The Rat Patrol 2: Desert Danger (24 page)

Hitch shoved the car in second gear and they skidded through the greasy sand. The wheels lost their traction and spun, clutched at the firmer subsoil and the car lurched forward. Hitch half turned his head.

"Sarge," he said, "we better climb back on that ridge or we'll get stuck."

"Climb," Troy said and picked up one of the MG42s with a full drum of ammunition.

Hitch angled up gradually, sliding through the mire. The wheels whirled and the car swung crazily with its rear wagging. Halfway up, the tires found some purchase and the vehicle unexpectedly leaped forward, shooting to the crest and almost over. Hitch grappled with the wheel, spinning them about and finally bringing the car to a stop headed east. They were scarcely a hundred yards from where they had started. The sun was burning the soot from the sky and glaring on the windscreens of the German patrol cars. The soldiers had awakened and were slouched against the cars. As Troy focused his glasses on them, two of the Jerries spotted the car, turning to the others and gesturing. They scrambled in the cars. Troy watched the wheels go round and the cars inch forward in slow-motion. They barely seemed to move.

"Let's get the top down," he said casually. "In case they ever catch us."

With the canvas folded over the trunk, Hitch brought the car about and the tires bit into the sand along the ridge line. Although not as gooey as in the valley, the sand was slippery and Hitch kept the car in second gear and the speed down. Even so, they quickly outdistanced their pursuers, and watching them through the glasses, Troy saw the two patrol cars stop.

"Get on the radio, Doctor," he said to Moffitt. "I think they're going to call in aerial reinforcements."

"Any ideas, Sergeant," Wilson asked, shaking his head. "We're still a ways from home."

"Yes," Troy said with a slow smile. "We'll call Jerry HQ and ask them to relay a message to the British: 'Send down some Spitfires.' "

"Not a bad idea," Moffitt said, switching on the radio transmitter. "I can jam their transmission."

He picked up the mike, turned over to the radio, listened to a phrase that was unintelligible to Troy, and went back to the transmitter. "They're reporting their position," he said. "Let's see what they make of this." He spoke into the microphone.
"Du bist wie eine Blume/ So holt, so schoen, so reine/ Ich schau dich an und Welmut/ Schleich mir im Hertz hinein."

"Wunderbar,"
Wilson exclaimed.

"What's he saying, Sarge?" Tully asked.

"I think it's a recipe for weinerschnitzel," Troy said.

"He's quoting Heine," Wilson said, laughing heartily and looking down at Dietrich. The German officer's lips had been pressed tight with anger but gradually a smile ragged them apart.

"I wonder," Dietrich said, "which of my officers is a flower."

"Well, fun's fun," Troy said, quickly serious. "Moffitt may delay them but sooner or later we're going to have the Stukas. We'd better look for cover."

"Not again," Tully wailed.

"We should be within twenty-five miles of Bir-el-Alam," Wilson said and frowned. "An hour's drive at the most. Couldn't we make a run for it?"

"We run for cover," Troy said firmly.

The sun was blazing on their backs and on the dune rim the sands were drying. Hitch moved into high gear and stepped the speed up to twenty miles an hour. Troy broke out rations, more corned beef and dry biscuits, and they shared Dietrich's cigarettes. The German officer was sitting now, leaning against the side of the car. He was in better spirits than he had been.

"I will make a wager with you," he said to Wilson with a sardonic smile. "You do not reach Bir-el-Alam with me.

"You know something we don't?" Troy asked quickly.

"How would you collect if you won?" Wilson asked, smiling.

"One hundred marks," Dietrich said. "You do not take me into Bir-el-Alam. You will send it to me care of HQ, Afrika Korps."

"It's a bet," Wilson said, laughing. "You've seen my men in operation. I should give you odds."

"Your men are superb, Colonel Wilson," Dietrich said, eyes flashing at Troy. "But I think they do not appreciate the thoroughness of the German preparations perhaps."

Damn the Jerry, Troy thought, leaning over the side of tie car and scanning the bright burning desert behind and the clearing sky above. The patrol cars had disappeared and there was no sign of planes. What was Dietrich up to now? Was there something to his boast or was he merely trying to throw them off base?

"I think we ought to change our course, Sarge," Hitch spoke up suddenly.

"Don't let this Jerry rattle you," Troy growled.

"Get your glasses and look ahead," Hitch said, pointing off to his right.

Troy focused on four moving dots in the northwest. They appeared to be patrol cars. Jerry patrols. Troy swore and glanced at Dietrich. The German officer was smiling.

"Get down behind the dunes," Troy said to Hitch, "Veer south."

Hitch swerved the car from the ridge and plunged down a slimy embankment, skittering toward a wadi like a swinging pendulum. The sandhill spun by as the car cavorted, uncontrollable and crazy, gliding, whirling, all topsy-turvy.

"Do something," Troy clamored.

Hitch struggled, spun the steering wheel, shoved the gear in second, pumped the brake. Nothing worked in the sliding sand. The car gave a final lurch and snugged its nose deep in a wadi. Troy leaped over the side, bawling, "Tully, Wilson, Moffitt! We've got to get her out of here."

Feet against the slanted hood, backs braced, they labored while Hitch tried to shake the car loose, only dug in deeper. Dietrich humped himself onto the back seat, sat and smiled. Damned Jerry! Troy raged, he put us in this, made us panic, this never would have happened except for him. The wheels dug deeper. Troy lunged for the car. Maybe the Rat Patrol was finished but Dietrich wouldn't live to gloat. Wilson caught Troy by the shoulder, twisted him about.

"Watch it, Sergeant," he said coolly. "Keep your head. You'll get us out of this."

Troy shook himself and bared his teeth. "Listen," he said hoarsely.

From not far off came the angry droning of airplane engines.

16

Troy was enraged. When you pull off a caper against furious odds and end up stuck in the mud only a few miles from home, it's enough to shake you to your boots. He spun away from Wilson, ran across the wadi and scratched his way to the top of the sandbank where the car had started slewing. Plopping in the goo, he propped himself on his elbows and searched the wet sands for the Jerry patrol cars. They still were distant. He did not know whether or not the patrol had observed them. He turned his glasses to the eastern sky. The Stukas were up there somewhere. He could hear the buzzing of the aircraft, louder now, but he could not find the planes. He was certain the planes would come swooping down upon them. The German patrol to the east must have reported their position.

He slipped and stumbled back to the car. Hitch was still trying to get it loose and the wheels were spinning in the mire. The car had to be saved. It afforded the only chance they had to reach Bir-el-Alam. In an hour or two when the sun baked the sand dry, they would be able to run it out. If the Jerries could be decoyed away, they still might make it.

"Knock it off, Hitch," he shouted. "You're only digging in deeper."

Troy jerked open the back door, ignoring Dietrich who still lay trussed up on the floor, and started pulling out equipment. He called to Moffitt, Hitch and Tully, handed them the MG42s, drums of ammunition, a can of water.

"Hitch, Tully, get the net over the car," he panted, scrambling out and jerking open the storage compartment at the rear. He pulled out a box of grenades. "Wilson, guard Dietrich here under cover. We'll set up an ambush for the four Jerries as far away as we can get. If the Stukas do spot you, let them get a glimpse of Dietrich. That ought to keep them from raking the ground with fire."

From the top of the dune, Troy looked back at the camouflaged car. The net had been soaked in the downpour and blended reasonably well with the sodden sand. The tracks of the car showed on the mound to the point they had started skidding, but from the marks on the side hill, it was difficult to tell what had happened. The sand was churned and nothing indicated direction. The deep marks in the wadi were hidden.

With Troy leading, the four members of the Rat Patrol jogged just below the crest of the tumbling dunes. Troy carted the heavy load of stick grenades, holding it awkwardly before him, knees banging against the wooden box. Moffitt, Hitch and Tully were not quite so heavily burdened. Their light machine guns weighed only twenty-five pounds with bipods but the steel drums of ammunition almost doubled that. Tully fetched along the can of water. Hitch had gathered some canned meat and biscuits. They were prepared for a siege, Troy thought and grinned. The only weapon he carried was a captured Luger. He would have liked the range and impact of the fifty caliber Browning heavy machine gun but handling it without a mount would have been like wrestling a boa constrictor with bare hands.

They trotted a good half mile before Troy called a halt to catch his breath and snaked up through the slime to check on the patrol cars. It was odd; the Stukas were somewhere overhead but seemed to be overshooting. He could hear the mutterings of their motors but now they sounded from the west. He found the four patrol cars, closer now, perhaps five miles off. They were coming on steadily but at a slow pace in the slippery sand. They appeared to be taking the same route Dietrich's armor had used on the withdrawal from Bir-el-Alam.

Troy lay in the sludgy sand, examining the terrain for a place to intercept the four patrol cars. The desert bed where the cars now were was flat, but another half mile and they would enter the lumpy dunes. The route in the rolling hills lay through a winding valley that was some fifty yards broad and looked like the course of some ancient river. Water from the rain had run through it and it looked slimy. Troy wondered whether the patrol would risk it over the ridges or take the established road through the valley. He gambled on the predictable discipline of the Teutonic soldier and decided they would take the proved way. Pulling Moffitt, Hitch and Tully from the ridge behind which they had hidden, Troy led the Rat Patrol to twin hills that humped on either side of the valley road.

Moffitt and Hitch, with two light machine guns and a couple dozen stick grenades, dug in on the south hill. Troy and Tully detoured through a depression and worked their way back to the opposite hill with one machine gun and the crate with the rest of the grenades. They had left the food and water with Moffitt and Hitch.

Troy kept looking at the sky. He was certain that the Stukas had passed high overhead and could not understand it. Were they abandoning the search for Dietrich? Had they been assigned another mission, perhaps to bomb Bir-el-Alam? Once more he checked the four patrol cars through his binoculars. They were pulling away from the valley route and moving toward the ridges. He swore. They would be behind Tully and him and out of range for Moffitt and Hitch. The cars started up the slope and their wheels spun. The lead car in the procession dug in deep and the column halted. The last two cars backed away. The second car fixed a line and towed the lead car slowly back. They reversed down the hill, swung and came into the valley that led between the Rat Patrol's positions.

The situation puzzled Troy. It did not look as if the Jerry patrol were looking for Dietrich or them. If he had had any way to signal Moffitt and Hitch, he would have called off the ambush. With the Stukas overflying and this patrol apparently heading back to Sidi Abd, he was taking a needless risk by engaging sixteen men with only four.

But they were in for it and they had better make it good, he thought, arranging his throwing sticks in front of him. Tully got his MG42 zeroed in. From the west end of the valley came the sounds of oncoming cars, motors loose and tappets rattling. Noisy machines the Jerries built, Troy thought, half smiling and then alerting as a patter of small sounds reached him from far away. It was difficult to tell what they were but they were familiar—distant machine gun chatter. He wondered what target the Stukas had found. Another sound intruded and he turned his glasses to the east. The two patrol cars they had outdistanced earlier were plowing through the valley toward the four approaching from the west.

It would be a good job if it came off, he thought, pulling off the glasses so Tully could have a look. Tully studied first the one patrol and then the other, chewing his matchstick contemplatively.

"They ought to meet about right here, Sarge," he said. "Think they hear each other coming?"

"It doesn't matter," Troy said. "When they get in view of one another, they'll stop."

"It's going to be like shooting fish in a barrel," Tully said, laughing.

From the west, Troy thought he heard the sound of the Stukas returning. The positions Moffitt and Hitch, Tully and he occupied were indefensible if the aircraft spotted them.

"Yeah," Troy said, smiling thinly, "providing we're not sitting ducks."

The two cars from the east and four from the west came around the lips of the hills and predictably stopped.

The sound of the Stukas was louder now, and glancing hastily to the west, Troy saw them, flying lower.

"Let me get a couple grenades in first," he said, "then open fire."

He flung one grenade and a second. As the second arched toward its target, a burst of flame puffed where a stick from the opposite hill had struck home. Three other explosions in rapid succession blasted in the valley. Machine guns chattered from both hills and Troy pitched grenade after grenade. Showers of sand and metal flared. Three of the cars were flaming. The Jerries leaped from the other vehicles, racing from them but finding no cover. They scattered, returning light and indecisive fire from Schmeisser machine pistols and Mausers. The shots clattered away ineffectively. Grenades kept slamming the Jerries to the ground and unnerved them. Two more of the cars were hit and exploded in great blooms of fire. The machine guns were picking off their targets methodically and Jerry dead littered the desert floor. Troy pitched a grenade into the remaining car. It blew to pieces with a shattering roar. Troy swiped his hand across his face, looking skyward. The Stukas had dropped down and were coming in fast with shrieking motors.