Free Breaking Lorca by Giles Blunt Page A

vivid.
    That night he climbed out of bed, the fever gone, and tiptoed through completely deserted classrooms that glowed pale as marble in the moonlight. After slitting the throat of the night guard, a boy of fifteen, he opened the last door and lay in bed with the Sanchez woman. What they did together was indistinct, but he had a wonderful sensation of warmth and comfort, as if he were curled in a den of warm animals.
    When the Captain and the others burst in on them, Victor pulled out his service revolver and fired before they could even draw their pistols. Bodies tumbled at his feet. He pulled the Sanchez woman along the corridor, fighting hand to hand with the soldiers who now leapt out at him from all sides. It was amazing what strength and cunning he had. Bullets swarmed in the air, but he ran through them with supernatural courage. It should have been a terrifying dream, but it was not; the sense of victory was too thrilling.
    But the thrill dissolved when he awoke and remembered he was a coward. A coward who, far from saving the Sanchez woman, had done his part to split open her flesh.
    He lay in bed trying to persuade himself that he was not evil. He was not doing it by choice. He was here under threat of death. If he tried to help her escape, they would both be shot; that was not good. If he tried to escape himself, he would be shot, and that was not good. Besides, if he disappeared, they would only replace him with someone much worse. Nevertheless, he resolved to escape if the chance—a realistic chance—should ever present itself.
    Victor suffered three days of fever before he was pronounced fit to return to duty. He went back to work feeling thin and ethereal, no match for the harshness of his fellow soldiers.
    “Hey, Peña junior,” said Yunques. “How was your vacation?”
    “Not much fun, thanks.”
    “You’re lucky the Captain’s your uncle, Peña.” Tito made a throat-slitting gesture. “Me and the boys here get the feeling you’re a slacker. A malingerer.”
    “That isn’t true. I was sick. Lopez, you saw.”
    Lopez shrugged and looked out the window. “So you fainted. So you have a weak stomach.”
    “Tell me, Peña,” said Tito. “What do you have in mind for a career after you leave the army?”
    “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it much.”
    “Because, to tell you the truth, I get a very negative feeling from you. You don’t participate here like you should.”
    “And if you don’t participate in one way,” Yunques put in, “you will certainly participate in another.”
    “Peña and the doctor, I think they are two of a kind. I think we should tie them together and throw them in the tank.” Tito kicked his chair. “Funny how you manage to be out sick just when things get interesting.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “It reminds me of your battle experience, no? You manage to be unconscious just when things take a turn for the worse? Oh, yes, don’t look so shocked. I happen to have a friend in the Casarossa unit. He’s told me all about you, my friend, and frankly, you are going to have to convince me of your sincerity. If you’re just here because your uncle saved your ass, that makes you a security threat.”
    “I don’t understand. What are you talking about?”
    “Look. We’re not fools here, just because we don’t read faggot books in English. We know that when this war is over, people will come asking questions about special units like ours. What are you going to tell them, eh? ‘I was helpless’? ‘They made me do it’? ‘I never hurt anybody’?”
    “I won’t tell anybody anything. I assume everything we do here is strictly confidential.”
    “What we do here is not confidential. It doesn’t even exist. As far as I’m concerned, you are not yet part of this team. You never do anything to anybody.”
    “That’s not true. I worked the General on Sanchez.”
    “The Captain made you do it. First opportunity you get, you’re going to blab to