The Rat Patrol 3 - The Trojan Tank Affair (16 page)

Tully hit his brakes, skidding sidewise into a depression and caroming along the bottom of it. The plane dipped back low, but it flew a straight course a mile and a half away across the middle of the flat land. Tully gunned the jeep over a dune and into a saucer, waiting until the plane started its climb before changing his course and hopping the dune to the west. This time the plane dived straight at them with both its cannons pounding.

"He sees the tracks on the dunes," Troy shouted. "Drop the rake."

Tully spun, changing his course again and turning due east. The rake shouldn't have slowed them much, but Troy could feel its drag. They seemed to crawl into another pocket as the Messerschmidt howled by but its cannons still were firing into the hollow they just had left.

"Hold it here," Troy yelled, snatching the five-gallon can of gasoline from the rack and leaping out

"Watch it, Sarge," Tully cried. "Don't get caught." Troy's feet slipped and skidded in the sand as he tried to run, half tottered over the dune and slid toward the hollow. He tore off his field jacket, saturated it with gasoline, wrapped it around the opened can which he dropped near the middle of the shallow dip. The plane was coming in again as Troy scratched up the hill and threw himself over the top of the dune to the other side. He flattened himself in the sand. The plane flashed by with its cannon smashing at the hollow. Apparently none of the shells hit the gasoline can and Troy ran back swearing, jerking his forty-five from its holster and firing in the dark toward the spot where he thought he'd left his fire bomb. A sheet of flame spouted and burned fiercely. He dug up the hill and was in the jeep before the fighter returned, this time a little higher. Tully and he huddled, fearful that the leaping flames would reveal them, as the plane circled once and then leveled off, heading back for the other side of the smooth desert bed. Tully shot out of the pocket but with the rake dragging, only pulled slowly over the next dune. He hesitated as he swung around a sand hill.

"Can't I lift that thing, Sarge?" he asked. "I'll try to keep off the ridges."

"Can't chance it," Troy said grimly. "When Jerry finds he's been fooled by a gasoline can, he's going to comb the sand for tracks. Head in our general direction and keep in the valleys as much as possible, but leave that rake down."

They rolled over another hill and Tully found a depression that snaked southwest and was partly in shadows. He followed the winding course silently for a mile or two, fishing a new matchstick from his pocket and chewing it.

"You think we've had it, Sarge?" he asked at last without turning his head to Troy.

"We're not giving up, if that's what you mean," Troy snapped. He took a breath and said more calmly, "Sorry, Tully. I've no cause to bark at you. This caper is rough. I don't think Jerry is looking for the Rat Patrol, yet. He wouldn't want to believe that even two jeeps could take two of his patrol cars and a plane out of action. He's picked up Cobble and Damon in an armored car. I don't think they'll talk. The logical German mind is going to reason that the Allies are probing and he's going to worry like hell about how many units we've thrown in here. It's going to put him on guard and it's not going to make it any easier for us. That's what I think."

"Aw, Sarge," Tully said with a chuckle. "We wouldn't like it if it was duck soup."

"Maybe not," Troy said glumly, "but I could do with a break or two." An idea flashed across his mind and he frowned and then laughed. "At least there's one place he won't look for us."

"The rock?" Tully asked doubtfully. "We can't get much done if we stay holed up."

"No, not the rock," Troy said impatiently. "Inside his staging area. If Moffitt and Hitch come back with the information they went after, we'll get into the enemy camp tomorrow night and carry the ball from there."

"Moffitt and Hitch will have the dope," Tully said confidently.

Everything hung on it, Troy thought. He, himself, Troy, leader of the Rat Patrol, had called entirely too much attention to them by his activity tonight. And they had nothing to show for it. They had gained no useful knowledge except that the area was patrolled and guarded, and this they already knew. He should have used discretion, stayed buried under the rock, drinking coffee, listening to the radio, playing cribbage with Tully. This was a critical mission and he was bungling at every turn. Now the caper depended on how much Moffitt and Hitch had learned this night at Agarawa. Tomorrow night they had to get into the staging area.

The long valley through which they had been driving ended in a cul-de-sac and Tully stopped the jeep. For several minutes they sat listening to the faintly humming aircraft. They seemed to be flying high altitude cover again. Troy crawled the slope to the top of a dune to scout for patrol cars. He lay on his stomach examining every square mile of desert in a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree circle through his glasses. He found the black out-thrust of their rock slanting from the desert four or five miles away and studied the land between. There could be patrol cars hidden below the dunes or even against the rock itself, he knew, but he could see nothing. Far behind, three glowing spots marked the two cars and the plane. Nothing burned at the place he'd fired the gasoline.

"Run straight for the rock from the top of the dune," he told Tully when he returned to the jeep. "We'll have to take a chance that whatever Jerry has near here is concentrated back by the wrecks."

Tully let out the clutch and the jeep moved up the hill. Troy could understand Tully's feeling about the rake. It was like sailing with the anchor out. The last five miles seemed like fifty but no one intercepted them and at last Tully pulled onto the path at the side of the escarpment. It was dark and they were protected. Troy blew his breath noisily and looked at his watch.

"Tomorrow already," he said. "It's oh-one hundred hours on Day Three. Wonder if Moffitt and Hitch are back. Think you can find the entrance?"

"Checked it coming out," Tully mumbled, holding a penlight against the odometer. "Exactly 1.07 miles from here."

The jeep moved slowly toward the middle of the rock. When Tully checked again, they'd traveled one mile and he shifted to second gear. Ahead, a shadow slunk away into the rock-filled sand.

"You don't have to check," Troy rasped. "That's your entrance. The damned hyena has been back."

He jumped from the jeep, running ahead so the rake would tear up his prints, and got his fingers under the steel sheet on his second try. Tully circled off to the edge of the path and slanted the nose toward the ramp as Troy held the sheet against the rock. As soon as the jeep was at the bottom, Troy backed into the opening and lowered the camouflaged trapdoor. Tully turned on his lights and drove into the grotto.

"Nobody's home," he called, swinging the jeep around in the large chamber and parking it headed out, far enough back from the mouth of the cave for Hitch to drive by.

"Wonder what's keeping them," Troy said, eyes wandering about the black-walled cavern. Illuminated only by the lights of the jeep, it seemed unreal. "They roll up the sidewalks in towns like Agarawa long before midnight. Moffitt and Hitch should be back."

"Hell, Sarge," Tully drawled. "We didn't even go to town and look how long it took us."

"That's what worries me," Troy said. "All we need now is for Moffitt and Hitch to stir up as much trouble as we did."

He turned on his heel, walking to the big crate they used for a table and lighting the lamp. Tully switched off the headlights and sauntered to the stove.

"Feels good to be home," he said. "Coffee? Something to eat?"

"Yeah," Troy said absently. He shivered. It was cold in the cave. He'd sacrificed his jacket and he was tired. "Light both burners. Let's drag our stools up to the fire."

Tully got the coffee started, looked at Troy a moment, frowning, and went to the crate with the rations. He pulled out a bottle of bourbon and handed it to Troy.

"You're pooped, Sarge," he said. "Better have a jolt." Troy looked at the bottle a moment, started to shake his head. If he had a drink, he'd go to sleep. And why not? he asked himself. Sitting up waiting for Moffitt and Hitch wasn't going to do any good. He took the bottle, unscrewed the cap and gulped. The whiskey burned satisfyingly down his throat and the fire spread across his chest. He returned the bottle to Tully, tilting back on his stool and lighting a cigarette.

"Thanks," he said. "It warms the blood."

"How about some beef stew?" Tully asked. "You can soak it up with biscuits."

"Sure," Troy growled. "Just stop clucking over me like a brood hen."

They wrapped themselves in blankets and Tully turned on the radio while the coffee simmered and their supper warmed. The Algiers station came in clear. Bing Crosby was singing "Three Little Words" and Troy wrinkled his nose. It was a nostalgic, pre-war melody that smelled of lilacs on a balmy spring night and a girl named Margie. Sentimental stuff. He wondered whether they still had band concerts in the park on Thursday nights. Songs like this were subversive. They made some of the younger men and boys go soft inside. "Three little words, eight little letters, that simply mean, I love you," he sang in his mind. He'd enlisted in the Army when Margie got herself engaged to that college boy. He wondered whether she'd married him. This kind of music was for morons, he thought grumpily. A fighting man needed the martial strain of a brass band.

The food, the music, the whiskey were lulling him and Troy's eyes closed. His head drooped. He jerked himself awake, shaking his head and lighting a cigarette.

"Hit the sack," Tully said. "I slept last night while you and Moffitt were standing guard. I'll wait for him and Hitch and wake you up when they come in."

"Thanks," Troy said. "I'll take you up on that."

As he'd done the previous morning, he collapsed on his cot and fell asleep while he was pulling the blankets over himself. Tully shook him awake and he sat up, looking around the cavern. The second jeep had not come in. 

"Are they coming?" he asked, getting to his feet.

"No," Tully said, wrinkling his forehead and taking a breath uncertainly. "I hate to bother you, but it's oh-five hundred and they ain't come back yet. Another hour and it'll be light."

"I shouldn't have let them go in alone," Troy said, feeling hollow inside. He walked to the stove, where a flame still burned under the coffee pot and poured a cup. "The Rat Patrol shouldn't split up. We should have gone along to cover for them if they needed it."

"Moffitt said they stood a better chance alone—," Tully reminded him. "And that if anything did happen, the mission still had half a chance if we stayed behind."

"We've got the chance of a snowball in hell if they don't get back," Troy said, slumping at the big crate and staring at the lamp. There wasn't anything Tully and he could do but wait, damnit, sit inside the rock and wait. Maybe Moffitt and Hitch had been captured by the Arabs or Jerry. Tully and he could not go in after them. They'd have to carry on as best they could without Moffitt and Hitch. Maybe Moffitt and Hitch hadn't been captured. If they'd run onto something or someone important, Tully and he might spill whatever they had brewing. Nothing to do but sit and wait. There'd already been too many mistakes.

"Sarge," Tully began. He stood beside him, hesitating. 

"What is it?" Troy asked shortly.

"Whyn't you let me take the jeep and go out a ways to have a look."

Troy silently studied Tully. He was a good man. He knew that if Moffitt and Hitch had fallen into a trap, it was baited for anyone who tried to rescue them, but he wouldn't hesitate to try.

"Thanks," Troy said. "But it's too late. It would be daylight before you got into Agarawa and you don't speak the language."

"I know, Sarge," Tully said resignedly. He slouched against the wall. "It's just that I feel useless here inside. Maybe if we could just go out and watch for them—" 

"Sure." Troy stood at once. Any kind of activity would help. Neither of them wanted to think of what might have happened. "We'll wear robes."

"You think we need to disguise ourselves?"

"Who's wearing them for disguise?" Troy said. "I used my field jacket to build a fire, remember? I don't want to freeze."

Troy strapped his forty-five outside the loose Arab robes and hung his binoculars around his neck. Tully carried his submachine gun. They closed the entrance to the ramp behind and stepped back against the ramp, wearily searching the desert before they moved. There was no pad of feet to indicate the hyena had returned. The moon had set and the sun had not yet begun to streak the sky with pink. It was dark but not pitch black. Not seeing any moving objects, they walked close to the rock until they reached a place near the end where they could climb on it. Picking their way carefully over the broad but jagged surface, they crawled halfway up and Troy brought his glasses to his eyes. The desert looked peaceful and empty. To the south, no jeep raced toward them from the direction of Agarawa.

Moffitt and Hitch would not voluntarily have remained away so long, Troy was certain. They knew that if they did not return before the sun rose, they would not be able to come back until night and they also knew the mission could not be delayed. They had been captured or killed, Troy admitted to himself. He pounded his fist in the palm of his hand.

"We'll get into the Jerry camp tonight," he said harshly. "We'll load the jeep with demolition charges. Maybe we can't get the campaign plans, but we'll blow up so much armor they'll think a battalion has attacked them."

"Sort of looks like the end of the Rat Patrol," Tully said quietly.

The red rim of the sun poked over the horizon and the morning sky was chalky gray and streaked with pink. The sudden appearance of dawn startled Troy. He looked down. It was at least fifty feet to the ground.

"We've stayed too long," he said. "Lie on your back and slide down to where you can jump. We don't want anyone seeing us now. There's a big job to be done tonight."

Tully gave himself a little shove and scudded away. Troy lifted his glasses for one last look. In the distance to the south, from the direction of Agarawa, a thin cloud, more haze than dust, hung above the desert. His heart jumped and he kept the glasses on the wispy banner, waiting for the rising sun to reveal a jeep speeding ahead of the telltale trail. At last he could make out what was kicking up the tenuous cloud on the floor of the desert. It was a camel caravan, a train of the burdened beasts in double file. Otherwise, the desert was empty.