1

Far ahead of the straggling, confused and leaderless Allied tank column that clawed its tortuous way through the slipping sands of the Libyan desert, two jeeps raced side by side over the rolling dunes toward an appointment with destiny or death. The December day was sunless and sullen and the desert, that musty, ancient lion, crouched, patiently waiting for more victims. Behind lay a minor victory at Bir-el-Alam, where the small Allied Force had blunted and turned aside a lightning thrust of the Afrika Korps, but ahead, somewhere in the limitless sea of treacherous sand, lay Sidi Abd where Hauptmann Hans Dietrich had fortified an Arabian oasis town as headquarters for his crack Panzer unit.

The two jeeps were battered, pocked with the scars of many no-quarter encounters with Captain Dietrich's armored cars and tanks. The windshields were down flat against the hoods even on this gray day, a constant precaution against any telltale glinting reflection which might pinpoint them to the wily enemy. A swivel-mounted fifty caliber machine gun lifted its ugly snout from the rear of one of the jeeps while the other carried a similar thirty caliber weapon. Two determined men, faces rigid below their goggles with masks of dust, manned each vehicle. Private Mark Hitchcock, wearing a red French Foreign Legion hat and steel-rimmed GI glasses beneath his goggles, was at the wheel of one of the jeeps, his jaw working at a cud of gum. At his side was Sergeant Jack Moffitt, dark beret cocked to lift a rakish eyebrow, eyes serene although his jaw was set. Moffitt had been detached from the British Army's Scots Grays for this special desert duty. In the second jeep, Private Tully Pettigrew, in a dull and dusty helmet, was relaxed, rolling a matchstick from one side of his mouth to the other as he drove with deceptive ease. Beside him, Sergeant Sam Troy's quick and angry eyes under the brim of his Australian bush hat roved the lonely and hostile landscape.

The Rat Patrol was on the prowl again and this time the mission was intensely personal. Captain Dietrich, vanquished at Bir-el-Alam, had audaciously snatched the victor from his triumph. The Afrika Korps had captured Colonel Dan Wilson, commanding officer of the armored regiment to which the Rat Patrol was attached, and borne him, white varnished helmet, twin pearl-handled pistols and bravado, with them to their desert fortress.

"The fathead," Troy said bitterly, pulling his eyes from the empty monotony of sand that simmered muckily in the hot, flannelly day. "Wilson had no right to be in a lead pursuit car."

"Maybe the CO was bucking for Patton's job, Sarge," Tully said laconically.

"At this time of year Patton would have had better sense," Troy said. "This is the beginning of the rainy season. Look at the sky. What happens if the rains come and we bog down in gumbo? We're his only chance."

"I guess that's it, Sarge," Tully said.

"What do you mean, you guess that's it?" Troy demanded impatiently.

"Long as the CO's got the Rat Patrol, he ain't going to let a little thing like being captured by Dietrich bother him none," Tully said with his slow Kentucky drawl.

"We're good but we're not supermen," Troy said disgustedly.

Tully laughed and lifted one hand, palm up, from the wheel.

"Sarge," he said, "you know what the Jerries say. They say, 'They're here, they're there, they're everywhere, the Gottverdamtig Rat Patrol.'"

The two jeeps swept on toward Sidi Abd over the unmarked, unidentifiable and limitless land on the compass reading Moffitt had provided. Moffitt had visited Sidi Abd on countless field trips, digging into the past with his father, who was an anthropologist, uncovering shards of ancient warheads. Now it was as if the four men and two jeeps were the only things that lived or moved in a world of dun-colored sand and dark sky, but Troy knew that in any wadi might lurk Dietrich's armored cars or spying Arabs, eager to betray any man to anyone for anything of value.

The Rat Patrol crested a dune and plunged toward a depression on the floor of the desert. Troy stiffened. The sand in the wadi still wore the marks of a halftrack.

"Brake," Troy shouted, half rising from his seat and flinging a hand signal to Hitch in the other jeep. Standing, he examined the clear marking of the tread through his binoculars. The Germans were not careless. He was certain the trace he saw had been left deliberately to point the direction the Rat Patrol should take. He lifted his glasses and scanned the desert beyond the wadi. It seemed empty and undisturbed but Troy sensed a trap.

"What put you up, old boy?" Moffitt strolled over and asked. He lifted his goggles, letting the bemused smile which cracked his dust-stiffened face linger in his eyes.

Silently Troy handed him the glasses, pointing to the wadi. Moffitt studied the area and when he returned the binoculars his lips were grim.

"Well, Doctor," Troy said, climbing down. "They teach you anything at Cambridge about preserving bones as well as digging them up?"

"Rather," Moffitt said and smiled. "Especially if they're mine. You think that track is an invitation to step into a Devil's Garden?"

"That's it, Jack," Troy said tersely. "You're the expert on field mines. Aren't they laid in some kind of pattern?"

Moffitt turned to survey the wadi and the innocent appearing sand on either side and beyond.

"Usually they're U-boxes," he said. "Open at our end, as a sort of invitation, you know. Fenced across the base, at their end. Three or four miles wide, probably four miles long. If this is a Devil's Garden, about ten yards back from the entry here, they'll have French and Egyptian tank mines laid in horseshoe patterns. That's the subterranean stuff. The actual garden is behind the tank mines. Simple T-mines laid in tiers of two or three. Nasty things. If you do find and remove the first mine, you will detonate the second or third mine in the process. You'll find Italian grenades attached to the T-bombs. And there probably will be S-mines. They're anti-personnel machines that leap into the air hurling metal in all directions. Frightful playthings."

"What do we do, Doctor?" Troy asked dryly. "We're dead on our bearing. We don't have time to go around."

"I'd think not," Moffitt said agreeably. "And it really wouldn't do much good to try, you know. There will be areas mined indiscriminately at the perimeters. We'd have to creep through on hands and knees. We look for the safe path through the garden. They always leave one someplace in the pattern for their own patrols. We'll probe until we find it."

"Oh, fine," Troy said, swinging to Tully and Hitch. "So Moffitt and I will go ahead on foot. If we're blown up, don't go around. Come straight on through. It'll be safe by then."

"Sure, Sarge," Tully said, "but you won't be there."

"You're stealing Hitch's lines," Troy said, teeth gleaming in his dark and dusty face as he grinned. He turned back to Moffitt, cocking his bush hat jauntily. "Shall we have at it, Doctor?"

In his jeep, Hitch blew a bubble and popped it. "Mine sweepers would have been handy," he observed.

Cradling tommy guns, Troy walked with Moffitt down toward the wadi. They halted about fifty yards from it.

"We'll just dig a bit until we find the gap in the pattern," Moffitt said.

Troy grinned crookedly and said, "Are you ready, Doctor?"

"Ready on the firing line, Sam," Moffitt said, lifting his tommy gun to his shoulder.

Troy considered the garden of land mines he believed lay before them. The desert is the loneliest battlefield in the world, especially when you know that in the vast and manless expanse of nothingness before you, the enemy has planted his deadly seed.

"Fire at will," Troy said, raising his weapon.

"No comment," Hitch called.

"But you always liked Will," Tully said and chortled.

Moffitt fired a burst into the sand twenty-five yards ahead and Troy worked his burst into a converging arc. They lifted their sights, marching their bursts in a jeep-wide path all the way to the edge of the wadi. They detonated nothing.

"Looks safe that far," Troy said, striding ahead through the clinging sand.

"Wait," Moffitt said. He handed his tommy gun to Troy, unhooked a grenade from his web belt and ran toward the wadi. Near the edge of it, he unpinned the grenade, hurled it into the depression beyond the mark of the halftrack and fell to his face.

Troy flung himself into the old-smelling sand. There was a moment of hollow silence, intensified by the throaty breathing of the jeep motors and then a single blast as the grenade exploded pelting him with a shower of sand. As he was pushing himself to his knees, Moffitt motioned him to wait, ran into the wadi and pitched a grenade straight ahead into the desert beyond. Again the only explosion came from the grenade.

"We go that-a-way," Troy sang out, pointing straight ahead.

Troy walked across the wadi to Moffitt who was studying the desert.

"So I was wrong," Troy said.

"Not necessarily," Moffitt said. "Let's walk our bursts into the desert."

They stepped their bursts in a path for a hundred yards and detonated nothing.

"Now off to he sides," Moffitt said.

Almost immediately Moffitt exploded a mine just off the far end of the trail which their machine gun bullets had blazed. It leapt six feet in the air flinging showers of junk metal and sand in all directions. His bursts found a second mine and Troy detonated three in quick succession on the other side of the path.

"S-mines," Moffitt said. "They're triggered to blow up at the slightest disturbance."

"What do you think, Jack?" Troy asked. An uneasy, troubled feeling nagged him.

"Why, we're in luck, old boy," Moffitt said and chuckled. "First crack, we found the pathway in the pattern. The garden gate is open."

Troy looked into the deadly Devil's Garden and to the sides of the path at the dumps of sand that marked the places where the S-mines had erupted. One miscalculation and the four of them would be indistinguishable bits and pieces mingled with the twisted remnants of the jeeps.

"Wilson's over there some place," Troy said slowly. Sweat streaked down his caked face and his smile was stiff. "He'll be expecting us."

"Right-o," Moffitt said with a tiny smile. "We'll clear the way. Shall we be off?"

He started walking slowly ahead into the mine field. "Not on foot," Troy said. "We'll ride."

Moffitt looked at him and shrugged.

Colonel Dan Wilson inspected his surroundings and considered his circumstances. At the moment his quarters, although Spartan, were reasonably comfortable. He was housed in a second-floor room of a substantial building he took to be German operational headquarters in a native town somewhere in the desert. It was dark in the room because the one window was shuttered and very little of the gray light of day filtered through. The room was furnished barely with a desk and two straight wooden chairs but it was not used as an office. He was quite certain of this because the moment the guard had locked him in, he had quickly and carefully inspected the desk, even pulling out the drawers, and had failed to find a single scrap of paper. With its shuttered window and two straight, hard chairs, the room plainly was used for interrogations.

That he would be interrogated Wilson had no doubt. Well, he thought determinedly, brushing the top of his close-cropped head with his hand, he'd give his name, rank and serial number, and no more.

The thought brought a wry smile to his hard, lean face but the smile did not warm his steely eyes. He remembered a young private who had asked him what he should say if he were captured and to whom he had answered:

"Conventions of War, son. Your name, rank and serial number. That's all."

And the private had complained, "But suppose they don't want my serial number?"

They would want more than a serial number from him, Wilson knew, and he wondered how far they were prepared to go to get it. West Point knew about all there was to know concerning warfare except what a man's breaking point would be. They put a lot of starch in your spine at the Point but who could say how long you would stand up when there was nothing left of your mind or body except starch? He just hoped he would mercifully pass out from whatever it was they did to him each time before an uncontrollable sound escaped from his throat. He wished to hell he didn't know what he did, that he had not been in on the combined Allied Forces briefing with Eisenhower and Montgomery the week before. He wished to hell he had not felt he must set an example for his men this day, manning the gun himself in the lead armored car, standing dauntless in white varnished helmet with twin pearl-handled pistols at his hips out in front for all to see. It was good for morale but his Army career was over for doing a damned fool thing like that even if be did manage to get out of this.

Now he remembered who the private was who had wanted to know what to say if he were captured and the enemy was not interested in his serial number. That had been the lanky lad from Kentucky, Private Tully Pettigrew of the Rat Patrol. Wilson's pulse quickened at the thought of the Rat Patrol. That incorrigible quartet had pulled off some fantastic missions, or capers, as Troy impudently preferred to consider them. The regiment had Intelligence on the name of the place where Dietrich's headquarters were located, if it was Dietrich's men who had captured him. And if they could pinpoint this handful of buildings.

But, Wilson thought, his spirits sagging, even if they could locate this place, breaking him out of Dietrich's headquarters would be expecting the impossible. His entire regiment could not take a strong point like this.

He stood, smoothing his still neat and clean fatigues, and walked to the shuttered window. From outside he heard a jumble of voices, some of which he knew to be German, others he supposed to be Arabian, and the sounds of much activity, the bustle that always accompanies the military whatever its nation. This must be a very strong point indeed, he thought. He walked to the door. The outside movement was constant, flowing and ebbing, and he sensed a high-echelon tension in the atmosphere. Be reasonable, he told himself, the Rat Patrol is your only hope and the Jerries have put you in the one spot where the Patrol can never reach you.

He returned to the chair in front of the desk and sat in it, erect and stiff. The Jerries had been polite enough, to this point, and had not even removed any of his effects except his helmet and pistols although they had searched him thoroughly for any other weapon. The lieutenant who had supervised the inspection had seemed amused at the pistols. Now Wilson lighted a cigarette and looked at his watch in the flare of the Zippo. It was 1630, almost two hours since they had locked him in this room. He fidgeted, wondering when they would start to question him, and his mind grew brittle. Then he forced himself to relax against the hard back of the chair, even smiling a little. They would ignore him, of course, for a day, two days, without food or water, seeing no one, talking with no one, hoping that being alone with his thoughts and doubts would begin to erode his will.

The idea had scarcely crossed his mind when there was a sound at the door and it swung open. An orderly, a butcher-faced fat boy with piggy eyes marched in. He was carrying a large tray and on it was an acetylene lantern which he placed on the desk. It glared with a cold, green-white light on an aluminum pitcher that smelled as if it contained coffee, two metal cups and a plate that was covered with a large white napkin. As the orderly walked with precise, clacking steps from the room, Wilson leaned over the desk to lift the cloth on the plate. Someone else entered the room and the door closed behind him.

"Ah, Colonel Wilson," a voice said in precise but German-accented English.

Wilson stood erect and turned quickly. He saw a tall, sinewy, young German officer with intent eyes, a pointed and stem but rather handsome face. He was wearing a conspicuously clean and well pressed sand-tan uniform and the epaulets of a captain.

"Hauptmann Dietrich," the officer said, smiling thinly and bowing slightly from the waist. He waved at the tray. "I have come for coffee with you."

"That is thoughtful of you, Captain," Wilson said coolly, thinking, I'm to get the soft treatment at first, and when that does not work, the other will seem harsher than it is by contrast. He remained standing.

"Sit down, Colonel," Dietrich said, walking around the desk and sitting behind it. He studied Wilson a moment and smiled his tight smile that revealed self satisfaction but no humor. "We have been adversaries for some time. I thought we should become acquainted. You have been a worthy opponent."

Without comment, Wilson sat in the chair opposite Dietrich and watched impassively while he poured coffee from the pitcher into the tin cups. Dietrich lifted the cloth from the dish.

"Sandwiches, as you were about to discover when I entered," he said with the cold smile lingering on his lips. "We have been fortunate here on the desert. The coffee is not ersatz and now and then we are able to get some fresh meat from the tribesmen. This may be goat but if it is not too old, you will find it quite tasty."

Wilson found himself astonishingly hungry and the coffee and sandwiches astonishingly good. When Dietrich had poured second cups of coffee and lighted their cigarettes, he leaned back and the impersonal smile came again to his mouth.

"Did you know, Colonel," he said, "that I am a student of your American Indian? Of Indian warfare and tactics to be precise."

"That is interesting," Wilson said warily.

"Yes," Dietrich said. "I find much that is analogous between the methods used in battle between your Indian tribes and the tactics we use with tanks and armored cars. Your Indians would encircle or push through the spearhead of a file and attack from the rear. In more than one battle, Rommel has employed a maneuver that might have been devised by Cochise himself. Perhaps we have adapted or even borrowed outright some of our most successful tactics from your Indians although I do not think Rommel would be pleased to hear that. You will not tell him, hein?" Dietrich laughed shortly but with a glint of amusement in his eyes. "Do you not agree, Colonel, there is something here that merits consideration?"

"I hadn't thought about it that way," Wilson said carefully. "It's an interesting theory."

"Yes," Dietrich said. "Now you have employed an unorthodox patrol which has been troublesome to me. It is called, I believe, the Rat Patrol. To continue my analogy, this Rat Patrol compares with the Indian raiding parties that struck swiftly in small numbers and were gone before their victims recovered from their surprise. Will you not agree there are many points of similarity between the warfare we have waged here in northern Africa and the forays of your Indians?"

"Yes," Wilson said, smiling a little at this admission from Dietrich that the Teutonic supermen could learn from others. "I will concede there are many points."

"Ah, Colonel, I am gratified," Dietrich said and his smile was smug. "If you will pardon me, I must say that this has been a satisfying day. You are a chief of a tribe of the Indians who have opposed us. With your capture I have removed a long thorn from my side."

"The fortunes of war," Wilson said, coldly now.

"But of course," Dietrich said with a genial wave of his hand. "And I think that by tomorrow morning, I shall have pulled a second thorn that has annoyed me even more than you personally have done."

Wilson felt apprehension chill his heart and remained silent.

"I see you suspect," Dietrich said and laughed aloud with obvious enjoyment. "I expect that your Rat Patrol will come racing across the desert in a foolish attempt to rescue you and I have laid an Indian trap for them. Out there, the way they must come, we have planted a small Devil's Garden which we expect them to discover. We have, however, left the gate invitingly open to the safe pathway. Once we have them in the garden, we shall close the gate and nail it tightly shut.

2

It smelled. Out of the darkening desert afternoon, the odor of the trap reached from Dietrich's headquarters at Sidi Abd across the Devil's Garden and irritated Troy's nostrils. He had no intention of entering the garden through the gate they had so easily discovered. The mark of the halftrack and the safe path were an obvious trap.

Halfway through the garden, the path would be thickly sown with mines or the Jerries would be waiting for them by the fence at the other end.

Troy had a plan. It was a desperate one but it might work. Hell, it had to work. Wilson was walking around, or penned up somewhere, with too much knowledge in his head. If Dietrich couldn't get him to talk, there was always the Gestapo and they would work Wilson over until he talked or was dead. Either way Wilson was dead but a man could take only so much before he spilled his guts.

He had Tully drive the jeep forward through the wadi and onto the path, reverse meticulously following the impressions left by the treads of his tires, then drive back into the garden. Tully, who had learned to negotiate a trail only the deer could follow when he was running the ridges of Kentucky with moonshine, repeated the operation until the wadi and the path showed the unmistakable marks of a jeep entering the Devil's Garden through this gateway.

Troy leapt in beside Tully and back atop the dunes where the shifting sands quickly obliterated all sign of passage, the two jeeps raced north for two miles along the crest until they found a depression concealed from horizontal view that thrust into the garden area.

He watched with Tully and Hitch from far back as Moffitt crept forward, studied the terrain, retreated and hurled a grenade into the sector he had marked. As Moffitt plunged to the earth, a series of explosions blasted the desert, throwing great curtains of sand and dust and metal into the air. A second and a third time, Moffitt pitched grenades into the depression until he was certain no more antitank mines remained in a space wider than the jeeps. Then Troy examined with him the craters where the sand already was sliding back. They worked the blasted area carefully with rapid successions of bursts from their tommy guns and when they did not explode any mines, lifted their fire in five-foot paths into the desert beyond. They exploded half a dozen T-mines beyond the horseshoe of antitank mines and then, advancing on foot, detonated several S-mines. The air hung thick and gritty with dust and sand.

"I said we'd ride," Troy said, halting Moffitt who shook his head and smiled faintly.

Back at the jeeps, Troy directed Tully to pull his jeep around and put it in reverse at the edge of the holes the mines had dug in the depression. While Troy stood beyond within the garden, Tully gunned the machine. The jeep plummeted into the unsubstantial sand which the explosions had left the consistency of dry cornmeal. The jeep came back, wheels spinning and slipping to one side. Troy felt the muscles knot in his jaws as Tully fought and twisted the steering wheel with one hand as he craned his head to watch the sides of the trough. The jeep continued to slip as it skidded through the middle of the horseshoe and then, just as it seemed certain it was going to climb right off the path, Tully whipped the wheel a full half-circle and the jeep pounded up onto the narrow trail within the garden where the lighter, anti-personnel mines had not completely disintegrated the sand foundation. Tully grinned and winked as Troy jumped into the rear of the jeep behind the machine gun and pointed the fifty caliber weapon over the back of the vehicle into the endless furrows of the Devil's Garden.

Hitch plowed the other jeep with Moffitt over in forward. With Tully in reverse, nose to nose in single file, the jeeps of the Rat Patrol began to inch their way through the dreaded minefield. At the machine gun, Troy swept their pathway clear, firing into the sand in interlinking arcs fifty yards ahead. The mines seemed to have been laid with typical German precision in a checkerboard. Troy quickly established the pattern and picked them off accurately with short bursts.

The pounding blasts hurled gritty showers of stinging sand that blinded Troy and the sharp taste of cordite burned his throat. Although the sun was mantled, its heat seeped through and came down in clinging coats of dust. Troy tried to keep the path cleared at least fifty yards ahead but in the thick spray of sand that rose from the desert floor, it was impossible to see without stopping every few yards. When a chunk of metal would come hurtling out of the unseen distance to clang against the jeep, Troy would jam the bush hat that afforded no protection over his forehead and resume firing.

Although the desert floor was blown with pockets of loose sand, Tully managed to hold to the right-of-way Troy was preempting and when the jeep's tires began to spin, Hitch eased up to give a push.

It was a tedious, nerve-rasping procession. A few yards further on they stopped while the air cleared and until Troy could blink his eyes, bare his teeth, grip the machine gun with both hands and blaze back into action. It must look and sound like a major tank battle out here, he thought, wondering how far they had come into the garden and whether they could be seen or heard from Sidi Abd.

He called another halt, swiped his grimed face with the back of his hand and took a swig from his canteen. When the dust had settled and he looked into the other jeep, Moffitt was standing, scanning the distance with his binoculars.

"What is it, Jack?" Troy called hoarsely.

"We're about through, Sam," Moffitt said, jumping down and edging on the path close to the jeeps back to Troy. He handed him the glasses. "Ahead about a half a mile, you see what looks like a hedge?"

Troy rubbed his eyes and adjusted the glasses. The line across the desert came into focus. It looked like tumbleweed piled along a prairie fence line. As he studied it, the dark and thorny fence came into detail. Poles and steel stakes were interwoven with a jumble of barbed wire that raised a barrier in both directions. He raised the glasses to the rolling dunes, searching for the outline of a sentry, a watchful Arab or a patrol but the land was as empty of life as the mountains of the moon.

"This is your country, Doctor," Troy said, returning the glasses to Moffitt. "How much farther to Sidi Abd?" Moffitt went back to the other jeep, got out a chart and did some calculations with compass and dividers.

"Three miles, more or less," he called, sounding surprised. "We're closer than I thought. Straight ahead over the blasted dunes."

"Thank God for the dunes," Troy said, pushing back his hat. "I hope they've hidden our sound and fury. Think you and I could bird dog the jeeps through to the fence, Jack? I don't like to risk any more noise and dust."

"Carry on," Moffitt said cheerfully.

Troy came stiffly down from his mount behind the gun. He felt like an ancient mummy whose skin had stiffened and whose veins had been drained for two thousand years. Submachine guns tucked under their arms, he and Moffitt crouched a jeep's width apart, pushing gradually ahead as they examined each foot of ground for the depressions in the sand that usually marked the place an S-mine had been buried. The jeeps, Tully still in reverse, crept closely after them.

"Hold on," Moffitt muttered before they had advanced ten yards. "Got a bloody bugger here. Shall we see if we can find a way through to the left?"

The jeeps stopped, their running motors smelling hot. Troy moved cautiously over to the left and came up short. There was a telltale sink spot.

"Nope," he said and they moved off to the right. Moffitt found evidence of another mine.

They separated, examining the field for thirty yards in each direction and discovered that a line of mines had been laid about three feet apart, barring their way to the fence at the end of the garden. The obscured sky seemed to be getting darker and Troy glanced at his watch. It was 1630 hours. He lifted one shoulder and one corner of his mouth in an attitude that expressed no choice, sent the jeeps back into the garden for fifty yards, climbed behind the machine gun and exploded the two mines directly in their path. Then he and Moffitt went forward again by foot. Apparently the line of mines had been the last defense because they reached the great tangle of barbed wire without encountering further planting. The fence looked impenetrable.

"What now, Sarge?" Tully asked, climbing out and leaning against the nose of the jeep. He twisted the match-stick in his mouth as he glanced up and down the bales of wire.

"Turn the baby around, Tully," Troy said patiently and laughed. "Here's one question anyway we don't have to answer for ourselves. Here's where we park the jeeps."

"Here?" Tully said and clucked.

"Right here by the fence at the edge of the Devil's Garden," Troy said firmly. "We'll take out the things we're going to need, throw the camouflage netting over them and take off on foot as soon as it's dark. This is the one place they'd never look if we are picked up. We've already got our getaway route right through the middle of the mine field. It's about as good as it could be."

"If they haven't got us spotted like bears in a berry patch," Tully said and something in his voice made Troy look sharply at him. Tully's eyes were distant and Troy followed their direction to a dune that lay ashy-colored in the late afternoon. A thin whorl of dust was swirling smokily from behind it.

"If they haven't got us spotted," Troy agreed.

The desert night was quick in falling and by the time they had thrown the netting over the jeeps, deposited small but essential pieces of equipment upon their persons and concealed themselves within enfolding dark robes and burnooses, it was dark enough to start the trek over the sandy swells of the desert to Sidi Abd. Tully had his Bowie knife slung at his belt while Troy had a kris with a ridged serpentine blade in a sheath. He touched its razor edge and grinned; he hadn't had a chance to use the knife since he'd taken it from a Malaysian he'd caught cheating at craps in Tangiers. Neither he nor Tully carried side arms although Moffitt and Hitch wore forty-fives beneath their robes.

"Watch the way you point that thing if you have to use it," Troy told Hitch who had left his glasses behind. "If you think it's a Jerry, give it a chance to say something in German before you pull the trigger."

"Hey, now, Sarge," Hitch protested, "I see like an owl in the dark."

"We shall use firearms only in a moment of extremity," Moffitt said mockingly.

"Yeah, like to save our skins," Hitch said.

They snipped a passageway through the fence with heavy wirecutters, bending the spiney strands with leather gloves so they faced into the desert and would not impede them if they came back through at a dead run. The wire-cutters and gloves were buried in the desert outside the fence. Silent, gliding shadows, they merged with the chill, black night, moving like tenuous clouds over dunes and through wadis until they came to a rise above the town of Sidi Abd. From a distance it appeared to be a substantial place for a desert village. They moved slowly forward toward the hunched outlines of buildings where most lights flickered feebly like candles, dimmed by the white brightness of illumination from a few places that penetrated the night until they could make out a thick plastered wattle wall of sunbaked clay that surrounded the town. There appeared to be only one entrance in the enclosure and at its vault an acetylene lamp was burning with a garish intensity.

Outside the walls, massed in two double rows, one row on each side of a corridor leading to the entrance in the fortification, were Dietrich's halftracks and tanks, massive and sinister. The halftracks lined either side of the corridor. The tanks were on the outsides and on either side beyond them were ranks of tents. All of the vehicles were facing out into the desert. There were a few feet between tails and noses of the armored vehicles and a tight passageway between the lines of halftracks and tanks. There appeared to be about a dozen halftracks and a dozen tanks in each column. It was a formidable sight.

"Hey, Jack," Troy whispered and Moffitt slid next to him. "Look at that. Sitting ducks. If it weren't for Wilson, we could blast Dietrich's whole armored outfit sky high."

"Perhaps we can accomplish both purposes," Moffitt said with a chuckle. "I have a couple packages, you know."

"Only if there's an opportunity after we come out with Wilson," Troy said sharply. "He's the first objective."

"Right-oh," Moffitt said softly.

Troy was studying the village beyond the wall. Solid groups of low white huts with several larger, more impressive structures were built wall to wall about a palm-filled area where the waterhole must be. There seemed to be a bazaar near the center of the town and one imposing two-story building at the intersection of two streets or alleys opposite this trading area. Moffitt had said the two-story building had been the palace of a strong tribal chief-tan and probably was where Dietrich had established his headquarters. The old palace was brightly lighted with what appeared to be acetylene lamps.

The sounds from the village carried to the dune, alien voices in many languages;, and above the voices and the shouts, Troy could hear occasional clatterings of machinery in motion. Even out here on the desert, the smells crept out—cooking smells, greasy and throat filling; odors of gasoline and oil of the fat lamps that burned in the houses and bazaar; and the lingering smell of war from the recently fired gun barrels. There was the not unpleasant odor of animal defecation but it was overridden by the rotten smell of human sewage.

"All right, Doctor," Troy told Moffitt. "Tully and I will slip into town through the gate. You and Hitch hide somewhere near the vehicles. Pick out one and be ready to grab it and take off when we come through with Wilson."

"I say, old boy, wouldn't it be better if I went in?" Moffitt asked quietly. "I speak most Arabic dialects, you know."

"That's why I want you outside," Troy said sharply. "If you're discovered loitering, you can pass it off. If you went in, there's the chance some Arab might recognize you from the trips you've made here with your father. Tully and I will locate the building where they're keeping Wilson and we'll do whatever we have to do to spring him. If we're not back by an hour before sun-up, you'll have to assume they've picked us up. If that's the way it turns out, you and Hitch go back to the jeeps and hole up under the camouflage until tomorrow night. Then give it a try yourselves. But remember, if you do have to come in, it's Wilson who counts, not us. He's the one we have to get away from here."

"Right," Moffitt said with a smile. "Well, luck and all that. We'll wait about here a bit until we see you're safely in before we drift down and pick out a vehicle for our departure."

Hitch popped his bubble gum.

"And you get rid of that gum, you idiot," Troy hissed.

"But Sarge," Hitch protested, "It's all I've got with me."

"Stick it," Troy said, "behind your ear."

Troy and Tully circled away from the dune and came toward the vaulted entrance in the village wall from the opposite direction. A corridor between the armor, ready for pursuit or attack, was patrolled on each side, and other guards were stationed behind the vehicles, between them and the tents. The two sentries in the dark way that led to the entry in the wall paid little attention as Troy and Tully, heads bent and faces concealed within their burnooses, approached the wall. At the opening, however, a bullnecked sergeant with a machine pistol blocked their way. He was carefully scrutinizing each robed figure entering or leaving the village in the light of an acetylene lantern hanging at the top of the arched entrance and he looked sharply in the direction of Troy and Tully as they approached him.

Troy hunched within his robe, head sunk between his shoulders until his burnoose concealed all of his face but his nose. He extended his hand from his robe and shuffled directly to the guard.

"Baksheesh," he wheedled, "baksheesh, enfendi."

"Neiti," the guard barked, shaking his head vigorously and pulling back as if he feared that Troy might touch him.

Troy grinned behind his burnoose and entered Sidi Abd with Tully at his heels.

The loud-voiced, beery-smelling soldiers of the Afrika Korps demanded and received unquestioned right-of-way in the dark, cramped streets. Troy and Tully hugged the walls and they squirmed toward the bazaar. The village was drenched with shadows and only now and then did a little yellow light spill from some unshuttered window or uncurtained doorway. But at the two-story structure opposite the bazaar, light glared blue-white from opened doors and windows. A dimly lit restaurant or some kind of public house stood across the way from the large, brightly lighted building and soldiers pushed in and out the open doorway.

Troy and Hitch stepped back into the dark recess of a doorway next to the tavern and Troy studied the building no more than ten feet across from him. Although it did not bear the usual German legend proclaiming in great, black block letters to the world of Sidi Abd that this was an important post, Troy was certain it was Dietrich's operational headquarters. The acetylene lamps burning in the two rooms behind the windows on either side of the open entry hallway and the four windows at the front of the second story indicated this clearly. Through the vaulted first-floor windows, Troy could see tables and filing cases and on the far wall of one room, maps and charts. A guard stood at stiff attention at the entrance and as Troy watched, several officers entered the building. He could not determine much about the second floor but the position of four tall windows spaced close together seemed to indicate a single large room at the front of the old palace.

Unless Dietrich already had sent him away, Colonel Wilson probably was confined within that building. Troy smiled lopsidedly; all he and Tully had to do was get inside the building, find Wilson, liberate him and get out of town with him.

He felt someone looking at him and glanced quickly down from the roof of the structure. An officer with the peaked cap of the Afrika Korps riding squarely on his head was standing a few feet away, examining him suspiciously. Troy pulled his face inside his burnoose, took Tully by the hand and led him down the wall and into the tavern doorway.

It was a long and narrow room, a hallway of a place, murkily lighted with fat lamps that permeated the smoky air with their reek. Tables lined either wall with a cramped aisle between. Although the place was jammed with soldiers, most of them were concentrated at the far end where there appeared to be a small stage and entertainment. Several tables near the entrance were vacant and Troy hustled Tully into a dark comer.

Now he heard wailing music that seemed to be coming from some single stringed instrument, a piping horn and a muted drum. Between the shoulders of the soldiers, he caught flashes of a dark-haired, bare-shouldered girl who was convoluting and swaying. Troy glanced swiftly at the doorway and finding it empty, stood. From the distant brief views he had of the girl, he thought she must be French or Italian or even Spanish. She was not, he was certain, an Arabian girl.

As he watched, the music stopped abruptly and the girl disappeared through a curtained doorway at the back of the room. There was no applause although several of the soldiers shouted after the girl. Then they began to move back down toward the front of the tavern, not sitting at the tables but crowding toward the doorway. Troy and Tully withdrew into their comer.

There was the clang of a cymbal and the men still seated pushed back their chairs, rose muttering among themselves and drifting out with the others.

"Curfew," Troy whispered.

"That go for us Ay-rabs, too?" Tully asked.

"I don't know," Troy said tightly. "One thing for sure, it's going to make us conspicuous."

Troy looked back at the doorway, suddenly and decisively knocked back his chair and stood.

"I'm going to take a chance on that girl," he said and walked rapidly toward the curtained doorway at the rear.

"Won't you never learn, Sarge?" Tully moaned at his shoulder.

"When we go through the curtain take a quick look behind you," Troy said stepping into a dismal passageway.

Standing in the doorway at the front observing them closely was the Afrika Korps officer in the peaked cap.

3

Moffitt and Hitch crouched motionless and hidden by the enveloping night in the sand beyond the double rows of tanks and armored cars that faced into the desert outside the walls of Sidi Abd. At the entrance to the town, the acetylene lantern was a bright blob of light in which hulked the outline of the guard. The light scantily touched only the hoods of the first two halftracks and the corridor between the vehicles became a tunnel to the opaque oblivion of black at the far end where Moffitt and Hitch lurked. A few acetylene lanterns burned within the tents that stood in taut ranks behind the vehicles on either side, but most of the shelters were dark. There was a tenacious impenetrability to the night. It was as if the clouded desert sky was an inky-colored sponge that sucked in and absorbed whatever light was spilled by wasteful man.

Although the sand still was warm from the diffused heat of the gray day, the night was cold and there was a faintly dank smell that seemed to warn of rain riding above the fat-sodden, slow-crawling cooking odors. Sergeant and private, Briton and Ivy Leaguer, scholar and school dropout, Moffitt and Hitch huddled in their dark robes and patiently observed the movements of the sentries about the Jerry armor. The patrols of each of the four guards had been carefully planned so that at all times there was one man, front or back, at each end of the double rows of vehicles.

"A bit sticky, wouldn't you say?" Moffitt said softly, reaching beneath his robe to touch the two packages of plastic explosives at his belt. "We can't just walk in as Troy and Tully did, plant our charges and say 'ta-ta.'"

"One of those guards will goof off sooner or later," Hitch whispered confidently. "One of them's going to want a smoke or have to go to the can. You'll see."

"We have only all night," Moffitt said. It was true; it probably would drag for Hitch and him but he hoped there would be hours enough in it for Troy and Tully. "Do you have any preference in the vehicle we appropriate for our flight?"

"Sure," Hitch said promptly. He pulled the wad of gum from behind his ear and pushed it in his mouth. "Don't worry about the gum, Doc, I'll get rid of it when we move. About the cars, I'd prefer a scout car but I haven't seen one. They must have them somewhere else in a motor pool. I figure we take the halftrack closest to the wall and bust out in it."

"Why not the last one in the line, the one farthest out in the desert?" Moffitt chided.

"Doc," Hitch said and he sounded annoyed. "You know as well as I do, they'd run us down before we got to it. We've got to get out ahead of them and run away fast."

"Good lad," Moffitt said approvingly. "Where do you think we ought to drop our packages?"

"Aw, you're just making conversation," Hitch said. "We'll carry them with us in the back of our halftrack and toss them where they'll do the most good when we make the run for it."

"Right-o," Moffitt said, chuckling. Then he gripped Hitch's arm and said quietly, "Down there, at the wall." Soldiers were spewing from the opening, separating and streaming along the wall to either side behind the last vehicles, going toward the rows of tents. The four guards who had been patrolling the armor now had lined up together to block off the corridor.

"Come along," Moffitt said quickly. "We can at least get into the vehicles."

He ran in a shambling crouch down the dark alleyway with Hitch loping behind him. Halfway to the wall, still cloaked by the blackness of the night, he dodged between two armored cars and, followed closely by Hitch, climbed over the side and dropped into the back of a halftrack. He slid down the metal wall and Hitch sat on the steel floor beside him.

"It's going to be more than just my aching back by morning," Hitch said ruefully.

"Easy now," Moffitt cautioned abruptly, stiffening and listening to the night. Despite the grumbling jumble of voices from the tents, he thought he had heard a distant whisper of slipping sands. Placing both hands on the steel bulwark of the halftrack, he vaulted over the side and cupped his ear a few inches from the ground. He distinctly heard the trickling sound that warns the desert-wise of someone's wary approach from far-off. He stood and whispered to Hitch, "Du kanst mir."

"Maybe," Hitch replied under his breath, "If I knew what you were saying."

Moffitt chuckled silently and asked, "Do you have your nylon noose?"

"Natch," Hitch said as if the question were unnecessary. "What are you going to do?"

"Intercept the enemy and entice him back here where we can deal with him," Moffitt said quietly. "Stand by for action."

"You mean we're going to play rough again?" Hitch whispered.

"It does look that way," Moffitt said and sighed.

He edged along the cold armor of the halftrack to the corridor. Although Moffitt still was wrapped in the obscuring night, he could see the outline of a figure in a peaked cap striding toward him through a twilight zone. Shrinking within his robe, he slunk forward toward the Jerry.

"Wo gehtz?" the German officer called sharply and his hand slapped to his holster and jerked out a Luger.

Bobbing his head and clasping his hands before him, Moffitt took a few faltering steps toward the officer.

"Mass'-el-Kheir, enfendi," he said in a plaintive voice. "Izayak?"

Clearly not understanding the simple greeting in Arabic, the officer reached out a hard hand, seized Moffitt's robe in a bunch at his chest, shook him violently and threw him backwards. Moffitt crashed into the side of an armored car and staggered a few steps forward.

"Was gehtz bei ihnen?" the officer demanded harshly and jammed the pistol into Moffitt's ribs.

Moffitt giggled nervously and nodded his head apologetically. In halting German, he said, "Ich hab' eine fraulein." He described two generous arcs with his hands, took one step away and beckoned, repeating, "Eine fraulein."

"Sie sprechen?" The German was amazed and lowered his pistol for a moment. Then he grasped Moffitt's shoulder roughly, spun him around and rammed the pistol in his kidney. "Wir wollen sehen aus," he growled and prodded Moffitt on.

Moffitt stumbled down the line past two vehicles and turned into the narrow space between the second and third. The officer threw the crook of his arm around Moffitt's throat and ground the pistol deeper into his back. Locked together, they edged ahead in the black, soundless, motionless pocket. Moffitt tensed, ready to break the hammer-lock the moment Hitch struck.

"Lailtak ayeeda atainaik behair," he muttered, hoping Hitch could locate them by the sound of his voice.

The German's arm tightened like a vise. Moffitt gasped and choked, scarcely able to breathe.

With a suddenness that surprised even Moffitt who was expecting it, Hitch lashed at the German with his noose. The officer jerked and in the flickering of time when his arm about Moffitt's neck relaxed, Moffitt squirmed about chopping at the hand that held the pistol at the same time he was groining the man with his knee. Briefly the German's hands clutched at Moffitt's throat but then they reached back to struggle at his own. Moffitt smashed his knee into the German's groin again but he already had begun to slump. Hitch tumbled over the side of the halftrack and fell onto the ground atop the man. Moffitt heard Hitch grunt twice and then he was up on his knees, then standing, breathing hard, astride the officer. Although Moffitt could not see it in the dark, he knew a two-foot length of plaited nylon rope was dangling from one of Hitch's hands.

"Good show," Moffitt said quietly. "As neat a job of garroting as ever I've lived through."

"What do we do with the corpus delecti?" Hitch whispered.

"Heave it over the side into the halftrack," Moffitt said.

They propped the lifeless, sagging figure against the side and, supporting and tugging, boosted themselves and the corpse over and onto the bed. Moffitt bent over the limp form and swiftly began to undress it.

"His cap and pistol," he said urgently. "They must be out there on the ground. We'll have to find them."

Hitch clambered down and Moffitt removed the German's belt, tunic, shirt, boots and breeches. He laid the clothing carefully in a pile in one comer, rolled the body over and shoved it against the gun mount. Hitch climbed back with the cap and pistol which Moffitt placed on top of the other clothing.

"Let's move," Hitch said. "I used to call this place home but it's getting crowded."

"Rather," Moffitt said agreeable. "Shall we pop off?"

"Yeah, but wait a minute," Hitch said. He sounded puzzled. "Why'd you undress him? What are you going to do with his clothes?"

"Nothing, I hope," Moffitt said cheerfully. "But they'll be here if I need them. If I have to go in to look for Wilson, they'll be checking for Arabs like Troy and Tully, not a German officer."

"That I see, Doc," Hitch said. "Just one more thing. That chatter you gave out with when you brought him back. It sounded like you were sneezing, coughing and gargling all at once. Did it mean anything?"

"Indeed it did," Moffitt said, laughing. "I was being choked to death. Just before that, to let you know which of us was which, I'd told him good night and goodbye in idiomatic Arabic."

"Hey, that's pretty good, Doc," Hitch said and popped his gum appreciatively.

"Stow the chicle, myte," Moffitt said in tight Cockney. "If you'd ha' busted that buble at the wrong time, there'd neither of us be on deck for the next show."

"Yeah," Hitch said slowly. "It ought to be about time for the main event right soon."

The hallway behind the stage at the tavern was long and cramped and draped with odors so evil they would not mingle but were suspended in separate nauseatingly distinctive streamers of harsh tobacco, cloying perfume, rancid food, diseased flesh and decayed filth. Jaundiced fingers of light from fat lamps poked feebly through brown beads that curtained the archways to two rooms at the left and one room at the end. No sound came from the two rooms off the hall but conversation jangled from the end room.

Troy swallowed, tasting the bitter-sour spume of bile, and thought the last room must be a kitchen where all were dipping fingers in a communal pot. He and Tully stood furtively against the flaking rough walls a few feet back from the curtain, narrowly watching the German officer who stood in the front entrance. Lights from the building on the other side of the street outlined him clearly. The officer seemed uncertain whether or not to come in after them.

"We can wait here and take him quiet," Tully murmured. He reached under his robe and pulled out his long, curving Bowie knife. Glancing over at Troy, he wrinkled his forehead and lifted his eyebrows questioningly as he pricked his thumb with the knife's needle point.

"He may think we belong here and go away," Troy said, sliding his kris in and out of its sheath. He glanced down the hall and then looked hard at Tully. "But one thing is sure, we have to get out of this stinking joint. If he comes looking for us, take him. I'm going to reconnoiter."

He backed along the wall of crumbly clay until he was opposite the first curtained opening. Moving forward inches at a time and breathing shallowly, he crept to the edge of the archway and peered between the beads. An enormous and shapeless old woman wrapped in black was seated on a pillow in the middle of a bare and desolate room that contained only a wick burning in a dish of fat on a low round table at one of the windowless walls. She was almost bald, only frizzled wisps of gray sprouting from her scalp, and her face was dark and gross. She had no neck. Her lips were blubbery and her nose a shapeless blob. Her eyes were ebony and she was staring straight at Troy. He froze.

Moments, minutes passed, and still the grotesque old woman sat as motionless and impassive as a Buddha, fixing him with her unflickering black eyes. Cautiously he lifted a hand, passed it back and forth just outside the beaded curtain. She sat trancelike, as if drugged, eyes not following the movement of his hand. He moved across to the other side of the hall, sweat beading his forehead, and darted a glance at Tully. He had moved another step away from the doorway and held the Bowie knife flat in his hand, expectant, tensed for action. Troy slid down the wall to the second archway.

Through the curtain he saw the dark-haired little dancer. She was seated in a spindly chair at a cluttered table against the back wall. She still wore her costume and her shoulders were bared to him. She was looking into a small framed mirror on the wall. Her shoulders and waist were thin and there was a red welt across her back between the spangles that bound her breasts and the gauze that hung from her waist about her legs like pantaloons. A fat lamp burned on her table showing an old brass bed pushed against the wall but occupying half the space of the room which was windowless like the other.

She must have seen his outline in the mirror because she twisted about on her chair. He parted the beads, entering the room with a warning finger at his lips.

Another time and another place, she might have developed into a rather pretty girl because her bones were regular and good, but her face was pinched and wan and her dark eyes were large and sad. Her lips looked too full in that little face and they came apart. Thinking she was about to scream, Troy swept the burnoose from his head and walked slowly toward her, smiling. Her expression changed from apprehension to bewilderment.

"Wer sind sie?" she asked in a hushed voice and although Troy did not understand her, he thought her German was uncertain.

"American," he said simply in English, wishing he had some of Moffitt's proficiency in languages. He pointed his finger to himself and then at her. Slowly and distinctly, hoping she would understand, he said, "I need your help."

"American," she gasped, motioning him agitatedly away from the doorway and to the bed. She whispered, "Be very quiet. I speak English, a little. How did you come here? What is it that you wish me to do?"

From her accent, he thought she must be French. She sat beside him on the bed and her perfume was very heavy. It filled his throat. Her lips were quivering and he picked up her hand. It trembled in his. He smiled reassuringly at her.

"Who are you and what are you doing here?" he asked.

"They brought me," she said, motioning with her free hand in the direction of the German headquarters. She sounded more resigned than bitter. "From Tunis. I am called Colette. What do you want of me?"

"Did they do this to you?" he asked, turning her by the shoulder until her back exposed the welt.

She bit her lip and nodded her head.

He slid his arm around her bare back and lifted her chin with the fingers of his other hand.

"You poor kid," he murmured gently, even tenderly. "You're playing in a rough league."

When he kissed her lips they were warm and moist and he forgot the perfume. She let the kiss linger a moment, returned it with a little pressure. Then she shuddered and pulled away. She stood, walked to the table and poured some dark red wine in glasses. When she handed a glass to him, her hand was shaking so she almost spilled the wine.

"Why did you come to Sidi Abd," she asked despairingly. "This is German headquarters."

"Yes," he said, grinning, and swallowed a little wine. It was very sour and he put the glass on the floor. "Across the street, isn't it?"

She nodded her head and whispered intently, "They will kill you if they find you."

"Yes," he said, pulling her down beside him on the bed. He kissed her lightly before she could protest. "Discouraging, isn't it? When we've only just found each other."

"You must not joke." She gripped his hand and her eyes seemed genuinely terrified. "What do you want of me?"

"A few more moments," he said easily.

"Oh, please," she said in a small tight voice. "I am afraid. What it is?"

"All right," he said, quickly serious. "I'm sorry. Is there another way out of here, a back way? There's a German officer standing at the front entrance."

"Oh, no," she said with a little moan.

"He doesn't know I'm American," Troy said. "Not yet."

"There is a way through the kitchen, into a small passage," Colette said. She turned her face to him and her eyes seemed to grow larger as she looked into his for a long moment. She whispered, "There are many persons eating there now. If I let you stay here with me until it is safe to leave, you will be kind to me?"

"Very kind," he said and this time when he kissed her, she clung to him. When he pulled away, he said, "I must ask a few questions. Is that where they keep the prisoners, in the building across the street?"

"When they have a prisoner, they take him there," she said, clasping his hand against her heart. He could feel it fluttering erratically. "It is not often they have a prisoner important enough to bring back with them. There is a room on the second floor at the side where the window is boarded up. If they have a prisoner, I think they take him to that room, at first."

"And then?" he asked.

"Who knows?" she said and lifted her shoulders helplessly. "They go away."

Troy reached for the glass and swallowed another mouthful of the vinegary wine. For a moment he was thoughtless, staring into the glass. As if the answer were there, he thought angrily. Colette went to the table, lighted two cigarettes and gave one to him. It was a Players, he noticed, and wondered whether the cigarettes had come from the black market or been taken from some poor devil of an Englishman, like Moffitt, who had been brought to the boarded up room for interrogation. And then been shot or shipped to the Gestapo at Bizerta for their amusement.

The beaded curtains fluttered silently and Troy leapt from the bed and sprang to the wall, hand reaching for his kris. Tully slipped into the room.

"He left," he said, sheathing his Bowie knife. An impudent smile danced in his eyes as they flicked over Colette. "Want I should wait outside, Sarge?"

Colette's eyes darted from Tully to Troy and he saw the stark terror in them. "Is this a commando raid?" she whispered tightly. "How many more of you are there?"

"There are only the two of us," Troy said softly. He waved toward the location of the German headquarters. "They have a friend of ours over there. We've come for him."

"You are fools," she said in a hoarse whisper.

"I have no doubt of that," Troy said and smiled. "Is there a curfew on Arabs as well as soldiers?"

"No," she said. "This is still their town."

"In that case," Tully said, "I think it might be a good idea to take off, Sarge. Out the front way like we came in."

"They'll be watching," Troy said shortly. "They'd follow. We'll stay here until we can go out the back."

Tully indifferently lifted his shoulders, strolled over to the bed and stretched out full length. He folded the burnoose away from his face, pulled the robes about his body and closed his eyes. A smile played about his lips.

"Did you have to bring him?" Colette whispered to Troy, as angry now as she had been fearful. "You I could hide, under my bed if necessary. But two I cannot. You can feel the presence of two persons who do not belong. If they find you, they will kill me because you are here." She seemed about to sob and took a deep but shaky breath. "You cannot stay here but I will do what I can. There is one place I think you will be safe until you can leave. I will take you to the room next door."

"But there's a weird old witch in there," Troy protested.

"She is deaf and blind," Colette said. "Everyone thinks she is evil and will not go near her. Only I enter the room to take her food and care for her. I will take the two of you to her room and you will remain seated quietly with your backs to the wall. I will come for you when the others have left the kitchen."

Troy studied her eyes. The anger that had flared up quickly had dissolved again in panic.

"Come on, Tully," he said sharply.

Tully rolled to his side and sat on the edge of the bed. "Sorry if I got in the way of things, Sarge," he said and grinned.

"We got what we came here for," Troy said.

"Did we?" Tully asked.

Colette led them stealthily down the hall and whisked them into the next room. The odor in this room was gagging, worse than in the hall. Colette pointed to the wall and motioned them to sit, facing the old woman. She placed a hand on the old lady's shoulder and handed her a glass of wine. The old one stared sightlessly at Troy and Tully as if she were aware of them. Troy shivered a little. He was sure she was. She did not take her blind eyes from him as she drank the wine, dribbling a stream down her chin in a dark line from the comer of her mouth.

Colette removed the empty glass from the old woman's fingers and squeezed her shoulder again. When her eyes found Troy's, she smiled unsteadily at him and slipped out of the room.

Tully looked silently and accusingly at Troy. Tully was frowning and his face was dark. He motioned at the curtains with his head and shook it in sharp negation. His hand crept under his robe and he bared his Bowie knife.

Troy smiled briefly and sat relaxed but wary, listening to the dying noises of the night. Looking at the old woman gave him a prickly sensation but every time he looked away from her, he felt his eyes drawn back hypnotically to her unseeing scrutiny. He closed his eyes, wondering whether he could trust Colette. He thought he could. She feared the Germans, it was true, but he thought she hated them as well. He was certain he could have trusted her if Tully had not come in.

Beside him, Tully's head dropped to his chest. His mouth opened and the gurgle of a snore started in his throat. Troy clasped his hand over Tully's mouth and the lanky Kentuckian awakened, shaking his head. When Troy pulled his hand away, Tully blinked and pulled back his robe to point to his wristwatch. It was almost 2300 hours.

Troy shrugged and looked at the old woman. He wondered whether she was asleep. Did blind people close their eyes when they slept? Blind and deaf, it would be like sleeping all the time, he thought, feeling a twinge of pity for the old one. Something made him turn his head. He had heard nothing but he sensed the movement of someone in the hall. The curtains were swaying, as if a breeze had brushed them. He jerked Tully by the wrist and slipped the kris from its sheath. Tully was at his side with the Bowie knife ready. They slid from the room. No one was in the hall but the curtain at the doorway that led into the tavern was fluttering.

Troy considered the curtain for a grim second.

"Maybe we should have brought Moffitt and Hitch in with us," he said. "I've an idea we could use a couple more strong pairs of hands in a few minutes."

"Aw, Sarge," Tully said lightly. "You know them boys need their sack time."

Hugging the wall, they moved swiftly to the doorway and Troy pulled the beads aside. Through the open doorway at the front, Troy could see Colette running across the street to the acetylene lighted German headquarters.

4

The lanterns in the rows of tents had been extinguished and outside the walls the only light came from the lamp hanging in the vaulted entrance where a burly Jerry guard with a machine pistol dangling toward the ground slumped against the masonry. He wore a low-riding pot-helmet and his face was shadowed but he seemed to be dozing. The village and the camp areas seemed to be asleep and the only sound that came to Moffitt's ears were the soft shushings of the sentries' feet on their patrols. Hitch and he squeezed between the halftracks and the tanks, working their cautious way through the somber night toward the last halftrack in the line. The one nearest to the wall and to the guard.

Moffitt heard shambling sand and gripped Hitch's arm. They became rigid and motionless as the tanks. A sentry trod past on the outside, between the tanks and tents. Just past the next tank from them, Moffitt heard the sands stop scrambling. There was a motionless moment of silence and then Moffitt heard the sentry's stealthy approach, the sound of his feet and his clothing as he passed between two tanks and into the space that separated the tanks and halftracks. He crouched, pulling Hitch down with him and felt the tension and creeping movement of Hitch's arm as it reached within his robe for the noose. Moffitt tightened his grip on Hitch and they waited breathlessly.

A tank's distance from them, a match flared and Moffitt saw the worried, thinly stubbled face of a man scarcely more than a boy in the yellow flame as he lighted a cigarette. The end of the cigarette glowed three times in quick succession illuminating the end of a narrow nose and throwing pinkish highlights on sharp cheek bones as the sentry risked three drags. The smell of tobacco drifted back and then Moffitt saw the ember of the cigarette drop into the sand as the Jerry snubbed his butt. He moved hastily out between the tanks and Moffitt heard him trotting to regain his scheduled position.

"I could use a butt myself, Doc," Hitch whispered tightly.

"Or a spot of something stronger." Moffitt chuckled. "At least now we know where the weak link is. We'll make our break into the halftrack when this chap is due at the wall on the tanks and the sentry on the opposite side on the halftracks. Meanwhile we'll hold tight here for a moment."

"We ought to be sabotaging the equipment as we go along," Hitch complained.

"Can't risk the time," Moffitt whispered. "We must be in the vehicle and ready to shove off in a twinkle."

"I could pour sand in the gun barrels when we stop like now," Hitch said hopefully.

"We cannot do it," Moffitt said patiently. "The Jerries have maintenance crews and inspections, yon know. If Troy and Tully do not succeed tonight, we shall have to return tomorrow evening. They may suspect there are more of us out here but we don't want to leave positive evidence of it."

"What about the body, Doc?" Hitch said.

"If we have to leave, we'll take it and the clothing with us."

"They'll find the marks in the sand where we dragged the corpse."

"We'll carry it," Moffitt said and smiled to himself.

"That's what I was afraid of, Doc," Hitch grumbled.

Moffitt gave Hitch's arm a tug and they edged on, walking Indian fashion on the balls of their feet. He could see glimmerings of the lamp in the entrance between the halftracks as they neared the end of the row. When he heard the sentry on the tank side returning, Hitch and he squatted and when the man had passed, he pressed Hitch to a sitting position and wriggled on his belly out between the halftracks until his head was on the ground in the corridor.

He turned his face to the guard under the lamp and before his ear was on the ground he heard the approaching sentry's feet almost upon him. The sand slushed as the shambling feet came closer, five feet, three feet. Any movement, Moffitt knew, would attract attention and he closed his eyes and tried to feel he was a part of the desert. But would the fellow step over this small part of the desert or on it, he wondered. Even in his position, the thought amused him and he couldn't help smiling.

The sentry's booted food stomped the sand inches from Moffitt's nose, Moffitt opened his eyes and watched the feet and legs, then rump and back, and finally helmeted head come into view. He looked beyond him at the guard who leaned his brutish shoulders against the clay wall and seemed half asleep. At the approach of the sentry, however, the guard's head swiveled to the side, his wrist turned as he checked his watch and his head lifted a little to look for the appearance of the sentry on the outside line of tanks on the other side.

As the sentry on the halftracks was turning about face on heel and toe, Moffitt pulled his head out of the corridor and dug his way backward with his elbows. The man strode by and one foot squashed into the sand where Moffitt's head had rested. Moffitt slithered into the space where Hitch sat.

"The guard's alert," he whispered to Hitch, "We'll have to take him out of action when they come through with Wilson."

"The noose?" Hitch asked.

"You'll be in the driver's seat, laddie," Moffitt reminded him. "I'll be the hangman this time."

"Right-o, myte," Hitch mocked and suppressed a chuckle.

"Now, up there on your belly," Moffitt said. "Over the side and into the front of the halftrack like a snake. Get on the floor and familiarize yourself with the apparatus. Keep touching things until you know where they are as well as you do in your own jeep. I don't know what the systematic German mind has devised as an ignition switch for a halftrack but if it's a key type get the wires crossed for contact. Once you're established securely in the front, I'll hop into the back and there we'll stay until it's time to leave. One way or the other."

Hitch pulled the noose from his robe and handed it to Moffitt.

"I entrust you with my dearest possession," he said.

"It's in good hands, you know," Moffitt assured him, adding, as Hitch started to crawl away, "Luck, lad. I can't cover you, you know."

Hitch dragged his body away toward the last halftrack. Moffitt rose on one knee, ready to fade away silently if there was an outcry. It was one of the rules of the game they played when the stakes were as high as the Rat Patrol's objective this night. Each of them was aware that while they operated as a team, on this mission they were, in a sense, loners. As long as one of them remained alive and uncaptured, it was his duty to carry on.

Moffitt saw a dark and almost shapeless form reach from the ground and scale the side of the halftrack like a lizzard. Silently it disappeared. He waited a tense moment and when no alarm pierced the night, expelled his breath in a heavy sigh.

Well, off we go, he told himself, dropping prone and listening to the sands. He detected the footsteps of the sentry on the outside of his line of tanks, going away, he was certain, and skittered to the last Panzerwagon. Moffitt leapt from the ground, grasped the armored side and pitched himself into the back of the vehicle. He dropped lightly to the bed and knelt in the spot where he landed, tense and ready to spring. He thought he heard a rustle, a flutter of a motion but it went away.

Moffitt slid back along the bed until his back was against the armor and would present no silhouette. Then he lifted himself slowly to his feet to survey the situation. There was, he noted with satisfaction, ample space, a good ten feet, between the back of the vehicle and the wall. Hitch should be easily able to get into the corridor and away by running in a simple reverse, then forward, maneuver. He considered the corridor thoughtfully. It could become a deadly trap if someone in the tents was alert enough to pull a vehicle across it at the far end and seal them in, cork them up like not so jolly flies in a bottle. He turned his head to the tent area. If, on the other hand, Hitch were to reverse first into the corridor, he could drive along the wall past the tent area and sweep wide into open desert. The only possible obstacle would be the first tank, and the Jerries would have to fire it up and get it into reverse at a rather hasty clip to block the way. Rather than run the gauntlet down the corridor, the tent area presented by far the better route, Moffitt decided. If it became necessary to crash over a few tents to elude pursuit, well, it was war.

Moffitt turned slowly now to consider the guard at the entry. His shoulders had dropped a little on the wall and his head was down again. Moffitt decided he would not use the noose on the man. It was both risky and time consuming. At the first signal, the sound of running feet, commotion or confusion, he would shoot the man and Hitch could reverse the halftrack and have it waiting for Wilson, Troy and Tully right at the entrance.

He loosened his robes, unhitched his web belt and strapped it on again outside so the forty-five was ready at his hip. A smile set itself on his lips and stayed there. Herr Hauptmann Dietrich was in for a night that would haunt him as long as he lived. Chuckling soundlessly, he checked the guard again, rolled over the far side of the steel bulwark and slid into the front of the vehicle to sit on the floor and whisper his plans to Hitch.

For a stunned moment he sat like a statue on the seat and then he was out of the halftrack and crawling away as fast as he dared. Hitch was not in the halftrack.

Herr Hauptmann Hans Dietrich was in an unusual mood. He was jovial, even expansive. Rarely did he indulge himself in such unmilitary luxuries. He was a stem disciplinarian who demanded more of himself than he did of his men. But this had been a day of singular achievement. He did not recall a day in his entire military career, a career that reached back to early boyhood and spanned most of his twenty-seven years, that had brought him such personal satisfaction.

True, the spearhead he had sought to thrust into the Allied defenses at Bir-el-Alam had been turned aside but that had been a probing action and the withdrawal of his forces had been strategic. Far from being defeated, the maneuver at Bir-el-Alam had been successful beyond his hopes. His capture of the American Colonel Wilson had been brilliant. While the main body of the Afrika Korps armor had raced straight on, two armored cars, hidden from the pursuing Allied armor, had pulled off into wadis on either side of the route, while a third had lagged invitingly behind.

Dietrich himself had set the trap. He had glimpsed the flamboyant and foolish American colonel through his binoculars racing on to victory ahead of his armor in a scout car. Dietrich laughed aloud. If the colonel had not been wearing his stage-play white varnished helmet with its great golden eagle, standing erect in the scout car with those worthless twin pearl-handled pistols at his hips, it was almost certain that Dietrich would not have recognized him and risked the capture. But Dietrich had recognized this silly man who sought to make himself a legend. Dietrich had set the trap and the colonel had taken the bait. As if he were a knight on a charger, the colonel had sped ahead of his regiment when he spied the limping Afrika Korps vehicle. He had thought to make the capture singlehanded with the aid only of his driver, but the two armored cars had closed in from behind. The colonel was lucky he had not been shot on the spot as his driver had been. Or maybe not so lucky, Dietrich added dryly in his mind.

The acetylene lamps burned with stark, cold light in Dietrich's big office at the front of the second story at his headquarters in Sidi Abd. He sat with his back to the windows at the long mahogany table he had brought with considerable difficulty from Tunis. One lamp hung from the vaulted white ceiling of this rather gracious old palace which, Dietrich regretted to acknowledge, he had been compelled to wrest by force from the stubborn old Arab chieftan who had occupied it. Another lamp was on the table and next to it, a bottle of Courvoissier from which he filled a glass and sipped not too frequently but every now and then when he recalled another pleasant event of this remarkable day, such as his amusing conversation concerning Indian tactics with the American colonel. Really now, did the fellow actually believe that he, Dietrich, a Panzer officer in the Afrika Korps, was serious? Dietrich frankly admitted to himself that he had wanted to gloat at the second trap he had so skillfully set that day.

Before him on the table was a chart showing the pattern of the minefield he had planted beyond the town. He had his finger on the gateway at the wadi and he pushed it now along the wide, safe path he had provided for the Rat Patrol to drive through the Devil's Garden right up to the fence. A patrol was concealed there, would remain right there at the fence for however long was necessary. If the Rat Patrol had come after the colonel—and he was certain they had—they should be somewhere in the minefield right now. Dietrich was waiting for a report from another patrol he'd sent around the garden to check the gate. Dietrich wanted that Gottverdamtig Rat Patrol safely locked up in the garden so he could take them alive at his leisure and deal with them at his pleasure.

He chuckled and sipped a little of the belly-warming brandy. The French did know how to do some things right. They would be taught to stick with their grapes and not play at being soldiers. It took a man of genuine and dedicated military talent to comprehend the ramifications of today's actions. The capture of the armored regiment's commander would bog down and demoralize the Allied Forces in this sector of the desert. Confused and leaderless, they would be ripe for attack and defeat. The capture of the Rat Patrol, while a minor thing by comparison, would have the major effect of removing a victory symbol from the Allies, and Dietrich knew full well how important symbols were to troops. And beyond the immediate results, properly supervised interrogation of this American Colonel Wilson would, Dietrich was supremely confident, elicit reluctant information that would reveal far-flung Allied plans. It might well be that his action today would be the hinge on which would swing final victory for the Afrika Korps.

For all this, Dietrich could well receive the diamonds to his Iron Cross. It was an honor reserved by the Fatherland for very few, perhaps no more than a handful of field marshals. It was an exhilarating possibility to contemplate and it was entirely possible that he would be called to Berlin to receive the highest of the Fatherland's decorations from the hand of Der Feuhrer himself. Although, Dietrich admitted privately, he would prefer the honor were bestowed by one of the old-line generals.

He yawned enjoyably and glanced at his watch. It was getting late, well after eleven o'clock, although he did not in the least feel tired. Comfortable but not tired. He crossed his black-booted legs under the table and let his usually taut muscles droop. From downstairs he heard the challenge of the guard followed by the clomp of quick pounding leather on the tiled stairway. Except for three guards—one at the entrance, one at the cell where the American colonel was confined and one outside his office door—Dietrich was alone in the palace. It was more than headquarters. The offices were confined to this large room on the second floor and the two front rooms on the first floor. The rest of the place comprised his personal quarters, a kitchen, diningroom, livingroom converted from a bedroom on the second floor and a few bedrooms. A man who bore responsibility was entitled to the privacy to think alone, relax now and then and enjoy himself with friends of his choosing. Dietrich was not apprehensive at his comparative isolation in the palace but he was prudent and when he heard the guard outside his door challenge the visitor, he pulled his Luger from its holster and held it in his hand before him on the table.

The door swung open and Dietrich chuckled, thinking the guards did well to challenge this sorry and unsoldierly looking sight. Feldwebel Max Schmitt wore a greatcoat that was splotched with dirt and trailed sand. The lower part of his face was swathed in a muffler while his cheeks and circles about his eyes that had been protected by goggles looked unnaturally pink.

Master Sergeant Schmitt stepped smartly across the room, halted sharply in front of the table, saluted and barked, "Heil Hitler!"

"Heil," Dietrich said impatiently. "Well, Schmitt, what did you find?"

"The Rat Patrol is in the Devil's Garden," Sergeant Schmitt said and Dietrich could see his heavy chest puff beneath his coat as if the sergeant himself were responsible.

"You are certain?" Dietrich challenged.

"Yes, my captain," Schmitt said. "There are unmistakeable tire marks of jeeps entering the garden through the gate which was left open."

"There was more than one?"

"More than one," Schmitt said decisively and a sly look flashed in his puffy eyes. "They sought to deceive, following closely in the same track, almost as if made by one vehicle only. But I examined the tread carefully with a flashlight and it is deeper by far than could possibly have been made by one jeep. Also there were several places where the tread marks did not exactly overprint."

"And you are certain they have driven into the trap?"

"There is no doubt of it," Schmitt said in an injured tone. "I personally followed the tracks on foot across the wadi well into the minefield until I lost them in the loose sand of the safe pathway."

"You do not think they are suspicious?"

"Of course they are suspicious but only of the minefield. They recognized it as it was meant they should. They had exploded mines on either side, many of them, to make certain they had found the path in the pattern."

"Ah, good, good," Dietrich said warmly. "Here Schmitt, help yourself to the brandy. The December nights are cold in the desert. Although not so cold as in the Fatherland, eh, Schmitt?"

"Thank you, my captain," Schmitt said, smiling broadly and pouring himself a glass of brandy. He lifted it to Dietrich, clicked his heels and said, "Heil."

"Heil," Dietrich said absently. "And you made certain the gate was closed securely before you left?"

"The gate is locked tight with antitank mines," Schmitt reported briskly. "It is also nailed with S-mines."

"We have them this time," Dietrich said and pounded his palm with his fist. He sighed with pleasure. "It is a good day's work, Schmitt. There is no way for them to escape. Well, Schmitt, unless the Rat Patrol blows itself to the skies in the meantime, we shall deal with them in person in the morning."

"Ja whol," Schmitt said and smiled fatly.

Dietrich heard the downstairs guard's voice again raised in challenge. He frowned with annoyance, wondering who could be seeking him at this hour and for what purpose. His hand reached back to the pistol he had abandoned when he recognized Schmitt.

"You may go," he told Schmitt abruptly, thinking irritably that the feldwebel would heil again. There were times, in the field like this, when it became tiresome.

"Heil," Schmitt said, sounding like a seal, and showed Dietrich the palm of his hand. He about-faced and marched stiffly from the office.

The door scarcely had closed behind the sergeant when it opened to admit Lieutenant Wilhelm Kummel. He was a tall man, like Dietrich, and he wore a tailored uniform.

His face was heavy, his mouth an incongruous horizontal line and his eyes blue and cold.

"Ah, Wilhelm," Dietrich said comfortably to his security officer and friend. He withdrew his hand from the pistol and gave it a little push. "Come, share a drink. What brings you out at this hour of the night?"

Kummel seated himself on the edge of Dietrich's table, reached for the brandy bottle and filled a glass. He tasted it and smacked his lips appreciatively.

"That is good," he said and refilled the glass. He held it to Dietrich. "This brandy may be the reason for the visit, hein?" He laughed but his face grew serious almost at once. "The reason but not the excuse. Are you having trouble with the Arabs, Hans?"

"There always is trouble with the Arabs," Dietrich said slowly and a little uneasily. "But at the moment no more than usual. Why do you ask, Wilhelm?"

"Two suspicious-looking Arabs were standing in a doorway across the street observing this building with more than ordinary curiosity. They hurried into the tavern when I approached to question them and that is strange in itself. Arabs no not usually enter places that are filled with no one but our soldiers. When they did not come out after curfew, I stepped inside and saw them stealing back toward the rear of the place."

"Probably friends of the proprietor," Dietrich said cautiously. "Waiting until the soldiers had gone before going back to the kitchen to share a cup of coffee."

"Possibly friends," Kummel conceded, "but possibly conspirators as well."

"Dammit, Wilhelm," Dietrich said, a little annoyed. "What can I do about it? Our relations always are touchy with the Arabs. I can't invade an Arab restaurant with a squad for no reason other than that two Arabs entered the building."

"I know, Hans," Kummel said with a sympathetic smile. "They looked suspicious and I thought I'd mention it." He held up the brandy bottle and laughed. "And it did give me the excuse for the reason."

"You don't need the excuse, Wilhelm," Dietrich said.

"Just the—"

A rap at the door interrupted him. The door opened and the guard stepped into the room.

"Your pardons, Captain, Lieutenant," the guard said with a flat plattedeutsch accent. "A young lady downstairs insists she must see Lieutenant Kummel. She says the matter is urgent."

"A young lady?" Dietrich exclaimed, bewildered.

"It must be Colette from the tavern," Kummel said quickly, standing. "Send her up, Sergeant."

Dietrich felt his face puzzling around a smile,

"She is your young lady, Wilhelm?"

"At times she is," Kummel said. "I have a feeling tonight we'll be happy that is the situation."

"The Arabs?" Dietrich drew a troubled breath and sat straight, waiting in stern silence. His hand grasped the butt of his pistol.

Colette flew into the room and Dietrich examined her as closely as he could. She was a scrawny chicken, he thought, but not entirely unattractive. Wilhelm should fatten her up. There was no doubt she was agitated. Ignoring Dietrich, she ran to Kummel and grasped both his arms.

"Vitement, vitement," she cried, tugging at him. Tears were streaming down her cheeks.

"Colette," Kummel said sharply, grasping her firmly by both shoulders. "Calm yourself. Take a deep breath and then tell me slowly in German, what is the trouble."

Obediently Colette drew in her breath and with the tears still running down her cheeks, said in trembling German, "Two American soldiers dressed as Arabs are in the tavern. They threatened me if I would not hide them. I put them in the room of the blind and deaf old one and came to you as quickly as I could."

Her voice broke and her chest heaved in great, gasping sobs.

"Good God!" Dietrich shouted. "It's the Rat Patrol. They've managed to get through the fence." He leapt to his feet and shoved the Luger in his holster. "Come, Wilhelm, we'll take the two guards and capture them ourselves."

5

Troy and Tully sprinted down the dark aisle between the tables in the empty tavern and from the concealing shadows within the doorway, watched Colette run to the guard who stood at the entrance to the German headquarters. Troy could hear their excited voices. The guard ran inside the building and shouted something. Colette half turned, holding her hand at her throat, and looked toward the tavern entrance.

"Dames," Tully said and spit.

When the guard came out again, Colette ran into the building. The guard stood with his rifle at the ready, squarely facing the entrance to the tavern.

"Take the other side, flat against the wall," Troy said brusquely. He slipped the kris from its sheath. "They'll know we haven't gone out the front way so they'll probably bust straight through to the back. As soon as they're in the back hall, we slip out. If the guard is still across the street, we'll have to try to jump him before he gets us. I think they'll bring him with them. If he isn't there, we go around the bazaar side of headquarters and see if we can get up on the roof from the back. If they discover us, it's you for you and me for me. Just try to get away and carry on."

"Sure, Sarge," Tully said. He held his long-bladed Bowie knife sharp edge up, ready to slash and run.

Troy pressed his shoulders against the wall, table guarding him from the front but with enough space to slip into the street. He held his kris poised at his shoulder for a dagger thrust at the base of the neck.

Running feet padded on the packed dirt of the narrow street and two figures burst into the tavern with drawn pistols. Troy thought one of them was Dietrich. A few steps inside the dark room, they paused almost within reach of Troy, then ran toward the doorway at the back. Troy held his breath and remained motionless. More footfalls sounded on the trodden earth and a soldier with a bayoneted rifle, closely followed by a second one similarly armed, plunged into the tavern and followed the first two figures. Troy waited another moment and swore under his breath. He had not thought of Colette. Of course she would wait outside.

The four Jerries were in the hall now. Troy hissed softly to Tully, sidled around the edge of the door. The guard was gone but Colette was standing at the headquarters' entrance. Troy dashed across the alley and slapped his hand over her mouth before she could scream. He dragged her, legs kicking and arms flailing, around the bazaar corner of the building. Her teeth bit viciously into the fat of his palm by his thumb. At the side of the building, he halted long enough to smash a blow into the side of her jaw. As she slumped, Tully picked up her feet.

"We'll push her in the first doorway," Troy said, getting his hands under her arms. "She's no good to us."

They trotted with Colette's limp body slung between them until they came to a recessed side door in the headquarters' building. They dropped her back in the recess.

"I ought to wring her neck like a chicken's," Tully said bitterly.

"No time for games," Troy said, shaking his bleeding hand that stung from her bite. "There should be a back way inside. Let's find it."

The bazaar had closed its shutters for the night and it was pitch black along the side of the building. Troy ran blindly with his hand on the blank side wall. He had not gone far, perhaps fifty feet, when his hand slipped from the coarse plastered wall into the night. He stopped, felt ahead with both hands, took a step and then another before he encountered the rough surface of another building. The passageway between the buildings was about three feet wide.

"Keep your hand on my shoulder," he told Tully, turning into the narrow passage he knew might be a cul-de-sac.

"Sarge, you couldn't lose me if you tried," Tully said.

Troy moved warily now, not lifting his feet but sliding them along the ground, toe to heel, counting his foot-lengths. He paused for a brief moment as a small dog or rat skittered over one foot and rustled away. The stench of the passage filled his lungs. It was not an odor of garbage or sewage but of things dead and rotting. In the confined and airless place it almost choked him.

He had advanced for twenty-five feet when his hand slid around a corner in the wall and he touched the wood of a gate or door. He pulled Tully up to it, placed both of Tully's hands on it and both of them searched for a latch or handle. They could find nothing, not even a hole or recess where one might have been. They put their shoulders to the wood and strained against it. If it were a door and hinged it was securely barred from the inside because it did not give so much as a fraction of an inch.

"We haven't got time to fool and we don't dare go on," Troy said in a whisper. "Get on my shoulders. This may be just a wall and not a part of the building."

He stood to the side of the recess, clasped his hands together for Tully's foot and boosted him. Tully clambered unsteadily, first one knee on a shoulder then the other. Steadying himself against the wall, he gradually got his feet planted on Troy's shoulders.

"Uh," Tully grunted, swaying, almost toppling.

"What is it?" Troy hissed.

"A wall, but there's broken glass on top. I cut my hand."

"Pull off your robe," Troy ordered. "Fold it over the top." He thought he heard voices from somewhere, muted by the buildings. "Get gone."

He felt Tully balancing himself against the wall as the robe dropped, draping Troy's face for a moment, and then the weight left Troy's shoulders and he heard Tully scrambling atop the wall.

"Helped some but it still jabbed," Tully muttered. "Catch. I'll drop the rope to you, then jump down the other side, catch the end and brace myself."

Troy reached above his head in the blackness, groped only the empty night. The voices he had heard came again, still muffled but louder now. He started to grasp the air wildly for the rope, grinned, let his arms fall to his sides, then reached upwards searching the void in a careful pattern with his thumbs hooked together and palms extended near the wall. One palm touched the rope, lost it. The voices sounded near the mouth of the passage. He found the rope again, grasped it with both hands, gave a tug to make sure Tully was at the other end, and walked up the wall, hand over hand on the rope, feet against the vertical surface. The shouting was plain now, not voices but sharp orders in German. He wriggled over the folded robe, feeling the sharp thrusting shards of glass even through the cloth, found a finger hold for one hand between the jagged pieces and hung on while he plucked at Tully's robe. It clung to the glass. His fingers began to slip. Light appeared abruptly in the night at the entrance to the passage. Troy yanked desperately at the robe as his fingers slipped and he fell into the thorns of a shrub. The robe fluttered down and covered him.

He stayed where he was while on the other side of the wall lanterns made the passage a lighted vault. The voices sounded as if they were speaking directly to him. He could not understand but he thought he detected two voices, both giving orders. That would be Dietrich and the other officer. He did not think there were more than four men in the passage and wondered whether they had found Colette. If they had, Troy was certain they had left her where she lay.

A pair of shoulders slammed against the door once, and then again.

"Nein!" a voice Troy thought was Dietrich's called out and a gutteral string of words followed in which he recognized only dumkopf.

The banging at the door stopped. Troy chuckled softly. He could imagine what Dietrich had said to the guards, "dumbells, they would scarcely hide in German headquarters and anyway, how would they get in?"

Which was a good question to be settled in reverse for future reference, Troy decided. When the lights and voices went away and Troy could no longer see nor hear a sign of the search party, he moved along the wall to the door and examined its entire surface minutely with his palms. It had, he discovered, an iron bar in brackets that held it solidly in place. It also had hinges at one side. He put his hands under the bar and it came freely from the brackets. He could find no string or handle but when he dug the point of his kris into the wood and pulled, the door swung easily inward. He closed it quickly and replaced the bar. There must, he thought, be some other way of opening the door without using a can opener but at the moment it satisfied him to know they had a rear exit if they had to use it.

"Tully," he called softly.

"Yeah, Sarge," Tully said so close beside him that Troy started.

"You shouldn't do that," Troy said. "If my reflexes hadn't been tired, you might have had a knife in you belly."

"I heard you slip it back in the sheath," Tully said and chuckled. "They got us where they want us only they don't know it."

"Let's keep them ignorant," Troy said and put his back to the wall. Apparently only the rooms at the front of the house were being used and no light seeped into this walled area at the rear. With difficulty, he could make out only the dim squarish outline of the top of the building. On the ground he still felt as if he were swimming in pitch. He tested the ground at the side of the door with his toe.

It was earth and he remembered the shrub he'd dropped upon. He returned to the door and discovered tile or some other type of smooth paving under his foot.

"We're in some kind of garden or patio," he whispered. This should be a paved walk straight to the house but we're likely to run into anything. We'll go on our hands and knees. Keep hold of my ankle."

"I'll never wear dark glasses again," Tully muttered. "Wait until I get back into my costume."

Reaching ahead to sweep the tiles on the ground and space before his face with one hand, Troy started moving ahead toward the old palace. The paved walk was not straight, he found out as he touched and went around the fat prickly trunk of a date palm, grasped a thorny shrub, splashed his hand in a pool of water, moved onto a surface paved with rough, broad ceramic pieces and bumped his head into a wall.

He jerked his foot from Tully's grasp, rolled quickly to the side and when Tully had banged his head against the wall, grinned, reached for him and they both stood, side by side, arms outflung.

"That's one I owe you, Sarge," Tully whispered. Even in a whisper, Troy thought he could detect a drawl.

"That was for interrupting Colette and me," he said. "Let's try to the left."

They began to move against the building, feeling carefully for the pavement beneath their feet. From the passageway came the returning sounds of angry voices and for a moment the night was vaulted again by the lanterns. Troy continued sidestepping until his hand found a comer and he turned into an open but interior hall. The floor was smooth now. There was no sound here at the back of the building but as he slid into another opening he detected cooking smells. These were not native smells. They were good, solid Germanic fragrances and Troy shook his head. So Dietrich had appropriated a palace and installed an orderly who was a cook. There were times when he could almost admire the unbending German officer.

He halted Tully with pressure on his shoulder and they waited for sound of movement within the building. It was dead tomb quiet. He breathed to Tully, "I'm going to risk lighting my Zippo for as long as it takes to blow it out. You look to the left. I'll look to the right."

The lighter flamed and in that flickering moment before he extinguished it, Troy saw a table in the middle of the room, a cooking area of brick immediately at his right and beyond that, the beaded entrance to another room. "Anything your way?" he asked Tully.

"Jugs, clay pots, brass pans and some kind of cupboard," Tully said.

"There's a table in the middle of the room," Troy said. "Along the side, there's a stove. We'll go by it and through a beaded archway into the next room."

Troy felt his way through the arch and they stepped from the paved floor of the kitchen onto a soft rug. From another arch at the far side of the room, light from a hall showed the shadowy outlines of a low table surrounded by lumps on the floor. Pillows! Troy thought, why Dietrich sits on a pillow to eat his homemade meals. The Kraut was living like a sultan. He quickly crossed the room over the richly carpeted floor to the arched entrance and found himself looking into a richly ornamented gold and blue hall that ran from the front entrance to balustraded steps at the back. The entrance was open; the iron gates to close it off were swung back against the walls. There was no guard at the entrance and the building, at least on the first floor, had an empty feeling. He jerked his head in Tully's direction and ran quickly and softly on his toes down the lamplighted hall to the tiled stairway. Back to wall and kris in hand, he mounted to the second floor. Tully followed a minute later.

A heavy wooden door opened to the large room at the front of the building just beyond the head of the stairs and a hall extended to the rear of the building. Lamps were burning in the large room but it was empty. A lamp hung from a barrel ceiling about halfway down the hallway and under it a guard was sitting on the floor in a recessed doorway. His knees were drawn up and his head was slumped on his chest. His mouth was partly open and his chin was slack. He was breathing heavily. The guard's rifle had fallen to the floor and lay slantwise, almost beyond reach, in the hall.

Troy grinned; they had found the CO's cell. He pulled out his kris, motioned Tully on with his head and crept toward the sleeping guard. He reached with one hand to bottle the sound and directed the rippled edge of the kris at the man's throat. Tully waited beside him to drag away the body. At the moment he was ready to slash the knife across the guard's throat, the sound of pounding feet thumped in the hallway downstairs.

Jerking away from the guard who slept on undisturbed, Troy darted to the back of the hall with Tully at his side. He sought swiftly for a door to a room in which to hide, ran on past several when he glimpsed a door in the sidewall at the very rear. With luck, it would lead to the roof. At the least, it would offer a closet in which to hide. Troy pushed the door and turned the handle in the same motion and he and Tully found a steep stairway. He closed the door quietly and felt his way in the thick blackness ahead of Tully to a door at the top. He opened it and stepped onto the flat, paved roof of the building.

The back of the palace was lost in the night but enough light from Dietrich's office crept up the wall to silhouette the parapet at the front and a rectangular mass at the far side that must be a water tank. Troy and Tully ran across the roof to the far comer, cautiously edged up in the far comer and peered into the street. The Jerries had found Colette and the officer who had watched Troy and Tully in the tavern was supporting her. One guard stood with them. As Troy and Tully watched, Dietrich came from the building with a second guard who led Colette over to the tavern and left her at the entrance. The second guard trotted off in the dark, zigzagging alley, heading toward the opening in the wall. Dietrich and the other officer turned into the headquarters building, followed almost immediately by the guard who had escorted the wobbly Colette to her doorstep.

"Dietrich is sending for reinforcements," Troy said, stepping back from the parapet.

"Whyn't he use radio?" Tully asked. "Or field telephone?"

"He doesn't know who's out there or how many." Troy laughed softly. "He knows he's got a couple of us running loose and it's bugging him. How many are inside? Who's out there monitoring his radio or clipped onto his wire?"

"It's going to be a rough night on the Ay-rabs," Tully smirked. "He'll strip them all."

"All right," Troy snapped. "Now's our chance while we have just the two guards, Dietrich and the other officer to deal with."

"In a box like this we're still going to bust out the CO?" Tully asked doubtfully.

"That's what we came for, isn't it?" Troy said sharply.

At the bottom of the steps, Troy opened the door a hair at a time until the crack was wide enough for the pupil of his eye. Fuzzily he saw the guard who had been sleeping at the cell door standing erect at rigid attention. The other guard stood beside the door to Dietrich's office. He was faced straight down the hall. The door to Dietrich's office was still open and through it Troy had glimpses of Dietrich striding back and forth and heard his wrathful voice. With a steady, patient hand, Troy closed the crack in the door and led the silent way back to the roof.

"No good," he told Tully. "They'd shoot the minute the door opened."

"What you aim to do, Sarge?" Tully asked hopelessly.

"Give me the rope," Troy said. He fixed a loop around his waist and walked to the parapet on the bazaar side of the building, leaning over at the point he positioned the room on the hallway below. He squinted into the night until he thought could discern a blacker darkness that indicated a window ledge a few feet to the left. "You're going over the side," he told Tully, sitting with his feet braced against the parapet. "You're going to see how they've got the shutters on Wilson's room fixed. If we're lucky, you're going to open that room with your Bowie knife."

"I was afraid you'd think of something like that, Sarge," Tully moaned. "What'll I do if it's nailed shut?"

"Pick out the nails with your knife," Troy said.

Tully dropped his burnoose and robe, gave his belt a hitch to the side so his knife rode well to the front. He grasped the plaited nylon rope with both hands and eased himself over the parapet onto the wall.

Troy leaned back, legs riveted to the parapet and grabbed the rope, pulling it toward him to ease the strain around his waist. He felt the dead and dangling weight of the lanky Kentuckian in his arms, on his back, against his legs. He closed his eyes against the stinging sweat that streamed into them as the weight grew almost unbearable. And then, while the line remained taut, the weight on it lessened. Good boy, Troy thought, his toes have found the ledge.

Troy let out his breath and flexed his muscles briefly. From below he heard the rasp of metal and the screak of a shutter swinging on its hinge. It was strange, Troy thought, and then so abruptly that he fell backward on the paved roof, all the weight left the line. He sat up in his old position at once and almost immediately the line was tight. Now the weight was greater than he could resist and he felt himself being pulled forward and his knees buckling. He tugged at the rope until the muscles in his forearms and biceps knotted and cramped and then all the tension was gone and he fell flat on the roof. When he opened his eyes, a figure was clambering over the parapet.

"I knew I could depend on the Rat Patrol," Colonel Dan Wilson said. "Shove over and let me help on the rope."

Troy braced his feet flat against the wall again and Wilson grasped the rope ahead of his hands. Together they heaved back as the line grew heavy. Tully was laughing when he tumbled onto the roof.

"What's the joke?" Troy gasped and lay back, breathing deeply and trying to pump some air back into his tortured lungs.

"Take a minute," Wilson said soothingly. "Get your wind."

Troy bit back the words that sprang from his throat. "Let me tell you, Sarge," Tully said, lying beside Troy. "That window had been barred from the inside just like that garden door. When the Jerries fixed it up for a cell, they just moved the brackets and the bar to the outside."

"That was a break," Troy agreed, sitting up and winding the rope around his wrist. "But I don't see it's belly-laughing funny."

"Look, Sarge," Tully said, still laughing. "I barred it again from the outside when I left. It's like magic. How did the prisoner escape from the barred, locked and guarded room?"

"That ought to bug them proper." Troy laughed shortly. "Providing we're not on the roof to give them the answer when they look."

Troy ran to the front of the building and looked down. No one was in the street and he heard no voices. He ran back to Tully and Wilson. Tully was back in his burnoose and robe. Wilson spun the wheel of his Zippo and sparks flew. The wick did not light.

"Put that away," Troy snarled. "Come on."

He jogged ahead to the other side and leaned over the wall next to the water tank. Gradually he was able to make out the dark surface of a roof below. It was difficult to judge but he estimated the drop at ten to twelve feet plus three feet from a hand grip at the top of the wall.

"I'll go first," he said, "and see if there are any obstructions."

"Why not secure the rope and go down it, Sergeant?" Wilson said disapprovingly.

"Because we'd have to leave the rope behind and I don't want any evidence up here that points to us," Troy snapped and went over the wall.

He clung to the parapet a moment and dropped, landing on a hard surface with his knees bent. He rolled over and came up on his feet, crouched and swept the roof below the water tank with his hands. Above, a figure leaned over the wall.

"Okay?" Tully called softly.

"Come on," Troy said, finding nothing.

Wilson fell first and Tully as soon as the thud sounded. Troy scrambled over to them.

"Everything all right?" Troy asked quickly.

"Yeah," Tully drawled.

"I hurt my hip when I hit," Wilson said.

"Walk, man, walk," Troy said nervously, helping Wilson to his feet. "Let's check it out."

With Troy at his elbow, Wilson tottered stiffly for a few feet and then walked almost normally although he seemed to favor his left leg.

"I can make it," Wilson said thinly.

"It'll walk out, sir," Troy said, grimly thinking, a bruise and he's going to be brave about it. "Let's move on. Over the rooftops to the hole in the wall."

"Used to be a cave we called the hole-in-the-wall where we hid out from revenooers," Tully drawled.

"Sometimes I wish you still were there," Troy said.

Although there still was no moon, the cloud cover seemed to be thinning and the walls between buildings and objects on the rooftops became distinguishable. No sound came from the squirming alley below and as they moved from building to building, now merely crawling or stepping over the walls that separated the one-story houses and stores, the entire Arab community with the exception of an occasional dog seemed to be asleep. Troy led the single file with Wilson in the middle. His slight limp had disappeared and Troy stepped up the pace until they were trotting, crouched, near the backs of the buildings. As they ran they carried with them the strange, dust-ridden smells of the town that had been cooked into the buildings for centuries.

The rooftops formed a strange geometric pattern as the buildings bent away from the bazaar like a cornered quarter of an octagon. Troy turned another comer and saw one hundred yards ahead the lamp burning in the vaulted arch. We've taken you again, Dietrich, he thought triumphantly.

Wilson and Tully came up beside him and he motioned them to crouch while he examined their situation. The buildings extended to about ten feet from the wall and then there was an open area to the base of the fortification. The wall was about five feet thick at its foundation and and about one foot thick at the top, a good twelve feet above the ground. With the clear space between the buildings and the wall, it was impossible to enter or leave the village without a scaling ladder.

The guard was standing in the middle of the entrance passage which was no more than four feet wide, too narrow to admit a vehicle. He was under the acetylene lantern and his broad shoulders were to Troy as he faced the desert. Suddenly the guard turned about, stepped out of the entrance into the town and a squad of soldiers came through, a tight two abreast, at double time. The first two men were carrying lanterns in their left hands and Schmeisser nine millimeter machine pistols in the right. The rest of the squad, about a dozen in all, were armed with Mauser rifles. All were wearing pot helmets and looked ready for combat.

The trotting squad pounded past the building on which Troy, Wilson and Tully squatted and Troy could hear the heavy breathing of the men scarcely ten feet below. The lanterns disappeared around a bend, the last of the squad went by and the alley again lay in silent darkness except for the lantern at the entrance.

"All right," Troy said. "Over the rooftops as far as we can. I'll take the guard and then it's over and out."

They worked their way slowly and cautiously and Troy poised at the side of the last building. He decided to drop near the back, edge along the wall to the entrance and pounce upon the guard with his kris. He had one leg over the low roof wall when he heard the rhythmic stomp of marching men again. He motioned Wilson and Tully to their bellies and flattened himself atop the wall at the rear.

A squad of a dozen men marched into the open space, an order was gruffly given and the squad dispersed, six men on each side, back from the alley and lighted entrance. They knelt there, rifles ready, Troy rolled slowly back onto the roof and swore silently, not in his mind but in his throat. Dietrich had them bottled up in Sidi Abd.

6

Jack Moffitt could feel the tension etching his face as he pushed with his elbows and pulled himself backward with his toes in the sand. He wormed alongside the tanks until the full length of a halftrack loomed between him and the vehicle Hitch and he had appropriated. Then he stopped in the deep black pocket, hard against a tank track, to consider what he must do.

What could have happened to Hitch was beyond his comprehension or imagination. He dismissed any idea that Hitch had wandered off to have a smoke or for any purpose whatsoever. Renegade, don't-give-a-damn, school bad-boy he might have been, but guerilla soldier he was also and one of the best. Hitch would not willingly have left his assigned position, which left the only alternative: Hitch had been taken away by force.

But how, in the few minutes between the time Hitch had crawled onto the floor in the front and Moffitt had slid from the back of the halftrack to the front seat, could Hitch have been spirited away without a sound?

The situation was so fantastic Moffitt could not believe it but he was forced to accept it. Accept it and look at it calmly, old boy, he told himself. Hitch is gone, you are not. Therefore, whoever nabbed Hitch is unaware of you. But he could not accept it calmly. Wouldn't Hitch have been marched straight to the guard? Wouldn't there have been conversation or at least an order that he would have heard? Wouldn't the sentries immediately have combed the entire area? Certainly there would have been a hubbub at the discovery of an American soldier, or even an Arab, hiding in a halftrack. Arabs? Were they the answer? Had the Arabs somehow taken Hitch to hold for the highest bidder?

There were no answers but one: whatever the odds, Moffitt had to remain, hidden and uncaptured, to be on hand when and if Troy and Tully came out with Wilson.

Moffitt ground his teeth in frustration and experienced a strange pressure that seemed to bind his head with bands of steel. He had to see, to know whether there was any unusual activity. He pushed away from the tank and burrowed under the halftrack next to it, between the caterpillar treads and front wheels. With his cheek pressed against the hard cold rubber of a tire, he looked toward the gateway of the town. The guard was within the shallow tunnel under the lantern in his usual slumped position, relaxed but alert, noting the sentry about-facing by the halftracks across the way. That meant the sentry between the tanks and tents on this side was in the same position and would be starting back down the line. Moffitt lay perfectly still between the wheels under the vehicle so no motion would betray him.

He heard the sentry on his side returning from the wall, and just before the Jerry came beside the tank opposite, he heard the single word "Doc" whispered with urgency by Hitch. Moffitt's heart leapt in a surge of release but the bands about his head tightened. Don't, Hitch, he said in his mind, don't call again until the Jerry is out of hearing. The sentry marched on and Moffitt scurried out into the dark aisle that separated the machine.

"Hitch," he whispered.

There was no answer. He called again and the silence beat against his eardrums. He crawled back to the first halftrack and under it.

"Hitch?"

No one was there, nothing but the awful silence of the night.

Easy, easy, he told himself, he's got to be somewhere here. He returned to the tank treads beyond the second halftrack, watching in the pitch black, listening where he had heard the whisper before, waiting to hear it again. He called Hitch softly, two more times, but there was no response. This is Hitch's misguided idea of a joke, he thought angrily and caught himself up quickly. Under other circumstances certainly, but not in these circumstances. Hitch was no fool. Was he lying somewhere hurt, unable to move, unconscious?

The sentry came back on his post from the end of the line. Don't call now, Moffitt said in his mind to Hitch, but the Jerry had scarcely gone by when he heard the whisper again. "Doc."

As soon as the sentry reached the wall, Moffitt whispered, "Where?" but there was no answer. I've got to find him, Moffitt thought desperately, before he gives us both away. And now as the sentry returned, Hitch answered him. "At the end of the line, Doc." Moffitt tightened in every sinew of his body but the sentry continued without breaking his pace.

Dizzily Moffitt dug his way down the line of armored vehicles. Was there some strange, unfelt current of desert air that was carrying Hitch's voice to him? Did these closely packed lines of steel create a phenomenon of physics, some inexplicable sound tunnel? Or had the Jerries screwed the truth from Hitch? Moffitt hesitated. Was he being lured from hiding by someone pretending to be Hitch.

He crawled on despite his doubts, reached the last tank and halftrack, lay between them at the edge of the open desert. He heard the sentry walking to the end of his post. The Jerry did not turn on his heel and start back. Moffitt heard the stealthy movement of the man at the front of the tank. He was creeping to the grave Moffitt had dug himself. The sentry loomed over him with his rifle. Moffitt leapt to his feet clutching Hitch's noose in Ms hands.

"Doc," the sentry said and popped his gum for identification.

"Hitch!" The word stuck in Moffitt's throat.

"Kind of a shock, isn't it?" Hitch said, rapping his pot helmet and flaring the great coat that hung about Ms ankles.

"What happened?" Moffitt managed.

"Can only tell you a little at a time, Doc," Hitch said and chuckled. "That guard times me on my patrol. I had to take the sentry. He spotted you. Just stay put. Don't miss the next exciting chapter."

Hitch spun on his heel and doubletimed down the line. Moffitt leaned against the tire of the halftrack. He could put together what had happened but he was spent and felt incapable of understanding it. He waited for Hitch to explain.

In jerky sequence on half a dozen trips, Hitch told his story. The sentry, coming between the lines of vehicles to steal another smoke, apparently had glimpsed Moffitt going over the side into the back of the halftrack. Thinking it was only an Arab looking for a place to sleep, perhaps seeing a chevron in it for his action, the sentry had stolen after Moffitt. Hitch had looked out to check just as the sentry came up and he dropped the sentry with a judo chop to his Adam's apple. Then fearing the guard would be alerted when the sentry did not appear on schedule, Hitch had dragged the body away from the halftrack, put on his helmet and coat, shouldering his Mauser and been walking his post ever since.

"There wasn't time to tell you, Doc," Hitch apologized.

"Think nothing of it, old boy," Moffitt said and laughed. "But what did you do with the body?"

"Like I said, there wasn't time to stop by for a chat," Hitch said. "I got rid of the body in the halftrack with the other victim. I've been peeling his clothes from him in case you need an orderly. That's where I stashed my robes."

"How long do you think you can get away with this?" Moffitt asked, thoroughly amused now.

"Until they change the guard. I figure 2400 hours."

"And then?"

"And then I'll be off duty," Hitch said and chuckled.

"You'll be recognized," Moffitt warned.

"Oh no, I won't," Hitch said. He pulled a muffler from the pocket of the coat. "He carried this with him, I figure he used it. I'll wrap it around my face."

Moffitt glanced at the dial of his watch, glowing in the dark.

"Then you'd better get at it right off," he said and laughed. "You'll just about make it. I wish I could see it. This should be better than the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace."

"Why don't you?" Hitch said, wrapping his nose and jaw in the scarf. "Watch from the back of the halftrack. It's safe on this side right now. I'll join you there as soon as I can."

Still cautious, Moffitt toed silently back to the halftrack while Hitch jogged toward the wall. Moffitt was in time to see Hitch with the other three sentries being relieved present arms to the guard. The four new sentries were lined up facing them. The burly guard had come out from his little cave in the wall and was grimly giving the new sentries personal inspection. Hitch did not, Moffitt was certain, know the German manual or understand any of the German orders. At the moment Hitch looked like any of the other Jerries but Moffitt knew he must be feeling more alone than ever he had felt before in his life.

The guard completed his inspection and heeled to give an order. An enlisted man with a rifle slung over his shoulder ran from the wall shouting an unintelligible string of nervous but imperative words. The guard roared two orders, the four new sentries marched to their posts and the sentries who had been relieved slouched off dragging their rifles, two to the area on the other side, Hitch and the other toward Moffitt's side. Hitch lagged behind and when the other two Jerries were well beyond, he dived between the tanks and shinnied into the back of the halftrack. Moffitt glanced over at the entrance and saw the guard had left and the enlisted man with the slung rifle was standing under the lantern.

"What is it with the Jerries?" Moffitt asked Hitch.

"Can't tell, don't savvy Kraut. But something has excited them."

The beefy guard returned to his post and a few minutes later, men hastily aroused and still adjusting their uniforms began to assemble at the entrance. Two carried machine pistols and lanterns, the others rifles. The enlisted man who had brought the message to the guard gave an order, the men lined up in two columns of six at attention. He barked another order, the men with machine pistols and lanterns started out and he fell into the column behind them. They moved into Sidi Abd at doubletime.

"You catch?" Hitch asked.

"Jerries don't tell their lads what's up, you know," Moffitt said. "They're reporting to headquarters."

"Troy and Tully?" Hitch asked.

"Undoubtedly," Moffitt said.

"Maybe we'd better blow while we can, Doc," Hitch said.

"And miss the second act?" Moffitt nodded his head to the entrance where a second squad was lining up. "They don't have Troy and Tully. They only know they're there." He chuclded. "And it looks as if they haven't been idle."

The second squad moved into the town.

"They'll seal them off," Hitch said.

"We may have a somewhat longer wait than we anticipated," Moffitt agreed. "Well, over the top with you. Pick up where you left off on the familiarization course. When you're satisfied everything is ship shape and ready to run, knock up a snooze. I'll awaken you if they come through tonight."

"If?" Hitch asked pointedly.

"A big if," Moffitt said.

At five o'clock he stood beside the halftrack and shook Hitch gently by the shoulder.

"Rise and shine, as you Yanks say," he whispered.

"They're coming?" Hitch breathed, instantly alert, and scrambled behind the wheel.

"Afraid not," Moffitt said. "We'd best take off. We've things to do."

The darkness was no longer opaque but it was thick enough to screen them at a distance of twenty yards. They moved warily along the line of tanks until they reached the halftrack where they had dumped the bodies. Moffitt climbed up. The bodies were beginning to stiffen. The amused smile left his lips and he felt lines plowing across his forehead. This was a nasty bit. They couldn't each carry a corpse like a stick of firewood nor could they drag them and expect to escape undetected. Nor could they leave them here in the open end of the halftrack. He scooped Hitch's robe and burnoose from the truck bed and tossed them down to him.

"Let me have that coat and helmet," he said. "Put these on again."

Moffitt bundled the helmet, officer's cap and the clothing into the coat and dropped it to Hitch. Then he dragged the two corpses clad only in their long underwear to the side of the halftrack and slid them down. They remained erect. Moffitt jumped down.

"Get over to the next tank," he told Hitch. "After the sentry has passed on his way to the wall, get the hatch opened. He's probably half asleep but easy does it. We'll get these chaps propped up alongside and ready to pop in." Hitch climbed over the protected treads and lay on the Panther alongside the turret. When the sentry had trudged by, he wrenched open the manholelike hatch with only a negligible rasp. Moffitt carted the bodies over like department store manikins, hoisted them up to the tread shelf and Hitch ran them head first down the hatch. The officer thumped on the floor and the enlisted man plopped on top of him. Hitch eased the cover down on the hatch, rolled off the treads and lay in the sand beside Moffitt.

When the sentry had made his return round and was on his way to the wall again, Moffitt picked up the awkward bundle of clothing and Hitch slung the Mauser. They trotted out of the armored column and angled into the open desert, running as fast as their robes, the sand and their burdens would allow. The darkness threw a cloak about them but they dropped at one hundred yards. "There's going to be a stink," Hitch said.

"I hope it's from the corpses," Moffitt said. "I hope they stink before they find them."

When Moffitt judged the sentry had made his turn at the end of the line and was returning to the wall, they pushed back to their feet and waded through the tiresome sands in the last cold, dark moments before dawn to the top of the dune from which they had first viewed Sidi Abd. Hitch paused and half turned, his robes caught around him, looking as if he belonged to the desert with his Mauser slung carelessly over his shoulder.

"All that's happened in the last few hours and all that's yet to come," he said contemplatively. "But you'd never find Sidi Abd if you didn't know it was there."

Moffitt looked back. A tiny pinpoint of light marked the entrance to the town and half a dozen faint glimmers showed where the German headquarters building was.. Otherwise there was nothing in the world but the vast black of merging sky and desert. Sidi Abd might as well never have existed, except for Dietrich. He turned away and Hitch plowed down a rolling slope with him.

"What do you suppose Dietrich did to Troy and Tully?" Hitch asked in a hushed voice. He glanced over his shoulder.

"Nothing," Moffitt said, smiling. "He hasn't caught them yet."

"How do you know that?" Hitch asked in a surprised tone.

"The patrols didn't come back," Moffitt said.

"I thought I saw lights off to the left, where you said their headquarters were," Hitch said and looked back again.

"You did," Moffitt said.

"Well, wouldn't that mean Dietrich had them there and was questioning them?" Hitch demanded. "Or had turned them over to his goons?"

"It would not." Moffitt laughed enjoyably. "Those lights mean the Jerries still are looking. If they'd caught them, the Jerries all would be in bed."

Now the dawn was on them in a haze of gray that turned the sands a purplish hue and they were solitary figures in an unreal world. Hitch grasped the rifle strap on his shoulder with his hands pulling the Mauser forward and half turned his head again.

"Why do you keep looking back?" Moffitt asked, smiling. "You haven't been able to see Sidi Abd since we started down the slope from that first dime."

"I know," Hitch said, stopping now and facing full about. "I think we're being followed."

Moffitt whirled around and scanned the horizon. A faint pillar of dust seemed to be rising from beyond the dune that rose above Sidi Abd. He threw the bundle of clothing to the ground and plunged behind it. Hitch unslung the Mauser and, holding it low, dropped prone behind the unsubstantial bunker. The dust drew a stronger column in the sky and Moffitt saw five robed figures halt their horses on the dune.

"Arabs," Hitch breathed.

Moffitt stood, picked up the bundle and walked on. Hitch propped himself erect with the butt of his rifle and stumbled to Moffitt's side.

"But if we'd stayed where we were and not moved, they might not have seen us," he said angrily,

"See us?" Moffitt turned, bemused, to Hitch. "Up till now they've been tracking us practically in the dark.

Dawn was breaking dirtily in a squalid sky when Hauptmann Hans Dietrich collapsed in his padded chair, let his shoulders sag and humped on his elbows over his mahogany table. The acetylene lamps still burned but the light seemed to have gone out of them just as it had left Dietrich's eyes. Lieutenant Wilhelm Kummel sprawled, tunic unbuttoned and collar loosened, in an armchair behind the table with Dietrich but he was not relaxed, only wearied to the point he could no longer command his body. Master Sergeant Schmitt, pink cheeks mottled and eyes red-rimmed, stood at ease before the table while near the door Corporal Willi Hansteuffel stood at attention in the rigid, sculpted pose he had maintained for the past two hours, ever since the escape of the American Colonel Wilson had been discovered. Willi was the hapless guard who had been found sleeping in the doorway to the interrogation chamber.

Dietrich unbent his arms, placed his palms on the edge of the table and pushed his body erect. He braced his shoulders and against the protests of his bones and muscles, assumed his normal appearance. Kummel straightened and put both feet on the floor. Schmitt brought his heels together and lined his thumbs on the seams of his trousers. Willi did not move or even take a breath.

"Will someone tell me what is going on before I lose my sanity," Dietrich croaked, voice hoarse from shouting. "Do you want me to believe there are poltergeists in the building friendly to the enemy? How else could the prisoner have escaped except through the door? The window still is so securely barred we cannot budge it with a rifle butt from the inside. There is no tunnel leading from the second floor into the bazaar across the street, ja? No wall has been broken through into another room, nein? There is no secret trapdoor in the floor, hein? Darum, since this Wilson is a thing of flesh and not a spirit that can pass through solid objects, someone unlocked the door and out he walked, verstehen?"

"It is the only logical answer, Hans." Kummel sighed helplessly and slipped a little in his chair. "But how could it have happened? The room was checked when Willi was caught sleeping at his post. The American was there, sleeping on the desk. You locked the door. You have the only key. Willi has been standing at attention in the doorway since that time. Your guard has been at his post outside your door where he can watch both the stairway and the hallway where Willi stood. No one could have entered that room."

"Dumkopf," Dietrich rasped at Kummel. "Do not tell me the room could not have been entered when it was. One by one, I will answer your obtuse questions. First, you have heard of passkeys. Second, Hansteuffel was alseep on the floor the first time we returned. This Hansteuffel of yours is undoubtedly a man of many talents. Among them must be the ability to sleep on his feet with his eyes open. As for the guard at my door, I would not put it past him to have checked this office a time or two for a swallow of brandy during the many times this night we have been out and in. Third, or whatever point this may be, have you heard of confederates? We know the Rat Patrol operates by pairs. Two or more of them came into this building and concealed themselves while the two dressed as Arabs lured all of us with the exception of your sleeping beauty, Hansteuffel, away. These are the only answers, verreicht? Take Hansteuffel out and shoot him."

Kummel flushed and sat as straight as if someone had rammed a broomstick down his back. He brought his feet together flat on the floor.

"No one was hidden in the building, Hans," he said evenly. "With three guards always on duty, it is impossible."

"Don't you listen to me, Kummel? Are you as crazy as the others? At first perhaps they were not hidden in the building but only near it. While we searched for the two of them, the entry was unguarded. I told you, that is when they entered. With your Hansteuffel here, nothing is impossible." Dietrich pounded the table with his fist. "It is the way it happened."

"Ja, Herr Hauptmann Dietrich," Kummel said between clenched teeth.

"Then have him shot at once," Dietrich ordered. "And another matter, where was your guard at the entrance that the town suddenly is overrun with Americans? Have him shot with Hansteuffel."

"If the captain will permit me to point out," Kummel said in a tightly contained voice, "we cannot spare men for a firing squad if we are to organize a thorough search for Wilson and the others."

"Ah, the others," Dietrich said with a steely glint in his eyes. "You are chief of my security, Kummel. Where is Wilson? Where are the others? Why have they not been found? How many do they total? Four? Six? A dozen? Tell me, Kummel, how many Americans are there wandering like tourists about my headquarters?" Both fists pounded the table. "Where are they, Kummel, where are they?"

"They have not left the town, mein Herr," Kummel said.

"Ja, of that I could not be less certain." Dietrich's eyes narrowed dangerously. "We need a new security officer here, I think, perhaps."

"The entrance has been guarded, Herr Hauptmann," Kummel said, face crimson. "The walls cannot be leapt over as you would a hedge and the Americans we chased were not carrying extension ladders. The walls are patrolled at night both inside and out. Within the hour every man in the unit will be organized for a building to building search of the entire community. I already have sent for my deputy, Lieutenant Emil Bemdt, who will conduct the operation under my direct supervision. He will report here any minute."

"Every man in the unit!" Dietrich screamed through his hoarseness. "May I remind you, Kummel, that I am planning a new offensive? Are you telling me the war must halt while my troops become policemen?"

Kummel pressed his lips together until a white line showed about them. He did not say a word. He could not. Dietrich fell against the back of his chair, took a deep breath and held it a moment before he expelled it in a tired sigh.

"No reason we both should suffer apoplexy. A little brandy, Wilhelm," he said wearily, motioning toward the half-filled bottle that fronted two emptied bottles. When he had gulped the full glass of liquor Kummel placed in his hand, he looked at Schmitt, standing at attention with his chin tucked in the folds of his underchin. "Oh, for God's sake, relax, Schmitt," he said. He reached into his pocket and tossed a ring of heavy keys that landed with a clatter on the table. "Take Hansteuffel and lock him in the interrogation room. Detail a twenty-four-hour guard. We will deal with him when the Americans have been captured and we learn exactly what took place."

Schmitt bent as if he were making a formal bow, picked up the keys, shot his right arm and palm forward and said, "Heil!"

Dietrich glowered at him and handed his glass to Kummel for a refill. When Schmitt had marched Hansteuffel from the room, Dietrich looked at Kummel.

"Detain the guard who was on duty at the entrance last night," he said harshly. "We will find out exactly what took place when the Americans are apprehended. They will talk, you understand? It is your assignment to interrogate them." Then Dietrich leaned an elbow on the table and rubbed his palm over his face. He was exhausted. He smiled wanly and said in a friendly voice, "Fill your glass, Wilhelm, and tell me what you plan. Then let us each have an hour's sleep. There is an extra bedroom here I will let you have."

"Ja, my captain," Kummel said, unbending a little. When he'd swallowed some brandy, he shook a Camel package at Dietrich and again slumped in his chair. "Ach, vas eine Nacht," he exclaimed and dragged hard at his cigarette. "Very well, Hans, I will tell you what has been done and what will be done. No one has left Sidi Abd, not even a true Arab. The entrance has been closely guarded from the moment of the first alarm and the patrols about the wall doubled. When Lieutenant Bemdt reports to me—" Kummel frowned and consulted his watch. "He is long overdue. Well, when Lieutenant Bemdt reports to me, I shall order him to conduct a thorough investigation of every building, every rat hole, garden and rooftop. Groups of buildings as they are cleared will be sealed off by patrols so the Americans will not be able to find a refuge by doubling back. Before the sun has leached its zenith"—he extended his fingers and slowly clenched them in a tight fist—"we shall have the swine in our grasp like that. And believe me, Hans, I am filled with gratitude at the opportunity to conduct the interrogations. This has become a personal matter."

Dietrich's lip curled. "With me also, Wilhelm. I want them taken alive at all costs. When you have finished with them, I would like a few days of conversation before I turn them over to the Gestapo." He finished his brandy and placed a hand on the table, half rising. "Well, shall we get a little rest?"

"You go on, Hans," Kummel said. "Tell me where my bed is. I must talk with Bemdt, you know. I wonder what can be keeping him."

"I am so tired already it had fled my mind," Dietrich said and stood limply. "All right, Wilhelm, I leave matters in your hands. The first door to your left in the hallway. In one hour, I shall see you downstairs in the diningroom."

In his rooms, Dietrich tugged off his boots, removed his belt and tunic, loosened his collar and breeches and fell back on the divan that served him as bed. His eyes were closing before his head touched the silken pillow but it seemed not a moment had passed before someone was shaking him from his draggedlike sleep.

"The hour has passed already?" he asked groggily and then his mind alerted itself. He sat bolt upright. "You have found them!"

Kummel stepped back from the divan, cold blue eyes like agates and thin lips grim.

"The hour has passed," he said and his voice was metallic. "I have waited until the last possible minute to tell you this. One of the sentries from last night has disappeared."

"The Americans?" Dietrich shouted.

Kummel did not answer this. Instead he said, "And Lieutenant Bemdt is gone as well."

7

Troy scuttled sidewise like a crab from his rooftop observation post near the entrance along the back line of crooked buildings. His eyes were sore and bleary but they wandered without ceasing: left, front, right; right, front, left. Forgotten were cold, cramped limbs and a stomach that growled with hunger. Dawn was plucking away the veil of night and the roofs no longer offered shelter. Not only was the entrance guarded but Jerry patrols now ringed the wall. He'd sent Tully and Wilson back to the building against the Jerry headquarters as their safest haven while he'd spent the dark hours prowling and probing, following the movement of the patrol from above the soldiers' heads, and returned to watch the entrance for new activity. If only they had brought a scaling hook, he thought again as he had all night, they could have been out of the enclosure before the dawn. Now the light of day would disclose them unless he could quickly find a place to hide, some manure heap, compost pit or kitchen oven.

He slithered over one wall after another, running ahead of the patrols he knew the day would see fanning out to pluck burnoose and veil from every Arab, to prod every bundle of rags with bayonet, sweep every rooftop clear of heaps of refuse, salvaged tins and wooden crates. A scaling hook, a scaling hook, the phrase ran through his mind like an obscene refrain. Last night it would have meant escape. This morning it might mean safety, the means to reach the one place he could think of where they might hide, and he was not even sure of that. Where could he find or how could he fashion, a scaling hook? And do it right now before patrols entered Sidi Abd and every wall and roof was under watchful eyes.

Below in the alleys he heard the shambling feet and spiritless grumbling of the night patrol returning to the tent area and he scrambled ahead. On the crazy corner where the alley turned its flank to the entrance, Troy's smirched and tattered robe caught between his knee and ankle and he tripped, falling backwards, wrenching himself forward just before he toppled from the wall. He damned the disguise. Disguise? No longer did the burnoose and robe offer concealment. But the garments might throw the searching parties off the trail for a few minutes. He pulled off the cloth and headpiece, wadded them and flung them far down on the opposite side of the passageway. They settled and draped neatly on the sill of an open window. Troy grinned and ran unimpeded in his thin, bleached khakis. His canteen bumped lightly at his hip and reminded him that he was thirsty. He would drink soon enough but where to find a scaling hook? What Arabian implement, what piece of Jerry equipment could he use to fashion one? The Jerries probably carried a stock of scaling hooks to use on walled towns such as this but he had no idea where their supply dump was and even if he had, there was no time to go there.

Wilson was sleeping with his head on Tully's shoulder against the wall of the building that housed the German headquarters. The Bowie knife was bare in Tully's hand.

Troy snorted, "Were you going to take them on with that, a whole patrol?"

"I got better sense than that, Sarge," Tully said, shaking his head and smiling bleakly. "If they'd found us, I was going to slit Wilson's throat so he couldn't tell them nothing."

Troy nodded his head approvingly.

"What's the scoop?" Tully asked.

"They'll be sifting the town with a sieve in minutes," Troy said. "We'd have a chance if I could find a scaling hook."

"Over the wall?" Tully asked.

"Uh-uh, too late for that." Troy pointed to the roof of the two-story German headquarters building. "You'd spend the day up there."

"Hell, Sarge," Tully said. "You still got the rope. If you think we'd be safe up there, we don't need no scaling hook."

"I'm no fly," Troy said tartly.

"Well, now look," Tully said. He stood and Wilson started to fall to the side, caught himself and sat up sleepy-eyed. Tully stood away from the wall with his feet apart, leaned forward with his back inclined and forearms against the wall. "Now you climb up on my shoulders and brace yourself. Wilson can walk right up us like a stepladder."

Troy measured off thirteen or so feet to the top of the parapet with his eyes.

"I believe you're right," he said. "You could just about reach the top of that wall with your hands and pull yourself over. Come on, time's a-wasting, let's move. Only thing, Wilson's on the bottom. You next. I'm going over. Someone's got to anchor the rope for you two monkeys."

Without a word, Wilson assumed his stance against the wall.

"Just a minute," Troy said. "Tully, shed your robe."

He took the clothing, rolled them together and ran to the back side of the tiled rooftop. He hurled them into the narrow passage at the rear they had used the night before. It was, he noted with a wry smile, a cul-de-sac ending at the blank wall of a building.

Wilson and Tully both were in place and Troy crawled up Wilson's back and from his shoulders onto Tully. The ladder was shaky but it did not collapse. Standing wobbly-legged on Tully's shoulders, Troy reached for the parapet. His fingertips were short an inch. He lifted on his toes and could get his fingers on the ledge but not with enough purchase to draw himself up.

"Give me another inch or two," he said.

Wilson slid his feet ahead, used his forearms to help his straighten and Tully did the same. Troy gripped the top of the wall with the lengths of his fingers, did a slow and trembling finger pullup, heaved and slipped one arm over the parapet. He got a grip with his other hand and lifted himself up and over.

"Whew," he said and lay on the roof, gulping air to stop the quivering in his arms. Then sitting beside the reservoir for added support, he threw the line, still looped about his waist, over the wall.

"Wilson first," he called softly and braced his legs. Tully must have boosted Wilson from his back because the unbearable, sweat-popping, dead weight pull of the lift lasted only a few seconds. With Wilson helping, they brought up Tully and then sat with their heads hanging between their knees until they had their wind back. When Troy lifted his head, Tully was studying the top of the reservoir.

"What's that?" he asked, pointing up.

A ledge about a foot wide extended skyward at a forty-five degree angle on all four sides.

"To catch rainwater," Troy said. "There are holes for it to run into the tank."

"You don't think they'll look for us up here, Troy?" Wilson asked. He seemed to be taking it calmly enough and for once, he wasn't trying to run the show.

"Of course they will," Troy said, "but it's going to be the last place they look and they won't search so thoroughly. Now give me a hand, Tully, and we'll see how our luck is running today."

He gripped the ledge that ran around the five-foot-high reservoir and swung himself on top of it. When Tully followed, they gripped the iron ring that was fitted into the cistern cover. After the weight of Wilson, lifting the concrete lid was like uncapping a bottle. Troy spread-eagled on the top of the tank and reached his arm into it. He did not touch water.

"Our luck is running," he said and grinned at Tully. "Now you hop in and tell me how deep it is. Wait, wait, I just remembered something." He pulled the rope up from the roof and slung it around his canteen. "Might as well fill up our canteens before you jump in the bathtub." He let the bottom of the canteen touch the floor of the reservoir, then brought the rope up and measured the wetness here on it. The water was about a foot deep. Troy filled Wilson's and Tully's canteens after he had filled his own.

"All right," he told Tully. "Get in there and sit down. Wilson, you hop in after Tully."

"We going to be able to breathe all right in there, Sarge?" Tully asked.

"It's not airtight," Troy said. "I told you about those holes for the rainwater."

"Uh, Troy," Wilson said. "You've done first rate up to now and I don't want you to think I'm complaining, but haven't you forgotten one thing?"

"What's that?" Troy asked.

"Once the three of us are inside, how are we going to get this lid back in place?"

"That could be managed," Troy said. "We'd leave the lid halfway in place and then a couple of us just edge it in the groove. But the three of us aren't going to be in there."

"No?" Wilson said with lifted eyebrows.

"No," Troy said. "I'm staying out. I'll be in the neighborhood. If they come up here and it looks as if they're getting warm, I'll hoot and holler and draw them off."

"You're going to get caught, Sarge," Tully said.

"Probably," Troy agreed and grinned. "But there's nothing in my head that's worth a damn to them.

"There's one thing," Wilson said quickly and furrowed his forehead. "You know where we are and they'll try to beat it out of you."

"Don't let that fret you," Troy said sharply. "I'll say you went over the wall with two other guys last night.

"But when you do get caught, all you've done is delay the end," Wilson said. "We'll not get out of here."

"I'll do my damnedest not to get caught," Troy said scornfully and turned to Tully. "All we want is to buy more time. Moffitt will be in tonight. When it's dark, the two of you lift off the lid and come on out. Work back toward the entrance on the rooftops. No telling what Moffitt will try to pull but keep alert for him. Now in with you."

Tully lowered himself through the hole and after he'd splashed, Wilson followed doubtfully. Troy shoved the cover almost into place.

"Oh, Tully," he said. "You know what to do if they should discover you?"

"Sure, Sarge," Tully drawled. "I'll take care of the CO."

"Boys," Wilson said and although his voice echoed hollowly in the tank, it was choked a little. "I just want you to know that I've never seen men so devoted to their commanding officer."

"Sure, Wilson," Troy said and pushed the lid in place. He started to gather the rope around his waist and then grinned. Leave the Jerries a trail to follow and they would not think of looking in the cistern. He untied the loop from his waist and tied one end of the line in a square knot to the iron ring. He threw the rope over the wall and went down it.

Crabbing on arms and knees, he lay at the front of the one-story building and saw, striding from headquarters the same officer who had watched Tully and him at the tavern. The German's face was set and gray in the bleak light of morning. He walked rapidly down the alley that led toward the entrance. A guard was stationed in front of the German headquarters but there seemed to be no patrol activity yet.

Troy had no illusions about the hounds and hare game he proposed to play. He knew the consequences. He would be tom to bits if the hounds caught up with him and he did not propose to sacrifice himself if it could be avoided. He retired to the rear of the building next to German headquarters to study his surroundings and the course he'd take when the chase started.

The squeezed-in one-way passage below was littered with refuse. It was nothing but a common garbage can for the buildings backing on it, a contained areaway piled with the detritus of life. Crawling over the moldering debris were hordes of savage, snarling, skittering rats. The stench of the vermin and offal and rot lay in visible layers in the dusty air. To the left, down the passageway and across a thin street, lay the shuttered shops of the bazaar, corrugated iron frontings armorlike in the bluish light. The roofs to his right, some tiled, mostly coarse clay brick sprinkled with sand, lay like parched rice paddies separated by dykelike walls. Where the cul-de-sac resulted from the blank wall, roofs twisted around providing an open but hedged field that extended back over dozens of walls to the palms about the waterhole and common well.

The oasis would bear investigation, he thought, looking over his shoulder at the nylon line that trailed from the cistern lid, and then down at Tully's dark robe lying with the other discarded and useless rags at the end of the way. The trail was marked and the Jerries would follow it. If he was lucky, he had them off the scent. First they would investigate his own robe near the entrance, and finding nothing, push on with the search. But when they discovered the nylon line and Tully's robe, they would think they had uncovered the start of the trail and return to intensify their investigation of the area near the entrance. He grinned; he hoped they would.

He leapfrogged from roof to roof at the backs of the buildings, always wary although there was no indication that patrols had started to prod through the town. The inactivity disturbed him. The Jerries with their methodical, almost machinelike, thought processes were usually predictable, but Dietrich did not always fit the pattern. The Jerry captain was capable of extreme measures to gain his end and Troy did not think Dietrich incapable of razing the walled village, reducing it to rubble to regain the rich prize Wilson represented. Or—and the thought lifted the hairs on his suddenly chilled arms—had they captured Moffitt and Hitch?

He flattened on the roofs and moved like a leech.

It was perhaps a thousand yards to the waterhole in a straight line from German headquarters. Over the contorted tops of the buildings, it was more nearly a mile. The roofs, as he crept back from stores and warehouses onto the huts, became a squalid obstacle course, strewn with rags, with washings, with discarded implements of life, inhabited by chickens and dogs and on one a goat that resented the invasion of his arid pasture by a foreigner and protested in a plaintive bleat.

Among the scabrous trunked palms that opened their umbrellas above the muddy waterhole, a dozen goats were tethered, some horses and mules chafed at the meager fodder and an Arab family had crawled from a striped awning and squatted about a dung fire. More one-room huts lay beyond, their white walls lavender in the cloud-filtered light of morning.

Sidi Abd was awakening and a murmuring of voices became a babble. Robed Arabs squatted in the alleys to relieve themselves and Troy started back toward German headquarters on his belly over the middle of the dusty roofs where he hoped he would be seen from neither front nor back.

It was going to be another gray day and the dismal threat of rain nagged like a shrewish wife. If there were a deluge in the desert, the Rat Patrol would be mired and at the mercy of the Jerries even if they eluded capture in the town and broke through the walls.

An angry outcry, many voices raised in a wail of enraged complaint lifted in a minor chorus from the direction of the gateway, and scanning the roofs in all directions for posted sentries, Troy reversed his direction and twisted toward the principal alley of the town, the in-and-out route. He had precious little time, he knew. A thought had suddenly struck him that he had not considered before. German headquarters was the tallest building in the community. The Jerries were certain to man an observation post atop it where constant watch could be maintained on every roof.

The first Jerry patrols were in the town and soldiers in pairs with bayoneted rifles were rummaging through the houses and buildings. The outraged Arabs were massing in the tight streets, plugging them with their bodies, crowding the Jerries back. Troy grinned. It was not unlikely that Dietrich would have a native uprising on his hands before the day was over. But patrol after patrol was pushing through the entrance, and the Arabs yielded foot by foot to the bayonets. When an Arab lagged, he was shorn of his burnoose. Troy's eyes narrowed at the German procedure. The Jerries were driving the Arabs out of the buildings so they could be inspected without interference. When the Arabs had been herded into a compound, probably at the waterhole, each individual would be stripped of headpiece and examined.

Still the Arabs poured out until it seemed every alley within sight was a congealing, bobbing mass of shouting, shrieking Arabs. A Jerry discovered Troy's discarded robe; the natives were shoved away by stabbing bayonets.

Teams dived into every building in the vicinity and a Jerry appeared on the roof of the building where the robe had draped on the window sill. He considered the empty roof briefly and dropped back into the building. Troy scrambled away.

The cacophony of the raddled village swelled in Troy's ears as he scuttled now in the gray but open light of day toward some refuge, a place where he could hide and lie undetected, at least for a while. It was futile to think he could escape the Jerry net for long. He wanted some place within sight of headquarters, but far enough away to give him a running start. He did not think the Germans would shoot at him, a solitary figure. They would want him at least alive enough to tell them where the others were.

Across the cul-de-sac passage behind headquarters and near the bazaar, he found a penthouse, a good-sized crate which had housed some piece of German machinery and which some Arab had purloined for its priceless wood. It was upended but he turned it on its side, crawled under and pulled it over him. With the kris, his only weapon, he enlarged cracks between the planks on all four sides, making the peepholes facing the headquarters building and the bazaar across the street larger than the other two. It was a temporary hiding place, he knew.

The commotion from the far side of town grew in intensity even within the warren the hare had found, but patrol activity had not yet reached headquarters or the bazaar. He turned his attention to the bazaar. Shutters were clattering up and merchants were laying out their stocks of fine brass pots and scurvy tin trade goods, strings of garlic, herbs and spices, beads and calico, American and English cigarettes and Italian wines, pillows, pipes and pistols. Troy considered the bazaar thoughtfully. Behind the shops must lie a maze of living quarters and storehouses. He hefted a leather pouch of gold coins from his shirt pocket. Mad money. Escape money. Bribes. It was possible that when the time came for him to run, he could buy more time across the street. And then again, an Arab might take the gold and merely re-sell him to the hounds.

With a rushing roar like the outpouring from an opened flood gate, Arabs flowed into the bazaar, infuriated Arabs who had been forced back by the relentless pressure of the bayoneted troops.

Troy returned to the peephole that looked at headquarters. A Jerry was on the roof. Troy caught his breath. He had not expected the Krauts to inspect their own back yard so soon. The Jerry marched directly to the reservoir and Troy got his fingers under the crate, ready to lift, shout and run. The soldier grasped the gutter trough, swung himself to the top and stood upright on the middle of the tank, right where the lid with the rope was. White against white, the line had not yet caught his eyes. He lifted binoculars and started a precise scrutiny of the rooftops.

Troy pulled his fingers back inside and started to laugh. Tully and Wilson were safe for the day with a Jerry observer guarding them. They would be miserable, scarcely daring to breathe with a Jerry on their lid, but they would be safe. The observer would soon enough zero in on the crate as worthy of investigation and Troy would have to bolt. And he would discover the rope and the robe. And that would be two leads to follow while the skin withered and whitened on Tully's and Wilson's feet.

The observer made a three hundred and sixty degree cursory sighting of the town and returned to an object that apparently interested him. Troy's penthouse. He fixed his glasses on it and held them. Troy fought an impulse to pull away from the peephole. He had the feeling that the Jerry was looking straight into his eyes. Well, perhaps he was, because he put down a hand to jump from the reservoir and noticed the line dangling to the next door roof. The Jerry ran across the roof toward the stairway. Troy crinkled his eyes, slid his fingers under the edge of the crate and prepared to evacuate. The chase was about to begin.

8

The five gaunt, dark-faced Arabs reined their pawing, fawn-colored stallions in a tight circle about Moffitt and Hitch. Leaning from silver-chased, high-cantled saddles, they silently regarded the two robed soldiers like beady-eyed, cruel-beaked vultures. They were dressed alike in dark robes and burnooses with the exception of one whose headpiece was ornamented with threads of gold. He carried a Schmeisser machine pistol and seemed to be the leader. The others were armed with Mausers.

Hitch's eyes roved the circle and came back to Moffitt. "What do you know, Doc!" he said and popped a bubble. "Their robes and burnooses are exactly like ours."

"I know," Moffitt said with half a smile. "I designed ours to be authentic and now we've run into members of the tribe whose peculiar dress I used. These are the men of Abu-el-bab. They dress different, think different, are different from any other people in the desert. They are savage fighters and feared by the other tribes." To the Arab in the richly embroidered burnoose, he said, "Sabah-el-Kheir. Ahlan wa sahlan."

Face impassive and emotionless as a chiseled brown-stone mask, the Arab considered Moffitt long before answering. When he spoke, he said harshly in his language, "Who are you who speak our tongue and wear the burnoose of our tribe but wander horseless in the desert, carrying bundles of old rags?"

"I am Hamam Gameel, the good pigeon," Moffitt said, touching his forehead and bowing his head. "I am blood brother to Ben-el-bab whose father, when I was no longer than a rifle, was the great sheik of Abu-el-bab. I speak your tongue because I have lived in your tents and I wear the burnoose of Abu-el-bab by order of the sheik."

The Arab's eyes closed suspiciously to slits. "There was such a one," he said. "A fair-haired child of a scholar who was a friend of Abu-el-bab and led us to the ancient lost city in the rocks that was our birthplace. I remember the ceremony of the mingling of the blood when this scholar from a distant island and his manchild clasped hands with the sheik and his son in a rare celebration not performed again in any of our lifetimes. If you be Hamam Gameel, we are honored and you are welcome, and your brother with you. These are strange times in our land when everyone is suspect. If you bear false testimony and are not Hamam Gameel but instead are of the thieving tribe of swine who now occupy the village of Sidi Abd, we shall bury you to your heads in the sands of the desert and annoint you with honey to draw the ants that will eat your eyeballs from their sockets."

"We have killed your enemy and stripped him of his clothes," Moffitt said, bending to unbutton the great coat and displaying the German uniforms. "Tonight we shall disguise ourselves as one of him and reenter this town from which he drives the rightful inhabitants to rescue our friends whom this enemy holds prisoners."

"Come," the Arab ordered impatiently. "We go to pray the judgment of the Ben-el-bab who is now the sheik of Abu-el-bab. If you speak the truth, you will eat and rest with us and have our aid in every way that we can help. I am Al Ombo Beni."

The leader of the Arabs lifted his reins, jerking the stallion's head to the right and the great animal danced and pawed the air as he wheeled. Rider and horse galloped in great clouds of dust into the desert. Two of the other Arabs raced away after him while the two remaining robed men rode slowly on either side of Moffitt and Hitch, not speaking but only pressing them in the direction they wanted to take.

"Well, how'd we make out, Doc?" Hitch said and adjusted the Mauser on his shoulder. "At least they didn't take our weapons."

"Sporting of them, wasn't it?" Moffitt said and laughed. "If we'd make a move, it would give them a chance to shoot us. They're not entirely convinced that I am who I claim to be. A lot is going to depend on the memory of their new sheik, the Ben-el-bab. He's supposed to be my desert brother."

"I just hope he places a high value on family ties," Hitch said.

Moffitt studied the morning sky that was a forebodingly dull pewter color. The weather worried him as much as geting into Sidi Abd and rescuing Wilson, along with Troy and Tully if that were possible. Desert rains are solid sheets of water that turn the sand to soup and he knew that if the jeeps were mired, the Rat Patrol was lost and the Jerries would not give them another chance to escape. Although the sky was thickly matted with gray clouds, the heat poured through and sweat drenched Moffitt's body. Suddenly he was very tired, thirsty and hungry. Both Hitch and he needed the daylight hours in which to rest and regain their strength for the coming night. He did not expect to enter and leave Sidi Abd without a struggle.

They had trudged without speaking in the slipping sands for perhaps half an hour when they climbed to the top of a rolling dune higher than the others and saw below in a rippled valley half a dozen pavilion-type tents, mauve in color with broad awnings at the entrances. Beyond the camp of Sheik Ben-el-bab's men—a raiding party, Moffitt was certain from their small number—perhaps two dozen magnificent Arabian steeds were hobbled. As Moffitt and Hitch entered the cluster of tents, Al Ombo Beni stepped out under the awning of a pavilion larger than the others and stood aside, indicating with an abrupt motion of his hand that they were to go inside.

A rug, thick and rich in oriental color and design, covered the ground and on it were several low octagonal wooden tables and many pillows. A young man sat cross-legged on a pillow at the middle of the tent. His burnoose was similar to Al Ombo Beni's except that it was even more richly adorned with gold and silver. His nose was thin and hawk-shaped and his mouth above a sharp chin was straight and almost lipless. Moffitt felt Ben-el-bab's keen eyes appraising him before they turned first to one and then the other of two old men with lined parchment faces who stood on either side of him. It was difficult to tell whether there was question or decision in Ben-el-bab's eyes.

Moffitt touched his forehead and bowed his head.

"Greetings, brother of my blood which runs stronger in my veins since the day it was united with that of your brave body," Moffitt said. "I am Hamam Gameel, come once again to the tribe of Abu-el-bab to pray the favor of the invincible Sheik Ben-el-bab, to ask food and drink and a place to rest for my friend in battle and myself that we may regain our strength and carry the fight again tonight against the enemy who has invaded these wide lands of yours."

Ben-el-bab's mouth grew hard and cruel and his eyes were stony. He turned from Moffitt to Al Ombo Beni.

"I do not know this man," he said. "He is an imposter. Hamam Gameel is dead. The word was passed from tribe to tribe how Hamam Gameel with his father was captured by a band of infidels who sought to rob our ancient crypts of gold."

"That was true, brother of my blood," Moffitt cried, "but were you not told how my father was tortured and would not betray your hiding place? And how we escaped and the thieves who sought to pilfer you of your treasures were consumed in the explosion where my father trapped them in the crevices of the rock?"

"The patriarchs of the tribe have told me Hamam Gameel is dead," Ben-el-bab said to Al Ombo Beni without glancing at Moffitt. "I honor and respect the old ones and have no reason to doubt they speak the truth." His voice rose angrily. "Shall I now listen to the outrageous lies of an alien beggar who profanes the memory of my brother in blood? Take these treacherous dogs who would deliver us to the infidel enemy at Sidi Abd and bury them to their necks in the sands of the desert."

"I speak the truth, great Sheik," Moffitt said bravely, but chill fear touched his heart. Only Ben-el-bab could help and the Arab was wary of the enemy in his land.

Al Ombo Beni shouted an order and two of the five Arabs who had intercepted Moffitt and Hitch in the desert strode into the tent and seized the Englishman and the American, ripping the robes from their bodies and sweeping the burnooses from their heads. Rough hands stripped away their belts with canteens and pistols and tore the khaki shirts from their backs.

"What do we do now, Doc?" Hitch asked, grinding away at his gum but not popping any bubbles.

"If we remain calm, I still may think of some way to convince Ben-el-bab," Moffitt said. "There was something that impressed the Arabs at the time of the blood ceremony. I am trying to recall it but I was very young and it was many years ago."

"Think, Doc," Hitch said urgently. "We're in a worse spot than if the Jerries had us."

Moffitt and Hitch stood, bare to the waist, on the thick bright carpet in the middle of the tent and the Arab guard lashed their wrists with rawhide so tightly the leather bit into the flesh. The sheik, Ben-el-bab, had risen from his pillow and was staring curiously at Moffitt's left shoulder.

"The sign, great Sheik," Moffitt said excitedly, suddenly remembering.. He nodded his head at a crescent-shaped birthmark high on his arm near his shoulder joint. "It is the sign of good fortune your father remarked at the ceremony of the mingling of the blood. 'By this sign we shall always know you,' your father said to me before he cut our palms and we clasped our hands in brotherhood. Now, Ben-el-bab, you know I speak the truth and indeed am Hamam Gameel."

"Remove the thongs that bind my brother and his friend," Ben-el-bab said harshly. "Only the true Hamam Gameel would know the meaning of this sign to us."

When the guard had freed Moffitt and Hitch, Ben-el-bab stepped forward and grasped Moffitt's right palm in both of his hands.

"I pray you will forgive me, brother of my blood," he said warmly, sharp eyes fixed on Moffitt's face. Moffitt could feel them, almost as if they penetrated his mind and read his thoughts. "When the enemy is in our midst, we distrust the very shadow of our favorite stallion. Welcome to the tribe of Abu-el-bab to which you belong by ancient ceremony and respected order of my wise father. Command and it shall be as you order. Tell us what it is that we can do to aid you in your fight."

"I say truly," Moffitt said heartily with the relief that surged through him, "I have never been so happy to see anyone in my life. We crave food and drink and a place to rest."

Ben-el-bab swung to Al Ombo Beni and said quickly, "See that a tent is prepared for my brother, Hamam Gameel, and his friend, that they are served with such of our poor fare as they will take, and that all comforts are provided for their rest."

"I don't exactly follow all that's going on, Doc," Hitch said with a smile, "but things seem to have taken a turn for the better. It never hurts to have friends in high places."

"Especially when they remember that they're friends," Moffitt agreed.

As Al Ombo Beni and the two guards left the tent, Ben-el-bab sat on his pillow, indicating that Moffitt and Hitch were to be seated.

"We shall talk while things are made in readiness," he said. "Tell me what your plans are."

"When it is dark, we shall dress in the uniform of the enemy which we have captured," Moffitt said, motioning at the bundle of clothing. "We shall enter the village of Sidi Abd and free three of our companions whom the enemy has captured."

"I have a small force of two dozen men here," Ben-el-bab said with a thin smile. "We are fighting men. Shall we accompany you?"

"You speak in true brotherhood," Moffitt said with an amused glint in his eye. "But I think not into the town. The enemy would overwhelm you with his number and his weapons. We have machines concealed within the fence the enemy has erected in the desert. If your men could guard these machines for us and destroy any of the enemy who approaches them, it would be the greatest help that you could give us."

"It shall be done at once," Ben-el-bab said. "Are there not other ways we may more actively be of assistance?"

"Perhaps," Moffitt said considering the difficulties that would beset Hitch and him once they had entered Sidi Abd that night. "If two of your men could slip into the town during the day to observe and listen for word of what has happened, it would be helpful to us to know what is going on."

"That, too, shall be as you ask," Ben-el-bab said.

"They may be submitted to indignities," Moffitt warned. "Our two companions entered the village disguised as Arabs and it is probably the enemy is searching everyone in burnoose and robe for them, if they already have not been captured."

"Any indignity will only harden our hatred and determination to rid our land of these invaders," Ben-el-bab said grimly. "There is a public house near the mansion the enemy has seized for his headquarters. It is now a brothel and a place where drinks are served to the infidel soldiers. If you go directly to this tavern, the two men of Abu-el-bab will meet you there and tell you what you wish to know. Is there more that we can do?"

"If you're in the neighborhood when we break out," Moffitt said with a smile, "You might get in a shot or two at the drivers of the machines that pursue us."

"That, too, shall be as you ask," Ben-el-bab said. Moffitt and Hitch stood as Al Ombo Beni reentered the tent gathering their clothing and equipment.

"May Allah smile on your fortunes," Ben-el-bab said. "Meanwhile we shall give what assistance we can by our efforts."

Moffitt touched his forehead and Hitch and he followed Al Ombo Beni to another, smaller tent where pillows were scattered on a rug, and food and drink, kunafa, basabusse and eish Al-Saraya, all of them delicious pastries, together with a great pot of mazbout, or slightly sweetened coffee, awaited them on a low table.

"We came up smelling like roses, Doc," Hitch said happily, contemplating the breakfast and the pillows.

"Yes," Moffitt said thoughtfully. "We'll spend at least this day in comfort. But I can't help wondering how our friends are faring and what Dietrich is up to now. I'd like to think Wilson, Troy and Tully had a chance but I have my doubts."

"Doc!" Hitch said and he sounded amazed and horrified. "It's not like you to be discouraged."

"It's not like Troy and Tully to fail in what they set out to do," Moffitt answered. "This may be the time that Dietrich is holding all the cards.

Captain Dietrich leapt to his feet behind the table in his office when the door flew open and the sentry he had sent to the rooftop observation post rushed in. Beside Dietrich, Lieutenant Wilhelm Kummel stood more slowly, a frown deepening between his tired eyes and his face flushing with anger.

"Corporal," he rasped. "What is the meaning of this unmilitary intrusion?"

The corporal, a slim youth with a wispy blond mustache sprouting under a pudgy nose, halted at attention. His fair-skinned face pinkened but he blurted, "I've found them, the way they went and maybe even where they are hiding now."

"Where?" Dietrich shouted, turning to Kummel. "Quickly, summon a patrol. Don't waste precious time."

Jerking back to the corporal, he said, "Now tell me, precisely, calmly. Exactly what have you found?"

The corporal drew a deep breath and tucked his chin into his neck. "They escaped down a rope tied to the ring in the water reservoir onto the roof of the next building. One of them discarded the Arab robes he was wearing and they are lying at the end of the passage at the rear. That is the way they went."

"From the rooftop of this building?" Dietrich said, catching his breath. "That is impossible."

"The signs are there," the corporal said. "The rope and the robe."

"Incredible," Dietrich breathed. "Must I shoot all my guards to establish security within my own headquarters? Well, well, where is it you think they may now be hiding?"

"A large crate rests upon a rooftop near the bazaar," the corporal said, excitedly now. "It is large enough to conceal two or even three persons. It is the only place I could see with my glasses in all the village where a man could hide. I can see from the dust on the roof where this crate recently has been moved."

"Well, come, man," Dietrich said, grabbing his cap from the table and crushing it on his head. To the guard at his door, he said, "Send Lieutenant Kummel and the patrol to the roof."

He ran down the hallway to the stairs and mounted them to the roof. The corporal trotted at his heels.

"The rope," the corporal said, pointing to the nylon line, and then to the passageway where the clothing lay crumpled on a heap of refuse.

"Where's the patrol?" Dietrich called angrily, swinging about and glaring at the stairway. "Send them after me," he told the guard and lifted a leg over the wall, grasping the rope in his hands. "Get up there on the reservoir and keep your eyes to your glasses."

Dietrich scrambled down the line, not bothering to walk the wall but lowering himself hand over hand. He dropped the last few feet and ran over the rooftops to the building where the passage ended, clearing the walls between with great hurdling leaps. He had his Luger in his hand and ran at full speed toward the crate several roofs away. He'd not shoot to kill, he thought wrathfully, although he'd like to after all the troubles this Rat Patrol had given him. But it would be no warning shot he'd fire, over their heads. He'd cut anyone who showed himself down at his legs.

He heard a commotion behind and turned his head over his shoulder. The patrol with Kummel in the lead was clambering down the wall. Good, good, he thought with a thin smile, it would be good for his security officer and men to see their commanding officer take the bothersome enemy singlehandedly.

Several roofs away, the crate was tilted on its side, blank bottom showing to Dietrich, and he cursed and fired into it. The open side of the crate was to the bazaar and Dietrich heard the sentry on the reservoir shouting. I see, damn it, Dietrich raged. Whoever was in the crate is slipping off the roof beyond my sight. He fired three more times, drilling the planks in the bottom of the box but knowing it was futile before he squeezed the trigger.

At the edge of the roof, he looked into a milling throng of Arabs that clogged the street of the bazaar. Across in front of a coffee shop, there seemed to be more jostling and confusion than elsewhere and Dietrich glimpsed a figure in a khaki shirt disappear under an awning. He swung himself from the rooftop by his hands and dropped into the street. The Arabs surrounded him, crowding him and pressing him back. He swung his pistol in a vicious sideswipe, cracking into an Arab's skull and knocking him back. Hammering his way with his pistol, he beat through the mob and the patrol dropped from the roof and followed him.

Some pillows and tables were scattered under the awning and a narrow opening in a windowless wall led into a small shop behind it. Dietrich kicked over a table and shouldered past half a dozen Arabs into the shop. It was a small dark hole with pastries displayed on a counter and jars of coffee beans on the shelf behind. A small and wizened dark-skinned man, draped in a reddish vest and wearing baggy trousers huddled against the wall.

"Where is he?" Dietrich shouted.

The shopkeeper cringed and pointed at a beaded doorway behind the counter in the rear wall. Dietrich crashed around the counter with Kummel and the patrol crowding closely now. The room behind the shop was a living quarter. It was a dark and airless place with only a little light seeping through an opening high in one wall. A table, looking as if it had hastily been pushed in place, stood beneath the opening which was about two feet square. Large enough for a man to crawl through, Dietrich thought, scanning the room with a glance. There was no rear door and no place to hide except under a cot, which he quickly discovered, kneeling to look, was not being used by the American or Americans.

"How many were in the crate?" he asked Kummel, climbing to the table and pulling himself up to the opening.

"One only," Kummel answered, boosting Dietrich.

"Was it Wilson?" Dietrich asked, dropping down the side of the building into an alleyway that twisted between the crowded buildings of the bazaar. Like the other passageways in the town, it was crammed with refuse and offal. He started down it at a trot.

"No," Kummel called. "It was an American I did not recognize but it was not the American colonel."

"Then the others are still free and we don't know how many there are," Dietrich flung over his shoulder.

Kummel landed in the passage and ran after Dietrich. "Patrols are spreading through the village," Kummel shouted. "They will be found."

"It had better be soon," Dietrich warned angrily. "The war waits while we chase will-o'-the-wisps."

Now the patrol, eight men armed with rifles, was in the alley and pounded in single file after the two officers. Dietrich came out of the passage into a slightly wider corridor that formed a lane behind the bazaar. It ran in both directions. Huts with open doors and single narrow windows fronted on it.

"Take four men and search the buildings to the left," Dietrich called. "I'll take the other four and go to the right."

They had lost their quarry, he thought with mounting rage. While they rummaged through the buildings one by one, the man could be hiding on the other side of town. He assigned one man to a hut and plunged himself into the first doorway. The one room he entered was a pigsty of a place with sleeping rags piled in a corner and some bricks that formed a stove. A woman with a shawl about her face and shoulders cradled something in her arms. Dietrich tore the shawl from her face and a baby clinging to her shoulders bawled. Dietrich ran from the hut and down the lane beyond his patrol.

From the left where Kummel's patrol was working, someone shouted and a shot rang out, echoing in the closed-in street. Dietrich turned, running toward the sound and saw Kummel fifty yards ahead. Kummel had his pistol in his hand and fired again as the members of his patrol darted after him. Dietrich had not yet glimpsed the person Kummel was chasing but as he followed Kummel around a turning into another alley slanting away from the bazaar, he saw a khaki-clad figure dart ahead into still another street. Kummel fired again and ran on.

The lane squirmed on away from the bazaar, until it broke free of its confines and gained the open area surrounding the waterhole. Dietrich saw the khaki figure, still fifty yards ahead of Kummel and his four men, burst into the open and disappear from his line of vision. Behind him he could hear his four men coming after him. Kummel fired once more and then he and his patrol were gone. When Dietrich reached the oasis with its scraggly palms and patches of poor ground cover, Kummel's patrol had spread out on either side of him and were racing toward the walled waterhole. The fleeing man in khaki was heading toward a huddle of huts on the other side and seemed to be outdistancing his pursuers.

Dietrich's breath was coming hard now but he ran on, still ahead of his patrol.

"Fire," he yelled to Kummel. "Fire at his legs." Kummel snapped an order to his men and they fell prone, rifles going to their shoulders and cracking before they hit the ground. Ahead, the khaki-clad figure stumbled, seemed about to fall but staggered on in a shambling, dragging trot.

"Halt," Dietrich heard Kummel shout.

The khaki figure ran on another half dozen steps and stumbled again, this time falling. He came to his hands and knees almost immediately and crawled, but Kummel reached him and grasped him by the collar, yanking the man to a stop and throwing him over on his back. Dietrich saw Kummel bend over the man, search him rapidly. When Dietrich ran to them, Kummel's patrol was standing over the American with rifles pointed and Kummel was examining a knife with a wavy edge.

"Some kind of dagger," Kummel panted. "Seems to be the only weapon he carried."

Dietrich scarcely glanced at the knife, looking at the figure on the ground and feeling a satisfied smile touch his lips.

"Sergeant Troy, late of the Rat Patrol, if I am not mistaken," he said. He looked at Troy's pant leg where red was staining the khaki. "You have been wounded. What a pity." He eased the leg of the trouser up to Troy's knee to examine the wound. Removing a handkerchief from his pocket, he rapidly wrapped the wound. "A scratch in the flesh, no more," he said, standing. "But we cannot risk infection in this filth. We shall take very good care of you, Sergeant Troy. Do you think you can stand upon your leg?"

Without answering, Sergeant Troy pushed himself with both hands to his good leg, gingerly rested a little weight on the wounded one. The sergeant's face was streaked with sweat and dirt and he was gasping for breath. His face looked taut with strain, Dietrich thought.

"Ah, that is good," he said as Troy took a limping step. "I shall have a man assist you. But to save time as well as perhaps unpleasantness later, where are the others? Where is Wilson and those who helped him to escape?"

A defiant smile flashed across Troy's set face and he did not say a word.

"So you are going to be foolish," Dietrich said harshly. "It is regrettable. The others will be caught anyway. And if you persist in maintaining silence, it only means that I shall have to turn you over to Lieutenant Kummel who has a peculiarly effective method of making stubborn prisoners talk."

Dietrich watched Troy narrowly for some evidence of fear but only the defiant smile came briefly.

"Very well," Dietrich said angrily to Kummel. "March him off to headquarters. We shall talk again, the three of us in my office."

Wrath was pounding once more in Dietrich's chest as he and four men of the patrol followed Kummel and his men with the prisoner. This Sergeant Troy, Dietrich knew from past encounters, was a tough nut and it would require all of Kummel's skill to crack him. However long Troy could hold out, it would delay them by that much time in recapturing Wilson and the others. And in the meantime, Dietrich raged, the war was being delayed, opportunities for victorious battles lost.

Back at the headquarters, Dietrich had the guard lock Troy in the interrogation room while he took Kummel into his office.

"Get him to talk fast," he said to Kummel. "I'm not going to bother with him. I'm far too soft. You understand, I must know where the others are at once."

"Yes, my captain," Kummel said, clenching his fists. The cords stood out in his neck as he clamped his teeth together.

"Good," Dietrich said. "And find out whether he knows anything about the disappearance of the sentry and Lieutenant Bemdt last night."

"It will be a pleasure," Kummel said between his teeth and turned to leave.

He had not taken a step when a knock rapped on the door and the guard came in.

"Your orderly, Corporal Lentzen, says that he must see you at once," the guard said. "I explained that you were occupied but Corporal Lentzen insists this is a matter of utmost importance."

"Very well," Dietrich snapped, calling to Kummel, "Wait a moment, Wilhelm. Lentzen would not bother me about a triviality."

The fat-faced orderly with the piggy eyes marched stiffly into Dietrich's office. One of his hands was clenched and he held it out to Dietrich, slowly opening his fingers. On his palm lay a thin scrap of white paper.

"What is this?" Dietrich asked, puzzled, taking the shred of paper and examining it. "It looks like a cigarette paper."

"It is," Corporal Lentzen said ponderously. "It is the paper from the American cigarette called Chesterfield."

"Where did it come from?" Dietrich asked.

"I found it when I cleaned your bath," Lentzen said. "It came from the water in the tap."

"But how would the paper from an American cigarette come to be in the water from my tap?" Dietrich queried, frowning and turning the paper until he could make out the brand name.

"Your bath water comes directly from the tank on the roof," Lentzen said. "If an American were hiding in the tank, it might have washed out from his pocket."

"The reservoir," Dietrich exclaimed and turned to Kummel. "Has the reservoir been searched?"

"It will be now," Kummel said, stepping quickly to the door and calling below. "Send up that patrol again."

The eight men followed Dietrich and Kummel swiftly up the stairway to the roof. The sentry manned his observation post atop the tank.

"We will take the tank by surprise," Dietrich whispered to Kummel. "We shall not let whoever is hiding know we suspect." To the sentry, he called, "We're coming up to have a look with your binoculars. Have you seen any sign of them?"

"No, my captain," the sentry said and Dietrich and Kummel climbed on top.

"Well, let us see whether we can find anything that you have missed," Dietrich said, motioning the sentry off the structure. He reached for one side of the ring and Kummel grasped the other. At Dietrich's nod, they both pulled and the lid came off the reservoir. Inside, Dietrich saw two figures and the flash of a knife. He leapt into the tank chopping at the wrist that held the knife with his pistol and the knife fell into the water.

"Out," he ordered, jabbing the pistol into the ribs of the lanky youth who had held the knife.

"And you, Colonel Wilson," he said as the enlisted man climbed out. "Did you not find your quarters comfortable?"

Silently Wilson reached for the hole at the top of the tank and pulled himself up. His legs and trousers dripped water almost to his waist. His pockets, Dietrich noted with a smile, had been submerged in water.

Kummel held Wilson and the enlisted man—another one of the Rat Patrol, Dietrich recognized, although he did not know this man's name—with his pistol and the patrol stood by with rifles at the ready. The sentry who had manned the observation post atop the tank was watching with eyes so large Dietrich could not help laughing.

"You did not know what kind of fish you had below you in the pond, eh, Corporal?" he said as Kummel marched the two Americans down the stairway. "Oh, Wilson," he called from the back of the hallway and the American colonel hesitated and turned. His face was blank. "You will find another man of yours in there. We are going to have a talk now, Lieutenant Kummel and I in my office, one by one with you. It would be in the interests of the physical well-being of each one of you if you advised your men to answer freely anything that is asked of them."

9

Troy slumped in one of the straight chairs in the shuttered interrogation room and dispiritedly pulled his pant leg above the flesh wound that Dietrich had bound with his handkerchief. The wound did not bother him particularly. The bullet had nicked a chunk of flesh from the calf of his leg but no serious damage had been done, he decided as he pulled the handkerchief away. The dried blood stuck to the handkerchief and the open wound began to bleed again. He retied the bandage tightly. What did bother him was whether Wilson and Tully would be able to sit it out in the water tank until night and whether he would be able to resist the Kraut lieutenant's efforts to make him reveal their hiding place. And if Wilson and Tully were able to last until dark, whether Moffitt and Hitch would find them. In a way, he thought, the rescue effort had been a botched up job, and all because no one had thought of a scaling hook.

It looked as if the Rat Patrol were short one member at the least for the duration and the thought saddened him. The explosive, high speed action in dozens of capers all over the desert had provided him with a stimulation he had never experienced before. Faced with months or even years of the tedium of a prison camp, he decided he would risk a break for freedom, whatever the cost, long before he reached Bizerta or wherever it was they decided to send him.

Running feet clattered in the hallway and jerked his attention from his morose thoughts. A patrol was rushing past the doorway of his cell, going to the rear stairway to the roof. Troy gritted his teeth. Somehow the hiding place had been discovered and all Troy could do was hope Tully was forewarned in time to perform the execution. If Wilson were taken alive, Troy would have to strangle him with his bare hands.

He crossed the room to the door and waited with his anxious ear pressed against the planks. Tense minutes dragged by and then there were the sounds of feet and voices in the hall. He stepped back to the desk. The lock clicked, the door swung open and Wilson and Tully walked in, water still running from their soggy pants. A guard with a bayoneted rifle stepped into the room with them and the door was closed and locked.

"How did they find you?" Troy demanded, looking first at Tully who shrugged discouragedly, walked to the desk and sat on the comer of it; and then at Wilson whose eyes were blazing.

"You didn't talk?" he asked Troy.

"I wasn't even questioned," Troy said. "They just locked me in here when I heard them going up for you."

"What I want to know," Wilson said, swinging and pointing accusingly at Tully, "Is what this man was trying to do to me with his knife. If that Jerry hadn't knocked it out of his fist, I believe he'd have cut my throat."

"You'd probably have been better off," Troy said softly.

"Why, I could have you shot," Wilson said loudly and stepped threateningly toward Troy.

The guard pushed Wilson back with the blade of his bayonet. He was a hefty-shouldered piece of beef, Troy noticed, and probably had been placed in the room to keep the three of them from tearing each other apart.

"It isn't going to do any good to quarrel," Troy said.

"What is going to do any good?" Wilson said coldly and sat in the chair behind the desk.

"How could they have discovered you?" Troy wondered aloud.

"Some bonehead thing you said or did," Wilson shot back.

"All I did was get shot," Troy said bitterly. "I haven't opened my mouth once."

"What I want to know," Tully drawled, "Is what do we say and do now?"

"We keep our mouths shut," Troy said, looking meaningfully from Tully to Wilson, "And we make or take every break we can."

"We're not likely to get any kind of break now," Wilson said stiffly.

"We can be ready for it if it comes," Troy said.

The door opened. A guard stepped into the room and motioned Wilson out. When the door was locked again, the guard with the bayoneted rifle placed the chair from behind the desk next to Troy's. He waved Tully into it and sat on the desk with his rifle pointing between them.

Troy's sullen eyes studied the guard. If Tully and he acted together, they could probably overpower him. That would gain them one weapon and the chance to seize another the next time the door was unlocked. There was half a chance they could shoot the guard at Dietrich's door before he was roused to action and escape again to the rooftops, but could they rescue Wilson or would they have to shoot him too? It was worth the risk, he decided. He looked at Tully, hoping the Kentuckian could read the message he wigwagged with his eyes.

Tully watched Troy for a moment and shifted in his chair. Troy edged forward, hoping his wounded leg would not buckle when he leapt. The guard sprang from the desk, lunging toward them with his bayonet.

"Nein," he shouted, deftly sidestepping to the door and banging on it with the butt of his rifle.

Troy slid back in his chair and Tully relaxed.

The guard stepped to one side as the door was kicked back. Two guards with machine pistols at their hips came into the room, glowering first at Troy and Tully and then at the guard. Dietrich ran down the hall. When he stepped into the room, Troy hunched his shoulders and lifted his hands.

"Your gorillas are edgy," he said. "We haven't moved from our chairs or said a word."

Dietrich spun to the guard with the bayoneted rifle and ordered him out. Turning to Troy and Tully, he said, "You made some move that aroused his suspicions. Without Colonel Wilson, I do not think a guard within the room is necessary."

He smiled bleakly and the door banged closed.

"Good try," Tully muttered.

"Not good enough," Troy growled. "Now we've blown our only chance."

"It wasn't a chance," Tully said. "It looks as if the place is crawling with guards."

"I wonder whether they've started to tear out Wilson's fingernails yet," Troy said dejectedly.

As if in answer, the door flew open and Wilson stumbled into the room. Troy and Tully sprang to their feet and rushed to him but he waved them aside.

"There's been no rough stuff," he said, squaring his shoulders and brushing back his close-cropped hair with the palm of his hand. "Not so far. Just intensive questioning and I don't know the answers." He smiled humorlessly. "You're next, Troy. What they seem most interested in at the moment is how I escaped. I told them I flew through the window."

The guard with the bayoneted rifle stepped into the room with Wilson and Tully as Troy walked out. Troy heard the door close behind him as he walked toward Dietrich's office at the front of the hall with a machine pistol bearing guard at his back. Half a dozen guards were now stationed in the hall and he heard the movements of others from the first floor. The Jerries had clamped down the lid, and Troy admitted with a wry smile that it looked as if the prisoners were secured.

Dietrich was seated behind a long table with Lieutenant Kummel at his side. A guard with a Schmeisser machine pistol was stationed inside the door. Dietrich waved amiably at Troy and motioned him to a chair in front of the table.

"The chief of my security does not agree," he said as Troy hitched the chair an inch closer and reached for a cigarette from the Camel package lying in front of Kummel. Dietrich nodded and flicked a box of matches toward Troy. "But I am inclined to treat prisoners of your stature with the respect I hold for them." Dietrich leaned forward and rested his chin in his palm. "Now, Sergeant Troy, you may save a life without endangering your own security by giving me a straight answer to this question. How was Colonel Wilson removed from the locked room?"

Troy considered a moment, "If you've got your guard in the frying pan for this," he said slowly, "Let him out. We came down from the roof on a rope. The shutters were barred from the outside and Tully just slipped out the bar. Wilson climbed the rope and that was that."

"Very ingenious," Dietrich said with a chill smile. "How did you get to the roof in the first place?"

"The rope," Troy said. "We came over the back wall into the garden and then up to the roof."

"I am going to miss the Rat Patrol," Dietrich said. "I hope your successors prove to be as interesting adversaries."

"Don't write us off yet," Troy said and dragged on his cigarette.

"I shall redouble the guards," Dietrich said and permitted himself a small smile. "How many others of you are there?"

"It was just Tully and me," Troy said. "We figured the two was enough. If we couldn't pull it off, another dozen wouldn't help."

"I am inclined to believe you," Dietrich said, "except for one thing. An officer and an enlisted man who was on patrol last night have disappeared. How do you explain that?"

"I don't," Troy said calmly. He nodded at Kummel.

"Tully and I know nothing about it. We were here in the village, as your officer will tell you. Maybe the Arabs?" Kummel slapped the table with the palm of his hand. "Lies, Hans," he exploded. "If you will permit me to question these men in my own way, I shall soon enough get at the truth."

"I think not, for the present, Wilhelm," Dietrich said easily. "I shall treat these men with the respect I would expect if I were in their hands."

"Bah!" Kummel shouted. "You entertain outmoded ideas of chivalry."

"And you, my good Kummel," Dietrich said coolly, "underestimate the resources of our enemy." He smiled thinly at Troy. "You expect your friends will make an effort to rescue you, of course."

"I don't know anyone stupid enough to try," Troy said and curled his lip.

"Nonetheless, we shall be waiting for them," Dietrich said with a smile. "This other man of yours?"

"Private Pettigrew," Troy answered promptly.

"Yes, another of the Rat Patrol," Dietrich said. "I do not suppose he would have anything of interest to say to us. But I am curious. What was he about to do with that wicked blade of his when we uncovered the hiding place?"

"Cut your throat, of course," Troy said and his eyes gleamed.

"Yes, of course," Dietrich said and laughed. "Well, the war must go on and I have battle plans to make. I shall have another session with your Colonel Wilson before I send the three of you away. Meanwhile I am going to transfer you to a compound within our camp area where you will have cots and a latrine. Also you will be in the open, within view and somewhat easier to guard."

"I could use some rest," Troy said and yawned.

The compound, an enclosure fenced with barbed wire to a height of ten feet, was beyond the tents on the north side of the entrance to the village. A piece of canvas had been stretched as an awning above three folding cots. The enclosure had a single narrow entrance at which two guards were stationed. Four other guards with machine pistols patrolled the perimeter. Patrols were returning from Sidi Abd and the German camp was resuming a normal appearance. Men in fatigue uniforms were clambering over the tanks and Panzerwagons, performing routine maintenance and inspection duties.

Troy studied the tightly wired cage dug in the sands of the desert and flopped on a cot. Their chances for escape had been improved one hundred per cent by the transfer from the headquarters to the compound. He grinned at Tully who was sitting thoughtfully on the edge of his cot, rolling a matchstick from one side of his mouth to the other.

"Hit the sack," Troy told him. "They'll have searchlights on us all night and you may find it hard to sleep with the lights in your eyes."

Tully leaned back on his cot.

"I expect you're right, Sarge," he said. "I was just wondering what our next move would be."

"Out of here, Tully," Troy said.

From his cot, Wilson spoke glumly. "Out of here to Bizerta, or worse."

"Nuts," Tully said and turned his back to the colonel.

It was growing dark when Troy awakened. He had slept through the heat of the gray day and his khakis were damp with his perspiration. Wilson was sitting on the edge of his cot smoking a cigarette and Tully was standing at the opening in the wire, gesturing to one of the guards. Troy swung his legs to the ground.

"What do you want, a pass to town tonight?" he called to Tully.

"Water," Tully croaked. "My throat is fried."

"Wasser," Wilson said absently.

"Wasser, wasser," Tully told the guard, gesturing to his mouth.

The guard turned and called to his companion who walked slowly toward the tents. Tully came under the canvas and sat on the cot with Troy.

"Something's up," Tully said. "They been giving them tanks and halftracks a real going over. They started at the wall and worked halfway down the line today."

"A new offensive," Troy muttered.

"That means they'll move us out of here tomorrow," Wilson spoke up. He looked from Troy to Tully and back again at Troy. His forehead was furrowed and his eyes looked strained in the cloud shrouded half light of late afternoon. "They won't chance leaving us with a handful of guards if they're mounting a new offensive. We have to break out of here tonight. Not only to sound warning of the new offensive. We won't have another chance to escape."

"You're right," Troy said. As he spoke, the sound of a generator throbbed in the heavy air and four searchlights poured bright white light into the barbed wire area. Troy squinted and looked off to the side of the searchlight beyond the compound entrance. "If we could get at the generator and put the lights out of business, we might have a chance. We could handle the two guards at the entrance."

"We can't get at the generator, Sarge," Tully said, "but there is one good thing about them lights."

"Name it," Troy said gloomily.

"Moffitt and Hitch still are out there," Tully said, chewing his matchstick. "We can't get at the generator but them lights pinpoint us and maybe Moffitt and Hitch can get to the machine."

"It's a chance," Wilson said hopefully. "We must be ready for them when they come."

"How else you going to be ready except just sit and wait?" Troy asked disgustedly.

"Snap out of it, Troy," Wilson said sharply. "It would be normal for us to take some exercise. We'll start now; off and on get up and take a stroll around the fence. As it gets later we'll all manage to be walking about. It will divert the guards' attention from whatever Moffitt and Hitch may do."

"It's not a bad idea, Wilson," Troy said, a little grudgingly. "In fact it's a damned good idea for me. My game leg is stiffening."

He stood and hobbled painfully from his cot to the entrance and back.

"I'd better keep moving from now on or you'll have to leave me behind," he said and grinned at Tully.

The second guard returned to the entrance with a bucket of water and a tin cup as Troy started back. The painful stiffness was easing but when Troy saw the guard, he made his limp pronounced. When he took the bucket and cup from the guard, he set them on the ground, pulled up his pant leg and pointed to the bloodstained bandage. Then he called Tully over to get the water.

"Let them think they've got an invalid," he muttered when he dragged himself back to the cots. "They won't watch me as closely as you two."

"How bad is it?" Wilson asked.

"I could run a footrace if it got me out of here," Troy said grimly.

A guard brought supper, beans and chunks of bread on tin plates and they ate with spoons in the glare of the lights. When they had washed it down with water, the guard picked up the plates and spoons, leaving them only the bucket of water and single cup. Wilson walked around the inside of the fence half a dozen times smoking a cigarette. When he returned to the cot, Tully and Troy made the rounds in opposite directions. Troy limped and moved slowly.

The night air was cold and the feeling of dampness persisted. Outside the barbed wire, Troy could occasionally hear the guards moving or talking although he could not see them. The searchlights were blinding and the prison compound a brilliant island in the inky desert.

The hours of the night crept by. Troy heard the soldiers leaving their tents and going into town for their beer, and later the sound of them returning. The noises quieted both within the wall and from the tent area. Except for the occasional murmur of a voice as one guard passed another, the desert slept. If Moffitt and Hitch were coming, it was time, Troy thought uneasily as he pulled his wounded leg through the sand.

It was midnight and Troy was sitting with Wilson and Tully on the cots, passing the butt of their last cigarette when he heard the sharp command outside the barbed wire.

"Achtung!" The order rang out sharply, followed by a rapid succession of commands.

Troy heard the guards running from the sides to the front of the compound. Several more orders were given and the six guards marched to the middle of the enclosed area. An officer, cap low on his forehead, muffler wrapped high around his throat, followed with his hand on his Luger.

"Prisoners," he shouted with a heavy German accent. "You will line up between the guards. Hands behind your heads. Follow me."

He turned on his heel. The guards nudged Troy, Tully and Wilson, each man between two guards, and they marched single file from the prison area. The guard behind Troy rammed his machine pistol into Troy's back as they left the brightly lighted area and walked toward the only other light that was showing, the lantern burning in the vaulted entrance to Sidi Abd. Moffitt and Hitch had delayed too long, Troy thought glumly. Dietrich was not waiting for the morning, but was starting them on their way to Bizerta by night.

A motor was running smoothly and as the single file neared the entrance to the town, a halftrack backed slowly out of the line of vehicles until it was abreast the opening in the wall.

"Over the back and into the machine," the Jerry officer ordered and stepped back.

The guard prodded Troy into the Panzerwagon and Wilson and Tully climbed in and stood beside him. The officer dismissed four of the guards. The other two mounted the back of the halftrack and covered the three Americans with their machine pistols. The officer seated himself beside the driver and the big machine crawled ahead into the night along the side of the wall.

"Where are we being taken?" Troy called above the growling motor and crunch of treads in the sand. The searchlight of the armored vehicle flared out on the open desert beyond the area of the camp and the machine turned slowly into the dark emptiness. A guard poked his weapon into Troy's back but the officer shouted an answer from the front.

"We are taking you into the desert to shoot you," he said tonelessly.

"That tears it," Tully muttered.

"Let's take our chances with these two," Troy whispered and swung, diving for one of the Jerries' legs. At the same moment Tully jabbed his elbow in the belly of the guard next to him and chopped at his neck with the side of his hand. Troy wrestled on the floor of the halftrack with his guard, got his hands around the man's throat and worked his thumbs into his windpipe until he felt the man go limp. He struggled to his feet, dragging the body with him, and heaved it over the back of the machine. When he turned, Wilson was helping Tully pitch the other Jerry into the desert.

"The machine pistols," Troy said quickly. "Let's grab them and take off."

"Shall we shoot the Kraut officer and the driver?" Tully asked. "Take the machine?"

"Too close to town," Troy said. "But we can use the machine. We'll ride it out and shoot them when we stop." He and Troy retrieved the Schmeissers and stood, one at each side. Wilson sat on the bed and chuckled.

"I'm feeling better," he said. "Just do one thing for me."

"Sure," Troy said, grinning. "What is it?"

"Let these two Krauts know what's happening before you shoot them. I want to see the expressions on their faces."

"It'll be a pleasure," Troy said.

The great machine picked up speed and the search-lighted area that marked the prison compound outside the walls of Sidi Abd was swallowed by the night. Over a dune, the halftrack halted with its light illuminating a wadi. The driver came out one side of the Panzerwagon and the officer the other. Troy and Tully leaped over the back and covered the two men.

"All right," Wilson called. "You two Krauts are covered. Walk in the light down into the wadi. We'll carry out the execution but we'll reverse the procedure."

Troy and Tully came forward with the machine pistols and the Jerries, hands above their heads, walked into the light. The driver, an enlisted man in a coat that reached his ankles, slouched insolently to the front of the car and turned, shoving his cap back on his head.

"Who is here, Sarge, you or me?" he said and popped a bubble.

The officer pulled off his cap. Hitch and Moffitt stood in the bright light of the halftrack holding their sides and laughing.

10

An explosion that rent the night, followed almost immediately by a second mighty blast that shook the desert floor, brought Captain Hans Dietrich tumbling from his bed. He ran down the hall from his rooms to his office at the front of the German HQ. The usually stolid guard at the door looked dazed. Dietrich burst into the room and looked out his windows. The dark sky reflected a rosy hue from the direction of the camp. Dietrich was agitated and his mind churned with the fearsome possible meanings of the violent detonations. Had the Americans somehow escaped their prison and sabotaged his gas supply or ammunition dump? He grasped the field telephone on his desk and rang for his security officer, Kummel. There was no response and he called the guard at the entrance gate. The line went dead.

He ran back to his bedroom, threw on his clothes and strapped on his Luger. With a flashlight in his fist, he ran into the dark, deserted lane and angled toward the entrance. Arabs were in the shadows and the darkness behind the windows of the buildings, he knew, but his searching beam discovered no one. Several smaller explosions made the night tremble once more and he ran faster. It was the Americans. The thought pounded and inflamed his brain. He did not dare assess the damage they had done.

When the alley cornered, he could see licking tongues of flames through the entrance and black smoke that puffed and billowed. Figures showed darkly outlined against the blaze, moving in confused groups. The sound of Panzer and Panzerwagon motors and tracks rose above the roar of the fires and hoarse shouts of men. Through the entrance and on the other side of the wall, Dietrich's heart stopped for a moment as he saw and then comprehended the awesome destruction that had been wrought. Near the end of the lines of vehicles, charges had been exploded in two of his Panzer tanks and the blasts had ignited gasoline and oil and spread to adjoining armor. The treads of the other halftracks and tanks that had been in battle readiness in neat formation were chewing away from the holocaust in panicked flight. The blaze raged from the areas of the two destroyed tanks, hot and fierce.

"Kummel!" Dietrich shouted, pushing into the men massed uncertainly in the jammed corridor. "Men!" he shouted hoarsely. "Back to your tents! Clear way for the crews and the machines!"

The soldiers regarded him and the fires numbly. "Back!" he yelled savagely. "Back!" And then again and again. "Kummel, Kummel!"

From somewhere in the crowding horror, the smudged figure of his security officer erupted. Kummel's tunic and breeches were blackened and his face enraged and flushed beneath the coat of grime it wore.

"For God's sake, Kummel," Dietrich shrieked. "Command a squad to get these men away. Get some order into the evacuation of the machines. I'm going to the prison compound. Meet me there as soon as you have things moving."

With the fires still raging at his back, Dietrich trotted toward the still searchlighted barbed wire enclosure. There were no guards and the compound was empty. It was the Americans, he thought, and the wrath burned from his head to the pit of his stomach. The guards had let the Americans escape. He would have the guards shot, every one of them, and Kummel too.

Gasping, almost sobbing, he whirled about and started back toward the devastation in the corridor. Kummel ran toward him.

"You let the Americans escape," Dietrich screeched.

"I?" Kummel stopped short and stared at Dietrich in the red burning light. "They did not escape. Who was the officer you sent with a driver to have them shot?"

"Shot?" Dietrich shouted furiously. "What is this madness? I gave no order to have them shot."

"An officer with two guards took the prisoners into the desert to shoot them," Kummel said.

"Americans, more Americans," Dietrich raged. "They posed as Germans to free the prisoners. What is the matter with you, Kummel, that you do not exercise the intelligence of a child in matters of security? How were they taken? Which way did they go?"

"The guard at the gate reports they took a Panzerwagon and left north by west around the tents," Kummel said numbly.

"Again the guard at the gate. Why did he not stop them? The same guard, no doubt, who admitted the Americans to the town last night. Have him shot." Dietrich glared at Kummel for a moment. "Well, don't stand there. Organize a search party. Two, three, no, four Panzerwagons." He paused and added bitterly, "If we have that many left."

"We have the Panzerwagons," Kummel assured him. "Only two tanks and two armored cars were damaged by the charges that were planted."

"Only two tanks and two cars!" Dietrich cried wildly. "It is a disaster. Well, go, go! I will come with you. In the lead. When we overtake them, I want personally to see them destroyed."

Kummel turned from Dietrich and raced toward the entrance. Dietrich ran after him, past the unguarded gate and the tent area. The fires still burned in the blackened hulls of four machines but the rest of the column was moving out in some semblance of order and the armor was regrouping in the desert. Kummel flung orders left and right as he jogged toward the Panzerwagon in the lead position. Dietrich swung his beam and saw crews forming and following.

"Get a driver," he shouted to Kummel. "You and I will take the lead. Make sure the others remain behind until we find the track."

Kummel barked an order and a soldier left the crews and ran ahead to the lead halftrack. He had the motor running when Dietrich leapt to the seat beside him. Kummel manned the gun.

"Is there ammunition, dumbhead?" Dietrich called back.

"Yes, my captain," Kummel answered.

With searchlight poking across the sand, white in its glare, the halftrack turned back almost to the edge of the tents, then swung about to run a due west line until it intercepted the marks of the Panzerwagon that had carried the prisoners. The flames seemed to be dying a little and there had been no more explosions. Dietrich was sick at thought of the losses he had suffered this night. His three prize prisoners had fled, four of his armored vehicles had been destroyed and a fifth stolen. He had no doubt there had been casualties in the explosions to add to the two men who had disappeared.

Behind the lead halftrack, three others turned into position fifty feet back and spread fifty feet apart. Now the searchlights of the four machines played forth and back, seeking the telltale marks that would lead them to the quarry.

Relentless and vengeful, the machines bit their way beyond the city. Dietrich saw the marks, dark in their own shadows, and the lead Panzerwagon fastened to the trace.

"Speed," he shouted, "We must overtake them."

In the back, Kummel loaded the cannon and swung it on its three hundred and sixty degree pivot. The sound of the motor droned at a higher pitch and the tracks slapped into the sand, clanking on their geared wheels. The marks they were following were leading in the direction of the fence at the back of the Devil's Garden. Surely, Dietrich thought, the Americans would not attempt to break out through the minefield. Would they make a run along the fence until they reached its end? He sat back, frowning. How the devil had they come through? He stiffened. And what had happened to the patrol he had concealed behind the fence to take them?

"Herr captain," the driver said excitedly, fixing the searchlight straight ahead. "Something is up there."

Dietrich followed the beam and saw two dark figures sprawled a few yards apart in the sand.

"Kummel, ahead," he shouted and Kummel turned his gun on its mount.

The halftrack ground to a stop and the other three machines flanked it. The four searchlights flung their beams across the desert and Dietrich jumped to the ground. Kummel followed and they approached the figures with drawn pistols. The bodies were wearing German uniforms. Kummel turned one, and then the other, with the toe of his boot. The faces stared glassy-eyed and white in the light.

"Funke and Hecht," Kummel said and swore. "Two of the guards at the compound."

"Have one of the other Panzerwagons pick up the bodies," Dietrich said grimly and strode back to his machine. When Kummel was back at the gun, they started off again, tracks straining against the pull of the full-throttled motor. Dietrich sat without speaking, frozen now by wrath that had turned icy. He would not shoot Wilson, he decided, only Troy and Pettigrew and their confederates, the other members of the hated Rat Patrol. Wilson he would reserve for the Gestapo. Let them tear his flesh to shreds, flail whatever knowledge he possessed from a brain they would turn to jelly.

They ran up a dune and started toward a wadi. Dietrich could see where the halftrack had halted and the men climbed out. The searchlight showed five sets of tracks. Wilson with Troy and Pettigrew and the two who had posed as Germans. The marks of the halftrack led on through the wadi and up a dune beyond. The driver raced the motor of the Panzerwagon and they mounted the next dune.

"Stop!" Dietrich said suddenly. The halftrack they were following had halted again on top of the dune. Its marks went straight ahead again but two sets of footprints led off to the right and two to the left until they disappeared into the night at the end of the searchlights' beams. The prisoners had known they would be followed and were dividing their party to confuse the pursuers or to set up a trap. Dietrich snarled. He wanted Wilson. He did not think Wilson would have driven off alone in the Panzerwagon but which of the footprints did belong to him? The ones to the left, he decided, the ones that ran toward the fence and the minefield.

Dietrich divided his forces, taking one halftrack with him to follow the footprints that led toward the minefield. He dispatched one halftrack after the fleeing Panzerwagon and the other two following the footprints that led to the right. At least, he thought with savage satisfaction, they should soon overrun the men on foot. Dietrich's force ground off on the three separate trails.

They were near the fence at the back of the Devil's Garden, he was certain, although the searchlight had not plucked it from the blackness of the night yet. The light flared in a wide and sweeping arc, reaching for the men who were somewhere just beyond it. They crawled up the sharp side of another dune and the light shot off it into the black sky. Nearly at the top, two rifle shots sang. Glass shattered and both searchlights went out. Dietrich swung to Kummel.

"Fire, fire, you fool!" he raged.

"At what?" Kummel asked hopelessly.

"Ahead!" And to the driver he shouted, "Keep moving. We can't let them get near us."

From the back, the cannon spat blindly, stabbing the night with white-hot flames. The cannon in the other halftrack opened fire. The machines churned forward. From a distance, Dietrich thought he heard the sound of other firing. How could five men have set up a trap like this for four Panzerwagons equipped with thirty-seven millimeter cannon, he wondered painfully.

Guns blazing, the two Panzerwagons moved slowly on. There was no return fire from the blackness. They've shot out our eyes, Dietrich thought, and now they'll run off to a rendezvous. An explosion rocked the desert close by and shells smashed the night with their flashing charges. The other Panzerwagon was a black sharp outline in a sheet of flame.

Grenades, Dietrich thought, they've exploded the shells and gas tank of the other armored car.

"Stop shooting," he shouted to Kummel. "You give them a target." To the driver he said, "Full speed and circle."

The treads spun and the machine started its runabout. Blinding light and sound mingled in a flashing detonation and the halftrack shuddered.

"They've got the tracks," he heard the driver shouting as he felt himself being flung from the vehicle.

"I thought I told you what you could do with that gum, Hitch," Troy said, grinning, when Moffitt and Hitch had stopped laughing.

The five of them, the Rat Patrol with Colonel Wilson, their commanding officer, were standing at the front of the halftrack with its motor chugging hotly in the cold night.

"I'm about to," Hitch said. "It's about wore out. It just had that one poor bubble left to tell you who I was."

"Crazy jerks," Troy said, but he was amused, not angry. "You don't know how close you came to getting shot."

"What did you do with the guards, old chap?" Moffitt asked, smiling. He touched the Luger at his hip. "I was about to take care of them for you."

"Pitched them off," Tully drawled. "It was a mite crowded back there."

"Hadn't we better move?" Wilson asked, straightening and looking at his men. "They'll be looking for us when they discover that we've gone."

In the distance, an explosion and then another roared in the night and the dark sky near Sidi Abd showed a pinkish underbelly.

"I was waiting for that," Moffitt said with a slow smile.

"What was it?" Wilson asked quickly.

"Plastic time charges," Moffitt said. "We planted them in two of the tanks before we came after you. One of the tanks contained some evidence we wanted to destroy." He hooked his thumb between the buttons of his tunic and then pointed at the greatcoat Hitch was wearing and laughed. "Those explosions ought to delay them long enough for us to make some plans."

"Let's get away," Wilson said. "That's the only plan that interests me."

"What do you have in mind?" Troy asked Moffitt.

"We met some friends," Moffitt said and told them about the two dozen men from the tribe of Abu-el-bab. "They're itching for a fight," he said, "but they find this Jerry armor a little out of their class. They do have some grenades they've appropriated. If we can break up the Jerry party they send after us, the Arabs will lend us a hand in picking them off."

"Good idea," Troy said, rubbing his handkerchief bound leg. "I've a personal score to settle."

"I don't think we should risk recapture," Wilson said doubtfully.

"We'll be preventing it, not risking it," Troy said crisply. He said to Moffitt, "Tell us how you've got this worked out."

After Moffitt had told them where the Arabs were waiting, they piled into the halftrack, driving to the top of the next dune where they separated. Wilson went with Moffitt off to the right. Tully and Troy with their captured Schmeisser machine pistols plodded away in the dark to the left. Hitch pulled off straight ahead in the Panzerwagon.

"Going to be tough on Hitch, ain't it, Sarge," Tully asked. "him out there alone with nobody to fire his weapon."

"He'll pick up some Arabs along the way," Troy said cheerfully.

The cold of the night enveloped them darkly and they walked away from the glow in the vicinity of Sidi Abd. As long as the reddened sky was in sight, Troy walked confidently but as the color dimmed and then disappeared, he slowed his pace and tried to correct for a natural instinct to wander in a blind and aimless circle. They were surrounded by black silence. For fifteen minutes they plowed ahead without a word and then Troy stopped.

"I thought I heard something," he said, listening for the sound of movement. He walked ahead, leg muscles telling him he was trudging up an incline. From the blackness ahead and up, he heard and whispered "S-s-s-st" and stopped again.

"I heard it, Sarge," Tully whispered.

"Might as well answer and hope for the best," Troy muttered and whistled through his teeth.

"S-s-st," came the whisper.

"All right, all right," Troy said, smiling tightly. "We're coming up."

Over the top of the dune, robed figures pressed about them and a match flared briefly close to Troy's face. He saw only the dark hand that held the light. A hand pressed his shoulder leading him behind and to the left, and he sat in the sand. Tully squatted beside him and then lay prone with his machine pistol propped in front. Troy rolled over on his stomach. They were hidden behind the top of the dune and the sand was comfortable and warmer than the air. It was impossible to see more than a few feet to either side, but Troy could hear the occasional movements of the Arabs as they shifted positions or lifted to look out over the crest of the dune. He thought there were six of them and wondered whether their desert eyes could penetrate the dark better than his own. They seemed men of infinite patience and lay without speaking in the silent night. The minutes dragged by, half an hour, forty-five minutes. An Arab lifted his head and whispered a warning. Troy raised slowly and far off in the desert saw two points of light searching the darkness in all directions.

"They're coming," he whispered to Tully. "Two of them. Following our tracks."

Tully moved his machine pistol and Troy brought his Schmeisser back with his hand on the grip and the metal extension against his shoulder. An Arab crawled up and pushed first Troy's and then Tully's weapons toward the ground.

"No," the Arab said. "No, no."

"Okay," Troy whispered. "Hold your fire, Tully, until we see what's up."

Troy raised his head again. The lights were creeping closer and he could hear the distant slapping of the tracks in the sand. A few minutes passed and the sounds of the motors and the treads were clearly audible. Lights poked up into the sky to the left of their position and an Arab squirmed forward pushing his rifle. He reached the top, aimed and fired, and almost simultaneously another shot cracked off to the side. The lights went out. Cannon fire rang out from the halftracks racking the air above their heads. Someone pushed Troy to the right.

"Come on, Tully, this way," he said, crouching and moving away from the thirty-seven millimeter shells. The Arabs were moving now, swinging around him to get at the machines from the side. He heard a roaring explosion and saw one of the halftracks engulfed in flame. The grenade must have hit the ammunition because the air shook with the repeated sounds of exploding shells. The gun in the second halftrack ceased fire and he heard the Panzerwagon grinding in a turn. A grenade burst near one of the track wheels and the machine stopped. The Arabs surged forward in the light of the flames, shouting, fiercely menacing in their flowing robes with rifles waving.

"Let's get down there," Troy shouted and sprang to his feet. "There may be someone we want to take."

He and Tully darted toward the crippled halftrack. The Arabs had dragged the driver from the seat and were pulling him off with them. A figure was slumped over the back of the armored vehicle. Tully ran to the other side, almost stumbled over someone lying face down in the sand. He rolled the figure over and whistled softly. It was Hauptmann Hans Dietrich.

"Tully," Troy shouted, jerking the Luger from Dietrich's holster. Dietrich was breathing and did not appear to be wounded, only knocked unconscious.

Tully came up panting.

"This one's ours," Troy said exultantly.

An Arab bent over Dietrich's body and lifted him by the collar.

"No!" Troy yelled, pushing the Arab off, shaking his head and repeating, "No!" He pointed to Dietrich and then himself. "Mine. Mine."

The Arab looked stonily at Troy.

"Here," Troy said, handing him Dietrich's pistol. "You take." He pointed again to Dietrich. "Mine."

The Arab obligingly pointed the pistol at Dietrich.

"No," Troy said, exasperated. He shoved the pistol aside. "You, pistol. Him, me."

The Arab shrugged and walked off.

Tully was chuckling. You Tarzan," he said pointing at Troy, and then at the robed figure of the Arab. "him Jane."

"Nuts," Troy said disgustedly. "Let's truss up our bird and get him away from here."

"What we going to tie him with and where we going to take him?" Tully asked.

"Grab a handful of wires from under the dashboard," Troy snapped. "We'll drag him to the top of the hill and sit on him."

"And then what?" Tully asked.

"We wait for Hitch to pick us up," Troy said.

Troy rolled Dietrich over on his face again and when Tully handed him a fistful of insulated wires, crossed the Jerry's hands and bound them tightly and securely, tying the wires on each turn with a square knot. He rolled Dietrich over on his back, pushed him to a sitting position and then with Tully's help, hoisted him to his unsteady feet. Dietrich swayed and slumped. Troy slapped his face and Dietrich opened his eyes. They were blank and unseeing but the man at least was conscious.

"Move," he said, jabbing the machine pistol in Dietrich's side.

Dietrich staggered away under the prodding of machine pistols from both sides, and catching him when he stumbled, Troy and Tully moved him to the top of the dune. Troy pushed him down and Dietrich sat leaning forward with his head on his chest, arms pulled back by his bound wrists.

The Arabs rummaged through the wrecked halftrack by the light from the burning machine. They removed the cannon from its mounting, took the shells, stripped the body they had found hanging over the side, moved off and pitched grenades into the machine. It exploded and blazed satisfyingly from the fourth or fifth grenade. The Arabs, two parties of six each, Troy saw now, came back to the top of the dune which was warmed and brightly lighted by the burning Panzerwagons. They crowded around Dietrich making threatening gestures with knives and hands, Tully kept his machine pistol trained on Dietrich while Troy shook his head, repeating, "No! Mine. Mine."

Awareness returned slowly to Dietrich but at last he pulled his head back and glared from the Arabs to Troy.

"They'll fight for anyone who pays them," he said harshly. "Next week you'll find them on the other side. What do you think you're going to do with me?"

Troy grinned. "You're going back to Bir-el-Alam with us," he said. "This time you get to answer the questions."

"Bir-el-Alam is more than one hundred kilometers distance," Dietrich said and sneered. "It is no more than five kilometers to Sidi Abd. Do you think my troops will not pursue and capture you as soon as it is light?"

"They'll have to be a lot better in daylight than they were in the dark tonight," Tully spoke up. He turned to Troy. "I thought I heard some other firing off in the distance while we were going at it here."

"I think you did," Troy said. "It shouldn't be long before Hitch gets here to make his pickup."

Tully turned to scan the broad, black sweep of desert. "I think I see fires in two places," he said, "and I don't think they're swamp fire."

Dietrich's head fell forward on his chest again.

The Arabs, seeming to lose interest in the two Americans and their prisoner, drifted down into the desert below the dune, leading great prancing stallions back with them. They stood in groups of twos and threes, muttering and apparently impatient to ride away now that the fighting here was over. Troy thought Moffitt's friend, the sheik, must have ordered his tribesmen to remain where they were until Hamam Gameel and his party were safely on their way. Moffitt, the good pigeon, Troy thought and laughed. The Englishman was more a hawk.

The fires had dwindled and the frames of the Panzerwagons were only glowing wreckage when the searchlight of a halftrack showed out in the desert. The light came straight for them, found the two burned-out heaps of junk and climbed the hill. Hitch was driving with Wilson beside him and Moffitt was at the gun.

Troy stood in front of Dietrich concealing him as Moffitt waved from the Panzerwagon.

"Good hunting here as well, I see," he called. "Shall we be off?"

"Room for another passenger?" Troy asked and his smile flashed. He stepped aside and Tully jerked Dietrich to his feet.

Wilson jumped from the halftrack and ran up.

"Magnificent," he breathed and his eyes gleamed. "Well, well, into the wagon with you," he said briskly.

Dietrich's shoulders went back.

"Fortunes of war," he said coldly.

11

The halftrack's searchlight poked at the fence behind the Devil's Garden until it found the snipped and bent strands of wire where the Rat Patrol had cut an aisle through the bramble. A shot rang out and a bullet whined as the machine came to a stop.

''Mass'-el-Kheir," Moffitt called out. "It is Hamam Gameel."

Half a dozen Arabs rode out of the night with rifles across their saddle horns, surrounding the Panzerwagon. One of the men was Al Ombo Beni who touched his forehead to Moffitt.

"We have food and drink for you and your friends," he said gravely in his language.

"We are already a lifetime in your debt," Moffitt said.

"We should like the food and drink but may we take it with us? The enemy soon will be at our heels again because this time we have captured his chieftan."

"The food and drink are yours to do with as you will," the Arab said and sent a rider off into the desert. He looked at Dietrich, standing in the back of the machine with his arms bound. "Why do you bother with him? Give this dog to me and we shall deliver him to his people."

Moffitt glanced at Dietrich and smiled, bemused.

"It is truly a worthy thought, Al Ombo Beni," he said, "but this man has knowledge that we desire."

"You know how to make him talk?" Al Ombo Beni said and his eyes had sparks in them.

"We have our ways," Moffitt said and laughed.

The horseman who had ridden into the desert returned with a bundle at his saddle. Moffitt took it and touched his head. Wilson was standing to the side of the halftrack, studying the steel posts and poles interwoven with barbed wire that formed the fence of the Devil's Garden. He looked from the fence to the halftrack and shook his head.

"I'd like to take the halftrack with us," he said, "but I don't see how we could push it through the barrier."

Moffitt walked over and examined the poles and imbedded steel. "I'm afraid it's impossible to take it through," he said. "But there's no reason why we couldn't drive it around."

"You think we can manage?" Wilson asked eagerly.

"Right-o," Moffitt said airily. "We'll swing wide around the north perimeter and meet up with you chaps beyond. I'll drive the halftrack. Hitch's and Tully's skill is needed for getting across the garden." He laughed. "Not a bad idea at all to take the vehicle. Gives them more sets of tracks to follow when they come this way tomorrow."

The Arabs backed their horses away from the halftrack, forming a wall between the little group of five desert fighters and their prisoner and the enemy that inhabited Sidi Abd. Tully and Hitch bent back the wire to form a wider way through the fence. The bundle the Arab had brought contained Hitch's and Moffitt's khakis, and after they had shed their Jerry disguises, Tully carried through the food and drink. With Troy helping and Wilson and Moffitt guarding Dietrich, Tully and Hitch stripped the jeeps of their camouflage.

Dietrich looked narrowly into the garden.

"I don't see how you came through," he said stiffly, "but I see where you did. At this point, I don't think you would be breaching any security if you answered one question that is consuming me. What happened to my patrol that was guarding the safe pathway at the end?"

Moffitt's eyes crinkled. "Al Ombo Beni," he called. "Did the men of Abu-el-bab encounter any of the enemy's forces along this monstrous fence today?"

"A handful only," Al Ombo Beni replied. "They were concealed for no apparent good in the dunes and so they were dispatched."

Moffitt turned to Dietrich and shrugged. "You have one less patrol," he said. "The Arabs found your men."

"It has been a costly time," Dietrich said. His face was gray and set. "The score will be evened."

Dietrich rode in one jeep with Tully driving and Troy guarding the prisoner from the rear. Wilson rode with Hitch in the other. Moffitt set out alone along the fenceline in the halftrack. The Arabs wheeled into the desert. There should be no further trouble this night, Moffitt thought, gripping the wheel of the cumbersome machine that seemed to resist his efforts. He gunned the motor and it roared on in a straight line ahead. He manipulated the searchlight until he had examined the surrounding area and then set it to follow the masses of barbed wire. If I had an automatic pilot, he thought, I could catch forty winks.

He was not particularly concerned over any danger to the jeeps but he strained to listen above the grinding of his tracks and the pounding of his motor for continued silence in the garden. By twisting his neck, he could see the two sets of headlights pushing slowly off to his left. Once through the minefield, they would race around in a wide sweep to rendezvous. Moffitt could understand Wilson's desire to bring back the Panzerwagon. It was a trophy that might be of some value to the engineers and with the capture of Dietrich as well, Wilson was returning a hero instead of a fool.

But it had been foolish again of Wilson to attempt bringing back the Panzerwagon. Oh, Moffitt himself had been all for it but this ponderous old tub was going to slow the jeeps down to less than half their normal speed. The Jerries would be after them in the morning, and in scout or command cars they could easily overtake them. It would be an interesting day, he thought, chuckling softly. After all this was over, with the future holding no more than a possible chair in anthropology, returning to Cambridge was going to be a bit stuffy.

The night pressed blackly all about him and the fence stretched endlessly beyond the range of his light. There shouldn't be more than another mile of it, he thought, shaking his head and blinking his eyes. He shouldn't be sleepy, he told himself, after the day's rest he had had in the camp of his blood brother, Ben-el-bab. Perhaps the tribe of Abu-el-bab held the answer to the future for him. He could take his place at the side of the sheik and maintain an extensive harem.

The thought amused him and he laughed aloud, clamping his jaw and sitting up straight and attentive as he saw the end of the fence in his spotlight. He pulled the wheel sharply to the right and felt the machine turn clumsily. He glanced at his watch and clanked straight east for five minutes before he swung the machine north again. Nothing, he thought, there was nothing within ten miles of him and he was making this wide detour because maybe out there somewhere in that patch of ground adjoining the Devil's Garden, the Jerries had thrown a mine or two. What would it be like after the fighting was over? Would the desert ever be clean again? Or a dozen years from now, would some nomad with a herd of goats be blown to bits by a forgotten infernal machine he had never even known existed?

Five minutes due north and Moffitt turned west. He searched ahead and to the left for the headlights of the jeeps but nothing showed through the deep black. He frowned slightly. Unless they had had trouble, the jeeps should have covered the distance in less time than this. Unless they had struck a mine. Or run into a Jerry patrol.

His grip tightened on the wheel and he leaned forward, swinging his searchlight, alert for sign of mines or for anyone who might be lurking in the night, waiting for him. An earshattering explosion detonated under him and the halftrack rocked and pitched and settled back—dead— amid a rattling clang of metal. An S-mine, he thought as he leaped out and away from the Panzerwagon, a Bouncing Betty, charge one and a quarter pounds. He had caught it with one of the tracks and now the machine was shattered. Fortunately the whole bloody thing had not gone up in flames and smoke.

The searchlight was still shining on ahead and Moffitt stepped a few yards in front of the vehicle, examining the ground. He could leave the light burning to signal his position. And if it didn't bring the Jerries, it might prove to be the false beacon that drew the Rat Patrol straight onto the shoals. He switched off the light and sat on the hood. The S-mine might have been a stray, one mine left over. Or he might be sitting in the middle of another minefield, undefined and limitless.

Through his mind ran the kinds of mines: magnetic hollow charge, used for disabling armored vehicles; Topf mine, cannot be detected with mine detector; Tellermine, might fire if stepped on by any personnel; Shu-mine, thickly scattered in antitank minefields.

This was something, he thought with a twisted smile. He couldn't very well chance stumbling about in the dark on foot, now could he? Just what was he going to do?

"All right, Dietrich," Troy had said when he climbed into the lead jeep behind the German captain with Tully at the wheel. "It's your neck as well as ours. Have your boys planted any new mines in the field since we came through last night?"

Tully started the motor and let it idle, chugging noisily. Dietrich took his time about answering.

"No. Not here," he said finally. He sat facing straight ahead.

Troy considered the back of Dietrich's head. He would like to have seen his face and eyes although he believed the Jerry spoke the truth. Dietrich placed too high a value on his own worth to the Afrika Korps to take needless risks.

The lights of the jeep beamed out across the ravaged path the Rat Patrol had blasted through the garden and Tully found his tracks. In the second jeep, Hitch waited until Tully was fifty yards ahead and then flicked on his lights and crept on, matching the marks of Tully's tires.

In front of Troy, Dietrich sat stiffly erect, looking to neither side. No one spoke during the tense, dark minutes. As they came to the edge of the garden and approached the depression where the great antitank mines had spewed destruction in every direction, Dietrich sat even straighter and Troy set his jaw as Tully slipped the gear down to low and raced the motor. Would they slip off to the side in the chumed-up sand, Troy wondered, or had the Jerries found this gap and re-sown it? The jeep plunged through the sand, slipping and skidding with Tully jerking at the wheel. They roared out of the garden and on a hundred yards before Tully braked. A moment later Hitch pulled up beside them.

"You men took the hard way," Wilson said thinly. "That was quite an experience."

Troy swung to the ground and stood beside Dietrich. "When I asked if your men had replanted the field, you said 'not here,' " he said roughly. "Does that mean they've planted new mines somewhere else?"

Dietrich did not turn his head, sat in stony silence.

"What does it matter?" Wilson said. "We're through. Let's get on to our rendezvous with Moffitt and started for Bir-el-Alam."

"It matters this much," Troy said angrily. "If they've closed the garden gate at the safe path, they could have a patrol waiting there for us in case some of us got through. When the Jerries realize what's happened to Dietrich, they'll radio that patrol and we'll have them on our backs."

"If there is a patrol there, we'll have them on our backs anyway," Wilson said tightly. "They will have seen our lights."

"Not necessarily, especially not if they're hidden out in a wadi," Troy said. "And we've been partially hidden in a depression."

"What are you going to do about it?" Wilson asked.

"I'm going to get rid of that patrol, if there is one," Troy snapped. "Dietrich, get out and stand by the left front wheel of the other jeep."

Dietrich obeyed without speaking. Troy dug in the equipment at the back of the jeep and found another length of nylon rope. He shoved Dietrich to a sitting position against the wheel and bound him to it.

"Hitch," Troy snapped, "sit in the sand facing Dietrich. If he tries to free himself or makes a move you don't like, shoot him." He turned to the CO. "Wilson, take the wheel. If the Jerries come back instead of Tully and me, Hitch will shoot Dietrich and cut him loose. Then you take off. Now douse your lights."

Troy ran to the other jeep and Tully took off, gunning up the incline and leaping into the open desert, racing without lights, driving straight south by instinct alone below the ridge that topped the dunes. After a few minutes he stopped the vehicle in a valley.

"I don't think we'd better go any farther, Sarge," he said quietly.

They equipped themselves with grenades, and carrying the German Schmeisser machine pistols, they stole ahead in the dead silence of the night.

"Get the cars," Troy whispered. "There'll be one or two patrol cars. Make sure of them and then we'll open on the men."

They walked for five minutes, crouched below the ridge of the rolling dune. Troy's mouth was dry and it seemed to him his breath rattled noisily in his chest. The Jerries would not have a light. They would be lying silently in some pocket near the gate, watchful and waiting. And in the blackness that surrounded Tully and him, they could stumble over the enemy before they knew they had reached the German position. Troy dropped prone and Tully lay on his belly beside him. They dug in their elbows and pulled ahead, a few feet at a time. Troy's eyes ached from trying to penetrate the thick cover of the night. His nose twitched and he stopped, snifling the air. He smelled tobacco. Some stupid Jerry was having a smoke, cupping his cigarette, not expecting attack from this quarter.

Troy lay motionless, alert and listening. He could sense no movement. He edged forward toward the top of the dune, lay looking down for the glowing end of a cigarette. It came when the man apparently put out his butt. Troy heaved a grenade toward the quickly dying ember, watchful now for the cars he hoped the flash would reveal.

In the flaring detonation, he glimpsed the outlines of two patrol cars parked at the bottom of the dune. He saw no figures between Tully's and his position and the vehicles. Sand rained on his back as he and Tully ran downhill toward the cars. Automatic fire chattered angrily, buzzed and sang about them. Halfway down they stopped, knelt, pulled the pins from grenades, and hurled. Guided by the flashes from the first explosions, they pitched a second time and a third. First one car and then the other burst into flames and Troy could see figures scattered about them, some motionless, some running. He and Tully opened fire with the machine pistols, spraying the wadi with short bursts, darting to the side and back. They zigzagged to the top of the dune. Return fire from the patrol petered out.

"Let's get out of here," Troy said, breathing hard. "I don't think they'll follow."

They trotted along the dune, stopping now and then to listen, but heard no one. Back at the jeep, Tully pulled the vehicle around and up, running on the top of the dune.

"Use the lights," Troy said. "They couldn't follow if they tried."

With the headlights reaching out across the desert, Tully speeded to the depression where Hitch waited with his prisoner and Wilson.

"I thought we heard some firecrackers," Hitch said mildly, standing.

"Let's get out of here," Troy said tersely.

The jeeps roared out of the depression, jounced into the flattening desert. Hitch moved his machine beside Tully's and together they bore into the night at the edge of the Devil's Garden. Although Dietrich now was bound hand and foot, Troy kept a wary eye on their prisoner, only now and then darting his eyes off to the east and north for the spotlight that would reveal Moffitt's position. At last he saw a flicker of light far to the right but the jeeps dropped down a valley. When they rolled to the top of the next hill, the light was gone. Troy called a halt.

"We'll have to wait until we see Moffitt's light again," he told Wilson, "or we'll overrun and lose him."

He stood in the back of his jeep with binoculars to his eyes, running them in a roaming arc about the area where he'd seen the light. There was no indication that anything ever had been out there.

"Tully," he said, "turn off your lights. Hitch, pull your jeep around facing a quarter turn to the right and leave your lights on. We'll have to give him a fix on us." He jumped to the ground, reached into the front and slid Dietrich's bound legs over the edge. He put his arm around Dietrich, helped him hop to the front of Hitch's jeep where he sat the Jerry in the light.

"We'll take a break," he said, glancing at his watch. It was 0245 hours. "Let's break out the refreshments, see what the Arabs provided for food and drink, fill the radiators with water."

Hitch brought the bundle from the jeep. The cloth contained ground bean patties that had been fried in oil, cold grilled goat or mutton and some pastries. There was a stopped jug of cold, sweetened coffee, a bottle of some kind of sour wine and a large earthen jug of water that had been sealed with wax. Troy spread the cloth on the sand, placed the rather generous portions of food and drink on it and untied Dietrich's hands. He helped the German officer to the picnic spread and the five of them sat on the ground and silently fell to their desert repast. They all ate hungrily and drank thirstily.

Hitch leaned back contentedly, pulled a piece of gum from his shirt pocket and started working on it.

"Last night you said you didn't have any more gum," Troy said idly.

"I didn't have any more with me then," Hitch corrected. "I had some stashed in the jeep."

"I wish we had some cigarettes stashed in the jeeps," Troy said.

"We didn't know we'd be so long, Sarge," Tully said, pulling out a matchstick and chewing on it.

Troy glanced away and noticed Dietrich studying him. The German reached into the pocket of his tunic and pulled out a package of cigarettes. Surprisingly he offered them around before taking one himself.

At 0300 hours, Troy had Hitch turn off his lights, stood on the hood of the jeep, and once more swept the desert to the east and north. There still was no light showing. Not anywhere in the world, he thought.

"Turn them on again," he said, stepping to the ground and studying his boots as he rubbed his hand over his stubbled face. They could not afford to wait for Moffitt, not with Wilson and Dietrich in tow. But they could not leave Moffitt stranded in the middle of Jerryland in a Panzerwagon. He straightened, swinging on his heel.

"Wilson," he said, "we've got to get you back, you and Dietrich. But we can't abandon Moffitt. Hitch, come here." When Hitch leaned over the hood of the jeep with Wilson and him, Troy sketched a rough map in the dust. "This is our approximate position," he said, making an X. He made another X to the west and slightly north. "Hitch, get a compass bearing on a straight line to this point. That's Faisan, the waterhole where we filled the radiators and our canteens. It should be about thirty miles from here. You take Wilson and Dietrich and go to Faisan. Tully and I will wait here until daybreak and then we'll try to find Moffitt if he hasn't shown up before. Wait at Faisan for us until 1000 hours. If we're not there by then, take off for Bir-el-Alam like a big bird and don't stop until you get there."

"Got you, Sarge," Hitch said and started to blow a bubble.

"Wilson," Troy said, rebinding Dietrich's hands; "Take Hitch's forty-five. Sit in the back behind Dietrich. If he tries anything funny, blow his brains out."

"Got you, Sarge," Wilson said with a twinkle in his eyes.

They divided the food and drink that was left between the two jeeps and Hitch spun his wheels in the sand and took off. Troy climbed onto the hood.

"Get some sleep," he told Tully. "Crawl under the camouflage netting. It will give you some warmth."

"I'll spell you, Sarge," Tully drawled.

"I'll catnap between looks," Troy said and spat. "Damn it, that Kraut didn't leave us any cigarettes."

Troy examined the black and featureless night through the binoculars. There just was nothing here, he thought helplessly and curled up against the warmth of the hood. He awakened at half-hour intervals to his fruitless vigil. He did not speculate on what had happened to Moffitt. It was useless to even try.

By 0500 hours, the sky had lightened enough so near objects were discernible. He and Tully each ate half a beancake and took a mouthful of water. They drove in the direction Troy had marked the position of the flicker he had seen in the night. Troy rode in the back of the jeep, sweeping the desert in all directions with the glasses. It was going to be another dull, overcast day. The clouds helped with the glare but did not keep out much heat and there was the constant threat that rain would start falling at any moment.

An hour went by. There was enough light in the dismal sky now to see the horizons. They had zigzagged forth and back in five-mile legs for a total distance of fifteen miles to the north from their starting point when Troy told Tully to turn around and make a straight run back.

"He couldn't have gone this far north," Troy said. "We've missed him somewhere out there."

They were almost back before Troy's binoculars picked up the halftrack far out in the desert, toppled and squatting on one haunch.

"Stop," he shouted.

"You see him?" Tully called excitedly.

"I don't know," Troy said, inspecting the machine. It was damaged although it was difficult to tell from a distance exactly how badly it was disabled or what had caused the trouble. Moffitt was not in sight. He could be sleeping in the vehicle or he could be on foot.

"Drive on slowly," Troy told Tully. "Straight ahead, as long as I can keep the halftrack in the glasses."

Half a mile on, Troy found a figure, a speck that moved on the sands. He trained his glasses on it, observing it closely. It was a man and he was moving on his hands and knees.

"It must be Moffitt," he told Tully. "Let's go get him. He may be wounded."

With Troy observing and directing, Tully turned and accelerated. In Troy's glasses, the tiny figure sprang upward and made motions with his hands.

"Wait," Troy said, trying to interpret. It looked as if the man were motioning them back. "Let's just sit still here and wait a while."

The figure dropped back to his hands and knees, changing course by a fraction in the glasses. Every now and then, he would get to his feet and motion the jeep away with his hands. Then he would go back to the ground and crawl some more, sometimes twisting, sometimes turning. The progress was painfully slow, a few yards at a time. Almost an hour passed from the time Troy first sighted the figure until the man was close enough for Troy to distinguish the features and recognize Moffitt. Tully started the motor and shoved the jeep in gear. Moffitt agitatedly waved them back again.

Troy put down the glasses and watched Moffitt from a hundred yards. He was wearing his thin, sun-faded khakis and he looked as if he had just come out of combat. His shirt and trousers were soiled and torn and his face was streaked with dirt. He got to his feet, made a crazy dance turn step and tottered to the jeep.

"What were you doing out there?" Troy asked. "Why'd you keep motioning us back?"

"Water," Moffitt croaked.

When he had drunk from the water jug, he smiled tiredly at Troy and reached for the machine pistol. He told Tully to take the jeep back with a slap of his hand, waited a moment, fired a burst sixty or seventy yards into the desert and fell to the ground. The earth jumped under the impact of a heavily charged mine and metal sang through the air in great clouds of sand. Moffitt staggered back to the jeep.

"Mined," he said, "all mined. Halftrack hit a mine. I've been coming through it all night."

"How could you come through a minefield at night without being blown to bits?" Troy demanded.

Moffitt held up both hands. "Sensitive fingers," he said and smiled. "When I could keep them from trembling, you know. I'd bring them to the earth in front of me, just a fraction of an inch above the sand, and skim the surface, so to speak. I found it worked. Luckily I didn't encounter any trip wires."

"But why?" Troy said. "Why did you risk it? Why didn't you wait until daylight when you'd have had half a chance?"

"Half a chance?" Moffitt's tired eyes lit up with amusement. "I'd say I had an entire chance. I came through in one piece."

"But you idiot," Troy exploded. "The odds were all against it, especially in the dark."

"I know," Moffitt said warily. "I had to do it. I saw your lights burning up there. I was afraid if I didn't warn you, you'd all come ripping through that blasted field at the crack of dawn."

"Yes," Troy said, looking at Tully and thinking of the five-mile legs of the zigzag course they just run east and north. "And so we did, Doctor, so we did."

12

Hitch's jeep had flown through the night borne on twin beams of light, soaring over the dunes and skimming the wadis but occasionally coming down to earth to bounce like a rubber ball. Dietrich sat beside this crazy American in steel-rimmed glasses who thought he was a pilot, jouncing, stiff and cramped in his fetters, and worried. When he had heard Sergeant Troy arrange the rendezvous at Faisan, Dietrich's heart had leaped and his pulse had quickened. They did not know, he had gloated. This omniscient Rat Patrol did not realize that the Faisan oasis was where the Afrika Korps patrols to the north and west often bivouacked. His first thought had been that the jeep bearing him would come racing in to Faisan unsuspecting. The Afrika Korps patrols would seize it. He would be freed and return to Sidi Abd with Colonel Wilson once more his captive.

Now he was not so certain. When this roaring machine sprang at his sentries out of nowhere, they would fire first and challenge later. Dietrich's face tingled with the gritty sting of the wind as the night fled by. There was no protection in these vehicles, not even from the breeze, and certainly no armored place where he could hide before the firing started.

It was a dilemma of the first order. He was not certain where his duty lay to the Fatherland. If he allowed the Americans to burst into Faisan and certain death, would Wilson's end offset the loss of Hauptmann Hans Dietrich? He did not think so. He owed it to the Fatherland to remain alive and fight again another day. It was not lack of courage; it was plain logic.

Ach, this Rat Patrol was a bother, a plague! In less than thirty-six hours' time, they had been responsible for the destruction of two Panzers and two Panzerwagons at Sidi Abd, had captured and escaped in a third, and four additional Panzerwagons had been destroyed in pursuit, plus the probability of two patrol cars. He could not count the casualties. His good friend, Wilhelm Kummel, and his aide, Lieutenant Bemdt, disappeared? That was unlikely. At least two dozen more. You would think he had been engaged with an armored battalion instead of a mere four enlisted men in jeeps.

Captain Dietrich squared his shoulders and set his jaw. His duty to the Fatherland was clear. He must rid North Africa of the Rat Patrol before they won the war single-handedly. He must allow Wilson, with this maniac who drove this bug of a motor vehicle, to enter Faisan and be shot without warning. That was of the first order. Then he must save his own skin if he could, so the trap could be set for the second jeep.

The decision ennobled Hauptmann Hans Dietrich and he strained his eyes into the nighttime of life that went streaming by, squinting against the wind, searching for the oasis. Suddenly the jeep stopped. This driver, this "Hitch," reached under his seat.

"Watch him, Colonel," he said and turned off the lights.

He threw a small penlight on a compass and consulted a chart. "I'm going to drive blind by compass," he said, "and come up around the other side of the waterhole. It should be down there a few miles."

"Right," the colonel said and Dietrich felt cold steel against his neck.

Dietrich was enraged. What kind of an army did the Americans throw together where an enlisted man could say what to do and an officer agree? It was unthinkable.

Hitch started again, turning to the south, slowing every few minutes to flick the penlight on the compass, the speedometer, his watch and the chart. Gradually he turned, deviating from his straight course in a wide circle. They rode in almost complete silence with the jeep motor whispering at low speeds. After half an hour Hitch stopped again.

"I'm going to crawl ahead and reconnoiter," he whispered. "This bird won't get away but if he opens his yap, let him have it and take off by yourself for Bir-el-Alam."

"Good luck," the colonel said quietly and Hitch moved off into the dark as silent as a shadow.

Dietrich's heart dropped into his boots. He had been certain the Americans would rush thoughtlessly into Faisan as they did into everything. It was their national custom. Now the trap was blown. Hitch would discover the patrol or patrols and they would race off in the jeep to warn the others. He sat grim and sick at heart, scarcely aware of the pistol that touched his skin.

Five minutes, ten, perhaps fifteen minutes passed. What was time anymore? Then Hitch was standing beside the jeep whispering to the colonel.

"It's okay," he said, "deserted."

"Good," Wilson said. "Fill the radiator and water cans."

Still without lights, Hitch drove the jeep over a dune and down into a hollow. Even when they were parked among the few tall palm trees at the edge of the waterhole, it was almost impossible to see their outline against the blue-blackness of the sky.

I wonder, Dietrich thought unhappily, if the reason neither of my patrols is here is that they fear the things that move in the dark of a night like this.

"I'll tie him to a tree," Hitch said, pushing Dietrich firmly against the rough trunk of a palm, winding a line in and about the ankles of his already bound legs, around the tree, about his waist and the tree again and then up through his hands. "That ought to hold you," he told Dietrich and patted his cheek.

Dietrich was infuriated. He chafed at his bonds but that only made the ropes seem tighter. He relaxed and listened to the sounds the Americans made, filling their containers, pouring water into the radiator, refilling the containers.

"Here." The voice startled Dietrich. It was Hitch. He held a bottle to Dietrich's mouth and Dietrich swallowed thirstily. "I'll unloosen the ropes so you can sit. They'll pull tight if you try to get away and I won't unloosen them again," Hitch said, slipping a knot here and a loop there. Dietrich slid down with his back against the tree. Hitch retied the line.

"You are very kind, may I offer you a cigarette?" Dietrich said craftily.

"Why sure," Hitch said. "Which pocket are they in?"

"The right pocket of my tunic," Dietrich said, smiling in the dark. "Please take one for the colonel also."

"Thanks," Hitch said. "We'll enjoy these tomorrow."

Dietrich shrugged. The Americans could not go on being lucky. When one or the other or both patrols came in, they would surely scout the place first. And, he thought, heartening, they would find him bound to the tree and he would live to fight another time.

Hitch returned to the jeep and he and the colonel loaded the cans in it. They busied themselves about the back end for a few moments and then Hitch was back. He untied the line around the tree.

"Okay," he said. "Back into the vehicle, Buster."

Dietrich pushed himself upright against the trunk, and with some slight assistance from Hitch, hopped to the jeep. The colonel climbed in the back and when Dietrich was in the seat, he felt the pistol at his neck again.

With only the penlight, compass and chart, Hitch ran another blind course, a great circle this time, it seemed to Dietrich, finally stopping between two dunes that should be somewhere near but above the oasis.

"Out," Hitch told Dietrich, and when he was on the ground, Hitch pushed him back against the jeep and bound him to the frame.

The colonel and Hitch dragged a net from the back of the machine and draped it over the jeep and him. Someone crawled under the net and into the back of the vehicle.

"Hitch is above, watching the waterhole, Captain," Wilson said. "I'm here with my pistol. If you make an outcry or even speak a word, I'll shoot you and we'll be away from here before they have their wits about them."

Dietrich could have sobbed. In the distance he heard the clattering motors of his rugged scout cars that had armored sides and even windshields.

Tully was protesting. He was wearing his helmet again and now he shoved it back from his forehead with the heel of his hand and chomped on the matchstick he had been rolling in his mouth. Troy, back in the bush hat he had dug out of the jeep, was beside him and Moffitt was asleep in the back on the camouflage net.

"I don't like it, Sarge," Tully said loudly. "It just don't make sense to go barreling into a waterhole in enemy territory in broad daylight."

Troy looked ahead and to the sides at the desert that was slipping grayly by in the somber day. There was nothing in it.

"You can see a hundred miles in every direction," he said patiently.

"You can't see into them wadis no better'n you can into a bear hole," Tully said irritably. "You ought to know. We hid in wadis times enough."

"Okay, Tully, you're right," Troy snapped. "It make you feel better to have me admit it?"

"Then what we got to do it for? Why can't we go sneaky-like around?"

"Because there isn't time. We said we'd rendezvous at 1000 hours. The only way we'll make it is to go straight in."

"And you think we're going to make it if we get shot up along the way?"

"Knock it off," Troy growled.

"Okay, Sarge," Tully said, slipping his left hand into the pocket of his khakis. He brought out a fresh matchstick and rested his hand, clenched on his thigh.

Troy looked across the monotonous sands. Damn it, he knew Tully was right but they had to chance it. When he glanced back, Tully was returning his still clenched hand to his thigh. He had the new matchstick in his mouth. The oasis should be due west from their position now, Troy thought, no more than half an hour, and that would be on the button, as far as their last minute for rendezvous was concerned. He considered the desert, the unchanging sameness of it. On a day like this, with no sun for a guide, it would be impossible to tell one direction from another without a compass. Tully was stepping up the speed, he noticed. Might be dangerous, the way the engine overheated and them with scarcely enough water to rinse out their mouths. He started to say something but decided against it. Tully already was sulking.

Troy glanced at Tully. He had been looking down at his left hand but he brought his eyes back up to the desert. The hand still was clenched. He's probably thinking how he would like to slug me in the jaw, Troy thought and a smile flashed across his face. He tiredly blew out his breath. If they ever got back to Bir-el-Alam from this caper, he wondered if the Old Man would pop for passes, a week for all of them in Algiers. Booze and babes, Troy thought happily.

He looked again at Tully and started to say something about the passes. Tully was studying his fist. Nuts, Troy thought, he's been here on the desert so long everything but the orneriness has dried out of him. The wind whistled and Moffitt snored and Tully sulked. It was a great day to be alive. Troy glanced at his watch. It was 0947 hours. Half standing, he studied the rolling dunes of the desert ahead. They should be within sight of the waterhole. The minutes passed and nothing showed, no tracks, no sign of vegetation. At 1007 he sat and jerked angrily to Tully.

"What's that in your fist?" he demanded.

Tully opened his hand and smiled sheepishly. A compass lay in his palm.

"You crossed me up," Troy shouted, grabbing Tully's shirt in his fist.

A rattle of firing crackled in the distance.

"Yeah, I guess I did, Sarge," Tully said, pushing his shirt down.

"Where are we?" Troy asked quickly, turning to shake Moffitt. "Come on, Doc, looks like we got to get Wilson out of trouble again."

"We're coming in from the northwest instead of southeast," Tully said. "I figured that ought to confuse them somewhat if they'd radioed anything from Sidi Abd."

"All right, don't rub it in," Troy snarled. "If they've got trouble, we've no time to reconnoiter. Get us in there fast where we're not expected and we'll make a run, in and out. Doc, give them hell with the fifty caliber. I'll heave grenades. And Tully, you just drive straight on through."

"Yes, sir, that's what the boss said," Tully said and laughed.

The jeep bounded up over the dune overlooking the waterhole and leaped through the air onto the slope. Moffitt swung the machine gun almost next to Troy's ear and began to smash burst after burst into three patrol cars, then pivoted to rake the soldiers lying beyond the palms on the eastern uphill slope. The Jerries were caught in the crossfire of the fifty caliber machine gun and the thirty caliber gun from Hitch's jeep above. Troy pitched the grenades as fast as he could bite the pins and an ear-splitting series of blasts followed them. The jeep burst out of the oasis and rushed up the southern hill. Troy swung about to look. Hitch was plunging down toward a pocket where a seven-point-ninety-two millimeter MG42, fired like a rifle with its barrel braced on a simple bipod mount, was pouring out its rounds. Wilson was firing the thirty caliber machine gun over Dietrich's head. Dietrich was like a wooden statue.

"They got one of them new contraptions down there," Tully yelled. "Let's give Hitch a hand."

Suddenly as Hitch's jeep shot down the hill, the firing from the MG42 ceased and a Jerry stood back away from it.

Hitch raced through the oasis and up a dune.

"He must have seen Dietrich," Troy shouted. "Stop and keep me covered. I want that weapon."

Tully slewed into a stop and Troy leaped from the jeep. Moffitt swung the machine gun on the Jerry who stood with his hands behind his head. Troy snatched the pistol-grip, rifle stock weapon from its mount and tossed it in the jeep. He leaped in the back with Moffitt and swung the MG42 from a sitting position.

"Take it easy, Sam," Moffitt said and laughed. "The only ones left to shoot have their hands behind their heads."

Troy looked around, surprised, and grinned. It was true. Resistance had ceased. The dead and wounded were sprawled helter-skelter through the oasis. Several—perhaps half a dozen—Jerries had dropped their weapons and were standing in the position of surrender. Two of the patrol cars were masses of flaming junk.

Hitch reappeared in a flying leap from the western dime and came in for a landing next to Tully. Dietrich sat immobile while Hitch and Wilson jumped from the jeep.

"An impressive victory." Wilson gloated.

"Glad you was here, Sarge," Hitch said and popped a bubble.

"Well, well," Wilson said, looking about. "We'll just load these prisoners in the undamaged patrol car and take them in with Dietrich."

"And the dead and wounded?" Troy asked quietly.

Wilson looked at him and didn't answer.

"I'd suggest we strip them of their weapons, let them bury the dead in the desert, away from the waterhole, and take their wounded back to Sidi Abd in the patrol car," Troy said.

"But we'd just have to fight them again another day," Wilson said.

"We can't care for them, not even the ones who are able-bodied," Troy said firmly. "And I'm not going to kill a wounded man."

Wilson's eyes hardened and he looked from Troy to Tully and back to Troy.

"Only able-bodied men," Wilson said softly.

"When they know too much," Troy agreed.

"All right," Wilson said harshly. "Get on with it."

Carrying the MG42, Troy walked to Dietrich, undid his bonds. "Get your men organized," he said coldly. "One detail to carry off the dead and bury them. Another to load the wounded into the patrol car. All weapons are to be left on the ground. If they're carrying sidearms, take them off and drop them. I'll be right with you and I don't mind cutting you in half with this toy of yours."

Dietrich started shouting orders.

"Hold it," Troy said and called Moffitt. He pitched the German weapon to him. "You understand this Jerry talk, I don't. Take over."

Moffitt marched off with Dietrich. Tully and Hitch were picking up the scattered weapons.

"What do we do with this junk?" Hitch asked.

"Keep a weapon if you need it, pick out something you can use and some spare ammo," Troy said. "Toss the rest of it in the fire."

Eyes darting from the Jerries on the burial detail to those who were loading the patrol car with the wounded, Troy went back to his jeep and pulled out the empty water cans. Wilson walked after him. Troy steeled himself. I'll try to keep my temper, he told himself, but if the CO sounds off about sending the wounded Jerries back to Sidi Abd, I'll slug him if it costs me my stripes and ten years.

He turned slowly to Wilson and stared at him icy-eyed.

Wilson smiled faintly. "Let me give you a hand with the water cans, Sergeant," he said.

13

Faisan oasis, a muddy waterhole in a grayish sandy hollow, where tattered-leafed palms reached in slant-trunked despair for moisture, was as neat and tidy as it had ever been. Only the charred and twisted heaps of junk from the two patrol cars that had been demolished disturbed the scene, reminding of the recent carnage. After burying their dead and policing the area with Germanic thoroughness, the dozen surviving Jerries, including five who were wounded, had packed into the patrol car and limped away, motor coughing and sputtering. Troy had broken off the firing point from one of the spark plugs. Colonel Wilson and the Rat Patrol sat in council under a ragged tree. Wilson, Troy and Moffitt were sharing one of the cigarettes Dietrich had given Hitch in the hope he would light it and betray himself. Tully was trying to manipulate a matchstick upward into one nostril and Hitch was snapping his bubble gum.

"Granted we had no choice," Wilson said with a deliberateness that was almost academic. "Granted the only humanitarian thing to do was to send the wounded back to Sidi Abd, we still must face the facts. The Jerries must have the desert crawling with patrols by now. The men in the patrol car we sent back will radio our position. We'll find ourselves besieged."

"Moffitt disabled their radio," Troy said patiently. He was fondling the MG42 fight machine gun he had captured with its drum containing a fifty-round belt. "It will take them as long to cover the thirty miles to Sidi Abd in that spitting machine as it will for us to drive the fifty miles to Bir-el-Alam."

"Um, well, good thinking," Wilson said stuffily and coughed. "At any rate, I think we should be off."

"And you're right," Troy said, yawning and stretching as he stood. "I wanted them out of sight so they couldn't report the direction we took. Moffitt learned this patrol we smashed was from the north. Instead of going west in a beeline for Bir-el-Alam, we'll go north a ways and then cut over. It's farther but we should avoid contact with the enemy. All right, men, let's move."

Hitch and Tully reluctantly strolled toward their jeeps. Moffitt and Wilson followed and Troy went to the far tree in the oasis where Dietrich had been secured beyond earshot. He untied the line from the tree trunk and unbound Dietrich's feet but left the rope attached to the cords binding Dietrich's hands behind his back. Troy held the end of the line in his fist and pushed Dietrich ahead, "Monkey on a leash," he said and laughed aloud. Dietrich's spine stiffened and he walked wooden-legged and flatfooted.

Hitch's starter already was whirring when Troy climbed in Tully's jeep behind Dietrich. Tully turned his engine over. The starters in both jeeps rattled away like coffee grinders but neither engine fired.

"Hey, Tully," Hitch called. "You having the same trouble?"

"No, I'm just keeping you company," Tully drawled. "Pretty soon now I'll turn on the ignition." He rolled the matchstick from one side of his mouth to the other. "What you think? Overheated? Flooded?"

"Funny they'd both conk out at the same time," Hitch said, climbing out and lifting his hood. From under it, he called, "Wilson, give it a couple turns. Let's see if it's pumping gas."

The starter buzzed but there was no response. Tully climbed out to look at his motor. Troy stood, scowling and shook a captured Luger at the back of Dietrich's head. He didn't know what Dietrich could have done or planned to do, but he was suspicious.

"Not overheated, no more than usual," Tully mumbled, patting the inside of the radiator. He was working back on the engine, talking as he went. "Spark plug connections okay, points, fuel pump." He buried his head deeper and jerked it right back out. "Hey, Hitch! My rotor's missing." Hitch's head bobbed under the hood of his jeep. "So's mine," he yelled.

They both glared at Dietrich. Troy jumped from the back, anger pulsing in his veins, and stood beside the German officer. Dietrich was wooden-faced. He had heard and seen nothing.

"The damned Jerries stole our rotors," Tully exploded. "But how could they have?" Moffitt asked, coming over. His face was puzzled and he was shaking his head. "I was with Dietrich every minute."

"I didn't say Dietrich took them," Tully raged. "I said the Jerries."

From somewhere in the overcast sky, a faint droning sounded, faded, buzzed again. Troy tilted his head and moved it from horizon to horizon. Nothing was visible in the murk, but the deep-throated humming of airplane engines was unmistakable. Troy's throat grew dry and his palms went moist.

"Wilson," he bawled. "Lash Dietrich to a tree. Moffitt, Hitch, get the nets over your jeep. Tully, let's move." They broke out the camouflage nets, threw them over the little vehicles and ran for the cover of the palms. Troy smiled crookedly; Wilson had tied Dietrich upright from foot to head with the last loop of line tight around his neck. The murmuring in the overcast was deep and sustained now.

"You think they're Jerries?" Moffitt asked, lying on his back head to toe with Troy. They both searched the leaden sky with binoculars.

"One hundred to one," Troy growled.

"And us stuck here," Tully wailed beside them.

"Better off here than in the open," Troy said. Not that they had any choice, he thought grimly. "I don't think they'll spot the jeeps. And they won't bomb their own oasis just to see the water splash."

"What about them rotors?" Tully asked. "How could they have taken them?"

"How isn't the question, they're gone," Troy said savagely. "But it wouldn't have been hard. Moffitt was with Dietrich working the burial detail. Wilson and I were at the waterhole. You and Hitch were supposed to keep an eye on the detail with the wounded but you were scrounging weapons. It not only could have happened, it did. The question right now is, what do we do without them?" The engines of the unseen planes were roaring overhead. "We'll have to radio HQ to send someone out for us," Hitch said, shifting his gum.

"We can't do that," Troy growled. "The Jerries would have a fix in a minute. Anyway, they'll be out here from Sidi Abd on a routine check. We've got to get away."

The pitch of the motors changed, became a whine and then a shrill rising screech. Out of the fuzzy sky, three planes dived at a sharp angle. The fat legs of their fixed landing gear, crooked wings and square-cut tails identified them. They were Stuka divebombers. They shrieked low over the oasis and pulled steeply back into the clouds. The screaming became a low humming high overhead and then the three planes made another pass. The third time they came over, they were flying level below the clouds in a V-formation but they skimmed the oasis and streaked away to the west.

"I wonder if they would have dropped an egg," Moffitt said, coming out from the palms and following them with his glasses. "If they're looking for us, they must know we have Dietrich."

"They're looking for us, Doc, but all they know about Dietrich is that he isn't there," Troy said with a humorless smile. "Maybe the Arabs have him. Maybe he got tired of fighting and took a powder. Maybe he's shacked up in Bizerta."

"Right you are, Sam," Moffitt said and lifted one eyebrow. "What do we do without the rotors?"

"We walk," Troy said harshly.

"Oh, I say, Moffitt said and grimaced. "Walk fifty miles to Bir-el-Alam. Jerries searching for us on the ground and from the sky. We may be desert rats but we've lost our scurry power."

"We walk and hide," Troy said impassively. "Let's gather our gear and get started."

Leaving Dietrich bound to the tree, Wilson and the Rat Patrol returned to the jeeps. For a moment they stopped, all looking helplessly at the machines.

"Isn't there some other way, Sergeant?" Wilson asked irritably.

"If you know how to make an engine fire without a rotor, there is," Troy said brutally. He looked fixedly at Wilson. "Well, do you?"

"If there is a way, I am not aware of it," Wilson admitted and flushed.

"Let's go," Troy said without spirit. He knew how the others felt. The situation looked hopeless. "We'll unload what we can carry. Water, one camouflage net, weapons. Then we'll blow up the jeeps."

"One moment, old chap," Moffitt said, pulling his eyebrows together and chewing at his lower lip. "Sam, has it occurred to you that those rotors may have been taken not only to disable us but to provide Dietrich with a means of escape?"

"It's possible," Troy said, eyes closing to slits.

"Dietrich shook hands with those men before they left," Moffitt continued, thinking aloud. "That's out of character for that Jerry. A salute perhaps, but a handclasp? Hardly. He could have been passing one or both rotors."

"What are we waiting for, Doctor?" Troy asked, baring his teeth. He swung to Hitch and Tully. "Hold everything!"

Troy released Dietrich from the tree. Hands still tied behind him, the sharp-faced German officer regarded Troy and Moffitt with silent and derisive contempt. Troy felt his muscles tightening and anger flaming. He and Moffitt began a probing search, working up Dietrich's sleeves to his collar, through his tunic, shirt and breeches, squeezing down the sides of his boots.

"Nothing," Moffitt said dejectedly.

Troy studied Dietrich's face. Defiance and superiority gleamed in the German's dark eyes.

"He's got them," Troy said with sudden conviction.

"Shall we strip him?" Moffitt asked. "Give him the body search before we put lighted matches to the soles of his feet?"

A flicker, almost the unseen movement of an insect's wings, touched Dietrich's eyelids.

"We won't have to," Troy said, lifting his lip until his teeth showed whitely. "The rotors are in the toes of his boots."

They found the rotors with Dietrich's toes curled around them.

"Walking would have been a trifle awkward," Moffitt said with an amused smile. "You didn't think we'd carry you, now did you?"

The Stukas had changed Troy's mind about the course they would take. He knew the divebombers would continue searching but he did not think they would return over the ground they had covered. Instead of going north as he'd planned, the jeeps darted into the desert from the waterhole on a due west course in the same straight line the planes had taken. The camouflage nets were carefully folded in the backs of the vehicles, ready to be quickly pulled over the machines at the first sound of aircraft.

Sooner or later, both the planes and the ground patrols would know that the Rat Patrol held Dietrich prisoner. It amused Troy to speculate whether or not the Jerries would fire as long as they held the commander of an Afrika Korps armored unit hostage.

The jeeps had scarcely left Faisan, driven perhaps two miles into the open desert, when the growling hum of fast approaching aircraft drove the two jeeps as one into a wadi. Before the Stukas whistled overhead, the camouflage nets were in place. Beyond the oasis, the planes climbed and dived back, once more soaring westward just above the cloud cover.

"They've got us charted in this area," Troy called to Moffitt. "We're going to have to make this by leaps and bounds."

Leaving the camouflage nets draped over the machine runs and the backs of the jeeps, they scampered from the wadi and raced across the sand. In less than five minutes, Troy heard the Stukas returning. Again they scuttled into a depression and were under cover when the planes shot over. They were flying at a lower altitude and on their return pass soared overhead at less than a thousand feet.

They know we were at the waterhole, Troy thought, his mind tightening. That means the carload we sent back met with a patrol. They've assumed a logical route for us and are combing it from above and on the ground behind us. They also know that we have Dietrich. At least it would be interesting to see the action the enemy would take, Troy thought, remembering what he and Tully had been prepared to do with Wilson.

He changed the course to due north, and well before the planes returned, the jeeps were under cover. The Stukas had dropped to about five hundred feet and had cut down to almost stall speed. They still were flying the same course, about a mile to the south now. When the planes swept back on the same line of flight, the jeeps leapt north again.

"Funny they don't spot our tracks," Troy said to Tully.

"There's lots of tracks going every which way around the waterhole, Sarge," Tully said easily. "And anyway, they ain't so easy to spot without the sun throwing shadows in them. If the sun was out, these nets wouldn't be much use either. We'd be throwing a solid shadow."

The sound of motors drummed from the sky again. Tully plunged into a hollow and Hitch followed. The nets were draped when a single Stuka keened above. Troy glanced to the south. The lead plane was flying the original course and the third was well to the south. They had opened the V. Troy turned, examining the hole in which they had plunged. It was a spoon-shaped depression with dunes on three sides and a level exit to the north at the tip. They were below horizontal line of sight. With the planes broadening the aerial search, it should be safe to stay here hidden.

When the lone Stuka dipped back from the sky beyond Faisan, it was at least three hundred yards beyond them to the north. Tully started his motor.

"Shut off the motor and stay put," Troy told him and called to Hitch. "Pull up here, as close as you can get. We're going to stay."

With the jeeps snugged together, Troy had Hitch and Tully stretch one net from the top of the dune to the first jeep, continuing the camouflage unbroken with the other net extending on and over the second jeep and to the ground. Troy and Moffitt ran in the tire tracks well behind the hollow and obliterated the marks by dragging water cans over them. They were under the netting before the Stuka reappeared, this time half a mile to the north.

The six men sat in the two jeeps, cramped together in an airless pocket in the sand. Their faces were dirty and sweat streaked and their breathing was heavy. Troy looked across at Moffitt and flashed his teeth in a smile.

"What do you think, Doctor?" he asked.

"We should be safe until dark," Moffitt said, crinkling his eyes. "Then we can make a run for it by compass."

"Mind if I go up and have a look, Sarge?" Tully asked, screwing his head around.

"No, we ought to have a lookout," Troy said. "Keep your helmet under the net."

Tully scrambled over the hoods, kicking down sand as he crawled to the top of the dune.

"Rest of you get some sleep," Troy said and rubbed his burning eyes. "I'll take the first watch on Dietrich." Dietrich sat at attention, back straight, shoulders squared, arms still cramped behind him. He probably feels as if they're coming out of their sockets, Troy thought, but he'll have to beg before I change his position. Dietrich sat silent and tight-lipped. Moffitt curled around the machine gun mount in the back of the other jeep. Hitch and Wilson stretched their legs over the turned-down windshields and rested their heads on the backs of the seats. It should be a restful day, Troy thought and grinned. He was half asleep himself.

"Hey, Sarge," Tully cried out. "There's a Jerry patrol."

"Where?" Troy's mind snapped alert. "How many?"

"About a mile away. Two cars."

"Forget it," Troy said easily. "We've been expecting them. They can't see us here."

"But they're coming this way, Sarge," Tully insisted. "It looks like they're following our tracks, the way they're poking along."

Troy swore softly and shook Moffitt.

"I have a prisoner here for you, Doctor," he said, crawling over the hoods. "Take over."

"Right-o," Moffitt murmured.

Two Jerry patrol cars, spare tires mounted on slanted, snoutlike hoods, their sides looking like old-fashioned, galvanized iron bathtubs, were warily approaching the dunes above the hollow. There were four helmeted soldiers in each car. The vehicles did not appear to be carrying any mounted weapons but, thinking of the MG42 light machine gun he had captured, Troy did not underestimate the possible firepower of the patrol.

"We could take them on," he said, thinking aloud, "but what about the Stukas?"

Troy looked at the sky through the latticework of the netting. Far away, down near the visible horizon, he could just make out three widely, separated flecks.

"If they do see us," he speculated, "they aren't going to fire while their patrol is engaging us. And we may be able to pull it off before they reach it." He clapped Tully's shoulder. "Stay put."

He grabbed the camouflage netting in both hands and slid down the bank of sand carrying it with him.

"Moffitt, Wilson," he shouted. "Get the other net off. Roll Dietrich up in them and tie him from the outside. Push him some place out of the way. Hitch, get these two jeeps out the end of the hollow and faced back south with their motors running."

He snatched the MG42 with its bipod mount and drum of ammunition and dug his way to the top of the dune at the south end of the hollow.

"What's coming off?" Wilson panted as he knotted a snarling, struggling Captain Dietrich in the double layers of netting.

"We're going to do battle," Troy called and his teeth flashed. "A two-car patrol is tracking us down here. I want those cars. They're our transportation out from under the Stukas. I'm going to set up this Jerry gun here and decoy them in. When they come for me, take them with the jeeps from either side. Try to get the drivers first and fire only at the personnel. Don't damage our carriers."

"Right-o," Moffitt called and laughed.

"They're half a mile off now, Sarge," Tully sang out, "and the Stukas are coming back."

"How far away are the planes?" Tully asked quickly. Tully looked from side to side. "Real spread out. And far away."

"Sergeant," Wilson said, climbing to the top of the dune.

"Yes?" Troy clamped his teeth together and frowned.

This was no time to pull rank. Wilson should realize he was an armored battalion commander, not a guerilla fighter.

"I think it would be better if I manned the decoy gun," Wilson said with a thin smile. "I'm the least valuable man in this engagement and you'll be far more effective than I with the fifty caliber machine gun in the jeep."

"I suppose you're right, damn it," Troy said, looking longingly at the light machine gun. It was on the bipod, ammunition belt in place. "It's ready to go. The firing rate is unbelievable. It has a cycling rate of twelve hundred rounds per minute but you're limited to the fifty rounds you have in the drum. It's recoil operated. Just squeeze the trigger and wham! Let go quick or you'll blow your wad. The range is four thousand yards. Wait them out, say five hundred yards. Aim for the windshields. Okay, you're calling the shots now. We'll take off at your first burst."

"Right, Sergeant," Wilson said smartly.

"Right, sir," Troy said and his white smile flashed across his face. "Don't get yourself shot now, sir. We've gone to a lot of trouble over you."

Wilson nodded, smiling, and lay down back of his gun. Troy called to Tully and ran down the hollow past Dietrich, trussed up and spluttering in the netting, to the idling jeep. Tully jumped in behind the wheel, depressed the clutch and held it down after he had slipped the car gear. Troy checked the heavy Browning M2 fifty caliber machine gun and the belt of shells. He smacked the side of the weapon and grasped the spadegrip trigger. "Forgive me, big baby," he murmured. It had been a brief love affair with the MG42, a damn punk kid who had given him the eye.

He glanced over his shoulder. In the other jeep, Moffitt gripped his machine gun with both hands.

"We'll go a split second ahead," Troy called. "Don't want any crossfire."

"Right-o and Tally-ho," Moffitt cried as a burst zipped from the MG42.

The jeeps leaped off as another burst and a third from the light machine gun were answered with a rattling hail of fire. The jeeps sprang off the dunes and careened from either side toward the patrol cars. Troy's machine gun smashed the cars from windshields to rear compartment with high impact slugs. Not a yard behind, Moffitt raked the Jerries. The attack had been so rapid and unexpected there was no return fire. Tully spun his jeep around and dashed back. Again the slugs tore at the soldiers in the cars. A feeble spatter of bullets came from one weapon on Moffitt's side. It had dribbled away before Moffitt made his second pass.

Troy searched the sky as Tully skidded to a stop. The planes were distant. Hitch braked on the other side.

"Tully, Hitch, get those motors started. Toss out the bodies, but keep the weapons. Moffitt, get the machine gun and ammunition out of your jeep. Dump it in your car. Take the water cans and equipment." Troy was dismounting his fifty caliber machine gun as he shouted. He trotted to the patrol car nearest him and heaved his eighty-one-pound weapon into the back. When he returned with water cans and equipment, Wilson had come down from the dune with the MG42.

"I could manage only three bursts and the ammunition was gone," he complained. "What can I do?"

"Take off their helmets and stuff the bodies in the jeeps," Troy said, throwing his bush hat in the back of the patrol car. He yanked a helmet from the nearest Kraut and pulled the body over to the jeep, shoving it behind the wheel. The five of them dragged the other Germans to the jeeps and Troy peered at the sky. The Stukas were converging in a tight V.

"Helmets on," Troy yelled. "In the cars. Get them moving. Pour it into the jeeps."

Behind smashed windshields, Tully and Hitch leaned over unfamiliar, high steering wheels and manipulated the clumsy German cars toward the jeeps. As the Stukas looped low, Troy heaved a German stick grenade into the jeep Tully had driven.

"That hurt, Sarge," Tully shouted as the machine erupted.

A moment later the second jeep blew up. The Stukas climbed straight up, dived back from the east and came over low in formation. They dipped their wings to the patrol cars and five men in German helmets stood in the German cars and waved at the German planes. The Stukas streaked westward.

"Let's get Dietrich and let's get out of here," Wilson said.

"Right you are, sir," Troy said and laughed.

In the hollow, they released Dietrich, silent but with eyes blazing, and folded the camouflage nets into the backs of the cars. Near the flaming jeeps, Troy called a halt.

"Let's clean up, wash out the blood, and take stock," he said.

They knocked the shattered glass from the windshields and sloshed out the machines with water from Jerry containers they found in the storage compartments at the rear. There also were rations, extra gasoline, and ammunition. The weapons they had picked up included Schmeisser machine pistols, two more of the MG42 light machine guns and stick grenades. Hitch found a carton of American cigarettes in his patrol car and divided them, even tucking a package into Dietrich's tunic. Dietrich looked furiously at him.

"We've had a busy day," Troy said, lifting his upper lip from his teeth and shouting, "Hey! Let's go home."

They clambered into the cars, Tully at the wheel of one with Dietrich beside him and Troy in the rear; Hitch at the wheel of the other with Moffitt inspecting the radio at the front and Wilson sprawled in the back.

"We'll have to head south until we're sure the planes have gone," Troy said. "Then it's westward-ho."

The patrol cars had not driven a mile before the Stukas zoomed in low and dipped their wings again, then climbed upstairs in a hurry.

"I guess that does it, Sarge," Tully said.

"I hope so," Troy said, wrinkling his forehead. "Let's play it safe. Keep driving south."

In a few minutes, the Stukas were back buzzing them before they climbed westward. Troy chewed his cheek and waited as the cars plodded along. A few minutes later, the Stukas made another pass.

"This is getting monotonous, Sarge," Tully said.

"Pull alongside Hitch," Troy said tightly.

"What do you think, Sam?" Moffitt called as the Stukas climbed up to make another dive.

"They see what we've done—found his nibs, the commander here," Troy said, baring his teeth and pointing at Dietrich. "In honor of the victory and the rescue, I think we've picked up an honor escort back to Sidi Abd."

14

They had no choice, no blasted choice. They had to play it out and wait for the break. The Luftwaffe was covering itself with glory this day, expending sorely needed gasoline flying protective escort for two patrol cars deep in German territory. Maybe they would put on an aerial circus for the amusement of Herr Hauptmann Hans Dietrich before the cars reached Sidi Abd. Here they came again, those mighty knights of the air, why weren't they off somewhere bombing Allied armor or engaging Spitfires?

The tight V-formation zoomed over at five hundred feet, flying southeast. They'd patrol the corridor all the way to Sidi Abd this time, belt out shells at anything that looked suspicious, and be back to wiggle their wings at Afrika Korps unit commander Dietrich in thirty minutes.

Thirty minutes? Troy considered. If he was right, if they were going to scout the route, and that seemed a reasonable assumption, he had thirty minutes, say twenty-five to be on the safe side, to change his direction, get these tubs under camouflage nets and burrow in until dark. It probably was the only opportunity that he would have.

Hitch pulled the second car alongside and Moffitt, lips twisted in an enigmatic smile, waved Troy to stop.

"Interesting traffic here," he called, holding up the headset for the Jerry radio. "Been on the birdmen's frequency. A lot of chatter about how they spotted the Rat Patrol for the scout cars and will bring Dietrich safely in."

That did it; by God it did! Troy smacked his fist in the palm of his hand and looked at his watch—1300 hours on the nose.

"Due west and pour it on," he told Tully. "Can you find some old tracks to follow?" He said to Hitch, "Get behind us, single file, and put your tires down cleat for cleat in our prints."

Tully found a batch of prints within a mile. Marks left on the desert sands by Dietrich's own armored column when it pulled back from Bir-el-Alam two days ago. Just two days? Well, that was luck, no one could tell who made which, he didn't think, unless from upstairs they could see which were fresh and which were stale. That did not seem likely.

They were off and running. It was not so bad for Troy in the lead car but, and he snorted, he knew the big, heavy-lugged tires were kicking stinging sand into Hitch's windscreenless vehicle. Tully was pounding along at a ripping seventy-five kilometers an hour. Troy did some fast conversion. That would be just over forty-five miles an hour—forty-six point five, to be exact. With time allowed for the mile they had traveled before they found the tracks, and they would be twenty miles to the west when they ducked under cover and the Luftwaffe would be looking for them about fifteen miles to the south and east. And when the Stukas did not find them, they would waste more time buzzing Faisan oasis. How much gas did those ugly babies carry? They could not stay up forever. Anyway, by 1800 hours it should be dark enough so the Rat Patrol could fold its nets and silently steal away.

Troy looked back. The three in the second car had their goggles on, Wilson with Jerry glasses he had had the good sense to grab for the trip. In their pot helmets and with black faces below the white which showed through the glasses, they looked like weird owl-men from another planet. Troy grinned. Moffitt shook a fist at him but he cracked his face in a white-toothed smile. Now there was something Troy never had considered. Those damned white teeth in a blackened face could give you away at night. He would have to warn them all, no matter how funny things got, to keep their lips buttoned next time they went prowling after dark. The patrol cars, he noticed as he turned back, had canvas tops, folded on top of the storage bin now. They would put them up when they pulled in. Although the glass was gone, the frames for the windscreens would support them. Should be more comfortable with the nets away from their heads and the nets would drape better, more naturally.

The desert streamed by. Gray sand. Gray sky. Were his glasses more grimed than usual or was the sky dropping in a thickening pall? He shook his fist at the sky. Hold off, rainmaker, he shouted in his mind, don't sink us just outside home port, even if rain would drive away the Stukas.

He looked at his watch—1315 hours. He began to search for wadis. This was going to be tricky. A line of tracks, even a single line of tracks leading off the beaten path into a wadi and not coming out would look mighty peculiar from above, the kind of thing that would bear investigation.

He put his chin on Tully's shoulder and shouted in his ear. "Take off where the dunes are rolling."

"Figured it was about that time, Sarge," Tully said, half turning and lifting one hand to point ahead. "Looks as if a man could get lost up there."

The desert where he pointed was convoluted, one dune upon another, rolled and humped together.

"In we go," Troy said. "Find a snug, tight hole, room enough for two patrol cars, but don't go in. Pull around to the side of it and stop."

"Got you, Sarge, I think," Tully said and smiled. "Like the old days with them revenooers back in Kentucky." Tully wound between the dunes until he found a good deep pocket, steep-sided at one end, shallow at the other. It was not too wide. The cars could sit side by side with maybe a couple feet between. He drove almost to it, turned to drive around and stopped. Hitch braked, heading straight in. Troy looked back. A single line of tracks, very neat, not overlapping, snaked through the valleys.

"You go on down," Troy told Hitch. "Pull to one side and leave room for us. Get your top up and start spreading your net. We're going on around and back to the thoroughfare. It'll look as if one car came in and went out again, I hope." He grinned. "We'll come back in on the tracks and then brush the marks away where we went into the wadi."

"Right, Sarge," Hitch said.

Moffitt lifted an earphone from his head. "The Jerries don't have a music station," he complained.

"What you want, a radio compass like the flyboys use to zero in on BBC?" Troy asked.

"It might be handy," Moffitt conceded as Hitch started down the ten-foot slope.

Tully made the circuit. When Troy looked at the tread trail as he swept away the set of prints leading into the wadi, he was satisfied that once the nets were up, there would be nothing in this part of the desert to arouse curiosity.

Just the same, he made preparations for assault. Not at the hole. The position was not defensible. Nor did he consider using the patrol cars. They were neither fast nor maneuverable. And they mounted no weapons. He gathered a couple of dozen potato mashers—the German stick grenades—and leaving the wadi by the shallow end and not crossing the trail left by the tire tracks, buried twelve grenades on a dune two hundred yards to the west and another dozen on a dune two hundred yards to the east. The path they had left lay below the dunes. From the second dune he could see the netting in place. He could see it because he knew it was there. He did not think it would show from the sky and it would be almost impossible to detect from the ground until you stepped on it. He was satisfied and swept away his footprints with the bush hat he again was wearing. It was funny. He had felt compressed in the helmet, regimented. It had been like stepping back in character when he had slapped the bush hat on. He felt free and could think again. To hell with conformity.

Back in the wadi, comfortable, roomy enough, the way out clear, and plenty of headspace in the cars with the tops up, he took pity on Dietrich. He untied his hands and feet, let him work his shoulders and rub his wrists, chafe his ankles. He had a thought, removed Dietrich's boots and put them in the trunk. Dietrich glared at him.

"You say a word," Troy told him and grinned, "and I'll lock up your britches too."

He tied Dietrich's ankles in a locked loop and knot to the steering column and his hands in the same fashion to the steering wheel, far enough apart so the fingers of one hand could reach neither knot nor wrist of the other.

Then he broke out the Jerry rations. Tinned corned beef. Not too bad. Probably from the Argentine, same as the stuff the supermarkets sold at home. Home? He shrugged. The word had little meaning. Home was where the body lay. There were some dry biscuits. They had plenty of water. It was not a bad meal, considering the fix they were in. Troy contemplated cigarettes, decided they had better not risk it. There was no wind. Maybe the smoke would dissipate, but maybe with them puffing away the wadi would look like a hot spring.

They waited. It was 1400 hours. Four more to go at the least. Troy sent Hitch up under the net to watch the ground and Tully to the back seat of the car to keep an eye on Dietrich. Then he climbed next to Moffitt in the second car. Moffitt was fiddling with the Jerry radio set. Wilson already was asleep in the back seat.

The desert had been silent, prickly, unnerving, empty, quiet, but now the faint sound Troy had been awaiting came, the hum of airplane motors that buzzed louder until they throbbed in his ears.

"Here they are," Hitch called down and Troy could almost feel the sands chum as the Stukas passed. "They're practically hedgehopping," he added.

Troy lifted a phone from Moffitt's ear. "Any static yet about them not finding us?"

"Tight silence, old boy." Moffitt said and chuckled. "'They're not admitting a thing." He bent his head forward, clapped the earphone in place and held his hand over it while he adjusted the volume. He listened a moment and smiled. "It's coming now," he told Troy, still holding his hand to the earphone. "Jerry HQ wants our position. They've been trying to raise Dietrich, think his set is out."

"Maybe we should let him say a little something, just to reassure them," Troy suggested gravely.

Moffitt held up his hand. Troy waited. A minute. Two minutes. Perhaps five minutes. Moffitt listened intently. Finally he took off the earphones, draped them around his neck but did not turn off the set. His face was working into something but it had not decided yet whether it was going to be a smile or a scowl.

"Perplexing, old boy," he said. "The Stukas report they've spotted us."

"What!" Troy started to climb out of the car. "I'd call that annoying, not perplexing. Don't just sit there."

"Don't pop off half-cocked," Moffitt said, a smile tugging at his lips. "We aren't where they say we are."

"I don't get it, Doctor," Troy said sharply. "Will you put it in simple statements I can understand?"

"Yes." Moffitt's smile was broad. "Now bear with me. I'm going to explain something first that will explain something later. Right?"

"Carry on," Troy groaned.

"These little outfits the Jerries carry can receive on any frequency but transmit only on a fixed frequency to their HQ. That frequency is set by a crystal which they simply plug in. Enables them to change from day to day, saves bother of tuning. You follow?"

"I think so," Troy said impatiently, "but get on."

"Well, matters were boiling. The birdmen admitted they misplaced us. They had diligently scoured the area from Faisan to Sidi Abd. We had disappeared. To quote HQ, 'You can see the entire Gottverdamtig desert from the air. How could they disappear?' It was then they conveniently found us and went streaking off to the west. We were some ten miles from where we are."

"I'm sorry, Doctor," Troy said patiently. "It doesn't make sense."

"That's why I told you about the fixed transmitting frequency. I think the Stukas saw a Jerry patrol out there somewhere. The patrol would be unable to communicate with the aircraft because they operate on another frequency."

"Ah, I begin to see, Doctor," Troy said with a grin.

"Yes, interesting, isn't it?" Moffitt said and laughed. "HQ had previously informed the birdmen that additional patrols were being dispatched from Sidi Abd to look for us and that if ground parties discovered their precious Dietrich first, the birdmen would have their wings clipped."

"Could they do that?" Troy asked, amused. "I mean, what would the Air Force general do if the Infantry captain said, 'I want three of your hotshot pilots grounded'?"

"Can't say, old chap, except that this is Rommel's Africa and apparently our friend Hauptmann Dietrich is his fair-haired boy."

"My, oh my!" Troy drew back in mock horror. "What have we done?"

"Stirred up a hornet's nest, I wot," Moffitt said and laughed heartily.

"Patrol," Hitch called quietly. "I don't think they're coming in."

"From which direction?" Troy asked quickly.

"From the west," Hitch said and Moffitt nodded his head and smiled. "They slowed," Hitch said, "gave the track a quick once over and went on. Two cars."

"You used your noggin," Moffitt told Troy, "making that track go in and out."

"That's the kind of devious thinking I pick up from Tully," Troy said.

There was an abrupt whine that screeched so close to the ground it sounded as if the Stukas were going to crash right into the camouflage netting. Troy gritted his teeth and winced. They were gone and back again in a few minutes, engines roaring close.

"Oh-oh," Hitch exclaimed and started to laugh. "They're on top of those patrol cars. Right above them. Not ten feet over them. They're turning and coming back. The Jerries have stopped. They're piling out of the cars. They're shaking their fists at the Stukas."

Moffitt clapped on the headset. Troy clawed up the slope and lay beside Hitch. One of the Jerries was climbing back into a car. The Stukas were now circling the two patrol cars.

"The patrol is calling HQ," Moffitt reported. "If I'm adroit enough, I'll be able to catch both conversations. Here we go. The patrol wants to know what kind of bloody idiots are flying the Stukas. The patrol has identified itself to HQ. Now hold on. There. Here's the aircraft. The pilot wants to know what the bloody hell the patrol has done with Dietrich. Now HQ wants to know what the bloody hell kind of idiots are flying the Stukas. Let's see what HQ tells the patrol." He was silent a moment. "Well, that's that," he said, removing the earphones. "The patrol has been ordered to investigate anything that looks suspicious and the Stukas are to continue searching the area between Faisan and Sidi Abd."

The Stukas swept off to the west, climbing steeply. They leveled and peeled off, diving in great power plunges that blasted the patrol cars in washes of sand. It was a howling gesture of defiance.

"That's thumbing their noses at them, Sarge," Hitch said, working busily at his gum.

"Uh," Troy said, carefully watching the knot of eight men between the patrol cars. One of the soldiers was pointing to the single tracks that led into the dunes. Another was pointing to the circle it made with a broad fling of his arm and indicating where the same track came out.

"Man your battle stations," Troy called. "I think we're going to have visitors." He looked at Dietrich. The Jerry appeared both secure and comfortable at the steering wheel. And probably able to start the patrol car and take off. Troy shook Wilson. "Watch Dietrich. The rest of us are going out for a minute."

"Oh, yes, yes," Wilson said sleepily, picking up a Schmeisser and climbing into the back of the other machine.

"Wilson," Troy said sharply. "Are you fully awake?"

"Yes, Sergeant," Wilson said, smiling. "I am aware of the penalty for sleeping on my post."

Tully and Troy ran behind sandhills that hid them from the track and bellied up to the dune west of the wadi. Hitch and Moffitt took their stations on the eastern dune. Lying in the sand atop his dune, Troy could see the two patrol cars and the men still arguing. Finally all of the soldiers climbed into the cars. One car backed away, turned and followed the tracks into the dunes from the east. The other car remained parked.

"Tully," Troy said quickly. "We've got to get that second car. If we don't, they'll radio Jerry HQ when the first grenade pops and we'll have the Stukas back."

He snatched three grenades in each hand and slid down the sandpile with Tully tumbling after. They ran in and out of the valleys of sliding sand toward the second car. It was getting unnaturally dark, he thought, glancing at his watch as he raced. Not quite 1500 hours. The sky seemed very close to the ground with the gray turning to a purplish-black. He expected at any moment to feel the slap of rain on his face. There was a deluge coming, and then won't we have fun, he thought and grinned. It was crazy, the things that amused him when he was on a caper. Maybe they didn't really amuse him. Maybe thinking about other things kept him driving ahead. You didn't know fear as long as you didn't think about it. Simple, wasn't it? He heard the other car growling in gear somewhere back of him and pumped air in his bursting lungs for a final spurt, up to the top of the next sand hill. That should bring them within throwing distance of the car.

They crouched, panting and sweating, just below the cheek of the hill. He slid his chin through the sand and looked. The car was below, about a hundred feet away.

"How's your pitching arm?" he asked Tully, taking one grenade by the stick and arranging the other five in front of him.

"Tolerable, Sarge, just tolerable," Tully said, creeping to the top and looking down. He slid back. "Looks like a far piece."

"All right," Troy said, taking a second grenade in his left hand. "As soon as we hear the first blast, we charge over the top and let them have it when they're within our range."

"Me and my mouth," Troy said disgustedly and spit out his matchstick.

Two muffled roars boomed in the dunes. Troy dashed over the hill and heaved the first grenade as he was tearing down the slope. It fell short to the side of the car but burst in a blast of flying sand. Tully's first grenade exploded in front of the car, close enough to rock the vehicle.

Troy's second landed under it and Tully's in the back seat. The car disappeared in continuing explosions of boiling smoke and fire and sand.

Troy stood looking at the flaming wreck a moment. The car was demolished and there were no survivors.

"No need to hang around," he said, looking at the menacing sky. "In fact, I think we'd better move."

He trotted along the tread trail.

"We pulling out?" Tully asked, jogging at his side.

"Fast," Troy said. "You know what happened to Sadie Thompson when the rains came?"

"What?" Tully panted.

"She got wet," Troy said, grinning.

"The way I heard it, that ain't all she got, Sarge," Tully said, starting to smile.

"What else she got we don't want," Troy laughed. "Do we, Tully?"

"We sure don't, Sarge."

"Then we're getting out while we can."

Troy could see the pillar of smoke from the first car before he heard the throaty voice of the flames. The air was heavy with the odors of burning rubber, gasoline and oil, seared flesh. Every now and then an exploding shell would snap. He and Tully ran around to the back of the wadi. Moffitt and Hitch were just sliding down from the front when they pitched under the netting.

"Is there something going on that I should know about?" Wilson asked mildly. "Or is this a private war out here?"

"Just keeping in practice," Troy said, grappling with one of the camouflage nets. "We're getting out of here. Tully, give me a hand."

"But the Stukas and the patrols," Wilson protested quietly, but he was already climbing into the other machine.

"Moffitt will explain on the way," Troy said, working now at Dietrich's bonds. To Dietrich, he said, "Sorry I can't give you your boots. We may be too busy to watch you and they're too easy to slip out of."

Dietrich stood, rigid and silent, as Troy rebound his feet and ankles. When the Jerry was seated in the car, Troy tied a line from his wrists to the rope around his ankles.

"You'll be comfortable as long as you're sitting," Troy said. "You'll fall flat on your face if you try to go anywhere fast."

"Barbarians," Dietrich hissed.

"Not entirely," Troy said and smiled. "I've left your hands in front of you. You can smoke if you like." He lighted a cigarette and placed it between Dietrich's lips, then lighted another for himself. "Tully, Hitch, we'll use the searchlights. There aren't going to be any planes in this. I don't think any more patrols are out this far. Hitch, stick close to Tully. Tully, stop the minute you don't see Hitch's light. Leave the tops up. It's going to be hell, driving with no glass to protect you when the rain starts, so let's make tracks."

They had almost reached the trace used by Dietrich's retreating column when the fat black clouds burst and the rain came, without wind but terrible in its pounding fury, slamming straight down with a crushing force that seemed to push the blind and crawling vehicles into the quick-born morass of sand and water.

"I don't know, Sarge," Tully yelled, shielding his goggles with one hand, then slipping them off, around his neck. The car was slogging in low gear and its canvas roof sagged low with a capacity burden of water. Water ran on the floor and even Troy, sitting in the middle of the back seat, was soaked to the skin. "I'm scared to go on. I can't see."

Troy turned around. The rain absorbed all the illumination but he still could see Hitch's light.

"Keep going," Troy said flatly. "You're giving Hitch something to follow."

"Now ain't that a crock," Tully shouted. "I may be going in circles for all I know."

"Hand back the compass and penlight," Troy said quietly. "I'll keep you headed west."

With the compass cupped in his palm, Troy huddled over it for protection and jabbed the light on it. What he saw startled him.

"North is almost behind us," he called. "Right, hard right."

Tully wrestled with the wheel. It was difficult to pull around, Troy knew. The water seemed to be deeper. This was no ordinary rain. There were not any raindrops, not even sheets of rain, but solid water running as from an opened giant tap. There is nothing like a desert downpour unless it's a monsoon. Tully finally got them headed west and Troy looked around. Hitch's light, just an opaque spot in the dark, was still there.

"Sarge," Tully pleaded. "There ain't no use. Just this minute I got out of some real deep stuff. I think now I'm running on a dune. Anyway, the water's not so deep. If I drive us off into a wadi like we was hiding in, we ain't just stuck. We're drowned."

"Dietrich," Troy said, leaning forward to the German officer. "You've been here a long time and through these rains before. If it isn't a military secret, how long do they last?"

"Sometimes an hour, sometimes a day, sometimes a week," Dietrich said and laughed shortly, "I am not being evasive, Sergeant. They are unpredictable. Dangerous and damaging."

"This may be foolish," Troy said, "but I'm going to ask you a straight question and I hope you will give me a straight answer. What would you do now?"

"I will give you a straight answer, Sergeant," Dietrich said with dignity. "You already have it. Pettigrew is right. It is folly to go on."

"All right. Thank you, Captain," Troy said wearily and leaned back against the cold, wet seat. "We'll stop, Tully. Signal Hitch."

Had Dietrich given him an honest answer, he wondered, or did the Jerry hope the delay would enable German patrols to overtake them? What would I have done under the same circumstances? he asked himself. Told the truth or answered to my personal advantage? He didn't know.

15

Like the desert rats they were, they huddled within their wet skins, crouching in their meager shelters, silent and waiting. There was no lessening in the intensity of the storm. It continued in its brutal impact until the clouds were empty. When it stopped, it was abrupt, as if the rainmaker suddenly had turned off the tap. Troy looked at his watch. It was 1907 hours.

"Turn on the searchlight," he told Tully, standing to heave against the canvas top that miraculously had not given way. A heavy plop of water dumped.

"Sarge," Tully wailed. "That came in my lap."

"Open the door and wring yourself out," Troy said and grinned.

The searchlight beamed straight ahead. Behind, Hitch's light came on, swept around them. They were sitting in the middle of a lake, as wide as the lights would reach. Nothing anywhere except black water.

"Thirsty?" Troy asked and stepped out. The water reached his knees. "See if the motor catches."

"We ain't going on in this," Tully said.

"I want to know if we can," Troy said, sliding his foot to the side.

The motor turned and spluttered. It sounded encouraging. Tully ground away again and the engine fired, coughed. Once more, Troy thought, and he was right. It caught, but died.

"The exhaust is under water," Tully said.

"Damn Jerries," Troy muttered. "Why'n't they use snorkles?"

"Do we, on the jeeps?" Tully demanded.

"Sure as hell, we're a-gonna, on our new issue," Troy said, taking another careful step.

"Hey, Sarge," Tully called.

"Yeah?" Troy answered, wading back toward the second car.

"Will they fix them like we want, the new jeeps?"

"That I reckon," Troy said, smiling. He had an idea Wilson would approve anything they requisitioned. "What you got in mind?"

"A heater," Tully said.

Troy stopped. "What's Washington going to say to that one? A heater in a desert jeep!"

"To keep my feet dry," Tully explained.

"You got yourself a heater, long and lanky," Troy called, laughing. He was almost back to the second car. "Hey, how's our prisoner doing?"

"Lighting a cigarette," Tully answered.

"Are you crazy? How'd he keep them dry?"

"I put his package inside my helmet, Sarge," Tully said. "With matches."

"Save one for me," Troy called and slipped around the hood of Hitch's car. The chill water did not seem so deep here. In fact it was receding quickly. The porous desert sand would hold a lot of moisture, he thought, but even after it drained, would they have traction?

By the time he reached Moffitt's side of the car, the water was sloshing only to his ankles. Hitch was probing with his searchlight. They still were sitting on a pond.

"Damn, it's Sam," Moffitt said and chuckled. "Fancy meeting up with you here."

In the reflected light from Hitch's spot, he could see Moffitt in his sodden beret, Hitch with his steel-rimmed glasses glinting, and Wilson sitting straight and proper in the back seat. The water was draining so rapidly, Troy could feel it going down about his feet.

"Have you been amusing yourself with the receptor?" he asked Moffitt.

"Knock it off, you bloke," Moffitt said and laughed. "You're ahead of me in your etymology. Fact is, yes. Nothing during the downpour but I just picked up a signal. The Jerries have a patrol in the vicinity."

"Douse the lights," Troy yelled. The spots went off immediately. He wondered whether Dietrich had anticipated the patrol.

"Shall I pinch the Jerry's butt?" Tully called.

"Only if you're feeling amorous," Troy called back. "Check his bonds and bring dry smokes back to us. Let's see what we can noodle up."

All right, so the situation was impossible. The muck was all about them and they could not use their lights. Jerry was somewhere in the neighborhood, but they were within thirty miles of home.

"Doctor," Troy said with a malicious smile that did not reveal itself in the dark, "We'll take the penlights and plumb on ahead."

"No objections, old boy," Moffitt said, "but shouldn't someone monitor the airwaves?"

"I'll work the point alone," Troy said.

"No," Wilson spoke up unexpectedly. He put his hand on the side of the car and splashed into the shallowing water beside Troy. "I'll prod along with you."

"What about Dietrich?" Troy asked.

"If the CO will let me have the Luger," Tully said, "I'll keep him covered like a shack with tarpaper."

The motors protested but they started. Troy slogged ahead with Wilson, penlights blinking intermittently in their fists. Troy's khakis clung clammily to his frame. He couldn't be wetter, he thought, and his foot skidded off into nothing. He floundered, threshed and flailed the water, finally got his toes into sand and scrambled toward Wilson's hand. He had not dropped his penlight.

"A wadi," Troy gasped. "Filled with water."

"You used your head, stopping the cars during the downpour," Wilson said. "We could have lost one in a ditch like that."

"I guess that's right," Troy agreed.

Troy on one side, Wilson on the other, neither seeing where they were going, guided only by an occasional glance at the compasses they both carried, they shoved on through the dank night. Except in valleys, they were out of water, but they sloshed in mire. The two cars would wait behind them, fifty feet or so, then they would rumble toward the two light dots in low gear, dragging slow but steady. An hour passed. They had crawled at least half a mile. Troy and Wilson scrambled up a long incline, stood apart with their penlights showing, and the big-lugged tires of the cars clutched at the porridge. The cars squirmed up and halted, hot and panting.

"This doesn't make sense," Troy told Wilson. "We've put some distance between us and the patrol we bushwhacked. We ought to be safe here until morning. I vote we call a halt."

"And I second your proposal," Wilson said. "We can cover as much distance in half an hour by daylight as we could this way in the next six hours."

Troy walked over to the second car and flashed his short beamed finger of light on Moffitt.

"We'll wait until daybreak," he said. "Anything more from Dietrich's friends?"

"Just the one message," Moffitt said. "A patrol reporting in. They said they were about twenty miles west of Faisan and mucked in."

"So we have neighbors," Troy said. "We'll post a guard and leave as soon as it's light. You take the first shift, I'll stand the dogwatch."

Embers of red streaked a charcoal sky. The sun burst over the horizon, sopping moisture from the slushy sands. Troy shivered and yawned, looked over his shoulder to check Dietrich, and tumbled to the ground. Below, about half a mile away on the floor of the desert, were two German patrol cars. No one moved about them and apparently no sentry had been posted.

Troy shook first Tully and then Hitch.

"Quick," he said, "get behind these dunes and move. Jerry's downstairs."

With Dietrich, Moffitt and Wilson still sleeping, the cars crept off the ridge, churning through the slurry. The slope was gradual but as they neared the valley, the grout turned soupy and the tires of Tully's car whirred and lost their grip. The sand squished and the car spun half about. Behind, Hitch could not brake, skidding into the side of Tully's car, ramming and toppling it. As the clumsy tub yawed, Tully gripped the steering wheel and clung to Dietrich with one arm. Troy was clambering over the side as it settled. The crash jarred Wilson and Moffitt to wakefulness and they scooted over, helping Tully yank Dietrich up and out. The fettered German officer fumed in silence as they carted him like a trussed sheep to the second car and heaved him in the back. Troy slipped through the ankle-deep sludge, retrieved his fifty caliber heavy machine gun, an MG42 light machine gun, one can of water and Dietrich's boots from the trunk. He climbed into the back of Hitch's car with Tully and Wilson. Under their legs on the floor, Dietrich looked at Troy with blazing eyes.

"You're a sad sack, Mac," Troy said and grinned. They were the first words that had been spoken since the smash.

Hitch shoved the car in second gear and they skidded through the greasy sand. The wheels lost their traction and spun, clutched at the firmer subsoil and the car lurched forward. Hitch half turned his head.

"Sarge," he said, "we better climb back on that ridge or we'll get stuck."

"Climb," Troy said and picked up one of the MG42s with a full drum of ammunition.

Hitch angled up gradually, sliding through the mire. The wheels whirled and the car swung crazily with its rear wagging. Halfway up, the tires found some purchase and the vehicle unexpectedly leaped forward, shooting to the crest and almost over. Hitch grappled with the wheel, spinning them about and finally bringing the car to a stop headed east. They were scarcely a hundred yards from where they had started. The sun was burning the soot from the sky and glaring on the windscreens of the German patrol cars. The soldiers had awakened and were slouched against the cars. As Troy focused his glasses on them, two of the Jerries spotted the car, turning to the others and gesturing. They scrambled in the cars. Troy watched the wheels go round and the cars inch forward in slow-motion. They barely seemed to move.

"Let's get the top down," he said casually. "In case they ever catch us."

With the canvas folded over the trunk, Hitch brought the car about and the tires bit into the sand along the ridge line. Although not as gooey as in the valley, the sand was slippery and Hitch kept the car in second gear and the speed down. Even so, they quickly outdistanced their pursuers, and watching them through the glasses, Troy saw the two patrol cars stop.

"Get on the radio, Doctor," he said to Moffitt. "I think they're going to call in aerial reinforcements."

"Any ideas, Sergeant," Wilson asked, shaking his head. "We're still a ways from home."

"Yes," Troy said with a slow smile. "We'll call Jerry HQ and ask them to relay a message to the British: 'Send down some Spitfires.' "

"Not a bad idea," Moffitt said, switching on the radio transmitter. "I can jam their transmission."

He picked up the mike, turned over to the radio, listened to a phrase that was unintelligible to Troy, and went back to the transmitter. "They're reporting their position," he said. "Let's see what they make of this." He spoke into the microphone. "Du bist wie eine Blume/ So holt, so schoen, so reine/ Ich schau dich an und Welmut/ Schleich mir im Hertz hinein."

"Wunderbar," Wilson exclaimed.

"What's he saying, Sarge?" Tully asked.

"I think it's a recipe for weinerschnitzel," Troy said.

"He's quoting Heine," Wilson said, laughing heartily and looking down at Dietrich. The German officer's lips had been pressed tight with anger but gradually a smile ragged them apart.

"I wonder," Dietrich said, "which of my officers is a flower."

"Well, fun's fun," Troy said, quickly serious. "Moffitt may delay them but sooner or later we're going to have the Stukas. We'd better look for cover."

"Not again," Tully wailed.

"We should be within twenty-five miles of Bir-el-Alam," Wilson said and frowned. "An hour's drive at the most. Couldn't we make a run for it?"

"We run for cover," Troy said firmly.

The sun was blazing on their backs and on the dune rim the sands were drying. Hitch moved into high gear and stepped the speed up to twenty miles an hour. Troy broke out rations, more corned beef and dry biscuits, and they shared Dietrich's cigarettes. The German officer was sitting now, leaning against the side of the car. He was in better spirits than he had been.

"I will make a wager with you," he said to Wilson with a sardonic smile. "You do not reach Bir-el-Alam with me.

"You know something we don't?" Troy asked quickly.

"How would you collect if you won?" Wilson asked, smiling.

"One hundred marks," Dietrich said. "You do not take me into Bir-el-Alam. You will send it to me care of HQ, Afrika Korps."

"It's a bet," Wilson said, laughing. "You've seen my men in operation. I should give you odds."

"Your men are superb, Colonel Wilson," Dietrich said, eyes flashing at Troy. "But I think they do not appreciate the thoroughness of the German preparations perhaps."

Damn the Jerry, Troy thought, leaning over the side of tie car and scanning the bright burning desert behind and the clearing sky above. The patrol cars had disappeared and there was no sign of planes. What was Dietrich up to now? Was there something to his boast or was he merely trying to throw them off base?

"I think we ought to change our course, Sarge," Hitch spoke up suddenly.

"Don't let this Jerry rattle you," Troy growled.

"Get your glasses and look ahead," Hitch said, pointing off to his right.

Troy focused on four moving dots in the northwest. They appeared to be patrol cars. Jerry patrols. Troy swore and glanced at Dietrich. The German officer was smiling.

"Get down behind the dunes," Troy said to Hitch, "Veer south."

Hitch swerved the car from the ridge and plunged down a slimy embankment, skittering toward a wadi like a swinging pendulum. The sandhill spun by as the car cavorted, uncontrollable and crazy, gliding, whirling, all topsy-turvy.

"Do something," Troy clamored.

Hitch struggled, spun the steering wheel, shoved the gear in second, pumped the brake. Nothing worked in the sliding sand. The car gave a final lurch and snugged its nose deep in a wadi. Troy leaped over the side, bawling, "Tully, Wilson, Moffitt! We've got to get her out of here."

Feet against the slanted hood, backs braced, they labored while Hitch tried to shake the car loose, only dug in deeper. Dietrich humped himself onto the back seat, sat and smiled. Damned Jerry! Troy raged, he put us in this, made us panic, this never would have happened except for him. The wheels dug deeper. Troy lunged for the car. Maybe the Rat Patrol was finished but Dietrich wouldn't live to gloat. Wilson caught Troy by the shoulder, twisted him about.

"Watch it, Sergeant," he said coolly. "Keep your head. You'll get us out of this."

Troy shook himself and bared his teeth. "Listen," he said hoarsely.

From not far off came the angry droning of airplane engines.

16

Troy was enraged. When you pull off a caper against furious odds and end up stuck in the mud only a few miles from home, it's enough to shake you to your boots. He spun away from Wilson, ran across the wadi and scratched his way to the top of the sandbank where the car had started slewing. Plopping in the goo, he propped himself on his elbows and searched the wet sands for the Jerry patrol cars. They still were distant. He did not know whether or not the patrol had observed them. He turned his glasses to the eastern sky. The Stukas were up there somewhere. He could hear the buzzing of the aircraft, louder now, but he could not find the planes. He was certain the planes would come swooping down upon them. The German patrol to the east must have reported their position.

He slipped and stumbled back to the car. Hitch was still trying to get it loose and the wheels were spinning in the mire. The car had to be saved. It afforded the only chance they had to reach Bir-el-Alam. In an hour or two when the sun baked the sand dry, they would be able to run it out. If the Jerries could be decoyed away, they still might make it.

"Knock it off, Hitch," he shouted. "You're only digging in deeper."

Troy jerked open the back door, ignoring Dietrich who still lay trussed up on the floor, and started pulling out equipment. He called to Moffitt, Hitch and Tully, handed them the MG42s, drums of ammunition, a can of water.

"Hitch, Tully, get the net over the car," he panted, scrambling out and jerking open the storage compartment at the rear. He pulled out a box of grenades. "Wilson, guard Dietrich here under cover. We'll set up an ambush for the four Jerries as far away as we can get. If the Stukas do spot you, let them get a glimpse of Dietrich. That ought to keep them from raking the ground with fire."

From the top of the dune, Troy looked back at the camouflaged car. The net had been soaked in the downpour and blended reasonably well with the sodden sand. The tracks of the car showed on the mound to the point they had started skidding, but from the marks on the side hill, it was difficult to tell what had happened. The sand was churned and nothing indicated direction. The deep marks in the wadi were hidden.

With Troy leading, the four members of the Rat Patrol jogged just below the crest of the tumbling dunes. Troy carted the heavy load of stick grenades, holding it awkwardly before him, knees banging against the wooden box. Moffitt, Hitch and Tully were not quite so heavily burdened. Their light machine guns weighed only twenty-five pounds with bipods but the steel drums of ammunition almost doubled that. Tully fetched along the can of water. Hitch had gathered some canned meat and biscuits. They were prepared for a siege, Troy thought and grinned. The only weapon he carried was a captured Luger. He would have liked the range and impact of the fifty caliber Browning heavy machine gun but handling it without a mount would have been like wrestling a boa constrictor with bare hands.

They trotted a good half mile before Troy called a halt to catch his breath and snaked up through the slime to check on the patrol cars. It was odd; the Stukas were somewhere overhead but seemed to be overshooting. He could hear the mutterings of their motors but now they sounded from the west. He found the four patrol cars, closer now, perhaps five miles off. They were coming on steadily but at a slow pace in the slippery sand. They appeared to be taking the same route Dietrich's armor had used on the withdrawal from Bir-el-Alam.

Troy lay in the sludgy sand, examining the terrain for a place to intercept the four patrol cars. The desert bed where the cars now were was flat, but another half mile and they would enter the lumpy dunes. The route in the rolling hills lay through a winding valley that was some fifty yards broad and looked like the course of some ancient river. Water from the rain had run through it and it looked slimy. Troy wondered whether the patrol would risk it over the ridges or take the established road through the valley. He gambled on the predictable discipline of the Teutonic soldier and decided they would take the proved way. Pulling Moffitt, Hitch and Tully from the ridge behind which they had hidden, Troy led the Rat Patrol to twin hills that humped on either side of the valley road.

Moffitt and Hitch, with two light machine guns and a couple dozen stick grenades, dug in on the south hill. Troy and Tully detoured through a depression and worked their way back to the opposite hill with one machine gun and the crate with the rest of the grenades. They had left the food and water with Moffitt and Hitch.

Troy kept looking at the sky. He was certain that the Stukas had passed high overhead and could not understand it. Were they abandoning the search for Dietrich? Had they been assigned another mission, perhaps to bomb Bir-el-Alam? Once more he checked the four patrol cars through his binoculars. They were pulling away from the valley route and moving toward the ridges. He swore. They would be behind Tully and him and out of range for Moffitt and Hitch. The cars started up the slope and their wheels spun. The lead car in the procession dug in deep and the column halted. The last two cars backed away. The second car fixed a line and towed the lead car slowly back. They reversed down the hill, swung and came into the valley that led between the Rat Patrol's positions.

The situation puzzled Troy. It did not look as if the Jerry patrol were looking for Dietrich or them. If he had had any way to signal Moffitt and Hitch, he would have called off the ambush. With the Stukas overflying and this patrol apparently heading back to Sidi Abd, he was taking a needless risk by engaging sixteen men with only four.

But they were in for it and they had better make it good, he thought, arranging his throwing sticks in front of him. Tully got his MG42 zeroed in. From the west end of the valley came the sounds of oncoming cars, motors loose and tappets rattling. Noisy machines the Jerries built, Troy thought, half smiling and then alerting as a patter of small sounds reached him from far away. It was difficult to tell what they were but they were familiar—distant machine gun chatter. He wondered what target the Stukas had found. Another sound intruded and he turned his glasses to the east. The two patrol cars they had outdistanced earlier were plowing through the valley toward the four approaching from the west.

It would be a good job if it came off, he thought, pulling off the glasses so Tully could have a look. Tully studied first the one patrol and then the other, chewing his matchstick contemplatively.

"They ought to meet about right here, Sarge," he said. "Think they hear each other coming?"

"It doesn't matter," Troy said. "When they get in view of one another, they'll stop."

"It's going to be like shooting fish in a barrel," Tully said, laughing.

From the west, Troy thought he heard the sound of the Stukas returning. The positions Moffitt and Hitch, Tully and he occupied were indefensible if the aircraft spotted them.

"Yeah," Troy said, smiling thinly, "providing we're not sitting ducks."

The two cars from the east and four from the west came around the lips of the hills and predictably stopped.

The sound of the Stukas was louder now, and glancing hastily to the west, Troy saw them, flying lower.

"Let me get a couple grenades in first," he said, "then open fire."

He flung one grenade and a second. As the second arched toward its target, a burst of flame puffed where a stick from the opposite hill had struck home. Three other explosions in rapid succession blasted in the valley. Machine guns chattered from both hills and Troy pitched grenade after grenade. Showers of sand and metal flared. Three of the cars were flaming. The Jerries leaped from the other vehicles, racing from them but finding no cover. They scattered, returning light and indecisive fire from Schmeisser machine pistols and Mausers. The shots clattered away ineffectively. Grenades kept slamming the Jerries to the ground and unnerved them. Two more of the cars were hit and exploded in great blooms of fire. The machine guns were picking off their targets methodically and Jerry dead littered the desert floor. Troy pitched a grenade into the remaining car. It blew to pieces with a shattering roar. Troy swiped his hand across his face, looking skyward. The Stukas had dropped down and were coming in fast with shrieking motors.

"Let's get off this hill," Troy yelled, grabbing two grenades and throwing himself on the downslope, rolling toward the valley. He did not think the aircraft would open fire on their own men.

Tully plunged after Troy, dragging along the light machine gun. Halfway down they found a spoonlike hollow and crawled to it, lay there panting. The Stukas howled over the battlefield at about a thousand feet and skimmed on without opening fire or dropping bombs.

"The pilots can't tell what's going on yet," Troy said, leaping up. "Let's finish them off."

He heaved a grenade and ran in a crouch toward the bed of the valley. Moffitt and Hitch were scrambling down the opposite slope. The only enemy fire was sporadic, coming from somewhere behind the last burning car.

"Lie low," Troy shouted as the Stukas again screamed overhead.

The planes shot over the flaming wreckage and raging towers of black smoke, veering and streaking up. They had come in lower on this pass but still they withheld their fire.

Moffitt and Hitch were working toward the last car. They fell to the ground as another burst of shots spattered from the position. While Moffitt lay down a barrage of covering fire, Hitch rolled ofl to the side and squeezed two bursts. Jerry firing ceased.

"Down, don't move," Troy shouted as the three Stukas came in very low.

The four men of the Rat Patrol sprawled motionless in the sand with the dead. The planes flashed by, guns still silent, circling back for another look. They made still another, wider circle and a final sweep above the valley. Then they shot up steeply and flew east in a V.

"Any survivors?" Troy asked, getting to his haunches.

"I think that does it, Sam," Moffitt said, mopping his face. "We should have accounted for most of the Jerries in this part of the desert by now."

"He keeps turning up unexpectedly," Hitch said, snapping his gum.

"I worry about the Stukas," Troy said. "I wonder what they were doing west of here and when they'll be back. They'll report what they saw and someone's going to be boiling mad." A smile darted across his face. "Let's get up to the water can and take a break. Make sure those aircraft don't get cute and sneak back on us."

The sun blazed from a cleared sky and heat rose in moist layers. Moffitt handed the five-gallon Jerry can to Troy. Troy unscrewed the cap and lifted the tin to his lips. He hesitated suspiciously and sniffed, drawing back his lips.

"That's not water," he said disgustedly, handing the can to Moffitt. "Does Jerry always carry his extra gasoline in water cans?"

"It's water in the other can," Tully drawled. "We been drinking it."

"The gasoline may come in handy, old chap," Moffitt said, laughing. "I noticed the gauge. The tank is nearly dry."

"We can wait," Troy said, throwing himself to the ground, first scanning the sky for the Stukas then turning to the six burning cars and twenty-four bodies below. He wished they could have spared one of the vehicles. He thought they could work the camouflaged car back in the wadi free from the mud but it might take time. Jerry was certain to send back the Stukas, Troy thought. The enemy would be smarting from the trail of destruction the Rat Patrol had left from Sidi Abd almost to Bir-el-Alam. He grinned broadly. Dietrich would long regret taking Wilson prisoner.

He searched the sky once more and looked over the dunes about them. They seemed to be alone. He stood wearily, pulling off his bush hat and wiping the perspiration from his forehead. Hoisting the can of gasoline, he started back toward the wadi. Moffitt trudged beside him, breathing hard. Hitch and Tully slouched behind, Hitch carting the tinned meat and Tully the biscuits, dragging their feet and trailing their guns in the oppressive heat. Their khaki shirts were muddy and wet from sand and sweat. Troy hoped they could get back to Bir-el-Alam without further interruption. Back to the sack. But he would hate to bet on it.

He straightened, lifting his eyes from his feet. To the south and east, he saw a Jerry patrol car with the cross on its side climbing a dune. The canvas top was up and he could not see how many soldiers were in the car.

"Down," he called quickly, diving into the sand. The other three dug furrows beside him and he watched the car roll over the dune and disappear. "I don't think they saw us," he said, "but we'd better lie low. Jerry must be combing this area with everything he's got."

He waited for a second car to appear and when it did not, turned on his side to Moffitt.

"What do you make of it, Doctor?" he asked, puzzled.

"It does seem a bit odd," Moffitt said, wrinkling his forehead. "Usually there are a pair of them at least."

"They must have heard the firing," Troy said. "Funny they didn't come over to lend a hand or investigate at least."

"And did the aircraft see them or know about them?" Moffitt wanted to know.

The lone car appeared again, a good mile off now and traveling east on the ridges. It continued its course steadily and after a few moments Troy moved on his belly below the top of the dune. The unexpected appearance of this car disturbed him. He wished he could have seem how many Jerries were in it. He wondered how close the car had been to the camouflaged vehicle in the wadi and whether Wilson had had trouble preventing Dietrich from crying out. He stood, stepping off at a fast clip.

"Hey, Sarge, have a heart," Tully groaned.

Troy grunted and began to trot, can of gasoline slapping against his leg. His face was running with sweat and his wounded leg throbbed a little. He could see tracks extending back now from the spot he had first sighted the car. They seemed a little beyond the wadi but too close for comfort. He broke into a run, transferring the can to his left hand and loosening the flap of his holster. The others brought their light machine guns at the ready, up across their chests.

They dug up a final dune and Troy stopped dead, panting and swearing. The patrol car and Dietrich were gone and Wilson was sitting on the ground, tied hand and foot, the same way they had left Dietrich.

Dietrich had edged himself from the floor onto the back seat of the car and watched angrily through the netting as Sergeant Troy led his men off to ambush the German patrol. It was a large patrol of four cars, Dietrich knew, and had been roaming the western part of the German held territory, alert for renewed Allied activity. He had been counting on this patrol to block the way to Bir-el-Alam and release him. Now, unless aircraft found him and his captors and somehow disabled the vehicle, it looked as if any opportunity to escape was gone. He strained at the ropes that secured his wrists but the knots were firm.

Wilson and he were protected from the sun by the high canvas top but was airless under the confining netting. The American colonel was in the front seat, half turned, watching Dietrich from droopily lidded eyes. He held a Luger casually in one hand. Dietrich worked his wrists forth and back but the ropes only seemed to bite in harder.

It was a disaster, Dietrich fumed in silence. Wholesale destruction had been dealt the Afrika Korps and a smashing blow delivered to his campaign plans. Worst of all, he was a prisoner. He felt his rage burn fiercely. He was grimly determined that he would have his revenge on the Rat Patrol. But how, Gott in himmel, how? Tied with ropes that held his hands caught toward his ankles, he could not stand nor sit upright. He could not even wipe off the perspiration that was running into his eyes and beading his nose.

Wilson's head nodded and dropped to his chest. He jerked awake immediately but his eyes were heavy. Dietrich looked furtively about the car for some forgotten tool or weapon as Wilson's eyes closed again. There was nothing. Everything had been shut up in the trunk or carried off to the ambush. If I could only free my hands, Dietrich thought wildly, twisting and tugging at the line. It was no use. He would be carried into Bir-el-Alam a helpless captive and sent to some prisoner of war camp to sit out the battles with the Italians. The prospect was enough to make a strong man weep.

He heard planes passing so far overhead their motors made only faintly audible drummings. He thought they must be the Luftwaffe's Stukas but he did not believe that they were searching for him. In some respects, the Luftwaffe operated entirely too independently although they were under orders to cooperate. Or had his own headquarters already called off the hunt? It could not be possible. He should have his own light aircraft for liaison and observation as Rommel did.

Dietrich studied Wilson, head bobbing, eyes fatigued and strained. With the American drowsy and inattentive, he might be less cautious than normal. Dietrich tried desperately to think of some innocuous reason for asking Wilson to loosen his wrists. Not untie them, that would be too farfetched, but unloosen them from the cord that bound them to his feet. Dietrich's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Wilson was a career officer and observed military amenities. His attitude would not be the same as Sergeant Troy's, Dietrich thought. Wilson would observe a degree of respect for another officer, whatever country's uniform he wore.

"Colonel Wilson," Dietrich said quietly. "Will you please loosen my hands for a few minutes?"

Colonel Wilson's eyes popped wide and he smiled. "Certainly not, Captain," he said, laughing. "I suspect you also would like me to remove the ropes from your legs so you can take a walk."

"It will not be necessary to untie my legs or even untie my wrists, only loosen the single strand so I may stand upright," Dietrich said with dignity. "You see, I must relieve myself."

Wilson hesitated and frowned. "All right," he said slowly and reluctantly. "You are not to go from under the net. You will have to open the door and not leave the back seat. You understand?"

"Yes, Colonel," Dietrich said, heart quickening and muscles tensing. He had not thought it would be so easy. "You are a considerate person."

"I shall have to shoot you if you make a suspicious move," Wilson said, laying the pistol beside him on the seat. He leaned over the back. "Move up close so I can get at the knots."

His fingers plucked and strained at the rope that joined Dietrich's hands to his feet. As Wilson jerked the line free, Dietrich crashed his bound but doubled fists against Wilson's throat, then slamming them at the base of his skull as he doubled, coughing and choking. Wilson slumped back in the front seat, half sprawling on the floor. Dietrich toppled over the seat, grasping Wilson's pistol and pushing it in his waistband. He shoved Wilson's limp body off the seat, searched along the base of the windscreen frame until he found a jagged piece of glass. He began to saw his wrists across the glass. The nylon rope was tough and Dietrich sweated, working furiously. His arm slipped and the glass cut a jagged wound in his arm. Blood dripped onto the dashboard and splashed on his breeches. He ground the rope harder into the glass, paused to examine it, found it fraying.

Somewhere in the distance, a series of explosions rattled back to the wadi and there was small arms fire, the zipped bursts from light machine guns. He heard the planes again, flying lower now. The rope parted and he ripped it from his wrists, rubbing and chafing them. He bound a handkerchief about the bleeding cut, bent over and worked at the ropes about his ankles until his feet were free. The planes seemed to be near at hand and circling. Working with frantic haste, he tied the lines tightly about the unconscious Wilson's hands and feet and pulled the camouflage netting from the top, searching the sky for the Stukas. He found them, flying in a V formation toward the east and cursed them. When he reached the back of the car, he retrieved his boots from the trunk.

He quickly inspected the wet sand in the wadi and the holes the spinning wheels had dug. Doubling the camouflage net, he jammed it under the tires, spreading it back across the sand to form a firm, rough surface. Then he started the car, put it in reverse gear and gently eased out the clutch, feeding the gas with a light foot. The tires gripped the netting and the car began to move back. Easily, easily, Dietrich thought, a few inches, a foot. Gradually the car pulled its nose from the bank and climbed back on the netting.

Dietrich slammed back the door, leaving the motor running but the car in neutral gear. He ran across the wadi, testing the ground, looking for the best way out. He was fearful of a steep slope at the east, trotted around to the other side where the depression shallowed and the sand seemed more solid. Back in the car, he considered Wilson for a moment. His eyes glinted as he thought of returning to Sidi Abd with the prisoner but he shook his head regretfully, opening the door and pushing the American colonel out onto the ground. It was a considerable distance to Sidi Abd and Dietrich did not wish to be hampered in any way. Also, he thought and made a wry face, he did not wish to provide the Rat Patrol with reason to return until he was prepared for them.

He reversed cautiously, creeping back on the netting until he had sufficient room to maneuver a tight turn. In low gear, he pulled out of the wadi, driving slowly, restraining his desire for speed. Coming around the wadi, he found a slope extending into the dunes toward the south and east. As the car climbed a mound, Dietrich looked back. He glimpsed four figures who flung themselves to the ground. He smiled thinly. The Rat Patrol apparently had been successful in their ambush but they still had a long trek to Bir-el-Alam and there should be another patrol somewhere close at hand. His eyes became steely slits and over another dune and concealed in a hollow, he stopped and switched on the radio transmitter, calling his headquarters at Sidi Abd.

Ja, mein herr Haupmann, there were two patrols in that sector of the desert but nein, it had been impossible to contact either of them for more than half an hour. They would keep on trying. Und ja, the Luftwaffe would be notified that the enemy was fleeing on foot and requested to pursue the search for them. The captain was returning? Gute. Gute.

It was not so good, Dietrich thought bleakly, switching off the set. If HQ had been unable to raise either of the patrols, it could mean the Rat Patrol had accounted for them both. And what had the divebombers been doing off to the west when they should have been searching for him? It could mean the Allied forces were advancing and with his crippled armor, the situation could become difficult if not downright nasty. It was far past time for him to get back to his command.

He put the car in gear and started in a northerly direction, seeking the known route to Sidi Abd. The desert seemed reasonably well drained and dry except in the deeper depressions and he picked up speed. Blasts of hot air gushed through the glassless windscreen burning his face and searing his throat. There should be water in the storage compartment at the rear, he thought, slowing on the top of a mound that overlooked the flat valley route. Before he came to a stop, the motor sputtered and his eyes fell quickly to the gas gauge. It registered empty. He braked and shut off the motor hastily. Water and gasoline in the compartment, he was certain. He walked back and opened the lid, craning his neck into the bin that was crammed with weapons. One can only. He lugged it out, frowning, unscrewed the cap and sniffed. He raised it to his lips and tasted. The can contained water. He rummaged through the bin again, found two canteens but no container of gasoline. He stepped back, staring helplessly at the sand and sky. He was caught, trapped only a few miles from the persistent Rat Patrol and probably in the path of an Allied advance, without gasoline.

Think, Hans, think, he told himself, returning to the shade inside the car with the can of water. If there had been extra gasoline, he could guess what had happened. The Rat Patrol had mistakenly taken it instead of the water can. It was possible, of course, that both cans had contained water and some dumkopf of a corporal from western Silesia had not provided for emergencies. He sipped water from the can sparingly. Well, what had happened was unimportant. What was to be done was what counted and there was one quick solution that remained. Dietrich switched on the radio transmitter. When he had made contact with his HQ, he told them to order one of the Stukas to land in the flat valley route and pick him up.

"I am aware it is a single-place aircraft," he said bitingly when his lieutenant reminded him. "Also, I am aware that in desperate circumstances many things thought to be impossible can be accomplished." He was reminded of the havoc created by the Rat Patrol and grew angrier. "You will have me picked up at once by a Stuka, verstehen?"

"Ja wohl, herr Hauptmann," his lieutenant answered. "At once, when it is possible."

Dietrich broke the connection, groaning with frustration. He took another sip of water, laid the Luger on the seat and settled back to wait. The idea that the Americans might possess the tin of gasoline haunted him, dug into his mind. They also probably knew that the gasoline tank was dry. It could possibly be that they had deliberately carried away the gasoline knowing that if he should succeed in escaping from Wilson, he would be unable to travel very far. If all these things were so, and they seemed likely to Dietrich now, then Sergeant Troy would follow the marks the tires had left and reclaim the vehicle. Dietrich groaned. Rather than that, he thought, I shall blow up the car myself if any grenades are left in the compartment. He stepped to the back and found a box, an entire box of stick grenades. Enough to make a cataclysmic blast. He sat in the front of the vehicle, toying with die potato masher and thinking. Destroy the car and that would leave the Rat Patrol without transportation, if they actually did have the gasoline. But Dietrich actually would gain nothing from it and would lose one more car. He sat studying the grenade, eyes wandering about the floor, each time coming back to the brake pedal. Abruptly he decided and smiled frostily. He would call HQ on the radio to warn other German patrols and then he would booby trap the car. He would make this German patrol car a death trap for the Rat Patrol. The idea delighted him and provided him with something to do until the Stuka came by for him. He hoped most desperately that the Rat Patrol would come for the car.

17

Troy sat in the blazing sun on the jumbled camouflage net with his head between his knees while Hitch and Tully pulled at Wilson's fetters. He was disgusted and he was bitter. It was incredible that Dietrich could have escaped and left them in this impossible situation in the desert. Moffitt stretched on his side near Troy sucking a pebble.

"Clever man, that Dietrich," he said respectfully. "Some one of us should have thought of this netting to provide the car with a base on which to run."

"Someone should have thought," Troy said savagely, lifting his head and glancing disdainfully at Wilson. The colonel's face was pale and his lips were tight. He had volunteered no explanation of what had happened. The evidence was so obvious that Troy had not bothered to ask. Wilson had let himself get suckered. Troy turned his head back to Moffitt. "Doctor, how could you and Hitch have left your canteens in the storage compartment when you knew Tully and I had lost ours in the shuffle?"

"Careless, I know," Moffitt murmured. "We seemed to have an ample supply of water and it didn't occur to me to question when you brought along the five-gallon can."

"That was because Tully and I didn't have canteens," Troy growled. "So all right. I grabbed the wrong tin. So we both goofed, Doctor. It's a luxury we can't afford in our business."

"We still have the meat tins, Sam," Moffitt said.

"The corned beef won't satisfy our thirst," Troy said.

"There's still moisture in the ground," Moffitt suggested. "If we empty the cans, we can make sink holes and fill them."

"That'll help," Troy admitted, getting up and walking over to the box of tinned meat Hitch had lugged along for some hungry reason of his own on their ambush. He brought the tins back to the net. "Anyone want breakfast? No point starting our hike on an empty stomach."

Wilson came over with Hitch and Tully. The colonel swallowed as if it pained him, rubbing his throat and the back of his neck.

"I let Dietrich clip me," he said apologetically, looking sheepishly at Troy and then down at his feet. "I loosened the bonds to his ankles because he said he had a duty to perform and he knocked me out with his wrists still tied."

"You're lucky he didn't take you with him again," Troy said coolly.

"Yes, that would have been embarrassing," Wilson said with a weak smile.

Troy opened a tin of corned beef for each of them. "Eat," he said gruffly. "Then we'll dig some of that rain out of the ground."

Tully tilted his head to the sky. It was a washed-out blue and the searing sun was almost overhead. The sand was beginning to bum although the netting furnished insulation.

"How far you figure we have to walk, Sarge?" he asked. "Twenty miles, more or less," Troy said, wrinkling his nose at the meat.

"When you think we'll get there?" Hitch asked. "I've run out of gum."

"Maybe tomorrow," Troy said, chewing at the preserved meat. Now that they had no water, the corned beef seemed unusually salty. He moved to the edge of the net, kicked a hole in the sand with his heel and dumped the meat in it. "Maybe we'd be better off on empty stomachs."

The others looked at him, ran their tongues over their teeth, swallowed, and disposed of their meat. Moffitt prowled the wadi until he found a low place where the surface sand was moist. With his hands, he scooped a hole several feet in diameter and two or three feet deep. Water had seeped in and half filled it before he stopped. When the sand had settled, they took turns filling their meat tins with the dirty water. When they had drunk, each filled a tin, a thimbleful it seemed, for a precious, scanty reserve.

"I guess it'd be no use trying to fill that," Hitch said, pointing to the five-gallon can of gasoline. "We'd never get rid of the taste of gas."

Troy considered the can a moment and then he squinted at Moffitt, a smile tugging at one comer of his mouth.

"Doctor," he said, "what was it you said about the gas gauge in that car?"

"It showed empty," Moffitt said, beginning to smile and amusement glinting in his eyes.

"Let me have one of those MG42s," Troy said, stretching his hand to Tully. He hefted it and slapped the ammunition drum. "Wilson, you, Hitch and Tully rig up that camouflage net some way to get some shade and protection. Keep the tins filled with water." He turned to Moffitt. "Doctor, shoulder your weapon. We're going to get the patrol car back from Dietrich."

Moffitt was smiling with evident enjoyment. "We just might do that, if he hasn't blown it up."

"Aw, he wouldn't do that, would he, Sarge?" Tully drawled.

"You mean we aren't going to walk home after all?" Hitch asked happily.

"Not if I can help it," Troy said, picking up the gasoline can, adding to Tully, "Yank off that helmet and get it filled with water too. You won't need the tin lid if you stay out of the sun."

"That's why I wear it," Tully said and grinned. "To keep the sun out of my eyes. But I'll fill it for you, Sarge. Are you going to shave?"

Troy and Moffitt followed the tracks of the car out the shallow end of the wadi and around to the slope. Troy stopped and studied them through his glasses. He could see them stretching, straight and plain, for half a mile or so and then they disappeared over a dune. He swept the dunes around but found no Jerry patrol car. With Moffitt, he started to dig his way up the trail under the scorching sun. The sand flickered and flashed in heat waves as they plodded halfway to the first dune and stopped, panting for breath. Troy pulled off his bush hat and ran his palm over his sweaty forehead back into his wet hair.

"What's your guess, Doctor?" he asked. "What would Dietrich do when the tank ran dry?"

"He has the radio now, Sam," Moffitt said. "I think he'd call for help."

"Let's hope there wasn't another patrol closer than Sidi Abd," Troy said, picking up the can and trudging on. "If the Jerries get there before we do, we're sunk. They'll fix him up with gas. He'll drive the car away. The patrol will try to dig us out and clean our clocks."

They waded the rest of the way to the dune top. The car tracks went down through a hollow and came out the other side. They walked around the top.

"He went down there for something," Troy said, looking back.

"Perhaps to radio?"

"He isn't out of gas yet," Troy said, pointing at the tire marks that veered to the north and ran out of sight. "He's switching his direction. He's going to try to pick up the route they've all been using."

"Perhaps we'd better have a look," Moffitt said, raising his binoculars.

Troy brought his glasses to his tired, red-rimmed eyes. He followed the double lines and then lost them. Farther to the north, he brought the glasses on the tops of the sandhills and found the patrol car, a grayish tub that was anchored all alone in a sea of sand.

"I've got the car, Doctor," Troy said, "but I don't see Dietrich."

"He may be in it," Moffitt said, "out of the sun. Or he may be hiding somewhere, waiting for us to come along."

"Let's keep out of sight," Troy said tightly. Dietrich had an arsenal in the car.

They slid halfway down the slope, and keeping away from the ridges, crept toward the patrol car. They were shambling now and every fifty feet or so, they had to stop for breath. Troy's khakis were soaked through, and looking at Moffitt, Troy saw there was not a square inch of dry cloth on him. Wet outside and parched within, he wished he had a tin of the dirty, sandy desert water right now.

"I'll take the can, Sam," Moffitt said heavily but a smile fluttered on his lips.

"Don't mind if you do," Troy said and pushed his feet ahead again. "Let's work around to the west and come up from the fiat route they've been using. If Dietrich is expecting company, he'll be looking for us to follow the trail he left."

"It's the long, hard way of doing things," Moffitt said and sighed, "but I expect you're right."

They changed their course, making a wide and tedious circle up and down over the dunes before they were on the flat. The car was half a mile east and above them on the sandhill. Troy drew Moffitt into a pocket off to the side of the valley and brought his glasses on the car. He searched it thoroughly. If Dietrich was in the car, he must be on the floor. They doubled over and moved ahead crouching, keeping close to the near side where the humpty dumpty dunes offered a place to hide. Troy was troubled. The situation did not look right. He wondered where Dietrich was, whether he had abandoned the car and set off on foot, why he had left the vehicle intact. Hadn't he expected them to come after it? Troy stopped and shook the doubts from his head. He was being foolish. Dietrich had no way of knowing they had gasoline.

He put his hand out to caution Moffitt, listening for the sound he thought he had detected. It came again, the ebb and flow humming of aircraft. Damn the Stukas, he thought, you couldn't throw grenades at them. You might have a chance with a fifty caliber machine gun but the MG42 just didn't have the stuff.

"The Stukas are coming back," he said wearily to Moffitt. "We'll have to take cover."

He swung quickly about in a complete circle, looking for a hole like a hunted animal. Some place where they would not be seen.

"In here," he called, darting forward and diving into a ditchlike depression between two sand hills. "If we lie flat on the bottom, they may not see us." He smiled quickly. "We hope."

The sound of the aircraft grew in volume until it was a roar and a plane swooped low, almost overhead, casting its racing shadow on the desert floor. Troy waited, listening for the others, but there was only the sound of the one plane, going away and circling north, coming back. He's spotted us, Troy thought, but the plane, instead of coming over, was landing. The blast of the motor diminished and the motor idled nearby. Troy scooted from their squirming alley and crawled around a bend where he could see down the flat stretch. The Stuka had landed and the glass-caged cockpit was open.

A man, it was Dietrich, tumbled down the slope of the hill where the car was parked and pitched onto the wing, working along the fuselage. The pilot was leaning over the side and stuffing Dietrich into the plane, literally stuffing him into the space behind the single place. Troy brought his MG42 forward and to his shoulder. He could get them both as they took off.

"No." Moffitt held back his arm. "If you miss, we'll be no match. The JU 87 carries three machine guns. We'd better get back around the corner and hide."

They crabbed back and flattened on the ground. The air shook and the Stuka blasted past, taking to the air and climbing sharply. It turned south. They're going to have a look at the wadi, Troy thought. Dietrich will point out the wadi and the plane will rake it. He gritted his teeth waiting for the machine guns. When the chattering did not come, Troy rolled over, questioning Moffitt with his eyes.

"I imagine the pilot has his hands full, just flying the ship," Moffitt said and laughed. "Well, now we know, old boy. Dietrich used the radio and called for air taxi service."

The sound of the plane was receding quickly and Troy and Moffitt came out of the ditch erect. Troy looked at the sky and found the Stuka shooting off to the southeast.

"Think that's the end of it?" Troy asked.

"Hard to say," Moffitt said. "Let's see whether the car is serviceable."

Troy walked more easily and slowly now. He was bone weary and his wounded leg had begun to throb again. He felt as if he had not eaten or bathed or slept or drank for months. Beside him, Moffitt seemed stooped, as tired as Troy. They dragged up the sliding hill and stood for a moment looking silently at the car. It seemed intact. Troy walked to the side and tossed his machine gun in the back seat, glancing in the front. The water can was on the floor.

"Dietrich left the water," Troy exclaimed, reaching for it.

"Don't," Moffitt said sharply, coming over fast.

"What do you mean, don't!" Troy said irritably. "He probably emptied it, but if there's any water, I'm going to have a swallow."

"Yes, but just a moment," Moffitt said, leaning over the side, inspecting the door carefully before opening it. "Could be booby trapped, you know."

"Nuts," Troy said. "Why would he booby trap his own car? He couldn't know he wouldn't catch his own men. He didn't know we had gasoline or that we'd come after this car. He'll have a patrol out to pick it up."

Moffitt pulled his head from the floor of the front seat and lifted out the water can.

"Almost full," he said happily.

"And it wasn't booby trapped," Troy said, unscrewing the top, sniffing the water and handing the can to Moffitt.

When Moffitt had swallowed two mouthfuls and returned the can to Troy, he said, "I'm suspicious, Sam. This isn't like Dietrich. Why would he leave the car so conveniently here for us? Why didn't he blow it up? There are grenades, ammunition and weapons in the trunk."

"Doctor, I told you," Troy said patiently. "He didn't have any idea we'd come after it. I'm going to dump in the gasoline and then let's be off."

"Not until we've gone over the vehicle," Moffitt said firmly.

"All right, Doctor," Troy said, resigned. "Who starts where?"

"I'll take the engine and the outside," Moffitt said. "You search the inside."

"Right," Troy said with a tired smile.

Moffitt opened the slant-nosed hood and began a careful check of the engine. Troy climbed into the front seat and began a systematic check for trip wires or charges. He found nothing that looked suspicious.

"It looks okay, Doctor," he called, starting to get off the floor where he was lying on his stomach when he saw a twist of wire around the brake pedal. "Hold it!" he called loudly.

He traced the wire, cleverly concealed with dust and sand, to a stick grenade securely lodged under the seat. Carefully he removed the wire and dislodged the grenade.

"Ingenious," Moffitt said softly. "He wanted to be sure we were in the car and started. The first time the brake was depressed, we'd have been memories."

They plumbed the car to its depths for other traps but could find nothing. Troy turned on the ignition switch and looked at the gas gauge. It registered empty. He laughed and poured the five gallons of gasoline into the tank. Moffitt climbed in behind the wheel, switched the ignition on once more, looked at Troy and shrugged. He engaged the starter. The motor turned over, then ground away as Moffitt held the accelerator to the floor. The motor caught, chattered, wheezed, caught again and ran evenly.

"Now we have transportation," Moffitt set, listening to the engine.

"And water," Troy said.

"And a clear road home perhaps," Moffitt said, smiling.

He backed and turned around, following Dietrich's trail over the dunes to the wadi. Tully and Hitch crawled from the camouflage hut they had rigged and they whooped. Still serious but not so shamefaced, Wilson started pulling down the netting. He folded it, carried it to the back of the car and laid it over the weapons in the storage compartment.

"That's been a handy item," he commented.

"Anyone want a drink?" Troy asked. He passed around the water can.

"Let's move," Tully said. "We been long gone."

Hitch drove out of the wadi and found a solid ridge that reached toward the German trace. The air was smudgy and acrid over this part of the valley where the six patrol cars still smoldered.

"Follow Jerry's route?" he asked, half turning.

"Why not?" Troy said. "I think we're the only ones left to use it."

On the flat desert, the car picked up speed. The hot sand whirred by and the wind rushed at them from the front and sides. In the front beside Hitch, Moffitt's head nodded. Wilson was sprawled at one side in the back, chin resting on his chest. Tully was in the middle. The matchstick drooped from his slack lips. Troy hunched on his side, idly playing with the MG42, blinking his smarting eyes occasionally at the land about them and to the west ahead. Unless the Stukas came streaking and shrieking back, he did not think they would encounter any more enemy opposition. They all were silent, exhausted, bone tired, but it had been quite a caper, Troy was thinking, although he wasn't sorry it all was behind them.

"Sarge!" Hitch called, leaning forward as if peering.

"Yeah," Troy said absently.

"There, ahead," Hitch said. "A long ways off but you can see it, a line of dust, like a column moving. Can you get your glasses on it?"

Beside Hitch, Moffitt stirred, lifting his glasses to his face as Troy swept the horizon with his binoculars. Troy straightened quickly. Vehicles were moving on the desert.

"I think they're halftracks and tanks," he called. "And I think they're ours."

"By George, I think you're right," Moffitt exclaimed.

"They are ours," Wilson said quietly. "This is one of our actions Dietrich hoped to learn about in advance. We're setting up the defensive positions we'll maintain during the winter rainy season."

"Home," Tully said, yawning.

"Fresh bubble gum," Hitch added and pressed down harder on the accelerator.

They all were wide awake now. They were practically hanging onto the sides and cheering as the patrol car raced to meet the oncoming Allied armor. After the time they had spent in Jerry land, the squat, husky Sherman tanks with their long barreled seventy-five millimeter guns were a welcome sight.

Well, Troy thought happily and relaxing, they had done it again.

He was blasted from his pleasant reflections by the impact of a shell that exploded in a blinding, showering burst of sand in front but well short of the car. Another detonation rocked the desert to one side.

"They're shelling us, our own men are shelling us," Hitch shouted.

"They're not shelling us," Tully said, sitting straight. "They're shelling a Jerry patrol car."

The clouds of dust and sand still hung dense about them.

"Turn around and run away," Troy bellowed. "Quick. I'd rather take my chances against the whole Afrika Korps."

18

Hauptmann Hans Dietrich unbent himself from the impossible, pinched-together, bent-over, crouched-down, humped-up position he had tolerated for the last three quarters of an hour. He had felt like a porpoise stuffed in a goldfish bowl under the glass canopy of the Stuka. When the pilot, who seemed amused by the disgraceful treatment of an Afrika Korps unit commander, slid back the glass, Dietrich burst from the enclosure in a seething rage. Ears still clanging from the awesome shrieks and growls of the engine, he somehow managed to skid down the fuselage to the comfortable sand beyond the corridor of armor at Sidi Abd. He would see that this smirking young Luftwaffe lieutenant suffered unspeakable indignities for his three-quarter hour entertainment.

"I shall look forward to acquainting you with the interior of a tank, Lieutenant," Dietrich called to the toothy youth at the controls of the Stuka. "I shall personally request your commanding officer to grant me the pleasure of your visit."

"Well, thank you, sir," the lieutenant said, flushing a little. "It wasn't really much, all in the line of duty." He laughed—boisterously, Dietrich thought. "Wait till the squadron hears about how I carried you today. They'll laugh themselves sick."

He waved, pushed the canopy forward, twisted the ship about and took off with the sound of all the Furies, leaving Dietrich bathed in a shower of stinging, lashing sand.

Dietrich swung furiously on his heel to be greeted by the uninspiring sight of Feldwebel Max Schmitt in his dress uniform standing at sucked-in-chin and thumbs-along-the-seams-stiff attention. Schmitt's cheeks were round and pinkly healthy, looking freshly scrubbed, and his blue eyes looked rested and untroubled. This sausage skin has been filling himself with my chicken and brandy, sleeping at least upon a cot if not one of my beds, Dietrich thought, fuming, while I have been trussed like a prize stag and bounced about and over the desert in every insufferable contraption man has conceived. Eating swill like swine. He rubbed his bearded, greasy jaw, looked at the grime on his palms, glanced distastefully at his crumpled tunic and soiled breeches. He strode toward the corridor that led to the town's entrance.

"I shall find the most decrepit PzKw III in all of North Africa, one whose treads are loose and clattering and turrets locks securely in place," he muttered aloud. "When the temperature has burst the thermometer and the interior of the tank is a stinking steel crucible, I shall load the tank with Arab prisoners and jam this Luftwaffe pilot in with this fat pig of a sergeant and send them all to Bizerta." He glared at Schmitt. "You would like that, would you not, Sergeant, to take that Luftwaffe lieutenant for a trip similar in pleasure to the one I have just enjoyed?"

"Ja, mein herr Hauptmann," Schmitt said, puffing as he trotted at Dietrich's heels.

Dietrich halted as he came between the twin lines of armor and his eyes coursed down them. The armored columns looked puny, weak and sick. Dietrich was ill at heart. He had not yet assessed the losses his unit had suffered at the rampaging hands of the Rat Patrol and Arabs and it frightened him to think of it.

"Schmitt," he barked. "I want a complete report within the hour on the losses, material and men, which have been inflicted on us during the past four days, you understand?"

"Yes, my captain, but " Schmitt stammered.

"I will tolerate no excuses," Dietrich thundered.

"But, Captain Dietrich," Schmitt pleaded. "I am not making excuses. I only wanted to tell you there is a visitor waiting for you at your headquarters."

"A visitor? Who is it? Have him thrown out. What has that to do with this report I want?"

"It is Colonel Ziegler," Schmitt said unhappily.

Ziegler? It caught Dietrich up short. Colonel Ziegler was operations chief to the General for this entire area. Only a matter of utmost urgency would bring him to Sidi Abd in person. Dietrich himself had never met him and knew only his ferocious reputation.

"How long has Colonel Ziegler been here?" Dietrich flared. "What does he want?"

"Since yesterday, herr Hauptmann," Schmitt said and gulped. "I do not know, of course, what it is he wants. But the reports on the losses you have just requested, they were turned over to Colonel Ziegler on his order this morning."

The news shocked Dietrich profoundly. It agitated him. It was tragic, he thought, groaning. Ziegler had come down to discuss operations in person, plan and map campaigns, ask his advice perhaps, and had arrived to find Dietrich enmeshed in disaster. What an impossible misfortune. The word would go straight back to Rommel himself.

Dietrich was unaware of the guard in the vaulted entrance or the soldiers who turned to stare after him in the twisting streets. He was unpleasantly aware of the heavy Arabian smells, of cooking and dirt that pressed on him physically and oppressed him. He looked again at the filth of his own uniform. He could not present himself to Ziegler until he had bathed, shaved and changed into a fresh uniform.

"Schmitt," Dietrich said as they turned into the narrow street that led to HQ. "Trot on ahead. Present my compliments to Colonel Ziegler. Explain that I have been in the field and ask his indulgence for a few moments. Put out a bottle of Courvoisier, cigars and cigarettes, perhaps make up a tray of sandwiches or canapés. Make him feel at home and welcome. Oh, and be sure the door to the office is closed so he is not offended, at the sight of me when I go back to my rooms."

Schmitt rolled away—like the tub of lard he is, Dietrich thought, and he wondered how his sergeant would manage to botch things up with Ziegler. No, Dietrich admitted, he could not blame anything that happened with Ziegler on Schmitt. He could not really blame anyone for anything, not even himself. It was just that, well, there was this Rat Patrol.

Nodding curtly to the guard at the entrance to HQ, Dietrich went immediately to his rooms. He bathed and shaved rapidly and presented himself, in his own office, within half an hour. The uniform he wore was freshly pressed and he thought he looked reasonably well.

Colonel Ziegler was standing at the tall, narrow windows overlooking the squalid street with his back to the room. He turned ponderously, a man of massive proportions. His enormous, white-maned head was set solidly on stout shoulders and his chest was shaped like a barrel. In contrast, his facial features were dwarfed by the skin and bone they occupied. His eyes were bright, tiny and beady, bird-like. His nose was short, straight and pinched and his mouth only a little opening in a big jaw.

Dietrich involuntarily came to attention.

Ziegler leaned pudgy hands on Dietrich's desk, eyes darting from Dietrich's freshly shaved face to well shined boots. "You appear remarkably fresh for a man who has just come in from the field," he rumbled in a voice as big as he. The little features quivered with suspicion.

"I took the opportunity to change before presenting myself," Dietrich said evenly, damning Schmitt for not making this clear. "I regret I was not here in person to welcome you." He glanced at the brandy bottle and glasses on a silver tray. The bottle had not been opened. "Let me offer you a drink, Colonel Ziegler," Dietrich said graciously. "It really is quite excellent."

"Thank you, I do not drink," Ziegler said stiffly. His beady eyes fixed Dietrich's with a penetrating stare. "But please do not let me interrupt your habits."

"No, no thank you," Dietrich said uncomfortably. "I really keep it on hand for special occasions, honored guests." He found the cigarette box and humidor where Schmitt had placed them at the other end of the table. He offered both, opened to Ziegler. The brands were American. "A cigarette? Cigar?"

Ziegler inspected both and shook his head, observing, "You are a man of expensive tastes. I neither drink nor smoke."

A rap sounded at the door. It swung open to admit Schmitt. He had donned a chef's hat and wore a white coat and apron. He bore an ornate oriental platter laden with canapés and relishes. Dietrich could have shot him.

Schmitt placed the platter on the table before Ziegler, bowed to him and then to Dietrich.

"Cafes, messieurs?" he inquired in atrociously accented French.

Ziegler shook his head violently.

"That will be all," Dietrich told Schmitt. He indicated the platter to Ziegler. "A bite, perhaps?"

"Wasn't that your sergeant?" Ziegler's throat demanded while his mouth looked shocked.

Dietrich nodded his head miserably.

"I find this"—Ziegler waved to indicate the lavish display of liquor, tobacco and tidbits—"fantastic. Utterly fantastic. Perhaps it is in keeping with some of the other things I have heard and learned since yesterday. Perhaps I now shall learn something more. You have been in the field, you say?"

"Yes, yes, that is correct," Dietrich said.

"Not entirely correct," Ziegler corrected. "Not entirely in the military sense. You were out chasing prisoners?"

Dietrich nodded his head grimly.

"Why?" Ziegler roared. "Why is it necessary for the commanding officer of an Afrika Korps unit to leave his command in pursuit of prisoners?"

"I had reason to believe they possessed knowledge that would be valuable," Dietrich said, beginning to seethe.

"You did not catch them," Ziegler said icily. "In fact, they captured you. Is this not so?"

"It is difficult to explain," Dietrich said, keeping a tight rein on his anger. "I captured them. They escaped. They captured me. I escaped."

"Oh, so you play games with the enemy and this was played to a draw," Ziegler said quietly and looked questioningly at Dietrich. "Is that the way you see it?"

"You might interpret it that way," Dietrich said and clenched his teeth.

"Very well," Ziegler said with deadly calm. "Now I shall explain a few matters to you. The first is this. The information which you should have obtained from the American colonel while he was your prisoner concerned a strategic movement of Allied forces into defensive winter positions. Had you squeezed this knowledge from him while you had the opportunity and then disposed of him, you could have struck with the armor you then had at your disposal and prevented the enemy from taking positions where you will not be able to dislodge him. We learned this from our pilots who were wasting their time searching for you. They were able to drop a few small bombs but no serious damage was inflicted. The second point I wish to make is this. Your losses in striking power have been severe in this foolish cat and mouse game in which you engaged five men and two jeeps. You have lost—destroyed or captured—fourteen patrol cars, eight halftracks and two tanks. Plus"—and Ziegler started to shout and shake his finger—"plus seventy-six men killed! I scarcely call this a game with the enemy that was played to a draw!"

"Yes, Colonel Ziegler," Dietrich said stonily, eyes front, shoulders back.

"I think it might be well," Ziegler said, glancing at the brandy, tobacco and canapés, "if you arranged to take a leave while this entire situation is investigated."

Hitch slammed the Jerry patrol car out of range of the cannon poking their long, lethal noses from the turrets of the Sherman tanks and out of sight in a wadi on the other side of the desert. He patted his forehead.

"That sweat isn't from the sun," he said.

They all were perspiring and who knew how much came from the sun that soaked through the canvas top of the car and how much from the shells they had just faced?

"We stick our nose out there again and wham, they're going to slam us," Tully said and gulped. "It's a darned funny thing when your own folks won't let you come home."

Troy put down the glasses. He had been watching the tanks and halftracks in the forefront of the column, and apparently other vehicles lost in the dust clouds behind them, crawl relentlessly toward them.

"Is there anything we could use for a mirror?" he asked Moffitt. "We might try signalling."

"I'd thought of that," Moffitt said. "We could get a reflection off the glasses but they know Jerry's over here and they'd fob it off as a trick."

"Are they coming much closer?" Troy asked Wilson who was sitting quietly and thoughtfully in the comer of the back seat.

"Right into the dunes above the route the Jerries have been using and digging in," Wilson said. "When the heavy rains hit, the Jerries won't be able to come over the hills and we'll control the flat trail and the land in front of Bir-el-Alam."

"Why don't we hide?" Hitch asked. "When they are dug in, we'll come out and give ourselves up to our own people. Maybe they'll bring along some gum."

"They'd dig you out and shoot first," Troy said.

"Don't someone know we're here?" Tully asked disconsolately.

"Sure," Troy said and laughed shortly. "But in jeeps, not a Jerry car."

The only sensible thing to do, Troy had decided, was to go out on foot in plain sight and hope the armor would hold off wasting shells on five tattered men.

"What've we got that's real GI?" Troy asked, seeking something that would identify them.

"Us," Tully said promptly.

"Okay, we'll send Tully out alone to tell them who we are," Troy said, laughing.

"I've never walked up and shook hands with a seventy-five millimeter cannon before," Tully said, "let alone maybe a dozen of them."

"Well, like Tully said, we're GI and I'm counting on us," Troy said with a smile. "Everything that isn't GI, we leave behind. The MG42s, Lugers, anything else you may have picked up. We're all going to walk across the desert to meet them, just a bunch of broken-down GIs."

"What about the headpieces?" Hitch asked. "Mine's French Foreign Legion, Moffitt wears a beret, you got an Aussie hat, Wilson is bareheaded. Tully's tin pot is the only one that's GI."

"I think they'll know us when they spot our bonnets," Moffitt said with a smile. "We've achieved a certain amount of notoriety, you know." He raised the binoculars to his face and after a moment, said, "About three miles away now. I think we ought to start walking."

"Pass around the water can," Tully said cheerfully. "This may be the last drink we have."

When they had emptied the can, they climbed out and sauntered hopefully into the open desert. They really were a ragtag outfit, Troy thought, glancing at each of them, bedraggled desert rats. They did not bunch as they started for the lines of gray dust creeping toward them but they did not spread out wide either. Some eager Joe without too many brains might figure they were an infantry line advancing against the armor.

They shuffled along, the colonel and his boys, now that they were getting back to the line of command. It had not been that way back in Jerry land. There it had depended on who could cut the mustard. Wilson had been pretty quiet, Troy was thinking. The CO was probably worried about being in the frying pan for letting himself get captured. It would be too bad if there were trouble over that. The CO was a good armored regiment commander, maybe inclined to be a little daring but that won battles and there were others just as brash who were heroes and even generals. Look at Patton. When it came right down to it, who actually did know for sure that Wilson had been captured? He was missing but that did not mean he was dead or had been taken prisoner. Wilson was a little stuffy and he had done some stupid things like letting Dietrich get away, but then the CO had not had the advantages the Rat Patrol enjoyed. He could not be expected to do their kind of job any more than they could do his. There ought to be some way to keep this affair from being a stinker.

They continued toward the muzzles that kept getting larger of the long guns on the Sherman tanks and it seemed as if all of them were pointing at each man in the Rat Patrol. Troy did not think anyone would open fire on a tiny band of ragged men who carried no firepower, just side arms. But you never knew who was due a Section Eight. The halftracks and tanks kept crawling closer, just half a mile off now. Suddenly a jeep shot out from somewhere toward the dust-shrouded end of the line and raced toward them. It was a good homey feeling to see a jeep again after all the Jerry vehicles, although this one mounted no machine gun. Three or four hundred yards away, the jeep stopped and someone—they could not tell who at that distance—stood on the seat and held an amplifying speaker to his face.

"Who are you," the voice squawked. "Identify yourselves. One of you, step forward and identify yourself."

Troy drifted over to Wilson. "Go ahead," he said. "You identify but don't say anything about where we've been or what's happened. Let me take care of that."

Wilson glanced at Troy, a puzzled frown between his eyes, and marched straight and soldierly to within shouting distance of the jeep. Troy could hear him calling out his name, rank and serial number. There was a moment's hesitation and then the jeep shot forward and Troy moved up toward Wilson too. The officer who had shouted through the horn leaped out of the jeep, ran to Wilson and threw his arms around him. Troy recognized him. It was Major Frank Lippin, Wilson's adjutant. Wilson turned and motioned the Rat Patrol to come in. Troy was already there.

"Where've you been?" Major Lippin was asking Wilson while he thumped him on the back. "Did you get lost? You were reported missing."

"A rear action diversion the colonel dreamed up," Troy said quickly.

"A rear action diversion?" Major Lippin puzzled that one.

Wilson looked at Troy strangely.

"Yes, sir," Troy said emphatically. "To keep Dietrich from launching another attack just when you were moving into the defensive positions. I know Colonel Wilson won't talk much about it but he ought to get a lot of credit for disrupting and demoralizing Dietrich's unit. He got us to take him in and out when his own driver was killed." Troy paused and then he laughed. "We had to swipe a Jerry patrol car to make it out. About the closest call we had was when you opened up on us."

"What is this all about?" Major Lippin asked, an admiring tone in his voice. "Were you able to inflict much damage?"

"Well, rather considerable, Frank, to tell the truth," Wilson said, "but I'm afraid Sergeant Troy overestimates the role I played. There will be figures in the reports."

"You fox," Major Lippin said to Wilson, "now don't be modest." He looked over his shoulder. The tanks and halftracks were bearing down. "I suppose you'd like a personnel carrier for your men, a chance to get back to Bir-el-Alam, clean up, rest up, feed up?"

"Yes, Frank," Wilson said. "I should report in. And I feel the men deserve a little something for pulling things off the way they did."

"I'll get a vehicle out of the line," Major Lippin said. "Come along with me."

Moffitt edged over to Troy as Wilson climbed in the jeep. "What was this about a rear action diversion?"

"Got a better name for it?" Troy asked and grinned.

In a few minutes a six-by-six with a floppy brown canvas top ground to a stop and Troy piled in the back after Moffitt, Hitch and Tully. As the truck was starting up, someone halted it. Wilson came back and climbed in. "Got room for me, men?" he asked, smiling.

Bir-el-Alam is scarcely paradise on earth but  it was an Arabian oasis town and of somewhat larger proportions than Sidi Abd. The Allies had clashed with the Jerries near Bir-el-Alam but the fighting had been in the desert and the town was undamaged. Some semi-permanent installations had been thrown up at the edges of the town and there were adequate tent quarters and facilities. In the town, some of the native places offered food and drink that was acceptable. In a way it was a pretty place with a little grass, flowers and palm trees. It looked good to the Rat Patrol when the truck rolled through, but best of all was the GI shower rigged up by their tents. Wilson went on to his quarters and Troy, Moffitt, Hitch and Tully plunged in the showers. No one argued with them very much about spending too much time under the water after a look at their crazy desert eyes and ground-in grime. They shaved and dressed in clean, fresh khakis and clapped their old, dirty desert gear back over their just washed hair. Troy managed time to have sulpha and a bandage slapped on his wound and then they plunged into Bir-el-Alam the way they had plunged into the showers. A few hours before, they had been beat to the sox. Now they were all charged up and ready to emit sparks.

The CO was taking them out on the town and one might have thought that would have put a damper on the party but it wasn't that way at all. He had left his eagles at his quarters and it was just as it had been back in Jerry land. He was wearing plain khakis, no decorations, except for one funny thing. He had picked up a hat. It looked like a sultan's turban with a flashy red stone in front and the cockeyed thing about it was, the CO wanted to know if that hat made him a member of the Rat Patrol.

He took them for dinner to a place up on a roof. It was posh with soft lights and lots of pillows and skinny little men in turbans like the CO's, sitting crosslegged and making peeping sounds with pipes. The food was good and tasty—caviar, pigeons baked in cream with rice followed by minced meat and eggplant in tomato sauce. Moffitt kept calling them names like hamam fil tagen, mussaka and other things, but that did not spoil anyone's appetite. They all could understand the name of the drink. The manager of the roof place had brought it over from Cairo where it had been famous for a long time. It was called the "Suffering Bastard," which they all thought was quite appropriate, and was made from gin, bitters, fruit juices and mint.

There even were belly dancers, lithesome girls who squirmed and wiggled and wore bright baubles and bangles and did not look too tawdry. They should have enlivened any place but in spite of them the atmosphere seemed subdued. Maybe it was because the belly dancers insisted on dancing alone although they could have had any member of the Rat Patrol for partner. So they dragged Wilson off to a rowdy joint called—could it be possible?—The Oasis. There the lights were bright and the music from the jukebox loud and U.S.A., if very ancient.

Here were partners. Along the garishly lighted bar built of glass blocks someone had slipped in on some kind of high priority shipment, there were half a dozen girls with bare shoulders and tight-fitting, shiny black and red dresses, floppy black hair and very red lips. Not Arabian girls, or at least not entirely Arabian, but the products of a dozen races who had mingled for a thousand years along the waterfronts of the Mediterranean. Not exactly the kind of girls you would introduce to Mother, but sure enough right for dancing partners in the joint called The Oasis at Bir-el-Alam in North Africa. And what would Mother be doing here anyway?

They were getting plenty of attention, swamped and overwhelmed by the free-spending GIs who would spend ten bucks for nothing more than ten minutes of conversation. Females were scarce in this part of the world. Some GIs had even married girls from The Oasis. So gangs of soldiers surrounded the half dozen girls and for a while it looked as if the CO would have to pull rank, not that it would have done any good if he had been foolish enough to try; but then Troy, backed up by Moffitt, Hitch and Tully, made a flying wedge that somehow enclosed a girl when they flew back to their table.

She said her name was Oola and that she was French and maybe she was and maybe again all the French she knew was Oo-la-la. But who cared? She had washed her face before she painted it and she was willing company as long as the CO shelled out for the thimbles of vermouth they passed off for Scotch. She even was willing to dance, but that cost extra because it cut down on the number of those thimblefuls she could toss off in fifteen minutes. It was astronomical. Troy once had seen a GI fall off a bar stool when he had tried to down a one-ounce shot of beer every minute for an hour and here she was nearly equaling that challenge with vermouth.

By the time the CO got around to dancing with her, she was kicking her heels in fine fettle. He seemed to like it, really enjoy it, although he did not hold her quite so close as Tully did but that meant nothing. Maybe that was his regular style of dancing which was probably more than you could say for the way Tully handled her.

They had to call a halt finally to this bottomless jug or the CO would have run out of spending money, so Oola trotted back to the bar and for a few minutes, until they got their breath back, the Rat Patrol relaxed. Some of the West Point seemed to be coming out of Wilson that night, or perhaps it had been coming out for several days and no one noticed it. He kept asking questions, curious but friendly, about home and girls and what their plans were after Jerry had given up. Not quite all of West Point had washed away though. For one thing, he could not understand why an enlisted man would not want to be an officer. What was Moffitt, a Doctor of Anthropology at Cambridge, doing with the Rat Patrol as a sergeant?

"Lucky," Moffitt said with that amused smile of his.

"And you, Troy, you'd make an excellent officer."

"Couldn't stand the restrictions on my freedom," Troy answered with a flashing smile and a jaunty cock of his bush hat.

"Well, now, Tully," Wilson began.

"Be like putting pants on a Billy goat," Tully drawled.

"Hitch—" the CO started.

"What! And give up all this fun?"

About then the music blared again and Wilson gave up trying to understand enlisted men, but even if he couldn't understand them, he was willing to get in on their act. Some new GIs were in the joint, fresh from the States, and they did not quite comprehend. They made a couple of loud and uncomplimentary remarks about the jerks in the dopey hats, and Wilson rose, majestic in his boozy fury and sultan's bath towel, and wanted to bat down half a dozen of them.

Moffitt explained why that just was not cricket while Troy, Tully and Hitch attended to the situation. The CO beat it out the back door with them as the MPs streamed in the front.

They wove into another place where GIs congregated, drinking beer, telling lies, getting nostalgic or just plain homesick, wishing they had women, any kind of women.

"When we going to get Dirty Gertie from Bizerte?" Troy asked, swaying like a snake charmer.

"When we change the spelling," Moffitt said, smiling. "Jerry spells it with an 'a'—Bizerta."

"Things are tough all over," Wilson said sympathetically to Troy. "I guess you'd settle for a WAC or WAAF."

"Why sure," Troy agreed, "any old waif."

"There's nothing here, that's for certain," Tully complained.

"Hey, Wilson," Troy called, remembering. "Can we go to Algiers, the four of us?"

"Why not the five of us?" the CO asked, laughing. "You can go when the rains come, that's a promise."

They roamed on, another hour, another place, or maybe they were back somewhere near the place they started. Bir-el-Alam could not have as many places as they had been in. The evening was running out in slow motion. They were an itchy bunch, built for action. They could not sit still long. A night on the town was beginning to smother and stifle them. They were not built to roll from joint to joint. They were meant for two jeeps mounted with machine guns that raced across the desert, lunging from rolling dunes toward the enemy. The scorching sun nourished them and revealed their enemy behind the glittering facade of glinting desert sands. The desert night invigorated them and cloaked their stealthy movements. Their life was swift pursuit and deadly combat and the reward of a lovely woman's caress until the long sun brought tomorrow, the enemy and the chase.

Moffitt sighed and swished the drink in his glass. He looked into it, silent and bemused. Tully raised his eyebrows at him and Hitch blinked behind his steel-rimmed glasses.

"Is it something profound, Doctor?" Troy obliged by asking. "Or would we understand?"

"Not in the least profound, old chap," Moffitt said and the amusement crept from his lips into his eyes. "I was just thinking, I'm happy that Dietrich escaped."

"You know," Troy said with the flash of a smile white in his dark face. "I've often wanted to kill that Jerry, but I'm glad too."

"Uh-huh," Tully said succinctly.

"I'm in on that," Hitch agreed and popped a bubble for emphasis.

"But why? In the name of heaven, why?" Wilson demanded, aghast.

"The desert just wouldn't be the same without him," Moffitt said and laughed.

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