The General's Dog

by James Garcia Woods

  ‘Paco?’ she mouthed silently.

  Almost immediately, there was a second explosion – much louder and much closer than the first. She felt a shock run through the floor on which was kneeling, and heard the groaning of the masonry as it crumbled. Cindy’s ears were ringing, and the air was suddenly thick with plaster dust, which rapidly found its way into her throat and set her off coughing uncontrollably.

  She raised her head above the edge of the table. Through the cloud of plaster, she could see a dark finger crossing the room towards her.

  ‘Paco?’ she croaked.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he spluttered.

  She nodded, because that was easier than talking, and climbed from behind the table. He threw his arms around her, hugged her tightly for the briefest of moments, then led her towards the gaping hole where, seconds earlier, there had been a solid back wall.

  It was easier to breathe outside. Paco took Cindy’s hand, and half dragging her, started to run down the alley, away from the Plaza Mayor.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Cindy gasped.

  ‘Car,’ Paco replied. ‘Just ahead of us.’

  The beaten-up old Peugeot had its engine running, and Pérez and Jiménez were already sitting in the back seat. Paco got in through the driver’s door, and once Cindy was safely inside, slipped the car into gear and eased it forward.

  ‘Christ, but wasn’t that a big bang?’ Pérez said, high on excitement and destruction. ‘Old Jiménez here was really crapping himself, but I thought it was wonderful.’

  They had almost reached the end of the alley, and the checkpoint at the village’s edge loomed up in front of them. Three sentries, who had been arguing fiercely about what they should do next, turned to face the oncoming Peugeot, and one of them, a corporal, stood in the middle of the street, holding up his hand to order the car to come to a halt.

  ‘Why are they still there?’ Paco muttered, through gritted teeth. ‘Why in God’s name haven’t they gone to see what’s happening in the village – like they were supposed to?’

  ‘What are we going to do now?’ Pérez asked. ‘Try and bluff our way through?’

  Paco shook his head. ‘No. It wouldn’t work. I’m too well known around the village for that.’

  ‘So what are we going to do?’

  ‘This!’ Paco told him, slamming his foot down hard on the Peugeot’s accelerator.

  The tyres screeched like banshees, pebbles from beneath the wheels flew in the air with the speed of bullets, and the big car suddenly shot forward. The corporal in the middle of the road hesitated for a split second, then flung himself to one side. The other two soldiers were already raising their rifle butts to their shoulders. Paco, his foot pressing the accelerator into the floorboards, wished he were driving a faster car.

  The Peugeot hit the barrier at almost its top speed. The pole disintegrated. Wood chips flew into the air, then fell to earth again as a powdery rain. As the car plunged on into the darkness of the sierra there was the distant sound of at least two rifle shots. Then the car was clear of the village, climbing as fast as it could up a narrow, twisting road flanked on one side by dark pine trees, and on the other by a stomach-churning drop.

  ‘We’ve done it!’ Pérez shouted jubilantly. ‘We’ve bloody done it. We’re in the clear!’

  Paco shook his head doubtingly. It couldn’t be that simple. Nothing in his life ever was. Though he didn’t know what else could go wrong, he was willing to bet that something would.

  They were less than a kilometre out of the village when the trouble started. At first Paco told himself that it was the change in the road surface which was making the ride increasingly bumpy, but after a while – when there was not even a moment’s relief from the jarring, and as steering the Peugeot became more difficult with every second which passed – he was forced to acknowledge the truth of the situation.

  He pulled into the side of the road. ‘We’ve got a flat tyre,’ he told his passengers.

  ‘You don’t say?’ Pérez replied sourly.

  They all climbed out of the car, and Paco quickly made his way round the side towards the boot.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Pérez asked.

  ‘Getting the tools to change the wheel.’

  ‘You!’ Pérez said contemptuously. ‘Are you a motor mechanic as well as a cop?’

  ‘I’ve changed wheels before,’ Paco told him.

  ‘And how long did it take you?’ Perez countered. ‘I used to steal wheels for a living – and you can be sure I learned to do it quickly. Better leave this job to me and Jiménez.’

  Paco walked to the other side of the road. From where he was standing, he could look down on the village in which he had done so much damage. The explosion was still having an effect. The fire in the armoury was not burning as fiercely as it had earlier, but now it had spread to the buildings on either side of it. At that very moment Major Gómez would be demonstrating his cool leadership by organizing men to contain the blaze, Paco thought.

  But not everyone in San Fernando was concentrating their efforts on the fire! On the road along which the Peugeot had so recently travelled, he could see the headlights of a speeding car!

  ‘Hurry up, for God’s sake!’ he shouted to Pérez, who was bent over one of the back wheels while Jiménez stood bovinely by his side, shining the torch. ‘They’re after us.’

  ‘I’m working as quickly as I can,’ the rat-faced private screamed back over his shoulder. ‘But it’s not as easy as I thought it would be. Some of these bloody bolts are rusted on.’

  The car below was making good time – better than the Peugeot had. Paco wondered who had sent it. Was it Gómez, finally playing the double-cross he’d been expecting for so long? Or was it Valera, trying to save his own reputation by capturing the people who had caused all the destruction?

  It doesn’t really matter which of them is behind it, he told himself.

  Because whether it was Colonel Valera or Major Gómez – or even the general – the plain fact was that a car full of armed soldiers was approaching them at an alarming rate.

  ‘How much longer are you going to take?’ he called to Pérez.

  ‘Nearly there.’

  But so was the other car! There were several sharp bends separating the two vehicles, but even if they had to keep slowing down, it would not take the pursuers long to reach the Peugeot.

  ‘Finished!’ Pérez shouted.

  Paco sprinted across the road, and got behind the wheel. As he pulled away from the side of the road, the headlights of the other car appeared round the bend behind them.

  ‘Shit!’ Pérez said.

  ‘Shit!’ Paco echoed. The pursuers were in a new Renault which was much more powerful than the old banger he was driving. The Renault probably couldn’t overtake them on this narrow strip of road, but it would have no difficulty keeping up with them until it did have the chance. And then? And then the four of them – with no weapons other than Pérez’s knife – would be at the mercy of five or six armed soldiers. He wrenched hard on the wheel, and the Peugeot screeched round yet another bend at fifteen or twenty kilometres an hour more than was remotely safe.

  They had reached a straight stretch of road, and through his side window, Paco could see another village – San Ignacio – deep in the valley below them. The twinkling lights in the houses seemed so comforting – seemed almost to offer security and salvation. He remembered visiting the village in happier days, when, after a long, invigorating walk in the mountains, he would call in at the taverna for a glass of wine and a plate of mountain ham. But times had changed. Now the village would be full of men in uniforms who would see him as just one more enemy to be eliminated as quickly as possible.

  The Renault was gaining on them with every metre both cars travelled. In his mirror, Paco could now see the white blobs which were the faces of the driver and the front-seat passenger.

  The Peugeot jolted as the Renault smashed into its back bumper. Paco’s head was filled with
noises. The crash of metal against metal. A gasp from Cindy as she was thrown forward in her seat. A loud cry of ‘Jesus Christ!’ which he thought may have come from himself. And suddenly the lights of the village of San Ignacio were no longer to the side – but straight ahead of them!

  His stomach heaving, Paco wrenched on the steering wheel with all his might. The Peugeot shook and rattled in protest, but turned away from the edge – away from the long dark plunge into oblivion.

  As the Peugeot turned the next bend, the rear window suddenly exploded, showering Pérez and Jiménez with glass.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Cindy screamed.

  Jiménez grunted that he was.

  ‘What about you, Pérez?’

  ‘I’m cut, but I’ve had worse!’ the rat-faced private bawled back.

  They’d had a narrow escape, but their luck couldn’t last for ever, Paco thought. The next bullet could well be more accurate – might burst one of the tyres and send them into an uncontrollable skid.

  The opposition had fire-power, and a faster car. Those were their strengths. But a good fighter didn’t concentrate on the enemy’s strengths, Paco reminded himself – he sought out its weaknesses. He knew this road. They probably didn’t. There had to be a way to turn that to his advantage.

  He visualized the stretch of road which lay immediately ahead of them. There was a bend to the right, followed by one to the left, then another straight stretch. And on the straight stretch some of the trees had been cut down and the embankment carved out in order to make a picnic area!

  Another bullet thudded into the side of the old Peugeot as Paco negotiated the first of the two bends. The men behind wouldn’t even have to shoot out a tyre, he thought – if they managed to hit the petrol tank, the whole bloody car would go up in a tower of flame.

  He was on the straight stretch now, rapidly approaching the picnic area. The Renault was accelerating, ready to ram him again.

  The timing has to be exactly right, he told himself – because if it’s out by even a second, we’ll all be dead.

  He began his countdown. Three . . . two . . . one. The Peugeot was level with the picnic area now. He twisted the wheel fiercely to the left, and stamped down hard on the brake pedal.

  The tyres screamed. The car rocked and shuddered. But he had stopped exactly where he’d intended it to – slewed across the road at an angle, the boot of the car very close to the edge, the bonnet almost in the picnic area.

  ‘Get to the right-hand edge of the seat, Pérez!’ Paco shouted. ‘Sit on Jiménez’s bloody knee if you can.’

  The driver of the Renault slammed on his brakes – but it was too late! Paco felt the impact of the other car smashing against his back door at the very moment he pressed his foot down on the accelerator. The Peugeot struggled between the opposing forces – the collision with the Renault impelling it further down the road, the drive shaft straining to go forward into the picnic area. The vehicle wobbled its rear like a demented mambo dancer, then lurched towards the gap in the trees.

  The Renault, deflected to the right, was already off the edge, flying through space. For an instant, it was hard to imagine it had ever been on the road at all. Then there was a flash of light rising from below the lip of the road, followed by the roar of an explosion as deep and angry as the cry of a dying god.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Paco and Private Pérez stood at the edge of the road, looking down at the smouldering wreckage of the Renault below. Though they seemed to have been celebrating their escape from death for at least a hundred years, it could not have been much more than a minute since the car took its fatal plunge.

  ‘So what do we do now, jefe?’ the rat-faced private asked.

  ‘The first thing is to dump the car—’

  ‘Dump it?’ Pérez interrupted. ‘Abandon the car and walk – when with it we could ride in style? Why the hell should we want to do that?’

  Paco took out a packet of cigarettes, lit two, and handed one over to the private.

  ‘In the first place, we don’t even know that the Peugeot will get very far after the battering it’s had,’ he said.

  Pérez inhaled the smoke from his cigarette hungrily. ‘Even if it only makes a short way before it gives up on us, that’s still a bloody sight better than nothing,’ he said.

  ‘And in the second place, they’ll have heard the explosion in San Ignacio,’ Paco continued, pointing with his cigarette to towards the village down below them, ‘and they’ll already have sent people out to investigate it. So if you and your friend Jiménez want to take the car and drive straight into the arms of a military patrol, then that’s entirely up to you. But I’m going deep into the woods. And I’m taking Cindy with me.’

  ‘So we have to walk back to Madrid, do we?’ Pérez said, sulkily. ‘That could take all day.’

  ‘It’ll take much longer than that,’ Paco told him. ‘The army will be out looking for us, so we can’t afford to run into them. And you’re wearing a rebel uniform, so we don’t want to meet any Republican militiamen either. Which means that we only travel at night and during the first couple of hours of daylight before the fighting starts.’

  ‘We can’t stay hidden for ever,’ Pérez pointed out.

  ‘No, we can’t,’ Paco agreed. ‘Once we’re well behind Republican lines, Cindy will find some way to get us three boiler suits, then we’ll be able to just blend into the background.’

  ‘Might work,’ Pérez said grudgingly. ‘Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s get started.’

  ‘Not quite yet. There’s one more thing we have to do before we leave,’ Paco said.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘We have to push the Peugeot over the edge, close to where the Renault went off.’

  Pérez snorted in disgust. ‘Why, in God’s name, should we waste our time doing that?’

  ‘Because it will take very little of our time, but a great deal of the army’s,’ Paco explained. ‘The officer in charge of the first unit to arrive at the scene will send men down to investigate the wreckage. They’ll find charred bodies in one car, but no sign of the occupants of the other. That will puzzle him. He’ll order his men to search for more bodies, and it should take him at least half an hour to come to the conclusion that the Peugeot was empty when it went over the edge. By that time, we could be a couple of kilometres away.’

  Pérez laughed. ‘Joder, but you’re a smart one,’ he said. ‘Do you know something? If you’d ever put your mind to it, you could have made a fortune out of crime.’

  They put the battered Peugeot into neutral, then pushed it out of the picnic area on to the road.

  ‘I still can’t believe I’m doing this,’ Pérez grunted as he put his weight behind the vehicle. ‘I know it might be not much more than a wreck, but I could still have found somebody stupid enough to pay me quite a lot of money for this car back in Madrid.’

  ‘You could have found someone in the old days,’ Paco said. ‘The Madrid you’re going back to is not the one you knew.’

  ‘Bollocks!’ Pérez said. ‘There was crime there before I was born, there’ll be crime there long after I’m dead, and whatever you say about the recent changes, there’ll be crime there right now.’

  They reached the edge of the road, and pushed the car over. It bounced a few times down the steep slope, then burst into flames.

  His new plan was a good one, Paco thought, as he watched the Peugeot burn. It had none of the complexities he’d been forced into adopting back in the village – none of the delicate balancing of threats and promises, none of the split-second timing, none of the reliance on others.

  Yes, it was a good plan because it was a very simple one – and he had no reason on earth to think that within a few hours it would come completely unravelled before his very eyes.

  *

  Even with the help of their torches, they made slow progress through the woods that night. Tree roots lurked in the shadows, then snaked out to trip them when they drew le
vel. Holes in the ground cunningly covered themselves with leaves, to form traps for unwary ankles. And small nocturnal creatures scuttered through the undergrowth, making as much noise as the platoon of enemy soldiers which the four fugitives were sometimes convinced was lying in wait for them.

  Private Pérez led the way, his wiry body tense, yet his movements always fluid. Private Jiménez brought up the rear, crashing through the forest like a bumbling ox. And in between them were Paco and Cindy, holding hands when the terrain made it possible, and walking in single file whenever it didn’t.

  ‘You know who killed the dog now, don’t you?’ Cindy asked, when they’d been on the move for about an hour.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ Paco replied.

  ‘And who killed the lieutenant?’

  ‘I know that, too. And I also know who murdered the poor bloody seamstress.’

  ‘But I’ve never heard you mention anything about a seamstress!’ Cindy protested.

  No, she wouldn’t have, Paco realized. With all that had gone on the day before, it already seemed an age since he had examined the body of Carmen Sanchez. But now that he thought about it, it was probably no more than fifteen or sixteen hours since he’d entered the modest house on the Calle Mayor and seen the knotted sheet hanging from the ham hook.

  ‘Do you know why they were all killed?’ Cindy asked.

  ‘Yes. They all had to die for the same reason – to cover up a guilty, dangerous secret.’

  ‘Then tell me about it. Give me all the details.’

  ‘Not now,’ Paco said tiredly. ‘When we’re back in our own apartment in Calle Hortaleza, sipping copas of brandy, I’ll explain the whole thing to you. But right at this moment, it’s as much as I can do to keep my eyes open and place one foot in front of the other.’

  *

  By three o’clock in the morning the stars by which Paco was navigating seemed to him to be bouncing around the heavens like fireflies. By four o’clock he had all but given up trying to estimate exactly how much ground they’d covered since they’d left the road.