Seeking to stand still and aim, it was difficult for Cal Jardine to pick targets through a throng in front of him, that not made any easier by the dark-green uniforms of those he was seeking to kill, which in the trees made them indistinct. Five rounds did not go far even if they were effective and he had little choice but to go after Florencia, who had a grenade in one hand, with the other ready to pull the pin.
She had to be a target, so dropping the rifle he hauled out his pistol and began to fire at what lay right in front of her, his only hope in emptying it that he would disturb anyone aiming for what had to be one of their most dangerous opponents. At the same time, even if he thought her crazy, he had to admire the sheer fearless brio of her charge, not that she was alone in that, it was common to them all.
His curiosity as to why the bottles remained unthrown till the last possible moment was explained when they began to smash against the trees, the flames immediately spreading to the branches and the tinder-dry grass beneath, several inches long and untidy in clumps; they would not have broken otherwise. Florencia had thrown her first grenade, shouting as she did so to warn her comrades to duck down, immediately breaking the thread on another, and she hugged the ground.
Cal grabbed two off her, pulled the pins and threw them into the rapidly spreading flames of the burning petrol. These were sending up plumes of black smoke, which was working to obscure the anarchist fighters. It was also making life very uncomfortable for a unit whose attack had been forestalled, for with a slight easterly wind, the smoke and flames were being driven into their position. Shouted commands were coming out of the treeline and it was obvious the troopers were retiring.
Staying alongside Florencia, and after she had thrown another grenade, Cal was able to grab her and stop her entering the wood, where she would be isolated and a sitting duck — especially since her comrades’ forward movement had petered out through a lack of both firepower and wine bottles — not that he got much thanks.
It was only when she struggled to get free that Cal realised she was in a state of such exhaustion she must be near to hallucinating; her eyes were like those of a wild animal, her kicking and screaming the act of a mad creature, both of which stopped abruptly when he slapped her hard. She stood stock-still, in shock, staring at him for several seconds, then burst into tears.
With the edge of the wood now ablaze and forming an impenetrable barrier, it was a peaceful withdrawal, for not even the most rabid militia fighter thought they could hold what they had taken. If their enemy did not advance as soon as the fire died down they would move to left or right to take them in flank. The real question was could they hold their original position?
What saved them was not their bravery but the arrival of what Alverson had predicted was needed. Unbeknown to those in the Casa de Campo, as they had been fighting the first troops of the International Brigades had come into the city, marching in disciplined columns up the wide boulevards to the cheers and tears of the populace. They did not stop; one brigade headed for the University area, the other straight for the Segovia Bridge and the Casa de Campo.
They heard the clumping boots first as they crept back to their start point, and that induced a frisson of fear; marching boots meant soldiers and that meant Nationalists. But the singing of the communist anthem, ‘The Internationale’, soon laid that to rest and, with a swaggering fellow at their head, in a cap with his communist red badge very evident, they passed four abreast, staring straight ahead, through the muddled crowd of anarchist fighters. They then began to deploy for battle.
The man at their head, later identified as Manfred Stern, alias General Kleber, stood to one side and began to shout orders to the militias to disperse, to go home and rest. That was when it finally came home to them that these brigades had come to their rescue, and rescue it was, because there was no doubt a Nationalist counter-attack was in preparation, and it was one they could not have withstood.
With Florencia between them in a state of near collapse, Cal Jardine and Tyler Alverson took her back to the hotel, where her lover got her up to their room, took off her filthy clothes, ran her a deep hot bath and lowered her in, then gently washed her body and hair. Having left her to soak for only a minute, he re-entered the bathroom to find her sound asleep, her blonde hair streaming out in the bathwater like the Burne-Jones painting of Ophelia.
Lifting her out was difficult, but when he had, Cal wrapped her in a towel and put her to bed.
The brigades had looked impressive, with their uniform dress and sloped arms, but it took little time to show that they were far from properly trained and nothing demonstrated that more than their losses. Knowing Florencia would sleep for an age, Cal went out to see if any of his boys were present in the other units, knowing he had not seen them at the Segovia Bridge.
He made his way to the University area, where he expected to find fierce fighting, and he found plenty. He also came, at a crawl, across Ernest Hemingway, well forward, right in the thick of a fierce firefight and too close for a non-combatant.
All he got was a nod of recognition and the American’s attention went back to the battle before him; what Cal did not find was any of the Olympiad athletes, the men fighting being Italian communists, part of what was called, he discovered from those at the rear, the Centuria Gastone after their leader.
From what he could observe, the Centuria was attacking without much tactical nous; it was all frontal and fast up against a stout and well-organised defence made up, he suspected, of the hard elements of the Spanish Foreign Legion — odd that it should be non-Spaniards on both sides. Once back out of the fighting zone he noted the number of men being fetched back either as corpses or seriously wounded, and he also ran once more into Hemingway, he likewise observing the numbers.
‘They’re brave enough,’ Hemingway said, as if he was damning with faint praise.
‘They’re taking casualties to no purpose.’
‘Happens in a shooting war, friend.’
‘The first people I would shoot are their commanders.’
That got a wry smile and a question. ‘You figure you could do better?’
‘They’re not trained to the requisite standard for such an assault, anyone can see that, and you do not send forward men like that. You form them into a defence and get them to hold ground.’
‘So how do you win a battle?’
‘Attrition and on-the-job instruction in field tactics, not that those who command them seem to know how.’
‘You a soldier, Mr Thomas?’
There was a moment when Cal wondered who he was talking to, until he recalled that was how Alverson had introduced him. ‘I was once.’
‘That does not surprise me.’
‘Why?’
‘You look like one, that’s why.’ Hemingway was staring, but not in an unfriendly way; in fact it was as if he was amused. ‘So tell me where you soldiered?’
‘Maybe over that drink,’ Cal said, stalling, for no good reason he could think of; it just seemed right, or maybe it was habit.
In streets of some fairly smart apartment blocks, obviously the homes of well-heeled madrilenos, they heard the sounds of echoed commotion, this explained as a small knot of black-clad men emerged from a doorway, dragging in their midst a struggling middle-aged fellow, clearly being arrested. Something he was seeing for the first time made it remarkable, but not so much as what followed next.
Out of the same doorway came Manfred Drecker, as usual smoking one of his long Russian cigarettes in between the wrong fingers, hand held aloft and full of that arrogance and righteousness that Cal recalled so well, while it was obvious, as he glanced in their direction, he immediately recognised him — not hard, he was dressed as Drecker had seen him last — the face screwing up with what looked like rage.