Kat's Rats

by Michael Beals

  “The giant supposed maintenance depot you people set up in the middle of nowhere, about 50 klicks north of Fes. The one crawling with SS goons. We may be under your boot, but that doesn’t mean we’re stupid.”

  Trufflefoot and Kat dashed to the map table, bumping heads as they both traced a route to the lone swastika marker in Morocco. “Only four hours away. Pernass must have just got there.” Trufflefoot rubbed his swollen nose and mumbled. Kat tapped a yellow marker on the west side of Fes.

  “Who’s this? They’re not friendly, and they’re not Americans.”

  The Colonel puckered his lips. “A band of Jewish Partisans snuck across the border last night. They have our airfield under siege. No worries though, we have a large armored task force assembling to finish them off. Should be on site any minute.”

  “Call them off!” Kat clutched his collar as Dore leaped forward. He didn’t break cover by trying out his two words of German. He did catch the blade slipping out of her pants and kept it out of sight.

  Trufflefoot let a grin etch his face for the first time since entering. “She means you’re attacking the wrong target. Turn that force around and sanitize this SS base. Have the airfield surrender to the rebels; the Americans would appreciate the gesture.”

  “You want us to turn our weapons on the SS?” The Colonel glanced over his arching shoulder a couple of times.

  “We believe Pernass is setting up a counter-coup. He’s a hardliner that wants to keep the war going. Makes sense, because he’s a wanted war criminal. Bringing him in, dead or alive, is the type of thing that makes a man’s name. The fast track to add a couple of stars on your shoulders in the post-war army.”

  The Colonel licked his lips and leaned in. “Is any of this true?”

  “Does it matter?” Trufflefoot shrugged. “Would you rather fight Americans or Germans?”

  “And I thought this was going to be a bad day.” The Colonel’s spreading grin surpassed even Kat’s. He snagged a radio and muttered orders.

  Trufflefoot flashed a thumbs-up at Dore and hustled the team outside. In the two waiting cars, Capson beamed like a puppy while Atkins crossed himself.

  “I know that look. You’ve got a new mission! Haven’t we done enough?”

  Capson waved his hand. “Don’t mind him. He hasn’t had his beauty sleep. Gets cranky without a nap. What’s the plan?”

  Trufflefoot tilted his head up and sucked in the fresh morning air. The only birds in the sky now sported feathers rather than bombs. He collapsed in the backseat and stretched out. “The French are mopping up the mess for us. We’re done. For once, there’s not a damn thing for us to do.”

  Even Kat laughed and stretched out. “You know, maybe Atkins is right. When’s the last time we had some R&R? Neutral Portuguese colonies are right down the road. After all, we’re still off the books. It’ll probably take weeks for anyone to notice we’re gone…”

  Atkins whooped, jumping up and down. He ran over and wrapped Kat in a bear hug, then dodged a meaty fist as he kissed Sergeant Dore’s cheek.

  “Climb in; I’ll drive. We’ll be barefoot on a beach by sunset! I’ll buy the first round—”

  “You double-crossing bastards!” A furious Vichy Colonel charged out of the Command post with a sub-machine gun high. He spat and threw the weapon away. “Why? We did exactly what you demanded!”

  “What’s your problem?” Dore bowed up and snagged his weapon. The Colonel didn’t even bat an eye at his Scottish growl and switched to nasally English.

  “The whole task force disappeared as soon as they approached the base. Fifty armored vehicles and three hundred men,” he snapped his fingers, “wiped away like that. We can’t raise a single survivor.”

  Kat punched a dent in the car’s aluminum hood. “Then call in an airstrike!”

  “How? We surrendered the nearest airbase, per your brilliant orders. We now have a bunch of Jewish rebels roaming around and dynamiting the planes, completely unopposed! If I launch aircraft from anywhere else, the Americans will call that a cease-fire violation and blast every one of our bases!”

  The Colonel cussed again and stripped off his uniform coat. Twenty more staffers piled out of the bunker, chucking their weapons and rank while scattering to the four winds.

  “Where the hell is everyone going? There’s still work to do! We need to get to an armory.” Kat screamed at their fleeing backs. Only the Colonel turned around. He jerked a thumb at a small cluster of bunkers a hundred yards away.

  “We don’t need the arsenal any longer. Help yourself, if you’re that foolhardy. We’re turning ourselves over to the Americans before Pernass returns. I don’t know who you’re really working for, but good luck.” He flicked his eyes at the eastern horizon, still not relaxing when no boogie man appeared.

  “We shot the devil in the back… and missed. Only an idiot would hang around to find out what happens next.”

  Kat spun around as the Colonel scaled the nearest berm and raced towards the beach.

  Atkins snagged her wrist as she took a step towards the abandoned Command bunker. “Kat… We’re not idiots. You heard him.”

  She winked and pinched his cheek. “All I heard is that the rebels are still in Fes. Best stroke of luck we’ve had all day.”

  Dore already twisted open a steel door on the nearest bunker. He whistled inside and clapped his hands. “Oh, you’re going to love this shopping trip. Kat?”

  Kat jogged back inside the Command bunker with Trufflefoot on her heels. While Kat snagged a radio mic and flipped through frequencies, he rifled through a bookshelf of intel folders stacked neatly in alphabetical order. He ripped open a binder and scooped up the aerial reconnaissance photos spilling out on the floor.

  Kat stayed hunched over the radio until a snooty French voice finally answered her endless hails to the aerodrome in Fes. “Don’t worry. Your people haven’t been hurt. We’ll keep them safe as insurance until the Americans get here.”

  “Shut up and listen. Get your Commander on the line. I’m working with the Géo Gras Group and I’ve got some hot intel about—”

  “Right. When will you people learn Jews aren’t so gullible? Now leave us alone. We’ve got a ton of stuff to blow up!”

  Kat shouted into the dead air for a solid minute until Dore appeared at her shoulder. “May I try?”

  He keyed the mic and repeated the same digits over and over. “5-5-5-7-9.”

  On the fifth iteration, a breathless voice boomed in response. “Dore? You sneaky rat! I should have known it was you when these French bastards just dropped their guns and invited us in for coffee. My radioman’s telling me you’re calling from a Top-Level Command Net. Why do you always have to one-up me?”

  “Lieutenant!” Dore held the radio mic away as Kat hopped up and down, trying to snag it from him. “You looking for a chance to even the score? We’ve got the juiciest target yet right up the road from you. The Germans up there at grid 36—”

  Lieutenant Karsenty purred into the mic. “Oh, you had me at killing Krauts.”

  “Don’t attack yet! Just recon.” Kat stopped jumping and jabbed a contemplative finger in Dore’s chest. “Let’s bring some more friends to the party, eh?”

  Trufflefoot jerked his head around at her cat-call.

  “I don’t have any contacts with the Americans, if that’s what you’re driving at.”

  “You worry too much, boss.” Kat ripped open cabinets until she found a stubby pistol resting on a small crate. “Isn’t this place the ultimate letter of recommendation?”

  She shoved Dore outside, hopped on the Command car’s hood and fired a white flare in the sky. Dore shook his head, but she kep
t talking anyway.

  “Time to split up. You take the dream team here…” Kat pointed a pistol hand at Capson, who stuck out his chest and beamed. She missed Atkins slinking away behind the rear fender. “And link up with the rebels. Make sure they don’t do anything foolhardy. Trufflefoot and I will meet you in a few hours with the cavalry and finish this for good.”

  Trufflefoot strolled over and cocked his head. “That’s… unnecessary. I can liaison with the Americans myself. What’s really wrong?”

  Kat’s grin collapsed as she dropped to the ground, pounding the back of her head against the driver’s door. “Pernass is waiting for me. If it’s just you guys, maybe…”

  “We can’t split up again. Since when are you not itching for a fight?” Dore plopped beside her and wrapped an arm over her shoulder. For once, she didn’t push back and leaned into his chest.

  “Something’s wrong about all this.”

  Dore grunted. “Tosh! Don’t give me the shell-shocked routine. A man gets burned out. A woman gets even.”

  “Pernass is playing us better than ever. I’ve got a bad feeling we’re biting off more than we can chew.” She rocked back and forth, sniffing at something.

  Dore gaped as the Terror of Tripoli gave in to a shake. He ground his jaw and flicked away a loose tear from her bloodshot eye.

  “Ssshh. Pernass is hiding out in the mountains only because you’ve kicked his ass at every turn. God, what has he done to you? I swear, I’m going to filet your papa like a fish and strangle him with his own intestines!”

  She sniveled one last time and laughed, then tilted up to kiss his cheek.

  “Oh, you wonderful Wolfman. You always say the sweetest things. So a good old-fashioned NAZI hunt it is.

  Part III

  May God have mercy upon my enemies.

  Because I won’t.

  - General George S. Patton

  CHAPTER 10

  Sebou River, Border of French/Spanish Morocco

  50 Kilometers north of Fes, Morocco

  Dore snapped his eyes open as something skittered over his pants leg and then fumbled with his rucksack. “The devil…” He sat ramrod straight in his shallow foxhole, shielding his brow from the late afternoon sun. Through the loose dust cloud kicking up in the sandy pit, he tossed his ruck aside.

  “Good to see I’m not the hairiest bastard around.” The giant spider/scorpion skittered his way, both oversized chelicerae jaws clacking as Dore crushed the nightmare with an ammo can.

  “What’s that, Sergeant?” Capson popped his bright-eyed face out of his foxhole, scanning in all directions with his rifle tight in his shoulder.

  “Nothing…Lick me hammy!”

  The ten-pound ammo can picked itself up and ran around in a circle. Dore stifled his howl, and piston stomped the other half of his firing pit a hundred times. Atkins popped up from a foxhole on his other side and snickered at the dust cloud.

  “Damn, Sarge. Are you kicking your own shadow? Maybe it’s time to get out of the sun.”

  Kat slithered over and dropped into Dore’s firing hole, careful not to rise more than a foot off the ground. “What do you see? Contact?”

  Dore stabbed his bayonet into the dirt as the monster slipped inside one of the endless cracks in the sunbaked ground. He peered out of his hole and stuck his chin over the cliff ledge inches away. Something stirred out of the cracks in the sheer canyon ledge below. No way to tell if it was the same camel spider.

  “We’re wasting our time. Let’s get off this damn ledge already.”

  Karsenty crawled over and slapped Dore’s back. “Where else should we go? Down there seems… less than ideal.” He jerked his thumb across the wide-open plain fifty meters below their perch. The shredded remnants from scores of still-smoldering French armored cars littered the field. Five hundred meters ahead, a nondescript block of shacks and warehouses stood untouched.

  “Maybe too perfect a vantage point. Why haven’t we seen a thing all day?” Dore rapped his hand in the sand. Karsenty dipped his patrol cap down and settled in.

  “My money is on those boats. Why else would you drag a bunch of warships 150 clicks inland from the ocean if you weren’t going to use them as pillboxes? They might look like salvage from here, but I bet that’s a disguise.”

  Kat raised her binoculars and focused on the small base nestled at the base of the Rif Mountains. Someone had dragged a heavy cruiser and several U-boats along the thin Sebou River before beaching the gutted hulls next to an unusually massive warehouse.

  “How? They’re not much use with the guns and armor stripped out. Though I wonder why they took the powerplants too? You’d need a train to transport those giant diesel engines back to the coast.”

  “Whatever secret weapon they’re cooking up, it’s got to be in that warehouse. It’s the only thing around with any real security.” Dore stuck his finger out at the clever sandcastle between them and the warehouse. Endless rows of dirt-filled, wire-mesh baskets, each seven feet high and five wide, were stacked together like so many children’s blocks. She adjusted the focus, trying to take in the towering bunker complex all at once. Camouflage netting draped every firing port and plywood sheets with sandbags on top capped off the fortress.

  “It’ll be dark in an hour. If Trufflefoot doesn’t get here soon, what do you say we ring the doorbell as soon as the sun goes down?”

  “Are you nuts?” Karsenty snorted, then coughed in the sand flying up in his face. “The French couldn’t take that place with tanks; how are we going to overrun it with just our rifles?”

  Kat tugged out a canteen from her hip and leaned back against a pair of steel canisters in Dore’s firing scrap. “We aren’t exactly helpless…”

  “Right… how are we going to get close enough for you to play with your giant flamethrower? Starlight out here in the open desert lights things up better than any city’s street lamps.”

  Kat waved her hand at Karsenty. “You worry too much. You’ve got dozens of fighters. With enough smoke and cover fire—”

  While everyone fussed over the quiet base below, Capson popped his tenth stick of gum and glanced down at the meandering canyon.

  “Shouldn’t we attack the base here in the canyons first?”

  All eyes stitched him. “What are you talking about?”

  “The one hidden somewhere in this twisting valley. I mean, we could just follow the tank tracks to find it. They peter out somewhere around that temple thing.” Capson smiled back at Dore, eyes blank.

  “What bloody tracks, man? Quit being so coy.”

  “The ones right there.” He stuck his hand over the ledge, dragging everyone’s gaze towards a pair of wide paths running parallel in the sand. Each line of mini dunes was about four meters wide and at least ten apart. The whole pattern ran in a winding path from several crushed Vichy tanks all the way back to the valley. It spun in circles and disappeared in front of a wind-scarred ancient temple carved into the opposite canyon wall a few hundred meters away.

  “Now who’s been in the sun too long? It’s just a trick of the eye, with the help of the strong winds. I guess the dunes kind of look like tank treads… if you had a tank the size of a battleship! Stay focused, son. Drink some water.” Karsenty twisted away, crawling back to the trucks hidden several hundred meters back on the ledge’s reverse slope.

  Kat craned her neck and studied the tracks from every angle before clicking her teeth.

  “Actually… what if these came from a whole company of panzers driving by in ultra-tight formation? We don’t know what Pernass might have stashed around the next bend. Let’s at least send a recon team to check it out.”

 
; “Too risky. This is the only overhang that juts up, shielding us from the base’s view. The rest of the canyon ledges slope down. Just one person running around in the open will give us all away. So be patient for once, will ya?” Karsenty shook his head as a runner charged up the slope from the trucks and pointed at a dust cloud on the horizon.

  “The cavalry’s here. Less than five minutes out, sir.”

  Colonel Trufflefoot huffed his way up the slope well behind the runner, even trailing a young American Lieutenant with a bulky wireless set on his back. He waved and clutched his knees, gasping for air. “Did you have to set up your observation post so damn high?”

  “Boss! Fashionably late as usual, eh? Did you bring me a present?”

  “Just a company of motorized infantry, backed by an armor company and a platoon of tank destroyers. All I could do on short notice.” He kept huffing as the skinny redhead squealed and skipped over, clapping her hands.

  The American Officer grinned at all the armed civilians popping out of their firing holes along the ledge. “Don’t forget the air cover. No need to hide any longer, folks. Let Uncle Sam take it from here.”

  “Uh, guys…” Capson whooped from his overwatch perch, the only one around still scanning the ground and not cheering the twin blue eagles diving out of the sun. Particularly the racks of bombs slung under each Dauntless dive bomber. The Lieutenant nodded as Dore and Karsenty stood tall and marched over.

  “Anything change about the target?”

  “Sergeant!”

  Dore flapped his hand at Capson. “Not now, son.” He and Karsenty peered over the American’s shoulder as the dust storm in the distance veered right, growling east, away from the base before slipping into the valley.

  “Nothing new. Where’s your ground team going?”

  The American murmured “Roger” into his radio and grinned. “We aren’t going to just wander in there in parade ground fashion like the French. We’ll use the canyon for cover and pop out right on top of the SOBs. So what’s the best target for my dive bombers…”