The Rat Patrol 2: Desert Danger (20 page)

"And the dead and wounded?" Troy asked quietly.

Wilson looked at him and didn't answer.

"I'd suggest we strip them of their weapons, let them bury the dead in the desert, away from the waterhole, and take their wounded back to Sidi Abd in the patrol car," Troy said.

"But we'd just have to fight them again another day," Wilson said.

"We can't care for them, not even the ones who are able-bodied," Troy said firmly. "And I'm not going to kill a wounded man."

Wilson's eyes hardened and he looked from Troy to Tully and back to Troy.

"Only able-bodied men," Wilson said softly.

"When they know too much," Troy agreed.

"All right," Wilson said harshly. "Get on with it."

Carrying the MG42, Troy walked to Dietrich, undid his bonds. "Get your men organized," he said coldly. "One detail to carry off the dead and bury them. Another to load the wounded into the patrol car. All weapons are to be left on the ground. If they're carrying sidearms, take them off and drop them. I'll be right with you and I don't mind cutting you in half with this toy of yours."

Dietrich started shouting orders.

"Hold it," Troy said and called Moffitt. He pitched the German weapon to him. "You understand this Jerry talk, I don't. Take over."

Moffitt marched off with Dietrich. Tully and Hitch were picking up the scattered weapons.

"What do we do with this junk?" Hitch asked.

"Keep a weapon if you need it, pick out something you can use and some spare ammo," Troy said. "Toss the rest of it in the fire."

Eyes darting from the Jerries on the burial detail to those who were loading the patrol car with the wounded, Troy went back to his jeep and pulled out the empty water cans. Wilson walked after him. Troy steeled himself. I'll try to keep my temper, he told himself, but if the CO sounds off about sending the wounded Jerries back to Sidi Abd, I'll slug him if it costs me my stripes and ten years.

He turned slowly to Wilson and stared at him icy-eyed.

Wilson smiled faintly. "Let me give you a hand with the water cans, Sergeant," he said.

13

Faisan oasis, a muddy waterhole in a grayish sandy hollow, where tattered-leafed palms reached in slant-trunked despair for moisture, was as neat and tidy as it had ever been. Only the charred and twisted heaps of junk from the two patrol cars that had been demolished disturbed the scene, reminding of the recent carnage. After burying their dead and policing the area with Germanic thoroughness, the dozen surviving Jerries, including five who were wounded, had packed into the patrol car and limped away, motor coughing and sputtering. Troy had broken off the firing point from one of the spark plugs. Colonel Wilson and the Rat Patrol sat in council under a ragged tree. Wilson, Troy and Moffitt were sharing one of the cigarettes Dietrich had given Hitch in the hope he would light it and betray himself. Tully was trying to manipulate a matchstick upward into one nostril and Hitch was snapping his bubble gum.

"Granted we had no choice," Wilson said with a deliberateness that was almost academic. "Granted the only humanitarian thing to do was to send the wounded back to Sidi Abd, we still must face the facts. The Jerries must have the desert crawling with patrols by now. The men in the patrol car we sent back will radio our position. We'll find ourselves besieged."

"Moffitt disabled their radio," Troy said patiently. He was fondling the MG42 fight machine gun he had captured with its drum containing a fifty-round belt. "It will take them as long to cover the thirty miles to Sidi Abd in that spitting machine as it will for us to drive the fifty miles to Bir-el-Alam."

"Um, well, good thinking," Wilson said stuffily and coughed. "At any rate, I think we should be off."

"And you're right," Troy said, yawning and stretching as he stood. "I wanted them out of sight so they couldn't report the direction we took. Moffitt learned this patrol we smashed was from the north. Instead of going west in a beeline for Bir-el-Alam, we'll go north a ways and then cut over. It's farther but we should avoid contact with the enemy. All right, men, let's move."

Hitch and Tully reluctantly strolled toward their jeeps. Moffitt and Wilson followed and Troy went to the far tree in the oasis where Dietrich had been secured beyond earshot. He untied the line from the tree trunk and unbound Dietrich's feet but left the rope attached to the cords binding Dietrich's hands behind his back. Troy held the end of the line in his fist and pushed Dietrich ahead, "Monkey on a leash," he said and laughed aloud. Dietrich's spine stiffened and he walked wooden-legged and flatfooted.

Hitch's starter already was whirring when Troy climbed in Tully's jeep behind Dietrich. Tully turned his engine over. The starters in both jeeps rattled away like coffee grinders but neither engine fired.

"Hey, Tully," Hitch called. "You having the same trouble?"

"No, I'm just keeping you company," Tully drawled. "Pretty soon now I'll turn on the ignition." He rolled the matchstick from one side of his mouth to the other. "What you think? Overheated? Flooded?"

"Funny they'd both conk out at the same time," Hitch said, climbing out and lifting his hood. From under it, he called, "Wilson, give it a couple turns. Let's see if it's pumping gas."

The starter buzzed but there was no response. Tully climbed out to look at his motor. Troy stood, scowling and shook a captured Luger at the back of Dietrich's head. He didn't know what Dietrich could have done or planned to do, but he was suspicious.

"Not overheated, no more than usual," Tully mumbled, patting the inside of the radiator. He was working back on the engine, talking as he went. "Spark plug connections okay, points, fuel pump." He buried his head deeper and jerked it right back out. "Hey, Hitch! My rotor's missing." Hitch's head bobbed under the hood of his jeep. "So's mine," he yelled.

They both glared at Dietrich. Troy jumped from the back, anger pulsing in his veins, and stood beside the German officer. Dietrich was wooden-faced. He had heard and seen nothing.

"The damned Jerries stole our rotors," Tully exploded. "But how could they have?" Moffitt asked, coming over. His face was puzzled and he was shaking his head. "I was with Dietrich every minute."

"I didn't say Dietrich took them," Tully raged. "I said the Jerries."

From somewhere in the overcast sky, a faint droning sounded, faded, buzzed again. Troy tilted his head and moved it from horizon to horizon. Nothing was visible in the murk, but the deep-throated humming of airplane engines was unmistakable. Troy's throat grew dry and his palms went moist.

"Wilson," he bawled. "Lash Dietrich to a tree. Moffitt, Hitch, get the nets over your jeep. Tully, let's move." They broke out the camouflage nets, threw them over the little vehicles and ran for the cover of the palms. Troy smiled crookedly; Wilson had tied Dietrich upright from foot to head with the last loop of line tight around his neck. The murmuring in the overcast was deep and sustained now.

"You think they're Jerries?" Moffitt asked, lying on his back head to toe with Troy. They both searched the leaden sky with binoculars.

"One hundred to one," Troy growled.

"And us stuck here," Tully wailed beside them.

"Better off here than in the open," Troy said. Not that they had any choice, he thought grimly. "I don't think they'll spot the jeeps. And they won't bomb their own oasis just to see the water splash."

"What about them rotors?" Tully asked. "How could they have taken them?"

"How isn't the question, they're gone," Troy said savagely. "But it wouldn't have been hard. Moffitt was with Dietrich working the burial detail. Wilson and I were at the waterhole. You and Hitch were supposed to keep an eye on the detail with the wounded but you were scrounging weapons. It not only could have happened, it did. The question right now is, what do we do without them?" The engines of the unseen planes were roaring overhead. "We'll have to radio HQ to send someone out for us," Hitch said, shifting his gum.

"We can't do that," Troy growled. "The Jerries would have a fix in a minute. Anyway, they'll be out here from Sidi Abd on a routine check. We've got to get away."

The pitch of the motors changed, became a whine and then a shrill rising screech. Out of the fuzzy sky, three planes dived at a sharp angle. The fat legs of their fixed landing gear, crooked wings and square-cut tails identified them. They were Stuka divebombers. They shrieked low over the oasis and pulled steeply back into the clouds. The screaming became a low humming high overhead and then the three planes made another pass. The third time they came over, they were flying level below the clouds in a V-formation but they skimmed the oasis and streaked away to the west.

"I wonder if they would have dropped an egg," Moffitt said, coming out from the palms and following them with his glasses. "If they're looking for us, they must know we have Dietrich."

"They're looking for us, Doc, but all they know about Dietrich is that he isn't there," Troy said with a humorless smile. "Maybe the Arabs have him. Maybe he got tired of fighting and took a powder. Maybe he's shacked up in Bizerta."

"Right you are, Sam," Moffitt said and lifted one eyebrow. "What do we do without the rotors?"

"We walk," Troy said harshly.

"Oh, I say, Moffitt said and grimaced. "Walk fifty miles to Bir-el-Alam. Jerries searching for us on the ground and from the sky. We may be desert rats but we've lost our scurry power."

"We walk and hide," Troy said impassively. "Let's gather our gear and get started."

Leaving Dietrich bound to the tree, Wilson and the Rat Patrol returned to the jeeps. For a moment they stopped, all looking helplessly at the machines.

"Isn't there some other way, Sergeant?" Wilson asked irritably.

"If you know how to make an engine fire without a rotor, there is," Troy said brutally. He looked fixedly at Wilson. "Well, do you?"

"If there is a way, I am not aware of it," Wilson admitted and flushed.

"Let's go," Troy said without spirit. He knew how the others felt. The situation looked hopeless. "We'll unload what we can carry. Water, one camouflage net, weapons. Then we'll blow up the jeeps."

"One moment, old chap," Moffitt said, pulling his eyebrows together and chewing at his lower lip. "Sam, has it occurred to you that those rotors may have been taken not only to disable us but to provide Dietrich with a means of escape?"

"It's possible," Troy said, eyes closing to slits. 

"Dietrich shook hands with those men before they left," Moffitt continued, thinking aloud. "That's out of character for that Jerry. A salute perhaps, but a handclasp? Hardly. He could have been passing one or both rotors."

"What are we waiting for, Doctor?" Troy asked, baring his teeth. He swung to Hitch and Tully. "Hold everything!"

Troy released Dietrich from the tree. Hands still tied behind him, the sharp-faced German officer regarded Troy and Moffitt with silent and derisive contempt. Troy felt his muscles tightening and anger flaming. He and Moffitt began a probing search, working up Dietrich's sleeves to his collar, through his tunic, shirt and breeches, squeezing down the sides of his boots.

"Nothing," Moffitt said dejectedly.

Troy studied Dietrich's face. Defiance and superiority gleamed in the German's dark eyes.

"He's got them," Troy said with sudden conviction.

"Shall we strip him?" Moffitt asked. "Give him the body search before we put lighted matches to the soles of his feet?"

A flicker, almost the unseen movement of an insect's wings, touched Dietrich's eyelids.

"We won't have to," Troy said, lifting his lip until his teeth showed whitely. "The rotors are in the toes of his boots."

They found the rotors with Dietrich's toes curled around them.

"Walking would have been a trifle awkward," Moffitt said with an amused smile. "You didn't think we'd carry you, now did you?"

The Stukas had changed Troy's mind about the course they would take. He knew the divebombers would continue searching but he did not think they would return over the ground they had covered. Instead of going north as he'd planned, the jeeps darted into the desert from the waterhole on a due west course in the same straight line the planes had taken. The camouflage nets were carefully folded in the backs of the vehicles, ready to be quickly pulled over the machines at the first sound of aircraft.

Sooner or later, both the planes and the ground patrols would know that the Rat Patrol held Dietrich prisoner. It amused Troy to speculate whether or not the Jerries would fire as long as they held the commander of an Afrika Korps armored unit hostage.

The jeeps had scarcely left Faisan, driven perhaps two miles into the open desert, when the growling hum of fast approaching aircraft drove the two jeeps as one into a wadi. Before the Stukas whistled overhead, the camouflage nets were in place. Beyond the oasis, the planes climbed and dived back, once more soaring westward just above the cloud cover.

"They've got us charted in this area," Troy called to Moffitt. "We're going to have to make this by leaps and bounds."

Leaving the camouflage nets draped over the machine runs and the backs of the jeeps, they scampered from the wadi and raced across the sand. In less than five minutes, Troy heard the Stukas returning. Again they scuttled into a depression and were under cover when the planes shot over. They were flying at a lower altitude and on their return pass soared overhead at less than a thousand feet.

They know we were at the waterhole, Troy thought, his mind tightening. That means the carload we sent back met with a patrol. They've assumed a logical route for us and are combing it from above and on the ground behind us. They also know that we have Dietrich. At least it would be interesting to see the action the enemy would take, Troy thought, remembering what he and Tully had been prepared to do with Wilson.

He changed the course to due north, and well before the planes returned, the jeeps were under cover. The Stukas had dropped to about five hundred feet and had cut down to almost stall speed. They still were flying the same course, about a mile to the south now. When the planes swept back on the same line of flight, the jeeps leapt north again.