“Captain Albert-” Albert started to repeat.
“Silencio. You have eluded me, embarrassed me, and delivered the wrath of my superiors upon me. For this, you will be punished. I will not kill you — as I am under orders not to — however, I will make you wish that I had.”
Albert felt his heart pound in his temples. His breath grew shallow and rapid. Stay Calm and Carry On, Albert recited to himself. He decided to go on the offensive against this rather frightening man.
“You are a soldier,” Albert said. “You do not fight unfair. To torture a man who is bound and helpless is unfair. It dishonors you. Are you not a man of honor?”
Vargas plugged the electric drill into an outlet.
“This is the horse farm?” Albert asked. “Where is the family that lived here? Dead, I imagine. You are a murderer. You are not a soldier. At least when I killed an innocent, it was an accident.”
“You killed-” Vargas started to say, but then stopped himself. His face betrayed internal conflict. Albert pressed further.
“I killed a little girl; flew 9 kilos of high-explosive right into her. Do you have a family, Major Vargas?”
“I had-”
“Did you have a little girl, too?”
Vargas realized he had faltered and he grew angry. He revved the drill, as his defense from guilt or sadness continued to be violence. He moved for Albert and placed the drill bit on the top of his hand. With a high-pitched whine, Vargas started the drill spinning. Albert felt the sharp steel bit tug at his skin. Then it burned and ripped as Vargas drove it through flesh. Albert tried not to scream, but his attempt failed. When he quieted, he heard other soldiers upstairs, laughing as Albert suffered. Vargas’s face displayed sadistic satisfaction.
“I will never tell you anything,” Albert spat.
“I have not asked you anything,” Vargas replied as he steadied the drill on another part of Albert’s hand. “We go again, yes?”
“Wanker,” Albert bellowed at Vargas.
The drill started up again, and the new hole it made splattered both men with Albert’s blood and tissue.
“I must have hit a vein. Triste. Very sorry,” Vargas said with a crooked smile. He waited for Albert to quiet and calm.
“Hurting me won’t bring back your family,” Albert jabbed, though his words were pinched by the raw pain.
“Perhaps you are right. Perhaps I should hurt another,” Vargas said quietly, then yelled: “Traiga la mujer.”
Albert did not know Spanish. He did not know that his tormentor had made an order that would only serve to ratchet up the torment. Albert heard shuffling upstairs, and then the cellar door creaked open. Several footfalls descended the stairs. Albert strained to turn his head and see what was coming. A soldier had brought a person, a folded mess of hair and dirty clothes. When that person looked up, Albert saw it was Linda, bruised and beaten. Vargas’s peon pushed her to the floor.
“You know her, don’t you?” Vargas asked smugly. Albert would not meet Vargas’s or Linda’s eyes.
“Su madre?” Albert swore; it was a phrase he had heard at a London tapas bar where he had spent joyous evenings of eating and drinking with old mates. Those days seemed so far away. Perhaps part of another life, he considered. Vargas went to Linda, stood over her, slid his hand beneath her shirt, and grabbed her left breast. Linda squealed with loathing.
“You do not know her, so you do not mind if I touch her, right?” Vargas said as he fondled Linda’s chest.
“Piss off, tosser.” Albert’s statement was defiant and steadfast, though his heart had broken when he saw Linda and the condition she was in.
“You do know her, then? Well, my men and I now know her very well.”
“You’re a rapist and a murderer. You will burn in hell.”
“I will see you there, then, eh, amigo?” Vargas’s laugh was sickening and exhibited a tenuous grasp on sanity.
“Don’t you realize that every time you kill, every time you drill someone’s hand, every time you rape, it is your own soul that you are torturing. God will make you pay.” Albert saw this last statement worried the Catholic. He would play this line further. “God is always watching — sees all. He will judge you,” Albert said with a smile. Vargas fidgeted, so Albert punched again: “You are evil. You are a demon.”
“Enough,” Vargas bellowed. He turned to Linda, and then grabbed and lifted her chin, forcing her to look to Albert through swollen eyelids. “I have your friend,” Vargas told Linda. “I took your daughter, too.” Linda’s bloodshot eyes rolled Albert’s way. “I raped her before I cut her throat.” Linda began to sob. “She squealed with pleasure like a little whore,” he twisted the knife of his words. “And, just, before she died, she cried for her mommy, her grandfather, her dog, and her little furry cat.”
“Bastard,” Albert exploded. Although still bound to the chair, he pushed to his feet, and crashed back down as hard as he could. The chair shattered under his body’s weight and his strength. Albert stood again. Coils of rope dangled from his wrists and ankles, and bits of wood from the chair fell free. He seemed to grow bigger, inflated by anger, and looked to Vargas. His chest barreled up, and his teeth clenched in an intimidating grimace. The vision made Vargas hesitate. Albert used the moment to throw his full weight and scorn at the smaller man, and he landed an elbow on Vargas’s cheek.
The hit shattered bone and threw Vargas’s head back with a snap, knocking him to the slab floor. Vargas’s head hit hard and started to bleed. Linda stopped crying as Albert shed the remains of his bindings, went to her, and lifted her up. She immediately ran to Vargas and kicked his torso with all her might, breaking her big toe on his ribcage. Albert pulled her off and she fell into an embrace.
“Kill him,” Linda begged.
“No. We are not like him.”
“Annie…” Linda had to find her daughter. She had to find Annie, even if dead. Albert looked at Vargas. He was curled up on the floor, and his head had a big knot that protruded from his crew cut. He bled from his mouth, too, and his bit tongue hung from between red-stained teeth. Albert spotted an assault rifle propped up in a corner of the basement.
“Jackpot.”
It was Vargas’s personal rifle. Albert picked up the cold weapon, released the magazine to check its load, smacked it in again, and cycled the charging handle. “Nice.” It was an FN FAL 50.61 with a folding-stock and shortened barrel. “Fabrique Nationale de Herstal Fusil Automatique Léger.”
“Eh?” Linda was perplexed.
“A Belgian light automatic rifle. Paratrooper version.” Albert folded the stock and brought the weapon to his hip. “Stay quiet and stay close.”
Linda grabbed some of Albert’s shirt and shadowed him as he moved up the stairs. He hunched down, the weapon’s sight floating before his eye. All British Army Air Corps pilots are infantrymen first, and Albert’s own Infantry Training Centre skills rushed back. He could almost hear his trainer screaming in his ear. Hundreds of years of warrior tradition flowed through him, from his heart, through his brain, to his legs and to his trigger finger. With Linda in trail, Albert bounded up the stairs and through the cellar door.
The sudden look of surprise on the Argentine soldiers face forestalled any decisive action. As he sipped a cup of coffee in the house’s kitchen, he never expected anyone other than Vargas to emerge from the basement. The look on the soldier’s expression was priceless to Albert; almost comical. That look was locked in by death when Albert put a single 7.62 x 51 millimeter NATO round between mister coffee drinker’s eyes. Albert spun around. He clicked his weapon to full automatic, and hosed the men standing at the farmhouse’s kitchen counter. They had made sandwiches from the cold cuts in the refrigerator, and, now, slumped and fell against the cabinets. Smeared blood marked the trail of their dead fall. They all had the same look of surprise, a sickening realization that their days of glory had ended. Albert and Linda heard the whimper of a child. They looked to each other and grinned.