Free The Eldorado Network by Derek Robinson

for eight, nine hours? Absurd. Who would drive the correspondents back to Madrid? Townsend was still shouting instructions. 'Yes, yes, okay,' Luis answered irritably. There was a moment of silence, during which Luis admired a hawk, poised high above the crest of the hill, balanced on the rising air currents, searching for prey: another war within a war.
    Thirty yards from him, urgent voices were being raised, overlapping and blurred. The hawk sideslipped away. Luis rolled onto his front. He was bored with this stupid hillside which kept sticking into him. He shifted his hips to avoid a hard lump and discovered that it was in fact inside his pocket. It was Davis's steel-pipe grenade.
    'Magnificent,' he whispered. 'Utterly and outstandingly magnificent.'
    The dull grey tube was about the size and shape of a kitchen candle. He twirled the wick and sniffed the other end. He had a box of matches. He struck three together. Flames spat and soared and he held the wick in their fire until it glowed gold. Gripped gently by the fingertips and poised in front of his face, the grenade seemed innocent and friendly, its wick hissing softly as the fibres were consumed.
    Luis rose on one elbow, lobbed the grenade and flattened his face in the dirt. It fell halfway to the observation post, slightly downhill. He braced his arms and legs. An ant, pushing on above the knee, explored his inside thigh. The explosion was immense: a crack like a lightning-strike, a crash like trains colliding. The ground quivered, and the noise pounded over him like a big sea. Then his hands forced him up and his feet thrust against the broken stone and slippery heather, and he was running into a mist of smoke and dirt.
    The funny bullets sang as they searched for him, erupting in a harmless crackle, far uphill. Then he was out in the sunshine again. Bullets whined and droned, whined and buzzed. He dodged sudden bits of litter: a bayonet, a knapsack, a broken weapon . . . His feet were too slow, for his brain: they skidded as he turned to grab that weapon and he nearly fell. The post was ten feet away. He threw the weapon into it, forced his legs into a last, lurching dash, and flung himself over the wall. The place was crammed with people and he landed on half of them.
    Summers was there, bleeding slightly from the head where the broken weapon had hit him. Barker and Dru were there. Townsend and Davis were still there, and they had been joined by three or four officers. The whole packed assembly had been shouting at each other when Luis fell from the sky and briefly silenced them. Summers was one of the men he felled, and Summers was already angry at having been struck on the head. By the time he struggled to his feet he was shaking with fury. 'What the hell are you doing?' He kicked Luis. 'How dare you?'
    Townsend dragged Summers away. 'Cut that out, you maniac,' he growled.
    'I'll have you shot.' Summers' face was white with loathing. I'll have you both shot.'
    'What with?' Davis mocked. He held up the broken weapon which Luis had found. 'This junk?'
    'Shosser? Luis panted eagerly.
    'Half a shosser,' Davis said.
    'You came here to spy,' Summers accused. 'You're all spies, fascist traitors  -- '
    'Oh, shut up,' Barker said.
    'Sir, do you have what you need?' Luis asked Townsend. He felt bewildered; everyone was so upset. He desperately wanted to be told that he had done well.
    One of the officers said: 'Is that what all this row is about? A broken shosser? For God's sake ...'
    'It's a useless piece of shit,' said Davis, 'and whoever got it for us ought to be shot.'
    'Give that thing to me,' Summers demanded.
    Davis handed the broken shosser to Townsend. 'Tell the world, friend,'he said. 'They won't like it, they won't believe it, but for Chrissake tell them anyway.'
    Summers' trembling fingers drew his pistol and thrust it at Townsend's face. 'Give that thing to me!' he demanded again.
    'Go get your own,' Townsend snapped.
    The muzzle was twitching and trembling.