The Rat Patrol 4 - Two-Faced Enemy

by David King

  The MP straightened and walked unaided and the other two MPs were walking apart. When the armored car halted at the end of the alley, Wilson got in with the driver and insisted that the men who'd been injured be taken to the aid station for examinations. Then he set out with the driver and the other two MPs for the pass. The barren ground beyond the edge of town was under several inches of water and in spots the road still was covered. The five remaining backup halftracks were parked in a line on the side of the road and appeared to be operational. Halfway to the pass, he encountered another five halftracks from Drake's command.

  "Strange happenings," Drake reported, coming to the side of Wilson's car. "When the water poured down the road out of the pass, it washed several bodies to the bottom. Seven of them. All Jerries. All of them were pretty battered and bruised. Two had drowned but the other five had been shot."

  "They must have been on foot in the pass," Wilson said, puzzled, "or were they trapped in vehicles?"

  "What gets me is how were those five shot and who shot them," Drake said.

  "It's possible some of the men we had at those machine gun positions managed to escape when the emplacements were taken," Wilson said.

  "That isn't all," Drake said. "The halftrack we moved up to replace the one the Rat Patrol hit discovered several enemy mortars that had either been washed or thrown from the top."

  "Well, this is the first piece of good news I've had for quite a spell," Wilson said, smiling. "That makes it certain some of our men got away. We can use a few friends behind the enemy lines. They must have used the rain to cover their movements." Wilson glanced at the halftracks. "Can you move off the road at all?"

  "Haven't tried it and I don't want to," Drake said with a grimace. "I've walked through the muck. It's impossible stuff."

  "Right," Wilson said. "Today the war is called because of rain."

  "The Rat Patrol show itself again?" Drake asked.

  "We found their hiding place in a warehouse," Wilson said. "They tried to hit us as we searched. Fortunately this time no one was seriously injured."

  "I hope you find them before tonight," Drake said. "I don't like the idea of those lunatics running around loose after dark."

  When Wilson had returned to HQ, Peilowski reported Arab mobs had driven all of the MP patrols out of the native quarter.

  "There wasn't a thing the MPs could do short of shooting them down and that'd of only made things worse," Peilowski declared.

  "Troy is back of this, Troy and Moffitt," Wilson bellowed and his face grew livid. "And those two privates, Pettigrew and Hitchcock."

  Christianson stumbled through the doorway, face bruised and bleeding and robe shredded almost from his back.

  "The Arabs are going to riot," he said thickly through lips that were puffed.

  "What happened to you?" Wilson asked in quick concern. "Where are they rioting? Is the Rat Patrol with them?"

  "No, sir," Christianson said. "At least, I didn't see the Rat Patrol. It was those same dozen Arabs in the white robes. They seemed to be the leaders. They picked me out of the mob in the bazaar and started after me. I ran but they hit me with stones and knocked me down. There's a bunch of them gathered now in the bazaar. They're going to come down the avenue and storm HQ. Some of them are armed with Mausers and pistols. Others have knives."

  "Troy must have pointed you out," Wilson said. "Your disguise was perfect. It fooled me completely." He turned to Peilowski. "Call in every available armored car and the five halftracks from the edge of the town. Issue tommy-guns to every man in uniform, including yourself. I've tried to avoid bloodshed, but this time if we're fired on, we'll shoot back."

  12

  Dietrich had rolled over into the gooey muck outside his tent. He half propped himself by twisting his arms to the side. His stockings and undershorts were soaked with mud. The gag was choking him and his face was contorted with rage. The first man who saw him was the sergeant from the officers' mess who had resented preparing coffee and food for the men in the field. The sergeant came out of the mess tent with a cup of coffee to look at the sky. When the man saw Dietrich, he stared for a moment and then his face reddened as he struggled with himself. Coffee sprayed from his mouth and he turned around quickly, but his shoulders were shaking. It was several seconds before he dropped his cup and ran to Dietrich.

  Without saying a word, the sergeant plucked at the knots in the handkerchief that bound Dietrich's gag. Dietrich spit the wad from his mouth and the sergeant pulled a clasp knife from the pocket of his white jacket and sawed at the strands that bound the Herr Hauptmann's hands and his feet. He helped Dietrich stand. Dietrich glared at him and the sergeant turned his head.

  "Get me Gleicher at once," Dietrich growled, mouth still feeling as if it were crammed with wadding. He went back into the tent to wipe the mud from his body and once more get into dry clothes.

  It was that bungler Funke who was responsible for this new outrage, Dietrich fumed to himself. The old fool had permitted the Rat Patrol to surprise him in his own headquarters, and now the Rat Patrol held the divisional commander prisoner. Dietrich was tempted to make no effort to aid Herr Oberst Matthe Funke.

  "What is it?" Gleicher panted as he burst into the tent.

  "The Rat Patrol again," Dietrich said, suddenly weary. "They've captured Colonel Funke and driven off with him in his staff car. Take an armored car and follow them until you can tell where they're headed. Be careful of the road where the plane crashed. They mined it. You won't be able to catch them and you won't be able to fire even if you do get within range because of the colonel. I just want to know the direction they take."

  "The staff car drove to the south," Gleicher said, "but only the colonel and the driver were in it. It was his driver, in uniform."

  "Are you contradicting me?" Dietrich exploded, blood rushing to his face. "There is the colonel's driver." He pointed to the unconscious man on the cot. "It was Pettigrew of the Rat Patrol driving the car. He was wearing the uniform of this man. The others were on the floor of the back seat. Do you comprehend now?"

  "Ja, Herr Hauptmann," Gleicher said, spinning about and running from the tent.

  "Willi, Willi Wunder," Dietrich stood in the entrance of the tent and shouted at the top of his voice.

  Immediately, before Dietrich could turn, the corporal shot around the comer of the officers' mess tent at a dead run splattering mud in every direction. Dietrich backed into the tent. Willi skidded through the entrance and saluted. His eyes were round and frightened again.

  "Take the car and drive to the communications van," Dietrich commanded, getting into a clean shirt and pulling on his breeches. "Have the driver bring it right here, to the command post, where it was before, immediately."

  Willi turned and dashed from the tent without uttering a word. Dietrich walked to the cot where Funke's driver had began to moan. He felt the back of the man's head and neck gently. The driver had a swelling near the base of his head. Dietrich poured a cup full of water and emptied it on the man's neck. He sat up shaking his head, recognized Dietrich and staggered to his feet.

  "Can you move your head?" Dietrich asked, not unkindly. "How does it feel?"

  "It hurts, Herr Hauptmann," the man said, turning his head from side to side, screwing up his face. "I feel somewhat dizzy."

  "Go tell the sergeant at the officers' mess to give you two cups of black coffee," Dietrich said. "I do not think any damage was done, but it may help to sit here quietly a moment and drink some coffee."

  "Thank you, Herr Hauptmann," the man said and walked hesitantly from the tent.

  The entire campaign was a fiasco, Dietrich thought angrily. After the capture of the machine gun positions at the pass, not one item of interest had turned out to be right. Now with Colonel Funke a prisoner, the responsibility was entirely Dietrich's for a badly damaged war machine. He pulled on dry boots and strode to the officers' mess where he told the first officer he saw to take a crew with machine guns and ammunition and occupy
the position that Lungershausen had commanded. The mess sergeant, he noted, gave Funke's driver the coffee without any question.

  "Sit down," Dietrich said when he returned to his tent and found the man standing beside the table. The coffee was steaming in tin cups.

  The man pulled over Funke's stool and Dietrich studied his face. It was a good, straightforward face with intelligent eyes. Dietrich asked him his name.

  "Grosse," the man said, lifting the cup with both hands. They were trembling slightly. "Sergeant Heinz Grosse."

  "Very well, Grosse," Dietrich said. "Do not let this annoying episode upset you. We both walked blindly into the ambush. The colonel should have warned me. How much petrol was in the colonel's car?"

  "It was full," Grosse said.

  "I suspected as much," Dietrich said. "And the mechanical condition of the machine?"

  "Perfect," Grosse answered.

  Dietrich nodded. The most he could hope was that he might manage to intercept the Rat Patrol and the colonel if he had some indication of where they were going.

  Corporal Willi Wunder piled into the tent and stood at attention.

  "Well?" Dietrich asked.

  "The communications van is stuck in the mud at the side of the road and the driver, is unable to move it," Willi reported breathlessly.

  "Dummkopf!" Dietrich shouted. He wasn't sure whether he meant Funke or the driver of the van or both of them.

  "We shall have to go to the van, Willi. Grosse, remain here until Lieutenant Gleicher returns. Have him report to me immediately at the communications van."

  The land on either side of the road was a miserable pudding of mud and Funke's armor was undoubtedly mired as well as the van. One immobile force in the field, Dietrich thought, the other stuck at the side of the road. It was a genuinely inspiring tank unit he commanded! Funke should have had better sense than to run his column off the road.

  Dietrich roused his radio operator from his normal lethargy.

  "I want you to contact the halftracks that accompanied the trucks to Sidi Abd," he said. "There is a Lieutenant Erich Maas with one of the halftracks, I want to talk with him."

  "Ja, Herr Hauptmann Dietrich," the boy said and addressed himself dully to tuning the transmitter.

  Here he was, Dietrich thought irritably, wasting precious time trying to apprehend the Rat Patrol and rescue the colonel when he should be occupied with strategy. He should be devoting himself, dedicating himself, to finding the means to a victory. The minutes dragged by and Dietrich fretted them away with cigarettes that burned harshly in his throat. The radio operator didn't raise Maas, and Gleicher did not return. It was such trivia that must crowd all else from his mind.

  Half an hour had passed at the communications van when Gleicher rumbled up in the car and the radio operator spoke.

  "Herr Hauptmann," he said, "the signal is weak, but I have Lieutenant Maas."

  Dietrich grabbed the microphone and earphones. "Maas, this is Dietrich," he said sternly for no reason except that nothing was functioning as it should. "Where are you?"

  "We are proceeding with the four empty trucks that were not damaged when the Arabs fired the petrol," Maas answered faintly.

  "I asked where you were, not what you were doing," Dietrich yelled into the microphone. "Only four trucks undamaged? And the halftracks?"

  "We are approaching the route from the oasis of El Alghur," Maas said. "We are only a few miles from the route. Both of the halftracks escaped without much destruction."

  "How much destruction?" Dietrich demanded.

  "The gun mounting in one of them was loosened by a drum that was blown into the halftrack," Maas answered.

  "What are you doing in the desert?" Dietrich interrupted. "Good Lord! Didn't you have rain?"

  "No," Maas answered, "not one drop of it fell. What is the weather like where you are?"

  "Oh, never mind," Dietrich said, weakly now. "Hold on a moment. Do not lose contact. I will speak with you again in a minute." He turned to Gleicher. "Well?"

  "They removed two jeeps from among the oil drums and drove south on the road beyond the crashed aircraft," Gleicher said hastily. "We followed for some miles and the two jeeps behind the staff car all were traveling due south on the route."

  "Good," Dietrich said with decisive satisfaction and pushed the headpieces back to his ears from his temples. He spoke again into the microphone. "Maas, a staff car of ours with Colonel Funke a prisoner in it, followed by two jeeps, is driving now south on the route. Leave the trucks at once. They can drive the rest of the way by themselves. There is no interest in empty trucks. Drive the halftracks due west to the route with all haste and get on the route. I want you to intercept those jeeps and the staff car and take them at all costs." He paused only briefly. "Disable the staff car if necessary but try not to harm the colonel."

  The howling Arab mob broke out of the street that led to the bazaar behind a dozen white-robed men waving Mausers. Wilson had drawn his armored cars in two lines, one facing the street to the bazaar and the other at right angle blocking the way on the avenue to HQ. He ordered a burst of machine gun fire directed above the heads of the natives. The Arabs shouted wildly at the fire and tried to turn back toward the bazaar except for the white-robed men who knelt like a squad that had been well trained.

  They fired rapidly at the armored cars. Wilson directed machine gun fire at their feet.

  The throng clogging the street surged against those who were trying to run away and dozens of Arabs spilled into the avenue. Some sprawled on the asphalt, some ran toward the cars firing pistols and rifles, many brandishing knives. A stone clanged against Wilson's white varnished helmet with the gold eagle and he drew his twin pearl-handled pistols. Rocks crashed against windshields and the sides of the cars.

  Wilson signaled for another volley of fire over the heads and at the feet of the crowd. The first wave of the Arabs behind the men in the white robes faltered and he ordered the cars to advance on them firing as they moved. Two of the white-robed Arabs pitched forward and lay where they had fallen. Wilson did not think they had been struck by bullets that had ricocheted and he did not much care that some of his men were taking deliberate aim.

  The cars crept relentlessly forward and the Arabs in the front lines turned in panic and fought against the pressure that came from the street. Another volley from the cars brought down four more natives, two of them wearing white robes. Now the rear ranks of the mob broke, men scattering and fleeing back toward the bazaar. They left their dead or wounded lying on the avenue.

  Wilson ordered a car to pick up the casualties and stationed another at the mouth of the street. He instructed the patrol to fire at any natives who approached with weapons of any kind. The sound of machine gun fire from behind brought Wilson whirling about and he saw the Rat Patrol's jeeps careen from the alley across from HQ that led to the Fat Frenchman's. Although several hundred yards away, Wilson recognized Troy in his bush hat and Moffitt in his beret. They both were wearing goggles again. Tully and Hitch drove them straight toward the cars lined across the avenue and Troy and Moffitt kept the machine guns spitting. Wilson saw one of his men in an armored car crumple over as he was bringing his weapon around on the jeeps.

  The jeeps spun about and Troy and Moffitt turned their machine guns to the rear as the vehicles shot down the avenue in the direction of Latsus Pass. Wilson ordered the cars after them. They drove off spraying water from puddles in splaying sheets to each side. Wilson followed in his car but saw that the jeeps already were at the edge of town as he rode past HQ. The Rat Patrol vanished around the corner of the building on the road that led to the footpath to the bluff.

  "They won't go to the warehouse this time," Wilson shouted to his driver. "They came out of the Fat Frenchman's street. Drive to the motor pool. We'll pick up jeeps and a patrol."

  The sergeant chewed his cigar butt and splashed along the avenue to the motor pool by the piers. Wilson loaded two jeeps with MPs armed with tommy-guns and grenade
s. Followed by an MP patrol on foot, the jeeps stormed into the native quarter. The jeeps parked beyond the entrance to the Fat Frenchman's and Wilson piled over the backs with his men. He hammered at the barred door to the wine cellar. There was no response, not a voice raised to protest, not a sound from the place.

  Wilson glanced angrily at the blank face of the story-and-a-half structure. He ordered four MPs ahead of the jeeps and four back to block off the area and then waved the others away. He pulled the pin from a grenade, tossed it down the steps against the barred door and ran away from the recessed entry.

  He was hugging a wall when the explosion crashed and rang in his ears. He felt the wall shake. When the gray powdered plaster and smoke had cleared from the air, he ran toward the steps with his tommy-gun at his hip. The grenade had shattered the door and some of the masonry wall as well as the steps. He jumped through the gaping hole followed by a dozen MPs and flattened against the wall of the gloomy but day-lighted cellar. The room was dust-filled from a hole the grenade had blasted in the wall. Broken chairs and tables, smashed bottles and debris from the ceiling littered the place. No one was in the room.

  Wilson saw the door at the side. "Where does that lead?" he asked an MP who'd raided the shop before.

  "To the Frenchie's quarters," the MP said, "and steps to the apartment where that girl lives."

  Wilson banged against the door with the broken leg from a table. There was the grating sound of a bar being drawn and the door swung slowly open. A round-bodied man with a large curly-haired head and soft eyes that looked infinitely sad stepped into the cellar and closed the door behind him.

  "What is it you want with me?" he asked and his eyes pleaded with Wilson. "I closed and barred my shop to avoid trouble from the moment I learned the Germans were coming to attack the city. I have not opened it except at the insistence of your police force who threatened to break in. Now you have demolished the front of my building with your bomb and intruded on my private property where you have no business. You have agonized me. What is it you want?"