The Rat Patrol 3 - The Trojan Tank Affair (12 page)

"I've seen everything," Troy said in amazement. "If we'd known this was waiting for us, we needn't have gone to Algiers."

"I'm going to make some coffee," Tully said excitedly. He handed the lantern he'd been carrying to Hitch and lighted the one on the crate. "To hell with that instant stuff I put in the canteens. Maybe the fire will take off some of the chill."

"Fix some supper, will you?" Hitch asked. "Fix something good to go with real coffee."

"Don't you want to look at the rest of the barracks first?" Troy asked Tully, laughing as he filled the picnic sized coffee pot with water from one of the cans.

"I got all day tomorrow to look around, Sarge," Tully said, shaking the can of coffee at him. "How long since you seen anything like this? I could buy me a Ay-rab girl for my share of what's in this can but I wouldn't trade for a harem. Yes siree, sir, we're going to have us some real, genuine, U. S. style homemade coffee. Yippee!"

Troy was amused. Not one of them had mentioned the beer or the booze.

Moffitt and Hitch were bent over a crate eight or ten feet beyond the stove. Two cardboard cartons were stacked against the wall but they were ignoring them, intent on something atop the crate. Before Troy reached them, the unmistakable sound of music reached him through the crackle of static. The music faded, the set cackled and then the music was back, loud and clear, Troy recognized the tune—"Waltzing Matilda."

"What do you think, Sam?" Moffitt swung around and asked. "A Signal Corps shortwave, battery-powered receiver."

"Did they give us a shortwave frequency for our messages?" Troy asked, surprised.

"Right-o," Moffitt said, smiling. "Shortwave and in the clear. It will seem perfectly harmless to Jerry."

"What do you have there?" Troy asked curiously, "BBC?"

"I think not," Moffitt said. "Probably some station in Algiers."

"That's something," Troy said and hesitated. The music sounded good to him. He didn't want Moffitt to turn it off. "You, uh, don't think it will run the battery down?" 

"Got a spare, right here," Moffitt said brightly, pointing to the side of the crate where a second battery stood.

"How are we getting such good reception, here inside the rock?" Troy asked, puzzled.

"Someone has thought of everything," Moffitt said. He pointed to a copper wire that stretched up the wall and around to the passage at the rear. "We've an antenna. You know, they said there was a vent hole. The G2 chaps must have weighted the wire and dropped it through."

"What about light showing through the fissure?" Troy asked quickly.

"The wire seems to go back into the passage," Moffitt said, following it with his eyes. "We'll investigate."

Four canvas folding cots were lined across the back of the cavern and three GI blankets were piled on each cot. Against the wall behind the cots was another large wooden crate with the top pried loose. Troy lifted it. Inside were Arabian robes, burnooses and German uniforms.

"They're here if we need them," he said, rifling through the garments. "Let's take a look at that passage."

Moffitt and Hitch went ahead and Troy glanced back.

Tully was stooped, sorting through the rations. With the lanterns burning beside the stove and on the crate that would serve as their dining table, the grotto looked cheerful. It was comfortable, almost homey, he admitted.

Hitch and Moffitt were standing just outside the passage. Moffitt was laughing and he pointed to a notice chalked on the wall. Below it, an arrow pointed to the passage that was no more than five feet high and two feet wide. The notice read: Shower and Latrine.

Hitch sidled in first, stooped and edging along the wall. Following Moffitt, Troy saw the copper wire stretched against the top. Ten or twelve feet behind the grotto the passage opened to another chamber. Before he reached it, Troy thought he heard the sound of trickling water.

Hitch was standing on a ledge of stone in a room that was about twenty feet wide and thirty feet long. He was holding the lantern high, staring with amazement at three shallow basins of water stepped one above the other. A thin stream flowed from a crevice near the rather low ceiling into the first bowl with the overflow spilling into the second and then washing into the third pools. Below the lowest sink the stone was eroded where a diminishing rivulet dribbled itself away over a distance of three or four feet

"I'll be damned," Troy gasped. He turned to Moffitt. "Where's that water coming from?"

"Rain," Moffitt said. "Either the rock is porous in spots or there are catch basins. Must be a rather considerable reservoir somewhere in this pile."

"Looks like we've hit the jackpot here," Troy said, grinning. "We'll reserve that top basin for drinking water if we need it. Second is for washing or bathing and the bottom one is the latrine. Hell. This place is a self-contained fortress."

Moffitt had turned from the pools and was studying the wall near the ceiling behind Troy. When Troy turned, he saw the copper wire extending into a vertical fissure that was V-shaped and four or five inches wide at the top. "Get the light out of here," he snapped.

"Just a minute, Sam," Moffitt said slowly. "Boost me up so I can get my arm in there."

Troy cupped his hands and Moffitt stepped in them. He thrust his arm into the top of the opening, leaning against the wall until his arm was in the hole to his shoulder. He pulled back and hopped down.

"No need to worry," he said. "That's the chimney. I could feel the air. But we've a bend in the stovepipe. They must have fished the wire out. We're in luck."

"It's kind of spooky," Hitch said, blinking behind his steel-rimmed glasses. He turned to Moffitt. "This crazy rock sticking up out of the sand in this flat country. How come?"

"Who knows what mountains and valleys, cities and civilizations, ancient lakes or seas are hidden by the sand of the desert?" Moffitt said quietly.

"Like I said," Hitch repeated. "It's spooky."

"That's exactly what keeps the natives away and makes it safe for us," Moffitt said.

"Let's take a look at the rest of the main chamber," Troy said.

When they squeezed out of the passage, Troy saw GI gasoline cans and boxes of ammunition piled on the side of the cave opposite the kitchen and dining area.

"Leave the lantern by the cots," he told Hitch. "If we don't have enough light, I'll use the flash. That's our arsenal and fuel dump over there."

Two dozen five-gallon cans of gasoline, cans of oil, crates of ammunition, pistols, tommy-guns, knives, grenades, plastic demolition charges, ropes, wires, smoke bombs, scaling ladders, rake attachments for the jeeps, and miscellaneous pieces of equipment such as compasses and flashlights were among the items they found in the boxes. Moffitt went through the containers hastily as if he were looking for something in particular. He removed a cardboard box from one of the last crates, ripped it open and sat on the floor staring into it. A look of preoccupation crept over his face and seemed to remove him from the grotto as he concentrated on what was in the carton.

"All right, Doctor," Troy called from the boxes of ammunition where he was slapping clips into the tommy-guns. "What do you have there?"

"A wire recorder," Moffitt said thoughtfully. "I was looking for a camera but they sent a wire recorder. With a tiny, but, I would imagine, extremely sensitive, microphone. It would work. Maybe G2 was a step ahead of us."

"What are you talking about, Sarge?" Hitch asked, looking over Moffitt's shoulder. "How's that machine with that spool of wire going to help us."

"What you got in mind, Jack?" Troy asked, watching as Moffitt lifted the small battery-operated wire recorder from the carton.

Moffitt looked up and his eyes were twinkling.

"Jerry will have a staff meeting before the offensive," he said. "The officers will be briefed. All we have to do is bug the room and get it on the wire."

"Jack, that's just not practical," Troy said wearily. "It's worse than your idea of photographing the plan. You'd have to find out where and exactly when the meeting was taking place, get in the room, bug it, run your connection to the machine and be right there to change the spools of wire. How long does a spool last? Maybe an hour at the most."

"Do you have a better idea, Sam?" Moffitt asked softly.

Troy was silent for a moment. He didn't have a better idea but he couldn't think of a worse one.

"Just take it easy, Jack," he said. "We'll think of something."

Moffitt nodded but he didn't take his eyes from the recording unit.

"Chow time," Tully called, his voice echoing in the chamber.

A smile flashed across Moffitt's face and he scrambled to his feet.

"That's the first order of the day," he said.

The heady aroma of the coffee was tantalizing and Tully had managed, even with rations, to prepare a breakfast, or supper, that matched the fragrant brew. The eggs were powdered but he'd used condensed milk and scrambled them with plenty of salt and pepper. The canned bacon had been fried golden crisp and somehow he'd contrived to toast the biscuits which he served with apricot jam. It was a little awkward sitting sidewise against the crate but it was a good deal better than gnawing cold rations in a slit trench. Troy lighted a cigarette and leaned against the wall. He was sleepy and for the moment content. He closed his eyes, letting his surroundings drift away as he listened to the nostalgic melody of "Sentimental Journey" coming to him here under the desert in the middle of a great thrust of stone somewhere in Libya, courtesy of an Algerian shortwave station. It was strange that he should be able to find time in the midst of the battle for North Africa to take a sentimental journey anywhere, especially to Margie, the girl he'd left behind on the banks of the Ohio. The tunes ran through his mind as he thought the phrases and he felt a mellowness within his shell that he thought he'd lost forever.

But there was something wrong, a disquieting foreign something, an irritant that scratched and worried him. He opened his eyes and sat stiffly upright, listening intently. A sound that did not belong had obtruded on his consciousness. Something, somewhere, moved stealthily and stopped.
Someone
paused to listen before he moved furtively again.

Troy's hand darted to the lantern, turned it out, motioned Tully to the lantern by the stove and Hitch to the one back by the cots. He slipped off his boots, beckoned Moffitt. They padded across the cavern and swept up tommy-guns. Hitch turned off the radio and the last lantern went out. Troy held the flashlight near the floor so the only illumination was a small circle of white on the black stone directly m front of his feet. He crept with Moffitt around the jeeps and out the mouth of the cave to the ramp.

They stood there listening to the silence. He thought, or perhaps imagined, that he could hear someone breathing heavily above him on the sheet of steel, but there was no movement. Not for many minutes. And then, distinctly, he heard the sound of footsteps over his head. Someone walked around the edges of the sheet. Someone was looking for the entrance to the grotto. It was a long time before he went away.

9

It was oh-six-hundred hours when Troy motioned Moffitt to cover him and crept softly up the ramp. The two of them had remained silent and stationary for more than three hours guarding the mouth of the cave, waiting for the footsteps to return. They never had. The back of Troy's neck ached so badly he could scarcely hold his head up and his shoulders sagged under the weight of his tommy-gun. His legs were rubbery and uncertain, but not once during the long, tense hours had his head nodded. Moffitt's usually clear eyes were glazed and red-rimmed, but Troy was certain they had remained alert and fixed on the entrance. Now the sun would be rising. Whatever the risk, Troy had to crawl from the hole in the ground to see how many footprints there were and where they led.

Moffitt moved up behind him, taking Troy's tommy-gun. Getting his shoulder under the sheet of steel, Troy lifted the heavy cover and Moffitt popped out, dropping Troy's weapon and swinging quickly with his submachine gun ready at his hip. Troy crawled out, dropped the sheet, picked up his gun and backed to the rock, standing straddle-legged and searching the flat, stone-scattered sand.

The sun was rising red as blood in a hazed blue sky and the sands of the desert were pink. It was quiet, deathly quiet, quiet as the tomb in the rock below, and nothing moved. Not a creature on the ground nor a carrion-eater in the sky. It was as if the war had swept every living thing from the earth and its atmosphere and only the four of them within the rock had survived. Troy lifted his head and saw above only the sheer stone. Moffitt had dropped to his knees and was crawling around the edges of the sheet. He laughed abruptly. It was not a pleasant laugh.

"We're prize chumps, Sam," he said, dusting off his pants and smiling ruefully. "It should have occurred to me. Take a look."

Moffitt was pointing and Troy bent to examine the marks. The prints in the sand looked like the paw marks of a large dog. They wandered about the entrance and led off to the east along the base of the escarpment.

"Some kind of animal," Troy said, puzzled. "Out here in the bare desert? No water. No food. What is it, Jack?" 

"Hyena," Moffitt said disgustedly. "We're close enough to Agarawa. Probably a pack of them feeding off the garbage there. These tracks look like those of a loner. It must have sniffed out Tully's cooking."

Troy examined the sheet cemented with sand that covered the entrance to the cave. It extended over the bracing into the sand and was practically impossible to detect when in place. But the prints of the hyena showed where the beast had nosed around it.

"I don't like it, Jack," Troy said with real concern. He glanced swiftly about them again, not certain whether he was searching for the hyena or a Jerry patrol. "We're secure here, even from close observation, unless Jerry sees animals sniffing around in the sand and decides to investigate. Look." He pointed to the tracks. "They outline the entrance."

"The hyena is a nocturnal animal," Moffitt said. "They won't bother during the day and the tracks aren't discernible unless you're looking for them, but I expect it would be wise to pick up a goat and some poison and bait this fellow off."