A small boy and his grandfather were standing behind the barricades, both breathless with the excitement of the spectacle taking place only a few feet from them.
“Look at them!” the old man exclaimed. “¡Magnífico!”
The little boy shuddered. “Tengo miedo, Abuelo. I’m afraid.”
The old man put his arm around the boy. “Sí, Manuelo. It is frightening. But wonderful, too. I once ran with the bulls. There’s nothing like it. You test yourself against death, and it makes you feel like a man.”
As a rule, it took two minutes for the animals to gallop the nine hundred yards along the Calle Santo Domingo to the arena, and the moment the bulls were safely in the corral, a third rocket was sent into the air. On this day, the third rocket did not go off, for an incident occurred that had never before happened in Pamplona’s four-hundred-year history of the running of the bulls.
As the animals raced down the narrow street, half a dozen men dressed in the colorful costumes of the feria shifted the wooden barricades, and the bulls found themselves forced off the restricted street and turned loose into the heart of the city. What had a moment before been a happy celebration instantly turned into a nightmare. The frenzied beasts charged into the stunned onlookers. The young boy and his grandfather were among the first to die, knocked down and trampled by the charging bulls. Vicious horns sliced into a baby carriage, killing an infant and sending its mother down to the ground to be crushed. Death was in the air everywhere. The animals crashed into helpless bystanders, knocking down women and children, plunging their long, deadly horns into pedestrians, food stands, statues, sweeping aside everything unlucky enough to be in their path. People screamed in terror, desperately fighting to get out of the way of the lethal behemoths.
A bright red truck suddenly appeared in the path of the bulls, and they turned and charged toward it, down the Calle de Estrella, the street that led to the cárcel—Pamplona’s prison.
The cárcel is a forbidding-looking two-story stone building with heavily barred windows. There are turrets at each of its four corners, and the red-and-yellow Spanish flag flies over its door. A stone gate leads to a small courtyard. The second floor of the building consists of a row of cells that holds prisoners condemned to die.
Inside the prison, a heavyset guard in the uniform of the Policía Armada was leading a priest garbed in plain black robes along the second-floor corridor. The policeman carried a submachine gun.
Noting the questioning look in the priest’s eye at the sight of the weapon, the guard said, “One can’t be too careful here, Father. We have the scum of the earth on this floor.”
The guard directed the priest to walk through a metal detector very much like those used at airports.
“I’m sorry, Father, but the rules—”
“Of course, my son.”
As the priest passed through the security portal, a shrieking siren cut through the corridor. The guard instinctively tightened his grip on his weapon.
The priest turned and smiled back at the guard.
“My mistake,” he said as he removed a heavy metal cross that hung from his neck on a silver chain and handed it to the guard. This time as he passed through, the machine was silent. The guard handed the cross back to the priest and the two continued their journey deeper into the bowels of the prison.
The stench in the corridor near the cells was overpowering.
The guard was in a philosophical mood. “You know, you’re wasting your time here, Father. These animals have no souls to save.”
“Still, we must try, my son.”
The guard shook his head. “I tell you, the gates of hell are waiting to welcome both of them.”
The priest looked at the guard in surprise. “Both of them? I was told there were three who needed confession.”
The guard shrugged. “We saved you some time. Zamora died in the infirmary this morning. Heart attack.”
The men had reached the two farthest cells.
“Here we are, Father.”
The guard unlocked a door and stepped cautiously back as the priest entered the cell. The guard then locked the door and stood in the corridor, alert for any sign of trouble.