Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

The objective of countermines is to identify the position of the enemy mine and disable it. Underground labyrinth warfare, this, with far more recourse to fire, smoke, and daggers than rifles and bullets. Los Cucs had initiated several tunnels but not yet managed to hit the Bourbon’s primary gallery.

“Don’t you worry about digging any more galleries,” the captain said to me. “Going and sounding out the walls will be more than sufficient. If you find something, you come and let us know. We’ll see to the rest.”

Men with experience have always commanded my respect — far more than the bookish kind. I nodded and went and spoke with Ballester and his men.

“You come behind me,” I said. “Every man is to bring one grenade, a dagger, and two loaded pistols, that’s all.”

The entrance to our mine was located inside a house that had been blown up, just inside the city walls, the idea being to avoid the prying eyes of any Bourbon spies. The captain of Los Cucs —I simply cannot recall that man’s name — had readied some equipment for us. Very valuable material, and we would need to take care of it. Ignorant Ballester laughed when he saw it. “You’re going down there with eight canes and. . what are those? Plates? Four plates with holes in the middle?”

“These aren’t canes and plates,” I said, not looking at him. “These are sounding lines, and these are plugs. And extremely valuable they are too.”

Down in the narrow confines of the mine, silence was essential. Before descending, I gathered Ballester’s men and tried to teach them the rudiments of the sign language of engineers. I could not. I was so afraid that my fingers trembled, and I had to give up on the idea. Very embarrassing. The men, in a circle, regarded me, expecting some kind of instruction that would enable them to face whatever inferno we were about to go down into. I was their most direct line of authority; I was supposed to be showing them the way to return to the world of the living. I looked at that vertical black shaft, and my mind was filled with all the things we might encounter down there: a trench, but mazelike, and beneath the earth, with all kinds of nooks and crannies. And Bourbons who would show no mercy, infinitely more numerous and experienced in underground combat than we were. And even perhaps fifty thousand pounds of gunpowder, ready to go up the very moment we reached the chamber. The thought of it made me shudder violently.

After that time, never have I set foot in a mine or a countermine again. Once, in the Barcelona of 1714, was enough. And that time, in front of those manly Miquelets, I wept like a child. But would you like to guess what happened?

The Miquelets were incredibly good about it. And it wasn’t mere tolerance for my bleak view of things — sincerity was far more important to them than any authority. They thought I was afraid because I didn’t trust them, and they responded like remorseful children.

“Captain Ballester and I will go first,” I said, feigning enthusiasm. “Then the rest of you. Got it?”

Down we went. A ladder, which, to save wood, had been made with fewer rungs than it needed, led us down into the gallery.

All the manuals say that the primary tunnel ought to be wide enough for two miners to move along side by side: one carrying the tools, the other a lamp and a pistol, lighting the way and protecting the other if need be. Manuals! A lot of help they are! The tunnel was so narrow, it pressed against your shoulders. Ballester had to walk behind, with me carrying the tools and the lamp. We shuffled along forty or fifty feet. Feeling stifled, struggling to breathe as if on the gallows once more, I halted.

We were only ten or fifteen feet under the ground, but it was hot as an oven. We could feel the artillery exchanges going on as they reverberated the ground. A fine shower of loose earth was falling from the poorly braced ceiling. I felt sure it was going to cave in.

Zuvi, good old Zuvi, wasn’t born to crawl along on his belly. The air became more and more stifling, and I felt invisible pincers gripping my throat. Under the ground, my Bazoches senses were worthless or as good as; the darkness was a leveler, reducing all men to moles. Those guttering lamps in our hands seemed less to light the way than make apparent just how dark it was. And given that my sight could usually take in as much as that of four men at once, to lose it was all the more crippling.

Somehow managing to turn and look behind me, I saw that lunatic Ballester in fits of laughter, though he was keeping his voice down. He pointed around us; it had finally dawned on him why, in the early stages of the siege, I’d insisted on the looting of furniture from houses across the city. The braces for this long, winding tunnel were made from the beams and planks we ourselves had removed. Window frames made the perfect tunnel supports, girding the roof and the sides. Table legs buttressed the walls.

I pushed on, bringing us through into a corridor that seemed to go on forever. Then we came to a fork. I chose the right branch.

I halted somewhere along the way and set one of the plugs against the tunnel wall. Putting my ear against the ceramic part of the large plate and hunching myself over it, I gestured for Ballester to be quiet. His men piled up behind him, their curiosity overcoming any battle seasoning.

It’s hard to believe the number of sounds that can travel through earth. They were redoubled by the ceramic, which acted like a microscope for acoustics. I introduced the first of the canes through the hole in the center of the plate. The earth was soft, and the cane, or sounding line, passed easily into it, traveling farther and farther into the wall. Once it was all the way in, I screwed the next one onto its bottom and resumed pushing. Then another sounding line, then another. Finally, I could tell, combining my senses of hearing and touch, that the lines in series had come out into a space; the resistance of compacted earth wasn’t there anymore. Then I had to feed a thinnish piece of cable down the center of the line, thereby clearing the earth out of it. And when that was done, withdrawing the cable, I could look along the interior of the line, which functioned like a periscope.

The only thing I could tell was that it was an enemy gallery — flickering lights, movements, shadows. I could hear as much as see them. But they were there, all right.

Dark bodies came across my field of vision. I could hear their picks, and the sound of baskets full of earth being dragged along. Their presence became more and more sharply defined, details such as someone clearing his throat.

“What on earth are you doing?” whispered Ballester.

The movements I was making must have struck him as strange. I’d put my eye up to the end of the line for the briefest moment, then pull my head back, and again go to the line — back and forth, like a chicken pecking for seeds. I gestured for him to be quiet.

Too late. Perhaps they heard Ballester, or perhaps they saw my line poking through into their gallery; whatever it was, within moments they had sent a line of their own in our direction, and it emerged into our gallery between Ballester and me. A tubular worm poking through into the space, a metal circle no wider than a thumb and forefinger. And yet what a terrifying thing, for it meant that we’d been discovered.

That little tube of metal — apparently inoffensive — signified death. The men at the far end were killers, and they had sniffed us out. French sappers, veterans of a thousand skirmishes, possibly trained by Vauban himself. And what adeptness they showed: The moment they’d heard or perhaps only sensed us, one sank a sounding line into the wall and located us at the first attempt. I was paralyzed with fear.