Disclaimer: I do not own these guys. Only the desert wind does. I'm only getting paid with the joy that comes with doing something I love.
Busy Day At The Office
by tallsunsine12
Chapter 1 Kidnapped!
A/N: Thanks to AliasCWN and texaslass2000 for helping me over writer's block with some friendly suggestions. If it wasn't for them, the story would have stayed just one scene. No writer likes to be that stumped!
Troy was shuffling papers around, looking for a slip of paper with a colonel's name on it. He was supposed to address the letter he was diligently scratching out to this man, but his name and address were lost in a welter of other papers and forms. Troy's unkempt desk reflected his work load. He had to approve requisitions, issue orders to the units in the field and read/sign reports from team leaders. He had lost a cup of coffee in this jumble some time ago, and it would be cold now.
His fountain pen began to show signs of desertion, so he got out the bottle of ink from the top drawer of the desk. He had found that bottle yesterday on his first foray through the desk. Today, he was only glad he hadn't moved it at the time, or it'd be lost, too. Unscrewing the metal cap from the glass ink bottle, he then turned to pick up the fountain pen. It had disappeared. Shoving his papers aside, Troy kept looking for that lost pen, then he looked up as a tall man followed by two younger men entered the room.
"Hi, Sarge," said Hitch. "What're you doing?"
"I'm looking for something, Hitch. A fountain pen. It's in these papers somewhere."
Moffitt stood back with a bemused smile on his face while the two young privates, Tully and Hitch, went up to the desk and began shuffling the papers right and left, looking for their Sarge's lost pen. A few papers fluttered to the floor and Moffitt bent down to pick them up. He held them until it was safe to throw them back into the pile on the desk. Which he did, willy-nilly.
The pen had rolled off the mound of papers to the floor and Tully stooped to pick it up.
"Look what I found," he exclaimed, holding up the once-missing object.
"Give me that!" Troy grabbed for it. "I've got to finish this letter, if I could only find it again!"
Moffitt looked under the desk and, sure enough, a hand-scrawled letter was on the floor. He had to get on his knees this time to pick it up.
Standing with some effort, he asked, "Is this what you're looking for, Troy?"
Troy looked up with impatient eyes and nodded. "Yeah. It's a letter to what's his name, a colonel somebody or other. That was the first thing I lost, before I lost the pen."
"It seems like you're overwhelmed," said Moffitt. "Can we help in any way?"
"You can tell me what you want here. I thought you and Lt. Perkins were going out on a recon mission."
"We're back. I just have to write a report and turn it into you."
"You might as well throw it away, I've got so many reports to read. It seems all of you desert rats get back at the same time, then load my desk up with reports!"
"Can I help you with that?" asked Moffitt, ignoring his whining and referring to his pen-filling task.
Troy had lifted the small lever on the body of the fountain pen and was holding it up before his eyes. "I haven't refilled one of these since I was in high school."
"Dip the nib part in the ink, not too far. Wait ten seconds for the pen to fill and then close the lever. It's that simple. Don't forget to wipe off the stray ink."
Like a scientist with a highly explosive substance, Troy dipped the pen in, moving his lips as he counted ten seconds, and then pulled out the pen, closing the lever. After that, he took up one of his papers—he didn't know which document it belonged to—and wiped off the pen.
"There, that wasn't so hard, was it?"
"Don't baby me, Moffitt. I'll assign the three of you and Lt. Perkins to G Sector where Dietrich's base is."
"Any word on Capt. Boggs' condition?" asked Hitch, fumbling around with the cap and the glass jar of ink. He couldn't quite screw it back on. Suddenly, the ink jar had fallen to the desk and scattered blue ink to kingdom come. Most of Troy's papers were sodden with the stuff.
"Ah, Hitch, see what you've done. I know that I'll never find the colonel's name and address now."
"But we still have the letter," said Moffitt, holding it up from the sudden melee at the desk. The two young drivers were scrambling to sop up the ink with anything they could find, including more papers.
Troy just held his head in his hands and massaged his temples. "I knew it was going to be one of those days," he said. "I just knew it." He blew out a huge breath and turned fatalistically to regard the still-frantic efforts of the two privates. "Do you see a slip of paper with a name and address on it?" he asked, not really expecting them to find it.
Hitch was the discoverer this time. He handed a small slip of paper with an inky corner to Troy. "It looks like a name and address," he said.
"It is," said Troy. "I wrote it quickly at this morning's briefing." He looked at the three faces above him. "Are you going to the mess?"
"We thought we'd invite you," said Moffitt. "Unless you're too buried in paperwork?"
"Gotta get out of here," said Troy. "I just gotta. This place is killin' me. I'm with you."
He hastily got up from the ruin of what was once the tidiest desk in all of Libya. Capt. Boggs was neat as a pin and so well-organized he could have found the proverbial needle in a haystack—providing he built the haystack. Looking at it, Troy shook his head and slapped Moffitt on the arm. "Outta here!" he said.
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Coming back to their quarters on base that night after being 'out on the town,' Tully Pettigrew and Mark 'Hitch' Hitchcock were talking freely about the fight in the bar they'd just left. Knowing they had an early start to make tomorrow, they'd kept out of the fray, only downing their one drink apiece before leaving. Their sergeants, Troy and Moffitt, were visiting with Capt. Boggs in the hospital. He had sprained his hip in a jeep rollover. With other bruises and cuts, he was lucky not to have been sent to Benghazi, three hundred miles away, for further observation.
When they were passing an open alley leading to another street, they heard a commotion and a woman's scream. Looking at each other, they decided to enter the alley and see what was going on. They entered cautiously at first, but then another scream like the first made them speed up, stopping only when they were at the center of the alley.
The long-robed woman who had twice screamed could be seen fleeing into the dim light of the parallel street, while before them stood two Arab men in long djellabas who had appeared out of the shadows of the buildings and into their path. Each man was circling a knife before him, the other hand held high for balance.
These two men expertly separated the two privates and each man took one in his own orbit, forcing each of them to focus only on his own attacker. That divided the force Tully and Hitch might have used together against the Arabs. With a few deft moves of the knife, Tully's assailant put him into a chokehold, the knife inches away from his throat. Tully didn't move, but Hitch was having better luck. He tossed his Arab over his back and slugged the man across the jaw when he tried to rise again.
The fight continued, Hitch and the Arab trading blows and kicks, the knife skittering off into the dark. But with each success of Hitch's, Tully's man backed him up to the other street. Finally, two more men stepped into the alley and now the three of them forced Tully's hands behind his back, tying them, and then manhandled him to an old car. He was thrust inside and the car rattled away.
Hitch finally knocked out his opponent and turned to look for Tully, seeing no one now but the Arab he'd fought lying unconscious on the ground. Bleeding from a scrape over his left eye, not able to see that well, he ran down the alley and looked in either direction. There! An old, pre-war jalopy was flying away down the street. It was the only thing moving at that time of night, so unless they were walking, he figured Tully and his attackers had to be in that car.
Exhausted from his fight, he leaned back against the wall of one of the buildings bordering the alley and just closed his eyes. "Oh, Tully," he could have been heard to murmur, if there had been anyone nearby.
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When Troy and Moffitt heard the news, Hitch catching up with them as they were returning from the hospital, all three ran to the alley. Now since the Arab that Hitch had knocked out was no longer there, they proceeded on to the second street, where Hitch had seen the fleeing car.
"I saw an old Mercedes, Sarge, black, I think. Dark, anyhow. It was going about as fast as it could down this street."
"Hitch, how are the jeeps?" said Troy. "Are they ready?"
"They're all gassed up for tomorrow's recon mission. Radiators full, too. All minor repairs taken care of."
"Then let's go."
"You're in charge now, remember, Troy?" asked Moffitt, throwing cold water on Troy's idea of going along on this rescue. "I'll go find Lt. Perkins. He should be in his quarters right now."
"No need to wake Perkins. He needs his beauty sleep."
"Troy, you're duty is here, taking care of all of the units, not just ours."
"My duty's with my men, Doc. Hitch, here's what I want you to do," he said. "Go to the hospital and let the night nurse know what's happened to Tully. Tell her I went along, too."
"You're not taking me, Sarge?"
"With that bad scrape on your head, no."
"He's had worse, Troy," said Moffitt. "I can take care of a scratch like that easily."
"I'm not staying back, Sarge, while Tully's in trouble. I'll go by myself, if I have to."
"Then we'd have two men AWOL," muttered Moffitt.
"What about you, Moffitt? If you go, wouldn't you be AWOL, too?"
"No, Troy. On the contrary, I'd be following orders. Yours."
Troy laughed. "Get the jeeps, both of you. I'll leave a note for Boggs' clerk. He'll see it first thing tomorrow."
While Moffitt and Hitch sped off for the motor pool, Troy raced the other way to the office. He found an inked-up piece of paper and wrote a quick note on it, then left it on the aide's desk under his stapler. Glancing once more at Boggs' devastated desk, thinking of how he'd feel if someone did that to one of the jeeps, he hurried on out into the desert night again. Moffitt and Hitch were already there. He climbed in beside Hitch and said, "Shake it!"
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Tully, who was bareheaded tonight, his combat helmet left in his jeep, was forced out of the car at gunpoint. Only now was his bayonet knife taken away. Keeping a sharp watch on the German Lugar in the Arab's hand, he backed up a couple of steps from the car.
"I don't know why you're doing this," he said, twisting in his bonds, "but you've got the wrong man."
At a gesture of the pistol, he was herded over to a horse, one of several brought there by two other Arabs he'd never seen before. The first Arab untied him and thrust the cord into his belt, for later. Then he climbed on the horse and lowered a hand to pull Tully up. A moonlit ride on the desert—it was almost something he might have dreamed of, until now.
As Tully watched, the driver of the car turned it around on the sand road and headed back to the Allied base at Ras Tanura, while the other Arabs mounted their horses. The desert wind was up tonight, and the Arabs' robes billowed outward over the horses' flanks as they sped across the nearest dunes. Tully held on with both hands around the Arab's waist, but he wasn't sure he liked this mode of travel. Speeding jeeps were more to his liking.
A number of miles were covered before the Arabs came to a small waterhole buffered by three scraggly palms. Tully practically fell off the horse when it came to a halt at the water. He backed away from it and then did the only thing he could. He turned tail and ran. He knew the route back to base and he was taking it. He also knew that the Arabs, all four of them, wouldn't be far behind. He ran and ran, his tortured lungs heaving. He was glad that it was dark now, and getting colder. With the sun a-blazing, he couldn't have run so hard.
He heard the sound of galloping hooves and took a chance on looking around. When he did, he stumbled over a sand hill and went head over heels. Suddenly, without warning, there were the giant hooves of Berber horses stomping the ground around him. He twisted this way and that, rolling aside and then back again as the men deliberately tried to panic him with their mounts. Finally, after they backed off, he came to his knees, covered in sand. Shaking the sand out of his hair, he spit and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.
Shakily, he rose to his feet and found his hands tied behind him again. Then he was marched back to the oasis and made to sit down at one of the palms. His hands were untied, then tied around the rough trunk of the tree. He laid his head back on it and blew out, watching them go in order to prepare a fire for a short break.
"Water?" he called, wriggling in his ropes.
The lead Arab, on whose horse he had been riding, reached up to his horse and brought over a skin of water. Uncapping the horn mouthpiece, he tilted it up for Tully to drink. He drank long and hard. It might be the last water he'd see in a while. After that, he nodded thanks. Sgt. Troy—Sarge—had always taught the two privates to be as polite as they could with their captors. You never knew when it would pay off.
The Arab said nothing. He went over to the warmth of the fire, sitting down cross-legged and turning to his right to talk to one of his men. Tully didn't know if they were talking about him or not. Doc—Moffitt—had taught him some rudimentary German, but Arab was still beyond him. If he ever got back to base, he'd have to start his lessons in Arabic, too.
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With the jeeps all prepared for the morning's recon with medical supplies, rations, gas and water, it had been a cinch to just take off and leave the base at a moment's notice. After twenty miles or thereabout, the jeeps were still on hard road, but that would soon change and they'd be driving on soft desert sand, though that wasn't a problem for these tough, four-wheel drive vehicles.
While the headlamps made the road a waxy, white hue, Troy asked Hitch, for the third time, "They didn't say anything? No hint of where they were going?"
Hitch shook his head, topped by his red kepi, over the engine's roar. "No, Sarge, nothing. Just the fight. Then they took Tully with them."
Troy looked ahead again. "What's that?"
It was the car in which Tully had been whisked off base. Now it was returning from meeting up with the Arab horsemen.
"It's a staff car, Sarge—do you think it might be the same one, coming back?"
"I don't know. Let's intercept it and see. Give it all she's got."
For Moffitt following behind in his jeep, the jeep he usually shared with Tully, Troy gave a signal that they were going to pursue the unknown vehicle up ahead. Moffitt nodded and sped up as Hitch floored the accelerator pedal.
The car, driven by the lone Arab, knew these jeeps—and the men in them. He had no wish to die tonight, so he veered off the road.
"Like taking candy from a baby," murmured Troy. "After him, Hitch!"
Hitch was already turning off the road onto the sand and with the Willys jeep, he was soon outstripping the older make car, its round black fenders soon covered in dust.
Once they had the car in between them, Troy and Hitch circled back and Troy had a gun on the driver as soon as he came to a stop. The driver raised his hands in the air and in no time found Troy's submachine gun in his face through the window.
"Get out, slowly," Troy said, opening the car door with his left hand and quickly gesturing to the ground with the gun in his right.
Moffitt had gotten into the rear of his jeep to mount a defense with the fifty, or .50 caliber machine gun, in case there were others out and about on this cold night.
The driver, frightened of the three American commandos who had to be angry over his capture of their friend, came out slowly, hands high.
"Where's the man you took tonight from town?" No response. "Moffitt!"
Moffitt repeated the question in Arabic, and the driver of the car turned his head slightly to indicate the dunes all around them. He never said a word.
"He's showing us which way they went, Troy."
"I get the gesture. Thanks, Moffitt." Troy pointed his gun to the east. "They went that away? Just nod your head."
He put the gun for effect up under the Arab's chin. Turbaned, robed and sandaled, the man nodded, but then Hitch, still sitting in the jeep in the driver's seat, noted a ring. The jeep's headlights bounced off it.
"Look, Sarge. He's wearing a death's head ring. The SS!"
Troy grabbed up the Arab by his robe and pushed him against the car. "Where'd you get that ring?"
One more slam against the car and Troy had the driver ready to talk. "I'm not SS. Bad men. I buy ring in market. I'm only Arab runner. I drive for Hamdi. He took your man."
"Why! Why did he take him?" Troy had changed his position and now his forearm rested against the man's neck, pressing on his voice box. He let up slightly so he could talk.
"Bounty."
Hitch stepped out of the jeep now, grabbing a tommy gun out of its holster next to his seat. Coming to stand directly beside the Arab, peering down into his face, he asked, "You took Tully for money?"
"Back off, Hitch," said Troy. "I'll take care of this." Addressing the driver again, he asked, "Where were they taking him?"
"To meet Germans."
"You don't think—" began Hitch. "You don't think it's Dietrich who's paying the bounty, maybe hoping to get us all?"
"What's the German's name? Come on!" Troy urged, pressing his hand deeper into the man's throat. "Out with it!"
"That, praise Allah, I do not know. He is German, that is all I know."
"You say they went up over there?" He pointed back to the dunes again. The Arab nodded. "Where? Any name?"
"Dar el-Tanri," said the hoarse man. When Troy let him go, the frightened man felt of his throat. Still all there.
"What can we do with him?" called Moffitt from the jeep.
"I know what I'd like to do—" said Hitch, raising his own Thompson.
"You do that, Hitch," said Troy, "and we'll never get another word out of him."
Hitch acknowledged the wisdom of Troy's statement with a nod, but still kept his gun up.
"How much of a head start do they have?" asked Troy, still clenching the man's robe in his fist.
"About three hours. They ride fast horses."
"Where are they stopping for the night? Horses can't run forever."
The Arab smiled. At last, he could say something to please the desert commando, who might take his fist out of his robe and let him breathe again.
"A small place. Three palms. Very little water."
"In the same direction as Dar el-Tanri?" The Arab nodded and Troy began to let the man go. "It's almost twenty miles back to the base. You have water?"
Looking dubious, the Arab nodded again. Looking down at Troy, he said, "I have water."
Troy stepped back, but still didn't release the man all the way. "Then I suggest you get it and start walking. When you get there, turn yourself over to the MPs. If you don't," he raised the gun in the man's face with his arm outstretched. "I'll find you and blow your head off."
The Arab had no doubt he would. "I get my water," he said. Troy let him go and watched him turn into the window of the car, but then knocked him aside, fearing he was pulling out a gun.
"Hitch, check in there and find the water. We've got to get a move on."
Hitch barged past the Arab without saying sorry and pulled out a water skin from the car. Meeting him eye to eye, he shoved it into the man's hands, grabbed the key out of his hand, and then pushed him off. The Arab spun away, turned once to say something, but then just shook his head and started walking. It would be well past sunup before he saw the streets of the Arab quarter again. For what he was being paid tonight, if he was paid, that is, after fouling up so badly, he could get an honest job and make a better living.
"I better gas the jeeps up," said Hitch, throwing the key as far as he could into the sand. "And give 'em a drink, too."
"Be quick about it, Hitch. Moffitt, do you know where this oasis is?" Troy asked when the waddling Arab was out of earshot, looking up at him on the back of the jeep.
"I'm familiar with it. About five miles to the east. It's nearly dried up at this time."
Troy unstrapped a jerrycan of water from the back of Moffitt's jeep and went to lift the hood. "Keep watch, Moffitt."
When the tasks had been completed, Troy and Hitch threw themselves back in their jeep and Moffitt descended from the fifty to the driver's seat of his, then both jeeps sped off across the sands, leaving the road at this point rather than further on. Troy hoped to cut a diagonal line to the place where the oasis lay.
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The Arab leader stood up from the fire and stretched, then he reached into a bag hanging on his hip and pulled out a piece of flatbread. He broke it in two and walked over to the prisoner, untying him and then handing him the bread. Tully, famished after his adventure, thanked the man and made short work of the dry bread. The Arab handed him the skin of water again and he drank to wash it down.
"Thanks," he murmured, coughing a little on the water.
"Welcome," said the Arab. "You are guest here."
Tully smiled, looking up at him. So maybe they were making headway at being friends?
After certain needs had been attended to by all parties, the Arabs and their 'guest' mounted the horses again and rode out, heading east. Tully's legs were sore from the unaccustomed position of riding, rather than sitting as he did in the jeep sometimes all day, with short breaks for food and radiator checks.
The sky was very dark now, so the stars were very bright. He looked up at them as he got the chance and tried to reckon their direction. There was the Big Dipper, with its long handle and square-shaped 'cup.' The two stars at the base of the cup point directly to the North Star, he told himself, which is true north. To the left of the star is west; to the right is east. South is behind you if you're facing the star.
Tully located the two 'pointer' stars and counted five times their distance to the North Star. Since he had to turn his head ninety degrees and look across his left shoulder to see the North Star, he reckoned that the horses were traveling east. If North was 12:00, across his shoulder, then east was at 3:00. That was the direction they were taking.
He turned to face the way they were going, confident now, even without the morning sun, that the Arabs were going east. Ras Tanura, then, the Allied base, lay on his right, to the south.
What lay to the east? He knew that Sector G lay over that way, Dietrich's stomping ground. If only he had read a map before being kidnapped, he thought with a slight laugh. He drew a blank trying to remember any particular name of various Arab settlements that way.
He only hoped that when and if his rescuers came, even if it was Lt. Perkins, the same man who had made a derogatory comment about southerners when Tully first met him, they could read the horses' tracks and know in which direction he had been taken.
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By headlamp, Troy and his party found the disturbed desert sand of the small oasis where the Arabs had broken their flight for a short meal. By his flashlight, Moffitt marked it on his map for future reference. They found a burned out campfire and a few food remains. Hitch had a notion and took his own flashlight over to each one of the palms. At the base of one of them he found scratch marks, as if someone had been tied there and was trying to wiggle out of his ropes.
"Look, Sarge," he said. "This may have been where they tied Tully up."
Grimly, Troy said, "Looks that way. Moffitt, which way to Dar el-Tanri?"
Moffitt checked his map and found that the village was a good fifteen miles, due east, from the three-palm oasis. All three men climbed back into the jeeps after a radiator check. Desert travel was harsh. Petrol was holding up, though, and Hitch refilled the water cans at the spring. Troy turned in his seat.
"East, Hitch."
They had had to take it slow after leaving the Arab and the car because they were looking for the tiny oasis, but now they could put on speed and head for the old village without delay.