I'm expecting to post chapters of The Pit of Despair Raid once or twice a week, but since the first one is so short, here's another one to keep Hubbles happy. Regrettably, it's still un-betaed and unpolished. All the usual disclaimers about me neither owning nor claiming any rights to the Rat Patrol apply. My only sadness is that they didn't make more of it. Private Langert is all mine; so's Oberleutnant Braun, but I'm not sure anyone would want him. « » indicate German dialog.
On the crest of the ridge along the east side of the depot, a swift, quiet form moved toward its goal, a parked jeep and the man guarding it. Very quietly, challenge and response were made. Hitchcock rejoined Tully by the jeeps.
"Sergeant Troy back yet?" Hitch asked.
"Nope." Tully shifted the matchstick to the other side of his mouth. "The Professor's up there, watching."
"I'll go see if I can spot the Sarge." Keeping his head down in case the faint moonlight and first traces of dawn were enough to silhouette him, Hitch scampered up the low rise and flattened himself on the ground next to Moffitt.
"Troy isn't with you?" Moffitt asked quietly.
"He had more charges to set than I did. He must have taken cover when the trucks started moving out."
"Then he should be along any moment," Moffitt said. "I hope."
The dim light of false dawn started to touch the sky. The men who had sent the trucks off were bank in their tents. The depot was quiet except for the occasional sound of canvas flapping in the rising wind. Walking his post at the perimter of the depot, the shivering Private Langert was a bundle of nerves. The shadows were moving, he knew it. That big one was moving, coming toward him. So was the other one to its rear. Yes, they were moving! Adrenaline flooded his veins. He was fully awake now, for the first time in hours. He aimed his rifle at the largest of the moving shadows and forced his stiff fingers to pull the trigger. Again. Again. The bullets blasted chunks off of the rock. He heard shouting back in the camp, and the sound of running feet. Three others of the guard detachment joined him, along with Oberleutnant Braun himself.
«What is it, soldier?» Braun asked.
«I saw something move. It must be the Americans,» the shaken private replied.
«So where are they?» Braun asked harshly. «I see no bodies out there.»
«I ... I don't know.»
«You don't know -- what?» Braun snapped.
«I don't know, SIR.» The sentry's voice rose almost to a squeak.
«You don't know because there were never any Americans out there.» Braun snatched Langert's rifle from his hands. «The Fatherland has no use for cowards who shoot at shadows.» He glared around. «Grossmann, you will finish out Private Langert's watch. Dressel, Weller, escort this fool to my tent. I will be there shortly to deal with him.» With a disgusted look, he stomped away. Langert's knees failed him. What was Braun going to do? Visions of court-martial or worse filled his head. The other two had to bodily haul him to the command tent and shove him inside.
"What's happening?" Hitch whispered when he heard the gunshots.
"Three shots. Far side of the depot, I saw the muzzle flashes." He kept his attention, and his binoculars, on the scene below. "Men running that way, I can't see how many. Damn this light." He watched for a while longer, seeing nothing. "They're coming back. Looks like they're carrying someone." Light blossomed as the flap of the command tent was opened. For a moment, Moffitt saw silhouetted two men half-dragging a third, saw them shove him roughly into the tent. A hard knot formed in his stomach.
"They have Troy," he said flatly.
"Is he hurt?"
"Not sure. Just got a glimpse of them putting him in one of the tents. Get Tully up here."
Hitchcock slithered back down the slope to the jeeps and quickly returned with the quiet private. Hitch kept close watch on the fuel depot while Moffitt filled Tully in on the situation.
"It appears that Sergeant Troy was spotted while he was leaving the camp. You heard the shots. He's alive, but captured."
"So how are we gonna get him out?" Tully asked, never once doubting that they would.
"We have just under twenty minutes until those charges blow. I want us in position before they do. It will be light enough to see by then, so this will be risky, and we'll only be able to use one jeep. One of us needs to infiltrate the camp. Logically that would be me, since you chaps don't speak German."
Moffitt brushed a patch of ground free of small stones and laid out several pebbles to represent the target area. It was barely visible in the faint moonlight.
"Here is the fuel storage, which is going to be a huge fireball very shortly. This stone is the radio bunker. These little ones flanking the north and south entrances are the machine gun nests. This stone here is the command tent, where I'll be going. I'll get to the tent and assess Troy's condition. When the explosions start, that's your cue to come in and sow some additional confusion and a few grenades. There may be guards in front of the command tent; watch out for them." He added another stone to represent a jeep and moved it from the north entrance to the command tent. "I'll be waiting to bring Troy out of the tent and get him in the jeep. I don't know what kind of shape he'll be in, so Tully, I want you on the fifty where you can lend a hand. Then we run for it and pick up the other jeep." He moved the jeep stone accordingly. "I don't expect they will be too interested in pursuing us. They'll have a lot more on their minds right about then."
"Let's do it, Sarge," Hitch said, ignoring Moffitt's wince at the title.
"Very good. You had better leave the second jeep by that hill to the north. That's far enough away that we will be able to tell if we are being followed."
With that, and a whispered "Good luck" from Hitch and Tully, Moffitt slipped off into the fading darkness, headed into the enemy camp. The other two ran for their jeeps and prepared for their part in the raid.
Following the route Troy had taken earlier, Moffitt moved from one bit of cover to another. Once he was within the guarded perimeter he could move a bit faster. Handy thing, the way guards looked out, not in. He checked his watch. Six minutes until the explosions. He ducked around a tent, clinging to the protective shadows, and came up behind the command tent. The rear flaps were tied shut. A quick flick of his knife solved that minor problem and, pistol in hand, he slipped inside.
In the dim light of the tent's lantern, he saw a figure hunched on a folding camp stool, his back to Moffitt. His eyes narrowed. That wasn't Troy. Not unless Troy had bleached his hair and joined the Afrika Korps. Two silent steps put him close to the other man, who was apparently absorbed in his own thoughts and oblivious to Moffitt's presence.
«Be silent,» Moffitt said in German, very quietly. The other man leaped to his feet, knocking over his stool, and spun around to stare wide-eyed at the intruder -- or, more precisely, at the gun in the intruder's hand. Wisely, Klaus Langert remained silent and kept his hands away from anything that might appear threatening.
«Where is the American?» Moffitt hissed.
«American? What American?» Klaus looked bewildered. «There was only a rock.»
«Rock?» Moffitt was starting to feel as confused as the German. «No, where is the American they brought in here?»
«There was no American. There was only a rock. I am to wait for Oberleutnant Braun, because I fired at a rock. He said there were no Americans here. But you are here.»
«I'm British,» Moffitt corrected rather testily. «You shot a rock?»
«Yes, and Oberleutnant Braun is going to send me to the Eastern front, or, or somewhere worse. Except you are going to kill me.» He was shaking. Moffitt took a good look at the man ... boy, rather. One of the replacements they had seen arriving here two days ago. Was he any older than 16?
«It was you they brought into this tent?»
«Yes.» His eyes were wide and frightened. Then he gathered himself together and stood straight and defiant. «I will die like a soldier for the Fatherland.»
«Turn around,» Moffitt ordered. Klaus glared at him and did not move. Moffitt sighed; the boy obviously expected to be shot in the back. «I'm not going to kill you,» he told the German. Shoulders back, bravado covering fear, the other turned. Moffitt's hand lashed out and Klaus dropped bonelessly to the floor.
Moffitt dragged the unconscious German to the back of the tent where he would be less obvious to someone coming in unexpectedly. Almost as an afterthought, he disarranged some of the papers on the field desk. They'd know he'd been here anyway, so he may as well add a bit of further confusion. He moved to the tent flap to await Tully and Hitch just as the first of the explosions rocked the depot.
Right on cue, Moffitt heard the chatter of the fifty-cal and a pair of grenade explosions. The cavalry, as Troy would say, were here. He looked out. The jeep came to a stop in front of the tent. Tully was on the fifty laying down suppressing fire, not that it was much needed. The Germans had plenty else to worry about. Moffitt leaped into the passenger's seat of the jeep.
"Go! Go!" he yelled to Hitch. The driver slammed the jeep into gear and swung it around to head back the way they'd come.
"Where's the Sarge?" he shouted back as he put the accelerator to the floor.
"Not here!"
The jeep tore back through the depot spitting jacketed lead. Moffitt had a Thompson in his hands and loosed a few rounds at any Germans who took too much of an interest in the escaping jeep. Some intrepid German opened up with the gun on a halftrack; fortunately, his aim was off. Tully's aim with a grenade was not. Moffitt felt the heat from the blazing fuel dump on his face, then on his back as they sped away. When they finally reached the freedom of the open desert, there was no pursuit. Hitch slowed to a safer speed.
"What happened?" he asked Moffitt.
"Wild goose chase. That wasn't Troy in the tent. Some green Jerry private getting written up for shooting at shadows."
"Then where's Troy?"
"I don't know."
Tully looked down from his position in the back. "Sarge, since he didn't make it to the rendezvous and he wasn't in the camp, there's only one place he coulda been."
Moffitt felt the cold knot return to his stomach. Tully was right. There was only one place Troy could have been that would have kept him from rejoining the others.
"The trucks," Moffitt said.
"The trucks that just blew up."
"He could still be alive. He could have gotten out anywhere along the road," Hitchcock said, as if expecting someone to disagree.
"We'll find him," Moffitt said firmly. "Hitchcock, you take the other jeep. We'll parallel the road, get to wherever that convoy is as fast as we can. You follow us, take it slower, and look for Troy if he's out there. We'll keep looking until we find him."