The Rat Patrol 4 - Two-Faced Enemy (11 page)

"Ja, Hans, I am glad you agree that is the thing to do," the old man said and signed off.

Loss of the fuel stored at El Alghur was more of a disaster than he'd admitted to Oberst Funke, Dietrich thought bitterly as he absently marked his map with the position of the halftrack that had been lost. Even with the fuel he hoped the convoy would bring from Sidi Abd, his conduct of the battle would be curtailed if he did not achieve a reasonably quick victory. His need was not immediate, not today nor tomorrow. But three days from now, if the battle stalled and the convoy did not return from Sidi Abd, he would be stranded here on the plateau. His command would consist of a column of dry tanks.

Signals had been crackling in his eardrums and now they claimed his attention. In quick succession, three commanders reported losses: two more halftracks and one tank. It was becoming increasingly difficult to remain calm and his fingers trembled a little as he marked the map. There was no pattern anywhere, nor explanation for the varied progress of the advance. Some units seemed to lag while others spurted ahead. Two tanks acting as minesweepers near the middle of the line had pushed through to the fifteen-hundred yard point. The two tanks behind them moved up and four seventy-fives now opened fire on the two tank positions at the center of the Allied fine of defense. Until now the enemy had held his fire, but scarcely had the PzKws opened than not two but four of the defensive positions swept the Afrika Korps armor. Dietrich shook his head and bit his lip. One of the advantages on which he had counted was the maneuverability of his force against the permanent installations of the enemy. In the minefield, his armor was in as fixed position as it was possible to be.

Dietrich lifted his field glasses and focused into the mantle of pulverized dirt directly in front of his station where the duel was taking place. He could not see his tanks fifteen hundred yards away. He could not see any of his units. Everywhere shells were crashing, mines were blasting in a hellish nightmare of confusion. Now three more tanks moved into range and they with their minesweeper escorts opened fire. Half a dozen additional enemy positions promptly joined. It was completely impossible to judge what was happening on the dust-enshrouded field. Dietrich's tanks were within visual sighting range but were forced to fire by calculation. They had the advantage of being hidden from the enemy, whose positions were established, but they could not see the result of their fire.

Although the day was still in its early hours, the temperature already had passed ninety. Dietrich himself, with a handkerchief covering his nose and mouth, was choked by the hot dust. Although he wore goggles, he was half blinded. The reports that reached him were garbled and confused. He did not know whether his force had knocked out a single enemy position nor did he know what losses he had sustained.

At oh-eight-hundred -hours, he ordered a general withdrawal. The enemy would not run away. He would be able to return again at will at least as far as his armor had already advanced and it was essential that he appraise the results of the first engagement. Each enemy emplacement that had been knocked out would not only be a weak point to be exploited but also would be a position on which no more shells need be wasted.

The Afrika Korps armored vehicles rumbled back, and when they had reached their original positions. Dietrich called for a rotation roll from his commanders. Some responded, some did not. The result was inconclusive. He did not know whether those who failed to answer were still in the field or whether there had been communications breakdowns. The slow-settling dust pall still concealed what had happened. Dietrich chafed and waited. It was one hell of a way to wage a battle.

As the dust gradually dissipated, Dietrich's field glasses roamed restlessly over the battlefield. He did not like the shrouded shapes they found and when he was able to distinguish and count them his spirit withered. Three more halftracks had been disabled or wrecked, and more appalling, five of his tanks had been left on the field. The crews of some of the vehicles of war were returning warily afoot, now that they could see where they were going. No life at all showed around others.

The toll had been heavy and Dietrich turned his glasses to the enemy positions they would reach, seeking the crippled, the disabled, wondering whether the price he had paid was too high. He could not see all of the emplacements, and as if sensing his question and realizing this, the Allied tanks, starting from the west, each fired a salute in succession. He counted, and when they were through all twenty-five positions had spoken.

A bomber; send just one B-25, Wilson had pleaded with Divisional Headquarters when the observer in the Cub had reported the armored column parked by the side of the road about six miles southeast of Latsus Pass. They were sitting ducks. Yes, they had an eighty-eight millimeter antiaircraft gun, but there was nothing new about that. In addition to the column at Latsus Pass, there were times when the armor on the plateau was pretty well bunched and there was no indication they had an eighty-eight or they would have been using it on the emplacements. Divisional Headquarters had told him what they'd said the day before, but now it was twenty-four hours instead of forty-eight hours and tomorrow he would have a squadron, but today the bombers were committed and could not be diverted. With the wheeling and dealing Wilson had done with his tanks, pushing them this way and that wherever and whenever they were needed, it seemed to him the Air Force was being a little hidebound and stuffy.

Lieutenant Farb, in charge of the defenses on the plateau, had reported the minefield and tanks not only holding but inflicting significant losses on the enemy. The enemy still held an awesome superiority in numbers on the plateau and could call upon the column beyond Latsus Pass for reinforcements. Wilson was not sanguine about his situation.

Farb had reported an item of interest. When the enemy had withdrawn for a breathing spell, he had sent out not only for his casualties but also had drained the gas from his disabled units. It may have been merely that Dietrich was a frugal man or it may have indicated something a great deal more important, although the aerial observer reported what appeared to be a vast store of fuel drums still at the old site of the CP which had been moved.

The morning was blistering and the town was panting and sweating, but there had been no further outward signs of unrest. Life in the native quarter and trade at the bazaar seemed to be normal. Wilson was keeping the Arabs and Frenchies sealed up between the military boulevard and the bluff and Christianson was circulating among the natives again. The Rat Patrol was in there somewhere fomenting Lord knew what kind of dissension. He hadn't risked going into the bazaar where Christianson had seen them. He'd been afraid of bloodshed and he didn't have the force to quell a native uprising.

The defection of the Rat Patrol was the most crushing blow Wilson had suffered in his entire military career. It wasn't the first time men had cracked up under the continuing strain of battle, and perhaps he had contributed to it by his sometimes harsh words, but he'd thought each member of the Rat Patrol was man enough to take it. He had looked upon the Rat Patrol as a superior military machine, a very personal extension of himself. The situation made Wilson physically ill. It could no longer be an ordinary court-martial with the Rat Patrol. When they were caught, they'd be tried for treason and shot.

Peilowski stepped into the office and Wilson looked at him with quick apprehension. It seemed the only times his first sergeant came into his office these days was to bring a fresh parcel of bad news. It was something disagreeable again, Wilson could see. The man's thick lips were blubbering and he shifted uneasily from foot to foot as he stood in front of Wilson's metal desk.

"Yes," Wilson said sharply. "Well, what is it this time?" 

"The Rat Patrol," Peilowski said unhappily. "They've been broadcasting to Dietrich's headquarters."

"What!" Wilson came out of his chair raging.

"In the clear," Peilowski said. "It's funny, we can't pick up anything that goes between the column and the CP and we know there must be transmissions, but we can pick up the communications between here and the CP. This was on the same frequency we picked up the code words last night." 

"Never mind the explanations," Wilson roared, striding to the window and back. "How do you know it was the Rat Patrol? What was said?"

"It must of been Moffitt because he was talking German," Peilowski said. "Anyway, he identified himself as the Rat Patrol and went on to tell that the Arabs were making trouble and the warehouse had been blown."

Wilson staggered to his chair and collapsed in it. He was suddenly a hundred years old and without any strength. He breathed deeply and could not seem to get any oxygen into his lungs. His mind was spinning crazily. Disobeying orders, even fraternizing with the Arabs was reprehensible, but to go out and go over to the enemy was unthinkable. Why? he asked himself despairingly. Why would the Rat Patrol go over to Dietrich? He knew they'd all respected the man. They had made no secret of that. But he had not thought they admired him. Wilson had been stern with them, certainly, and they probably hated his guts, but that was a personal matter. What they were now doing affected not individuals but a nation. This was the most despicable act of treason since Benedict Arnold tried to sell out West Point to the British.

"Have they been seen this morning?" Wilson asked brokenly.

"Yes, sir," Peilowski said nervously. "Christianson just reported they're back in the bazaar with the Arabs." 

"We're going in and try to take them regardless of what it costs us," Wilson said grimly. "I'll take in a platoon. They'll probably run, but I have to see them myself to believe this is true. I want two armored cars and a platoon of twenty-four MPs armed with tommy-guns."

Wilson knew the ugly mood of the town, knew that bloodshed would bring the Arab mob howling into the streets. He also knew he could not permit the Rat Patrol to remain free.

By the time Wilson was ready, two armored cars were at the grilled double-doors of HQ and two dozen MPs armed with submachine guns were aligned smartly in a column of twos behind. Wilson sat in the first car beside his cigar-chewing sergeant and the detail drove slowly down the boulevard. It was so hot the asphalt had blistered and the bubbles cracked and popped under the tires. When the car reached the one street into the native quarter that was more than an alley, the driver turned into it. For the two blocks to the bazaar, the street was lined with small shops and cafes. Metal shutters were down at all of them. The shopkeepers feared violence. The street was ominously deserted.

The bazaar, however, was thronged with robed men. It was the trading center and here shops on four sides faced a bare square where Arabs spread their rugs and laid out their wares, spices and fruits, coffee and vegetables, tin pots and brass pans, even goat milk and eggs. The merchants were there and two or three hundred others. As the armored cars and the MP platoon pushed into the market place, the merchants began hastily taking down their awnings and bundling up their goods. A sullen silence fell over the crowd that watched with resentful eyes as the intruders moved slowly down one side of the bazaar and started back the other.

Wilson stood in his car, hands on the butts of his pistols, searching the mute, hostile crowd for the headpieces of Troy, Moffitt, Pettigrew and Hitchcock.

A shrill yell rent the tense air and a familiar figure in Australian bush hat and goggles leapt from a group of several dozen Arabs in white robes and burnooses. It was Troy, Wilson recognized at once. Troy shook his fist at Wilson, shrieked a blasphemous stream of epithets and ducked back into the crowd. A moment later Troy, followed by a man in a dark beret, whom Wilson recognized as Moffitt, Hitch in his red-topped French Foreign Legionnaire cap and Tully, chewing a matchstick and wearing his steel helmet, darted off down an alley. There was no doubt that it was the Rat Patrol. Wilson had hoped against hope that there might be some mistake but now he had seen them.

"After them, after them," he shouted to the platoon of MPs. "Take them if you can, but shoot if you must."

The Arabs in white robes surged forward. Their faces were darkly ferocious. They clogged the entrance to the alley. They pushed against the MPs and forced them back, got their hands on Wilson's car and began to overturn it. The sergeant shoved the car into reverse and backed away from the Arabs. The MPs struggled against the Arabs, swinging the butts and barrels of their guns but holding their fire. The crowd followed the armored cars and the MPs down the alley to the military avenue. Here the MPs on foot took a firm stand five or six deep and the Arabs halted at the very edge of the quarter, on the threshold of their property. Wilson left one of the cars stationed with the MPs and went back to his headquarters.

"It was them all right," he heavily told Peilowski. "I saw them. Troy threatened me. They're working with the Arabs for the Jerries against us. It may even have been them who blew up the warehouse. Damnit, Peilowski, we've got to find those jeeps before there's more sabotage. They're carrying enough stuff with them to defeat us even if we beat off the Jerries."

The Rat Patrol had been about three miles from the oasis when El Alghur disappeared from the desert in a mighty explosion that pelted them with a blinding shock wave of sand. Flames from the dump licked the sky savagely and even a little ram seemed to fall. The waterhole had been blown into the air with the dump.

Tully and Hitch parked the jeeps behind a dune and crawled to the top with Troy and Moffitt to watch the convoy and wait.

"First rate show," Moffitt said with a chuckle. "And no blood spilled. That's something of an oddity for this group of pirates. What do you deduce their next move to be?"

"If there's more gas around, they'll go after it," Troy said.

"You think we can get there ahead of them again, Sarge?" Tully asked, rolling the matchstick in his mouth.