The Last Lorry - Kelvin Hughes - Bog

Madrid. March 1939.The final hours of the Spanish Republic. As the doomed Spanish capital prepares to surrender after two years of stubborn resistance, one final mission remains. A lorry, disguised as an ambulance, must leave the city and head south to the port of Alicante, where a ship is waiting to take its valuable secret cargo to South America. The lorry's cargo is so important that the victorious rebels will stop at nothing to capture it. The person given this unenviable task is a young Captain, Daniel Miller Gonzalez, a man who has proved his loyalty to the legitimate Government of Spain on battlefields across the Iberian Peninsula. Together with his lifelong friend Fernando, an English nurse, and the driver of the lorry, Dani tries to outwit the advancing forces of General Franco in a dangerous game of cat and mouse along the last remaining route south out of Madrid. He knows that this final corridor of escape is closing in on him and that every moment is vital, but they can only travel along the back roads and at night as Rebel aircraft are out hunting for them during the daytime. The man entrusted with the task of hunting down the last lorry is the ruthless Captain Roberto Ruiz Roman, a brutal and sadistic expert in extracting information and sniffing out 'Reds.' And, as General Franco himself has said "better Dead than Red." Captain Ruiz has the entire rebel war machine at his disposal for this final wartime mission, and he is not a man accustomed to failure. This is a story of supreme loyalty, of courage when all hope is lost, and, ultimately, of betrayal.