Chapter 2 Attack!

Blind with anxiety over what they were going to find at the crash site—if they reached it, that is—Tully and Hitch stopped only once to refuel and to add water to the jeeps' radiators. Visions of packs of golden wolves ripping apart one of their own became almost too much for Tully. He glanced over at Hitch as they now rode side by side and wondered if he was thinking along the same lines.

Kept in good repair by the drivers themselves, the jeeps didn't fail them. In as little as thirty minutes, the two privates had arrived at the crash site. Speechless with awe, they slipped out of their seats and walked over to the wrecked plane. Its blunt nose was smashed, the propeller twisted, and there was a huge hole ripped into the fuselage. There were no signs of wild dogs, and for that they could be grateful.

Hitch was the first to look inside the plane through the gaping hole where the pilot's door had been. He saw a strange man in a tan business suit leaning against the side of the plane behind the pilot's seat, but what fixed his attention the most was Doc, nursing his jaw as he sat in Troy's old seat. His eyes were bloodshot and his hands fumbled nervously with his stubbly chin, but he was alive. In shades of black and blue, his jittery hands showed what an ordeal he'd been through.

"Tully!" yelled Hitch, the ecstatic discoverer. "Come, help me!"

"I found signs of a struggle …" began Tully as he peered into the hole at Hitch, then he stopped. "Well, I'll be. I guess Troy jumped the gun a little, wouldn't you say so, Hitch?"

Breaking out into an even wider smile, Hitch turned back to stare at Doc, taking hold of his arm. "Doc, it's us, Tully and Hitch. Can you hear me?"

"Probably not," Tully said. "Remember he went to Benghazi to get his hearing checked."

"Oh, I almost forgot." Hitch struggled to turn Moffitt's head towards him, as he was looking down and away. "He's really out of it, Tully. Doc! Don't you know who we are?"

"Let's get him out of there, he needs water."

"What about him?" Hitch looked back at Chambers.

"He must be the envoy they were traveling with. Check him out."

Hitch turned on the balls of his feet and took the arm of the envoy. He had to push back the cuff of his suit coat a bit to reach his pulse. He shook his head. "He's dead. We'll have to bury him."

While Hitch checked on Chambers, Moffitt slipped away. Hitch turned just in time to catch him as he was falling out of the passenger seat.

Tully shook his head and smiled. "Well, let's get Rip Van Winkle out of here first."

Hoping to get Moffitt out of the plane with the least number of bruises to add to those he already had, Tully backed out. He had to use every bit of arm muscle not to let Moffitt's body drag across the jagged opening where the boulder had rent the plane, taking off the door just above the snapped-off wing.

Hitch followed with Moffitt's legs, almost wishing when they lost Cotter to that bullet three months ago, they'd been given a shorter sergeant to replace him.

He finally was able to stand outside the plane himself and helped Tully to gently lay their burden on the ground. "That's it!" he breathed. "All nine feet of him!"

Retrieving his steel helmet where it had fallen in the struggle, Tully laughed with a dry chuckle. "I had the heavy end. You know how much he carries inside his head. Better go get the medical kit."

Hitch ran back to their jeeps and fished out the bag, liberating the smelling salts while Tully dabbed Moffitt's lips with water using his own fingers. Hitch applied the salts under Moffitt's nose and brought him around again.

"Don't fight it, Doc. Let yourself come to—gradually," said Tully, slipping the canteen between Moffitt's lips. He snapped it away after the dazed man had taken only a sip, not wanting him to have too much water all at once.

"More," murmured Moffitt. "Water, please."

Tully tipped the canteen to his lips again, then looked up at Hitch who was kneeling in the sand on the other side of Moffitt. "We'll have to get him back to base," he said, tipping his helmet back a bit off his forehead.

"But what about the Sarge? Dietrich's got him!"

Tully thought for a moment. "They can't be too far away from us, not with half-tracks."

"We've got to get going." Hitch then looked down at Moffitt. "We can't leave him, can we?"

"No, he needs help."

"I was only joking."

"You bet you were," Tully teased him.

"More water …" whispered Moffitt.

"Give him some more, Tully."

Tully tipped the canteen towards Moffitt's lips again while at the same time raising the back of his head to meet it. He let him drink long and hard this time.

"I wish I had a handkerchief," said Tully, "Wash Doc's face."

"Voila!" said Hitch, producing one. "Be prepared."

"Boy Scout." Tully laughed as he reached over for it. He wet it with water from the canteen and dabbed at Moffitt's still face. "I wish he'd wake up," he murmured. "He's too quiet."

"That's an improvement," teased Hitch. "You know how he can go on, talking about Egypt and the Arabs and I don't what else."

Tully continued to gently wipe away the smoke-soot from around Moffitt's eyes. "How'd you know what he talks about?"

"He talks in camp while you're on watch."

"I've got him nine-tenths of the time in the jeep." Tully turned serious. "Dietrich's base is at Madros Well. He'd go there."

"Shouldn't we ask Doc about it?"

Tully looked down at Doc's closed eyes and slightly parted lips. "I don't think he can tell us anything. He's still out." He screwed the cap back on the canteen. "Help me get him up."

On either side, each man struggled to pick up the sergeant from the clinging sand, fitting him in the jeep's passenger seat. As he walked back to his own jeep and got behind the wheel, Hitch observed, "It's hot out here today! Must be in the low 100s already."

"Wait—we forgot. Are we going to bury the other man?" Tully slid into the driver's seat beside Moffitt.

Preparing to start his engine, Hitch looked over at the other jeep. Conscious but drifting, Moffitt was resting his head on the seat back. His voice startled them both.

"He's already in his tomb. Troy … matters now."

"You heard us, Doc?" Tully asked.

"Go find Troy. Drive, Tully." Moffitt's words were coming from very far away.

"You bet!"

Tully and Hitch put their jeeps into gear and climbed back up to the road that ran along the ridge. From the map, they knew that they'd be driving on only soft sand before too long, so they wanted to drive with as much speed as possible while they still had hard surface.

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While the Kubelwagen and the half-tracks drifted over the crests and craters of sand, proceeding with as much speed as possible, Troy had a good long time to assess his situation. Though shaken up inside, he was mostly unhurt by the crash. His left eye was swollen and that made it hard to see out of it. John Miller, the pilot, though, was in worse shape. He was holding his right elbow in his left hand and there were bruises on his face that could spell head trauma. He had a distant look in his eyes—possibly a sign of concussion. Plus, with no obvious injuries there, he was still bleeding from the mouth. A shudder would go through him and he'd gasp for breath. Something was broken inside.

In quiet whispers, for fear Dietrich, who rode in the car's front seat, might hear, Troy asked Miller for his own assessment of himself. In much the same hushed way, he said, "Head hurts. Arm may be broken. It's hard to breathe. I bit my tongue."

"That's all? I thought you were bleeding inside."

Miller raised a nervous hand and wiped off the blood on his chin. "No, but it really hurts."

Troy smiled a bit. He and his men had suffered far worse and gone on to complete a mission. "Then you can run if you have to?" he asked in a voice so low he could barely hear it himself. "I mean, run?"

Miller took in a shaky breath and nodded, once, then more fiercely a second time. "I'll be ready," he mouthed, still afraid Dietrich would hear.

At the moment they were free and untied. If Dietrich thought they were conspiring to escape, he'd quickly tie them up and maybe separate them, putting at least one of them in a half-track under guard.

"When?" asked Miller, pointing at the back of Dietrich's head.

"Any time now," said Troy.

"No water."

Miller mimed taking a drink. In his hand was the slim, round, German canteen that Dietrich had given Troy, who had passed it along to Miller, thinking he needed it more.

"Don't need any."

Miller raised his eyebrows. No?

Troy shook his head with the smallest motion. No.

Once Dietrich turned to look back at his prisoners. Troy stared hard at him, while Miller lay with his head on the seat back and his eyes closed.

Just after this, and for the fortieth time that afternoon, Troy turned to look back at the desert behind them. He was hoping that Tully and Hitch, after burying the two men at the plane, would decide to follow the now-eroding path of Dietrich's column. The drivers didn't even need to consult his tracks, as Madros Well, where his camp was situated, was marked on their map. Both young men owed their map-reading skills to the best map-reader of them all, Jack Moffitt.

This time was the charmer. Two specks were showing on the horizon of the vast plain of sand. He'd let them gain on the column, preferring not to do anything to attract attention to them until they were closer.

Now, Troy leaned up a bit to look over the seat. He saw the briefcase, about twenty inches by thirty in size, of tough, brown leather, under Dietrich's arm. He was guarding it well, for it probably contained plans and proposals for airfields that Chambers had been sent to negotiate. There was a lot of useful information to glean from even blueprints. Dietrich could use maps to pinpoint where these bases and airfields might be set up and give that information to his High Command. Should the Arabs lease the land, bombers and fighters could be sent over to destroy the whole works before it even got 'off the ground.'

The two military-green jeeps were keeping low, slowing down after Hitch, in the second jeep, spotted the column moving along the open sands like two lumbering elephants, the half-tracks, following on the heels of a smaller, gazelle-like creature, or the Kubelwagen.

Over the roar of their own engines, he pointed out the column to Moffitt, who nodded, knowing that soon he'd have to man the fifty in the back of the jeep. He briefly touched his right temple, his headache still pretty bad. When the plane tore apart on the boulder, his belt broke and he slipped out of it, not having a shoulder harness like Troy and the pilot. He'd hit the side of his head on the bench as he tumbled off it to land beside Chambers. All he remembered after that was waking up in Troy's seat, feeling ill and out of sorts with a busting headache. He didn't know that he'd been pronounced dead, not only by Dietrich and his driver, but also by his friend, nor how close he had come to being 'buried' by Dietrich and his men, with Troy's blessing.

He pointed out the route to Tully of the half-tracks, and the lead jeep gradually turned in the troughs and hills of sand, with Hitch moving that way as well. Moffitt seemed to want to go around the half-tracks, approaching them from the side instead of from the rear. There was more cover he saw on the side, bushes and low trees. Tully and Hitch trusted his judgement. As Troy's second-in-command, he had learned a lot in his time with the unit. Tactical maneuvers were very important to Troy, so he had made sure Moffitt had mastered their finer points.

In the back seat of Dietrich's Kubelwagen, Troy thumbed a signal over his shoulder and Miller saw it. When Miller was about to turn his head to look back, Troy shook his head sharply. No abrupt moves. We can't alert Dietrich or the soldiers in the half-tracks, he seemed to say. Miller caught on fast and straightened up.

One more look, and Troy felt ready. The jeeps had disappeared into a wind-hollowed gully and were moving along, he guessed correctly, behind some scrub growing on the side of it. Completely concealed, even their engines were muted by the sandbank. Troy pointed carefully to the area. Miller could look just past him now and see where he was supposed to run to when free of the car.

"You go now," muttered the commando sergeant. "I have a small job to do first."

At his sharp nod, Miller lifted himself up from the deep seat and pitched over the side. He found his feet pretty quickly and ran behind the car and kept running as hard as he could towards the gully hidden by bushes. Troy, his onetime passenger, would be on his feet behind him. But first, Troy had a 'small' job to do—steal the envoy's briefcase out from under Dietrich's arm. When he leaned over to get it, his hand just on the back end of it, he suddenly found himself facing his own handgun, a Colt 1911 army-issue. Dietrich's gun hand was as steady as Pvt. Hilfer's driving even over the rough tracts of sand.

Troy leaned back, pulling his arm in. "Why? Why did you let him go?" he asked.

"I don't need the pilot. It's hard enough to watch you, without adding another to that burden."

"You have the briefcase now—and me."

Dietrich nodded, motioning Pvt. Hilfer to stop. The private, looking nervously at the gun in his captain's hand and then back at the smoldering Troy in the rear seat, pulled up as quickly as he could. The half-tracks were almost upon them when they, too, came to a halt, spinning apart to avoid ramming the Kubelwagen.

Troy suddenly lunged, both hands going for the gun. He took quite a gamble that Dietrich, surprised by his action, wouldn't shoot him. They fought until the gun pointed at Pvt. Hilfer's head. Hilfer turned in his seat and lowered his head out of the way, towards the steering wheel. He slipped out of his side of the car and then threw his considerable weight on top of Troy, who now had two battles going, one with Dietrich over the gun, and the other with Hilfer trying to pull his grip loose.

Troy eased off his right hand from Dietrich's wrist and across his own left arm punched Hilfer in the nose. Hard. Hilfer backed up, with blood cascading from his injury. Battle half-won. Troy resumed his struggle with Dietrich and in the process, climbed over the seat and fell into the place where the driver had been seated. The gun, as if a bird trying to get away from a fire, flew up and out of Dietrich's hand and fell out of the car into the sand. Troy saw where it landed—Hilfer couldn't see anything over his nose—and scrambled out of the car to grab it.

The men in the half-tracks hadn't been idle. Several of Dietrich's six or seven men took to their feet after the prisoner who had escaped, trying to run him down. They were just catching up, when two jeeps in succession mounted a rise and Moffitt's fifty began mowing them down. While Moffitt laid down cover fire, Hitch skewed around in a tight half-circle and picked up the fleeing pilot, then he sped off into cover as Moffitt continued pouring rounds of lead into the attackers, downing a few, but driving most of them into the cover of the scrub dotting the plain.

Troy had his own worries. Though he had his gun back, he was very much outclassed by some of the remaining men from the half-tracks, men who also had guns—submachine guns vs. a lowly pistol. He shot the first man who strayed too close to him, however, and then turned and grabbed up Hilfer and twisted him around, with the pistol at his head. He had to swing the gun back as Dietrich tried to get out of the car.

"I wouldn't do that, Captain," he said, trying to keep a single gun on three targets at once, the copiously-bleeding private, the anxious captain, and the armed men from the half-tracks. As a couple of shots ricocheted off the car, and others hit the sand at his feet, he put the gun to Hilfer's temple again. The tank-built private suddenly butted Troy in the abdomen with his right elbow, taking that hand away from his nose. Troy doubled up as Hilfer turned and chopped down on his neck with the heel of his hand. Dietrich emerged from the car and the Schmeisser-carrying half-trackers drew closer.

Troy glanced up and to his dismay saw the changing scene. He righted himself with difficulty and grabbed Hilfer by his fatigue jacket and put the gun right up to his nose. Dietrich stopped his advance and his men stopped theirs. A low hum of "What do we do now?" filled the air.

"Get over with them, Captain!" Troy yelled at Dietrich, nodding at his men. Dietrich slowly complied, perhaps too slowly for Troy's liking. "Get over there!" he urged more forcefully, jabbing the gun into the side of Hilfer's nose.

"Alright, Sgt. Troy, don't shoot Pvt. Hilfer."

"I won't if you do as you're told." Troy was not thinking reasonably now.

He looked up and saw what it took a moment even for Dietrich to realize. One of the jeeps was dashing towards the knot of men with the pilot at the wheel and Hitch manning his own fifty. At the last second, as the armed men began firing on the jeep with their Schmeissers, it swerved off. Hitch had time to spray a dozen rounds into them, scattering them for cover behind the behemoth half-tracks. One man who tried to climb back into the gun turret of the lead vehicle was knocked to the sand by a .50 caliber bullet. He did not emerge again.

Dietrich found cover behind one of the half-tracks, even as Troy pushed Hilfer off him. Striking the private on the temple, he only hit him hard enough to daze him, not disable him. Hilfer staggered aside. Looking up, he saw the same jeep as before bearing down for a second pass and dove for cover beside his captain. Troy reached into the Kubelwagen and pulled out the briefcase, then ran with it toward Tully's jeep as it was coming to join Hitch's. Hitch was still 'spraying and praying' with his fifty, while with his own rear-mounted gun, Moffitt had devastated at least half of Dietrich's men on the sands.

Troy threw the case into the back of the jeep and fell in after it, right up against the long legs of the gunner at the fifty. He looked up at the dark-haired man in the black beret, who was staring down at him with an odd half-sad, half-taunting look in his eyes. Moffitt!

A broad smile spread slowly across Troy's face. "Shake it!" he yelled to Tully over the machine gun's continued fire and their own engine roar.

Since they had depressed Herr Hauptmann Dietrich's day long enough, with several of his men lying prostrate in the sand, dead or wounded, the jeeps now flew off in a cloud of dust and no one in them looked back. The half-tracks were still able to shoot at them, but mounting them required gunners—of whom there were fewer now than there had been at the start of the skirmish.

While his men were busy attending to the wounded, Dietrich stood up, following by the snuffling Hilfer, who pulled out his shirt to use as a handkerchief on his nose, and looked at the retreating jeeps.

Hilfer dropped his shirt tail finally and turned to look, too. "Well, at least we killed the envoy, sir," he said.

Dietrich turned towards him with a half-smile and said, "Did we? I fear that with that briefcase and Sgt. Moffitt's ability to speak Arabic, we've just substituted one envoy for another."

"So the mission failed, sir?"

Dietrich nodded. "I'm afraid it has, Pvt. Hilfer. Fortunes of war. Come, we must get the wounded men back to base. You, too. You look like you've been hit with a hammer."

"I feel like I have been, sir." He massaged the top of his nose. "Sgt. Troy's got a powerful punch."

"So he does, Private, so he does." He rubbed his own jaw as he said this. Putting his hands behind his back, he walked away from Pvt. Kurt Hilfer and stood for one more moment on the sand looking after the jeeps. To himself, he murmured, "I'll never be a match for him."

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Three men lay sprawled in the sand, passing a canteen back and forth. Tully and Hitch were working under the hood of Tully's jeep as well as watching the trail behind them.

Troy struggled to sit up, brushing sand off his shirt. He hated to move. The day had cooled towards evening, and the sand felt warm through his shirt. He had holstered his gun again, but patted it to make sure.

"I couldn't believe it was you, Moffitt," he said, taking a big swig of water. "I thought you were dead."

"I could tell by your face you were surprised to see me … on my feet." Moffitt reached over and took the canteen from Troy and took a huge gulp.

"But how did you fool Dietrich? Well, I mean Hilfer. Dietrich was with me. You played dead, didn't you?"

Wiping his mouth, and handing the canteen to Miller on the other side of him, he said, "No, for a time, I didn't know if I was or not. I was in a deep, deep hollow looking up and seeing some kind of cloudy light. It moved around like a vapor, but it was always bright enough to see by. Do you think I was seeing the 'light at the end of the tunnel,' as some people claim to see when they die?"

Troy straightened up. "It was the sun. At that time of day, it has a circle around it. That's what you saw."

Moffitt turned serious. "I'm glad you were there, Troy, when you thought I'd died. It's good to have a friend mourn you. I'm in your debt."

"How did you know I was there?"

"I heard you—in that tunnel of mine. I felt your hand on my chest. I knew it was you."

Troy hesitated, thinking over Moffitt's words, then with a slight cough he became all business again.

"We've got to finish a little business, then we'll get back to base. What about it, Miller? Are you up to going with us?"

Miller spit out the water he had been swishing around in his mouth. "I'm game if you lads are."

"Do you still plan on using me as a substitute envoy?" Moffitt asked, sitting up now beside Troy.

"You got any other plans—besides getting a week of bed rest?"

Moffitt could only smile and shake his head. "You're not going to let Dietrich win this one?"

"No way to win a war! We're still on the front lines, even if it's behind a conference table. How's your hearing? You were on that fifty a long time today."

"It's better."

"I don't want it better, I want it well!"

Moffitt looked directly at him. "What, Troy?"

Troy laughed and slapped him on the arm, then reached down to help him up. When they were both on their feet, they helped Miller up. The pilot nodded, tiredly but gratefully.

"How's the jeep, Tully?" asked Troy, slapping the sand off his pants.

"Runs. It'll get us there, Sarge."

"It'd better!"

It seemed like the crash had never happened. Save for sore eyes and sore heads, things were back to normal again for the Rat Patrol. They had a new mission, checked out via radio with headquarters at Ras Tanura. Sgt. Moffitt, with all of Chambers' papers in his possession, was now the new envoy to the Arab tribesmen at Harfar, on temporary assignment with His Majesty's Diplomatic Service.

Whatever, Troy might have said. He preferred the handles of his .50 caliber gun in the back of a racing jeep to diplomatic chatter around a big table in a hot tent.

While the drivers slammed down the hood of Tully's jeep and got into their places behind the steering wheels, he helped Miller into Hitch's jeep, giving him the passenger seat while he himself climbed into the rear and sat on the spare tire at the back.

Just before Troy could utter his signature line, Moffitt called out loudly enough for both drivers to hear, "Let's shake it!"

Everybody, but the uninformed pilot, broke out laughing.

Moffitt called over to Troy again, saying, "Payback, Troy, for declaring me dead."

"You're like an elephant, Moffitt. You never forget."

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