He waited a full ten seconds.
Henry suddenly felt something was amiss.
He struggled to open his eyes and saw through the blur a pair of LOWA boots slowly approaching him.
In a daze, he heard someone speaking, seemingly asking something.
Then, he passed out.
When he woke up again, Henry found himself in a room.
The room was messy and looked somewhat like a basement.
He instinctively tried to move his limbs,
but discovered he was securely tied to a chair.
"Awake?"
A strange man was beside him, and seeing him awake, turned and smiled, "Lucky we arrived on time, or you might be chatting with Satan in the underworld by now."
"Are you with the CIA?"
Henry blurted out, because in his subconscious, the people after him were from Musician Defense, while those likely to rescue him were from the CIA.
In Henry's eyes, Song Heping would never let him off.
He had betrayed him by divulging information about the smuggling of SA-9 to France's DGSE, almost causing an interception in Eritrea—Song surely hated him to the bones afterward.
"CIA?"
The strange man stared at him as if looking at an idiot for a moment, then turned and walked to the basement entrance, shouting up, "Hey boss, he's awake."
Soon, a person entered from the basement entrance.
Seeing this person, Henry finally recognized him.
He immediately felt a chill surge from his feet upward, his entire head ice cold.
Chinese...
The strange man had spoken in Chinese.
Without asking, these people were definitely from Musician Defense...
"It's over..."
Henry felt somewhat desperate.
He suddenly noticed another person tied beside him, bloody and battered.
Right next to him, also tied to a chair, he didn't know if they were dead or alive.
"Who is this?"
His mind raced.
A killer?
He suddenly realized that the person tied beside him was likely the one set to hunt him down tonight.
Thinking this, his mind became chaotic.
If the killer was tied next to him, and the one who rescued him was Song Heping...
Then, who was the killer?
A terrifying thought appeared in his mind.
This was the conclusion Henry least wanted and feared the most.
"JK."
Hearing Song Heping call him, Henry trembled slightly.
But he did not answer.
He dared not answer.
Song Heping didn't seem to care; he was holding a bottle of Coke, handed it to the strange man, pointed at the bloody fellow, and asked, "Has he confessed?"
"No," Jiang Feng shook his head: "He must have undergone counter-interrogation training, he can really hold out."
Song Heping walked over to the killer, examined him closely, noting that his fingernails were gone, bloodied.
The pain in his fingers went straight to his heart.
Jiang Feng's method of torture was a very common form of physical torture.
Looking at his palms, there were two bloody holes, and a drill lay beside on the floor; he frowned and said, "Jiang Feng, look at what you've done, you've knocked the man out. When I asked you to interrogate him, you were supposed to do it properly, not kill him."
"What could I do?"
Jiang Feng, sipping on his Coke, looked helpless: "I wanted to use waterboarding, but we don't have the facilities here, right?"
This house, far from the city and out in the wilderness, had been recently rented by Song Heping.
He had rented it for its quiet and remote location without an in-person viewing, directly reserving it through a real estate agent over the phone.
He had been quite satisfied with the house he saw in pictures, but it proved problematic upon arrival, the most critical issue being the broken water supply system!
Broken!
Just his luck to have a disaster in a ditch.
Even the real estate agents in Algiers were unreliable.
The boss of a Mercenary Corps got played by a mere real estate agent.
It was too late to trouble the agent; the people had been captured, and the house had to be used, right?
Calling the agent over to scold wouldn't solve anything, and if they wanted to come over to check or send someone for repairs, seeing two men tied up in the basement might scare them peeless.
That would mean another life lost?
So waterboarding in this room was out of the question unless they rented a truck to haul water over.
"Alright, enough, stop explaining. Go get a box of bottled water from the car."
Jiang Feng, upon hearing this, turned to fetch the water.
Song Heping came in front of Henry, pulled over a chair, sat down, and looked at the intelligence broker with a smile, "Bet you didn't expect it would be me who saved you, eh?"
Henry dared not make a sound, feeling his blood rush faster as his heart became restless.
The man in front of him was the head of a Mercenary Corps who dared to oppose the French and traffic arms to the Sahel region.
Thinking about enduring the same agony as the man next door sent chills down Henry's spine.
He would rather die.
"Just kill me! We're all tough men here, show some ruthlessness and blast me with a bullet, shoot me in the head!"
Song Heping nodded, "Looks like a tough guy."
Jiang Feng had returned by this time, but Song Heping had left the basement. Before long, he returned with a bunch of strange items and a suitcase.
"What are you doing with these things?"
"Some handiwork."
As Song Heping spoke, he set the items down on the ground.
Then he grabbed a bottle of mineral water, twisted the cap off, and poured it over the assassin's head.
The water flowed from the top of the head and by the time it dripped down, it was red — all blood.
The man came to.
Seeing the man awake, Song Heping pulled over a chair and sat in front of him, serious like a teacher scolding a student who had erred.
Jiang Feng was puzzled, not understanding what Song Heping was up to. He glanced at the items Song Heping had brought, which included copper wire, tape, and something resembling a transformer, all from what seemed to be an off-road vehicle's toolkit.
"Hey, buddy."
Song Heping patted the assassin's face, "Awake?"
The assassin was initially confused, but after a moment, his spirit returned and he recognized the person in front of him.
"Kill me...I won't talk."
He said this and then lowered his head again.
Pointing at him, Song Heping told Jiang Feng, "See? Another tough guy."
Having said this, he didn't proceed with interrogation but squatted down and started tinkering with the heap of scrap metal.
"Know what this is?"
Song Heping, without looking up, skillfully took pliers to break and pull off the copper wire from the transformer.
Soon, only a robust magnetic core remained of the entire transformer.
Song Heping then took the coarse copper wire he had brought and slipped it into an insulating hose, starting to wind it around the transformer core...
As he did this, Jiang Feng watched, completely baffled.
Henry and the assassin were equally baffled.
Neither knew what Song Heping was up to.
"Old squad leader, what are you doing?"
"Making a simple transformer..."
As Song Heping said this, he looked up at the surrounding wires.
"The standard voltage here is 240 volts, I'm afraid it might kill him, so I decided to make a simple transformer to drop down the voltage a bit."
Suddenly, Jiang Feng felt his old squad leader was a bit sadistic...
He was really making a transformer to administer electric shocks...
Actually, creating a simple transformer wasn't too hard, requiring only some basic electronics knowledge and materials.
Just two ferrite magnetic cores, two coils of different-sized copper wire, insulating tape, and such were needed.
Not much later, a simple transformer was ready.
Song Heping then got some wires, connected them to the transformer, wrapped one end around two iron bars as thick as chopsticks, and finally put on insulating gloves.
"Just about done."
Jiang Feng swallowed hard, his eyes wide, "Old squad leader, you plan to use electric shock?"
Song Heping nodded, "Yeah."
He connected the transformer properly, and then picked up a multimeter to measure the voltage.
After the measurement, viewing the display on the multimeter, Song Heping shook his head in dissatisfaction, "Damn, it's a bit high..."
Then he shook his head again, "Anyway, it's not being used for electrical appliances..."
He said all this in English.
It was absolutely deliberate...
The entire manufacturing process took about twenty minutes.
But during those twenty minutes, Henry felt his sweat pouring down like rain.
The assassin was dumbfounded too.
He had seen sadistic, but never this level of sadistic—making a transformer on the spot...
He knew about electric torture.
He had also undergone simulation training.
But those were just experience tests conducted slightly over 60 volts, not knowing how many volts or how strong the current might be with Song Heping's simply made transformer, potentially fluctuating due to the rudimentary equipment...
"God..."
He shuddered internally.
Wearing insulating gloves, Song Heping touched the two iron rods together, and there was a snap...
It all went black...
The circuit breaker tripped!
In the darkness, Song Heping cursed under his breath, "FUCK! Is the voltage that high?"
Sitting in the darkness, the assassin heard this and felt a wave of urgency in his bladder.