by David King
The oaths from the net were muffled but explicit. The men roared with laughter and slapped their legs.
Doeppler came out of shock and shuddered. He turned his back and hit the bottle hard. Grosse walked up.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Dietrich. In a net."
"Thank God, he's safe!" Grosse said fervently.
"We're not," Doeppler said, taking Grosse by the arm. "Come quickly. Let's drive back to camp."
Grosse jerked away. "Why don't they release him? What are they doing to him?"
The laughter was becoming boisterous. Doeppler took a deep breath and another pull at the bottle. He turned. The men were rolling the man bundled in the net one from the other. Each volley of curses from deep inside only made them laugh harder.
"Stop!" Doeppler shouted. "What are you doing? There is a man in the net. Unfasten it and let him out."
"That won't get you off, Doeppler," Grosse said nastily. "You were here when they started and you let them get away with it."
"I'll say you were here with me," Doeppler snarled. "We'd better stand together. Come along."
The men pulled back sullenly as Doeppler and Grosse ran to the net. "We'll each take one end and undo it, Grosse," Doeppler said.
Doeppler fumbled with his end and pulled it back.
"Oh Lord!" Grosse groaned. "He's all rolled up. We'll have to unroll the whole net."
"Let's get it started," Doeppler said heavily. "It's too bad but there's no other way."
Standing on a flap of the net, Doeppler and Grosse began turning the bundle over and over. It cursed steadily. The men began to laugh again. Half a dozen twists and Doeppler stopped for breath. He wanted a drink. He wanted to run. He wished he were a private on garbage detail. The bundle humped and began to turn itself. The men guffawed.
"All right, Grosse, let's get this poor fellow out of here," Doeppler said with a prayer.
Grosse glowered and the bundle swore.
Another half dozen gentle turns and Dietrich emerged. His face was white and his eyes were coals of fire. He stood with his feet apart, swaying dizzily from side to side. A single gasp rose from the men grouped about the net and trembled in the air. Doeppler closed his eyes. There was silence and it was awesome.
"Do you have the car, Grosse?" Dietrich asked at last.
"Yes, sir," Grosse said.
"We shall go to the camp at once. Doeppler, I want the name of each man who is here. If anyone tries to slip away, shoot him."
21
The sun was an hour above the horizon and had begun to burn the color from the sky when Troy stood the Hispano-Suiza on its nose, rolled it down the sharp embankment in second gear against smoking brake linings and pointed the long hood north toward the eastern edge of the salt marsh that protected Dietrich's southern flank. When he was out of the rocks on the sandy slope and on the desert flat that stretched unbroken for fifty miles to the Allied camp, he stopped. Moffitt lifted his head from the corner of the seat.
"Anything wrong?" he inquired.
"You just slept through a dive an airplane wouldn't try," Troy said and wiped the wet and grimy palms of his hands on his pants legs, "Water and gas stop. Find something tasty in the trunk. We'll eat on the run. We're only an hour from home, but we don't know when Dietrich was found or whether he has been able to call in aircraft."
"Quite," Moffitt said, swinging out the door. "I imagine the chap is a bit annoyed."
If they had left Dietrich behind in the ravine as he had planned or if they had thrown him in the back seat and taken him along, they'd be in camp right now. He did not regret his decision to dump the Jerry on his own doorstep in a scruffy package. It was a derisive gesture that not only would destroy Dietrich's effectiveness but shake the confidence and morale of the entire unit. He was convinced the Jerries would have less stomach for fighting when Wilson launched an attack because of the way they had treated Dietrich. And Dietrich would not have his mind on fighting either. Right now he'd rather remove the Rat Patrol from the face of the desert than win a campaign. That was fine for Wilson but a little rough on Moffitt and him.
When he'd serviced the car and was back on the sticking leather seat behind the steering wheel, he pushed the car to its limit. The speedometer wobbled forth and back between eighty-five and a hundred miles an hour. The wind screamed through the bullethole in the windshield and the dust hung like the trail of a meteor behind them. The desert was flat and smooth, unbroken by even an occasional wadi or dune. To the left now lay the salt marsh white and glittering like Christmas snow. The miles clicked off; another fifteen miles and they'd be reporting to Wilson. He began to think they'd make it.
Above the rush of the wind boring at his eardrums, he heard the scream of diving planes before Moffitt turned around and saw them. Ahead and to the sides no area offered even partial protection and the only concealment lay in the treacherous salt marsh that would swallow them forever.
"Three Messerschmitts," Moffitt called. "Coming in fast and low to strafe. Tight formation. Almost wingtip to wingtip."
Concentrated fire, Troy thought, three times two 20 mm. cannon, two 7.9 mm. machine guns. Murder. Coming in from behind. Hunters who'd flown the way they'd taken over the ridge. Dietrich had called them in, ordered them to gun down the two men in the open touring car.
"How close?" Troy shouted.
"About a mile."
About twelve seconds, he thought. Don't give them time to change their course. One. Two. Three. Jam the brakes. Slew right. Second gear. Slam ahead. Get out of the path of the slugs that are hailing on the sand. The ME-109s streaked by off-target in a screaming hurricane of sand. Troy skidded and shot north.
"That won't work again," he called. "They'll spread out. Jump, Jack, and dig a hole. They'll go for the car."
Moffitt lifted the tommy-gun. "If they're low enough, I might hit a gas tank."
"This is it!" Troy yelled angrily. "Don't try to be a hero. Take a dive."
"They're circling upstairs," Moffitt said calmly. "Opening the formation. They're going to come in from behind again. Oooops! Give it everything. Head straight on."
"What is it?" Troy hollered, "What are they doing?"
"We jumped them, Sam," Moffitt said exultantly. "Right out of the sun. Three beautiful Spitfires are on their tails. It's a dogfight. They can't get at us."
"How did the RAF get into this?" Troy asked and laughed shrilly.
"Shall we ask to see their orders?" Moffitt asked and his voice was higher pitched than normal.
The sound of the fighters and the pound of their weapons high above was faint in Troy's ears. The hum of the engine was loud. He didn't glance at the speedometer. He was shoving the accelerator through the floorboard.
"One of the Messerschmitts has broken off," Moffitt called. "It's going to dive at us."
"Watch it, Jack. I'll try to shake it."
"There's a Spitfire on its tail. It's not closing. The 109 is too fast."
"Where is it now?" Troy shouted.
"Straight for us," Moffitt said.
Troy used both the foot brake and the hand brake. He spun the wheel. The car careened, rocking from side to side. He had it in second gear and pulled away fast in the opposite direction. The Messerschmitt pulled out of its dive and started to climb.
"The Spitfire was waiting," Moffitt said, voice rising again in excitement. "He's got it. He's got it. The 109 is going down. Straight down. Streaking smoke. There's the crash."
Troy slowed and circled, driving north again. He saw a mushroom of black smoke rising from the desert.
"Jerry will have his hands full now," Moffitt gloated. "There's a spare Spitfire and neither of the 109s knows when he's going to have it diving on him."
Just the same, Troy thought, we're getting cut of here. He bounced the speedometer up to a hundred. Black Vs appeared on the shimmering sand a few miles away. "We're going to make it," he said.
"The Messerschmitts know it," Moffitt said. "They've leveled
off and they're going back to Tunis. The Spits are hanging onto their tails. They can't catch them. There they go, over the ridge."
"Whew," Troy said, but he didn't slacken the speed. He heard the keening thunder of the Spitfires. The three of them dived and buzzed the car. Moffitt stood, clinging to the door with one hand and waving with the other.
"Our chaps," he said, sitting again. He sounded all choked up.
"I wonder where we got that kind of support," Troy said.
He rammed the car into the camp at a modest sixty miles an hour, waved at a guard, who gaped but did not challenge nor fire. Skidding behind the halftracks, he barreled toward Wilson's tent at fifty, braked and skidded to a fine, dramatic, dusty stop that showered HQ with sand.
Corporal Locke poked his head from the radio van and Wilson stepped from the tent. He looked from Moffitt to Troy.
"Good to see you," he said and smiled. "I'm guessing, but Troy is wearing the turtleneck sweater. Hitch and Tully prepared me for your appearances. I'm afraid they cost me my dignity. Come in and have some coffee while you tell me what you've been up to." He looked at his watch. "Oh-nine-oh-seven hundred. We have about an hour."
"Not that stuff you drink," Troy said. "Can your stomach stand a decent breakfast?"
They laid it out for Wilson: fresh oranges, a Westphalian ham, Swiss cheese, olives, Melba toast, American-style coffee with condensed milk.
"We salvaged the coffee, but Dietrich's orderly scrounged our tin of butter," Moffitt said.
"The best part of it is, the coffee is piping hot," Wilson said, glancing enviously at the Sterno stove.
Tully and Hitch came in for the briefing. They'd removed the contact lenses and wore their usual uniform, thin faded khakis, but they still were the Enna brothers with bristling black mustaches and curly black hair under their distinctive headpieces.
"You're a sight, Hitch," Troy said with a laugh. Hitch hadn't shaved and red stubble covered his chin and jawbone. "Why don't you take off the wig and mustache?"
"We can't get them off," Hitch said with a fierce scowl. "They haven't sent the solvent for the adhesive. My head is itching so I can't stand it. That's my sweater you're wearing. I'll trade you for the Walther."
Troy shook his head and saw Wilson glancing from his face to his waist where the butts of the Browning and the Walther P-38 showed above the belt. The Jerry knife dangled in a sheath. "I don't know whether I can explain you to Washington," he said. "We have a VIP coming in this morning."
"What's the deal?" Troy asked.
"Your story first," Wilson said. Peilowski had been sent to the airstrip and they all were sitting around Wilson's table.
Moffitt and Troy gave him a quick rundown on the events of the evening.
"Maybe we should have brought Dietrich in," Troy finished, "but I kept thinking how it would be with us if you were delivered in a bundle like that."
Tully and Hitch laughed openly.
Wilson's eyes twinkled and he smiled broadly but he said, "Eh? What's that? I'm afraid I wasn't listening. Well, I'm sure it wasn't important. There isn't much time and I want to tell you about the man who is coming and the weapon he is bringing." He laughed. "To tell you the truth, I actually don't know very much about either myself."
A civilian ordnance expert, he said, was coming to test a multiple missile launcher that would provide area saturation bombardment. Wilson actually knew little of the details, but Troy was happy they hadn't been told why the positions and nature of the weapons on the ridge were wanted. Knowing that Wilson was counting on the area saturation bombardment to provide a breakthrough for the armored column might have made them tense and overanxious.
"We'll coordinate our offensive with the missile test firing," Wilson said. "The armor is ready to go at a moment's notice. Do you think Dietrich will mine the safe passage now that he knows who you are?"
"It is possible," Moffitt said.
"He hasn't done it yet," Wilson said. "The grade is under observation."
"We hope we threw him so far off balance that all he'll think about is getting back at us," Troy said. "Those Messerschmitts this morning were after the Hispano-Suiza and Moffitt and me. They had no other target. Which reminds me. How did those Spitfires happen to be up there? They saved our necks."
"They didn't happen," Wilson said. "We asked the Eighth Army for help in keeping the sky clean when the C-47 lands with the new weapon." He looked at his watch. "Almost ten-hundred. Let's get over to the airstrip."
"Us?" Troy said, withdrawing. "Like this? Ordnance and missiles aren't our show. Anyway, you said you couldn't explain us to Washington."
"Maybe I'll have to explain how the targets were selected," Wilson said.
Wilson settled his white varnished helmet with the gold eagle on his head and strapped on his twin pearl handled pistols. For the benefit of the civilian ordnance expert, Troy thought, hiding his smile. The man from Washington was going to wonder what kind of weird company he'd fallen into. Wilson was looking thoughtfully at the Hispano-Suiza when Troy tromped out.
"Let's take the car," he said. "It's a rather impressive vehicle." He opened the back door and sat in the middle. Moffitt sat on one side and Troy on the other. Tully took the steering wheel. Wilson pointed at the gas and water cans and the handbags. "You can clean those things out while we wait."
Troy's heart sank. The car didn't belong to them, but he'd hoped they might be able to conveniently misplace it so it would be available to them when they had a need for it. He had become attached to the big old tub.
Tully stopped at the camouflage net over their hole in the ground and unloaded the cargo from the backseat and the weapons from the front. The C-47 came in as they circled the trucks and parked near the middle of the strip. The aircraft stopped at the end of the runway with reversed props howling and blowing up a sandstorm. It swung about and stopped opposite the car. Wilson indicated the Rat Patrol should tag along and Peilowski ran up to join the welcoming committee. Troy felt ridiculous in his turtleneck sweater and pointed shoes and with the weapons at his belt. Moffitt, in his wrinkled and stained cream-colored gabardine, was no prize. Hitch and Tully were the most unsavory GIs he'd ever seen.
A door near the tail of the C-47 swung back and banged the fuselage. A ladder was dropped and a one-star general in a summer worsted uniform climbed down. Troy started to edge toward the trucks. He was followed by a dumpy civilian in a sweat shirt and baggy slacks. Troy stopped to watch. The two men walked toward Wilson, who took one step forward and waited. Troy wanted to laugh. Wilson and the Rat Patrol were the silliest-looking group in the Army.
The CO saluted the general and nodded to the civilian. "I'm Wilson," he said. "We are pleased to have you here."
The lieutenant general was inspecting Wilson. "Caruthers," he said. "Ordnance." Caruthers had scraggly gray eyebrows and the jaw of an English bulldog. He also had a triple row of ribbons that went back to World War I. He brought up the civilian. He had thick black hair with a monstrous cowlick and black-rimmed glasses that hid most of his face. "Mr. Spain," Caruthers said. "Can you run a couple trucks back to the plane? We have some crates to unload."
"Of course, sir," Wilson said and summoned Peilowski. "Do you want to supervise the unloading, General?"
"What for?" Caruthers snapped. "They're just wooden crates. Shove them in the trucks. Take them to your headquarters and we'll tell you what to do with them."
Peilowski trotted off. Troy backed away. He felt like an extra thumb. "Come on," he growled to Moffitt. "We don't belong here."
The grizzled general found Hitch and Tully, Moffitt and him and the bushy eyebrows went up.
"Oh!" Wilson pointed each of them out. Troy felt like a specimen. "Sergeants Troy and Moffitt. Privates Hitchcock and Pettigrew." He smiled benignly at the Rat Patrol. "Men, General Caruthers. Mr. Spain."
Hitch and Tully saluted. Moffitt and Troy stood at attention. Troy was uncomfortably conscious that he was bareheaded, in civilian clothing and carried a
n arsenal in his belt. The general confronted them, standing straddle-legged, arms behind his back. His eyes jumped from one to the other.
"Frankly, Colonel," he said, turning to Wilson, "I am curious. Why did you introduce me to these men? Only one is in anything that approaches a uniform. Two are in civilian clothes. They all look like brigands."
"They have just returned from a mission into Jerry's camp," Wilson said with a laugh. "They have charted the enemy's gun positions so that your test firing may be a purposeful demonstration. I have made plans to follow up your bombardment with an offensive against the enemy position."
"Indeed!" Caruthers said in some surprise. "This is gratifying. Splendid. Commendable. Since you have been so cooperative, perhaps you would do one more thing that would be invaluable to us."
"Of course, sir," Wilson said graciously.
"Good," Caruthers said. "I would like your four men to return behind the enemy lines to observe the effectiveness of this new weapon first hand."
"Of course," Wilson said, holding the back door of the Hispano-Suiza open for Caruthers and Spain. He got in beside Spain. Troy looked at Tully and nodded toward the steering wheel. Wilson leaned across Spain to the general. "I want to tell you an amusing little story about what happened last night to the Jerry commander..."
22
Considerably worse mentally than physically for his night in the net, Dietrich had swept his cold lighted tent with his eyes when Grosse opened the door of the staff car. He noted the rent in the back wall, the damp sand of the floor, the cot that looked as if someone had been sleeping on it and his mounting fury threatened to explode. He stepped to the locker, opened it for a bottle of brandy and saw that only one remained. He scowled, swinging to the table where two empty glasses stood. There had been a bottle of American whisky and he distinctly remembered two bottles of brandy in the locker. Removing the last bottle of brandy, he poured himself a stiff drink, tossed it off. He was becoming more wrathful by the moment. Not only had the Sergeants Troy and Moffitt kidnapped him from under the noses of his men, but they had humiliated him in his own camp and while his back was turned, men in his command had presumed to take his liquor and sleep or sit on his cot.