Code Name- Beatriz

by Lou Cadle

  The plastique exploded, and in a moment, the black night was lit brighter than day, obvious even though her face was down and her eyes were closed. Her ears popped and at the same time she heard the blast. All of this in a split second. Then a heartbeat, a second, and dirt and rock rained down on her.

  Unconsciously, she tried to bury herself in the ground. Turtle behavior, but without the handy shell to retreat into. A big chunk of concrete bounced off her hip, and then the rocks hitting her were only gravel. She popped to her feet and looked toward the bridge.

  The car was still on the road, and a door opened.

  Then a second explosion went off, one detonator completing its circuit behind the others. She was blinded, but she knew enough to throw herself back on the ground and cover her face.

  A second rain of concrete and rocks, a second wait, and then she was up and running toward the bridge. The car was nose down now, at the edge of the break in the road. She heard German, a man inside the car yelling in his language.

  Movement at the corner of her eye. It was Claude, catching up, going for the back door. She lifted her knees higher and pounded toward the open driver’s door. The Nazi driver was half out of the car, dazed but alive, moving slowly.

  Letting her jacket fall away, she snatched the knife out of her sleeve sheath and ran with it out, crossing the last few feet. She caught the Nazi with it in the chest as he stood, using the force of her sprint. Then she yanked the knife out, shoved his head up with her free hand, and plunged it in again at his neck. It caught on bone, then slid, and she helped it slide, drawing the thin, sharp blade sideways in a vicious cut.

  Hot blood poured out over her bare hand.

  She grabbed at his head, wanting to pull his body down to the ground so she could get into the car, but a cap came off in her hand. And under that, his hair was so short there was nothing to grab.

  He made a sound. Still alive, the bastard.

  She pulled at his collar, muscled him onto the ground, and leapt onto his back. She stabbed him in the side of the neck, three times fast, shallow, wanting to feel more gushing of blood.

  Feebly, he tried to roll her off. She let him roll but moved her legs, squatting over him as he rolled to his back. She took the knife in both hands and swung it far overhead, then brought her arms down, aiming for his face.

  It was a good hit. The knife may have hit the nose bone at first, but it slid sideways and plunged into his eye socket. She tried to yank it out, but it was buried deep.

  The job was done. The Nazi moved no more.

  She wanted to check on Will right away, but she couldn’t. She had to make sure Claude didn’t need her help.

  It registered that she had heard another pop a moment ago. Had he shot the guard or been shot?

  No, had the guard shot, it would have been much louder, a rifle shot, surely.

  She ran around the back of the car and made it to the back door. Claude was sitting on the ground, holding his hand.

  “You okay?” she said, her voice sounding like a stranger’s.

  “Cut myself,” he said. “Check him.”

  She reached inside and grabbed at the Nazi guard.

  A hand closed around her wrist.

  “Fuck you,” she growled. This one had more hair. With her free hand she found it and yanked him half out of the car. “Shoot him,” she said to Claude.

  “I dropped the gun. My hand.”

  She kept pulling the Nazi, who was hurt but fighting feebly. He was holding on to his own gut with one hand and to her wrist with the other. She lifted his head, leaned forward, and bit his nose as hard as she’d ever bit anything before. Like a mad dog, she held on, and he dropped her wrist and batted at her face.

  Both her hands dropped to his waist, and she found his belt and hauled him out by that. Her teeth lost their grip.

  He fell to the ground, and she kicked him. Then she spat, realizing she had managed to bite off a piece of his flesh when it flew from her mouth. She spit again, and he made it up to hands and knees. She jumped on him, and wrapped her hands around his head. Her fingertips found his eyes, and she sunk her fingers in, feeling the hot, wet pressure of the eyeballs, the fluttering of his lashes as his eyes tried to close against the intrusion. And she closed her hands into fists, with all the anger she felt at these monsters, with all the revenge for her parents and Reg, and her fingertips popped through and fluid ran out.

  He screamed as she blinded him.

  She held on. She could hear Claude say something, but her whole world was red, and she wasn’t making the sense of any words at all.

  “Beatriz, stop!” Claude.

  It snapped her out of her rage. She dismounted the Nazi and stood, shaking.

  Another pop, and she registered the gun in Claude’s hand, pointed at the guard’s head.

  The Nazi fell to the ground.

  She was panting, as if she’d run ten miles up a mountain, still full of adrenaline with nowhere for it to go.

  She had loved every minute of that, loved the pain she’d inflicted, the terror, loved hearing the scream. Some part of her knew that in this moment, she was every bit the monster she hated, no different than the ones she was fighting.

  But mostly she felt victorious. This was why she had volunteered. She’d worry about becoming a monster later.

  “Get Bernard,” Claude said.

  That snapped her the rest of the way out of her killing rage. She ran back around the car to the other back door, pulled on it, and it wouldn’t open. Locked, of course. She crawled in the front seat, remembered her torch, and turned it on.

  Will was sitting there, blinking against the light. His face was swollen. He’d been punched many times over many days, that much was clear. Even at the widest point of his blink, both eyelids were swollen half shut.

  “Can you hear me?” she said.

  “Who is it?” he said.

  “It’s Beatriz. And Claude. We’re here to take you home.”

  “Home,” he said, and he sighed.

  She felt the car lurch.

  “It’s rolling. Get out!” Claude yelled.

  It was rolling, forward, canting down into the abyss the explosives had left. She threw herself over the back of the seat and grabbed Will’s arm, tugging it toward the open door. “Hurry,” she said.

  “What? Where?”

  “To your right!” The car lurched again, and the rear end shot up a good foot more. She grabbed his arm harder and yanked at it.

  He cried out in pain.

  “Move your ass, damn you,” she said, in English.

  He scooted a bit as she yanked at his arm again. “It hurts.”

  “It’s going to hurt more if you don’t move,” she said, her breath coming harder as she took as much of his weight as she could and hauled at him.

  He fell over, and she slid out the door, pulling him half out. His knees were still in the car. It rolled another few inches.

  “Help me!” she said to Claude.

  Claude’s hand reached in and grabbed at Will’s clothing, and together, pulling him by the clothes, they hauled him another foot and another, all the while the car nosing down.

  He popped out of the car just before it fell. The noise of the car smashing on the remains of the supports was loud, with metal crumpling and glass breaking.

  Will was moaning. They’d hurt him. But not as much as he’d have been hurt if he’d been in that car.

  She knelt by him. “What did they do to you?”

  “We have to dump the bodies in the river,” Claude said. “Now. Before someone else comes.”

  Reluctantly, she left Will lying on the ground. Claude was dragging the Nazi guard he’d shot in the head by one hand. “You’re hurt?” she asked him.

  “Sliced my hand. We’ll get to that in a second.”

  Together they pulled the body over as far as it was safe to go on the crumbled road, and then she sat on the ground and pushed him over the precipice with her feet.

  Sh
e went around to the driver, yanked until she retrieved her knife from his brain, and again she and Claude pulled him to the edge. She kicked the driver over, and except for the rent in the road, and possibly some blood soaking into the ground, it hardly seemed a thing had happened here.

  Antonia felt around for the torch, but it wasn’t on her body. She must have dropped it in the car. “I lost my torch,” she said to Claude.

  “No matter.”

  “I need to see both of your injuries, yours and Will’s.”

  “What about yours?”

  “I’m not injured.”

  “You’re limping.”

  “It’s nothing, really.” She went back to Will and kneeled down beside him. “Will. Do you think you can walk?”

  “How far?”

  She wasn’t going to say “fourteen miles,” which was the real answer. “A hundred yards, no more. We have a cart in a ditch. I want us there, in case another German car comes along.”

  “They’d look for us everywhere,” Claude said.

  “We won’t make it any easier for them by sitting here waiting.” She turned to him. There was enough moonlight she could see him cradling his hand. “You’re hurt badly?”

  “I’m bleeding,” he said. “I should keep it above my heart, yes?”

  “Don’t go into shock,” she said, worrying about how weak his voice sounded. “I need you to walk to the cart. I can’t carry you both that far.”

  “I think you could,” he said. “But I’ll walk on my own. You help Bernard.”

  “Okay, Will,” she said, moving around to put her arms under his armpits. “Up you go.”

  “Upsy-daisy,” he said.

  It wasn’t a work of art, the way she pulled him to his feet. It was a staggering, unlovely dance, but in less than a minute, he was standing, though if she let go of him, he swayed. “This way,” she said, tucking her head under his arm and taking some of his weight.

  Claude was a third of the way to the cart already. Good. One fewer person to worry about. She steered Will to the left.

  “Where are we going?” he said.

  “This way has less of a slope,” she said.

  “I’m doing fine,” he said, staggering enough she had to hold on tight to keep him from falling.

  “You’re doing very well,” she said. “Tell me where you hurt.”

  “Lots of places,” he said.

  “Where were you shot? Back on the night when we tried to get Hesse?”

  “My side, but it went—you know—in and out. They didn’t even have to pull a bullet out. Just poured stinging stuff on me. Bandages.”

  “Okay, good.” She wondered then why he’d fallen when he was shot. She would ask him later, if she remembered. Maybe shock. Not important. “And what did they do to you? The interrogation?”

  “Well, they hit me some. And a few of them kicked me. I’m pissing blood.” He stopped, and said, “Sorry. Ladies present.”

  “I want to know the facts. I’ve heard it all. Remember, I’ve been married.”

  “I can’t forget that.” He sounded somber. Then he said, “Oh, goddamn son of a bitch, that hurts!”

  “What?” She was afraid she’d touched him somewhere it hurt.

  “Walking hurts. They kicked me in….” He coughed. “You know.”

  “They kicked you in your bollix?” She had no idea what that felt like, but once in bed she’d accidentally kneed Reg while rolling off him, and it had taken him a good five minutes to be able to say he forgave her.

  “For about an hour.”

  “Jesus,” she breathed.

  “The first day. They seemed rather put out. And maybe again the second day.”

  She had no idea how he was alive. Or on his feet. Or talking. An hour of kicking? Even if he exaggerated, she had no doubt it had gone on a while. “You must have testicles of steel.”

  “Closer to porridge at this point. They’re swollen. Every step hurts.”

  “I’m so sorry, Will.”

  “I don’t know that anything down there will ever work again.”

  “That’s not important,” she said.

  “It is, rather.”

  “Well, yes, it is to you, of course it is. But what’s more important right now is that you’re alive and not on your way to Baumettes.” Though they were in deep, deep trouble still.

  “What’s Baumettes?” he asked.

  “A bad place. You don’t want to go there.”

  “I’m not twelve,” he said, sounding petulant. He was walking more slowly. No doubt swollen testicles had a great deal to do with that.

  “It’s a Gestapo prison where they torture you.”

  “I’ve been tortured,” he said. “I’ve found I don’t much like it.”

  How he could make jokes at a time like this? She could only respond as lightly, to keep his spirits up. “I’m sure you’ve had better days.”

  “I have. Recently, as a matter of fact. But right now, I think I have to lie down.” And he sank to his knees and fell on his side.

  They were more than halfway to the spot where the path back to the cart began. And he was not in sight of the road. Let him rest. “Can you wait for a moment? I want to run ahead and see how Claude is.”

  “I’d enjoy the rest.”

  She ran to the cart and saw Claude leaning against it.

  “I need light, for both of you,” she said. With him telling her where to look, she found Claude’s torch, relieved to see it still worked. “Now show me that hand.”

  He had the canvas bag the explosives had been in emptied and balled against his palm. She took his hand, held it up, pulled the canvas away, and looked at it. There was a long but clean gash in it. It welled blood. “How did you do this?”

  “He had a knife. I grabbed at it and caught the blade.”

  “Ouch.” It was bleeding freely. “We need to wrap that. And you won’t be able to pull the cart.”

  “One-handed,” he said.

  “No. I think you must have lost a good deal of blood. And you may lose more.”

  “You can’t pull alone, and he’ll need to be pulled.”

  “I know. One disaster at a time.”

  “It was no disaster. It was a perfect operation. Or nearly so.”

  She found her valise, took out her work blouse, and began to tear it into strips to use as bandage material. “Your hand bled freely enough that I don’t think I need sulfa powder.”

  “You have some?”

  “A little. A first aid kit no bigger than your fist.” She rolled up one strip of shirt to use as a pad, pressed it along the cut, and then wrapped his hand tightly with a second strip. “Okay. How does that feel?”

  “All right.”

  “Keep it high. Rest it here on the cart, in fact. That’s over your heart. Don’t move it. Don’t flex it. And get stitches in town. I hope there’s a doctor in the Résistance.”

  “We have someone. Not a doctor,” he said. “Help Bernard. I’m fine. Wait. Shh, a car. The torch.”

  She flicked it off. “I need to go,” she whispered, and turned to run back to Will.

  He held her back. “Wait until it passes.”

  “It can’t pass,” she said. “It can stop, or it can wreck itself by going off the bridge.”

  “True.”

  The car did slow and stop in time as its headlights found the break in the road. A man emerged, walked over, and looked down. Then he turned in a slow circle. He said, as if talking to himself, but far too loudly for that to be the case, “I think I’ll just go back to town and have a beer.”

  She understood he knew someone was possibly out here and was talking to them. To her. She whispered to Claude, “Should I stop him, ask him for a ride?”

  “There is a vast difference between not wanting to cause trouble and wanting to take part in it.”

  “I’ll never be able to pull Will in that cart alone,” she said. “Certainly not through the woods, over cow paths. And he can’t walk far.” In a
few words, she explained his injuries. “And those are only the ones he told me about. Until we examine him, we can’t be sure how bad it really is.”

  The man stood outside his car for a moment, but then he turned, opened the door, and started to sit back down in the driver’s seat.

  “I’m doing it,” she said, and when Claude did not stop her, she ran up the side of the ditch and yelled to the stranger, “I need help.”

  Claude hissed, “Don’t mention me.” He wanted no part of it, and she didn’t blame him. She’d rather not be doing this herself.

  The stranger sat in his car, but he did not close the door.

  Antonia wondered if she had made a terrible mistake. She turned briefly to Claude. “Keep my bags safe if I am lost.” She jogged toward the road, and the man waited for her. She stopped a dozen feet from him. “I need a ride back to town. That’s all. You don’t even have to look at my face. Just let me in the back seat.” She walked forward another few feet. “I won’t hurt you. I swear.”

  The man said, “I don’t want to get involved.”

  “I don’t want you to be. Just a ride. Let me out before town. That’s it. Ten minutes of your time.”

  “Only you?”

  “I have an injured friend,” she said, meaning Will. “He needs a ride. I could walk, but he can’t.”

  “Are you armed?”

  “Neither of us has a gun,” she said.

  “How did he get injured? When you blew up this road?”

  “You don’t want to be involved,” she said. “It is better that you not know.”

  He said nothing for a long time.

  She kept her distance, not wanting him to think she was threatening him. And she wasn’t. She understood the risk she was taking, asking a total stranger for help, a stranger who could be, for all she knew, part of the Vichy government. But she also thought about him, the risk he was taking if he was not that, was just a citizen, perhaps tired of the Germans. “We can do it however you’d like. We’ll get in the boot, if you wish.”

  He stood again. “Why should I trust you?”

  “There is absolutely no reason you should.”

  “Are you German?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Or with them?”

  “Not fifteen minutes ago I wrecked their car and the bridge,” she said. “I’m definitely not with them.”