The Rat Patrol 4 - Two-Faced Enemy (15 page)

Wilson was agreeably surprised when the first groups of the Arabs began streaming onto the military avenue. They were frightened, fleeing people, yes, but there was neither anger nor resentment in their faces. They had heard the shelling, they understood the city was besieged, and Christianson must have done a good job explaining that the only concern of the Allied Forces was their safety. They carried precious few possessions, a pillow, a rug, a water jar, packages perhaps of food. The women clutched children too young to toddle. The older ones ran along whooping. They thought it was a lark. The men in their robes were more dignified but made haste.

It was the shopkeepers who offered resistance, Christianson explained when he came in. They'd take their chances with the shells, they said. What they most feared were the looters.

Wilson assigned teams of MPs to patrol the alleys and had Christianson announce from a roving car with an amplifier that looters would be shot on sight. Still the shop-keepers remained behind their corrugated iron shutters.

The MPs reported the door to the Fat Frenchman's wine shop was barred and despite repeated attempts, they had been unable to get any kind of response. They did not know whether the girl and the Fat Frenchman even were in the building. Should they break down the door?

"No," Wilson said slowly. "We won't break in."

There had been no sign of the Arabs in the white robes from the bazaar nor of the Rat Patrol. They and their Arab friends may have fled Sidi Beda by the back route. Or the Rat Patrol might be hiding at the Fat Frenchman's. If they were and a shell fell on the building, it would be the most satisfactory solution to the whole sorry affair.

Some of the natives went to the beaches, the piers, the wasteland at the edge of town, but most seemed to prefer being within the shelter that was provided, perhaps sensing that they had been conveyed to a place of safety. The Arabs were badly frightened and silent. The Frenchies were inclined to be scornful or gay. Many brought along bottles of wine and there were several concertinas.

It was almost sunset. Farb reported that after the positions had been prepared on the plateau, the enemy had retired and there was no indication of further action. At the small warehouse, mess hall equipment had been lugged in and soup was simmering. The coffee urns were set up and at the kitchen in the regular military mess hall, racks of bread had been taken from the ovens. Wilson prepared to serve supper and tuck his town in. He looked doubtfully at the warehouse where the Frenchies were cavorting and hoped it would be a quiet night.

It was almost sunset when Tully sent the jeep spinning down a sand hill toward a small, unnamed oasis about fifty miles north of Bir-el-Alam, the desert city that once had been the base for Wilson's armored unit. It had been the long way around to return through Bir-el-Alam, but Troy had thought it prudent to get out of Jerryland with as much haste as possible. Now the Rat Patrol was in familiar and friendly territory, but Troy stood at the machine gun in the back of the jeep. He darted a glance at the other jeep and smiled. Moffitt, still in the robes of the men of Abu-el-bab, was alert at his weapon. Tully and Hitch slowly circled the cluster of palms that grew by the waterhole in the valley. Satisfied they were alone and there had been no recent visitors, Troy called a halt.

"We'll eat and rest here until the moon is up," he announced, "and then we'll get back to work."

"Is it okay to build a fire, Sarge?" Tully asked, getting from behind the steering wheel and going to the back of the jeep.

"I'd forgotten about that so-called young goat you picked up at Bir-el-Alam," Troy said, laughing. "If you're sure it's a kid, go ahead and make a fire. Someone ought to stand guard anyway. Hitch, how about taking the first turn?"

"Okay, Sarge," Hitch said and popped his gum to show that he was feeling good.

They all were feeling good, Troy thought, carrying the bundle of sticks they'd bought with the goat over to Tully. Troy still burned at Wilson's attitude when he'd handed them this assignment, but it did give him a good, satisfying glow to realize he was doing the job he'd set out to do. What the hell, Troy thought, smiling suddenly; he shouldn't be annoyed with Wilson. With Dietrich hammering at his door, Wilson had other things on his mind besides a sergeant who couldn't be found on his day off.

With coffee and biscuits from their rations, they dined well and the kid they roasted was surprisingly juicy and tender. It was a good fire, Troy thought contentedly as he lighted a cigarette after relieving Hitch on guard. He turned slowly round, looking first at the vast, unconfining, empty desert that surrounded him and then at the warm glow of the embers down in the oasis where his friends and companions were stretching out in the sand. He looked up at the deep purple vault of the sky, pin-pricked by stars, and listened to the music of the universe. Here it was calm and it seemed that peace was eternal. He grinned a little crookedly. And in an hour or two, they'd be in the thick of it again.

The fire had died and Moffitt, Tully and Hitch all were asleep when Troy shuffled down to the oasis at twenty-hundred hours. The moon had risen, a magnificent full moon that was a great luminescent globe illuminating the desert with faintly greenish-white light.

"Grab your socks," he barked harshly in his best drill instructor's voice and grinned as the three of them rolled and came up with their tommy-guns.

"You shouldn't ought to do that, Sarge," Tully complained. "I was dreaming a Jerry was chasing me and I was just diving for my weapon."

"Never let a Jerry chase you," Troy said. "You get the drop on him first."

"What's the program?" Hitch asked, jaw moving on the gum he always had.

"We have deprived Jerry of his petrol," Moffitt said with a smile. "He still has his ammunition. Is that what you have in mind, Sam?"

"Something like that, Jack," Troy said. "Why don't we just mosey up to the plateau and see how our defenses are holding. We might blow a tank tread or two."

They drove straight north for almost an hour and then turned east toward the Mediterranean. Although the jeeps ran without lights, the moon was so bright their shadows ran with them. It was a warm evening, not uncomfortable but warm for the desert, and Troy thought the air felt moist. It was strange, he thought, that the humidity from the ocean should be so noticeable after just one day in the interior.

It was nearing twenty-two-hundred hours when they approached the oasis where they'd destroyed the first Jerry dump. Tully and Hitch parked on a dune a thousand yards away and Troy and Moffitt observed it carefully through glasses for several minutes before they circled it wide in opposite directions. The smell of gasoline and burned oil still clung to it, and the sand was littered with blown drums and the black wreckage of the halftrack and truck. The area was clear and Troy went in to the waterhole. The brackish water had a faintly oilish taste. After filling the tanks with gasoline, they used the water only to fill the radiators. From the oasis, they drove straight north toward the western end of the defense line, keeping within the shadowed valleys until the ground began to get rocky.

"We'd better leave the jeeps and go on foot," Troy told Tully.

Carrying tommy-guns and grenades, the four crawled ahead to reconnoiter. It was uncommonly quiet on the plateau, Troy thought, as if all the world were sleeping, but the air tasted of recent battle. They slunk over the hard earth for almost half a mile before Troy, cresting a stony dime, saw the squatty outlines of two medium Jerry tanks about a thousand yards ahead. They were facing the last Allied position across the minefield, but they were about four thousand yards from it, well out of range. The ravaged earth bore evidence of exploded mines. Troy wondered why the guns were silent. The night was ideal for warfare. He considered planting a grenade with the pin pulled under the treads of a tank and dismissed the idea. There would be other targets and he wanted a further look at the situation before alerting the Jerries.

"I don't like it," he said quietly when he was in the valley with the others. "It's peculiar. It doesn't feel right. Dietrich ought to have all his armor pounding away at our positions."

"Maybe he's out of gas, Sarge," Tully drawled and fished a matchstick from his pocket.

"Not so soon," Troy said. "He must have started with full tanks. He's got enough gas for another day or two."

"What do you think, Sam?" Moffitt asked.

"I don't," Troy said, puzzled. "I just feel something in the air. Let's take the jeeps, swing south and come up near the middle of his line."

This time he had Tully park in a depression about a mile from his estimated position for the Jerry armor. Again the four of them advanced warily through shadowed valleys or from rock to rock when they found them. Troy left the others wrapped in shadows and crawled up a hard-packed slope on his belly. When he reached the top he flattened instinctively. He was closer to the Jerry armor than he'd realized. On both sides of the hill, tanks were parked and men were sleeping on the ground.

Bareheaded, he rested his chin on the ground and looked straight ahead. The minefield was pocked with a thousand craters. At the edge of the field he saw a small area that recently had been leveled. Shifting his eyes on down the line, he saw several more such positions at regular intervals. He slipped down the slope and came back to the top facing the opposite direction. Again he found several of the small, level sites. They were platforms for something, but what?

Moffitt was as puzzled as Troy when he returned and described them.

"They sound almost like artillery positions," Moffitt said, "but what would Dietrich be doing with artillery?"

"Let's slip around the back way to the other column and see if anything new has come in," Troy suggested.

They returned to the jeeps and drove straight east, coming to the route south of the command post they'd destroyed. Tully drove across it slowly, too slowly for Troy in the moonlight. Tully stopped behind the dune on the other side.

"What is it?" Troy asked.

"They been working on that road, Sarge," Tully said. "They been smoothing it out and filling it in."

"So there's a regulation against that?" Troy asked.

Hitch and Moffitt parked and walked over.

"What is it, Sam?" Moffitt asked.

"Ask Tully," he said.

"They been fixing up that road for a plane to land," Tully said. "They don't give a hoot or a holler how rough a road is for trucks and tanks. The only reason they been smoothing that road out is a plane is coming in here carrying something they don't want jarred no more than can be helped."

Troy looked narrowly at Moffitt. "High explosives," he said.

"You know, Sam," Moffitt said slowly, "I believe you are correct. And those positions you described might well be rocket-launching pads."

Troy whistled soundlessly. "They could tear the town apart. We've our night's work cut out for us."

"Such as?" Hitch asked.

"We're going to mine that road for the whole distance it's been worked," Troy said. "Every place they've filled in a pot hole, we're going to plant an impact charge." He laughed quietly. "I hope it takes all we've got. I'll be glad to get rid of them."

They remained behind the dune until the moon went out and then they worked in teams. Troy and Tully started at the end of the repaired road near the former command post. The drums still were there, stacked three and four high and lined in rows, but no guards patrolled them now. Where the tents had been, there was only a blacker patch in the darkness. Moffitt and Hitch worked toward them from two miles away. Although they worked rapidly, scratching out the packed earth with their knives, laying their charges at a depth of one or two inches and packing the dirt carefully back, it was almost oh-three-hundred in the morning before the four of them met. Not a patrol car or guard had appeared all during the night.

Wearily Troy trudged with the others over the dune to the jeeps. "Funny they didn't have any guards," he mumbled.

"Why should they, Sam?" Moffitt asked and chuckled. "They undoubtedly have had contact with Sidi Abd and the Arab bit won't deceive Dietrich. He thinks now that we've destroyed all his patrol, our mission is accomplished and we're out of his hair."

"Maybe you're right," Troy said sleepily. "Let's get the nets over the jeeps."

"Are we going to stay here, Sarge?" Tully asked.

"Yes," Troy said. "I want to see what happens."

"We'd best find another place, Sam," Moffitt said. "Depending on the time they come in and the position of the sun, it's possible they might pick us up from the air even though we are under nets."

"I guess you're right, Doctor, and I thank you," Troy said, yawning again. "I'm too sleepy to think straight. Where shall we go?"

"Into the deep wadi where we parked last night when we hit the command post," Moffitt said. "We can watch the events from the dune."

"Sorry, gents," Tully drawled, "but aren't you forgetting something?"

"Oh?" Moffitt said, smiling. "What have we forgotten?" 

"Tracks," Tully said. "From the air, they'd lead right into the wadi, and like you said, the nets might not hide us." 

"All right, Tully," Troy said edgily. "I'd like to be within a couple miles. Where do we go?"

"There's just one safe place," Tully said rolling his matchstick. "We dig us a cave by pulling out some of them empty drums they got piled up. Nobody's paying attention to them now. Nobody's going to notice a extra row we make from those we take out for our hole. We'll have a ringside seat for the show and they're going to be too busy with that busted up plane to pay us any attention when we bust out."

9

It was Herr Oberst Funke's snoring that had awakened him, Dietrich was certain, as he opened his eyes in the gray half-light inside the HQ tent. The air was fetid and Dietrich rose swiftly from his cot and pulled back the flap at the entrance. He stepped outside in his undershorts, glancing at his watch and looking to the east where the sky was light but hazed. It was a few minutes past oh-five-hundred and any moment the rising sun would burn away the pallid gauze that draped the horizon. The camp was awake and the smell of coffee drifted from the mess tent. He listened a second or two for the drone of aircraft motors, but there was no sound from the sky. In fact it seemed unnaturally quiet. There seemed to be some pressure in the air and breathing was a little difficult.