by David King
1
The noonday sun, a blazing ball, seemed to be motionless, suspended in a sky of burned-out blue above the North African port of Sidi Beda on the Libyan coast. The flat-roofed, white-walled buildings that crouched shoulder to shoulder along the twisting alleys of the native quarter, and the taller structures that stood erect and separate from one another on the broad, paved avenue that bordered the blue-gray beach of mussel shells, all seemed like mausoleums. The bayfront was new and modern, a military installation that belonged to the Allied Forces who were waging war with Rommel's Afrika Korps. The rest of the town was very old and belonged to the Arabs and the French. On the piers that jutted into the brilliant turquoise of the Mediterranean, the usually clanking cranes and winches had fallen silent and the sizzling steel decks of the cargo ships were deserted. Even the two destroyers appeared to be empty. The temperatures boiled at a hundred and nine degrees and military personnel had followed the native population into dark recesses behind thick mud and wattle walls.
The grilled doors of a two-story, creamy-faced waterfront building that housed Allied Forces headquarters flew open and two GIs burst from the entrance. They ran across the asphalted boulevard and burst into one of the narrow alleyways that squeezed between the baking, silent buildings. Both wore U. S. Army sun-tans, worn thin by the desert sand and sun, but there the similarity ended. One was tall and lanky with a high-cheeked, square-jawed, stoic face. He bore a steel helmet on his head and under this pot the sweat was stewing and spilling out. The other, sturdily put together, looked solemn and scholarly in steel-rimmed glasses, yet there were, at the comers of his eyes, telltale crinkles that had been etched long before he squinted at the glinting desert. He wore the red-topped cap of a French Foreign Legionnaire with the black bill pushed up from his forehead. The two men were Privates Tully Pettigrew and Mark Hitchcock, half of the redoubtable commando team known as the Rat Patrol, and their mission was urgent.
"Find Sergeant Troy and bring him in!" Colonel Dan Wilson had shouted a moment before in cold fury. Colonel Wilson was commanding officer of the armored unit to which the Rat Patrol was attached. He was lean and hard and had disciplined his mind, as he did his body, with military precision, but this morning both had blown apart at the seams he had so carefully welded. His voice had trembled and his tight, burned face had paled. "At a time like this, being absent from his post is tantamount to desertion!"
Sergeant Jack Moffitt, detached from the British Army's Scots Greys for special desert duty with the Rat Patrol, had swung about a most un-English-like to face Colonel Wilson squarely. Usually the suggestion of an amused smile lurked in his quick eyes, but this morning they had been frozen and fixed on the colonel like icicles.
"Sergeant Troy has free time today, sir," Moffitt said frigidly. "He is no more to blame for being absent than you yourself. It was your own suggestion that while the armored unit was stationed on guard duty at this supply port the Rat Patrol rotate, each taking a day in turn for rest and relaxation."
"There is no such thing as a day off for a soldier in a combat zone!" Colonel Wilson raged and his hands began to shake. "He must be available for duty twenty-four hours a day!"
"You placed no restrictions on any of us," Moffitt said remotely. "We were not confined to area nor even to the town. If it had been my free time today, I expect I should have been somewhere in the desert, digging about for shards or bones."
"One thing you can be certain about, Dr. Moffitt," Colonel Wilson said bitingly, "Sergeant Troy is not digging for shards and if there are any bones involved, they are suitably covered with feminine flesh. He should have told one of you where he was bound, but even if he didn't, the number of places offering female enticement in Sidi Beda must be limited. At least one of you must be normal enough to be aware of them. I want Sergeant Troy found and brought in immediately! At once! Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir," Moffitt said as Hitch, Tully and he saluted and wheeled in unison.
"Not you, Sergeant Moffitt," Colonel Wilson snapped. "I want to have a talk with you. If Sergeant Troy is not brought in within thirty minutes, you'll take charge of the Rat Patrol and I'll assign a new man to the team to replace Troy."
"Yes, sir," Moffitt said with a sarcastic deference that seemed lost on Wilson, who sent Tully and Hitch packing.
Now they glanced over their shoulders as they trotted down the hot dirt-floored alley, and discovering that they were out of view from HQ, dropped their pace to a stroll.
"Troy ain't going to like this no better than a bee likes a bear stealing honey," Tully panted. "He won't gripe about the duty, but Wilson's attitude is going to light his fuse."
"You sure you know where to find him?" Hitch asked. "We don't have time to guess wrong."
"With free time at high noon on a day that's blistering the paint on the jeeps, there's just one place he could be," Tully panted. His throat was parched. "It's behind those thick walls in that half-cellar wine shop of the Fat Frenchman."
"With the little Arab belly dancer," Hitch said, smiling faintly.
"You better not let Troy hear you call her that," Tully warned quickly. "He claims she's half French and that her father was a Ay-rab chief. And she ain't no belly dancer. Before the Jerries came, she was a private teacher for the daughters of the rich Frenchman who owned the ships."
"Well, why did she stay behind?" Hitch demanded. "She could have left like the other Frenchies. I don't trust a French girl who stayed behind after the Jerries occupied the port any more than I do an Arab. She's trouble, I tell you. big trouble and we've already got as much of that as we can handle."
Tully shook his head and looked up at the five-hundred-foot escarpment that towered at the back of town. At the top of the bluff, which marked the beginning of a plateau stretching for thirty miles through rock and sand into the desert, he knew Sherman tanks were dug in as the port's main fortification. The tanks, with the minefields which had been sown in front of them, formed a ring of steel around Sidi Beda, and Tully knew Wilson had orders to hold the port at all costs. It had been a shambles when the Allied Forces had taken it from Jerry after a long and bloody battle. Now the port facilities had been rebuilt and supplies flowed through Sidi Beda.
Tully squinted, still studying the escarpment that formed the battlements of Sidi Beda. The tank positions behind the minefields were permanent. Only one route led into the town from the desert, a track through rock and clay from the southeast down Latsus Pass, eight miles away. It was the Allies' main route and was well patrolled. Wilson had a highly mobile striking force of halftracks and armored cars poised within the town, ready to race for the pass to entrap any attacking force from the route or to flank the enemy if he launched a frontal action on the escarpment. Wilson's defensive strategy appeared to make the port impregnable from the armored units that the Jerry captain, Hauptmann Hans Dietrich, was known to have in his command at Sidi Abd, more than a hundred miles away.
"It's hard to believe we could be in trouble," Tully said slowly.
"That's what's got Wilson bugged," Hitch said and pointed ahead to an arched opening in an unmarked, blank white wall. Steps descended within the opening. "Isn't that the Frenchie's place?"
"It's got to be," Tully said. "He's got the only cellar I know of in Sidi Beda. I sure hope Troy comes peaceably. It's too hot to argue."
"We got our orders," Hitch muttered. "I don't like the idea of tangling with him, but we'll drag him back between us if we have to."
Tully shook his head impatiently and plunged down the three stone steps with Hitch at his heels. For a few moments they stood just within the semi-basement, blinded from the glaring white walls outside. The stone-floored room was mustily c
ool and Tully could smell the sour odor of wine and liquor, but he was unable to see even the shapes of the tables he knew were scattered haphazardly between the entrance and the small service bar at the back. He heard someone moving and heavy footsteps approached.
"You appear flushed and agitated, gentlemen, and in need of some cool refreshment," a voice said in a nasal French accent. "What will be your pleasure?"
Now Tully could dimly make out the Fat Frenchman waddling toward him on short legs. He was a dumpy man with a ponderous, curly-haired head and pendulous jowls.
"Troy!" Tully called sharply, looking beyond the keeper of the wine shop at the tables that were beginning to take shape. "Troy!"
"Troy!" Hitch echoed. "Where are you?"
Uneasily Tully glanced from table to table. All seemed to be unoccupied.
"N'est pas ici," the Fat Frenchman said, shrugging and lifting both palms above his enormous stomach. "As you see, we are alone. The shop, alas, is deserted."
Sergeant Sam Troy yawned, rolled from his stomach to his back and sat up. He was wearing khaki swimming trunks, and his usually tight-lipped, set face was relaxed. He had been lying beneath a broad-leafed palm in the courtyard garden behind the Frenchman's wine shop. It was a walled and private place reached only by outside stairs from the apartment above the shop. Beside him, still lying on her stomach, was a girl in a brief two-piece white bathing suit.
She shook her ebon hair back over her shoulders and sat up, turning to him and smiling. Her name was Rhee, which Moffitt had told him translated into Rhea, but Troy preferred to call her Ray.
"Ray," he said quietly, looking for a moment into the depths of her eyes, feeling as he always did that he was plunging into them. He sat back, smiling. "It's too hot even to kiss you. Do you think we can go to the beach for a swim now?"
"They say it is only mad dogs and Englishmen who go out in the noonday sun," she said, laughing. "You are not English and I do not think you are a mad dog. I think today we go and sit with Laurentz in the coolness of the wine shop until the sun sinks. Then, if you wish, we go for the swim and afterward I prepare a salad of fresh fish for you in my apartment. Yes?"
Troy glanced up the open steps that led to the half-story-high balcony and the row of tall windows across the back of the building. In the two weeks he had known Ray, he had spent many evenings with her in the cool, high-ceilinged apartment with its tiled floors. Like the courtyard garden, it was a private place, reached only by a hall and stairs from the wine shop through a heavy door that was always locked. Laurentz, the Fat Frenchman, had a small bedroom off the hall at ground level. The apartment was strictly Ray's. It was a strange relationship between Ray and Laurentz. At first Troy had suspected something between them, but he was happy he had never questioned her. When he had come to know the two of them better, he had sensed in Laurentz an almost paternal attitude toward Ray.
It was curious, he thought, that in this unlikely place he should have found a girl who suited him so well. It was also curious that she would have tolerated him at all. He had wandered into the Frenchman's wine shop alone on one of his first nights at Sidi Beda and stepped into a brawling fight between Frenchies and GIs. A lean, dark man, a Frenchie who probably was a dock worker, had been mean drunk and had pulled a knife on a GI. Troy simply had broken the Frenchie's wrist and the small shop had erupted. The GIs and Frenchies were at each other with chairs, bottles and knives when the MPs' whistles sounded. Unaccountably Troy found himself being hustled by Laurentz up the stairs to Ray's apartment. When Ray learned that he'd started the fight by breaking the dark Frenchman's wrist, she made him welcome.
Suddenly Troy stood up, listening intently.
"What is it?" she asked.
"I thought I heard my name called," he said, not certain. He strained. Again the call came, barely audible but unmistakable. "Someone is calling for me."
"No one will find you, here or in the apartment," she said, clinging to him.
"They wouldn't call unless they needed me," he said, starting for the steps at a run.
"But this day is your own," she cried.
"I've got to see what they want," he called, starting up the steps without looking back. He heard Ray's bare feet racing after him.
Without turning to look, he ran into the living room, sweeping his boots and clothing from the low, damask divan as he crossed the room.
"Don't bother to come back," she flung at him as he started down the steps.
When he reached the downstairs hall, he heard her feet pattering after him. As he pushed the door and stumbled into the dark, cool cellar, he saw two GIs in familiar headgear starting up the front entrance steps. He held his breath uncertainly for a moment as he felt Ray standing tensely behind him, then he called, "Tully! Hitch!"
They swung about and he walked to meet them, already getting his arms into his shirt. Ray followed. She was breathing fast. Tully and Hitch stopped a few feet from him, stood looking from him back to Ray for a few moments. Troy had not seen Laurentz, but he could feel him hovering somewhere in the background.
"Troy, you've got to come with us to HQ right away," Hitch said urgently. He pressed his lips together and frowned, looking back again to Ray. "The colonel wants you and is raising hell."
"He knows this is my day off," Troy said irritably, but he started pulling on his pants. "What's up?"
"We've got to go out," Tully answered. "On a patrol."
"Shut up," Hitch hissed at Tully, eyes darting back in Ray's direction.
"Knock that off, Hitch," Troy snapped and turned back to Tully. "Why do we have to go out on a patrol? Right now? On a day like this? When it gets this hot, nothing moves." He sat on the edge of a table and started pulling on his boots. "Your radiator will boil before you've gone ten miles and it won't cool off when you stop. What in hell is going on?"
"We'll tell you on the way to HQ," Hitch mumbled, eyes moving meaningfully in Ray's direction.
"Hitch," Troy shouted, angry now. "I told you to cut out that stuff. I'm not budging until I know what's so urgent."
"It's the Jerries," Tully blurted. "There's a passel of them coming at Sidi Beda, a couple armored divisions maybe, and they're not very far away. The colonel wants the Rat Patrol out behind them before they box us in."
Colonel Dan Wilson fumed. He was standing in the middle of his map-hung office directly under the creaking, four-bladed wooden ceiling fan, but his khakis were soaked. He could feel the perspiration bursting from the roots of his close-cropped hair. His eyes kept blurring with moisture from his eyelids and his lungs withered at each breath he took. He was waiting. For an hour and a half, he'd been waiting. The Jerries were advancing, but at Sidi Beda, nothing moved. He'd ordered out his mobile unit of halftracks and armored cars at eleven-hundred hours, but they still hadn't arrived. He'd ordered Privates Pettigrew and Hitchcock to bring in Sergeant Troy, but they had not returned—with or without him. He'd ordered Sergeant Moffitt to personally supervise the outfitting of the Rat Patrol's jeeps for their crucial mission and to see that the vehicles were delivered to HQ without delay, but like the others, Moffitt was dawdling. It was too hot to smoke, it was too hot to pace the floor, so Colonel Wilson just stood under his big ceiling fan and suffered.
He heard the sound of gasoline engines and started for his window that overlooked the military boulevard. There were two motors, jeep motors, he thought, but they didn't sound right. They seemed to be clacking and sputtering. When he finally reached the window, the two Rat Patrol jeeps, windshields flat down on the hoods, long snouts of fifty-caliber Browning machine guns fixed forward, were parked and the motors shut off. Sergeant Moffitt in his dark beret, goggles dangling loosely about his neck, seemingly with all the time in the world, waved lackadaisically to someone concealed within one of the native alleys, said something to a man in fatigues who'd driven the second jeep, then sauntered toward the entrance to HQ. The enlisted man in fatigues strolled away as if the war would keep. Sergeant Troy, flanked by Privates Pe
ttigrew and Hitchcock, walked casually onto the avenue from the native quarter and ambled over to HQ. Colonel Wilson returned to his position under the fan and stood straddle-legged, arms behind his back, waiting for the Rat Patrol. His rage was monumental.
They straggled in, first Moffitt, then the others, and stood limp and slumping, looking at him without a spark of interest in their faces.
"Attention!" Wilson barked. When the four were aligned in a semblance of military order, he stared furiously at Sergeant Sam Troy. The man returned the look indifferently. Wilson addressed his remarks directly to Troy. "Sergeant, time is critical so I shall not waste it now. We shall deal with your dereliction upon your return from this assignment. If you exhibit any of the impaired judgment on this mission that you have already displayed this morning I have ordered Sergeant Moffitt to take command of the patrol and place you in restraint."
Sergeant Troy glared resentfully but remained tight-lipped.
"Briefly the situation is this," Wilson went on, still seething but keeping his voice even. "Somehow under cover of darkness the enemy had managed to approach our position with an unexpectedly large armored force. It is, in fact, a force of overwhelmingly superior strength. An observation plane picked up the enemy about thirty miles southeast from Sidi Beda at ten-hundred hours. His radio went out or was jammed, so it was eleven-hundred hours before his report managed to creep into HQ." He paused to get an accusing tone into his voice. "Since that time, we have been looking for you, Sergeant Troy."
Troy was breathing heavily now and his jaw was jutting stubbornly, but he remained silent.
"It appears the enemy has two forces which are approaching a rendezvous or command position about fifteen miles south and east on the track," Wilson said tightly. "Each force consists of approximately fifty units—tanks, halftracks and armored cars. That is an estimate only, because our observation plane was driven from close surveillance by Jerry's eighty-eights and we know Dietrich employs dust-makers to conceal the real strength of his columns. One thing is obvious. The armored unit he had at Sidi Abd has been reinforced by a strong strike force. We have twenty-five Sherman tanks dug in behind minefields above the town and our mobile force of twenty-five units with which to oppose the enemy. The enemy's strategy appears to be a two-pronged attack, one force directed at the port through Latsus Pass, the other an encircling movement aimed at our tank positions on the escarpment. Although we are well fortified both at the pass and above the town, against the numerical superiority of the enemy our situation is difficult. Have I made myself clear on this point?"