In the shadow of the night, a truck pulled up to a grinding halt. The three men, armed with old Russian machine guns, taped and tied, waited patiently. Nodding a greeting to the driver they untied the blue tarpaulin sheet covering the load. Pulling it off to reveal a multitude of terrified, confused faces.
Undoing the bolts on the back of the truck, the men led their captives off. Pushing. Kicking. Forcing them into the middle of the red clay yard.
‘Take all your clothes off… Do it.’ The nervous, embarrassed, frightened glimpses of the old man, echoed in the thoughts of the others. A variety of ages, not knowing why they’d been chosen. Nor why they’d been taken.
‘Now move it… Move.’
Walking naked with their arms raised high, heads bowed down, they moved in quiet unison towards the ice-cold showers, forced at gunpoint to walk and stand under the freezing water.
To an accompaniment of distant screams, which pierced the blanket of hush, the herded group were now taken down stairs into the enigma of deeper darkness. A long, low-roofed hallway led them to a metal door which opened and, once they were in, closed shut. Leaving them crammed tightly. Pushed up close to one another in a red, unplastered chamber of stifling heat.