Iceberg

Pitt forced back the hate and projected a quaver of fear. "Leave me alone; leave me alone!" His voice was high-pitched now, almost a screech. "Why do you want to hurt me? I've done nothing to you." His mouth was working in short jerks from a contorted face. "I lied to you about blowing up your boat. I never saw it through the fog-I swear. You must believe-" The two guards looked at each other and exchanged sickened expressions, but Rondheim's face went far beyond mere revulsion-he looked positively nauseated.

"Enough!" he shouted commandingly. "Stop this drivel. I never believed for a moment you had the courage to attack and destroy my boat and crew."

Pitt stared wildly about him, a look of blind stupid terror in his eyes that might have been painted there.

"You have no reason to kill me. I'll tell no one anything. Please! You can trust me." He started to move toward Rondheim, his hands upturned, pleading.

"Stand where you are!"

Pitt froze. His pla

"A major in the United States Air Force," Rondheim grimaced. "I'll wager you are nothing but a spineless homosexual who used your father's influence to acquire rank-the lowest form of vermin, living off Your own excretion. Soon you will know what it is to feel pain from the hands and feet of another man. A shame You will not enjoy the time to look back and reflect on,your most Punishing lesson in the art of selfdefense." Pitt stood there like a panic-frozen elk about to be brought down by the hounds. He stood there mumbling incoherently as Rondheim moved to the middle of the mat and assumed one of the many opening stances of Karate.

"No, wait-" Pitt choked the, words off in his throat, threw back his head and spun sideways in one convulsive movement. He had caught the tiny shift in Rondheim's eyes, the begi

Pitt had made a mistake by ducking, had almost given himself away by revealing his quick reflexes. He had to fight to keep his mind turned on the rules. it wasn't easy. No normal man who knows how to take care of himself enjoys standing idle while being beaten to a pulp. He gritted his teeth and waited, holding his body low to absorb the blows from Rondheim's next attack. He didn't wait but a few seconds.

Rondheim scored with a roundhouse kick to the head that rammed Pitt full in the face, knocking him off the mat against a row of horizontal exercise bars set into the wall. Pitt lay on the floor in silence, tasting the blood from his crushed lips and feeling his loosened teeth.

"Come, come, Major." Rondheim spoke soothingly, tauntingly. "Up on your feet. The lesson's barely begun."

Pitt pushed himself groggily to his feet and stumbled drunkenly onto the mat. The urge to counterpunch Rondheim was stronger than ever now, but he knew his only course was to play out his role.

Rondheim lost no time in working on him again. A quick combination of sledgehammer blows to the head that never seemed to end, followed by a front kick to the exposed rib area, and Pitt felt rather than heard one of his ribs snap. As if in slow motion, Pitt sunk to his knees and slowly slumped forward onto his face, so badly injured that blood and vomit mingled freely in his mouth and flowed onto the mat in an ever-widening pool. He didn't need a mirror to know he was being worked over fearfully, his face distorted in grotesque mutilation, both eyes rapidly closing, lips ballooned in a purplish mass of torn meat, one nostril of his nose split open.

The daggerlike pain in his chest and the agony of his torn face rose in giant waves and pounded him to the verge of blackness; yet he was surprised to find his mind was still functioning normally. Instead of allowing the painless oblivion of unconsciousness to swoop in, he willed himself to fake it, setting his teeth against a groan that would have given his deception away.

Rondheim was infuriated. "I'm not through with this slimy faggot." He motioned to one of the guards.

"Revive him."

The one with the bald head walked to a nearby bathroom, soaked a towel and none too gently wiped the blood from Pitts face and then compressed the now reddened cloth behind his neck. When Pitt didn't respond, the guard left again and returned with a small vial of smellin, — , salts.

Pitt coughed once, twice, then spit a gob of blood on the guard's boot, taking grim satisfaction that it was no accident. He rolled over onto his side and looked up at Rondheim looming over him.

Rondheim laughed softly. "You seem to have difficulty staying awake in class, Major. Perhaps you are becoming bored." His voice suddenly chilled. "Stand up! You have yet to finish your-ah-course of instruction."

"Course? Instruction?" Pitts words came blurred, semi-intelligibly through his bloated, broken lips. "I don't get what you mean-" Rondheim answered by lifting his heel and jamming it in Pitts groin. Pitts whole body shuddered and he groaned, the agony tearing him apart.

Rondheim spat on him. "I said stand up!"

"I. I can't."

And then Rondheim leaned down and struck Pitt with a shuto blow to the back of the neck. There was no fighting it, no faking it this time: Pitt blacked out for real.

"Bring him around again!" Rondheim yelled insanely. "I want him on his feet."

The guards stared uncomprehendingly; even they were begi

Rondheim pounded the defenseless battered body until his gi was soaked through with sweat, the front splotched with blood.

Pitt, in those tortured moments between light and darkness, found himself losing his grip of any emotion, of all intelligence; even the pain was begi

Rondheim threw a particularly vicious and accurately aimed kick to Pitts stomach. As the light passed from Pitts eyes for the sixth time and the guards released their grip, letting his limp body drop to the mat, the sadistic lust on Rondheim's face slowly faded. He stared vacantly at his bloody and swollen knuckles, his chest heaving as his breath came in quick pants from the exertion. He dropped to his knees, grabbed Pitt by the hair, turning the head so that the throat was exposed, and then he lifted his right hand, palm open, in preparation to deliver the finishing stroke, the coup de grdce, a killing judo chop that would snap Pitts head backward, breaking his neck.

"No!"