The CRES code

Chapter Seventy - Man Management

     "He lives," said Loach at last. "For the moment."

     Brick and Sandbag stared at him. "Boss?" said Brick in confusion.

     "He's right He's too valuable to us alive, for the time being." He stared down at the former businessman, who was too fatigued and exhausted to look relieved. "There must still be punishment, though. Will you please explain that to him, gentlemen?"

     The two henchmen grinned and, taking Randall by the shoulders, they pulled him away from the mob boss into an area of open ground. Then Brick punched him in the stomach as hard as he could. A deliberate attempt to damage delicate organs and rupture blood vessels. Randall was thrown back, doubled over, his breath expelled from his lungs in a great OOOOFF! Then he fell to his hands and knees and threw up, spitting out spatters of bile to stain the muddy, fallen leaves that covered the ground. He tried to breathe, but the blow had emptied his lungs far more than they ever should be emptied and he had to make a deliberate attempt to suck the air in while his ears were filled with the pounding of his heart. A sickening ache began to settle in the pit of his stomach.

     More blows followed, the two men taking turns to hammer his face, his stomach and his kidneys with their great, meaty fists while the two women watched with horror. Loach smiled with pleasure. "I would dearly love to be doing that to you myself," he said as the two thugs paused to catch their breath. "However, my battle with the Chieftain has left me a little frail, for the time being. Never mind, watching is almost as good as doing. Please continue, gentlemen.

      The henchmen nodded and resumed their battery of Randall, for whom the universe had shrunk to a tiny bubble of misery and pain. "Stop it!" cried Jane, running forward and trying to pull at Sandbag's thick-muscled forearm with her tiny hands. He shrugged her off and she staggered back with a cry. She turned to stare at Loach, begging with her eyes. "They're killing him!"

     "Hmm," said the mob boss thoughtfully. "Maybe you're right. We don't want him crippled or we'll have to carry him the rest of the way." The two henchmen looked up at him and paused in their work, blood on their fists and splattered across their clothes and faces. Loach gave a small hand gesture and they stepped away from their victim, who collapsed into the mud, moaning and sobbing as he pulled himself into a fetal position.

     "Get him on his feet," said Loach, and the two men took him by an arm each, pulling him upright. Randall tried to raise his bloodied head, tried to look at the mob boss through eyes that were already beginning to swell closed.

     "Consider that a down payment," said Loach. "We will discuss the wisdom of betraying me at length on some future occasion, I assure you. In the meantime, though, I think it's time for us to go meet your friends." He turned to Brick. "I want you to keep a knife pressed to his back at all times. If you think he's about to betray us again, or if you just feel like it, kill him. Also kill him if he fails to obey any order I give him."

     "You got it, Boss." The henchman pulled a wicked looking knife from his belt and pressed it against Randall's right kidney. The former businessman winced as he felt it pierce his clothing and jab into his flesh. He knew there'd be a cut in his skin there when he examined it later. If there was a later for him.

     Loach then began walking through the trees towards the sounds of industrial activity coming from the other side. The others followed, and as they went, Sandbag went to walk beside the mob boss. "Are we going to get the gold now?" he asked hopefully.

     Randall gave a bitter laugh through teeth that now felt loose in their sockets. "There is no gold, you idiot," he said. "We just made up the gold to get the noblemen to help us. We needed the manpower." He felt the knife jabbing deeper into his side as Brick tensed up angrily.