After a few minutes he attempted to tune into the New River Settlement’s beacon, without success. If the Spanish were already ashore, they might have destroyed the highly visible radio tower to the north of the town, a small fishing community with beaches unprotected by reefs. The waters thereabouts were shallow, shoaling some distance off the coast; if the invaders really were using small or flat-bottomed boats, they could easily just run them up the beaches…
Apparently, on Jamaica the Cubans had grounded a couple of old freighters, put down ramps at low tide and their assault troopers had waded ashore unopposed. The Spanish had been planning for this day for a long, long time. It was not a very comforting thought.
Presently, Alex spied the low, pencil thin dark line of the land.
He clicked his throat microphone.
“BAD BOY ONE TO CHOIRBOYS!” He called laconically. “LEAVE THIS CHANNEL OPEN FOR ME TO SHOUT THE ODDS. REMEMBER WHAT I TOLD YOU BEFORE WE SET OFF. ONE PASS OVER EACH TARGET. DON’T GET TARGET FIXATED. ANYBODY WHO PILES STRAIGHT INTO THE GROUND WILL BE ON A CHARGE! STICK TO YOUR PARTNER’S WING TIP. WATCH FOR ENEMY SCOUTS AND BOMBERS BUT THE BEGGARS ON THE BEACH OR THE SHIPS OFF SHORE ARE THE MAIN OBJECTIVES!” He gave this a moment to sink in. “OH, AND HAVE FUN!”
Even as he spoke, he was cranking up the revs, unleashing the Goshawk, nosing down into a long, ever-quickening dive.
Presently, he put on his game face.
“BAD BOY ONE TO CHOIRBOYS!”
He paused, swallowed hard.
“WEAPONS FREE! REPEAT! WEAPONS FREE!”
And then, with ice water pumping through his battle-hardened veins…
“TALLY HO! TALLY HO!”
Chapter 38
Thursday 14th April
Villarino de los Aires, Spain
They had reached the outskirts of the village at dusk, collapsed exhausted in an abandoned orange grove and slept, fitfully, as the gnats and bugs bit and whirred above them.
But for the two Spaniards, Miguel Burgos and his son, Simon, the fugitives might have blundered about the countryside for days reaching Villarino, almost within touching distance of the River Douro and the sanctuary of Portugal on the opposite bank.
Melody had noted that Paul Nash had none of the sure-footedness he had demonstrated, day after enervating day, back in the Mountains of Madrid. It was as if this was strange territory to him, or simply a sign that he too was at the end of his tether. This latter was probably the only thing which would have convinced him to trust their two guides, strangers both, for no better reason than melody, backed up by Henrietta, had demanded that there should be no more violence.
Albert Stanton was like a man in a trance, absorbed in his thoughts apart from when he took his turn hefting Pedro onto his shoulders as the group trudged across the dusty hills, far from roads and tracks, skirting farms.
Simon Burgos had gone into the village to fill water bags.
The women slaked their thirst, gently persuaded Pedro to do likewise.
“We go now,” Miguel Burgos decided while it was still fully night beneath a cold, starry sky, his breath frosting briefly in the pre-dawn airs.
“We won’t get to the river until after full light?” Paul Nash objected, possibly having assumed the Spaniards’ plan was to rest up another day before the final push to get across the border.
“People will have seen us,” the other man replied simply. “We must go now,” he sighed, a little apologetically, “we must cross the river today. If we meet soldiers, Simon and I will lead them away.”
“That’s the plan?”
The Spaniard nodded.
Dogs barked as they passed the village, moving from dry, desiccated hillsides to a wooded downslope, signalling that they had finally reached the eastern side of the valley of the Douro.
Twigs and leaves flicked at their faces as they stumbled down towards the river. At first the rushing water was a murmur, soon it was loud, frighteningly loud.
“The stream passes over a rocky bottom. The river is still very quiet, normally it is angry at this season but the rains came early, so the Douro is calm again,” Miguel explained, halting the party some hundred feet above the bank. “We wait a few minutes. We listen. There will be watchers, they may not have seen us yet.”
The darkness was turning grey.
Morning was coming on with a rush.
“There are men in the trees above us,” Miguel pointed to the north. “Do you hear them?” he asked Paul Nash, who nodded.
The women froze.
“You and I,” Miguel whispered, “will meet them.”
Paul Nash nodded grimly.
“Simon will show the others the crossing.”
Within moments the Spaniard and the soldier had ghosted into the undergrowth, and Simon Burgos was waving for the others to follow him.
“Do not look back,” the young man said sternly.
Melody thought it was hopeless as she gazed out across the impossibly wide river gurgling and surging across a bed of stones. Opposite them there was a grassy mudbank partially diverting the current, downstream the river was clearly deeper, narrower but its flow deadly.
“Beyond that,” Simon hissed, “the river is stagnant, very slow and shallow.” He looked to Pedro. “Somebody must carry the boy.”
“That’s me,” Albert Stanton said in a tone that brooked no objection.
“Don’t try to swim, you will be swept away,” Simon Burgos said, and to the horror of the others, turned to go.
“Aren’t you coming with us?” Henrietta asked.
“No, my place is with my father and your friend, El Escorpion.”
That was when the first volley of gunshots rang out, high in the trees marching up the eastern flank of the valley wall.
The water was viciously, numbingly cold.
So cold that it was instantly physically hurtful.
“Follow me,” Albert Stanton ordered.
Melody and Henrietta clutched hands.
Quickly they were up to their knees, then their thighs in the freezing water, slipping, sliding on the stones – mercifully rounded by aeons of rolling over and over in the river – fighting the drag of the stream.
They kept going.
There was no other option but to carry on.
Henrietta fell, Melody clung to her as she scrabbled and after a dreadful fright, regained her feet; only now both women were soaked through, head to toe.
Suddenly, they saw that the Manhattan Globe man, with Pedro perched on his shoulders was only standing in ankle-deep water in midstream. The woman struggled to join him, pausing to regain their strength, catch their breath.
They were barely half-way to the possible safety of the grassy mudbank.
Something sang through the air.
The water splashed oddly within a yard or so of Melody’s feet.
They were being fired upon…
“Go! Go! Go!” She cried, pushing the others forward.
As one the two women and the man were attempting to run through the shallows, the water sucking at their feet, heedless of whether their next panicky steps might plunge them into an unseen bottomless pool.
Melody heard somebody screaming.
It was only as she stumbled, fell and rolled to her feet on the muddy bank that she realised it had probably been her. They plunged down the reverse slope of the islet in the river.
All four of them piled into a heap as they ran into the dark lagoon beyond, encountering water waist high one step from the bank. They scrabbled, half swam, half-walked, their feet sinking into the sludge covered rocks underfoot.
And then they were crawling, on hands and knees on dry land.
“Hide, hide,” Melody gasped, knowing there might still be rifles trained upon them.
The women followed Albert Stanton, with Pedro still, miraculously in his arms, deep into the woods.