The Rat Patrol 6 - Desert Masqueraade

by David King

  Dietrich gasped. That could mean only that Wilson somehow or other had obtained one of the British twenty-five-pound howitzers, the 87.6 mm. artillery piece that could belt out four rounds a minute of high explosive or armor piercing ammunition. Dietrich felt sick. The gun was effective at a range of twelve thousand five hundred yards.

  The Rat Patrol and the jeeps were camouflage, he thought. The bomber today, the strange personnel, the calm in the camp—it could mean only that Wilson was preparing to sit back out of range, shell the hill and ridge from bottom to top with the howitzer and assault the position with his armor when he was satisfied the way was clear. Dietrich chewed his lower lip.

  "You are not pleased we brought you this information?" el Burabub asked.

  "No, I am not pleased!" Dietrich erupted, immediately apologizing. "It is the information that displeases me. I am very grateful to you, my friend, for bringing it to me."

  Dietrich walked slowly to the locker at the foot of his cot. He unlocked it, lifted a heavy strongbox from the locker, opened it and reached in for two handsful of silver florins. He dumped them in el Burabub's lap.

  "It is a great deal of money," he said, "but I am willing to pay for something of value. You will return when you have something else of interest."

  "We shall return," el Burabub said gravely. He stood and with Haffi, joined the third Arab, who was then standing at the entrance. The corporal brought up the horses and the Arabs rode away to the west. Once, just before they reached the perimeter, Dietrich would have sworn he heard them laughing, but of course, he was wrong. Arabs never laughed.

  6

  You couldn't say it was a typical Rat Patrol maneuver, Troy thought with fleeting grim humor as he tumbled with his violin case from one side of the slewing Hispano-Suiza. Almost with the impact of the rifle slug on the windshield, Tully had switched off the searchlight, jerked the car off the road and spun, it about. Moffitt went out the other side of the back seat as Hitch dived from the front. Tully raced back toward Bir el Alam, now switching on his headlights. A few hundred yards up the trace, the car seemed to falter.

  Moffitt and Hitch crouched some ten yards apart on one side of the track and just above them on the other side, Troy had his tommy-gun off safety. He was squatting beside a clump of spiney cactus. In a moment he heard the pounding thud of galloping hooves and five robed figures rode into shadowy view in the transparent night. Ahead of the other four, a single horseman guided his mount with his knees as he raised a rifle to his shoulder. Behind, the other four men rode in pairs.

  Troy leaped to his feet as the first pair rushed by in a sandy cloud of dust. He fired three bursts point-blank at the second pair of horsemen. Both tumbled from their rearing horses as Troy heard the rattle of several machine gun bursts from the other side of the road. A horse ran wildly back along the trace. A body was dragging from a stirrup and the animal was frenzied. It shook its head violently, rearing and pawing. Troy lifted his gun to shoot it, shook his head. He did not think the animal was wounded and it would free itself from its burden soon. The animal kicked with its hind legs and jerked off the road. The body dropped to the sand and rolled. The horse pranced into the desert. Two other horses already had trotted away.

  Troy walked to the first figure lying on the track, jerked back the burnoose, flicked his lighter and knelt holding the flame to the face. The mouth and eyes of a very dead Arab were open. The other man he'd killed also was an Arab. He brushed the sand from his recently acquired suit, went back to the cactus and picked up his violin case. The car had turned around and the glare of its headlights plucked Moffitt and Hitch from the night. As Troy had done, they were bending over their victims inspecting their faces.

  Troy stopped in shock. For a moment there was something terribly unreal about the scene. Ahead of him were two sinister strangers, tommy-guns dangling, dressed in garish civilian clothing, checking the men they'd just murdered. The Arabs had tried to ambush them and they'd turned the trick, but somehow killing seemed different than when you were in uniform. The sickening moment passed and Troy walked on.

  "Arabs?" he asked.

  "Yeah," Hitch said, standing. He looked about, stepped off the road and recovered his violin case.

  "What do you make of it, Sam?" Moffitt asked quietly, replacing his tommy-gun in the case.

  The Hispano-Suiza rolled to a stop a few yards away and Tully jumped out, leaving the motor quietly idling.

  "A neat maneuver, Sol," he said to Tully, but he was thinking about Moffitt's question. The attempted ambush made him more uneasy than being jumped by the 109s. The two attempts seemed too much for coincidence, but how could anyone have known they'd be driving the old touring car this way just after nightfall? Unless, he thought savagely, Wilson had chattered like a gossipy old biddy when he'd sent the radio message.

  "This wagon ain't no jeep, Sam," Tully drawled, "but it's got spunk."

  Troy turned to Moffitt. "There's nothing to make of it, Jack," he said. "The Arabs saw a civilian car by itself away from town and thought they had easy pickings."

  "Away from town!" Moffitt exclaimed. "Why, we are within sound of the base."

  "That's right, Jack," Troy said quickly. "We'd better carry the mail."

  He ran ahead to remove the bodies from the trace while Moffitt and Hitch bent to their tasks. He had just dragged his second victim into the desert when the car moved up. He stepped onto the running board and swung in beside Moffitt.

  "Douse the lamps, Sol," he said from the corner of his mouth, "And open her up. We got to take it on the lam. The fuzz is on our tail."

  "What!" Moffitt exclaimed as the headlights went out and the car shot ahead.

  "Back there, Jack," Troy said, turning and looking over the tonneau with him. Racing out from the base were two sets of headlights. "You were right. They heard the firing." Troy and Moffitt settled back as Tully guided the car around a curve, up and over a hill and the lights of Bir el Alam and the MPs, or whoever they were, disappeared.

  "Is that the true cant of the criminal?" Moffitt asked curiously.

  "If you mean, is that the lingo of the mobster?" Troy said with a quick smile, "I don't know. It's the way they talk on radio and in the movies. Ask Sol. He used to run 'shine in the Kentucky ridge country."

  "Sam there, he sho nuff rat," Tully half turned and said. "All us gangstahs tawk like thet."

  Hitch squirmed about. "You think they'll come after us, Sam? When they find the bodies?"

  "No," Troy said shortly. "Why should they complicate their fives over a bunch of Arabs? They'll bury them and forget it."

  The big old car had been built for cobblestone pavements and potholed country roads. It did not object to the desert trace. The huge wheels dug into the sand and the Hispano-Suiza rushed through the bluish night with a smooth surge of power. With its high clearance, it would be a better vehicle than the jeeps when they came to the rocky hill country.

  Troy considered the route they were taking. For about a hundred miles, they would follow the old trace through the desert. In about two hours they would run out of desert, turning due west off the trail and entering a rough barren land of stony ridges at the western edge of the peninsula. There were salt marshes, three of them, great impenetrable areas, glittering white sloughs that were worse than quicksand. They would snake between on a strip of jagged high land well south of Dietrich's position. Turning northwest beyond the marshes, they should be able to pick up the coastal highway this side of Surt and by the time a Jerry patrol halted them, appear to be approaching from the direction of Tunis far to the northwest. Although it was a trip of not much more than three hundred miles, Troy estimated it would take up to twenty hours, sixteen if they were lucky, twenty-four if they ran into difficulties. For the first hundred miles on the trace, they should be able to maintain a speed of fifty miles per hour. Once they entered the trackless, menacing highland, they would be pressed to make five or ten miles an hour. One third of their journey would be through this inhos
pitable, empty land between the salt marshes. The final leg of the trip should be reasonably fast. It would be better, Troy thought, if they were presented to Dietrich at dusk the next afternoon when the fading light would contribute to their disguises.

  Moffitt had been fumbling with a flap on the side of the door. He lifted it and reached into the pocket. "I wondered whether they hadn't provided us with a few pineapples," he said with a chuckle. He brought out a Jerry stick grenade and showed it to Troy.

  "That's a potato masher, not a pineapple," Troy observed. He turned to the pocket in his door. "How many are there?"

  He found the pocket on his side was stuffed with the German grenades and started to count them.

  "A dozen," Moffitt said.

  "Another dozen here," Troy said. He was pleased at their find. A grenade was a somewhat more positive weapon of both offense and defense than a tommy-gun. "I wonder why Norman didn't mention them."

  "I imagine they assumed we'd have intelligence enough to realize that since we are the Enna brothers, we are equipped appropriately," Moffitt said with a touch of acerbity in his voice.

  "Easy, Jack," Troy said softly. "G2 doesn't assume. Norman is human. He forgot."

  "I expect you're right, old boy," Moffitt said quickly. "But at least he didn't forget to provide them. He just forgot to tell us."

  "Hey, Sam," Tully flung over his shoulder. "I'm hungry. We haven't eaten since morning and we sure as shooting got no rations. Did those G2 guys pack us a picnic lunch or did they slip up?"

  Troy had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, part hunger, part apprehension. Food hadn't been mentioned and he was afraid this was plain oversight. The idea of another twenty-four hours without eating did not appeal to him. They had water and they could manage, but there would be unnecessary discomfort. "Is there a flashlight in the front seat?" he asked.

  "A big one," Hitch said, handing back a six-celled flashlight with a large head.

  Troy swept its bright beam over the bags and cans of water and gas on the floor of the back seat. There was no picnic hamper, no package of sandwiches, no cartons of C rations. G2 had forgotten to provide food and it angered Troy.

  "We'll go through a village," he said irritably. "If we can't buy some eggs, we'll run over a chicken."

  "Nuts," Hitch said. "They give us booze but no food. I don't even have any gum."

  "I don't believe Norman would be guilty of such a lapse," Moffitt objected. "Perhaps he did forget to tell us about the grenades but they were here. Every detail has been attended. Norman was extremely careful to keep everything in keeping with the character of the Enna brothers. Traveling about a savage land, you would expect them to be accompanied by small luxuries, potted eel, artichoke hearts, champagne."

  "Cut it out," Hitch complained.

  "You might expect it, but where is it?" Troy snapped. The car came to a gentle stop and Tully turned. Even in the muted light of the transparent night, it startled Troy to have a fierce, mustached stranger looking at him from Tully's head. "What's wrong, Sol?"

  "It don't seem right to me either," he said. "This car's got a trunk behind. There's usually things in trunks."

  "Like tools," Troy said gloomily.

  Nonetheless, when Tully, Hitch and Moffitt had stepped from the car, he stood hopefully, first scanning the surrounding country. Tully had parked on the top of a dune. The night sky was light blue and the desert floor all about was ultramarine with black patches that marked the pockets. About half a mile ahead on either side of the trace, the ragged silhouettes of a handful of palms marked an uncharted oasis. Troy examined it carefully and studied all the shadowed hollows for movement. The Enna brothers seemed alone under the vast vault of the evening sky. He turned, hanging over the tonneau and looking down. Tully had unfastened the metal straps that secured the lid of a large trunk mounted on a rack at the rear of the car. He was standing with both hands on the lid. Hitch was scowling, the creases between his eyes looking like grease marks on his face. Moffitt's teeth showed whitely in an amused smile.

  "I'm afraid to open it, Sam," Tully said, looking up at Troy.

  "Go on, Sol," Troy urged. "Be brave."

  "If there ain't food in there, my stomach won't live with me no more," Tully groaned. "It's been complaining it ain't being treated right ever since we hit those Ay-rabs."

  "Come on, Sol, open," Troy said encouragingly. He chuckled softly.

  "Oh," Tully moaned. "There goes my belly again, just a-growling awful."

  Troy grinned as Hitch pushed Tully out of the way and threw back the lid. Troy beamed the flashlight into the trunk.

  "Will you give a look at that!" Hitch gasped and Tully stuck his head and both hands into the trunk. He pulled away, straightening and triumphantly holding aloft a cloth-wrapped Westphalian Kugel ham that must have weighed twenty pounds.

  Troy played his light forth and back over the assortment of cheeses and sausages, tins and jars of gourmet food. A wicker hamper stood at either side of the trunk. "See what's in the hampers," he said.

  One contained dishes, cutlery, and cooking utensils. The other was filled with bottles of Asti Gancia Spumate wine and Liquore Galliano packed in straw.

  "I was rather certain Norman would do nothing to diminish the image of die Enna brothers," Moffitt said; a trifle smugly, Troy thought.

  Tully was hugging the German ham and chanting: "Between the lips and over the gums, look out stomach, here ah comes."

  "Ricottari!" Troy said in a severely disapproving voice, scarcely suppressing a chuckle. "Watch your language, Sol. That's no way for a capo to talk."

  "Hey, that's kosher, boss," Tully said, surprised.

  "Put back the ham, shut the trunk," Troy said. "There's a small oasis just down the trace. Get the car in the trees and we'll take a break for dinner."

  Tully nosed the car well off the trace into the palms on the south side of the track. There were perhaps a dozen trees here growing about a brackish water hole and they afforded good cover. Troy had once more observed the desert all about them and was satisfied they were alone, but when Moffitt and he stepped from the car on opposite sides, each left his violin case behind and carried a bare tommy-gun.

  Tully already had the lid of the trunk up and his hands were inside. "Look, Sam," he said and the front of the trunk dropped down to make a table.

  Troy beamed the flashlight on the store of provisions as Moffitt and Hitch came around to the back of the car. No one spoke for a moment as the light dazzled on three hams, canned Norwegian herring sprats, anchovies and sardellen, Beluga caviar, Carciofini, half a dozen sticks of sausages, cans of smoked sturgeon, crab meat, lobster, shrimp, pate de foie gras, smoked oysters, pickled lambs tongue, pickled walnuts, pickled nasturtium pods, hearts of palm, pearl onions, olives Italiene, and cheeses—Roquefort, Lieder-kranz, Camembert, Edam, Swiss. There was Major Grey's chutney and Bercy sauce; French dressing and Russian dressing; tins of Melba toast, crackers and cookies; a tin of Danish butter; a five-pound can of coffee; a dozen cans of condensed milk; fresh oranges and limes, and a string of garlic.

  "I wonder who gave up his ration points," Hitch said at last.

  "Don't anyone ever say anything against G2 again," Troy said fiercely.

  "Look what I found," Tully said. He'd been rummaging in the hamper with the dishes and brought out a Sterno stove. "Anyone for coffee? There's a pot in here."

  "Your G2 isn't infallible," Moffitt said with mock bitterness. "They forgot the tea."

  "These are props for Dietrich's benefit," Troy said, grinning with the others. "But it wouldn't look right if we hadn't touched the stuff. Brew up a pot, Sol, open some cans and slice the ham. I'll go back on the dune and stand watch until the buffet is spread."

  He started to move away. Moffitt gripped his arm tightly. "I wouldn't go just yet, Sam," Moffitt whispered. "We're going to have company." He nodded his head toward the dune.

  Creeping down the trace without lights was a slant-nosed Jerry Volkswagen patrol
car. Troy could see the outlines of four Jerries in the car and three of them were hanging over the sides with their machine guns ready.

  7

  Tully went wild. The thought of a battle raging about their cupboard must have been what set him off. The coffee pot clattered on the table formed by the side of the trunk. He growled like a maddened animal, low in his throat, and plunged for the back door of the car. With two Jerry stick grenades in his hands, he spurted from the oasis into the desert, circling wide to intercept the Volkswagen. He looked like a Balkan anarchist with his handlebar mustache, curly black hair and civilian clothing.

  Troy flipped his tommy-gun off safety and started after him. Abruptly he changed course and ran toward the patrol car in a crouch along the side of the trace to cover Tully with diversionary fire if necessary. He didn't think the Jerries suspected they were in the oasis and swore under his breath at Tully. If he'd used his head and stayed put, they could have ambushed the patrol and caught the Volkswagen in cross fire. The Jerries either had seen the car from a distance or found the tracks on the trace and followed them. The enemy patrol was deep in Allied territory. There was only one explanation. They were here on Dietrich's orders to get the Rat Patrol if the Arabs failed. One, the 109s; two, the Arabs; three, this patrol. No matter how he tried, he couldn't read coincidence into these facts that spoke with guns. Troy dropped to his hands and knees and crept toward the slowly approaching Volkswagen. The Jerries were wary, the men in the back seat peering intently at each side of the track, and the man beside the driver leaning out around the windscreen to inspect the way ahead.

  The car was about three hundred yards away when it stopped abruptly and the man beside the driver lifted his light machine gun as he twisted to the side. Behind him, the man on his side had his weapon to his shoulder. They had seen Tully. Troy, on the opposite side of the trace, jumped up, ripped off three fast bursts and fell to the ground. In the moment the startled Jerries hesitated, Tully threw a grenade. It was short by a good fifteen yards, but the flash and concussion of the explosion blinded the Jerries and threw their aim off. Three of them fired but the bursts were wild. Troy rose on one knee, fired two more bursts and flattened on the sand. A moment later the Volkswagen blew apart in a flaming blast that threw firelight all the way to the oasis and hurled chunks of twisted metal everywhere. Troy hugged the desert floor until the ammunition in the car stopped popping, then pushed to his feet and brushed the sand from his suit. Norman needn't have worried about its looking new, Troy thought as he walked cautiously toward the burning wreck. Not that it made any difference now. They weren't going anywhere except back to Bir el Alam.