When Sean and Drew first reached the outpost, time felt like a bullet they were trying to outrun. Fairburne worked fast and there was no telling when the target would arrive. And it seemed that half the damn Wehrmacht was stationed in the area; it took Sean three hours to clear out the entire camp without raising the alarm. When he set up in a hide that had originally belonged to a guard (Sean kicked his corpse off the ledge), he expected Karl or the target to come tearing through the second he settled down.
Now time was syrup poured over a tabletop. He and Drew waited, and waited, and waited, and waited. After four hours Sean wondered what the hell Fairburne was doing, by five he started to worry that they'd been given bad information.
Now the sun was rising and illuminating an ugly truth.
Sean looked around to double check that no guards were coming their way to investigate and stood up. His joints weren't popping nearly as satisfyingly as he'd like, but he'd take what he could get. He saw Drew still sitting lookout in a natural ledge in the rock wall, drooping with exhaustion but still awake. He began climbing down the ladder. His movements seemed to jolt Drew out of his impending collapse, because he suddenly sat up. His sharp blue eyes followed Sean across the road to the obscured path up to his spot. When Sean sat down next to him with a done-in sigh, his eyebrows creased in worry.
"Sean?" There was such a kicked-dog look on Drew's face that he nearly lost the urge to say it.
Beating around the bush seemed easier. "Fairburne's never taken this long has he?"
Drew's eyebrows came down in a sharp V, "Once. On the mission Ben died on."
Sean rubbed the heels of his hands against his eyes. Goddammit he didn't want to think of Brauer, not with the situation that was staring him in the face now. "He set up a grave for…for what was left of Brauer, didn't he?"
"Goddammit Sean," Drew's eyes burned with mixed dread and outrage, "he's not dead!"
"He vanished into that fucking city yesterday, and its morning and he still hasn't come through," Sean snapped, hours of tension unraveling like a cut rubber band, "Fairburne's a tough son-of-a-bitch, but he's not immortal. He's not coming back, Drew."
Drew's face closed off, "So we should just leave him?"
Sean wasn't going to say that; he planned on saying something among the lines of how they should sneak about and look for clues as to what happened the previous night. But it was hard to put into words without being vague as hell. But he wasn't leaving without finding some clue as to Fairburne's fate. Not to mention that there was no way they could approach the Captain without their target dead or any information on his whereabouts.
"No."
Drew didn't relax, but his posture lost its aggressive edge, "So what will we do then?"
Sean looked out to the rock face, looking out to Tobruk, remembering sharply its high walls and tall houses. Karl in there somewhere, dead, dying or trapped, and for all of the bastard's lack of social skills and refusal to hold a conversation like a normal human being, Sean couldn't stomach the idea of leaving him to the SS.
"We find out what happened." He said, his own voice sounding steady to his ears.
His fingers still ached and burned when he woke up. Karl sat up, his back unpleasantly stiff. The wooden bench was no more comfortable to sit on, but it was the cleanest thing in his cell. Everything else was stained from what very little he could see or smelled vaguely of shit. The bucket in the darkest of the corners and the poor ventilation of the room were the most likely culprits.
There was a clang from somewhere deep in the corridor, and Karl jerked his head up. Boots stamped towards the reinforced door of his tiny room, sparking his instincts to run or reach for his rifle. He stood up, but it was pointless; he could hear no less than six sets of footsteps and he had neither a weapon nor room to maneuver.
When the door opened, it showed, portrait-style with light shining into the dark room, a smiling Johan with five guards flanking him. "Guten Morgen." Johan greeted, like a friendly neighbor.
Karl was silent. "Hungry?" Johan asked, "I brought something for you." He gestured to a guard, who came forward holding a tray. He set it down on the ground in the light that was thrown into the cell from the open doorway. Johan looked at Karl with an expectant smile.
Karl glanced down at the food long enough to see what it was - bread and a can of something with a tin of water - then in defiance of his stomach, lifted his eyes to glare at Johan. He'd be damned if he ate on the floor like a dog in front of these men, even if it had been a full sixteen hours since he'd last eaten.
Johan faced off with him for a moment, and then shrugged. "I just figured that it make today easier."
What's today? Karl thought immediately.
Johan grinned, a gradual unveiling of teeth. "It's something for your back. I know you must be stiff." He gestured at the guards, "Come with us."
Two big guards, young, one built like an Adonis with dark blond hair and the other freakishly tall and not yet grown into it, took hold of his arms at the shoulder and started pulling him to the door. Pride made him dig in his heels. Another guard scowled and walked over. He punched Karl in the solar plexus hard enough to make him see spots. The guards holding him dragged him out of the room and into the narrow hallway. T
here were two more guards at the door who silently watched them go past, and Johan opened the door. The light was blinding after the nearly black cell, and even keeping them open a sliver made it no less nauseating. The air was dry as North Africa's always was, and stained from vehicle fumes, but Karl greedily breathed it in. After the stale rot of his cell it was as refreshing as the forests Karl's father took him to every summer when he was a boy.
Karl was grateful for his boots as his feet dragged carelessly through the hard-packed dirt and stone. He still couldn't see where he was being carried to, but he could hear vehicles and chatter. Hearing German, everyday conversations in German for the first time in…ten years? God had it been that long already? He heard two men discussing girlfriends ("You're still with Charlotte?" "Yeah, she's writing from a farm in some pathetic little hole in the Rhineland") and two more arguing ("Shithead, this is the second time you haven't paid me!" "You didn't win! You passed out!" "Bullshit!").
It was more surreal than familiar.
The chatter gradually died away, replaced by curious, apprehensive silence. Karl's eyes finally started adjusting, and he realized that soldiers were breaking off their conversations to stare at him. The enemy soldier who'd attempted to kill the Fuhrer last night.
He was led to a post set up at a corner overlooking the courtyard and his arms were tied around it. Johan started fishing around in his toolkit as a crowd of roughly two-dozen shuffled forward to watch. Johan pulled out a whip that was about a meter long and made of twined rope.
"Strip him." Two of the guards walked back over, and unbuttoned his shirt so hastily that they tore a button off. It was tossed aside. Karl eyed the whip, and kept his back muscles tight so he wouldn't flinch as Johan walked up to him, slowly, lazily, giving him plenty of time to imagine the pain. Johan smiled, and Karl thought he was going to say something.
Instead, he brought the whip down hard on Karl's back.
It burned a stripe from his right shoulder to his left hip. Karl bit down on his lip so hard he tasted blood.
Johan walked around to get a different angle, and hit him again. The pain was worse that time, but Karl couldn't say if it was the new angle or because he now knew what to expect.
The whip stung again in the span of a second.
The pain was numbing, burning, and made his muscles twitch sporadically. Karl kept his breaths deep and even, counting them instead of the lashes to stay calm. When Johan walked forward and crouched down in front of him, Karl instinctively dropped his head onto his chest and tensed his shoulder blades up and together to shield his neck.
"Does it hurt?" Johan sounded calm and almost compassionate, but too professional for it, like a caring CO. Karl grit his teeth. "I just want an answer. If you can't answer them all, one will do." Karl turned his head enough to glare at him. "Which squad are you from? Are you an American or a British agent? Who ordered your mission?"
Karl maintained his stony silence. Johan stood and stepped back. The next blow didn't hurt as much as the others. The second one was worse, overlaying another and adding a fresh layer of pain. The third was like a brand. Karl clenched his jaw so hard that he knew it'd be sore soon. An itchy, warm sensation trailed down the lines of Karl's trapezius and dragged down his side uncomfortably. He looked down and around and saw a thin line of red gleaming as it dripped off his side. Johan's last blow had cut into his skin.
Johan had noticed too and he smiled, pleased. He brought the whip down across the cut. Karl grit his teeth and grunted through it.
Johan stepped over a bit for more leverage and hit him at angle with such force that the pain pushed Karl into the wood of the post. The grunt morphed into a gasp.
Johan hit him again and then again without pause. Again, and again, and again, and again, and again. The pain became a dull but savage burn punctuated by bursts of sharp agony. Blood started running down his back, and between blows the hot North African sun seemed to scald it. The blows of the whip made it difficult to breathe, like it was tied around his chest, not flaying his back and beginning to make his vision swim.
After Karl lost track of how many it was Johan was panting, and used the last of the energy in his tired arm to hit him with a blow that knocked him into the wooden post. It sent his head spinning and scraped skin off his cheek and jaw. He cried out, a long, high yelp that didn't sound like him.
Johan walked away a bit, breathing hard, and for a moment Karl thought he'd let up. He rested his forehead against the post and tried to draw air into his chest. Somewhere in the crowd, a CO was snapping at a few grunts, "Listen to that! Fifteen blows before he made a peep. If you bitch about my training regimen—"
Jesus Christ. Only fifteen lashes and it hurts this much? For the first time, Karl felt fear, real fear creep in under his feet. Not fear that he'd die; fear that he'd break. And he'd already yelled out. What was to stop him, in the throes of mind-numbing pain as Johan progressed, to blurt out something to pause the torture?
Johan walked over slowly and crouched down gently, like he was approaching a scared animal. "Are you sure that there's nothing you can tell us? Surely there's something—something that won't hurt anyone?"
Yes, a craven little voice whispered in the back of his mind, is there something that will satisfy them at least for now? I know of an offensive in Algeria that's far away from Drew or Sean or any of the others…
Nausea rose in his throat and he closed his eyes. He clenched his jaws together like he was trying to crack a walnut between them. Johan stood next to him for several awful tensely-wound moments where Karl expected it all to snap like a string. But Johan stood back, and Karl could breathe again.
Johan switched arms, and lashed him again. The pain was a shock, and he could swear that his back had just been ripped open. Karl howled.
He wasn't going to last like this. He needed something to grip since his hands were tied uselessly to the post and there were no words in his mouth to block any vital information that might slip out in a pained haze. He needed a focus.
Johan raised the whip above him. Karl found the nearest thing to remember. "Fairburne, Karl, Lieutenant…"
The whip came down and Karl anticipated it and turned inward to his words. "Fairburne, Karl, Lieutenant…" The whip was just as painful as before, but the words gave Karl something to pull back on. "Fair—Aggh!"
Johan was down by his ear in an instant. "I'm sorry, what was that?" He asked conversationally. Karl stayed quiet, a little surge of false triumph going through him at having something that fortified him against Johan.
Johan stepped back with a patient hum. He raised the lash again. "Fairburne, Karl, Lieutenant…" The next blow wasn't as bad as the others.
"Listen!" Johan cawed to the crowd. "The Desert Ghost finally has a name! Lieutenant Karl Fairburne." He crouched down next to Karl again, and grabbed his jaw, twisting his head to look at the crowd. "Say hello Karl!"
Karl bared his teeth and glared. The crowd wasn't looking at him with a slightly superstitious awe anymore, like he was no longer a monster being ritually sacrificed for the continued wellbeing of a primitive village. He was just another POW unfortunate enough to land in Johan's hands. Another enemy of the Fatherland. Several had already lost interest, and had turned back around to continue their old conversations. A few had looks on their faces that made Karl worry; looks like a dog would give to a piece of meat on the floor their owner had given them permission to eat.
Johan flicked the whip so it hit Karl on the face, barely missing his right eye. It felt like Johan had slashed him with a hot knife. He screamed, and dimly heard someone in the crowd laugh.
Johan returned to his post, and Karl went slack against his bonds, until they strained his joints and cut into his wrists. Johan knocked him to the ground with the next hit, and hit his exposed side before he had time to get up. Karl had barely resumed his mantra before the lash came down again.
Each blow was delivered with all the force Johan could to compensate for their lack of precision from his non-dominant arm. The pain seemed to travel, pull deeper into his back, until it hammered his ribs and rattled his organs. He couldn't expand his chest to breathe, he didn't have the strength to get up, the bonds felt like they were on the verge of dislocating his wrists, he couldn't breathe—
He opened his eyes and saw spots, the world spinning, Johan's blurry smiling face, and then mercifully nothing.