The Rat Patrol 6 - Desert Masqueraade Read online

  1

  The bombardment at dawn shook Colonel Dan Wilson from his cot. Wearily the tight-faced commander of the Allied armored column stumbled across the sand floor of the HQ tent and stood at the opened flap watching the red-white bursts that ignited the ashen sky. The whoosh and thunder of the shells from the ridge seemed more intense this morning than usual. Vivid flames streaked across the flannel-colored sky that had just begun to lighten. The desert shuddered and belched hot sand. He glanced swiftly from left to right. In slit trenches along and behind a dozen halftracks dispersed in a wide-angled V a hundred yards in front of him, only a few men were stirring. Most slept on, unmindful of the rock-ridged hill several miles away that bloomed with muzzle flame and echoed the pounding of artillery. No more than they any longer awakened at the parachuted flares that showered the nights with light.

  The situation was impossible, Wilson thought angrily. That was Jerry up there on the ridge throwing thunder and lightning at Wilson's column and he couldn't do a thing about it. Not that the enemy was achieving anything with his flares and artillery except to assure himself that the Allies hadn't tossed caution to the wind and sent the armor charging at the position. Wilson had tried it once. He would not again until he knew a great deal more than he now did.

  Across and well above the sandy floor of the tawny desert, Hauptmann Hans Dietrich of the Afrika Korps was secure in his strategic position. A spiney thrust of rock jutted northward toward the sea. To the south the ridge dropped into a salt marsh that glittered for fifty impassable miles. Dietrich held the pass and could not be flanked.

  Dietrich had been beaten and battered at his stronghold of Sidi Abd deep in the Libyan desert. He had fled up through the swirling sands with the Allied armor pounding hard on the clanking treads of the Jerry column. Scarcely pausing to refill with gasoline and water, Wilson had denied Dietrich any opportunity to regroup to make a stand or maneuver to flank. It had not been an orderly withdrawal for Dietrich. The Jerries had been routed and the uncharted desert had been strewn with the shredded remnants of Dietrich's might—Jerry armor and vehicles discarded when they could push ahead no longer, Wilson remembered bitterly. Exhausted and unable to continue running, the Jerry column had sprawled at last within grasp on the ridge. Or so Wilson had thought.

  Dietrich had nearly trapped Wilson here. Precipitous as the flight had been, it had not been aimless. Wilson grimly admitted that Dietrich had led him into this well-fortified position. The sloping approach to the ridge was heavily mined and backed by a ledge of mortars. Infantry and machinegun positions were burrowed in horizontal shelves above and gun emplacements of 75s and rocket launchers were dug in at the top. Trying to take such a fixed position with tanks would be murder.

  He'd very nearly been caught in the trap, Wilson thought with slow, burning resentment as the Jerry shells continued to shriek across the sands in the early morning. He'd watched Dietrich's Mark IVs lumber up the grade through the pass no more than half an hour ahead, and he'd sent a flying wedge, a V of a dozen Shermans, in hot pursuit. The hill and the ridge had been quiet as the tanks moved up with his close friend, Major Gus Runstead, tank commander, on the point. The Shermans ground toward the foot of the slope unchallenged, and Runstead's tank started up the grade with the others fanned out. An explosion erupted on the grade over which the Mark IVs had passed only half an hour earlier. Runstead's tank shuddered to a canting halt, its right tread blown. The grade and slope had been mined, and the Jerries, undetected, had used a safe passage through the field. To the left of Runstead's tank, a second Sherman struck a mine, plunged forward on its nose and burst into flame. From above, mortars began lobbing shells at the cripples and the 75s on top opened direct fire on the phalanx. Runstead's tank took an armor-piercing shell through its bowels and exploded. Far to the right, a third Sherman went up in a blast of smoke and fire. The Shermans raked the hillside with their 75s but could not dig out the enemy nor withstand his barrage. Wilson had withdrawn his assault force, but not before another Sherman had been put out of action.

  Dietrich's flight had ended on the ridge. His tanks were up there, supplementing the emplaced artillery, ready to pounce when the Jerry column had regained its strength. It infuriated Wilson. He was impotent. He had withdrawn his own armor on the barren sand sea beyond the reach of the enemy.

  First, Wilson had a V of Shermans a hundred yards apart but ready to converge in formation—thirty Sherman medium tanks with 75 mm. cannon and .30 caliber machine guns. The five-man crews were on alert in slit trenches beside their weapons. Then there were a dozen M-15 halftracks each mounting an automatic 37 mm. gun and two .50 caliber antiaircraft machine guns. Behind the halftracks was the communications van and his HQ tent. To the rear were dozens of supply trucks, which had multiplied until Wilson's position looked like a motor pool. They were in a vulnerable position and at the first indication that Dietrich was coming off the ridge to fight, he'd send them back to the base at Bir el Alam, a hundred and fifty miles to the southeast. Meanwhile he clung to the idea that somehow he'd find a way to crash through the fortifications. He'd need the trucks to cart the supplies if the column ever got Dietrich on the run again.

  It enraged Wilson to think that for once he had supplies in sufficient quantity plus superior armored strength and could not engage the enemy. Actually the advantage was the enemy's. The situation was a standoff until Dietrich felt he was strong enough to come out in the open or chose to withdraw his armor with his rear protected at the ridge to the main force of the Afrika Korps, which was engaged with the British Eighth Army somewhere near Tunisia.

  Until now Dietrich appeared to be licking his wounds and waiting. Wilson occasionally was permitted the use of a light observation plane, which flew in from the base at Bir el Alam. It would land on a strip which had been smoothed on the desert by hand. Hopefully, and to give the men something to do, the strip, located behind the supply trucks, had been extended until it was long enough to take a B-25 medium bomber. The observation plane would refuel and circle the ridge beyond the reach of the 75s. A few bombers over the ridge would have been more useful, but Wilson had been told they could not be spared for this action. Maybe a containing action here was all that was necessary in this campaign, Wilson thought angrily, but the trouble was that it was he who was being contained.

  Much more frequently than Wilson was permitted the use of the observation craft, Dietrich managed to get two ME-109s, probably from Tunis. The square-wingtipped fighters would swoop over the ridge with their 20 mm. cannon hammering. Although Wilson's .50 caliber antiaircraft machine guns had yet to score a kill, the concentrated fire from the halftracks did drive the Messerschmitts far enough upstairs so that to date the only casualties from their forays had been the canvas top of one truck and a water barrel.

  It was, Wilson thought as the sun began to touch the sky with blue and gold, a hell of a way to fight a war. A barrage of mortar shells cratered the desert more than a mile away and the ridge went quiet. Time out for breakfast, he thought with sardonic humor. Jerry probably would remain unprotesting until the sudden desert dusk dropped over this strange battlefield.

  He watched as his men began to crawl from their holes, shredding waxed containers from rations to build small fires. They'd heat water for powdered coffee, prepare powdered eggs and heat some potted meat. Breakfast in the lingering cool of morning was the one hot meal they ate. The rest of the day they sought what little shade their vehicles afforded, moving with the sun and sweating it out. A stinking way to fight a war, he repeated to himself, turning back into the tent as he saw his first sergeant, Dewey Peilowski, shambling toward HQ.

  The tank crews were growing flabby-minded
with inactivity, he thought as he washed in a metal basin on a wooden crate and pulled on battle fatigues. At first they'd been enraged that Dietrich had turned a trick on them, but now they no longer seemed to care. The desert was like that. Unless you were fighting for your life, it sapped your will to win. Even Peilowski was going to pot. He'd begged to come along, see some action, bang off some shells. He'd been tired of HQ and wanted to flex his muscles with the men. Now since they'd been here on this desert flat, tough old Army man Peilowski had voluntarily taken on the duties of an orderly. Just to have something to do.

  Peilowski bumbled into the tent. Already his fair but sunburned face was sweaty and his blue eyes were dull. He brought in a can of warm water for Wilson's morning shave, nodded and stepped just outside the tent to prepare breakfast for both of them. It made Wilson sick.

  "Another day of the same," Peilowski said heavily as he handed Wilson a canteen cup of tepid coffee and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. "This is one time I guess even the Rat Patrol can't help."

  "I'm afraid you guess right," Wilson snapped. Either you gave way to torpor or your temper got short.

  Wilson's temper was short when the Rat Patrol was mentioned. They were his four-man army. Sergeants Sam Troy and Jack Moffitt and Privates Mark Hitchcock and Tully Pettigrew were undisciplined mavericks who wrote their own rules and conducted their own brand of warfare against the enemy. They were his long-range penetration commando group. With their two jeeps mounting .50 caliber machine guns and their unconventional assortment of weapons and explosives, they'd harassed Dietrich everywhere in the desert. He wasn't angry with them. He was enraged at this intolerable situation where he didn't dare use them.

  He wanted to send them on a mission. If he knew the pattern of the minefield, the safe passage through it, the positions of the mortars and machine guns, the locations of the gun emplacements and the dispersement of the armor, he would risk a massed assault. It was the kind of mission they'd cheer. And once behind Dietrich's lines, they'd get the information. But Dietrich expected them. He was waiting for them. Even though they started from far behind the Allied position under cover of night, and whether they approached Jerry from land or sea or even dropped in from the sky, they'd find a reception committee. The Rat Patrol had been the weapon Wilson had used to defeat Dietrich on too many occasions, and Wilson wasn't going to risk losing them now. Wilson tossed off his coffee, strapped his twin pearl-handled pistols about his waist and clapped the white enameled helmet with the golden eagle over his close-cropped gray hair. He bent from the hips to leave the tent, stood and braced his shoulders, ready to make the tedious morning tour of inspection. His jaw set at his own attitude. He hadn't realized the lethargy had reached him.

  From the back of the communications van between the tent and the V of halftracks, Corporal John Locke, his carrot-topped radio operator, hopped down and trotted toward HQ. Wilson halted. There was urgency in Locke's movements, and moreover, Locke was on duty. It was unlike him to leave the Command Set. There were a dozen men within call from the van who could have brought the message Locke had folded in his fist.

  "It came in security code," Locke said, standing as tall as Wilson himself. Wilson felt a tingle of excitement as he took the penciled message. Only Locke and himself—not even Peilowski or the executive officer at base—had access to the security code. Locke had been given special clearance. "I've decoded it and destroyed the original," he added.

  The message was for Eyes Only. Locke watched closely as Wilson read it, automatically reached for his Zippo, lighted the paper and dropped it to the sand when the paper flamed. When Wilson had ground the charred bits into the ground, Locke turned and strolled back to the van.

  The message which Wilson had destroyed to Locke's satisfaction had read: New missile launcher designed for area saturation bombardment arriving with ordnance expert your position for testing within week. Prepare landing facilities for C-47. Utmost security and secrecy essential.

  Wilson turned swiftly back into the tent. His eyes were narrow and his lips were thin. His mind was chewing at the message. Peilowski already was at his typewriter, preparing to occupy himself during another day of duty with the tanks by battling with the forms.

  "Get out a work detail," Wilson said abruptly. "Prepare the landing strip for a C-47."

  Peilowski's jaw slackened and he looked mutely at Wilson for a moment. "We already done it," he protested. "We fixed it for a B-25, it'll take a C-47."

  "Do it again," Wilson growled. "Go over it foot by foot. Make sure it's smooth and packed."

  "Yes, sir," Peilowski said, and a startled look leaped into his eyes.

  Unmindful of his first sergeant's uncomprehending stare, Wilson sat on the edge of his cot, gray eyes half closed in concentration. He considered the wording and implication of the message: a new weapon, a missile launcher designed for area saturation bombardment. Since this would be a test, there probably would be only one, no more than two of the launchers at the most and a limited number of missiles. He wondered what the size and capabilities of the missiles would be, the area that could be hit with saturation bombardment. The main thing was to know the strategic target area. If he knew where to direct the test firing, this new weapon might provide a breakthrough and safe passage for his armor to the ridge. He could push his column through immediately following the firing and take Dietrich completely by surprise. It was an opportunity he could not afford to lose.

  "Peilowski!" he barked at his thick-backed first sergeant, who was shuffling from the tent with his clipboard under his arm. "Right now, at once, before you round up that work detail, find Troy and send him to me. On the double. I think I have an assignment for the Rat Patrol."

  2

  Two hundred yards behind the HQ tent and two hundred yards in front of the rows of canvas topped supply trucks, four signs marked the corners of a splotchy tan patch on the sandy carpet of the desert. The signs read: OFF LIMITS. They marked the area covered by the camouflage nets which the Rat Patrol had spliced together and used to roof the hole they'd dug and into which they'd driven the jeeps. They were not particularly concerned with concealing the jeeps. In fact, they had them out in sight of the Jerries almost every day. The hidden hollow had merely given them an excuse to provide themselves with quarters that afforded some protection from the sun during the scorching days and shelter from the cold at night. The jeeps were parked well apart. In the ten feet that separated the deadly little vehicles with their big smashing weapons, Sergeants Sam Troy and Jack Moffitt and Privates Tully Pettigrew and Mark Hitchcock sprawled, each wrapped in a GI blanket, asleep and for the moment unaware of the war.

  At the far end of the burrow, Hitch rolled over, sat up stretching, crawled to one of the jeeps, and pulled his red-topped French Foreign Legion cap from the front seat. He fished a piece of bubble gum from inside the cap, put it into his mouth, enclosed his face with steel-rimmed GI glasses, and clapped the black-billed cap on the back of his red-haired head. He was ready to face the day.

  "Tully, you awake?" he asked quietly.

  "Just on one side," the flat-cheeked Kentuckian drawled.

  "Let's run out a jeep, drive to the ocean and have a swim," Hitch said in a whisper. "This place is beginning to bug me."

  "You don't reckon Troy will have a catnip fit?" Tully asked softly, sitting up and digging in the pocket of his shirt for a matchstick. He put it between his teeth and rolled it to one side of his mouth.

  At the other end of the cavern, Troy lay with his arms behind his head, studying without interest the patterns in the camouflage nets. "Why not?" Troy said without moving. "The Jerries are bound to see us take off. It should give them something to think about. Maybe stir them up. Maybe they'll send a patrol after us. Maybe we can get this war under way again."

  "Splendid thought," Moffitt said with Cambridge in his voice. He'd been detached from the Scots Greys for special desert service with the Rat Patrol. He sat up and adjusted the dark beret on his head
. There was a faintly amused smile on his lips. "We can all use some ablutionary activity."

  "That isn't against regulations?" Hitch asked with mock concern in his voice.

  "You know ablutions are against regulations," Troy said with a tight smile. He sat up with the others. "Otherwise you and Tully wouldn't be conspiring."

  "My, my," Tully drawled.

  "Do we tell the colonel we're taking off?" Hitch wanted to know.

  "No!" Troy said sharply. He reached beside him for the Australian bush hat that was as much a part of his uniform as his boots. "He'd figure we were up to some kind of caper on our own and tell us to stay put."

  "Then we'll be AWOL," Tully moaned in despair. "That'll be worse than abluting."

  "Nuts," Hitch said, kneeling to roll his blanket. He tossed it in the back of the jeep he drove. "Let's tear down the ceiling and take off before Peilowski puts us on a detail policing up the area."

  "Perhaps we can indulge in a spot of fishing," Moffitt said, stooping and crawling up the sand ramp at the end of the cavern. "I've always fancied kippers for breakfast."

  "A fine thing," Troy said disgustedly, following Moffitt up to the desert. "Breakfast on the beach. I never thought the Rat Patrol would come to this."

  Troy looked toward the inactive halftracks and tanks where men still drowsed. It was like a rest camp. He was fed up with Wilson's do-nothing attitude. So Dietrich had them in a temporary bind. That Jerry hadn't stopped them yet. The thing to do was smash at him where he least expected it instead of sitting back and waiting for him to make the first move. The trouble with Wilson was he didn't have any imagination. Troy looked up toward the ridge where all seemed peaceful in the serene cool of the blue early morning. Wilson was playing the fool. Dietrich wasn't the type to sit quietly in a secure position. He was up to something and Wilson ought to know what it was. Instead of going to the ocean, the Rat Patrol should load the jeeps with charges and speed south around the salt marsh. If nothing else, at least they could create a diversion at the enemy's rear and in the resulting confusion Wilson's armor should be able to penetrate at some area.