Vincent Sasia: Pride

War hasn’t changed over the current of time… Most don’t make it to battle; rather, they are fought through diplomacy, the gathering of leaders and negotiations. The key is having leverage. You need to possess or control something your enemy wants or needs. Preferably this need is so high that your enemy cannot live without it. If you have the power to destroy that need, then you have the power over your enemy.

Sometimes an addition of economics helps as well. The trick is to make a country’s economic system crash. Without money, society tends to builds down to its basic needs. If you can break all the way through to physiological needs, such as food and water, then people will do anything for survival, including killing each other. Especially major cities fall subject to this because of the lack of food. Ruining their logistics is a big influence on this. The advantages that this gives you, is that it doesn’t cost you any soldiers to unbalance a country and a coup d’état is that much easier.  Now all you have to do is find “a face” to represent you, which you bring to the people as the savior. You then try to rebalance that country’s system by undoing most of the damage you’ve cause, after which you’ll be in control. You think the economical downfall of Greece was bad luck? That was just a prototype. This is what we call, economic warfare.

However, a more preferable way of warfare is educational war. Although this is a big investment, both in money and in time, this tactic is good for a complete take over. Tell a leader of a poor country that you will offer education in exchange for a bargain price and you will make him a hero. You’ve now corrupted the top end of their infrastructure. Put propaganda in your education to brainwash the children to your needs and corrupt their future leaders. This way, you’re good for a long term occupation and the best thing about it is that your organization, in both cases, isn’t known. You’re a ghost, other countries can’t stop you, they will only see the face you put on the top, but in fact you are in control. You run your show like a worm, they cut off the head and it will still live, the heart is located elsewhere. A good example of this is Ghana.

Today, I was here to perform minor diplomacy for the organization. The person I was about to negotiate with is named Ronald Darren Stanley. When he was 18, he started at medical school. He graduated at the top of his class. His career as a doctor was short lived, however.  Frustrated with how his city was run, he decided to get into politics. At the age of 31, he was mayor of his small home town and he soon climbed the ladder. He’s now running for governor. He married his wife Caroline at the age of 24 and has a son with her. The boy was his treasure, aged 14 and named Gabriel. He spoiled the kid towards the extreme and refers to him often in his speeches.

This information was of course commonly known by anybody interested in Dr. Stanley. What most people didn’t know, was that at the age of 7 he had stolen money from his sister and his parents never found out. He had beaten his wife the first time he didn’t get elected as mayor. He has an ongoing affair with his secretary and has thought of hiring somebody to kill his adversary, John Cooke. This was only a small part of what I know about Dr. Stanley. I knew all of this because before I could negotiate, I needed to know my enemy.

I also knew that the best moment to have some private time with Dr. Stanley was in the evenings, just before he left his office. His elevator gave you an open window of about 3 minutes. My partner and I drove to his office and rigged his cameras. Hacking the software of the security boot in the office is pretty easy. Security was located at front desk and the security guard always took a 5 minute break around 10 am in the morning. Installing the software only took my partner 2 minutes. People have a tendency not to ask questions, even if they don’t know who you are or what you are doing at the officer’s desk. Once the software was installed, we could download any file without the officer noticing, as well as change the input of the camera feed to yesterday’s images. I was standing in the elevator, waiting for him. Normally he stopped much later than the other people. I knew he was packing because we had live feed to his office through their tapped security. With yesterday’s images on repeat, I was a ghost. I couldn’t be traced by the cameras because this is the first time I was inside the building. My partner had given me full detail of where to walk. At 7:06 pm the elevator rose to his floor and he stepped in. We were standing alone.

“Good evening, sir” I said.
“Good evening, young man, good to see the younger generation is also working late!” he replied.
“Sir, I represent an organization who’s interested in supporting you.”
“Son, if you’re here to commercialize me, you’ll have to make an appointment like everybody else,” he snarled.
“Why no sir, the organization I work for can help you with your elections as governor, surely a chance you shouldn’t neglect, not many have been offered the same.”
“Boy, I’m not interested what so ever now please leave it at that,” he said angrily.
“Perhaps you have heard of a man called ‘Hung Than’? He’s a very influential man.”
“I’ve heard his name only once and all I know is that this man is involved in criminal activities, I won’t be part of it!”

The elevator got to the bottom floor, on this level too was the camera playing yesterday’s images. The security officer must’ve not watched them thoroughly as they had been playing the wrong image for more than 15 minutes now. We stepped out of the elevator and I grabbed Stanley by his shirt.

In a low and silent voice I said to him “Sir, I suggest you accept my offer or you will suffer the consequences. Hung Than is a very impatient man.”
“Boy, are you threatening me? Guard, show this man the way to the door,” he yelled.
“Sir, have you ever been tortured before?” I said with a small grin on my face.
“Guard, get this man out immediately!” he shouted as his face was starting to get red.
“An unwise choice, we’ll meet again,” I added as the guard grabbed me and tossed me out.

Of course sometimes you get a person who thinks he’s a good guy. He won’t accept help when he needs it and decides to play it fair. The next thing you know, because such an idiot won’t listen, you have to kidnap him.

The easiest way to kidnap someone is to chemically induce them. To stay under the radar it’s smarter to brew your own chemicals. Chlorine and methane are easy to find and unsuspicious items to get. You put the right dose in a pot and heat this up to 450°C. Your product will undergo chlorination, afterwards you distillate your chloroform. Now unlike what people think, chloroform does not directly incapacitate your victim. The trick here is to combine it with another drug. I just had to wait until the casual Friday, ‘going out with the boy’s’ night. As usual he took a taxi home because he was too drunk to drive. Alcohol is a perfect pre-drug to combine with chloroform.

Now I personally don’t like torture and believe that the body can be trained to endure pain. I, therefore, am a strong believer of psychological pain. The trick is to know your victim, which I did.

We strapped him to his chair; a cloth bag is still over his head. I had to wait until morning before he was up and sober again. I already ensured that legs and arms were tightly stuck so that he couldn’t move. Next I ensured that he couldn’t move his hands, tight wraps around the wrists are easy for this. Preferably your chair has big arm rests so that his hand can lay flat on them. I pulled the bag from Stanley’s head and cut the rope out of his mouth.

“Ugh… Where am I? … You! You’re messing with the wrong man, boy…” he urged.
I grinned slightly as I replied, “I told you my organization wanted you in but you didn’t want to cooperate and forced me to play this the hard way. You think I was bluffing? Sadly enough we don’t bluff.”
“Do to me whatever you want, I won’t help you or your organization.”
“Who said anything about doing things with you? On your left sir, you’ll see your beloved Gabriel…”
“WHAT? No, please don’t, don’t hurt my boy! Hurt me! Please, I beg you,” he cried.
I slapped him in the face as I told him “I’m sorry for you and your family…”

His son was strapped the same way he was. I ensured the boy could clearly see what I was about to do. People who are in fear always scream louder and I wanted to make sure his father got the message. I took the copper wire I’d prepared. I had grinded the top end of the 3mm wire to a flat point. I then took a HT-922 Portable Torch and heated the wire till its burning red. It went under the nail smoothly. Flat wire is better because is sticks close to the nail, round wire has a tendency to move undirected.  I only pushed it about a centimeter deep, never passing the length of the nail. This combined with flat wire ensured that the boy could still use his finger after the process. I couldn’t really distinguish who was screaming more, Dr. Stanley or his son. I pulled the wire back out in a quick motion, boiling skin was still stuck on it. I went to sit in front of the Doctor who was now screaming like a mad man.

I slapped him in the face and said “Now you listen to me old man, from now on you’ll do as we tell you or I’ve got 9 other fingers to go over and other family members who might not endure torture so well.”

I raised my voice and added “You don’t know who we are but we know exactly who you are… Do not fuck with us!”

I put their bags back on their heads. Together with my partner I put them in our rented Ford Escape, still strapped to their chairs. This type of jeep is the most rented type out there at the moment. This combined with a stolen registration plate makes us untraceable. We drove for about 10 minutes before we got two blocks away from the hospital. My partner cuts them loose, tosses them out and we immediately drove away. Afterwards we removed the stolen vehicle registration plate and dumped it in the bush. We had to ensure that just in case he did pull his bag off quick enough to see the plate, he hadn’t seen the real one; we had to be certain he didn’t know anything.

I’ve always wondered how he explained that in the hospital, but somehow he managed and his boy can still use all ten of his fingers. Both of them are scarred for life, they won’t forget this lesson soon. Dr. Stanley’s pride over his son was an easy button to push, and a sin which is always easily exploited. Now don’t start thinking I like torture. I’m neutral; I do what has to be done. From then on somebody else was Dr. Stanley’s contact person. He behaved well and it didn’t take much to ensure that John Cooke didn’t win. Having Ronald Darren Stanley on our side got us one step closer to our goal…

I wasn't always as I am now; before I was a part of the organization, my life was somewhat normal…