The Rat Patrol 3 - The Trojan Tank Affair (15 page)

"Versteh?"
the corporal exclaimed, apparently so shocked he didn't at first note that he had been given a field commission.

"Ja, mein Leutnant,"
Moffitt said, stroking the broad front fender of the Volkswagen respectfully. He continued in German: "I am but a poor scholar in the desert, where learning is not rewarded, yet often have I wished that I might possess such a steed as this. Did you yourself build it?"

The corporal now stood erect as any officer, clicking his heels together. "The car was built in my country by people like me," he said proudly. "It is the people's car."

"It is true, then, that all the people of your country travel in such fashion and do not walk or depend on horses?" Moffitt asked in apparent astonishment.

"Soon this will be true," the corporal-turned-lieutenant pronounced in words that rang with conviction. "
Der
Führer
built the Volkswagen so that everyone might have one. Now we must use these cars for military purposes, but when the war is won, every family in the Reich will own one."

"Allah be praised," Moffitt exclaimed, touching his forehead. "I have watched many times from a distance and your vehicle is more fleet than any horse I have ever seen. How many hours did it require to ride tonight to Agarawa?"

"Hours?" the corporal said disdainfully. "Forty-five minutes only."

"But that was by the trade route," Moffitt said. "It would not be possible to maintain such speed through the drifting sands of the desert."

"That is not so," the corporal said indignantly. "Only the last 16 kilometers were by the trade route. The first 24 kilometers were through the desert where there is no track." 

"It is fantastic," Moffitt said, "but I shall believe because you say that it is so."

Hitch touched his arm and Moffitt glanced at the entrance to the town. The five German officers from the public house were clustered about the guard. He was waving excitedly toward the car.

"Danke, Lebewohl, mein Leutnant,"
Moffitt said hastily, backing away with his head bobbing as he warily eyed the five officers. The guard was apparently in Jerry's pay and he'd told the officers that two strange Arabs had gone directly to the patrol car and engaged the corporal in conversation. That in itself was enough to make them suspicious. When the corporal reported the conversation that had taken place in German, the Jerries would be hot after Hitch and him.

The German officers walked rapidly from the entrance toward the car. Moffitt and Hitch turned and strode toward the southern corner of the wall where a prayer tower on the eastern side lifted its platform above the battlements. Moffitt was satisfied with the information the corporal had given him. The staging area was ten miles east from Agarawa on the trade route, and then fifteen miles south across the desert. Now all Hitch and he had to do was to get safely back to the rock with their knowledge.

He looked over his shoulder. The officers were talking with the corporal. Moffitt did not think that the guard at the gateway would leave his post, but in a minute or two the Jerries would be racing toward Hitch and him in the patrol car. He lengthened his step and Hitch trotted beside him. Moffitt studied the prayer tower. On the outside corner, prayer sticks had been mortised between the bricks, roosts where wandering souls could rest.

"Give me your rope," he called to Hitch, running toward the tower. "The sticks weren't meant to carry weight but I'll try to fly up them and drop the line to you."

Nimbly Moffitt mounted the old stick ladder that stretched to the top of the tower. The pieces cracked and splintered under his feet but he leaped from one to the next before each broke and sprang from the top roost onto the platform outside the tower. He lashed the rope about a parapet and dropped the end to Hitch. Hand over hand on the nylon rope, Hitch walked up the wall and tumbled over the top as the Volkswagen lurched toward the prayer tower with its searchlight flaring and plucking him from the shadows.

"Now we're in the porridge," Moffitt said, slipping the rope from the parapet and wrapping it around his waist. "Jerry will tell the guard we came up here. We've broken their prayer sticks and profaned a sacred place. They may not know who we are, but we're not believers. Jerry will be watching for us and the whole town will be up in arms. We've got to get out of here and find a place to hide."

"Lead on, Doc," Hitch said. "I'm with you."

Under the circumstances, the remark struck Moffitt as absurdly amusing and he chuckled. Lead on where? They were running now and there was no time. He stepped through the opening into the tower, feeling with his toe for the steps and finding steep treads that clung to the wall. He started down with Hitch touching his shoulder in the dark. They came to a landing and the steps reversed and went down the opposite wall. There was one place, only one possible place he knew in Agarawa where they might conceal themselves. That was in the basement Professor Dalmatie had excavated under the kitchen of the palace. The imposing structure was probably now occupied by some tribal chieftan or even by a high-ranking German official, but in either case, Moffitt did not think the man would have paid much attention to the back room where food was prepared. All he and Hitch had to do was slip into the kitchen, locate the big tile in front of the oven and drop into hiding, ten centuries remote from the present. Was the way to the kitchen still open through the service gate with the slit under the bar?

Moffitt and Hitch slipped from the tower and flitted across the paved yard, away from the mosque into an alley that paralleled the trade , route. The open windows of the tiny one-room houses were dark, but Moffitt felt eyes following as they stole down the narrow lane. A dog snarled and nipped at Moffitt's robe. He kicked and the animal yelped and pattered away. They came to a cross alley and turned into it, now moving toward the bazaar. At the edge facing the oasis stood the palace, almost as large as he remembered it. The main iron gate in the white wall fronting the oasis was closed, but warm, yellow light spilled from two tall arched windows onto the small garden between the palace and the wall. They were the windows of a large, formal chamber, Moffitt remembered, which Professor Dalmatie had said was used for entertaining dignitaries.

No hue and cry had yet been raised. Business was being transacted in the stalls as usual, the time-honored haggling uninterrupted by alarm and search. The Arabs at the coffee shops were sipping with deliberate pleasure and the people moved leisurely about the oasis. Moffitt led Hitch calmly to an alley at the side of the palace. The wall stood ten feet high at one side, and on the other, low, flat-roofed huts were silent and dark.

The door was a dark shadow in the moonlighted wall, recessed in an arch. Moffitt drew his knife and probed up and down the joint between the first and second planks with it. He jabbed where he thought the slit should be, met tightly joined wood and moved the point. A babble of voices erupted on the other side of the oasis and Moffitt felt beads of perspiration pop on his forehead. Jerry had sounded the tocsin. There were infidels and traitors afoot in Agarawa.

He inserted his thumbnail in the crack and pushed it down from where the bar should be on the other side. He felt a small place in the joint where something gave under pressure and dug at it with the tip of his knife, The slit had been discovered, puttied or cemented and painted over. The blade slid through the planks and he lifted the bar.

"Shoddy workmanship," he murmured in an aside to Hitch as they stepped into the service yard and he closed and barred the gate again.

A wall separated them from the main courtyard. Reflections of light showed across the top of the wall and a bar of music hung faintly in the air, but the service yard and kitchen area of the palace were lighted only by the moon and not a whisper disturbed the silence within the walls. From the direction of the bazaar, however, Moffitt heard cries. He quickly led Hitch to the arched opening and stepped into the palace kitchen.

Moonlight through one window fell in a shaft across a floor paved with large tawny colored tiles. Each was almost two feet by two feet. Moffitt moved silently to a brick stove with a grilled bed for charcoal and ovens at either side that covered one side of the room. The stove and ovens still breathed warmly of coarse Arab bread and goat meat stew. He bent to the tile at the middle of the stove, hearing as he did the heavy Germanic accents of a man's voice. A woman said something lightly, also in German. The words were indistinct and he could not understand what they were saying, but they were not far away.

He ran his forefinger along the base of the stove, found a groove in a brick that permitted him to hook his finger under the tile. He was prepared for a struggle to wrest the tile from the floor but it lifted easily. The voices were more distinct. They must be coming from the foyer between the formal chamber and the small salon at the front of this part of the palace that Professor Dalmatie had used as a library.

"In you go," he whispered to Hitch. "There should be a tunnel about four feet down. Crawl off a few feet and wait. I'll be on your heels."

"I'd hoped you would be," Hitch muttered and lowered himself cautiously. He touched bottom, stood upright a second with his head and shoulders above the floor and then dropped out of sight.

Moffitt jumped in the hole after him, easing the tile back in place. He groped, touched Hitch's arm and gripped it in warning. Shoes clacked on the tiles in the kitchen. He cupped his ear against the tile and heard the tones of a man's voice and the sound of a woman's voice but again he could not distinguish the words. The sharp rap of feminine heels crossed the floor, came back and then both pairs of feet moved from the kitchen. A Jerry and his woman, Moffitt thought, a high-ranking German official and his mistress occupied the palace. They'd come to the kitchen for another bottle of wine or brandy. He smiled quickly. At least Hitch and he should be secure enough in their hiding place.

The blind black tunnel was narrow and he could not squeeze by Hitch.

"You'll have to crawl ahead," he whispered. "About ten feet from here, you should come to the end of this passage. There's a drop of three or four feet to a clear space where we can stand. When you come to the ledge, ease yourself over it until your toes touch the floor."

"I sure hope you know what you're doing, Doc," Hitch said, starting forward. "I like more room to operate."

Moffitt followed on his hands and knees, a few feet behind Hitch. After only a few moments, Hitch stopped and Moffitt's hand touched his shoe.

"I'm at the edge," Hitch whispered. "I'm going to try to squirm around and hang onto the top."

"Right-o," Moffitt answered. "Touch your feet before you let go."

He heard Hitch wriggling. There was a quiet moment, then a grunt and a thud.

"Are you all right?" Moffitt asked quickly.

Another grunt answered him. Moffitt pushed off feet first, landing on the balls of his feet with his knees bent. He started to stand. His arms were jerked and pinioned behind his back and a hand slapped his mouth and sealed it.

11

The plane, a Messerschmidt Bf-109E Troy recognized from the square wing tips and stepped up canopy behind the sleek, pointed nose, skimmed the rolling dunes at the edge of the flat, moonlighted desert. Its altitude was no more than five hundred feet and it had been searching now for more than half an hour, sweeping an area of about ten miles east and west from the two German patrol cars that still burned, bright orange in the pastel-shaded night. Jerry wanted the vehicle, patrol or unit that had struck so suddenly behind his lines and drawn blood. The plane would maintain its vigilance until ground patrols could seal off the area or the fighter itself discovered and destroyed the attacker.

Troy had watched the shadow that concealed the jeep in the wadi where he and Tully had taken cover shrink as the moon soared high. Now the moonlight was touching the blunt front of the hood and soon it would shimmer on the flattened windshield. He listened to the stuttering engine of the plane as the pilot came back for yet another look, throttling down to almost stall speed.

"We're going to have to make a break for it," Troy said to Tully, looking out across the three miles of open desert that lay between them and the dunes to the south. "By the time the plane reaches us next time, we'll be lit up like a pin ball machine."

"We can't get across that stretch without him nailing us," Tully said and tossed away the matchstick he'd been gnawing.

"No," Troy said decisively. "This calls for action."

He clambered to the back of the jeep, limbered the machine gun and trained it in the direction of the explosively spluttering aircraft, waiting for it to come into view. He did not want to shoot down the plane. He had not wanted to destroy the patrol cars. He did not like alerting Jerry to this penetration but in each instance it was a matter of survival at the moment and tomorrow would have to tike care of itself. Troy did not think they were near the staging area and at least they were some distance from the rock. The loss of two patrol cars and a plane might confuse the enemy about the strength of the attacking force and draw patrols from other areas to this section.

"Break for the other side the minute we catch him," Troy shouted.

The plane loomed, seeming to hang overhead at Troy's right and he caught it in a burst that raked from nose through fuselage. It burst in a roaring puff ball of white hot flame a thousand yards beyond them and crashed to the desert in thousands of flying splinters. The jeep skittered out of the wadi and fled for the dunes three miles away.

From far above, Troy heard the changing pitch of another airplane's engine and a distant throbbing beat became a piercing shriek as it dived toward the Messerschmidt burning brightly. The second plane streaked over the wreck and climbed steeply. The jeep was halfway across the open sandy bed, but the fighter would be back in a minute or two, Troy knew, and it would not be a sitting duck as the first aircraft had been. This time the jeep was the easy target and the twenty-millimeter cannon mounted in the wings of the plane would blast them from the desert. The pilot must have glimpsed the speeding jeep as he dived and he'd be after them until he caught them.