فصل بیست و سوم

23

The Only Honorable Way to Die

The rebels had blown up the train tracks up in the hills and one of the trains transporting army provisions to a nearby garrison. The engine was entangled in strands of melted iron, its metal flanks coated with ashes and the soil it had dug itself into coming off the rails.

“I sounded the whistle, but they wouldn’t move!”

The engineer was eager to convince everyone this hadn’t been his fault. He stumbled along, as Vidal walked with Serrano past the damaged train cars.

“I tried to stop! I swear! But it was too late.”

Idiot. Only the guilty ones talk that fast. Vidal wanted to shove him under the broken train or kick him until he was as motionless as his engine. But the fool went on and on with his breathless pleas.

“The fireman and I jumped out just in time, but look at the mess they made!” Vidal eyed the blown-up rails, the blown-up train. Broken. Out of order. That’s what the bastards in the woods wanted. Chaos. He stopped in front of a car that seemed somewhat intact.

“What did they steal?” he asked one of the men overseeing the transport.

“Nothing, Capitán. They didn’t open a single car.” The man wiped soot from his face. He was much calmer than the engineer. He was delivering good news.

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“This whole mess . . . They didn’t open any of the wagons. They took nothing. God only knows what they wanted. Other than to waste our time.” Vidal watched his soldiers swarming around the broken train like ants around their trampled anthill. Waste our time. The words rang awfully false in his mind. No. The rebels wouldn’t make use of valuable explosives just to annoy him. Or would they? The answer rang through the woods before he could finish his thought.

Another explosion made them all spin around. Another fireball was rising from the trees and there was no doubt about the direction from where it came.

Fooled! It had all been a ruse, a distraction!

But now this was war.

The fighting was still going on when they reached the mill—explosions tearing the soldiers’ jeeps, trucks, and tents apart, blood-soaked bodies sprawled all over the yard. Vidal barely recognized Garces emerging from the smoke, covered in blood and soot.

“They came out of nowhere, Capitán!”

Vidal pushed him aside.

It was pouring, as if the sky were teaming up with the rebel beasts. Yes, that’s what he would call them from now on. Beasts from the woods. The rain mixed with the smoke and made it hard to see where the attacks were coming from, but Vidal didn’t remove his sunglasses. Their own reflections in the dark lenses—that was all he wanted his men to see until he’d regained control over his emotions. His mask was slipping and the eyes were the first to betray the rage and fear hidden behind it.

They’d been tricked like a bunch of rabbits by a fox, his equipment, his men, all reduced to a mess of rain-soaked trash. Vidal could hear the forest laughing at him, the forest and the cowards hiding under its trees.

“They have grenades, Capitán!” Garces’s eyes were wide with fear. “There was nothing we could do.” The soldiers all knew their capitán would find someone to blame and to bleed for this.

Only now did Vidal notice that the barn doors stood wide open.

He nearly crushed the sunglasses when he took them off with his gloved hand. Garces didn’t dare follow him into the barn. The provisions, the medicine . . . the rebels had taken everything, even his tobacco. The doors, though, were still intact. No trace of explosives. Vidal inspected the lock. No sign of forced entry.

“Capitán!” Serrano ran to his side. His face couldn’t hide his relief that Garces and not he had been in charge of guarding the mill this morning. “We’ve surrounded a small unit. They’ve taken cover up the hill.” The hill. Good. That would make the beasts into weak rabbits. Vidal straightened the cap on his wet hair. Yes. This time he wouldn’t let them get away.

It was not much of a hill they had run to. The few rocks on top were the only cover the rebels had.

Vidal led the attack himself, shooting as he ran from tree to tree. This time he would kill them before the forest could hide them again. As always, when he went into battle, he was holding the watch in his left hand. It was his good-luck charm, its broken face pressing against his palm, its ticking urging him forward. Sometimes it sounded like a metallic whisper: Come on, Vidal. I saw the death of your father. I want to see yours. How long will you keep me waiting?

He’d ordered his soldiers to attack the rebels’ position from all sides. Bark splintered around them in the cross fire, but he knew their foes would soon run out of ammunition. There were probably a dozen of them, maybe fewer. They were hopelessly outnumbered.

The hunt didn’t taste as good as it usually did. Vidal had allowed himself to be fooled by the prey. No revenge would erase that shame. But at least he could make sure no one would live to tell the story. He hid behind a tree to reload his pistol. Serrano took cover behind a tree to his left.

“Go ahead, Serrano!” Vidal yelled, stepping out to take another few shots. “No need to be afraid, this is the only decent way to die!” He took cover again and inhaled deeply as he slipped the watch into his pocket. It still protected him. Obviously, his time to die hadn’t come yet. Another few shots, bullets missing him by an inch, while his soldiers screamed around him and fell on their backs to stare with empty eyes up into the branches and the pitiless rain. Back behind another tree to push fresh bullets into the pistol, and out once more through the metal rain, up the hill, chasing prey out from behind the rocks, making them regret that they’d dared to make a fool of him.

Vidal took cover one last time. Rain dripped from the peak of his cap into his eyes. Corpses were sprawling their limbs over the rocks like pale roots torn out of the ground. Only two rebels were still fighting, but when Vidal ordered another attack they fell with muffled cries, hit by several bullets.

Oh, the silence of Death. There was nothing quite like it. Vidal often wished he could record it and listen to it while shaving his face. Its silence was only disturbed by the sound of the rain pouring through the trees and falling onto the lifeless bodies, soaking their clothes until they seemed to melt into the ground.

Vidal walked up the last stretch of the hill, followed by the soldiers who’d survived the attack. Their losses were nothing compared to the rebels. The first one Vidal stopped at didn’t stir. He made sure he was dead nevertheless by firing twice into his silent face. It felt good. Each shot neutralized some of the poison the shame of being fooled had left in his blood. But he needed to find one who could still talk.

Serrano came, as always, running like a well-trained dog when Vidal called him to his side. They found another two of their enemies lying between the rocks on top of the hill. They were only boys, maybe fifteen years old. One was dead, but the second one was still moving. He was pressing his right hand against a bullet wound in his neck, his pistol beside him. Vidal kicked it away.

“Let me see,” he said, pulling the boy’s bloody hand away from the wound. He said it almost gently. Vidal enjoyed being calm with his prey.

The boy still had some fight in him, but it was an easy task to pull his hand off the wound. He had no strength left and for sure not much life. The throat was covered with blood.

“Can you talk?”

The boy gasped for air, staring up at the clouds that were covering his face with rain.

“Damn it.” Vidal got up and drew his pistol.

When he pointed it at the boy’s head, the fool reached up with his bloodstained hand to push the muzzle aside, his fading eyes filled with defiance, almost mockery. Vidal yanked the pistol out of his grasp and took aim again. This time the boy pressed his hand against the muzzle, but the bullet went easily through flesh and bone. Vidal put another bullet into his rebellious head.

“These are useless. Neither of them can talk.” Vidal waved at the bodies covering the ground around them. “Shoot them all.” Serrano had watched the assassination of the boy uneasily. Vidal suspected Serrano sometimes imagined his own head beneath his capitán’s pistol. Garces for sure didn’t have such thoughts. He went to work as ordered.

“Capitán!” he called. “This one is alive. Just a wounded leg.”

Vidal stepped to his side. One look at the injured rebel was enough to make him smile.

“Yes, this one will do.”