The Rat Patrol 3 - The Trojan Tank Affair (13 page)

"In Agarawa?" Troy asked, looking up and down the path of sand at the base of the rock. The rake behind the armored car had done its job and no trail remained.

"I presume we'll be going in," Moffitt said, looking sharply at Troy.

"I presume you want to talk about it," Troy said, laughing and stooping to lift the sheet. "All right. Now come aboard. Step lively."

Moffitt's teeth flashed in a smile and he crouched, stepping down the ramp and holding the sheet open.

"All right, put the lid on us again," Troy muttered, flashing the light into the mouth of the cave.

"You don't like being confined, do you, old man," Moffitt said, chuckling, as he walked into the cavern with Troy.

"It makes me feel like a sardine in a can," Troy admitted. He directed their way to the crate where they dined and lighted the lantern, turning the beam of his flashlight back to the cots. Hitch and Tully, blankets to their chins, were sleeping soundly. He laughed. "That's trust for you." 

"Shall we warm up the coffee before we turn in?" Moffitt asked. Without waiting for an answer, he lit a burner on the stove and the second lantern. "Hungry?"

"I'll eat a biscuit," Troy said, slumping at the table and pushing his messkit, still unwashed from supper, aside. "Let's talk about tonight."

"Right-o," Moffitt said, laying a box of biscuits and a tin of jam on the crate. He picked up two cups, rinsed them and poured the water into the messkits. "I fear G2 has failed us. No provision for garbage disposal."

"Frightful oversight," Troy mocked. "It must be fifty feet back to our latrine."

The coffee was rumbling in the pot and Moffitt filled the two cups with the thick, black, warmed-over coffee.

"What is your plan?" he asked, sitting next to Troy and pouring condensed milk in his cup.

"I thought we'd slip into Agarawa after dark," Troy said. "If the staging area is as near as they say, some Arab will have set up a bar and some of the Jerries will be there drinking. We should be able to pick up something."

"All of us go in?" Moffitt asked.

"Sure," Troy said. "We'll wear Arab robes."

"This is your show and I'm not telling you how to run it, Sam," Moffitt said, wrinkling his forehead. "But I think I ought to go in alone, or at the most with Hitch. I speak most Arabic dialects as well as German. None of the rest of you speak either. My chances of learning something and surviving, alone or with Hitch, are better than if the four of us go. Also, if you and Tully stay behind and something does happen to Hitch and me, the mission still has half a chance of success."

"I suppose you're right," Troy admitted grudgingly. "But I don't like it."

"What you don't like is the idea of staying in the grotto," Moffitt said and laughed. "You and Tully don't have to be shut-ins, you know. You can reconnoiter the area east from the rock."

"I have no intention of staying in this hole after dark," Troy said firmly. "Just one thing, Jack. If anyone even looks at you suspiciously, kill him and try to dispose of the body."

"I'll remind Hitch we'll need his garrote," Moffitt said softly.

Troy collapsed on his cot, exhausted in mind and body, and when he awakened the bouquet of fresh coffee greeted him. He inhaled deeply before he opened his eyes. A hand was rocking his shoulder and he sat up, squinting at Moffitt.

"It's eleven-forty-five," Moffitt said with a smile. "You've time for a quick bath, if you hurry, before we tune in." 

"Tune in?" Troy mumbled vaguely before he remembered. "Oh, sure, for any messages. Did they remember soap and towels?"

"There were two boxes by the receiver we didn't examine last night," Moffitt said. "We found towels, soap, razors, a cribbage board, playing cards and some paperback books. Amazing outfit, G2. They must have a basic requirement list. You'll find a steel mirror by the basin in the bath." The water in the pool was icy cold and shallow. Troy lathered and rinsed quickly, shaved sketchily, reminding himself next time to heat some water, and hurried back to find Moffitt had brought two stools to the receiver which was crackling. He sat next to Moffitt and lighted a cigarette.

"The frequency is thirty-point-five megacycles," Moffitt said absently as he flirted with it, moving a hair above and below the wave length to compensate for any wandering. "So far nothing—" he started to say and was abruptly silent as he picked up a voice, lost it, brought it back again.

"... no return of books necessary, stop." the voice said, and Troy looked at Moffitt in dismay. Moffitt cautioned Troy with a shake of his head. Above the static, the voice came back. "I will repeat the message for Library. The message reads: Have your request for algebras, stop. Our transportation facilities limited, stop. We did send geometries earlier, stop. If not satisfactory advise, stop. No return of books necessary, stop. Over and out. That is all for Library."

The receiver rasped and Moffitt shut it off. Troy looked at the pad where Moffitt had transcribed the message.

"'Have our we if no,'" Troy translated. "The first message and they've garbled it."

"Unfortunately not, Sam," Moffitt said grimly, his eyes narrowed. "This is Day Two of our mission. The second word of each group."

"'Your transportation did not return,'" Troy read with a sinking feeling. "Jerry killed Cobble and Damon."

"Killed or captured them," Moffitt said. "It's a warning to be careful."

In the dark hour of dusk before the moon rose, Moffitt and Hitch, wrapped in dark robes and hidden under burnooses, set out in one jeep for Agarawa. Troy and Tully, bareheaded and wearing field jackets over their suntans, drove straight east. Both jeeps dragged the trail behind them with rakes until they were far from the rock that sheltered them.

The night sky was filled with the angry drone of patrolling aircraft, and before the full moon cast its pale but revealing light over the desert, Tully had charted his course through the wadis and in the shadowed valleys between the dunes. It was a slow, leapfrog operation when they had to crest a hill. Tully would remain concealed below with the jeep idling while Troy snaked up the rise, surveyed the desert through glasses for anything that moved and then listened to the sky for an approaching plane. When the way seemed clear, he would stand, throw Tully a hand signal and the jeep would hurtle from the hollow, flying over the top of the sand hill and plunging into concealment where they'd wait tense minutes with Troy rigid at the machine gun.

The going would be the same with Moffitt and Hitch, Troy thought, at least on the way to Agarawa. He was lying in the warm sand on another rise and breathing the chill night air. Except Moffitt and Hitch would have to be even more cautious. There would be Arabs as well as Jerries to avoid. They'd have to leave the jeep under a camouflage net two or three miles from the town and steal in on foot.

He heard a clacking noise like a washing machine in the basement of the next house and laid his cheek to the ground. The pouring sands confirmed that a German patrol car was approaching. He pushed back from the top of the hill and back paddled halfway down the incline. The typical tappety sound of the Volkswagen rattled in his ears and an armored patrol car with its slant nosed hood and bathtub body rolled across the ridge above him. Its searchlight flared out, beaming into the valley on the other side of the dune and then swinging back as the car turned east to skim the top of the wadi where Tully waited.

Troy scrabbled to the top and watched through his field glasses as the car drove straight east, its searchlight flicking on and off as it ran the dunes and peered into the wadis. The sound of the planes came and went. They were flying very high, he decided. They were to protect against air attack or air surveillance. Jerry depended on the patrol cars for his ground security.

He motioned Tully up the hill and signalled a halt at the top.

"They're checking out the wadis," Troy said, jumping into the seat. "I don't think they'll be back this way tonight. Follow their tracks and let's see where they lead."

"You nuts, Sarge?" Tully protested, standing and looking over the hood. "How can I follow their tracks? There ain't enough light."

"You can't see them because you're on top of them," Troy said, pointing ahead. Half a mile beyond, the moonlight showed two thin dark lines in the sand, marking the way the car had gone. "Keep going as long as you have the marks in sight."

Troy climbed in the back as Tully started, checking the fifty-caliber Browning heavy machine gun. They were taking a chance riding the dunes, he knew, but they were deep in enemy territory and Jerry had hundreds of miles to patrol. His cars were not operating in pairs and Troy did not think the patrol that just had passed would double back.

Tully gunned the motor and the jeep raced over the ridges.

"Don't get too close," Troy called in warning. "Slow down."

The words still were hanging in the air when the jeep slewed half around and pitched off the dune. Troy hugged the machine gun and struggled upright as Tully skidded out of the valley and sped north.

"Hold on," Troy called. "Stop. What's this all about?"

Tully slowed but did not stop.

"I seen them coming back," Tully said over his shoulder. "I'd lost the tracks just when you yelled to slow down. Then I saw the car coming back toward us about half a mile off."

Troy swore. They'd been sighted. Even at half a mile, in the moonlight that now flooded the desert with an ice-blue illumination, the silhouette of the jeep with the machine gun in the rear was unmistakable. The question was, would Jerry report them immediately? Did Tully and he pick a spot and fight it out or run? Think like Jerry, Troy told himself as he watched for the patrol car to come shooting out of the dark valley behind. Jerry would say to himself, there's the Rat Patrol or at least, there's an enemy jeep. If Jerry reported he was giving chase and the enemy eluded him, there'd be hell to pay and he knew it. So he'd try first to take the jeep, capture or destroy it, and maybe win a citation. If he didn't report giving chase to the jeep and it got away, he could always radio in a sighting. Troy smiled crookedly. He hoped Jerry's logic would be as devious as his own.

"Hey, Sarge," Tully called warningly. "You better make up your mind."

"I was thinking," Troy shouted back and laughed aloud at the absurdity of his statement. "All right, head north and east. Away from the rock. Keep in the valleys when you can but let them see us now and then. When we spot the place we want, we'll lay an ambush."

"We're going to have to move faster than you been thinking," Tully muttered.

The jeep spurted forward and Troy spun around. He saw the Volkswagen stopped atop a hill less than a thousand yards away. Apparently Jerry had lost the jeep but now the patrol car shot down the sand hill after them again. As Troy stood ready at the gun, he saw the desert floor flattening and the dunes fading in the distance. He half turned and saw, perhaps a mile, perhaps three miles to the north, the undulating dunes pocked with dark wadis of another rolling stretch of desert. The flat bed over which they raced was bathed with moonlight. Troy knew what Tully had in mind. They'd find a wadi in the dunes and wait for the patrol car to come in. But meanwhile, it was a dangerous gamble. Troy wondered whether Jerry would call his HQ and ask for a plane to come down and strafe the jeep. The patrol car was not gaining on them but neither was it losing ground.

"Slow down just a bit," Troy called uneasily.

Tully eased his foot on the accelerator and imperceptibly, the patrol car slowed, maintaining the same distance between the vehicles.

"Give it all you've got," Troy shouted.

The jeep raced ahead and the patrol car speeded, trying to maintain the same space interval. The jeep had been within range of the Volkswagen and in the open but Jerry had not fired a shot. Troy looked ahead again. The hills were close now. He wondered whether Jerry was driving the jeep into a trap. Tully spun the wheel, turning and skidding, straightening, and the jeep spurted for cover in a valley.

They were caught in the blinding glare of a searchlight ,and Troy swung the machine gun at it, firing before he had the weapon on target. They had been herded into a trap, he thought, enraged, as he swiveled the gun and hurled burst after burst in raking sweeps at the searchlight. He put it out but the jeep was spattered with steel-jacketed slugs. Tully veered and shot up a dune. At the top he turned sharply west and Troy looked back. There was no blaze in the valley to indicate they'd damaged the patrol car nor was there any sign of the Volkswagen that had been pursuing them. Either the first car had joined the second in the valley, or it had swept around in a flanking maneuver.

"Watch it, Sarge," Tully shouted.

Troy jerked about as the jeep slewed and stopped, broadside to the tire-mounted hood of the first patrol car that had come plowing over the ridge. Troy riveted the windshield of the car with blast after blast. Slugs from three or four light machine guns whined about his ears and whammed into the frame of the jeep. For a moment the two cars stood slamming each other with everything each had, then from the corner of his eyes Troy saw Tully's arm fling out as the jeep sprang for the valley. An explosion rocketed flashes of white and red on the dune as Tully ran the jeep into the flat desert, circling back and climbing above the valley where they'd been caught in the searchlight by the second patrol car. Below it was dark and still.

"I'm going to pitch some grenades down there," Tully said.

"Strike them out," Troy shouted and opened fire with the machine gun. He fired blindly, working the black pocket methodically, traces stitching a pattern with threads of red. His fire was returned, short bursts coming from scattered locations and indicating that the enemy was trying to find protected positions.

A billowing white blast marked Tully's first grenade and showed the target he had missed fifty yards away. Troy picked figures in two positions and fired at the places. Tully's second grenade was close and revealed two figures prone on the ground and a third clawing up the sand hill on the opposite slope. Troy trained his machine gun in that direction. Tully's third grenade was on target. The Volkswagen burst into roaring flame. Troy saw a figure running out of the valley toward the desert. Tully spun the jeep and dived after the man. Troy cut him down with one blast.