Sidney Sheldon - The sands of time

Teresa screamed. She looked up at the circle of men surrounding her. God will strike them all dead. He will not let them touch me, for I am His vessel. I am one with the

Lord, drinking from His fountain of purity.

One of the soldiers unfastened his belt. An instant later she felt rough hands pushing her legs apart, and as the soldier sprawled on top of her, she felt his hard flesh penetrate her and again she screamed.

"Now, God! Punish them now."

She waited for the clap of thunder and the bright flash of lightning that would destroy them all.

Another soldier climbed on top of her. A red haze came over her eyes. Teresa lay there waiting for God to strike,

almost unaware of the men who were ravaging her. She no longer felt the pain.

Lieutenant Arrieta was standing next to the cot. After each man finished with Teresa, he said, "Have you had enough,

Sister? You can stop this at any time. All you have to do is tell me where Jaime Miró is."

Sister Teresa did not hear him. She screamed in her mind:

Smite them down with Your power, Lord. Wipe them out as You wiped out the other wicked ones at Sodom and Gomorrah.

Incredibly, He did not answer. It was not possible, for

God was everywhere. And then she knew. As the sixth man entered her body, the epiphany suddenly came to her. God was not listening to her because there was no God. All these years she had deceived herself into worshiping a supreme power and had served Him faithfully. But there was no supreme power. If God exists, He would have saved me.

The red haze lifted from Sister Teresa's eyes and she got a clear look at her surroundings for the first time. There were at least a dozen soldiers in the tent waiting their turn to rape her. Lieutenant Arrieta was standing at one side of the bed watching. The soldiers in line were in full uniform,

not bothering to undress. As one soldier lifted himself from

Teresa, the next soldier squatted down over her and a moment later penetrated her.

There is no God, but there is a Satan, and these are his helpers, Sister Teresa thought. And they must die. All of them.

As the soldier plunged into her, Sister Teresa grabbed the pistol from his holster, and before anyone could react, she turned it on Arrieta. The bullet hit him in the throat. She then pointed the gun at the other soldiers and kept firing.

Four of them fell to the floor before the others came to their senses and began to shoot at her. Because of the soldier on top of her, they had difficulty aiming.

Sister Teresa and her last ravisher died at the same moment.

Jaime Miró came awake instantly, aroused by a movement at the edge of the clearing. He slipped out of the sleeping bag and rose, gun in hand. As he drew nearer he saw Megan on her knees, praying. He stood there, studying her. There was an unearthly beauty about the image of this lovely woman praying in the forest in the middle of the night, and Jaime found himself resenting it. If Felix Carpio hadn't blurted out that we were headed for San Sebastian, I wouldn't have been burdened with the sister in the first place.

It was imperative that he get to San Sebastian as quickly as possible. Colonel Acoña and his men were all around them,

and it would have been difficult enough slipping through their net alone. With the added burden of this woman to slow him down, the danger was increased tenfold.

He walked over to Megan, angry, and his voice was harsher than he had intended.

"I told you to get some sleep. I don't want you slowing us down tomorrow."

Megan looked up and said quietly, "I'm sorry if I've angered you."

"Sister, I save my anger for more important things. Your kind just bore me. You spend your lives hiding behind stone walls waiting for a free trip to the next world. You make me sick to my stomach, all of you."

"Because we believe in the next world?"

"No, Sister. Because you don't believe in this one. You ran away from it."

"To pray for you. We spend our lives praying for you."

"And you think that will solve the problems of the world?"

"In time, yes."

"There is no time. Your God can't hear your prayers because of the noise of the cannons and the screams of children being torn apart by bombs."

"When you have faith—"

"Oh, I have lots of faith, Sister. I have faith in what

I'm fighting for. I have faith in my men, and in my guns.

What I don't have faith in are people who walk on water. If you think your God is listening now, tell him to get us to the convent at Mendavia so I can be rid of you."

He was angry with himself for losing his temper. It wasn't her fault that the Church had stood idly by while Franco's

Falangists had tortured and raped and murdered Basques and

Catalans. It wasn't her fault, Jaime told himself, that my family was among the victims.

Jaime had been a young boy then, but it was a memory that would be etched forever in his brain…

He had been awakened in the middle of the night by the noise of the bombs falling. They fell from the sky like deadly flowers of sound, planting their seeds of destruction everywhere.

"Get up, Jaime. Hurry!"

The fear in his father's voice was more frightening to the boy than the terrible roar of the aerial bombardment.

Guernica was a stronghold of the Basques and General

Franco had decided to make it an object lesson: "Destroy it."

The dreaded Nazi Condor Legion and half a dozen Italian planes had mounted a concentrated attack, and they showed no mercy. The townspeople tried to flee from the rain of death pouring down from the skies, but there was no escape.

Jaime, his mother and father, and two older sisters fled with the others.

"To the church," Jaime's father said. "They won't bomb the church."

He was right. Everyone knew that the church was on the side of the Caudillo, turning a blind eye to the savage treatment of his enemies.

The Miró family headed for the church, fighting their way through the panicky crowds, trying to flee.

The young boy held his father's hand in a fierce grip and tried not to hear the terrible noises around him. He remembered a time when his father was not frightened, was not running away.

"Are we going to have a war, Papa?" he had once asked his father.

"No, Jaime. That's just newspaper talk. All we're asking is that the government give us a reasonable amount of independence. The Basques and the Catalans are entitled to have their own language and flag and holidays. We're still one nation. And Spaniards will never fight against

Spaniards."

Jaime was too young then to understand it, but of course there was more at stake than the issue of the Catalans and

Basques. It was a deep ideological conflict between the

Republican government and the right-wing Nationalists, and what had started out as a spark of dissension quickly became an uncontrollable conflagration that drew in a dozen foreign powers.

When Franco's superior forces had defeated the Republicans and the Nationalists were firmly in control of Spain, Franco turned his attention to the intransigent Basques: "Punish them."

And the blood continued to flow.

A hard core of Basque leaders had formed ETA, a movement for a Basque Free State, and Jaime's father was asked to join.

"No. It is wrong. We must gain what is rightfully ours by peaceful means. War accomplishes nothing."

But the hawks proved stronger than the doves, and ETA quickly became a powerful force.

Jaime had friends whose fathers were members of ETA, and he listened to the stories of their heroic exploits.

"My father and a group of his friends bombed the headquarters of the Guardia Civil," a friend would tell him.

Or: "Did you hear about the bank robbery in Barcelona? My father did that. Now they can buy weapons to fight the