The Rat Patrol 2: Desert Danger (7 page)

"I know, Hans," Kummel said with a sympathetic smile. "They looked suspicious and I thought I'd mention it." He held up the brandy bottle and laughed. "And it did give me the excuse for the reason."

"You don't need the excuse, Wilhelm," Dietrich said.

"Just the—"

A rap at the door interrupted him. The door opened and the guard stepped into the room.

"Your pardons, Captain, Lieutenant," the guard said with a flat
plattedeutsch
accent. "A young lady downstairs insists she must see Lieutenant Kummel. She says the matter is urgent."

"A young lady?" Dietrich exclaimed, bewildered.

"It must be Colette from the tavern," Kummel said quickly, standing. "Send her up, Sergeant."

Dietrich felt his face puzzling around a smile,

"She is
your
young lady, Wilhelm?"

"At times she is," Kummel said. "I have a feeling tonight we'll be happy that is the situation."

"The Arabs?" Dietrich drew a troubled breath and sat straight, waiting in stern silence. His hand grasped the butt of his pistol.

Colette flew into the room and Dietrich examined her as closely as he could. She was a scrawny chicken, he thought, but not entirely unattractive. Wilhelm should fatten her up. There was no doubt she was agitated. Ignoring Dietrich, she ran to Kummel and grasped both his arms.

"Vitement, vitement,"
she cried, tugging at him. Tears were streaming down her cheeks.

"Colette," Kummel said sharply, grasping her firmly by both shoulders. "Calm yourself. Take a deep breath and then tell me slowly in German, what is the trouble." 

Obediently Colette drew in her breath and with the tears still running down her cheeks, said in trembling German, "Two American soldiers dressed as Arabs are in the tavern. They threatened me if I would not hide them. I put them in the room of the blind and deaf old one and came to you as quickly as I could."

Her voice broke and her chest heaved in great, gasping sobs.

"Good God!" Dietrich shouted. "It's the Rat Patrol. They've managed to get through the fence." He leapt to his feet and shoved the Luger in his holster. "Come, Wilhelm, we'll take the two guards and capture them ourselves."

5

Troy and Tully
sprinted down the dark aisle between the tables in the empty tavern and from the concealing shadows within the doorway, watched Colette run to the guard who stood at the entrance to the German headquarters. Troy could hear their excited voices. The guard ran inside the building and shouted something. Colette half turned, holding her hand at her throat, and looked toward the tavern entrance.

"Dames," Tully said and spit.

When the guard came out again, Colette ran into the building. The guard stood with his rifle at the ready, squarely facing the entrance to the tavern.

"Take the other side, flat against the wall," Troy said brusquely. He slipped the kris from its sheath. "They'll know we haven't gone out the front way so they'll probably bust straight through to the back. As soon as they're in the back hall, we slip out. If the guard is still across the street, we'll have to try to jump him before he gets us. I think they'll bring him with them. If he isn't there, we go around the bazaar side of headquarters and see if we can get up on the roof from the back. If they discover us, it's you for you and me for me. Just try to get away and carry on."

"Sure, Sarge," Tully said. He held his long-bladed Bowie knife sharp edge up, ready to slash and run.

Troy pressed his shoulders against the wall, table guarding him from the front but with enough space to slip into the street. He held his kris poised at his shoulder for a dagger thrust at the base of the neck.

Running feet padded on the packed dirt of the narrow street and two figures burst into the tavern with drawn pistols. Troy thought one of them was Dietrich. A few steps inside the dark room, they paused almost within reach of Troy, then ran toward the doorway at the back. Troy held his breath and remained motionless. More footfalls sounded on the trodden earth and a soldier with a bayoneted rifle, closely followed by a second one similarly armed, plunged into the tavern and followed the first two figures. Troy waited another moment and swore under his breath. He had not thought of Colette. Of course she would wait outside.

The four Jerries were in the hall now. Troy hissed softly to Tully, sidled around the edge of the door. The guard was gone but Colette was standing at the headquarters' entrance. Troy dashed across the alley and slapped his hand over her mouth before she could scream. He dragged her, legs kicking and arms flailing, around the bazaar corner of the building. Her teeth bit viciously into the fat of his palm by his thumb. At the side of the building, he halted long enough to smash a blow into the side of her jaw. As she slumped, Tully picked up her feet.

"We'll push her in the first doorway," Troy said, getting his hands under her arms. "She's no good to us."

They trotted with Colette's limp body slung between them until they came to a recessed side door in the headquarters' building. They dropped her back in the recess.

"I ought to wring her neck like a chicken's," Tully said bitterly.

"No time for games," Troy said, shaking his bleeding hand that stung from her bite. "There should be a back way inside. Let's find it."

The bazaar had closed its shutters for the night and it was pitch black along the side of the building. Troy ran blindly with his hand on the blank side wall. He had not gone far, perhaps fifty feet, when his hand slipped from the coarse plastered wall into the night. He stopped, felt ahead with both hands, took a step and then another before he encountered the rough surface of another building. The passageway between the buildings was about three feet wide.

"Keep your hand on my shoulder," he told Tully, turning into the narrow passage he knew might be a cul-de-sac.

"Sarge, you couldn't lose me if you tried," Tully said.

Troy moved warily now, not lifting his feet but sliding them along the ground, toe to heel, counting his foot-lengths. He paused for a brief moment as a small dog or rat skittered over one foot and rustled away. The stench of the passage filled his lungs. It was not an odor of garbage or sewage but of things dead and rotting. In the confined and airless place it almost choked him.

He had advanced for twenty-five feet when his hand slid around a corner in the wall and he touched the wood of a gate or door. He pulled Tully up to it, placed both of Tully's hands on it and both of them searched for a latch or handle. They could find nothing, not even a hole or recess where one might have been. They put their shoulders to the wood and strained against it. If it were a door and hinged it was securely barred from the inside because it did not give so much as a fraction of an inch.

"We haven't got time to fool and we don't dare go on," Troy said in a whisper. "Get on my shoulders. This may be just a wall and not a part of the building."

He stood to the side of the recess, clasped his hands together for Tully's foot and boosted him. Tully clambered unsteadily, first one knee on a shoulder then the other. Steadying himself against the wall, he gradually got his feet planted on Troy's shoulders.

"Uh," Tully grunted, swaying, almost toppling.

"What is it?" Troy hissed.

"A wall, but there's broken glass on top. I cut my hand."

"Pull off your robe," Troy ordered. "Fold it over the top." He thought he heard voices from somewhere, muted by the buildings. "Get gone."

He felt Tully balancing himself against the wall as the robe dropped, draping Troy's face for a moment, and then the weight left Troy's shoulders and he heard Tully scrambling atop the wall.

"Helped some but it still jabbed," Tully muttered. "Catch. I'll drop the rope to you, then jump down the other side, catch the end and brace myself."

Troy reached above his head in the blackness, groped only the empty night. The voices he had heard came again, still muffled but louder now. He started to grasp the air wildly for the rope, grinned, let his arms fall to his sides, then reached upwards searching the void in a careful pattern with his thumbs hooked together and palms extended near the wall. One palm touched the rope, lost it. The voices sounded near the mouth of the passage. He found the rope again, grasped it with both hands, gave a tug to make sure Tully was at the other end, and walked up the wall, hand over hand on the rope, feet against the vertical surface. The shouting was plain now, not voices but sharp orders in German. He wriggled over the folded robe, feeling the sharp thrusting shards of glass even through the cloth, found a finger hold for one hand between the jagged pieces and hung on while he plucked at Tully's robe. It clung to the glass. His fingers began to slip. Light appeared abruptly in the night at the entrance to the passage. Troy yanked desperately at the robe as his fingers slipped and he fell into the thorns of a shrub. The robe fluttered down and covered him.

He stayed where he was while on the other side of the wall lanterns made the passage a lighted vault. The voices sounded as if they were speaking directly to him. He could not understand but he thought he detected two voices, both giving orders. That would be Dietrich and the other officer. He did not think there were more than four men in the passage and wondered whether they had found Colette. If they had, Troy was certain they had left her where she lay.

A pair of shoulders slammed against the door once, and then again.

"Nein!"
a voice Troy thought was Dietrich's called out and a gutteral string of words followed in which he recognized only
dumkopf.

The banging at the door stopped. Troy chuckled softly. He could imagine what Dietrich had said to the guards, "dumbells, they would scarcely hide in German headquarters and anyway, how would they get in?"

Which was a good question to be settled in reverse for future reference, Troy decided. When the lights and voices went away and Troy could no longer see nor hear a sign of the search party, he moved along the wall to the door and examined its entire surface minutely with his palms. It had, he discovered, an iron bar in brackets that held it solidly in place. It also had hinges at one side. He put his hands under the bar and it came freely from the brackets. He could find no string or handle but when he dug the point of his kris into the wood and pulled, the door swung easily inward. He closed it quickly and replaced the bar. There must, he thought, be some other way of opening the door without using a can opener but at the moment it satisfied him to know they had a rear exit if they had to use it.

"Tully," he called softly.

"Yeah, Sarge," Tully said so close beside him that Troy started.

"You shouldn't do that," Troy said. "If my reflexes hadn't been tired, you might have had a knife in you belly."

"I heard you slip it back in the sheath," Tully said and chuckled. "They got us where they want us only they don't know it."

"Let's keep them ignorant," Troy said and put his back to the wall. Apparently only the rooms at the front of the house were being used and no light seeped into this walled area at the rear. With difficulty, he could make out only the dim squarish outline of the top of the building. On the ground he still felt as if he were swimming in pitch. He tested the ground at the side of the door with his toe.

It was earth and he remembered the shrub he'd dropped upon. He returned to the door and discovered tile or some other type of smooth paving under his foot.

"We're in some kind of garden or patio," he whispered. This
should be a paved walk straight to the house but we're likely to run into anything. We'll go on our hands and knees. Keep hold of my ankle."

"I'll never wear dark glasses again," Tully muttered. "Wait until I get back into my costume."

Reaching ahead to sweep the tiles on the ground and space before his face with one hand, Troy started moving ahead toward the old palace. The paved walk was not straight, he found out as he touched and went around the fat prickly trunk of a date palm, grasped a thorny shrub, splashed his hand in a pool of water, moved onto a surface paved with rough, broad ceramic pieces and bumped his head into a wall.

He jerked his foot from Tully's grasp, rolled quickly to the side and when Tully had banged his head against the wall, grinned, reached for him and they both stood, side by side, arms outflung.

"That's one I owe you, Sarge," Tully whispered. Even in a whisper, Troy thought he could detect a drawl.

"That was for interrupting Colette and me," he said. "Let's try to the left."

They began to move against the building, feeling carefully for the pavement beneath their feet. From the passageway came the returning sounds of angry voices and for a moment the night was vaulted again by the lanterns. Troy continued sidestepping until his hand found a comer and he turned into an open but interior hall. The floor was smooth now. There was no sound here at the back of the building but as he slid into another opening he detected cooking smells. These were not native smells. They were good, solid Germanic fragrances and Troy shook his head. So Dietrich had appropriated a palace and installed an orderly who was a cook. There were times when he could almost admire the unbending German officer.

He halted Tully with pressure on his shoulder and they waited for sound of movement within the building. It was dead tomb quiet. He breathed to Tully, "I'm going to risk lighting my Zippo for as long as it takes to blow it out. You look to the left. I'll look to the right."

The lighter flamed and in that flickering moment before he extinguished it, Troy saw a table in the middle of the room, a cooking area of brick immediately at his right and beyond that, the beaded entrance to another room. "Anything your way?" he asked Tully.

"Jugs, clay pots, brass pans and some kind of cupboard," Tully said.

"There's a table in the middle of the room," Troy said. "Along the side, there's a stove. We'll go by it and through a beaded archway into the next room."

Troy felt his way through the arch and they stepped from the paved floor of the kitchen onto a soft rug. From another arch at the far side of the room, light from a hall showed the shadowy outlines of a low table surrounded by lumps on the floor. Pillows! Troy thought, why Dietrich sits on a pillow to eat his homemade meals. The Kraut was living like a sultan. He quickly crossed the room over the richly carpeted floor to the arched entrance and found himself looking into a richly ornamented gold and blue hall that ran from the front entrance to balustraded steps at the back. The entrance was open; the iron gates to close it off were swung back against the walls. There was no guard at the entrance and the building, at least on the first floor, had an empty feeling. He jerked his head in Tully's direction and ran quickly and softly on his toes down the lamplighted hall to the tiled stairway. Back to wall and kris in hand, he mounted to the second floor. Tully followed a minute later.