in the chain. She lies weeping in the mud, doesn't even try to get up. The one-eyed man stalks over to her.
"Up," he commands. "Up!"
"I can't." Diane looks up at her tormentor. Her face and bottle-blonde hair are smeared with mud and tears. Earlier Veronica thought she was maybe fifty. Now she looks older. "Please, for God's sake, I just can't."
"Let her go," Michael says desperately. He too seems to have aged ten years in the last half hour. "You don't need her. Take me and let her go."
The one-eyed man ignores him. He stoops towards Diane, grabs her bound wrists, and lifts. Veronica winces. Diane screams with new agony as her shoulders wrench in their sockets. Somehow she manages to scramble to her feet.
"You see?" the leader says. His alien accent sounds half French, half African. "Yes you can. Yes you will."
For a second Veronica crazily imagines him as a power-of-positive-thinking public speaker, and almost giggles. Then he starts to pull Diane's shirt off her.
"No," Michael says, his eyes wide. "No, please, that's not necessary. We'll go fast. I promise."
Again he is ignored. Diane's shirt is pulled up her waist, over her head, and back along her bound arms, revealing a pale, wrinkled body and a white sports bra. The one-eyed man's hand drops to his belt and draws out his panga.
"No!" Michael starts forward - but another man, the one in the Tupac Shakur T-shirt, casually grabs Michael's arms from behind, holding him back, and then stoops, reaches between Michael's legs, and squeezes his testicles hard. Michael gasps, his body contorts like he has been shocked with a thousand volts. The man keeps squeezing and twisting, his face expressionless, a man doing an undesirable but necessary job. Michael drops to his knees, whimpering pathetically, writhing helplessly, lost in agony, his wife forgotten. His eyes are completely white, the pupils have rolled back into his head.
Veronica stares with horror as the one-eyed man severs Diane's bra with his machete. Diane's weeping intensifies into a kind of breathless ululation. He replaces his panga and unfurls his whip, made of some kind of thick leather cut into a helical shape, like a stretched-out phone cord. Another of his men takes a position in front of Diane, forces her down onto her knees and forehead, then lifts up her arms as far as they will go, exposing her back. The whip whistles through the air and smacks into Diane's upper back. The impact doesn't sound that forceful, but it wrenches a howl of amazed agony from Diane's throat, a cry more animal than human. Her whole body arches and writhes, instinctively and futilely seeking escape, her legs scrabble feebly at the ground as the whip pulls back and immediately strikes again, catching the scream in Diane's throat, reducing it to a series of choking whimpers.
Derek steps up behind Veronica, close enough to touch, and she starts with surprise. He murmurs, "On the front of my belt, there's a Leatherman. Try to get it and pass it back to me. Not now. We're being watched."
Veronica turns and looks, sees the little leather pouch on Derek's belt, and the pygmy guide watching them carefully. She turns back in time to see Diane and Michael released. Michael crumples headfirst to the ground as if kowtowing. The one-eyed man coils up the whip, restores it to his belt loop, steps forward to the moaning, weeping heap that is Diane, grabs her by her hair and pulls her back upright. As she staggers to her feet Veronica momentarily sees that two red lines have been carved across her back. Both are already dripping blood along their length.
"Fast," the leader warns her, "or I give you more. Ten, twenty, fifty. Fast."
Diane, sobbing for breath, does not respond, but the one-eyed man seems satisfied. He nudges Michael's face with his muddy rubber boot and commands, "Up."
Michael obeys with a moan. His lined face is wet with tears. The one-eyed man walks back up the chain of prisoners. He nods at Tom and Judy, as if with approval. He stops in front of Susan for a moment, grabs a handful of her blonde hair, carefully inspects her chiselled face. Susan is rigid with terror. After a moment the man smirks and moves on to Jacob.
"Fast," he warns him.
"Vite," Jacob agrees breathlessly. "J'ai compris."
The one-eyed man raises his eyebrows. "Tu parles francais?"
"Un peu."
Veronica is next. She looks away as he approaches, but doesn't move. She tells herself, be nondescript, don't make