That was not the Republican way. In every town or village so far, the Falange had just pillaged the place, spread terror and passed through. Here, their enemies had determined to make a stand and, as they approached the first buildings, a blast of machine gun fire tore into the lead vehicles, first shredding the tyres on the armoured van and bringing it to a halt. It then set about those following, in one of which was Laporta.

Ten trucks to the rear, Cal Jardine, jumping out of his own cab, saw the fighters ahead of him abandoning their vehicles, as well as ground being torn up by bullets. Surrounded by ploughed fields, there was little cover, and given the road was bounded by deep ditches, which acted as storm drains, the only protection enjoyed by his own truck was the presence of those in front. Being within range, albeit near the limit for a light machine gun, he needed to get his men off, while the drivers reversed to get their vehicles out of harm’s way.

He got his own truckload, Florencia included, into one of the deep ditches, bone dry at this time of year and giving good shelter, the others behind taking that cue, till they were all safe, while on the road, with a mayhem of shouting, arguing, arm-waving and the odd sound of metal on metal, the trucks were grinding backwards.

Telling them all to stay down, Cal went forward at a crouch to find out what was happening. At the head of the ditch, where it joined a culvert that dropped to the waters of the canal, it was full of fighters, their leader amongst them, he having escaped from the cab of the second truck. On the road lay the cost of not being either vigilant or a professional, several bodies, while the vehicles in which they had travelled were now ablaze from end to end. The flames reached the fuel tank of one, creating a boom that made everyone duck their heads into their shoulders, as well as sending up a sheet of bright-orange flame.

Laporta was swearing, a continuous stream of Spanish invective that was as useless as his military prowess, and the look he gave Cal Jardine dared him to even think of alluding to that lack of foresight, but he did agree that it was nonsense to just stay pinned down in the ditch; something had to be done to silence that machine gun and it could not be done from where they were cowering. When Cal indicated he would seek its precise location, the anarchist leader nodded with real gratitude.

In short controlled bursts, bullets were now pinging off the plate armour of the van, making noise, but posing little real threat, while the smoke from the burning trucks was blowing across their front to obscure the location from which the enemy fire was coming. The only person in that makeshift tank was the driver and he had changed places with another several times; no one wanted to travel on a July day in what was close to an oven, and that included the riflemen allotted to it.

If that meant no return fire, its bulk, added to the billowing black smoke, allowed Cal to get forward to the rear of the van and, between bursts, get a snatched view of what lay ahead – a kind of big barn to one side of the road, probably the place where the crops from the surrounding fields were stored after harvest. In construction, it conformed to a type of which the convoy had seen hundreds on their travels: probably two-storey, with rough-hewn sandstone blocks held together by untidy layers of mortar.

Rectangular, it sat right by the edge of the road and it should, Cal thought, be a single layer of wall surrounding an interior open area, which triggered a possible solution, if not an easy one to execute. But first it was necessary to think through the portents of what had just happened. As far as he could make out it was a single weapon, probably operated by two men, so where were the rest of the party they had been pursuing and why had it been employed? To keep them away from the bridge perhaps?

With enough ammo that machine gun could keep them here until the light faded, and if it was speculation to assume the hold-up was a deliberate tactic, that perhaps even less charming surprises requiring time to be completed were being prepared on the other side of the canal, then that was what war-fighting was like; you had to use what knowledge you had, add it to experience, then make assumptions on which you could act.

Sporadic fire was being returned from the ditches, but a few single rifles were not having much impact on a well-concealed machine-gunner, firing from an elevated position. Crawling under the truck, closer to the ground than normal on its flat front tyres, Cal managed to get a look at what lay ahead: more red sandstone buildings on the other side of a narrow bridge, then a road that went straight on into the town, though from such a low point he could see nothing more that looked like a threat.

Getting across that bridge, if the rest of the Falange decided to contest it, would be tough and it could be mined. A fair amount of dynamite would be needed to blow the thing when the first vehicle was halfway over, though he doubted they had the means, doubly so because only a fool would start a fight on the far side of the bridge with that killer option up their sleeve.

Yet it would make sense if you were waiting for explosives, or you had them but not the time to set both charges and the means to fire them; hold up the enemy till it gets dark, deploy enough firepower to keep them to the east of the canal and use the night to mine the bridge. Dodging back to Laporta he gave his opinion, glad that the anarchist leader did not seek to challenge what could only be assumptions; there could be another case to make: that their enemies were as militarily naive as the man to whom he was talking.

‘I need an interpreter and that has to be you.’ Laporta nodded: fiery as she was, what was proposed was no task for Florencia. ‘Send someone back to Drecker; I think he has grenades and I need them.’

‘He might not give them up, my friend,’ came the reply. ‘The communists like to keep their own weapons for their own use, and not just that – this morning, after you were gone, I had to threaten to take fuel for our trucks by force if he did not give it up.’

There was no time to be shocked or surprised at that, no time to ask for an explanation either. ‘Then tell him he will have to sacrifice some men if he does not want to give up the weapons I need. His choice!’

The Spanish was rattled off quickly and Cal followed a crouching runner down the ditch to where Vince sat, his back propped up against the side, smoking a fag, eyes closed and his face turned to the sky. One of his lads nudged him to say Cal was approaching.

‘This is no time for forty winks, Vince,’ Cal joked; if anything he was pleased with Vince setting such an example of sangfroid.

‘Just working on a suntan, guv.’

‘Where’s Florencia?’

‘She’s gone back to the trucks to set up a field kitchen, in case we’re stuck here for a while.’

‘And we might be unless we give that machine gun Johnny ahead something to think about.’

Cal looked over the rim of the ditch, first to where the transport had withdrawn, well out of range, then at the field on the right-hand side of the road, seemingly recently ploughed, a fact he pointed out to Vince.

‘The furrows will give some protection at long range, so let’s get a squad across and deployed in extended order and looking as if they are there to advance. It will split his attention and, if he fires, I think he will be lucky at the distance to do much damage.’

‘You?’

‘I’ve got to try to get inside and silence the bugger.’ Vince was then given the same assessment as he had passed to Laporta, the notion he had formed lying under the armoured van. ‘I have a suspicion we have to get across that bridge as quickly as we can.’

‘You need two at least for a job like that, guv.’