The Rat Patrol 6 - Desert Masqueraade

by David King

  Orders or not, it wasn't such a bad idea, he thought seriously as he picked up one corner of the camouflage net. At least it would get Wilson off his fat butt. Which wasn't exactly true, he admitted with a brief grin. The old man didn't have a fat butt. He was as lean and hard as a rail. It was his head that was fat.

  "Troy!" His name was bellowed and he jerked his head toward the HQ tent. Peilowski was trotting toward him. Troy straightened and watched in amazement. Blubbery Peilowski never moved faster than a shamble. Peilowski was waving one arm excitedly and perspiration was running down his pink cheeks.

  "The colonel wants you," he shouted before he had covered half the distance to the burrow. "Right now. Shake it, Troy, shake it."

  "Now what do you imagine has buggered him?" Moffitt murmured.

  "The old man had his ear to the ground," Hitch said irritably, dropping his corner of the net. "He heard we were going swimming."

  "You know, you may be right," Troy said, strolling toward Peilowski. "What's up?" he asked the first sergeant.

  "All I know is, he told me to drop everything and get you," Peilowski said, grasping Troy's arm and tugging. "Move, man."

  "Hands off," Troy said tightly, brushing off the hand. He turned to the others. "Better hang around. It might be a caper."

  "Nuts," Hitch said, and pushed his cap to the back of his head. "He thinks we can't take care of ourselves any longer."

  Perhaps Wilson finally did have something useful for the Rat Patrol to do, Troy thought without much hope as he followed Peilowski leisurely toward HQ. He shook his head doubtfully. Wilson had told Troy firmly when Troy had begged for a chance to infiltrate that he could not use the Rat Patrol in this situation. Whatever the task, if it was a mission, it would not be against Dietrich. Troy glanced enviously toward the silent ridge. The Jerries had something going up there and Troy wanted to find out what it was.

  Wilson was seated at a table at the back of the tent when Troy followed Peilowski inside. Although he was wearing his white varnished helmet, he was concentrating on paperwork. He glanced up, nodded his head at Troy and consulted a code book. Troy watched him with growing curiosity. Wilson was a proper officer schooled at the Point. Whether at base or in the field, he did not wear his helmet at his desk. Something had happened that had stirred him.

  "Here, Peilowski," Wilson said, handing him the message form. "Have Locke request immediate confirmation and you wait for it." He looked steadily at Troy without speaking until the first sergeant was away from the tent. Then he asked quietly, "Had enough of your cave in the sand?"

  "Right," Troy exclaimed enthusiastically. "You have a mission for us?"

  "Good," Wilson said with a fleeting smile. "Yes, I have a little job for the Rat Patrol. I have just sent a message to G2 at Cairo. If my request is confirmed, you will be prepared to depart from this position within four hours."

  "Depart?" Troy's spirits sagged. "I'd rather hoped we might be given a shot at Dietrich. Where are we going and what is the mission?"

  "For reasons of security, you will be briefed by G2 at your destination."

  Troy felt a quick surge of anger. "For reasons of security? I don't understand."

  "I'm sorry, Troy," Wilson said and smiled. "It isn't a question of confidence in the Rat Patrol. The risks involved on this assignment are greater than you have ever hazarded. When you arrive at your destination, you will be briefed by G2 on exactly what is required and instructed how to proceed. There is every likelihood that one or all of you will be captured and interrogated. You will know what information you have been told to obtain but not why. The enemy will draw his own conclusions. In such an event the mission will have failed but a vital secret will have been protected. You understand?"

  "I don't like to work in the dark," Troy said stubbornly, then suddenly remembering one time when Wilson himself had possessed vital information and had been captured by Dietrich. The Rat Patrol had gone in on orders to rescue him or silence him. He smiled at the recollection. "But I guess I see what you mean. How much can you tell me?"

  "Immediately upon confirmation of my request, you will return to your personal quarters." Wilson permitted himself a slight smile at his humor as he consulted his watch. "You will remain there until ten hundred hours at which time you will put on fatigues and steel helmets, leaving your distinctive headgear behind. You will carry canteens and side arms only." He looked sharply at Troy. "Your transportation will be an aircraft. You will need canteens and side arms in the event the plane is shot down. At ten hundred hours, slip away from your rathole." He smiled again at his little joke. "Leave one by one and remain hidden among the supply trucks until the plane has landed. If we're under observation, I don't want the four of you bursting from your camouflage net and racing for the strip when the plane lands. When you board the aircraft, activity to divert attention will be arranged. Is this clear?"

  "Loud and clear," Troy said enthusiastically. It was good to have another secret mission to tuck under your web belt.

  "I think that covers as much as I can tell you here," Wilson said, relaxing and looking at Troy with a friendly smile. Abruptly he stood, then walked to the locker at the foot of his cot and opened it. He brought up a bottle of Hennessy Five Star brandy to the table. "Your canteen cup, Troy. We'll have a drink and a cigarette while we wait for Peilowski."

  It was not the first time Troy had shared a drink with Wilson but the other occasions had been on the successful completion of a mission, not the start of one. His eyes darted to Wilson and quickly slipped away. The CO had warned of the risks on this assignment, but he seemed very sure of himself, almost smug. Troy remembered that less than half an hour before he had been condemning Wilson for lacking imagination. He puzzled the assignment Wilson could have evolved that made him appear so certain of its success. It must be a very extraordinary job, he concluded.

  Peilowski pushed through the opening, red-faced and panting, and thrust a message form at Wilson who scanned his code book, looked at Troy and smiled.

  "Confirmed," he said tersely. "You have your instructions."

  Troy gulped the last of the warming brandy, replaced his canteen cup, stood and touched his hand to the brim of his hat. He was feeling mellow toward Wilson, and it wasn't from the dollop of brandy.

  Wilson nodded and Troy turned to leave. "Peilowski," he heard Wilson say abruptly. "Tell Corporal Locke to be alert for additional information."

  Peilowski panted back out of the tent. Troy smiled. A radio operator like Locke didn't have to be told to be alert. He turned to Wilson and waited.

  "One final but extremely important warning," Wilson said, stern now. "I perhaps am saying more than I should but I know you men and G2 does not. You will instruct your men that your individual characteristics are well known to the enemy. I want you personally to check out Tully and Hitch. See that Tully has no matchsticks and Hitch has no supply of gum. On this mission, nothing must identify you as the Rat Patrol. To all intents and purposes, for the next few days the Rat Patrol will be very much in evidence in and about this position."

  Troy could not refrain from asking, "Who and what will we be?"

  Wilson hesitated, then smiled quickly, teeth flashing in his tanned face. "I will not say who and what you will be but I will say what you will be doing. You will be assisting Dietrich in capturing the Rat Patrol."

  3

  Herr Hauptmann Hans Dietrich, commander of a crack Afrika Korps armored unit, stood motionless on top of a flat rock on the gray ridge where his tanks and guns commanded the pass and slope. As he had done each mid morning since he had occupied this well-prepared position guarding the route to Tunis at the western edge of the Cyrenaica peninsula, he observed the Allied camp beyond his reach below. His eyes were thoughtful as he lowered his field glasses. There seemed to be no unusual activity at the Allied position, no indication that the American Colonel Wilson was aware that he was bringing up additional armor at night, a few tanks at a time, and camouflaging them between the remna
nts of his column. Soon, a week at the most, and his mobile armor would pound down the slope through the safe passage in the minefield and sweep the enemy from the desert floor. He smiled thinly at the thought.

  Although his position here on the ridge was secure and blocked the way to western Libya, most of the territory deep on the peninsula he once had commanded had been seized through the treachery of men who had no place in honorable warfare. He bristled at thought of the Rat Patrol. He could not permit the miserable rout of his forces from his former command post at Sidi Abd to remain unavenged. Soon he would start the long trail back.

  He searched once more as he did each morning for the four men of the Rat Patrol and their jeeps. He did not fear them. In fact, he was well prepared for the Rat Patrol, should they attempt to penetrate or attack his position, yet he felt reassured each day they and their jeeps still were in the camp. He was prepared to receive them with the fiery reception they had earned, yes, yet he could not entirely anticipate them. Sergeant Troy had a habit of leading his little group in unexpected assaults that usually were costly to the Afrika Korps.

  As he watched now, he saw the Rat Patrol crawl from the hollow in the sand where they so foolishly imagined their camouflage nets concealed them from the heights. The four of them in their impertinent headpieces pulled the nets aside and the two drivers backed the jeeps up the sand ramp onto the desert. Sergeant Troy, in his cocky bush hat, leaped into the back of the machine Private Pettigrew was driving and Sergeant Moffitt in his dark beret jumped behind the machine gun in the other. Now they would go racing off side by side in reckless and empty attempts to impress the tank crews with their daring.

  But this morning the jeep with Sergeant Troy sped northward toward the sea while the other with Sergeant Moffitt darted south in the direction of the salt marsh. Dietrich scowled. Such an action in broad daylight was clearly for his benefit. It could mean nothing. The jeeps could be observed all of the way to the ocean and to the salt marsh. Yet these were slippery, untrustworthy men. You never could tell what tricks they had in their foolish hats.

  The handsome German captain with the cold eyes swung on his heel to the stiff-backed lieutenant who was standing at attention some ten feet back.

  "Doeppler," Dietrich said. "I want those jeeps observed meticulously every moment. They must not be lost sight of for a minute. I want to know each place they go, where they stop, what the men do. Understand?"

  "Ja, Herr Hauptmann," the lieutenant barked, saluted, whirled and marched away.

  The distant drone of an aircraft brought Dietrich's glasses back to the sky above the Allied position. It sounded like the engine of a more powerful plane than the observation cub that buzzed like an annoying but harmless insect now and then far from Dietrich's well-protected flanks. He found a flash of silver to the southeast and shuddered involuntarily as he identified the fast-approaching plane as a B-25 Mitchell medium bomber streaking toward the ridge. Until now the Allies had not attempted to bomb his emplacements but the Mitchell with its 3600-pound bomb load was a deadly threat if it was not driven off. Even as he turned to shout, he knew the bomber and the two jeeps of the Rat Patrol were somehow allied in some secret mission.

  "Doeppler," he shouted and found himself standing alone between two 88s. Doeppler never was about when he was needed, he thought waspishly even as he remembered he had just ordered the lieutenant to keep the jeeps under observation. "Kraemer," he called and a gaunt-cheeked man with large eyes jumped down from one of the gun carriers.

  "Ja," Kraemer said tonelessly. His voice was as sad as Ins face.

  "Kraemer," Dietrich snapped, irritated at the man's indifference. "Elevate the AA guns, be prepared for a bombing run. That is a Mitchell coming over."

  "Ja, mein Hauptmann," Kraemer said quietly. "The aircraft was observed. The guns are ready. But it is not coming over, I think. Already it has landed on the airstrip of the enemy."

  "Dummkopf, why did you not say so?" Dietrich asked angrily, leaping back on the rock.

  "Herr Hauptmann?"

  "Silence," Dietrich said, bringing his glasses to focus on the bomber. He was just in time to see two men in steel helmets and fatigues clambering aboard the plane. Who were they; what were they; had there been others? he demanded of himself in frustration. During the moments he had been calling for the inept Doeppler and engaged in worthless conversation with the inadequate Kraemer, the bomber had landed. He had no idea what cargo or personnel it had discharged—or what personnel had boarded. Something more important than bombing the ridge was taking place under his nose. It was incredible. Now, would the Mitchell and the men who had boarded, specialists no doubt, rendezvous with one or other jeep of the Rat Patrol? What new bedevilment could he expect from this operation that involved the two jeeps of the Rat Patrol and a medium bomber? Or had the two jeeps of the Rat Patrol traveling in opposite directions been nothing more than a deceptive action to divert his attention from the bomber?

  "Herr Hauptmann," Kraemer persisted.

  "Tölpel, are you stuck here in the ground like a stick?" Dietrich said. "Why aren't you at the gun?"

  "I wished only to remind the captain that the Messerschmitts are already overdue for the strafing run that was promised for this morning," Kraemer said calmly. "If they could catch the bomber on the ground "

  "I do not need you to think for me," Dietrich barked, raging at the Rat Patrol. They disrupted even his normal thought processes. "Kloake, Kloake!" he called at the top of his voice for his radio operator as he ran toward the communications truck. "Raise me the fighter planes."

  The B-25J bomber had not carried a full crew for its short run to pick up the Rat Patrol. There was a gunner in the turret behind the cockpit and a tail gunner but the .50 caliber guns at each side of the fuselage were not manned. Troy had tumbled into the bare belly of the plane and taken one of the positions so he might observe the country over which they flew through the plexiglass. Moffitt took the position on the other side while Tully and Hitch seemed content to sprawl on the floor. The skin of the ship trembled with a whining vibration as the twin engines snarled and spit and roared. The ship skimmed down the sand runway and lifted with a suddenness that pitched Troy's stomach into his boots. The plane circled to a southeasterly course and Moffitt looked inquiringly across at Troy.

  Troy shrugged. He had told the others as much as he knew and could only guess at their destination. He assumed the bomber had come from the base at Bir el Alam. It was now flying in that direction, but that did not mean it would land there. It did not seem likely that an action against Dietrich—or rather, Dietrich, he amended with a grimace—would be mounted from Bir el Alam.

  Troy frankly was baffled. Utterly confused and confounded. He had accused the CO of being unimaginative and yet Wilson had concocted some scheme that would enable the four of them to get behind Dietrich's lines and help him capture the Rat Patrol. It not only sounded cockeyed, it was crazy. Even Moffitt, who usually had an answer to a riddle, was puzzled. The only suggestion Troy had been able to offer was that Wilson proposed to parachute them into Dietrich's position in Jerry uniform. That not only would be unimaginative but downright stupid. In the first place, Dietrich knew them all by sight. In the second place, when Dietrich laid his hands on them, he'd have them shot as spies.

  The bomber was flying low at about a thousand feet and the growl of the engines rose and fell rhythmically. Below the desert was empty, although it was crisscrossed with the tracks from the supply trucks that shuttled between the base and the Allied position. Watching the monotonous pattern of running lines on the glinting desert floor made Troy drowsy. His eyes were heavy and his head dropped, only to jerk back wide-awake with his hands reaching for the machine gun as the tail-gun hammered. A shadow swooped overhead and the turret gunner behind the cockpit rattled off a burst. A second fighter made a pass at the bomber and the ship shuddered as 20 mm. cannon opened wounds up the spine of its back.

  Troy ripped off his helmet and slammed on the earp
hones.

  "... under attack by two ME-109s," the pilot was saying. "Will attempt evasive action."

  Across the fuselage, Moffitt's gun rattled as one of the 109s swept up from below, stabbing at the bomber's belly. Troy's stomach soared into his throat as the ship abruptly dropped until it brushed the desert. Troy brought his gun up and when the 109s made their diving stabs they were met with the fire of four .50 caliber machine guns. The ship shook from the firing, but it was not hit. The big seventeen hundred horsepower engines pulled it up near its top speed of three hundred and twenty miles an hour only feet above the desert and the propellers whipped a furious sand gale.

  The ME-109s made one more diving pass at the almost impossible target. When they pulled out of the dives that must have almost pulled their wings off, they shot away to the west. After a few minutes, the bomber climbed back to a thousand feet and throttled back to a comfortable cruising speed.

  Troy pushed the earphone forward on his temples as he heard the pilot asking cheerfully, "Was that farewell party for the four of you back there in the belly?"

  Troy looked at Moffitt and wrinkled his forehead. Moffitt's eyes were crescents as he shook his head and showed his palms helplessly. On the floor, both Tully and Hitch were looking at Troy inquiringly.

  "I don't know," he shouted back above the thunder of the engines.

  Less than four hours had passed since Wilson had radioed for the transportation. Dietrich could not possibly have known a bomber was coming to pick up the Rat Patrol. Even in security code, Wilson would not have spelled out who the personnel were that he wanted taken off. Yet he had contacted G2 at Cairo with some plan and he may have felt it necessary to provide details. He'd said they would be briefed at destination by G2 so he must have said something in his message. Troy wondered whether their cover, whatever it was, and their mission, wherever it was, already was known to the enemy.