It was late and we had no car to get us back to the hotel.  Cars were in short supply and while there were a few taxis back in service since the occupation.  This was another work of General Quiepo.  He’d issued an announcement that every taxi driver should bring his car to the Alameda or be shot.  Then he’d confiscated nine out of ten. 

The Trams had stopped running and we walked along the tracks of the Caleta line. 

Malaga wasn’t a big city and it wasn’t a terribly long walk, but it seemed further in evening clothes. 

We were walking along the lower end of the Calle Larios, in front of some burned out houses, when the car approached.  It was a Hispano-Suiza T48, built in the previous decade as a Government service car.   A nondescript black sedan with high fenders and a low running board. They were ubiquitous civil service vehicles before the war, and not too unusual now, though as often as not they’d been commandeered by the Loyalists before the war, and the Civil Service was left driving whatever they could get hold of.  I was thinking that whoever it belonged to was doing pretty well, because the engine sounded smooth and well serviced.

Challie moved first, and I almost told her not to, to avoid attracting attention.  But I’m not slow either, and when I saw her reaching for her ankle, I went for my waistband.  We both dived in different directions, and I saw the muzzle flash begin.  9mm Beretta Moschetto Carbine.  Fully automatic.  At least it wouldn’t last very long.  I hit the ground and rolled staying in motion.  I heard the snap of an automatic pistol being fired in bursts, and pivoted with the car now almost parallel to us. 

I wasn’t too worried about the machinegun.  It was running out of ammo, and probably well beyond aiming at this point.  If it hadn’t hit me yet, it would only hit me with luck.  But whoever was snapping off shots with the pistol knew what they were doing.  I steadied myself for a second and fired two shots with my Webley.  One hit the side of the car.  A window broke which puzzled me, because I wasn’t aiming for the window, then I realized the shot was from Challie’s Bayard.   We’d spun at just about the same time, and each gotten a hit. 

I wasn’t going to make myself a target for long, and I ran another few steps, turning again to see the car already at an oblique angle.  I heard a few more shots ring out, and fired one more shot from the Webley, with the object of hitting the trunk.  I didn’t really care about doing any damage.  Before the war, the drive by shooting or paseo had been an art in Spain.  Now they’d just step out of the car and arrest you, or shoot you.  They hadn’t stopped for us because we were armed.  I wanted to remind them of that fact.

We faded to opposite sides of a burned out house, and met in the alley in back, whispered a few words, and made our way the rest of the way to the Continental without further incident, trying to keep out of sight. 

Inside I slammed the door shut and sagged against a wall.  Challie went to the sofa leaned against the back unsteadily.

“Okay, who was it?” she asked.

“Government” I was panting, still a little out of breath.  “Government – somebody who had an official car and has been able to hold onto it.  Your friend the General?”

“He would have had us shot at the party, or just sent some men to arrest us here.”

“So unofficial.  That’s why they didn’t stop to arrest us.”

“Yeah, I’d take a guess they also didn’t know exactly where we were.  There are better places to try to bump us off than six blocks from our hotel.”

“If we get any official followup on this,” I said, “it’s going to be up to you to charm your friend General Quiepo.”

“Quiepo isn’t local.  Somebody here doesn’t like us.  Somebody who knows who we are and what we’re after.”

“Masons?” I asked.

“The only thing more dangerous than being a Communist here is being a Mason.  Despite rumors that they’re behind the Coup, they’ve been shot in numbers.”

“Which doesn’t preclude them, but seems likely they’d keep a fairly low profile.  Do you think Duque Gavito compromised us?”

“Again, I think he’d have had someone waiting outside the party.  It’s possible we surprised him.  But no, I think this was some third party.”

“Nazis?  Holy See?”

“Go down the list. Somebody we’re not working for.”

“Just who the Hell are you working for anyway?” I asked.  I paced back and forth, thinking. 

“None of your business…who are you working for?” she snapped.

“Right.  Okay, glad we got that straight.  Machineguns.  Not much use in a big area in the middle of the night.”

“Neh, bastard didn’t come anywhere close to us,” Challie agreed.

“Yeah…I was just a little worried about the pistol shooter though.”

“Yeah…that one had me just a little worried,” she nodded nervously.

“You want a drink?”

“Neh.  Just a few shakes.  Hell, sure.”

The room had a little parlor and a bedroom like most older European hotels.  I went into the bedroom and fished in my valise for a bottle of  H&H Five Star wrapped in a shirt.  I looked around for something to pour it into, and didn’t have any luck.  Challie was standing in the doorway, and stepped back to let me walk out.  I handed her the bottle.

“You must be on the skids.”

“You can’t get The Dimple in Lisbon.”

She tilted the bottle and took a slug, then another.  She handed it back to me.  I took a good swig.  It was like golden water after the local rotgut aguardiente, though I’d had some decent Sherry at the General’s party.  We stood in silence for a couple of minutes, letting the liquor kick in.  My head started to swim a little and I got the warm feeling in my gut, passed the bottle back to her. I could see her knuckles white as she gripped it. 

Challie took another long swig, then let out a noise that started as a laugh and ended as something close to a sob.  “Christ that was too close.”

I shook my head and blew air out.  “Yeah, you don’t fucking say.”

She gave another nervous laugh.  I reached to take the bottle back and caught hold of her wrist instinctively.  I heard her breathe, felt her tense and her body react.

“Shit,” she breathed.

I could feel her body connected to her wrist like a live wire, not moving but full of energy.  She looked at me, nodded “no” and laughed again.  It wasn’t me that she was saying “no” to.  She didn’t want to feel what she was feeling.  She wanted to say “no” to everything that was going through her.  I moved her arm by my grip on her wrist until the bottle came to rest on a beaten wooden table that held the telephone.

She let go of it. 

I seized her other wrist.  Started to move her through the door.  She resisted and looked at me.  “No.  Here.  Now.  Hard.”

I pushed her back against the wall.  I saw her eyes widen the way they did when she let me take control, heard her breathe in.  I pressed her body up, lifting her, into the wall.  She didn’t exactly fight me, but she pushed back, as hard as she could, until it was a struggle between us, which I won.  Our bodies came together.  I started without taking anything off either of us, just my weight against her.  She could feel that I was hard, instantly, rising with the look in her eyes.  I ground against her and she closed her eyes, trying to deny it, rolling her hips into mine.  In a few moments she was pulling her wrist free and I let her.  She started trying to free me, and I helped her hand which was still shaking. 

I used my hands to push her dress up, and she raised herself until I was in her.  We fucked fast and hard against the wall.  The alcohol had slowed me down and it seemed to take me forever, everything in the room moving in slow-motion.  I could smell her and taste her, see her body arch forward against mine and her head go back.  She drove herself against me and I supported her felt a sort of piercing pain begin down inside me, rise up, merge with her, and suddenly was in the moment.  I came without giving her any warning, but the motion and feeling hit her and she started before I’d stopped. 

She sort of collapsed forward into my arms and rested her head on my shoulder.  I carried her to the bed, and started to undress her, but she shook her head negatively, stood up and undressed herself.  She got into bed just as she had when we’d been lovers before, and I undressed and climbed into bed next to her.  I fished my last pack of Player’s Navy Cuts out of a trousers pocket and passed one to her without looking.

“I’m sorry,” I said finally, when I flicked open the lighter for her.

“Yeah.” She said.  “Well, you know, being shot at makes you act funny.  Kind of fucking pointless to pretend it didn’t happen.”

“Bloody mess.  My fault.”  Already inside I was getting those creeping feelings I’d had in Africa.  I wanted to say something, but what was I going to say.  Nothing that wouldn’t make her think I was just setting her up to fall again.  Or scare her away for good.  And this wasn’t the time to try and work out our romantic problems.

I looked down at my cigarette, and caught my watch. 

“Oh bloody Hell!”

“What?” she asked.

“Crap.  Nothing.  I’ve got to go out for a while.”

“Oh Shit, you’ve got to work?”  She sat up, pulling the covers up under her arms. “What the Hell is it?”

“It’s best if you don’t know.”  I got out of bed, and began pulling clothes out of a suitcase.

“Fine, have it your way.”

I pulled on trousers and found her standing up.  “You can stay here.” I said. 

“Fuck that.  You think I’m not going with you.”

“Challie.  It may mean more shooting.”

“Well I should be used to it then, shouldn’t I.” 

“Christ.  Well there’s no arguing with you.”

“Right, we’re partners right now.  And I want half.”

“You’re not going to like this…”

“Oh shit Neil.  It’s a free job?  That’s going to involve shooting.”

“Not free exactly.  A favor.  Something like that.”

“Christ.  Well, are you going to loan me some pants and a shirt, or do I have to go wearing this.”

“I’ll find something.”

                                                                            *    *    *

Once we ran out of the Sea Port without lights it was almost a romantic night at sea.  The Chris Craft Utility was a three seater with a Mercruiser petrol engine thrumming inboard.  I had her running at low speed so we didn’t create a visible wake, but so far we’d seen no sign of pursuit.  I was hoping that the long low speedboat would be taken as harbor patrol.  That wasn’t who I’d stolen it from, but there weren’t a lot of speedboats left in Malaga.

I checked the compass and corrected for the current.  Challie sat opposite me, legs up, taking up two seats.  She occasionally scanned around us with binoculars, but mostly watched with her naked eyes.

“There it is.” 

I didn’t see anything, but I strained to look ahead where the dark of the sky met the dark of the water.  We’d left after moonrise, and were about an hour out of Malaga.  With luck we’d return before dawn.

There was another flash.  A quick red light.  I took a torch with a red lens off the seat and flashed it twice.  A double flash was returned and I steered toward the light.  Challie climbed up on the utility cover, and knocked on it, and said something in Spanish.  Four men climbed up out of the cargo compartment, and sat on the deck of the boat, while Challie climbed back into the cockpit.

By now I could see the steamer, turning so we could come alongside.  S.S. Pancho Villa, out of Veracruz by the registry painted on her stern.  Mexico was the only country that was giving open aid and comfort to the Loyalist Government.  I got us maneuvered alongside, and Challie got our passengers onto the ropes.  One of them couldn’t climb, and the sailors had to rig a sling to get him onto the deck.  The delay didn’t make any of us happy.  As soon as I’d seen the last of our refugees gain the deck, I gestured for Challie to cast off the line, and turned for home. 

We had a choice now.  We could risk a long run in and potentially approach Malaga in daylight.  Or we could risk running at high speed and attracting attention.  I thanked the Mercury Marine company for three hundred fifteen horses and opened the throttle.

I’d begun to throttle back when we had the first problem.  Neither Challie or I saw it until we got hit with the sweep light.

“Destroyer” said Challie, turning the glasses on our new friend.

“What do you figure she’s making?”

“Hard to tell.” Said Challie.  “She can probably open out to 26 or 27 knots.”

“We can outrun her.”

“We’ll make shore first anyway.  I hope nobody needed this boat.”

“It’s a nice boat,” I said. “That’s why I stole it.”

“Good,” said Challie.  “We can ditch it as soon as we make the coast?”

“Right, we just have to get there.”

We made our run for another five or so minutes.  I made our speed to be almost 35 knots, and the Destroyer was dropping astern.  I’d hoped she was British, but we must be getting close to the three mile limit and she wasn’t turning around which meant she was an Insurgent ship.  The British would try to turn us back, the Insurgents would try to blow us out of the water.   Once I heard a pop and saw a flash, and Challie said there was a spout of water astern, but a long way off.  We were out of her range, and I was planning to keep it that way.

“Shit!”  I heard a low hiss from Challie and knew it was something serious.

“What?”

“More company.”

I couldn’t hear yet, but I could see the light against the sky.  I couldn’t make out what kind of plane it was, but it was getting closer and had a spotlight.

“Has this thing got a radio?” asked Challie.

I looked around.  “Yeah.  Marine Radio, right there.”

She flipped some switches, cursed, and I heard a low hum.  She began spinning the tuner dial and speaking urgently in a language I didn’t know.  I was pretty sure it was Russian. 

The plane got closer.  They’d be on us within a few minutes.  They were further away than the destroyer, but a lot faster.  

I heard Challie muttering “what the fuck frequency are you bastards on…” and she continued to twiddle the dials.

I began to weigh zig-zagging.  I’d lose speed, but they’d have a harder time strafing us.

“Any luck”

“Shut up, I gotta contact…”  Challie began to reel off a long stream of fluent Russian.

In the meantime, I cut the steering wheel over and turned the Runabout on its side, then turned again.  I wasn’t sure how far away they could open up, but I didn’t want to be caught by surprise.

The first pass wasn’t too bad.  The plane flew over slow, but fired only a few rounds which went far above our heads.   She was a mid-sized flying boat, an older model with open cockpits and a single heavy engine mounted in the center of the upper wing.  I took the opportunity to open out flat for a while, then switched back to a hard zig zag as I saw them make their turn and come back. 

For the next five minutes we played cat and mouse.  They couldn’t see us that well, and I tried to be a hard target to hit.  I concluded the pilot wasn’t particularly good, and hoped he’d run out of ammo. 

I heard a couple of hits on one of the passes, but as far as I could tell we hadn’t taken any serious damage.  The boat-hulled biplane was probably a Savoia S-62.  The pilot would be sitting back under the wing, with a gunner in the nose,  Normally there would be another gunner sitting behind the pilot, but in this case that position was mounting the searchlight.  The nose gunner had a machine gun on a tripod that was going to be hard to score a hit with.

Unfortunately even a broken clock is right once a day.  I heard a cough and misfire.

“Shit!” That was Challie.  She began talking more urgently, then dropped the mike to climb through the utility hatch.  I could smell smoke.

Her head came up in a moment.  “We don’t have much time.”

I threw another zag, and heard the patrol plane not hitting us, a sound I liked.

I saw a glow down below, and heard Challie cough.  “There’s a fire extinguisher here, but I don’t wanna use it till we can shut the engine down.”

Then I was turning again, trying to keep the damn patrol plane from blowing us out of the water.

She was lower this time, and flying slower.  She’d slowed turning, and I could make out the white St. Andrews crosses on her wings and tail, and the solid black circle on her side.  The pilot was getting impatient, and may have seen the fire.  He knew we were hit.  The gunner opened up and I heard crunching sounds, felt a sharp pain in my arm, probably from a splinter of our deck.  I considered jumping overboard and playing dead.

Then the Savoia was folding up, the delicate twin wings buckling towards each other, the heavy engine overbalancing the hull, spinning forward, a mass of fire, wires and fabric.  No self-sealing fuel tanks on that vintage.  The boat pinwheeled towards us and for a moment I was afraid it would hit us, but then it was overhead, thick black smoke pouring from the engine cowling, as the airframe crumpled up and spun into the sea.

I could hear another engine, higher and above.  The newcomer slowed and circled above us once, wagging wings.  I gave a thumbs up.  Red bands with a tricolor tail.  A Soviet I-16 monoplane fighter flying in Republican livery.  We’d been lucky.  The Republic didn’t have a lot of patrol planes out here and the little Polikarpov was a long way from home.  The range on that sort of plane wasn’t much over five hundred miles.  That one must have been on a long range recon patrol.  Might have been connected with our passengers, so I couldn’t say for sure it was coincidence.  I hadn’t even known Challie spoke Russian.  I’d have to remember that.

In the next moment our rescuer was gone, and Challie was yelling at me to shut down the engine.  I slammed home the throttle and heard the engine die with a few knocks, and she went after the V-8 with the fire extinguisher.  I was hoping the fire wasn’t badly out of control, and in a moment her head came back out of the hatch.  Her face was streaked with soot and grease, but she gave a smile.  I handed her my pocket knife and she did a few minutes of work, splicing a fuel line.  I noticed we were settling in the water.  We were noticeably down when she climbed back over into the cockpit and had me start the engine while she worked the choke.  It coughed and complained but turned over, and I continued our run towards Malaga while she found the pump and got power going to it.  I couldn’t tell if we were gaining headway or sinking, but we’d make shore. 

Dawn was breaking by the time we got in sight of land.  I looked for a section of coastline that didn’t seem very populated and ran in quietly without showing any light.  When I felt the keel begin to drag, we jumped out and pushed till we were free, then I climbed back in and eased the boat around.  I jammed the throttle open, and turned the rudder out to sea, sending her back out to sea unmanned while we floundered up onto the beach.  We climbed onto the wet sand, soaked, and stood on the beach in the breaking dawn.

“Long walks on the beach at dawn,” I said.  “Who says I’m not romantic.”

Challie threw something wet at me that might have been seaweed.   We both turned and glanced at the impending dawn, and it made us stop in our tracks. 

The horizon had the band of rose colored light which climbs into the sky to fade in the growing light in the tropical dawn.  It was still low along the horizon and very intense.  The beach was on a cape of the coast which cut inward past Malaga and though the Mediterranean was mostly to the south, we had clear waters to the East as well. 

She eased up to me, and I took her by the waist and we stared for a few moments as the intense rose light climbed into the sky, scattering the darkness before it.  We both wanted to stand and watch the sun rise, but that would be unwise. 

Challie broke the spell first, by speaking.  “We better get under cover,” she said, and I agreed.