The Rat Patrol 4 - Two-Faced Enemy (16 page)

He turned back into the tent, washed in a basin on an upended ammunition box and shaved hurriedly, dressing and leaving without disturbing the old man. He would have preferred remaining in the field the night before to sharing a tent with the beer-sour colonel, but he'd wanted to be sure he was on hand when the Me-323 arrived with its uncommon cargo. Nebelwerfers had been used a time or two in North Africa, but they were enough of a rarity to excite him and he wanted a private word with the officer in charge of the rocket launchers. He wanted it clearly understood that they were to be elevated for the range of the military targets only, the warehouses, piers and installations on the waterfront. He was afraid Herr Oberst Funke might want to try them out on the tanks and there was too much danger of overshooting the bluff with the terrible rockets.

Except for the physical disturbances created by the sodden colonel, it had been a quiet night, a peaceful night, and Dietrich had slept well. Now if the rockets could be brought in on the targets he'd charted, Sidi Beda should soon be in their hands. One round of six shells from each of the twenty-four pieces should do it and Herr Oberst Funke could ride in his glory to accept the surrender. The port facilities would have to be rebuilt after the barrage but that could not be helped.

At the mess tent, Dietrich nodded to three officers from Funke's column who were breakfasting but sat apart from them at the far end of the long table. The breakfast was satisfactory, relatively tasteless but passable. Without waiting for a second cup of coffee, he lighted a cigarette and stepped outside, sighting down the route as he did. The aircraft would land a good two miles away, he thought, at least a mile south of the old CP.

Oberst Funke trotted out in his shorts and unbuttoned shirt. "Hans, why did you not awaken me?" he asked, sounding offended.

"I was just coming in to do so," Dietrich said evenly and looked at his watch. "I think it is time we were started." 

"One moment only," the colonel said, turning and starting back for the tent. "A car for me get."

"Are you coming with me to meet the aircraft?" Dietrich asked.

"No, Hans," Oberst Funke said. "You know what you wish to do with the Nebelwerfers. I am going to ready my column and proceed to the pass. There can be no doubt of the outcome. I shall take with me the communications van. Call me after you have fired your first rounds and I shall demand the surrender."

No doubt of the outcome, Dietrich thought a little bitterly. The colonel was right. It was not the way Dietrich liked to wage warfare, but with the threat to the civilian population, the result of the first wave of rockets was predictable. The American colonel, Wilson, would surrender rather than subject the native civilian population to annihilation. In a sense, it was amusing. Dietrich would not knowingly shell the civilians.

The colonel ducked into his tent and Dietrich ordered the staff car, a Mercedes sedan, brought around. With the abrupt appearance of Colonel Funke, the entire camp seemed to have awakened and now the mess tent was filled and the enlisted men were busy with small, individual fires preparing their rations at the sides of their units. While the colonel shaved and dressed, Dietrich kept looking to the sky and listening for the Me-323. The sun had not yet shown itself and the day was definitely overcast. Dietrich was not particularly concerned. It was odd to have this sort of weather after the weeks of hot, clear days that had followed the rainy season in December and January, but clouds would absorb some of the heat and even if rain should fall, which was unlikely, it would scarcely hamper the operation with the rockets.

"What was it you said the American colonel called himself?" Oberst Funke asked as he climbed into the Mercedes. He was dressed smartly in a fresh tunic and wore a pointed-crowned Afrika Korps cap.

"Wilson," Dietrich said absently, scanning the sky for the aircraft.

"So we shall meet in the town, Hans," the colonel said and chuckled. "Do you remember the place of the Frenchman? He knows how to keep his beer cool in the cellar. Shall we meet there? Hans? I shall allow you two hours to bring your armor into the town after the surrender."

"I shall meet you there, Herr Oberst," Dietrich said and smiled thinly. "Remember, the Frenchman's young lady knows how to keep Wehrmacht officers at a distance."

"Ach, Hans, I would not touch that one with a ten-foot pole if I possessed it," the colonel said and his face reddened. The French girl had rejected his attentions with a stinging blow to his chin in front of Dietrich and half a dozen staff officers.

The colonel's car, followed by the communication van, drove up the route to the head of the column, and Dietrich went looking for Corporal Willi Wunder to take him down the road.

The sky was graying rapidly along the horizon and Dietrich examined it curiously as the first elements of Colonel Funke's column turned over their motors. Even if it did rain, he did not see how it could interfere with the Nebelwerfers. Rain in the desert could mire the halftracks and tanks and he might have difficulty getting the armor off the battlefield, but the roadbed seemed substantial enough and Funke should have no trouble driving into the town. If there were a heavy rainfall and the half tracks and tanks bogged down, it would be the Nebelwerfers that saved the day.

Willi was waiting in the armored car just beyond the end of the column, sitting behind the steering wheel, smoking a cigarette. He started to get out but Dietrich waved him back. He thought at last he had heard the distant mutter of aircraft engines. He looked quickly at the gray sky but could see nothing.

"Drive right down the road," he told Corporal Wunder. "We'll wait for them where the empty drums are piled."

The Rat Patrol had been more bothersome than usual during this campaign, he thought but he smiled. Destruction of his fuel supplies had very nearly wrecked his plans for taking Sidi Beda, but out of necessity had come the call for the Nebelwerfers and if it did rain enough to muck down the armor, it would be the Rat Patrol he could thank for forcing him to bring in the rockets. With the last report of the Rat Patrol activity from Sidi Abd, they should not be annoying him again for a time. He had not heard from his own facsimile Rat Patrol again from Sidi Beda, but he was satisfied they already had served their purpose.

A fat drop of rain splashed on Dietrich's cheek as Willi neared the fuel drums. At almost the same moment, the enormous six-engined Me-323 emerged from the overcast. It circled the roadway and Dietrich told Willi to stop and put up the top. Willi braked in front of the rows of empty drums piled three high as the big plane began its approach to the road. Dietrich jumped from the car to give Willi a hand. He found himself facing Sergeant Sam Troy who stepped from the petrol drums with a submachine gun leveled at Dietrich's belt.

It had been a fitful morning, and several times Troy had awakened doubting the wisdom of Tully's suggestion that they conceal themselves within the drums. It had not been too much of a trick to remove a dozen barrels and make a new row, run in the jeeps and pile drums over them, but sitting on the ground with Tully in front of their jeep, Troy had felt confined and restrained. The odor of the gasoline had choked him and the fumes made his eyes smart. He dozed and awakened worrying that trucks or armor would pass over the mined road before the plane made its landing.

It was morning and gray light showed through the two-foot intervals they'd left between the drums, when the clack of tappets jerked Troy's head up. Tully was leaning forward, gun cradled in his arms. Troy restrained him, got to his knees as an armored car pulled up in front of the drums and stopped. Dietrich stepped out and Troy confronted him with his machine gun.

"Good morning, Captain," he said with a grin. "Tully," he called, "give the corporal a hand with the top and ask Moffitt and Hitch to come out. We may as well watch this landing in comfort."

Dietrich's face turned a shade grayer as Troy prodded him back in the front seat and sat behind him with the barrel of the submachine gun pushed into his neck. Tully helped the corporal with the top on the car as Moffitt and Hitch crawled from the drums and climbed into the back with Troy. The rain was plopping heavily on the top when Tully and the corporal got in. The day was suddenly darker and mossy clouds with dangling tendrils scudded close to the ground.

The aircraft seemed to be loafing as it lazed toward the road. It was the largest plane Troy had ever seen. A fat-nosed, underhung fuselage sprouted wings almost two-hundred feet wide and the six three-bladed propellers whipped the rain laden air with a growling fury.

"What have you done now, Sergeant Troy?" Dietrich asked tightly without turning his head.

"Depends on how you look at it, Captain," Troy said, smiling. "Is that rockets you're bringing in here?"

Almost two miles away, the Me-323 touched down on the roadway. Almost immediately an impact charge exploded and the huge plane shuddered and swung to one side. The swerving tail detonated another charge and the section burst into flames. A wing dipped, scraping the road for a few feet and another explosion blasted the aircraft.

"Great God!" Dietrich gasped as the aircraft erupted in a series of mighty explosions that tore it apart and threw sections of the plane and its cargo far out in the desert.

"Time for us to blow," Troy said, leaping from the car, lifting Dietrich's pistol from its holster and kicking aside the front row of drums. The rain was falling steadily and hard now. "Sorry we can't stay for the next act," he shouted at Dietrich, "but you'd better stick with tanks."

Tully and Hitch had rolled the barrels from the jeeps and now they started the vehicles and banged out. Moffitt already was at the machine gun in the rear of the jeep Hitch was driving and Troy leaped to the weapon in his jeep. He already was soaked to the skin by the drenching rain. Dietrich's driver had started his car.

"Better stay off the road," Troy shouted. "It's mined for two miles."

The great aircraft was burning and exploding. Troy did not think there would be anything salvageable left.

The jeeps headed straight west into the desert. From the north, an armored car and a sedan were racing towards Dietrich's car. The rain had not yet turned the baked earth of the plateau near the bluff into goo, but Troy knew that it would be only a matter of half an hour or so before the land was nearly impassable if the downpour continued. Until the sun dried out the land again, Dietrich's armor was going to be useless. Even the jeeps were skidding as they plunged behind Dietrich's line.

Troy's thoughts were tumbling one over the other as he tried to think of a safe place to conceal the jeeps where they would still be quickly available for use. The driving rain curtained their movements if there was any pursuit, and when the jeeps were a mile from the route, Troy called a halt. Hitch drove close alongside and parked, sitting with his arms clasping his wet shirt over his ribs.

"What do you know!" he shouted to Tully and opened his mouth in a wide grin, "A real midwestern downpour. In the desert yet. It sure beats the sun."

"If it keeps up," Tully drawled, relatively dry in his helmet, "we're going to need oars. Where we going, Sarge?" 

"I don't like to get too far from the road and that column they've run up near the pass," Troy said. "As long as the rain comes down like this, they can't see us from very far off. Dietrich must have taken the gun emplacements we had commanding the pass. Let's see if we can get them back."

"Don't you think we should take along an anchor to hold them, old boy," Moffitt observed.

The rain pounded them as Tully drove north by compass, feeling his way carefully over the surface that was becoming greasy with mud. It was about seven miles from the old CP to the pass and they'd detoured off the route. Troy kept calling to Tully for the mileage. Hitch was following close behind. It took half an hour to cover slightly more than seven miles and they drove the distance without seeing a person or vehicle, although they might have been within fifty yards of a tank and not seen it. Nor did they hear a sound except the rain thumping the hoods. The ground was becoming rocky and the jeeps were jolting.

"I'm going to walk you in the last half mile or so," Troy called and jumped to the ground. He stood beside Tully. "We'll try to take the gun position on the west side of the pass first and then cut across the road and see if we can surprise them. Don't fire unless necessary. If we grab the positions, you can run down for Wilson."

"Whyn't we just take the armored column while we're at it and let Dietrich surrender?" Tully asked mildly.

With compass in hand, Troy trotted in front of the jeep Tully was driving, looking for large stones that might hang up the vehicles and for the edge of the bluff with the emplacements the Jerries had taken. As long as the rain continued, he thought they had a good chance of recapturing the positions. The road should still be passable and Troy thought Wilson could charge up the pass, overwhelm the column by surprise and flank Dietrich's armor in the field.

After ten minutes, Troy slowed to a walk and changed his course slightly to the east. He thought he must be nearing the edge of the plateau overlooking the pass and he slogged along wearily with the jeep chugging in gear at his heels. Visibility was not good but he thought he could see far enough around to ward off any sudden encounter. Abruptly out of the gray rain a figure lunged at him from the side and rammed a machine pistol into his ribs.

When it started to rain, the Arab natives who'd been on the piers, beaches and in the wasteland at the edge of the town crowded into the warehouse and soon the large building was a babbling coliseum of men, women and children, confused and terrified. They overflowed into the small warehouse that contained the soup kitchen and crowded the line until a coffee urn was overturned. Shrieking at the scalding liquid, they jostled and roughed the MPs until Wilson finally ordered the food and equipment removed.

This infuriated the Arabs. Shouting angrily as they were pushed from the soup kitchen, they did not return to the large warehouse that had been provided for their shelter and protection but flowed back into the native quarter, seeking their homes. Wilson ordered his men not to restrain them. There had been no shelling during the night and the throng was becoming unmanageable. If the mortars fired this morning, the Arabs would crowd back.