The Rat Patrol 4 - Two-Faced Enemy (12 page)

"Not likely," Troy said. "Not in the daylight."

"What is our next move, then?" Hitch asked and popped a piece of bubble gum in his mouth.

"We ought to have something to eat and get some sleep," Troy said, "but I want to know where they're going." 

"You believe it's possible to smash them at some place when they return?" Moffitt asked, wrinkling his forehead. "They will be watching for us, you know."

"There will be a place where we can hit them," Troy said confidently. "There always is."

The air gradually cleared until they could see the ravaged oasis, although the flames roared and spit into the desert. The convoy approached to within half a mile of the destruction and the halftracks made a slow circuit of the devastated area, stopping again by the trucks. The convoy remained halted for about fifteen minutes and then moved out to the south.

"Must be another dump," Troy said with a grin. "We'll wait until they're almost out of sight and then tag along. Meanwhile, we might as well break out the chow."

After warm lemonade made with powder from the rations, some biscuits, hot jam and gooey fruit bars, Troy searched for the convoy with his field glasses. He plotted their location and apparent direction when he found them and the jeeps sped south behind the dunes. They drove ten miles before they stopped again. A thin streamer of dust hung in the air marking their course.

"They'll see that and know we're on their tail, Sarge," Tully drawled.

"Whether they see it or not, they're all on the alert," Troy said. "All we really have to do is keep them in sight and keep out of range. They know we're here."

"But how we going to get at the gas if they're watching for us?" Tully asked.

"I haven't figured that out yet," Troy admitted with a grin.

The convoy was about a mile away, still traveling in a due south direction. Troy consulted his map.

"They're going to Sidi Abd," he said. "We'll show ourselves on top of the dunes and start back toward Sidi Beda." 

"Think that will fool them?" Tully asked.

"I doubt it," Troy said and laughed. "But they won't know which direction we may come in from."

The jeeps climbed to the top of the dune and tamed northwest. They traveled about five miles and then went into the valleys between the dunes to go south.

"I think we can hold down the speed," Troy said. "I don't want a repeat of last night, but I don't think we'll lose them today and we may as well avoid leaving more of a trail in the air than is necessary."

The two jeeps drove south at about twice the speed of the convoy but slowly enough so no great clouds of dust rose after them. The convoy now was miles away and Troy did not think the Jerries would be able to follow their course. Neither did he expect his ruse had fooled them. They would be expecting an attack somewhere on the return trip with full loads. While the jeeps could outrun the halftracks, their bigger guns could keep the Rat patrol far enough away from the convoy to prevent them from doing any damage. The Rat Patrol would have to ambush the convoy, strike swiftly and ran. To do this, Troy had to know the route the convoy would take and he was reasonably certain they would attempt to make an evasive journey. He was determined to hang on tenaciously. Gasoline was vital to Dietrich and he must be desperate to send for it all the way to Sidi Abd.

It was not yet oh-nine-hundred when Troy estimated they were nearing Sidi Abd and told Tully to run into a wadi. He crawled to the top, smiling a little as he did. It seemed to him he had spent his entire life crawling through hot sand to the tops of dunes. Sidi Abd, the walled desert stronghold where Dietrich made his headquarters, lay some three miles to the east. He observed it with his field glasses through shimmers of heat waves. The German camp just outside the walls looked deserted with most of the armor gone. The tents still stood in neat rows on either side of the entrance in the wall and guards patrolled the area. He studied the camp area carefully, the empty wire-enclosed prison compound, the motor pool where several Volkswagen patrol cars, four or five motorcycles and a decrepit sedan staff car were parked. Beyond was the machine and repair shop housed in a large, open-sided, canvas-topped structure. The gas dump probably was somewhere near the motor pool, he reasoned, and here at headquarters it was not necessarily underground. A tank with broken treads caught his eyes. It was parked in front of a bulking pile covered with canvas. As he watched, a halftrack came from behind the pile making a slow circuit.

That would be the fuel dump, Troy decided, and the tank, although disabled, probably had a crew manning its seventy-five millimeter gun. It would be next to impossible to blast the dump and bolt. He slid down into the wadi and helped Moffitt, Tully and Hitch pull the camouflage nets over the rear ends of the jeeps.

"Get them ready to run—gas, oil and water," he said, "then sleep if you can. I'll watch now and wake Tully in an hour to relieve me."

He pulled off his Jerry uniform as the others had done but left on the cap. It afforded some protection to his head and eyes and would not be so conspicuous as his bush hat on top of the dune. Swallowing a mouthful of warm water, he went back to the crest and lay in the hot sand, breathing heavily and sweating under the burning sun. When he looked through his glasses to the north for the convoy or back at the town, it was difficult to see clearly through the dancing waves that shimmered over the sand.

When he had determined a route for the convoy on its return trip, Troy thought they would run on ahead, find some place where the terrain was difficult and left no alternate path. They'd lay mines to catch the first halftrack and fall on the trucks with grenades. The halftrack at the rear would prevent their blowing all of the trucks on the first strike, but they should be able to take half of them and catch the remaining half dozen at some other place.

The hour sizzled by and it was time to awaken Tully for the second watch when a speck that moved far to the north appeared in his glasses. He lay watching its tedious approach over the distant miles. It was still too far off to distinguish more than a faint crawling line but he sensed rather than saw something odd in its appearance. Uneasily he tried to bring it closer in his glasses to discover what had changed. It was not until the convoy was within two miles that he knew what disturbed him. The halftrack at the end of the convoy was missing.

"Doc, Tully, Hitch!" he shouted as he turned his glasses in a sweeping probe about him. "Tear off the nets and get the jeeps started."

He discovered the missing halftrack less than a mile away, bearing straight at the wadi and coming into range fast. He scrambled down the slope cursing and shouting and helped Tully yank the net from the jeep. As he leapt into the back and grasped the machine gun, a shell slammed into the dune where he had been lying and threw up a geyser of sand.

7

Dietrich's farthest advance into the minefield had been at the middle of the line in front of his station where four tanks had managed to reach a point within fifteen hundred yards of the enemy positions. Two tanks had been wrecked there, but Dietrich decided to exploit this penetration and push through and beyond it if he could. He sent two halftracks into the field. Firing from protected positions behind the tanks, they blasted the earth on either side to provide a path for armor to advance. When the areas at the sides of the tanks were cleared, the halftracks pushed on, obscured by the fine, flying dry earth, and began working ahead.

The two enemy positions opposite the tanks, apparently already zeroed in, opened fire and both halftracks shuddered and died. Dietrich ordered his entire force forward to the positions they'd held. He commanded them to move up within range and to maintain steady fire.

The Afrika Korps crack unit ground back into the dust-curtained minefield and soon the plateau was shuddering with the blows of the battle. The terrible throat-parching pall fell like a shower and coated Dietrich's face, arms and hands. He had the handkerchief back over his nose and mouth, but even through it he could scarcely breathe.

He stood stiffly, unmoving, face rigid, listening for the crash of shell into steel, for the clanging detonation of mine against tank treads, for some cessation in enemy fire that would indicate an emplacement had been destroyed. This was no tank battle. It was an artillery engagement and the odds were not with him. Unless he breached the defensive line soon, his losses would be greater than he could sustain. It was folly to leave his units fighting blindly for long at a time and the heat and dust were more than his crews could bear. He permitted his armor to slug it out, some reporting advances, for half an hour and then he withdrew them again. The advances and withdrawals were consuming fuel and he wondered whether there had been a report from the convoy. He disliked doing it but he called Colonel Funke.

"Ja, Hans," Herr Oberst Funke said thickly. "They are there safely and should start to return in one hour. One of the halftracks found the Rat Patrol hiding."

"They took the Rat Patrol?" Dietrich said swiftly and sucked in his breath.

"Ja, I think that is what they said, Hans," the old man said uncertainly.

"Look, Herr Oberst, you must know what they said," Dietrich almost shouted in frustration. "Tell me exactly what was reported. Think carefully. I want to know the words that were used."

"Hans, it is so hot to think clearly," Oberst Funke said complainingly. "I will try. They said the halftrack found the Rat Patrol hiding and put a dozen shells into them." 

"Did they take them?" Dietrich yelled. "Did they capture them or destroy them?"

"Oh, they killed them," Oberst Funke said with authority. "Ja, that is what was reported. They killed all the Rat Patrol with twelve shells from the seventy-five." Funke's voice assumed a condescending tone. "You should know, Hans, it is difficult for a man to withstand the effects of seventy-five millimeter shells at close range."

"It is certain then that the Rat Patrol has been removed," Dietrich said, not even minding Funke's air of superiority.

"They are kaput, Hans," the colonel said. "Now tell me, my boy, how goes the battle. Again you have stopped firing."

"I've just called another withdrawal so I can see how far we have advanced," Dietrich said airily. "It is very difficult to know what one is doing here."

"You know where the enemy is emplaced," Oberst Funke said, sternly now. "Why cannot you simply fire until you have removed him?"

"The men are firing blind," Dietrich said. "It is not entirely to our disadvantage. Our armor is concealed by the dust from the enemy."

"Then how is it, Hans, that the losses all are borne by us, eh? Tell me that, will you?" Funke said querulously.

"I have told you, Herr Oberst," Dietrich said patiently, refusing to be nettled, "we are operating from a minefield. Most of the losses have been from the mines."

"Tell me how many reinforcements you need and I will get them to you," Funke said imperiously.

"As I have explained, they are not yet needed," Dietrich said sharply. "Has there been signal from der Ungeziefer?" he asked.

"Oh, ja, Hans," the colonel said and the earphones vibrated with the boom of his laughter. "Explosions are happening and your friend, Ali Abu, takes them everywhere and they talk with the Arabs. Soon I think there will be some riots."

"Good, everything seems to be working out for the best," Dietrich said with a tight smile. "Call me when you have word the trucks are on the way."

"I will do that, Hans," Oberst Funke said.

When the miserable layers of dust had settled once more, Dietrich discovered that he had lost two more tanks. There was no evidence that any of the enemy tanks had been silenced. Although Dietrich would not yet admit it to Oberst Funke, he was becoming increasingly alarmed at his losses. His force was rapidly dwindling and he was losing his superiority. He now had only twenty-nine tanks and six halftracks. He did not know how much armor he had lost to enemy fire, but he did know that mines alone were not responsible for all the wrecks that littered the field.

"We must have a place where we can break through," he told his commanders on the radio. "I want four tanks at the middle of the line concentrating their fire on the two enemy tanks at the center. I want those positions eliminated. It is inconceivable that the enemy should be entirely impervious to our fire. Now then, two units from either side of my station will advance to the disabled tanks in the middle of the field. The other units will remain here in place. Advance and continue firing until the enemy positions have been silenced."

The tanks rumbled into the field and took their stands on either side of the smashed armor. The enemy immediately opened fire. Before Dietrich's tanks had hurled the first shell, one of his units had taken a direct hit that blew its hatch. Within seconds, the dirt was flying and clouds puffed out to envelope the field. Only the crashing guns on both sides told of the battle. Suddenly Dietrich thought he detected a break in the rhythm of the firing. Only one gun was firing from the Allied emplacements, he was certain. Exultantly he ordered his three remaining tanks to concentrate on the second Allied tank. It continued to match salvos with his tanks in the field. It still was firing when Dietrich ordered his tanks to withdraw. Only two returned. Another two tanks lost, he thought bitterly, but at least he had succeeded in removing the first enemy gun.

When the air had cleared enough so Dietrich could focus his glasses on the enemy emplacements, he saw a crew of men working about the gun that had been silenced. They were carrying shells to the turret. As he watched, the gun crew disappeared inside the tank, and although there was no target, its gun spoke defiantly once more. It was incredible, but the weapon had not been knocked out. It had only been out of ammunition.

The minefield would defeat him, he thought, anguished. He could not afford to continue flinging his armor into a field where the enemy apparently had charted every salient and was able to call his shots whenever Dietrich's units came within effective range. He did not doubt that some, perhaps many, of the shells from his tanks had struck home, but the medium tanks the enemy had emplaced apparently carried sufficient armor so that shells were ineffective at fifteen hundred yards.