The Rat Patrol 2: Desert Danger (2 page)

Now he remembered who the private was who had wanted to know what to say if he were captured and the enemy was not interested in his serial number. That had been the lanky lad from Kentucky, Private Tully Pettigrew of the Rat Patrol. Wilson's pulse quickened at the thought of the Rat Patrol. That incorrigible quartet had pulled off some fantastic missions, or capers, as Troy impudently preferred to consider them. The regiment had Intelligence on the name of the place where Dietrich's headquarters were located, if it was Dietrich's men who had captured him. And if they could pinpoint this handful of buildings.

But, Wilson thought, his spirits sagging, even if they could locate this place, breaking him out of Dietrich's headquarters would be expecting the impossible. His entire regiment could not take a strong point like this.

He stood, smoothing his still neat and clean fatigues, and walked to the shuttered window. From outside he heard a jumble of voices, some of which he knew to be German, others he supposed to be Arabian, and the sounds of much activity, the bustle that always accompanies the military whatever its nation. This must be a very strong point indeed, he thought. He walked to the door. The outside movement was constant, flowing and ebbing, and he sensed a high-echelon tension in the atmosphere. Be reasonable, he told himself, the Rat Patrol is your only hope and the Jerries have put you in the one spot where the Patrol can never reach you.

He returned to the chair in front of the desk and sat in it, erect and stiff. The Jerries had been polite enough, to this point, and had not even removed any of his effects except his helmet and pistols although they had searched him thoroughly for any other weapon. The lieutenant who had supervised the inspection had seemed amused at the pistols. Now Wilson lighted a cigarette and looked at his watch in the flare of the Zippo. It was 1630, almost two hours since they had locked him in this room. He fidgeted, wondering when they would start to question him, and his mind grew brittle. Then he forced himself to relax against the hard back of the chair, even smiling a little. They would ignore him, of course, for a day, two days, without food or water, seeing no one, talking with no one, hoping that being alone with his thoughts and doubts would begin to erode his will.

The idea had scarcely crossed his mind when there was a sound at the door and it swung open. An orderly, a butcher-faced fat boy with piggy eyes marched in. He was carrying a large tray and on it was an acetylene lantern which he placed on the desk. It glared with a cold, green-white light on an aluminum pitcher that smelled as if it contained coffee, two metal cups and a plate that was covered with a large white napkin. As the orderly walked with precise, clacking steps from the room, Wilson leaned over the desk to lift the cloth on the plate. Someone else entered the room and the door closed behind him.

"Ah, Colonel Wilson," a voice said in precise but German-accented English.

Wilson stood erect and turned quickly. He saw a tall, sinewy, young German officer with intent eyes, a pointed and stem but rather handsome face. He was wearing a conspicuously clean and well pressed sand-tan uniform and the epaulets of a captain.

"Hauptmann Dietrich," the officer said, smiling thinly and bowing slightly from the waist. He waved at the tray. "I have come for coffee with you."

"That is thoughtful of you, Captain," Wilson said coolly, thinking, I'm to get the soft treatment at first, and when that does not work, the other will seem harsher than it is by contrast. He remained standing.

"Sit down, Colonel," Dietrich said, walking around the desk and sitting behind it. He studied Wilson a moment and smiled his tight smile that revealed self satisfaction but no humor. "We have been adversaries for some time. I thought we should become acquainted. You have been a worthy opponent."

Without comment, Wilson sat in the chair opposite Dietrich and watched impassively while he poured coffee from the pitcher into the tin cups. Dietrich lifted the cloth from the dish.

"Sandwiches, as you were about to discover when I entered," he said with the cold smile lingering on his lips. "We have been fortunate here on the desert. The coffee is not ersatz and now and then we are able to get some fresh meat from the tribesmen. This may be goat but if it is not too old, you will find it quite tasty."

Wilson found himself astonishingly hungry and the coffee and sandwiches astonishingly good. When Dietrich had poured second cups of coffee and lighted their cigarettes, he leaned back and the impersonal smile came again to his mouth.

"Did you know, Colonel," he said, "that I am a student of your American Indian? Of Indian warfare and tactics to be precise."

"That is interesting," Wilson said warily.

"Yes," Dietrich said. "I find much that is analogous between the methods used in battle between your Indian tribes and the tactics we use with tanks and armored cars. Your Indians would encircle or push through the spearhead of a file and attack from the rear. In more than one battle, Rommel has employed a maneuver that might have been devised by Cochise himself. Perhaps we have adapted or even borrowed outright some of our most successful tactics from your Indians although I do not think Rommel would be pleased to hear that. You will not tell him, hein?" Dietrich laughed shortly but with a glint of amusement in his eyes. "Do you not agree, Colonel, there is something here that merits consideration?"

"I hadn't thought about it that way," Wilson said carefully. "It's an interesting theory."

"Yes," Dietrich said. "Now you have employed an unorthodox patrol which has been troublesome to me. It is called, I believe, the Rat Patrol. To continue my analogy, this Rat Patrol compares with the Indian raiding parties that struck swiftly in small numbers and were gone before their victims recovered from their surprise. Will you not agree there are many points of similarity between the warfare we have waged here in northern Africa and the forays of your Indians?"

"Yes," Wilson said, smiling a little at this admission from Dietrich that the Teutonic supermen could learn from others. "I will concede there are many points." 

"Ah, Colonel, I am gratified," Dietrich said and his smile was smug. "If you will pardon me, I must say that this has been a satisfying day. You are a chief of a tribe of the Indians who have opposed us. With your capture I have removed a long thorn from my side."

"The fortunes of war," Wilson said, coldly now.

"But of course," Dietrich said with a genial wave of his hand. "And I think that by tomorrow morning, I shall have pulled a second thorn that has annoyed me even more than you personally have done."

Wilson felt apprehension chill his heart and remained silent.

"I see you suspect," Dietrich said and laughed aloud with obvious enjoyment. "I expect that your Rat Patrol will come racing across the desert in a foolish attempt to rescue you and I have laid an Indian trap for them. Out there, the way they must come, we have planted a small Devil's Garden which we expect them to discover. We have, however, left the gate invitingly open to the safe pathway. Once we have them in the garden, we shall close the gate and nail it tightly shut.

2

It smelled. Out of the darkening desert afternoon, the odor of the trap reached from Dietrich's headquarters at Sidi Abd across the Devil's Garden and irritated Troy's nostrils. He had no intention of entering the garden through the gate they had so easily discovered. The mark of the halftrack and the safe path were an obvious trap.

Halfway through the garden, the path would be thickly sown with mines or the Jerries would be waiting for them by the fence at the other end.

Troy had a plan. It was a desperate one but it might work. Hell, it had to work. Wilson was walking around, or penned up somewhere, with too much knowledge in his head. If Dietrich couldn't get him to talk, there was always the Gestapo and they would work Wilson over until he talked or was dead. Either way Wilson was dead but a man could take only so much before he spilled his guts.

He had Tully drive the jeep forward through the wadi and onto the path, reverse meticulously following the impressions left by the treads of his tires, then drive back into the garden. Tully, who had learned to negotiate a trail only the deer could follow when he was ru
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ing the ridges of Kentucky with moonshine, repeated the operation until the wadi and the path showed the unmistakable marks of a jeep entering the Devil's Garden through this gateway.

Troy leapt in beside Tully and back atop the dunes where the shifting sands quickly obliterated all sign of passage, the two jeeps raced north for two miles along the crest until they found a depression concealed from horizontal view that thrust into the garden area.

He watched with Tully and Hitch from far back as Moffitt crept forward, studied the terrain, retreated and hurled a grenade into the sector he had marked. As Moffitt plunged to the earth, a series of explosions blasted the desert, throwing great curtains of sand and dust and metal into the air. A second and a third time, Moffitt pitched grenades into the depression until he was certain no more antitank mines remained in a space wider than the jeeps. Then Troy examined with him the craters where the sand already was sliding back. They worked the blasted area carefully with rapid successions of bursts from their tommy guns and when they did not explode any mines, lifted their fire in five-foot paths into the desert beyond. They exploded half a dozen T-mines beyond the horseshoe of antitank mines and then, advancing on foot, detonated several S-mines. The air hung thick and gritty with dust and sand.

"I said we'd ride," Troy said, halting Moffitt who shook his head and smiled faintly.

Back at the jeeps, Troy directed Tully to pull his jeep around and put it in reverse at the edge of the holes the mines had dug in the depression. While Troy stood beyond within the garden, Tully gunned the machine. The jeep plummeted into the unsubstantial sand which the explosions had left the consistency of dry cornmeal. The jeep came back, wheels spinning and slipping to one side. Troy felt the muscles knot in his jaws as Tully fought and twisted the steering wheel with one hand as he craned his head to watch the sides of the trough. The jeep continued to slip as it skidded through the middle of the horseshoe and then, just as it seemed certain it was going to climb right off the path, Tully whipped the wheel a full half-circle and the jeep pounded up onto the narrow trail within the garden where the lighter, anti-personnel mines had not completely disintegrated the sand foundation. Tully grinned and winked as Troy jumped into the rear of the jeep behind the machine gun and pointed the fifty caliber weapon over the back of the vehicle into the endless furrows of the Devil's Garden.

Hitch plowed the other jeep with Moffitt over in forward. With Tully in reverse, nose to nose in single file, the jeeps of the Rat Patrol began to inch their way through the dreaded minefield. At the machine gun, Troy swept their pathway clear, firing into the sand in interlinking arcs fifty yards ahead. The mines seemed to have been laid with typical German precision in a checkerboard. Troy quickly established the pattern and picked them off accurately with short bursts.

The pounding blasts hurled gritty showers of stinging sand that blinded Troy and the sharp taste of cordite burned his throat. Although the sun was mantled, its heat seeped through and came down in clinging coats of dust. Troy tried to keep the path cleared at least fifty yards ahead but in the thick spray of sand that rose from the desert floor, it was impossible to see without stopping every few yards. When a chunk of metal would come hurtling out of the unseen distance to clang against the jeep, Troy would jam the bush hat that afforded no protection over his forehead and resume firing.

Although the desert floor was blown with pockets of loose sand, Tully managed to hold to the right-of-way Troy was preempting and when the jeep's tires began to spin, Hitch eased up to give a push.

It was a tedious, nerve-rasping procession. A few yards further on they stopped while the air cleared and until Troy could blink his eyes, bare his teeth, grip the machine gun with both hands and blaze back into action. It must look and sound like a major tank battle out here, he thought, wondering how far they had come into the garden and whether they could be seen or heard from Sidi Abd.

He called another halt, swiped his grimed face with the back of his hand and took a swig from his canteen. When the dust had settled and he looked into the other jeep, Moffitt was standing, scanning the distance with his binoculars.

"What is it, Jack?" Troy called hoarsely.

"We're about through, Sam," Moffitt said, jumping down and edging on the path close to the jeeps back to Troy. He handed him the glasses. "Ahead about a half a mile, you see what looks like a hedge?"

Troy rubbed his eyes and adjusted the glasses. The line across the desert came into focus. It looked like tumbleweed piled along a prairie fence line. As he studied it, the dark and thorny fence came into detail. Poles and steel stakes were interwoven with a jumble of barbed wire that raised a barrier in both directions. He raised the glasses to the rolling dunes, searching for the outline of a sentry, a watchful Arab or a patrol but the land was as empty of life as the mountains of the moon.

"This is your country, Doctor," Troy said, returning the glasses to Moffitt. "How much farther to Sidi Abd?" Moffitt went back to the other jeep, got out a chart and did some calculations with compass and dividers.

"Three miles, more or less," he called, sounding surprised. "We're closer than I thought. Straight ahead over the blasted dunes."

"Thank God for the dunes," Troy said, pushing back his hat. "I hope they've hidden our sound and fury. Think you and I could bird dog the jeeps through to the fence, Jack? I don't like to risk any more noise and dust." 

"Carry on," Moffitt said cheerfully.

Troy came stiffly down from his mount behind the gun. He felt like an ancient mummy whose skin had stiffened and whose veins had been drained for two thousand years. Submachine guns tucked under their arms, he and Moffitt crouched a jeep's width apart, pushing gradually ahead as they examined each foot of ground for the depressions in the sand that usually marked the place an S-mine had been buried. The jeeps, Tully still in reverse, crept closely after them.