The Rat Patrol 2: Desert Danger (18 page)

Troy swung to the ground and stood beside Dietrich. "When I asked if your men had replanted the field, you said 'not here,' " he said roughly. "Does that mean they've planted new mines somewhere else?"

Dietrich did not turn his head, sat in stony silence.

"What does it matter?" Wilson said. "We're through. Let's get on to our rendezvous with Moffitt and started for Bir-el-Alam."

"It matters this much," Troy said angrily. "If they've closed the garden gate at the safe path, they could have a patrol waiting there for us in case some of us got through. When the Jerries realize what's happened to Dietrich, they'll radio that patrol and we'll have them on our backs."

"If there is a patrol there, we'll have them on our backs anyway," Wilson said tightly. "They will have seen our lights."

"Not necessarily, especially not if they're hidden out in a wadi," Troy said. "And we've been partially hidden in a depression."

"What are you going to do about it?" Wilson asked.

"I'm going to get rid of that patrol, if there is one," Troy snapped. "Dietrich, get out and stand by the left front wheel of the other jeep."

Dietrich obeyed without speaking. Troy dug in the equipment at the back of the jeep and found another length of nylon rope. He shoved Dietrich to a sitting position against the wheel and bound him to it.

"Hitch," Troy snapped, "sit in the sand facing Dietrich. If he tries to free himself or makes a move you don't like, shoot him." He turned to the CO. "Wilson, take the wheel. If the Jerries come back instead of Tully and me, Hitch will shoot Dietrich and cut him loose. Then you take off. Now douse your lights."

Troy ran to the other jeep and Tully took off, gunning up the incline and leaping into the open desert, racing without lights, driving straight south by instinct alone below the ridge that topped the dunes. After a few minutes he stopped the vehicle in a valley.

"I don't think we'd better go any farther, Sarge," he said quietly.

They equipped themselves with grenades, and carrying the German Schmeisser machine pistols, they stole ahead in the dead silence of the night.

"Get the cars," Troy whispered. "There'll be one or two patrol cars. Make sure of them and then we'll open on the men."

They walked for five minutes, crouched below the ridge of the rolling dune. Troy's mouth was dry and it seemed to him his breath rattled noisily in his chest. The Jerries would not have a light. They would be lying silently in some pocket near the gate, watchful and waiting. And in the blackness that surrounded Tully and him, they could stumble over the enemy before they knew they had reached the German position. Troy dropped prone and Tully lay on his belly beside him. They dug in their elbows and pulled ahead, a few feet at a time. Troy's eyes ached from trying to penetrate the thick cover of the night. His nose twitched and he stopped, snifling the air. He smelled tobacco. Some stupid Jerry was having a smoke, cupping his cigarette, not expecting attack from this quarter.

Troy lay motionless, alert and listening. He could sense no movement. He edged forward toward the top of the dune, lay looking down for the glowing end of a cigarette. It came when the man apparently put out his butt. Troy heaved a grenade toward the quickly dying ember, watchful now for the cars he hoped the flash would reveal.

In the flaring detonation, he glimpsed the outlines of two patrol cars parked at the bottom of the dune. He saw no figures between Tully's and his position and the vehicles. Sand rained on his back as he and Tully ran downhill toward the cars. Automatic fire chattered angrily, buzzed and sang about them. Halfway down they stopped, knelt, pulled the pins from grenades, and hurled. Guided by the flashes from the first explosions, they pitched a second time and a third. First one car and then the other burst into flames and Troy could see figures scattered about them, some motionless, some running. He and Tully opened fire with the machine pistols, spraying the wadi with short bursts, darting to the side and back. They zigzagged to the top of the dune. Return fire from the patrol petered out.

"Let's get out of here," Troy said, breathing hard. "I don't think they'll follow."

They trotted along the dune, stopping now and then to listen, but heard no one. Back at the jeep, Tully pulled the vehicle around and up, running on the top of the dune.

"Use the lights," Troy said. "They couldn't follow if they tried."

With the headlights reaching out across the desert, Tully speeded to the depression where Hitch waited with his prisoner and Wilson.

"I thought we heard some firecrackers," Hitch said mildly, standing.

"Let's get out of here," Troy said tersely.

The jeeps roared out of the depression, jounced into the flattening desert. Hitch moved his machine beside Tully's and together they bore into the night at the edge of the Devil's Garden. Although Dietrich now was bound hand and foot, Troy kept a wary eye on their prisoner, only now and then darting his eyes off to the east and north for the spotlight that would reveal Moffitt's position. At last he saw a flicker of light far to the right but the jeeps dropped down a valley. When they rolled to the top of the next hill, the light was gone. Troy called a halt.

"We'll have to wait until we see Moffitt's light again," he told Wilson, "or we'll overrun and lose him."

He stood in the back of his jeep with binoculars to his eyes, running them in a roaming arc about the area where he'd seen the light. There was no indication that anything ever had been out there.

"Tully," he said, "turn off your lights. Hitch, pull your jeep around facing a quarter turn to the right and leave your lights on. We'll have to give him a fix on us." He jumped to the ground, reached into the front and slid Dietrich's bound legs over the edge. He put his arm around Dietrich, helped him hop to the front of Hitch's jeep where he sat the Jerry in the light.

"We'll take a break," he said, glancing at his watch. It was 0245 hours. "Let's break out the refreshments, see what the Arabs provided for food and drink, fill the radiators with water."

Hitch brought the bundle from the jeep. The cloth contained ground bean patties that had been fried in oil, cold grilled goat or mutton and some pastries. There was a stopped jug of cold, sweetened coffee, a bottle of some kind of sour wine and a large earthen jug of water that had been sealed with wax. Troy spread the cloth on the sand, placed the rather generous portions of food and drink on it and untied Dietrich's hands. He helped the German officer to the picnic spread and the five of them sat on the ground and silently fell to their desert repast. They all ate hungrily and drank thirstily.

Hitch leaned back contentedly, pulled a piece of gum from his shirt pocket and started working on it.

"Last night you said you didn't have any more gum," Troy said idly.

"I didn't have any more with me then," Hitch corrected. "I had some stashed in the jeep."

"I wish we had some cigarettes stashed in the jeeps," Troy said.

"We didn't know we'd be so long, Sarge," Tully said, pulling out a matchstick and chewing on it.

Troy glanced away and noticed Dietrich studying him. The German reached into the pocket of his tunic and pulled out a package of cigarettes. Surprisingly he offered them around before taking one himself.

At 0300 hours, Troy had Hitch turn off his lights, stood on the hood of the jeep, and once more swept the desert to the east and north. There still was no light showing. Not anywhere in the world, he thought.

"Turn them on again," he said, stepping to the ground and studying his boots as he rubbed his hand over his stubbled face. They could not afford to wait for Moffitt, not with Wilson and Dietrich in tow. But they could not leave Moffitt stranded in the middle of Jerryland in a Panzerwagon. He straightened, swinging on his heel.

"Wilson," he said, "we've got to get you back, you and Dietrich. But we can't abandon Moffitt. Hitch, come here." When Hitch leaned over the hood of the jeep with Wilson and him, Troy sketched a rough map in the dust. "This is our approximate position," he said, making an X. He made another X to the west and slightly north. "Hitch, get a compass bearing on a straight line to this point. That's Faisan, the waterhole where we filled the radiators and our canteens. It should be about thirty miles from here. You take Wilson and Dietrich and go to Faisan. Tully and I will wait here until daybreak and then we'll try to find Moffitt if he hasn't shown up before. Wait at Faisan for us until 1000 hours. If we're not there by then, take off for Bir-el-Alam like a big bird and don't stop until you get there."

"Got you, Sarge," Hitch said and started to blow a bubble. 

"Wilson," Troy said, rebinding Dietrich's hands; "Take Hitch's forty-five. Sit in the back behind Dietrich. If he tries anything funny, blow his brains out."

"Got you, Sarge," Wilson said with a twinkle in his eyes.

They divided the food and drink that was left between the two jeeps and Hitch spun his wheels in the sand and took off. Troy climbed onto the hood.

"Get some sleep," he told Tully. "Crawl under the camouflage netting. It will give you some warmth."

"I'll spell you, Sarge," Tully drawled.

"I'll catnap between looks," Troy said and spat. "Damn it, that Kraut didn't leave us any cigarettes."

Troy examined the black and featureless night through the binoculars. There just was nothing here, he thought helplessly and curled up against the warmth of the hood. He awakened at half-hour intervals to his fruitless vigil. He did not speculate on what had happened to Moffitt. It was useless to even try.

By 0500 hours, the sky had lightened enough so near objects were discernible. He and Tully each ate half a beancake and took a mouthful of water. They drove in the direction Troy had marked the position of the flicker he had seen in the night. Troy rode in the back of the jeep, sweeping the desert in all directions with the glasses. It was going to be another dull, overcast day. The clouds helped with the glare but did not keep out much heat and there was the constant threat that rain would start falling at any moment.

An hour went by. There was enough light in the dismal sky now to see the horizons. They had zigzagged forth and back in five-mile legs for a total distance of fifteen miles to the north from their starting point when Troy told Tully to turn around and make a straight run back.

"He couldn't have gone this far north," Troy said. "We've missed him somewhere out there."

They were almost back before Troy's binoculars picked up the halftrack far out in the desert, toppled and squatting on one haunch.

"Stop," he shouted.

"You see him?" Tully called excitedly.

"I don't know," Troy said, inspecting the machine. It was damaged although it was difficult to tell from a distance exactly how badly it was disabled or what had caused the trouble. Moffitt was not in sight. He could be sleeping in the vehicle or he could be on foot.

"Drive on slowly," Troy told Tully. "Straight ahead, as long as I can keep the halftrack in the glasses."

Half a mile on, Troy found a figure, a speck that moved on the sands. He trained his glasses on it, observing it closely. It was a man and he was moving on his hands and knees.

"It must be Moffitt," he told Tully. "Let's go get him. He may be wounded."

With Troy observing and directing, Tully turned and accelerated. In Troy's glasses, the tiny figure sprang upward and made motions with his hands.

"Wait," Troy said, trying to interpret. It looked as if the man were motioning them back. "Let's just sit still here and wait a while."

The figure dropped back to his hands and knees, changing course by a fraction in the glasses. Every now and then, he would get to his feet and motion the jeep away with his hands. Then he would go back to the ground and crawl some more, sometimes twisting, sometimes turning. The progress was painfully slow, a few yards at a time. Almost an hour passed from the time Troy first sighted the figure until the man was close enough for Troy to distinguish the features and recognize Moffitt. Tully started the motor and shoved the jeep in gear. Moffitt agitatedly waved them back again.

Troy put down the glasses and watched Moffitt from a hundred yards. He was wearing his thin, sun-faded khakis and he looked as if he had just come out of combat. His shirt and trousers were soiled and torn and his face was streaked with dirt. He got to his feet, made a crazy dance turn step and tottered to the jeep.

"What were you doing out there?" Troy asked. "Why'd you keep motioning us back?"

"Water," Moffitt croaked.

When he had drunk from the water jug, he smiled tiredly at Troy and reached for the machine pistol. He told Tully to take the jeep back with a slap of his hand, waited a moment, fired a burst sixty or seventy yards into the desert and fell to the ground. The earth jumped under the impact of a heavily charged mine and metal sang through the air in great clouds of sand. Moffitt staggered back to the jeep.

"Mined," he said, "all mined. Halftrack hit a mine. I've been coming through it all night."

"How could you come through a minefield at night without being blown to bits?" Troy demanded.

Moffitt held up both hands. "Sensitive fingers," he said and smiled. "When I could keep them from trembling, you know. I'd bring them to the earth in front of me, just a fraction of an inch above the sand, and skim the surface, so to speak. I found it worked. Luckily I didn't encounter any trip wires."

"But why?" Troy said. "Why did you risk it? Why didn't you wait until daylight when you'd have had half a chance?"

"Half a chance?" Moffitt's tired eyes lit up with amusement. "I'd say I had an entire chance. I came through in one piece."

"But you idiot," Troy exploded. "The odds were all against it, especially in the dark."

"I know," Moffitt said warily. "I had to do it. I saw your lights burning up there. I was afraid if I didn't warn you, you'd all come ripping through that blasted field at the crack of dawn."

"Yes," Troy said, looking at Tully and thinking of the five-mile legs of the zigzag course they just run east and north. "And so we did, Doctor, so we did."