Read Ultimate Power for Free Online

would say anything to get out of that unbearable predicament, they would sign a contract to wipe out their families if they had to.
    That was the beginning. When the body was suffering sufficiently, the mind was next. Repetition was the key to breaking a man's mind. Don't give them a chance to think, to compartmentalize the pain.  
    He once interrogated a guy where all they did was take turns shaking the man's chair for a couple of hours, they didn't question him, just reminded him that this was going to go on for the rest of his life. After three hours, the prisoner started to vomit and begged them to stop. He sang like a little canary afterward.
    Laiveaux looked up as the interrogator grabbed his chest and hammered two quick jabs into his nose. Laiveaux shook his head, his vision had gone blurry, but that would return soon.
    Anyway, another method he had used with a lot of success was the Vietnamese method of drip torture. You would place a prisoner's head beneath a tap or a bucket with a hole in it, tie his head down securely. The water would drip onto their foreheads, drip, drip, drip, incessantly, the dreaded monotony of anticipating the next drop broke the mind sooner than any physical blow could. It felt like your head was going to explode.
    He had been through this for two days in the Angolan bush war. The South Africans were masters at the art of torture. Sick bastards. It had taken him weeks to recover. That's where he learnt the trick of compartmentalizing your pain, like it was old baggage. No need to dwell on the past.
    Laiveaux braced himself as the man pounded a fist into his stomach. He glanced up, licking his lower lip. The man was growing tired, there was hardly any power in that blow.
    He chuckled as he recollected something that had worked with a dog handler.
    They had threatened the man, told him he was going to be KIA, they threatened to kill his children, his wife. He didn't blink an eyelid. But when they brought his dog into the interrogation chamber and put a gun to the mutt's head, the man went ape shit, begging them not too hurt the animal. Laiveaux understood how he felt. Most animals were worth saving.  
    Laiveaux smiled as he looked up. The guy stood in front of him, clutching his hand open and closed, a painful grimace on his face.  
    "You laughing at me, old man? Tell me now," he shouted, pointing a finger in Laiveaux's face.
    The guy was taking this personally. He wondered if he should end this now.
    The man turned around, rolling his shoulders, preparing for the next blow. He sauntered to Laiveaux, pulled his arm back and aimed a straight jab at Laiveaux's jawbone. Ah, the perfect shot, a hook would have been more difficult to deal with. Laiveaux dug his chin into his chest, stood up on his toes and rammed his head forward with all the power he could muster.
    The punch connected on Laiveaux's cranium, one of the hardest bones in the human body. He heard the crack as the bones in the man's hand shattered. Oh man, that must have hurt.
    Laiveaux looked up with a grin as he tilted back in his seat. The guy was bouncing around, clutching his injured hand in his armpit, howling with pain.  
    “That's a bad fracture, your metacarpals are gone, but I think I got the bones in your wrist as well. That once happened to me up in—“
    "Shut up," the man shouted, spittle dangling from his chin. "Just shut..the..fuck..up," the guy enunciated.
    Laiveaux closed his eyes, sighed. “My point is that you better have that attended to by a good surgeon, those things tend to grow on skew. I knew a man who had to amputate his entire arm with a similar break."
    The man glanced at al-Sharif with a panicked expression, excused himself from the room, holding his hand by the wrist. It was beginning to swell.
    Al-Sharif grabbed Laiveaux on his chest. "Talk to me man, do you want to die?"
    Laiveaux shrugged. "Off course I don't want to die, no-one wants to die, my dear man." He closed his eyes and licked his lips,