The Rat Patrol 2: Desert Danger (13 page)

Captain Dietrich leapt to his feet behind the table in his office when the door flew open and the sentry he had sent to the rooftop observation post rushed in. Beside Dietrich, Lieutenant Wilhelm Kummel stood more slowly, a frown deepening between his tired eyes and his face flushing with anger.

"Corporal," he rasped. "What is the meaning of this unmilitary intrusion?"

The corporal, a slim youth with a wispy blond mustache sprouting under a pudgy nose, halted at attention. His fair-skinned face pinkened but he blurted, "I've found them, the way they went and maybe even where they are hiding now."

"Where?" Dietrich shouted, turning to Kummel. "Quickly, summon a patrol. Don't waste precious time."

Jerking back to the corporal, he said, "Now tell me, precisely, calmly. Exactly what have you found?"

The corporal drew a deep breath and tucked his chin into his neck. "They escaped down a rope tied to the ring in the water reservoir onto the roof of the next building. One of them discarded the Arab robes he was wearing and they are lying at the end of the passage at the rear. That is the way they went."

"From the rooftop of this building?" Dietrich said, catching his breath. "That is impossible."

"The signs are there," the corporal said. "The rope and the robe."

"Incredible," Dietrich breathed. "Must I shoot all my guards to establish security within my own headquarters? Well, well, where is it you think they may now be hiding?" 

"A large crate rests upon a rooftop near the bazaar," the corporal said, excitedly now. "It is large enough to conceal two or even three persons. It is the only place I could see with my glasses in all the village where a man could hide. I can see from the dust on the roof where this crate recently has been moved."

"Well, come, man," Dietrich said, grabbing his cap from the table and crushing it on his head. To the guard at his door, he said, "Send Lieutenant Kummel and the patrol to the roof."

He ran down the hallway to the stairs and mounted them to the roof. The corporal trotted at his heels.

"The rope," the corporal said, pointing to the nylon line, and then to the passageway where the clothing lay crumpled on a heap of refuse.

"Where's the patrol?" Dietrich called angrily, swinging about and glaring at the stairway. "Send them after me," he told the guard and lifted a leg over the wall, grasping the rope in his hands. "Get up there on the reservoir and keep your eyes to your glasses."

Dietrich scrambled down the line, not bothering to walk the wall but lowering himself hand over hand. He dropped the last few feet and ran over the rooftops to the building where the passage ended, clearing the walls between with great hurdling leaps. He had his Luger in his hand and ran at full speed toward the crate several roofs away. He'd not shoot to kill, he thought wrathfully, although he'd like to after all the troubles this Rat Patrol had given him. But it would be no warning shot he'd fire, over their heads. He'd cut anyone who showed himself down at his legs.

He heard a commotion behind and turned his head over his shoulder. The patrol with Kummel in the lead was clambering down the wall. Good, good, he thought with a thin smile, it would be good for his security officer and men to see their commanding officer take the bothersome enemy singlehandedly.

Several roofs away, the crate was tilted on its side, blank bottom showing to Dietrich, and he cursed and fired into it. The open side of the crate was to the bazaar and Dietrich heard the sentry on the reservoir shouting. I see, damn it, Dietrich raged. Whoever was in the crate is slipping off the roof beyond my sight. He fired three more times, drilling the planks in the bottom of the box but knowing it was futile before he squeezed the trigger.

At the edge of the roof, he looked into a milling throng of Arabs that clogged the street of the bazaar. Across in front of a coffee shop, there seemed to be more jostling and confusion than elsewhere and Dietrich glimpsed a figure in a khaki shirt disappear under an awning. He swung himself from the rooftop by his hands and dropped into the street. The Arabs surrounded him, crowding him and pressing him back. He swung his pistol in a vicious sideswipe, cracking into an Arab's skull and knocking him back. Hammering his way with his pistol, he beat through the mob and the patrol dropped from the roof and followed him.

Some pillows and tables were scattered under the awning and a narrow opening in a windowless wall led into a small shop behind it. Dietrich kicked over a table and shouldered past half a dozen Arabs into the shop. It was a small dark hole with pastries displayed on a counter and jars of coffee beans on the shelf behind. A small and wizened dark-skinned man, draped in a reddish vest and wearing baggy trousers huddled against the wall.

"Where is he?" Dietrich shouted.

The shopkeeper cringed and pointed at a beaded doorway behind the counter in the rear wall. Dietrich crashed around the counter with Kummel and the patrol crowding closely now. The room behind the shop was a living quarter. It was a dark and airless place with only a little light seeping through an opening high in one wall. A table, looking as if it had hastily been pushed in place, stood beneath the opening which was about two feet square. Large enough for a man to crawl through, Dietrich thought, scanning the room with a glance. There was no rear door and no place to hide except under a cot, which he quickly discovered, kneeling to look, was not being used by the American or Americans.

"How many were in the crate?" he asked Kummel, climbing to the table and pulling himself up to the opening. 

"One only," Kummel answered, boosting Dietrich. 

"Was it Wilson?" Dietrich asked, dropping down the side of the building into an alleyway that twisted between the crowded buildings of the bazaar. Like the other passageways in the town, it was crammed with refuse and offal. He started down it at a trot.

"No," Kummel called. "It was an American I did not recognize but it was not the American colonel."

"Then the others are still free and we don't know how many there are," Dietrich flung over his shoulder. 

Kummel landed in the passage and ran after Dietrich. "Patrols are spreading through the village," Kummel shouted. "They will be found."

"It had better be soon," Dietrich warned angrily. "The war waits while we chase will-o'-the-wisps."

Now the patrol, eight men armed with rifles, was in the alley and pounded in single file after the two officers. Dietrich came out of the passage into a slightly wider corridor that formed a lane behind the bazaar. It ran in both directions. Huts with open doors and single narrow windows fronted on it.

"Take four men and search the buildings to the left," Dietrich called. "I'll take the other four and go to the right."

They had lost their quarry, he thought with mounting rage. While they rummaged through the buildings one by one, the man could be hiding on the other side of town. He assigned one man to a hut and plunged himself into the first doorway. The one room he entered was a pigsty of a place with sleeping rags piled in a corner and some bricks that formed a stove. A woman with a shawl about her face and shoulders cradled something in her arms. Dietrich tore the shawl from her face and a baby clinging to her shoulders bawled. Dietrich ran from the hut and down the lane beyond his patrol.

From the left where Kummel's patrol was working, someone shouted and a shot rang out, echoing in the closed-in street. Dietrich turned, running toward the sound and saw Kummel fifty yards ahead. Kummel had his pistol in his hand and fired again as the members of his patrol darted after him. Dietrich had not yet glimpsed the person Kummel was chasing but as he followed Kummel around a turning into another alley slanting away from the bazaar, he saw a khaki-clad figure dart ahead into still another street. Kummel fired again and ran on.

The lane squirmed on away from the bazaar, until it broke free of its confines and gained the open area surrounding the waterhole. Dietrich saw the khaki figure, still fifty yards ahead of Kummel and his four men, burst into the open and disappear from his line of vision. Behind him he could hear his four men coming after him. Kummel fired once more and then he and his patrol were gone. When Dietrich reached the oasis with its scraggly palms and patches of poor ground cover, Kummel's patrol had spread out on either side of him and were racing toward the walled waterhole. The fleeing man in khaki was heading toward a huddle of huts on the other side and seemed to be outdistancing his pursuers.

Dietrich's breath was coming hard now but he ran on, still ahead of his patrol.

"Fire," he yelled to Kummel. "Fire at his legs." Kummel snapped an order to his men and they fell prone, rifles going to their shoulders and cracking before they hit the ground. Ahead, the khaki-clad figure stumbled, seemed about to fall but staggered on in a shambling, dragging trot.

"Halt," Dietrich heard Kummel shout.

The khaki figure ran on another half dozen steps and stumbled again, this time falling. He came to his hands and knees almost immediately and crawled, but Kummel reached him and grasped him by the collar, yanking the man to a stop and throwing him over on his back. Dietrich saw Kummel bend over the man, search him rapidly. When Dietrich ran to them, Kummel's patrol was standing over the American with rifles pointed and Kummel was examining a knife with a wavy edge.

"Some kind of dagger," Kummel panted. "Seems to be the only weapon he carried."

Dietrich scarcely glanced at the knife, looking at the figure on the ground and feeling a satisfied smile touch his lips.

"Sergeant Troy, late of the Rat Patrol, if I am not mistaken," he said. He looked at Troy's pant leg where red was staining the khaki. "You have been wounded. What a pity." He eased the leg of the trouser up to Troy's knee to examine the wound. Removing a handkerchief from his pocket, he rapidly wrapped the wound. "A scratch in the flesh, no more," he said, standing. "But we cannot risk infection in this filth. We shall take very good care of you, Sergeant Troy. Do you think you can stand upon your leg?"

Without answering, Sergeant Troy pushed himself with both hands to his good leg, gingerly rested a little weight on the wounded one. The sergeant's face was streaked with sweat and dirt and he was gasping for breath. His face looked taut with strain, Dietrich thought.

"Ah, that is good," he said as Troy took a limping step. "I shall have a man assist you. But to save time as well as perhaps unpleasantness later, where are the others? Where is Wilson and those who helped him to escape?"

A defiant smile flashed across Troy's set face and he did not say a word.

"So you are going to be foolish," Dietrich said harshly. "It is regrettable. The others will be caught anyway. And if you persist in maintaining silence, it only means that I shall have to turn you over to Lieutenant Kummel who has a peculiarly effective method of making stubborn prisoners talk."

Dietrich watched Troy narrowly for some evidence of fear but only the defiant smile came briefly.

"Very well," Dietrich said angrily to Kummel. "March him off to headquarters. We shall talk again, the three of us in my office."

Wrath was pounding once more in Dietrich's chest as he and four men of the patrol followed Kummel and his men with the prisoner. This Sergeant Troy, Dietrich knew from past encounters, was a tough nut and it would require all of Kummel's skill to crack him. However long Troy could hold out, it would delay them by that much time in recapturing Wilson and the others. And in the meantime, Dietrich raged, the war was being delayed, opportunities for victorious battles lost.

Back at the headquarters, Dietrich had the guard lock Troy in the interrogation room while he took Kummel into his office.

"Get him to talk fast," he said to Kummel. "I'm not going to bother with him. I'm far too soft. You understand, I must know where the others are at once."

"Yes, my captain," Kummel said, clenching his fists. The cords stood out in his neck as he clamped his teeth together.

"Good," Dietrich said. "And find out whether he knows anything about the disappearance of the sentry and Lieutenant Bemdt last night."

"It will be a pleasure," Kummel said between his teeth and turned to leave.

He had not taken a step when a knock rapped on the door and the guard came in.

"Your orderly, Corporal Lentzen, says that he must see you at once," the guard said. "I explained that you were occupied but Corporal Lentzen insists this is a matter of utmost importance."

"Very well," Dietrich snapped, calling to Kummel, "Wait a moment, Wilhelm. Lentzen would not bother me about a triviality."

The fat-faced orderly with the piggy eyes marched stiffly into Dietrich's office. One of his hands was clenched and he held it out to Dietrich, slowly opening his fingers. On his palm lay a thin scrap of white paper.

"What is this?" Dietrich asked, puzzled, taking the shred of paper and examining it. "It looks like a cigarette paper."

"It is," Corporal Lentzen said ponderously. "It is the paper from the American cigarette called Chesterfield." 

"Where did it come from?" Dietrich asked.

"I found it when I cleaned your bath," Lentzen said. "It came from the water in the tap."

"But how would the paper from an American cigarette come to be in the water from my tap?" Dietrich queried, frowning and turning the paper until he could make out the brand name.

"Your bath water comes directly from the tank on the roof," Lentzen said. "If an American were hiding in the tank, it might have washed out from his pocket."

"The reservoir," Dietrich exclaimed and turned to Kummel. "Has the reservoir been searched?"

"It will be now," Kummel said, stepping quickly to the door and calling below. "Send up that patrol again."

The eight men followed Dietrich and Kummel swiftly up the stairway to the roof. The sentry manned his observation post atop the tank.

"We will take the tank by surprise," Dietrich whispered to Kummel. "We shall not let whoever is hiding know we suspect." To the sentry, he called, "We're coming up to have a look with your binoculars. Have you seen any sign of them?"