The Rat Patrol 2: Desert Danger (15 page)

The guard turned and called to his companion who walked slowly toward the tents. Tully came under the canvas and sat on the cot with Troy.

"Something's up," Tully said. "They been giving them tanks and halftracks a real going over. They started at the wall and worked halfway down the line today."

"A new offensive," Troy muttered.

"That means they'll move us out of here tomorrow," Wilson spoke up. He looked from Troy to Tully and back again at Troy. His forehead was furrowed and his eyes looked strained in the cloud shrouded half light of late afternoon. "They won't chance leaving us with a handful of guards if they're mounting a new offensive. We have to break out of here tonight. Not only to sound warning of the new offensive. We won't have another chance to escape."

"You're right," Troy said. As he spoke, the sound of a generator throbbed in the heavy air and four searchlights poured bright white light into the barbed wire area. Troy squinted and looked off to the side of the searchlight beyond the compound entrance. "If we could get at the generator and put the lights out of business, we might have a chance. We could handle the two guards at the entrance." 

"We can't get at the generator, Sarge," Tully said, "but there is one good thing about them lights."

"Name it," Troy said gloomily.

"Moffitt and Hitch still are out there," Tully said, chewing his matchstick.
"We
can't get at the generator but them lights pinpoint us and maybe Moffitt and Hitch can get to the machine."

"It's a chance," Wilson said hopefully. "We must be ready for them when they come."

"How else you going to be ready except just sit and wait?" Troy asked disgustedly.

"Snap out of it, Troy," Wilson said sharply. "It would be normal for us to take some exercise. We'll start now; off and on get up and take a stroll around the fence. As it gets later we'll all manage to be walking about. It will divert the guards' attention from whatever Moffitt and Hitch may do."

"It's not a bad idea, Wilson," Troy said, a little grudgingly. "In fact it's a damned good idea for me. My game leg is stiffening."

He stood and hobbled painfully from his cot to the entrance and back.

"I'd better keep moving from now on or you'll have to leave me behind," he said and grinned at Tully.

The second guard returned to the entrance with a bucket of water and a tin cup as Troy started back. The painful stiffness was easing but when Troy saw the guard, he made his limp pronounced. When he took the bucket and cup from the guard, he set them on the ground, pulled up his pant leg and pointed to the bloodstained bandage. Then he called Tully over to get the water.

"Let them think they've got an invalid," he muttered when he dragged himself back to the cots. "They won't watch me as closely as you two."

"How bad is it?" Wilson asked.

"I could run a footrace if it got me out of here," Troy said grimly.

A guard brought supper, beans and chunks of bread on tin plates and they ate with spoons in the glare of the lights. When they had washed it down with water, the guard picked up the plates and spoons, leaving them only the bucket of water and single cup. Wilson walked around the inside of the fence half a dozen times smoking a cigarette. When he returned to the cot, Tully and Troy made the rounds in opposite directions. Troy limped and moved slowly.

The night air was cold and the feeling of dampness persisted. Outside the barbed wire, Troy could occasionally hear the guards moving or talking although he could not see them. The searchlights were blinding and the prison compound a brilliant island in the inky desert.

The hours of the night crept by. Troy heard the soldiers leaving their tents and going into town for their beer, and later the sound of them returning. The noises quieted both within the wall and from the tent area. Except for the occasional murmur of a voice as one guard passed another, the desert slept. If Moffitt and Hitch were coming, it was time, Troy thought uneasily as he pulled his wounded leg through the sand.

It was midnight and Troy was sitting with Wilson and Tully on the cots, passing the butt of their last cigarette when he heard the sharp command outside the barbed wire.

"Achtung!"
The order rang out sharply, followed by a rapid succession of commands.

Troy heard the guards running from the sides to the front of the compound. Several more orders were given and the six guards marched to the middle of the enclosed area. An officer, cap low on his forehead, muffler wrapped high around his throat, followed with his hand on his Luger.

"Prisoners," he shouted with a heavy German accent. "You will line up between the guards. Hands behind your heads. Follow me."

He turned on his heel. The guards nudged Troy, Tully and Wilson, each man between two guards, and they marched single file from the prison area. The guard behind Troy rammed his machine pistol into Troy's back as they left the brightly lighted area and walked toward the only other light that was showing, the lantern burning in the vaulted entrance to Sidi Abd. Moffitt and Hitch had delayed too long, Troy thought glumly. Dietrich was not waiting for the morning, but was starting them on their way to Bizerta by night.

A motor was running smoothly and as the single file neared the entrance to the town, a halftrack backed slowly out of the line of vehicles until it was abreast the opening in the wall.

"Over the back and into the machine," the Jerry officer ordered and stepped back.

The guard prodded Troy into the Panzerwagon and Wilson and Tully climbed in and stood beside him. The officer dismissed four of the guards. The other two mounted the back of the halftrack and covered the three Americans with their machine pistols. The officer seated himself beside the driver and the big machine crawled ahead into the night along the side of the wall.

"Where are we being taken?" Troy called above the growling motor and crunch of treads in the sand. The searchlight of the armored vehicle flared out on the open desert beyond the area of the camp and the machine turned slowly into the dark emptiness. A guard poked his weapon into Troy's back but the officer shouted an answer from the front.

"We are taking you into the desert to shoot you," he said tonelessly.

"That tears it," Tully muttered.

"Let's take our chances with these two," Troy whispered and swung, diving for one of the Jerries' legs. At the same moment Tully jabbed his elbow in the belly of the guard next to him and chopped at his neck with the side of his hand. Troy wrestled on the floor of the halftrack with his guard, got his hands around the man's throat and worked his thumbs into his windpipe until he felt the man go limp. He struggled to his feet, dragging the body with him, and heaved it over the back of the machine. When he turned, Wilson was helping Tully pitch the other Jerry into the desert.

"The machine pistols," Troy said quickly. "Let's grab them and take off."

"Shall we shoot the Kraut officer and the driver?" Tully asked. "Take the machine?"

"Too close to town," Troy said. "But we can use the machine. We'll ride it out and shoot them when we stop." He and Troy retrieved the Schmeissers and stood, one at each side. Wilson sat on the bed and chuckled.

"I'm feeling better," he said. "Just do one thing for me."

"Sure," Troy said, grinning. "What is it?"

"Let these two Krauts know what's happening before you shoot them. I want to see the expressions on their faces."

"It'll be a pleasure," Troy said.

The great machine picked up speed and the search-lighted area that marked the prison compound outside the walls of Sidi Abd was swallowed by the night. Over a dune, the halftrack halted with its light illuminating a wadi. The driver came out one side of the Panzerwagon and the officer the other. Troy and Tully leaped over the back and covered the two men.

"All right," Wilson called. "You two Krauts are covered. Walk in the light down into the wadi. We'll carry out the execution but we'll reverse the procedure."

Troy and Tully came forward with the machine pistols and the Jerries, hands above their heads, walked into the light. The driver, an enlisted man in a coat that reached his ankles, slouched insolently to the front of the car and turned, shoving his cap back on his head.

"Who is here, Sarge, you or me?" he said and popped a bubble.

The officer pulled off his cap. Hitch and Moffitt stood in the bright light of the halftrack holding their sides and laughing.

10

An explosion that rent the night, followed almost immediately by a second mighty blast that shook the desert floor, brought Captain Hans Dietrich tumbling from his bed. He ran down the hall from his rooms to his office at the front of the German HQ. The usually stolid guard at the door looked dazed. Dietrich burst into the room and looked out his windows. The dark sky reflected a rosy hue from the direction of the camp. Dietrich was agitated and his mind churned with the fearsome possible meanings of the violent detonations. Had the Americans somehow escaped their prison and sabotaged his gas supply or ammunition dump? He grasped the field telephone on his desk and rang for his security officer, Kummel. There was no response and he called the guard at the entrance gate. The line went dead.

He ran back to his bedroom, threw on his clothes and strapped on his Luger. With a flashlight in his fist, he ran into the dark, deserted lane and angled toward the entrance. Arabs were in the shadows and the darkness behind the windows of the buildings, he knew, but his searching beam discovered no one. Several smaller explosions made the night tremble once more and he ran faster. It was the Americans. The thought pounded and inflamed his brain. He did not dare assess the damage they had done.

When the alley cornered, he could see licking tongues of flames through the entrance and black smoke that puffed and billowed. Figures showed darkly outlined against the blaze, moving in confused groups. The sound of Panzer and Panzerwagon motors and tracks rose above the roar of the fires and hoarse shouts of men. Through the entrance and on the other side of the wall, Dietrich's heart stopped for a moment as he saw and then comprehended the awesome destruction that had been wrought. Near the end of the lines of vehicles, charges had been exploded in two of his Panzer tanks and the blasts had ignited gasoline and oil and spread to adjoining armor. The treads of the other halftracks and tanks that had been in battle readiness in neat formation were chewing away from the holocaust in panicked flight. The blaze raged from the areas of the two destroyed tanks, hot and fierce.

"Kummel!" Dietrich shouted, pushing into the men massed uncertainly in the jammed corridor. "Men!" he shouted hoarsely. "Back to your tents! Clear way for the crews and the machines!"

The soldiers regarded him and the fires numbly. "Back!" he yelled savagely. "Back!" And then again and again. "Kummel, Kummel!"

From somewhere in the crowding horror, the smudged figure of his security officer erupted. Kummel's tunic and breeches were blackened and his face enraged and flushed beneath the coat of grime it wore.

"For God's sake, Kummel," Dietrich shrieked. "Command a squad to get these men away. Get some order into the evacuation of the machines. I'm going to the prison compound. Meet me there as soon as you have things moving."

With the fires still raging at his back, Dietrich trotted toward the still searchlighted barbed wire enclosure. There were no guards and the compound was empty. It was the Americans, he thought, and the wrath burned from his head to the pit of his stomach. The guards had let the Americans escape. He would have the guards shot, every one of them, and Kummel too.

Gasping, almost sobbing, he whirled about and started back toward the devastation in the corridor. Kummel ran toward him.

"You let the Americans escape," Dietrich screeched.

"I?" Kummel stopped short and stared at Dietrich in the red burning light. "They did not escape. Who was the officer you sent with a driver to have them shot?"

"Shot?" Dietrich shouted furiously. "What is this madness? I gave no order to have them shot."

"An officer with two guards took the prisoners into the desert to shoot them," Kummel said.

"Americans, more Americans," Dietrich raged. "They posed as Germans to free the prisoners. What is the matter with you, Kummel, that you do not exercise the intelligence of a child in matters of security? How were they taken? Which way did they go?"

"The guard at the gate reports they took a Panzerwagon and left north by west around the tents," Kummel said numbly.

"Again the guard at the gate. Why did he not stop them? The same guard, no doubt, who admitted the Americans to the town last night. Have him shot." Dietrich glared at Kummel for a moment. "Well, don't stand there. Organize a search party. Two, three, no,
four
Panzerwagons." He paused and added bitterly, "If we have that many left."

"We have the Panzerwagons," Kummel assured him. "Only two tanks and two armored cars were damaged by the charges that were planted."

"Only two tanks and two cars!" Dietrich cried wildly. "It is a disaster. Well, go, go! I will come with you. In the lead. When we overtake them, I want personally to see them destroyed."

Kummel turned from Dietrich and raced toward the entrance. Dietrich ran after him, past the unguarded gate and the tent area. The fires still burned in the blackened hulls of four machines but the rest of the column was moving out in some semblance of order and the armor was regrouping in the desert. Kummel flung orders left and right as he jogged toward the Panzerwagon in the lead position. Dietrich swung his beam and saw crews forming and following.

"Get a driver," he shouted to Kummel. "You and I will take the lead. Make sure the others remain behind until we find the track."

Kummel barked an order and a soldier left the crews and ran ahead to the lead halftrack. He had the motor running when Dietrich leapt to the seat beside him. Kummel manned the gun.

"Is there ammunition, dumbhead?" Dietrich called back.

"Yes, my captain," Kummel answered.