The Rat Patrol 4 - Two-Faced Enemy (28 page)

Pushing himself off the dune, he ran another five minutes, crawled over the top and came down the hill on his belly. He got into the mud ahead of the column. It was a gooey, sloppy slough and he pulled himself through it, wriggling like a snake. He watched the tanks and saw nothing. When he dragged himself out of the mud, feeling loathsome and slimy, he looked back at the shattered communications van and the blocky outlines of the first tanks. They canted. Perhaps Moffitt had done more damage than he'd known. Dietrich must have raged at the attack on the tanks. He chuckled softly, thinking of Dietrich trussed up on his cot and Dietrich knocked out cold by Tully in the mud. It had not been Dietrich's day.

Now he edged out on the bluff bordering the pass. He pulled his knife from his belt and moved warily. He stopped abruptly and tried to merge with the ground. A man was lying just ahead of him. He waited and watched, then moved ahead with his knife ready. The man was not sleeping. He was one of the victims of the earlier attack. Troy crawled quickly over the area, found everything as they'd left it.

He crept to the edge of the pass and crawled along it until he could drop to the road. He ran to the other side and walked to the top with his back against the rock wall. Again he studied the column and noted how Wilson could turn immediately west on the plateau, avoiding much of the fire if crews were in the stalled tanks at oh-three-hundred in the morning. About two hundred yards away, something caught his eye. A tank was out of line, on the road. Jerry had managed to move one tank out of the mud. It might explain why the camp was so quiet. Everyone was worn out and asleep. But the tank could come as a nasty surprise for Wilson's halftracks if it were manned.

Troy was certain no one had visited the position on this side of the bluff since the other position had not been remanned, but he crept out to make certain. The plugged gun and stilled crew were as they'd been left. His watch showed oh-two-forty-five. He crawled along the road toward the tank. When he was opposite it, he lay examining the tank, the ground and the armor parked near it. The hatch of the tank was open. That could mean someone was in it or it could mean someone planned to use it soon. Troy checked the time again. It was oh-two-fifty-five. At the command post, Moffitt, Tully and Hitch would be planting their packages in or near the tents so they would explode as Wilson started coming up the pass.

Troy dragged himself on his stomach onto the road and stood with his back pressed against the tank. He put his ear to the cold steel and listened. He heard nothing. At exactly oh-three-hundred, he stepped onto the tracks and dropped his two five-minute charges through the hatch. He jumped to the ground and ran around the tank, stumbling through the mud in the ditch, staggering and sliding in the mud field. A blast slammed the air and flames leapt into the dark sky. They quickly dwindled and Troy heard shouts. A tent was afire. Troy had crossed the mud field standing and now he was in the sand. Another explosion rocketed fire. Troy was running, but he watched the fire, listening to confused shouting. Another tent was burning. When he reached the top of the dune, he stopped and watched, standing. In the light of the fires, he saw men running in every direction away from the camp. Three more charges exploded and then a detonation mightier than all of the others combined grabbed and shook the earth and the sky in a continuing series of blasts that slapped each other. Flames shot into the air like rockets and the entire camp blazed. They'd blown the ammo dump, Troy thought, lying on the dune that seemed warmed as it was lighted by the fire. He watched for Wilson and the explosion in the tank where he'd dropped the charges. He wondered whether anyone had been in the tank.

The halftracks crawled out of the pass like prehistoric armored lizards from subterranean caves. The first turned sharply west, hesitated as if appraising the situation and then turned south directly opposite the Jerry armor. A second and a third followed confidently, then a blast boomed hollowly in the tank and flames shot from the opened hatch. The halftracks scurried away, stopped, considered, and came back to the column with their guns blasting. They drove straight down the line of halftracks and tanks, Wilson's force of ten halftracks and five armored cars. Some of the Jerry armor exploded or blew at the seams as they took direct hits in their fuel tanks or ammunition. All was confusion at the CP when Troy stood, and so many fires were burning it looked like one enormous bonfire.

Although he did not think anyone would observe him, Troy went to the sheltered side of the dune and trotted back in flickering light. The whine and blast of exploding shells continued. Torn and flying metal crashed and jangled. The fires lighted up dark bellied clouds from burning oil. The air was heavy with lung-filling odors of fusil and cordite, and the tart taste of the battlefield dripped like juice.

Troy listened carefully for a new tone, a different pitch in the whine of the shells, but none of the Jerry' weapons was returning the fire. They were taking a plastering, being blasted to hell in small pieces and apparently none of them was manned with a crew to ram shells in the seventy-fives, unless there had been a crew in the tank on the road. That tank had looked as if it had been ready to go somewhere.

Troy saw the jeeps ahead and climbed to the top of the dune. He plunged to the sand beside Moffitt with a good flying bellyflop. The doctor, with Tully and Hitch, was watching the fireworks that extended from the pass to the flame-roaring camp. Moffitt rolled on his side and examined Troy from hair to toes with eyes that sparkled with amusement.

"Nightfighter camouflage?" he inquired casually.

Troy ran a mud-smeared hand over a mud-caked face and glanced at his shirt and trousers. They looked as if they had been soaked in India ink.

"Uniform of the day," he observed. "You blew the dump."

Moffitt nodded. "It's a good show. Did you run into something unexpected? I thought I heard an explosion down your way before Colonel Wilson started firing."

"They'd managed to get a tank on the road," Troy said, searching the area around the camp and the road. "Where has everyone gone?"

"A few, not more than half a dozen, vehicles drove out toward the Jerry line," Moffitt said. "The men on foot who escaped ran south, mostly. I expect they'll realize by morning that they never will make Sidi Abd and wait for us to pick them up."

The halftracks were grinding past the burning camp and not wasting a shell on it.

"Let's get on to the second act," Troy said.

"Right-o, old chap," Moffitt said. "I understand this has a smashing climax."

Troy slid down the hill and vaulted in the back to his gun. He gripped the spade handles and whirled it around. Moffitt was at his gun, Troy noticed. There would be Jerries in the sand hills who would like nothing better than a pot shot at the Rat Patrol. Tully jumped the jeep off in the lead. They crested the dune and plunged toward the road. The column of halftracks and armored cars still was moving south. Wilson soon would circle and try to get a few nips at the enemy's rear before Dietrich realized, too late, what the strategy was.

"Dietrich get away, did you notice?" Troy called to Tully.

"He got away but not very soon," Tully said. "Nobody got away very fast. They didn't know what was happening, things was going like that. They just sort of swarmed aimless like ants when their hill's been dug up. It wasn't until Wilson started pouring it on the Jerry armor that Dietrich came to. He lit out in his armored car like there was hornets in his pants."

"Into the field?" Troy asked.

"Yeah," Tully said. "If I was him, I would of headed for home."

Even with Dietrich in command, there would be confusion in the field, Troy thought. His armor was spread over a front twelve miles long. Dietrich had an apparent distinct superiority over Wilson with twenty-five or more tanks remaining against Wilson's halftracks and armored cars, but Wilson's force was a unit ready to strike, and Dietrich did not have more than two tanks to a mile plus a few halftracks. And Wilson had a plan. His strategy would work, Troy was certain.

The jeeps speeded along the column. The fires were bright enough for Troy to recognize the features of individuals. Wilson was in the lead halftrack, wearing his white varnished helmet and standing very erect and proud, a noble figure of a military leader and a prime target for a slug in the chest. When he saw the jeeps, he waved them back. Troy laughed and pointing with one hand at Wilson, waved with a pushing, downward sweep with the other to indicate he should sit. Now Wilson laughed. He actually looked happy.

"Let's go," Troy shouted to Tully.

"Where?" Tully asked.

"In front of Wilson's halftrack," Troy said, roaring with laughter. "We'll lead the armored column a ways. That ought to give Wilson fits."

The jeeps bounded ahead of Wilson's vehicle and side by side led the parade. Troy and Moffitt each took stances leaning out into the desert with their guns swiveled to the sides as if they were guards for the party. A pistol shot and another cracked and when Troy looked around, Wilson had fired into the air. He wasn't angry or annoyed at their antics. He was laughing and joining the fun. Troy took off his hat, waved it at Wilson and shouted, "Hurrah!" 

"Shove off," he called to Tully. "Maybe we can find something to do."

It was light now, the curious blue early light that made everything visible without any seeming illumination. The jeeps drove south, then west fast, leaping crazily over the dunes. It was just abandon. Troy realized there wasn't much more they could do. Not in the light of day. This was a battle for the heavies and the Rat Patrol would serve best by staying out of the way. He looked back and saw Wilson was taking the almost identical path as the jeeps.

"About twelve miles straight west, pick out a dune with a view," Troy told Tully. "We'll have breakfast. We can always move if we don't like our seats."

"Hey, Sarge," Tully said, turning his head, dropping his jaw and feigning amazement. "You don't mean our work for the day is all done so early?"

"This is yesterday's work we're finishing up, son," Troy sternly informed him.

Tully found a good high dune where they could watch for miles around. Wilson's column looked like a toy train back in the distance. To the north and east in his glasses, Troy saw three slow-moving specks, two tanks and a halftrack. Dietrich apparently was calling his armor away from the positions they had held to assemble them somewhere near the center of the line for a stand. Wilson had counted on that. It was part of his strategy. Troy looked back and saw that Wilson's column had veered to the north and was going to take a first nip. This small engagement should take place just about sunrise, he thought, getting into the front seat and settling comfortably beside Tully. Hitch and Moffitt parked alongside. They broke out their coffee jugs and sandwiches, ate leisurely and when they had finished, had second cups of coffee with their cigarettes.

"The show is about to start," Moffitt announced. He was standing and watching through his glasses.

Troy focused on the play. Wilson's column had outdistanced the tanks, cutting them off. Now the halftracks drove straight toward them, but before they were within effective range of the tank's big seventy-five, the halftracks and cars split, circling and coming in hard from the rear. Troy saw smoke and flashes and a moment later heard the dull distant thudding reports of the shelling. The battle was brief and scarcely interesting. Wilson had clear numerical superiority here. Troy couldn't tell whether Wilson had shot off the treads of the armor or whether shells had pierced them, but they were disabled. Crews of five men each climbed from the two tanks. No one left the halftrack. It must have taken a direct hit. One of the armored cars dropped from Wilson's force and stayed with the ten men as they started trudging back toward the road. Wilson's column drove straight west.

"Let's move," Troy said lazily, "I think Wilson will take one more nip at this end."

"Is that his strategy, Sarge?" Tully asked, starting the motor. "Take them two or three at a time?"

"Only the ones he can take without any trouble," Troy said. "Dietrich has probably called most of his armor to his station so he'll have a striking force."

"And Wilson's going against all them tanks with his handful of halftracks?" Tully exclaimed.

"I wouldn't want to tell you and spoil the surprise," Troy said, laughing.

The jeeps spurted across a flat stretch after leaving the dune. The sun blazed brightly and the sand already was turning lighter as the last of the moisture evaporated. The day would be hot, Troy thought. About five miles from the dune where they'd breakfasted, Troy pointed to a good sand hill half a mile to the north.

"About there," he said, "ought to be a ringside seat." 

"Whatever you say, Sarge," Tully drawled and put the jeep on the top.

Hitch and Moffitt drove beside them and Troy found Wilson's column without using his glasses. About three quarters of a mile away, he had closed with two tanks using the same tactics he'd used with the first. He was shelling them at close range and had both of them in trouble. The tanks and the reports of the guns stopped abruptly. No one opened the hatch of either tank. The desert was silent. Wilson drove north. He was not far from Dietrich's position, Troy thought. The jeeps followed the halftracks and two armored cars at a distance.

Tully climbed another high dune and Troy told him to stop. He turned his glasses to the northeast and then the northwest but found nothing. He looked north and about two miles off saw moving black spots where Dietrich's armor was converging. The tanks looked like flies crawling on sugar. Wilson's force was headed straight for the Jerries.

"Hey, Sarge, is Wilson nuts!" Tully cried. "Now he's starting to circle around them. What's he going to do, make them chase him until they run out of gas?"

"That isn't a bad idea," Troy said, looking again to the northeast. This time he found what he wanted—three, four, five tiny black spots crawling over the desert. He handed the glasses to Tully and pointed. "Keep looking until you find something, then tell me what you see."