The Rat Patrol 3 - The Trojan Tank Affair (24 page)

"An understanding of the deployment from Sidi Abd is necessary to fully appreciate the critical nature of the assignment which we planned and requested and for which we have prepared."

Moffitt felt giddy. He swallowed the bitter taste that leaked in his mouth. Even knowing the enemy's offensive plan, his D-days and the phases of his attack, the Allies did not have the strength in Cyrenaica to meet or withstand the assault by three hundred medium tanks led by the monster King Tiger. And that was to be but the opening phase with another armored force from Sidi Abd striking from the rear when the Allied forces were already committed against overwhelmingly superior forces.

He stared numbly at the spinning spool of wire that was recording a dire prediction of inevitable defeat in the desert for the outnumbered, outweaponed and outwitted Allied forces who had waited to find out what Jerry was up to before pushing on with the war.

17

Half blinded and crushed to the ground by a weight that held him pinned, Troy came to consciousness by slow, painful degrees. His jaw ached and his fingers were paralyzed with tension. He tried to roll his body, moving his head from side to side as he attempted to shake away the fogginess that clouded his thoughts and actions. It took a long while before he realized that a person held him down but it was a lifeless burden. His fingers were clamped deep in the man's throat. He twisted and kicked, arched his back, flinging himself suddenly to one side and tearing his hands from their death grip by the force and the pull of his body. He examined his hands in the pale, cold moonlight and his fingers were clutched like claws. One by one, he unhooked the fingers of his left hand and then he straightened the right. He sat, clenching and unfolding his fists until the stiffness left his fingers. He looked slowly around, reactions still fuzzy, and saw he was alone with the dead German sentry near the monster tank far out in the desert. He thought it was the faint but wild shrieking from the pavilion almost two miles away that finally penetrated his sluggish brain cells. Charges coursed through his nerves to their apses and he reacted normally again. Or thought he did.

He looked once more about him, made sure he was undetected, stood stiffly and grasped the body of the sentry under the arm pits. He would have to bury the man, he knew, digging his heels in the insubstantial sand as he backed toward the slope. Tully had left the man he'd killed in a trench and Troy wondered whether he'd remembered to cover the evidence with sand. So much to remember when you waged informal warfare, he thought, still lightheaded, and tittered uncontrollably. The thought and foolish giggle were enough to shock him this time to icy-eyed awareness and steely control.

He used the Jerry's own helmet to scoop out a wind-washed depression near the bottom of the slope and heaped sand over the body with his hands. When the job was done, he returned cautiously to the monster tank, walking first around it, looking at its high heavy turret and long, big-bored gun. He squatted in front of the treads and measured them with the palm of his hand. They were—But he could not believe what he'd calculated and measured them carefully again allowing four inches for the knuckle to knuckle breadth of his hand. Incredible as it was, the treads measured thirty-two inches across.

The glacis plate in the buffer area below the great gun that projected at least twelve feet from the turret was at least six inches thick. The turret armor, he was certain, was even thicker. The monster was indestructible. An ordinary six-pound shell would not even dent it. He climbed to the turret but could find no way into it and slid down to the tread guards and jumped to the ground. He sat staring in unashamed horror at the monstrous machine. The massed might of the hundreds of medium tanks alone would be devastating, but this impregnable fortress with its massive firepower would annihilate everything that lay in its path.

There had to be a vulnerable spot, he thought. Even such a monster must have an Achilles heel. As the thought passed through his head, an idea flashed into his mind. The treads, of course. The lion was helpless and prey to the jackal when his legs were broken. He remembered the plastic charges he'd left on the ground when he leapt at the sentry and ran back toward the front line of medium tanks. He brushed the ground with his finger tips as his eyes darted from side to side. He found the four packages and returned to the tank, this time more carefully examining the treads and their rollers. The treads were linked as all tank treads had to be. He buried two charges between the treads and front rollers on both sides of the tank. The first inches the treads moved would detonate the plastic explosives and the tank would be immobilized here in this bowl, far from the battle. The loss would not alter Jerry's plans nor halt the advance of the medium tanks but at least the Allies would not have to contend with the indefensible, morale-shattering knock-out punch of the monster.

Troy crawled on his stomach toward the front line of nine medium tanks, prepared to count them. Something about their appearance bothered him and before he'd reached the first tank, he saw what it was. They were mounted on wheels, on ordinary rubber tires. Was this another new weapon Jerry had devised? A highly mobile, tanklike version of an armored car? They were not halftracks. He wondered how wheels could possibly bear the weight, and he stood beside one of the unusual armed vehicles. When he touched the armor, it was not cold to the touch like steel. It did not feel right. It seemed lightweight under the pressure of his fingers. He rapped against the surface with his knuckles. It was wood. He gripped the edge of a panel that partially covered the wheels. It was lightweight plywood. He went to the back, opened an ordinary enough wooden door and crawled over the rear engine into a Volkswagen patrol car. This tank was a mock-up, a wooden dummy. He jumped out and examined the gun. It had no bore. It was a solid post that had been turned in a lathe to the appearance of a seventy-five millimeter howitzer. He ran down the front line of vehicles, thumping the armor of each as he passed. Each was like the first, a flammable wooden box that had no firepower.

He trotted up and down the lines of vehicles, checking all to make sure that real tanks were not a part of the ruse. They all were alike. Three hundred dummies. He no longer needed to visit the pavilion. Long ago, from the first moment he had discovered that the armor plating was only plywood, he had identified the peculiar whining shriek that had haunted him. It was the sound of the saw, or saws, being used to cut the panels to fit over the Volkswagen chassis. He understood why so few patrol cars were on duty in the desert. The start of the campaign was imminent and Dietrich was adding every last one of them to augment the apparent striking force of his unit.

At the end of each of the nine columns of thirty-three tanks to a line stood a truck with an airplane motor mounted on an open low bed, Troy scarcely had to glance at them to know their purpose. He already had read Dietrich's entire strategy. The tracks with the airplane motors were dust-makers. They'd tail along behind each string of dummy tanks with the propellors kicking up such a great trail of dust that it would appear the first thirty-three tanks in each column were merely the spearhead of an inconceivably powerful force.

Troy sat on the bed of one of the dust-makers and considered the proportions and implications of the hoax. Dietrich's unit was a phantom phalanx, in a real sense a Trojan horse. It was designed to be observed as it approached the Allied perimeter, to draw all the strength the enemy could muster from all their positions in Cyrenaica to meet an unexpected and staggering threat. Meanwhile Jerry's real power would race through to the Allies' rear, cutting communications and supply lines and attacking in full armored force. The maneuver would create havoc, spread panic. It was cunning. It undoubtedly would work.

The master touch was the monster tank, the unstoppable giant far out in the front, ranging the battlefield with its mammoth cannon. After shells fell harmlessly on it, gunners would fall back in retreat. As well might a hundred or more tanks faced by the crushing numerical superiority of Dietrich's indominitable fleet. The damned wooden wagons could conceivably have a victory to savor without a shot being fired.

Well, it had been a good night's work and now it was time to collect the various members of the Rat Patrol from their assorted positions, get out of the staging area and roll. The campaign plan still was important because it would tell where and when the other force would strike, but even without it, the Allies could deliver a death blow to the Afrika Korps in Cyrenaica.

Troy checked the time, saw that it was twenty-three-hundred hours, and decided to be cautious and return to Tully the long way around. It appeared the only guard had been the man stationed at the monster tank and Troy walked back toward it along a row of the wooden tanks, or paper tigers, marveling at the ingenious plan Dietrich had devised. It was Dietrich's idea, he had no doubt, and he gave the man full credit, at the same time feeling almost sorry for him. He could, at least, understand and sympathize with him for the shattering defeat he would suffer when his brilliant stratagem collapsed.

He walked once more around the monster tank, shaking his head at its power and size. When the tracks blew, Dietrich would be warned well in advance that his secret was out but it would be too late. The unit was aligned in offensive formation and there would be no maneuvers until D-day sent them across the desert. The deception was part of a master plan with a timetable and Dietrich would move out on schedule. He'd leave the monster behind but he'd carry its weight with him in apprehensions and forebodings.

Troy's eyes roamed over the bottom of the bowl and then roved the sides to the rim. The moon had passed its zenith and the upper part of the slope was shadowed. To the south, the lights of the camp seemed to shimmer in the desert night air. The saw still was screaming while engines of ME-109s or Folke-Wulfs sang basso profundo as they soared overhead. They was nothing, absolutely nothing that moved on the desert where Troy stood in the fading moonlight beside the hulking tank. Not even silent shadows where sentries walked their posts or the blackout lights of patrol cars coming down the track into camp. He could safely walk the thousand yards to the beginning of the slope, he told himself.

And yet he did not walk, but fell on his stomach and crawled in the sand, raising eddies of dust that seeped into his nose, caking dryly. He realized he was thirsty and his throat burned. His elbows were chafed. He continued on his belly, a few feet at a time. It seemed foolish and several times he started to get to his feet. Each time some compulsion like a hand that was guiding him pushed him back down and held him flat. Experience and training, he thought, that had created an instinct. He snaked forward and stopped, went ahead and listened with his cheek to the sand. He was almost at the bottom of the slope now, near the place where he'd buried the sentry. He'd walked then, he thought suddenly, it had been much earlier, the moonlight much brighter. There was no one within a mile. What was he, an unthinking animal that trusted only responses to environment and was unable to reason? He started to push himself up to dash through the moonlight for the shadow near the rim when he heard the quiet purring of automobile motors.

He lay on his cheek looking toward the outside line of Volkswagen tanks. Two sedans, probably staff cars, drove slowly without lights to the front of the monster tank, stopped for a moment, then went on to the last line of wooden armor. Troy stayed where he was for a moment breathing deeply. It had been close. He thought Dietrich must have concluded his briefing. He'd brought his officers out here for a look at the formation, perhaps a final word. It could be, he thought, that D-day was dawning. He crawled up the slope a torpid chameleon until the shadow near the rim reached out and covered him.

He'd spent half an hour reaching the top of the incline and now he moved rapidly, trotting although one foot continually slipped lower than the other on the slanting sand hill. He crossed the automobile trace, stopped running, walked fifty paces and moved down. He had no trouble finding the patrol car although it was now hidden in shadow as well as by the net. For a moment he debated whether to wait there for the others. He decided against it. He'd told them he'd return and check out through Tully. If he didn't show up they would be concerned. They might disobey his instruction and wait for him, or even foolishly set out to find him.

He trotted again high above the bottom of the basin. The hand of his watch crept to twenty-three-fifty hours. He'd make it with a few minutes to spare, he thought confidently, as he came abreast the pavilion below. Something suddenly seemed strange and after a moment he smiled. The saw no longer screeched its mechanical wail. They'd built all the tanks they were going to this night, or maybe forever. The lights went out in the pavilion. All over camp, they were turning off the lights. The tents were dark and quiet. The motor pool was no longer illuminated. Now the only light that showed in the valley was at a single window in the back of HQ. The building was less than five hundred yards away and he still had five minutes. He sighed and relaxed. No alarm had been sounded, no cars or cycles had rushed out from the camp, no one had shouted and not a shot had been fired. The mission was almost completed and Moffitt and Hitch would be waiting with Tully for him.

His left foot came down, lower than the right foot, as usual. Much lower. He trod air seeking footing, waving his arms trying to maintain balance, and then he toppled, falling free in a cleft. It was black in the declivity, he noted as he dropped, but not nearly as black as the world when he slammed to the bottom and the air gushed out of his lungs.

18

Herr Hauptmann Hans Dietrich had nodded his head and smiled with satisfaction as his desert-worn staff car drove by the King Tiger tank. It was an imposing sight in the cold light of the moon but even more fearsome when seen by the day. Behind in the darkening night was his impressive but impotent tank force in formation, ready to roll out of the desert at dawn. He supposed it was unnecessary and perhaps a little vain that he had insisted his staff view the unit once more when the briefing was concluded. Each was thoroughly familiar with the dummy tanks and aware that Dietrich himself had evolved the daring plan.