that was the least of his problems.
    He always instructed his clients to try to loosen the car-peting on the inside of their car’s trunk so that they could kick out a rear light if they were held captive in a hijacked vehicle. The carpeting in this vehicle was sturdy. In the dark-ness, it took him a long time to work out where the lights were. Eventually he followed the curve of the trunk’s lid and found the area by feel. He tried to grab the edge of the carpet with his swollen fingers and yank it away.
    It didn’t work. He lost a nail. The red, tearing agony as it ripped out of his finger squeezed a flood of tears from his eyes. His nose blocked and he sobbed in desperation, fighting for breath as the gag threatened to choke him. Deep in his gut he knew that this was it. You didn’t get let out and set free when you were tied up in the back of a car. Only worse would happen.
    The car stopped. The heat pulsing through the metal above him reduced just a little. The engine was switched off. In the shade, he thought, with odd clarity. They had stopped in the shade.
    Then the lid was flung open.
    He shrank away from the light that burnt his eyes, filtered only by a thin layer of dry leaves and twigs from the tree above him.
    Blinking in the low rays of the sun, he looked up at the man who stood there. The tall man. The one with the cold, empty eyes.
    He could only watch. The man lit a cigarette.
    “Get out.”
    He sat up, knocking his head on the top of the open lid, and a wave of dizziness caught him. The world spun, and for a moment he thought it would spin away. Then it righted itself. With legs that trembled so violently they could hardly work, he wriggled up until he was sitting on the rim of the trunk. Then he pushed himself over. He lost his balance and fell head first onto the stony ground.
    “Get up.”
    He swung onto his knees and staggered to his feet. His bare feet, bruised from kicking and struggling during the journey. The stones hurt his soles.