The Rat Patrol 2: Desert Danger (17 page)

"We wait for Hitch to pick us up," Troy said.

Troy rolled Dietrich over on his face again and when Tully handed him a fistful of insulated wires, crossed the Jerry's hands and bound them tightly and securely, tying the wires on each turn with a square knot. He rolled Dietrich over on his back, pushed him to a sitting position and then with Tully's help, hoisted him to his unsteady feet. Dietrich swayed and slumped. Troy slapped his face and Dietrich opened his eyes. They were blank and unseeing but the man at least was conscious.

"Move," he said, jabbing the machine pistol in Dietrich's side.

Dietrich staggered away under the prodding of machine pistols from both sides, and catching him when he stumbled, Troy and Tully moved him to the top of the dune. Troy pushed him down and Dietrich sat leaning forward with his head on his chest, arms pulled back by his bound wrists.

The Arabs rummaged through the wrecked halftrack by the light from the burning machine. They removed the cannon from its mounting, took the shells, stripped the body they had found hanging over the side, moved off and pitched grenades into the machine. It exploded and blazed satisfyingly from the fourth or fifth grenade. The Arabs, two parties of six each, Troy saw now, came back to the top of the dune which was warmed and brightly lighted by the burning Panzerwagons. They crowded around Dietrich making threatening gestures with knives and hands, Tully kept his machine pistol trained on Dietrich while Troy shook his head, repeating, "No! Mine. Mine."

Awareness returned slowly to Dietrich but at last he pulled his head back and glared from the Arabs to Troy.

"They'll fight for anyone who pays them," he said harshly. "Next week you'll find them on the other side. What do you think you're going to do with me?"

Troy grinned. "You're going back to Bir-el-Alam with us," he said. "This time you get to answer the questions." 

"Bir-el-Alam is more than one hundred kilometers distance," Dietrich said and sneered. "It is no more than five kilometers to Sidi Abd. Do you think my troops will not pursue and capture you as soon as it is light?"

"They'll have to be a lot better in daylight than they were in the dark tonight," Tully spoke up. He turned to Troy. "I thought I heard some other firing off in the distance while we were going at it here."

"I think you did," Troy said. "It shouldn't be long before Hitch gets here to make his pickup."

Tully turned to scan the broad, black sweep of desert. "I think I see fires in two places," he said, "and I don't think they're swamp fire."

Dietrich's head fell forward on his chest again.

The Arabs, seeming to lose interest in the two Americans and their prisoner, drifted down into the desert below the dune, leading great prancing stallions back with them. They stood in groups of twos and threes, muttering and apparently impatient to ride away now that the fighting here was over. Troy thought Moffitt's friend, the sheik, must have ordered his tribesmen to remain where they were until Hamam Gameel and his party were safely on their way. Moffitt, the good pigeon, Troy thought and laughed. The Englishman was more a hawk.

The fires had dwindled and the frames of the Panzerwagons were only glowing wreckage when the searchlight of a halftrack showed out in the desert. The light came straight for them, found the two burned-out heaps of junk and climbed the hill. Hitch was driving with Wilson beside him and Moffitt was at the gun.

Troy stood in front of Dietrich concealing him as Moffitt waved from the Panzerwagon.

"Good hunting here as well, I see," he called. "Shall we be off?"

"Room for another passenger?" Troy asked and his smile flashed. He stepped aside and Tully jerked Dietrich to his feet.

Wilson jumped from the halftrack and ran up.

"Magnificent," he breathed and his eyes gleamed. "Well, well, into the wagon with you," he said briskly.

Dietrich's shoulders went back.

"Fortunes of war," he said coldly.

11

The halftrack's searchlight poked at the fence behind the Devil's Garden until it found the snipped and bent strands of wire where the Rat Patrol had cut an aisle through the bramble. A shot rang out and a bullet whined as the machine came to a stop.

''Mass'-el-Kheir,"
 
Moffitt called out. "It is Hamam Gameel."

Half a dozen Arabs rode out of the night with rifles across their saddle horns, surrounding the Panzerwagon. One of the men was Al Ombo Beni who touched his forehead to Moffitt.

"We have food and drink for you and your friends," he said gravely in his language.

"We are already a lifetime in your debt," Moffitt said.

"We should like the food and drink but may we take it with us? The enemy soon will be at our heels again because this time we have captured his chieftan."

"The food and drink are yours to do with as you will," the Arab said and sent a rider off into the desert. He looked at Dietrich, standing in the back of the machine with his arms bound. "Why do you bother with him? Give this dog to me and we shall deliver him to his people."

Moffitt glanced at Dietrich and smiled, bemused.

"It is truly a worthy thought, Al Ombo Beni," he said, "but this man has knowledge that we desire."

"You know how to make him talk?" Al Ombo Beni said and his eyes had sparks in them.

"We have our ways," Moffitt said and laughed.

The horseman who had ridden into the desert returned with a bundle at his saddle. Moffitt took it and touched his head. Wilson was standing to the side of the halftrack, studying the steel posts and poles interwoven with barbed wire that formed the fence of the Devil's Garden. He looked from the fence to the halftrack and shook his head.

"I'd like to take the halftrack with us," he said, "but I don't see how we could push it through the barrier."

Moffitt walked over and examined the poles and imbedded steel. "I'm afraid it's impossible to take it through," he said. "But there's no reason why we couldn't drive it around."

"You think we can manage?" Wilson asked eagerly.

"Right-o," Moffitt said airily. "We'll swing wide around the north perimeter and meet up with you chaps beyond. I'll drive the halftrack. Hitch's and Tully's skill is needed for getting across the garden." He laughed. "Not a bad idea at all to take the vehicle. Gives them more sets of tracks to follow when they come this way tomorrow."

The Arabs backed their horses away from the halftrack, forming a wall between the little group of five desert fighters and their prisoner and the enemy that inhabited Sidi Abd. Tully and Hitch bent back the wire to form a wider way through the fence. The bundle the Arab had brought contained Hitch's and Moffitt's khakis, and after they had shed their Jerry disguises, Tully carried through the food and drink. With Troy helping and Wilson and Moffitt guarding Dietrich, Tully and Hitch stripped the jeeps of their camouflage.

Dietrich looked narrowly into the garden.

"I don't see
 
how
 
you came through," he said stiffly, "but I see
 
where
 
you did. At this point, I don't think you would be breaching any security if you answered one question that is consuming me. What happened to my patrol that was guarding the safe pathway at the end?" 

Moffitt's eyes crinkled. "Al Ombo Beni," he called. "Did the men of Abu-el-bab encounter any of the enemy's forces along this monstrous fence today?"

"A handful only," Al Ombo Beni replied. "They were concealed for no apparent good in the dunes and so they were dispatched."

Moffitt turned to Dietrich and shrugged. "You have one less patrol," he said. "The Arabs found your men." 

"It has been a costly time," Dietrich said. His face was gray and set. "The score will be evened."

Dietrich rode in one jeep with Tully driving and Troy guarding the prisoner from the rear. Wilson rode with Hitch in the other. Moffitt set out alone along the fenceline in the halftrack. The Arabs wheeled into the desert. There should be no further trouble this night, Moffitt thought, gripping the wheel of the cumbersome machine that seemed to resist his efforts. He gunned the motor and it roared on in a straight line ahead. He manipulated the searchlight until he had examined the surrounding area and then set it to follow the masses of barbed wire. If I had an automatic pilot, he thought, I could catch forty winks.

He was not particularly concerned over any danger to the jeeps but he strained to listen above the grinding of his tracks and the pounding of his motor for continued silence in the garden. By twisting his neck, he could see the two sets of headlights pushing slowly off to his left. Once through the minefield, they would race around in a wide sweep to rendezvous. Moffitt could understand Wilson's desire to bring back the Panzerwagon. It was a trophy that might be of some value to the engineers and with the capture of Dietrich as well, Wilson was returning a hero instead of a fool.

But it had been foolish again of Wilson to attempt bringing back the Panzerwagon. Oh, Moffitt himself had been all for it but this ponderous old tub was going to slow the jeeps down to less than half their normal speed. The Jerries would be after them in the morning, and in scout or command cars they could easily overtake them. It would be an interesting day, he thought, chuckling softly. After all this was over, with the future holding no more than a possible chair in anthropology, returning to Cambridge was going to be a bit stuffy.

The night pressed blackly all about him and the fence stretched endlessly beyond the range of his light. There shouldn't be more than another mile of it, he thought, shaking his head and blinking his eyes. He shouldn't be sleepy, he told himself, after the day's rest he had had in the camp of his blood brother, Ben-el-bab. Perhaps the tribe of Abu-el-bab held the answer to the future for him. He could take his place at the side of the sheik and maintain an extensive harem.

The thought amused him and he laughed aloud, clamping his jaw and sitting up straight and attentive as he saw the end of the fence in his spotlight. He pulled the wheel sharply to the right and felt the machine turn clumsily. He glanced at his watch and clanked straight east for five minutes before he swung the machine north again. Nothing, he thought, there was nothing within ten miles of him and he was making this wide detour because maybe out there somewhere in that patch of ground adjoining the Devil's Garden, the Jerries had thrown a mine or two. What would it be like after the fighting was over? Would the desert ever be clean again? Or a dozen years from now, would some nomad with a herd of goats be blown to bits by a forgotten infernal machine he had never even known existed?

Five minutes due north and Moffitt turned west. He searched ahead and to the left for the headlights of the jeeps but nothing showed through the deep black. He frowned slightly. Unless they had had trouble, the jeeps should have covered the distance in less time than this. Unless they had struck a mine. Or run into a Jerry patrol.

His grip tightened on the wheel and he leaned forward, swinging his searchlight, alert for sign of mines or for anyone who might be lurking in the night, waiting for him. An earshattering explosion detonated under him and the halftrack rocked and pitched and settled back—dead— amid a rattling clang of metal. An S-mine, he thought as he leaped out and away from the Panzerwagon, a Bouncing Betty, charge one and a quarter pounds. He had caught it with one of the tracks and now the machine was shattered. Fortunately the whole bloody thing had not gone up in flames and smoke.

The searchlight was still shining on ahead and Moffitt stepped a few yards in front of the vehicle, examining the ground. He could leave the light burning to signal his position. And if it didn't bring the Jerries, it might prove to be the false beacon that drew the Rat Patrol straight onto the shoals. He switched off the light and sat on the hood. The S-mine might have been a stray, one mine left over. Or he might be sitting in the middle of another minefield, undefined and limitless.

Through his mind ran the kinds of mines: magnetic hollow charge, used for disabling armored vehicles; Topf mine, cannot be detected with mine detector; Tellermine, might fire if stepped on by any personnel; Shu-mine, thickly scattered in antitank minefields.

This was something, he thought with a twisted smile. He couldn't very well chance stumbling about in the dark on foot, now could he? Just what was he going to do?

"All right, Dietrich," Troy had said when he climbed into the lead jeep behind the German captain with Tully at the wheel. "It's your neck as well as ours. Have your boys planted any new mines in the field since we came through last night?"

Tully started the motor and let it idle, chugging noisily. Dietrich took his time about answering.

"No. Not here," he said finally. He sat facing straight ahead.

Troy considered the back of Dietrich's head. He would like to have seen his face and eyes although he believed the Jerry spoke the truth. Dietrich placed too high a value on his own worth to the Afrika Korps to take needless risks.

The lights of the jeep beamed out across the ravaged path the Rat Patrol had blasted through the garden and Tully found his tracks. In the second jeep, Hitch waited until Tully was fifty yards ahead and then flicked on his lights and crept on, matching the marks of Tully's tires.

In front of Troy, Dietrich sat stiffly erect, looking to neither side. No one spoke during the tense, dark minutes. As they came to the edge of the garden and approached the depression where the great antitank mines had spewed destruction in every direction, Dietrich sat even straighter and Troy set his jaw as Tully slipped the gear down to low and raced the motor. Would they slip off to the side in the chumed-up sand, Troy wondered, or had the Jerries found this gap and re-sown it? The jeep plunged through the sand, slipping and skidding with Tully jerking at the wheel. They roared out of the garden and on a hundred yards before Tully braked. A moment later Hitch pulled up beside them.

"You men took the hard way," Wilson said thinly. "That was quite an experience."