Disclaimer: Just for fun, not for profit.

When The Lights Go On Again

by tallsunshine12

Chapter 1 The Race Begins

A/N: I wrote this story about the jeep drivers in honor of Justin Tarr's birthday on April 14! Thanks, tullyfan, for the info!

Jogging in place, massaging well-muscled calves, or throwing back whole pints of water, the bikers were getting themselves in trim for the 1st Annual Tal Yata Bicycle Race, soon to be starting. A huge crowd of base personnel and Arab natives had gathered under tents and parasols and at the gates of the town to see the racers off. A group of reviewing judges, some of the 'brass' on the Allied base, watched from an elevated platform on the road itself.

As days went in this war-torn desert, it was a beautiful day. Date palms—inside and outside of town—waved in a slow, meandering breeze. Children and chickens darted in and out, some of them trailing after fleeing goats. Pennants flapped in the air and tent canopies billowed.

At this early hour, too, the heat wasn't as intense as it would be later on in the day, when the temperature could reach up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Now, at 0600 hours, military time, it was an only a balmy 60 degrees.

On the flip side of the record, there was a distinct odor of camel—like a sweaty pair of gym socks—filling the nostrils of onlookers. Most of the Arabs, who lived with and relied on camels daily, couldn't think of any better smell

Impatient for the race to start, Sgt. Sam Troy, the leader of the Rat Patrol, was like a worried dad. Hands on hips, trying to peer over Tully's shoulder, he crossed from one foot to the other. "Have you put enough oil on that chain?" he asked.

Squirting even more oil on the heart-shaped sprocket and chain, Tully said, "Plenty, Sarge. I'll just top off the can and stick it in the bike bag."

Eyeballing the operation carefully, Tully unscrewed the top of the small, cylindrical oil can and poured oil into it from a larger container. Dozens of wobbly black droplets dotted the sand when he was through. Screwing the spout back on, he put the top on the bigger can and then set it aside under a date palm.

"You sure spilled enough?" said Troy, only half-jesting, looking down at the spattered sand and kicking it in, then he noticed his brown boots had a couple of spatters. A bit of sand rubbed into them would remove the oil.

"How about water?" asked Moffitt, standing close by. He'd been chosen to start the race with his Webley Mark 1 six-shot revolver. "Enough to last until you reach the water cache?"

Hitch looked up from tightening his bike's nuts and bolts with a bike wrench, and smiled. "Just like Tully said, plenty, Doc."

"You remember the map coordinates of the cache?" asked Troy. The location in the rocks where ten separate bags of water had been stored was at the halfway point of grueling, 30-mile bike run.

"Doc's marked them out for us." Tully stood and as he did so, he snuck a look over at the other participants in the race, five teams in all. Seeing Pvts. Sampson and Cooper, he shook his head. "There's the guys who started the fight last night in Effie's bar."

Troy swung easily that way, registered the disagreeable faces on the brawlers, then he snapped his eyes back to the Patrol's two drivers. "Well, don't worry about them. They're just a couple of hotheads."

"I'm not worried, Sarge," said Tully, "except for the Turtle Team. You should've heard some of the things they called them. That's how they got the name Turtle Team."

Tully slapped the oil can and rag back into his saddle pouch and then reattached it to the rear of the sheepskin-covered saddle. A canteen had been fitted to the side frame of each bike, along with a leather scabbard on the right front fork. Tully and Hitch were each bringing along a Tommy-gun and a couple of extra mags for the trip, just for security.

"Turtle Team?" Troy began to smile. "You mean the guys with the sixty extra pounds apiece?"

"That's them," said Hitch. He stood and put his combination wrench away in his own bike bag behind the seat. Adjusting a pair of binoculars around his neck, he added, "File clerks! I just hope with all that extra lumber they're carryin' around, they don't have heart attacks in the heat."

"Yeah, what made those guys think they could compete anyway?" asked Tully. The strawberry-headed, thickly-bicepped private snortled, something between a chortle and a snort. "With all that weight, they should be judging the race, not racing it!"

Moffitt jumped to the other team's rescue. "There but for the grace of God, go I."

"You mean our guys could look like that?" asked Troy, now smartly laughing.

Hitch laughed. "I sure hope not."

"Ssshhh!" chided Moffitt. "Don't let them hear you!"

The four very fit men, Sgt. Troy, Sgt. Jack Moffitt, and their jeep drivers, Pvt. Tully Pettigrew and Pvt. Mark 'Hitch' Hitchcock, all members of the commando unit known as the Rat Patrol, ambled over to the starting line. The younger men rolled their well-tuned bikes, as tuned as the muscled legs of the men who would be riding them.

"Well, I guess this is it," Troy said as Hitch and Tully took their positions at the start line. He checked his wristwatch. "Five minutes until start time."

As the racers lined up, Troy ducked suddenly as a dirty rag flew past his nose and hit one of the Turtle Team's men in the face. It had come from one of the bullies who had dented a few noses, both of racers and non-racers, in Effie's bar last night.

"Better get out of the way, Troy. Missiles, you know," said Moffitt, stepping well back from the racing line with his Webley. He gave a thumbs-up to the two privates. Ready to mount, each of them faced the hard-packed desert road leading off the base.

At a signal from one of the judges, Moffitt raised his English-made pistol, and fired. The riders mounted their bikes. A few tense, sweat-dripping moments later, a second shot broke the ether and the racers were off!

Each team had designed its own route to follow, a route that had to make use of both the road and the rockier sand beyond. A master guide-sheet had been created to show where any one team of riders might be at any given moment.

On their Westerfield Columbias, heavy-duty bikes with thick, two and a half-inch tires, Hitch and Tully would keep to a slow, methodical pace for the first twenty miles, then with the finish line in sight, they'd put all of the energy remaining in their sun-tortured bodies to cross it ahead of the next team.

As both team mates had to cross for a win to count, it was a good idea if the bikers kept to the same pace. This was no time for the single winner. Tully and Hitch had rehearsed and synced their tempo so well that, even if they got separated, they'd both be ready to stop at the water cache at approximately the same time. Here, besides refilling their canteens with the stashed water, they'd oil the chains again, clean grit out of the tires, and tighten up any loose nuts and bolts.

"I feel like I'm sending them off to school for the first day," said Moffitt, smiling warmly.

Troy laughed that gravelly laugh of his and glanced up at him. "Softie, that's what you are, Doc."

Pretending to wipe his eyes, Moffitt produced a big stage sniff. "I know, Troy. Can't help it!"

A few Arabs looked over their way as Troy broke down at Moffitt's performance. He waved over at them and they turned their heads back to where the bikers were just beginning to disappear at a bend in the road.

Once out on the hardpan, Tully and Hitch smiled over at each other and slapped palms. The day was fresh, the sky was a cloudless blue, and the heat was bearable, at least for now. Confident of everything going their way, and of an easy win, they thought about their competition.

There was the Turtle Team, guys who'd fall through the floor doing jumping jacks! And Sampson's team, the two bullies from the fight last evening in Effie's bar. Sampson lived up to his name in every way. Broad of beam, thick-necked, and with an IQ about the same as his shoe size, he thought of himself as the base Casanova, but women, from nurses to clerks, would have nothing to do with him. He'd bring them gifts of nylon stockings and boxes of chocolates, but to go out with him was like going out with a windmill, all arms!

The other two teams had been cobbled together from bits and pieces on the base. One team had an Arab who carried a huge, leather-sheathed dagger in his belt and who had to hike up his robe, or djellaba, to keep it out of the bike chain. The other team had the real prize, though. A genuine POW, an Italian who was a trusty on the base. With a few of his fellow squad members, he had passionately given himself up last month at the gate of Tal Yata. For the bike race, one of his stockade guards had agreed to come along as his team mate.

"Tully, lend me your matchstick!" Hitch called over to Tully, who turned his bike inward and stretched out his arm to hand Hitch his matchstick.

He almost always had one in his mouth, sucking on the non-business end of it throughout the day. Why was not exactly known, but it seemed to comfort him, and Troy, the die-hard lighter of gasoline fires, always knew where he could get a spare match if he ran out.

Hitch stopped to let a little air out of his front tire, removing the rubber cap from the tire valve and depressing the center pin with the matchstick. He smiled at the hissing sound it made.

"It sounds just like a horned viper!" he called. The horned, or sidewinder, viper was one of his favorite creatures in the Libyan desert, another being the jerboa, or desert rat, for obvious reasons.

Tully kept riding so as not to lose the 'cadence' of his pedaling, but he turned his upper body slightly, and said, "You and your vipers!"

After flattening the tire so that its surface area gripped more of the sand, Hitch remounted, kicked the stand up, and leaned back in his seat, centering his weight over the rear of the bike to keep the front tire from digging in the sand as he rode.

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The day wore on, a breathless wind taking hold of the desert. Hot and sweaty and still thirsty after nearly emptying their canteens, Tully and Hitch had left the rest of the pack behind. The Arab had to stop to fiddle with his dress, going behind a rock for privacy, while the POW and Tamasi, his guard, had an issue with one of their bikes. Tamasi's chain kept slipping off. But after another stop to fix it, they were soon rolling again.

The Turtle Team was up ahead of every team but the jeep drivers'. On seeing them, Sampson and Cooper, his bike mate, put on a little extra steam and once on either side of the file clerks, the two brawlers cut in front and forced the team to stop.

"We've got a little unfinished business, Turtles," said Sampson, hauling up and dropping his feet to the ground. He swung his leg off the bike and kicked the stand down. Cracking his knuckles in his rubber gloves, he walked up to stand between the two bikers of the Turtle Team.

"Don't we have a race to run?" asked Zdzblo ('zids-blow'), a man of Polish extraction, but no one could have told that from his name! He was also the more forthright member of the Turtle Team, a name the two fighters had christened them with last night in Effie's bar. "You're holding us up, Sampson."

"Look, Ziddie, you've been looking at my girl too much lately."

"I work with her! We have lunch together sometimes." Zdzblo raised his noble Polish nose in the air. "And I'm sure she doesn't think of herself as your girl. What sane woman would?"

"Why, you—!" Sampson pulled him off the bike and started slapping his face, right and left. Zdzblo found his guts intact and drove a fist into Sampson's abdomen, knocking him into his bike. Both Sampson and bike sprawled into the sand. Cooper had a hard time fishing him out of it.

The other Turtle Team member, Torres, jumped off his bike and fell into Cooper, Sampson's teammate, grappling with him. Rolling about, they ate dust.

Zdzblo—Ziddie to his enemies—right-crossed Sampson's jaw, then wondered why he'd done it. Sampson yelled at the top of his cavernous lungs and threw a chokehold on Zdzblo. Zdzblo, his head encased by Sampson's immense arm, tried ineffectual punches to the brawler's ribcage, but Sampson only laughed.

"That tickles!" he sneered, and kept throttling him.

The Arab and his bike partner, Parker, rode up. Seeing the war being waged, the two men jumped off their bikes, letting them drop into the soft sand. While Parker, a corporal, tried to separate the two privates, Torres and Cooper, the Arab pulled out his double-sided knife from its leather sheath and sliced off a piece of Sampson's hair. Sampson felt the sudden change in weight on that side and turned to see who had dared, dropping Zdzblo in the process.

Rubbing his reddened neck, Zdzblo looked up and saw the Arab in his long robe weaving the knife around in circles above his head. For once, Sampson, all six feet, four inches of him, looked cowed. Zdzblo laughed, tickled to death as he sat there in the sand waiting for the Arab's death blow. Then realizing he had a race to run, he called to his friend and fellow private.

"C'mon, Torres. Let's ride!"

Torres thanked Parker for his rescue with a wave and a big, toothy smile in his double-chinned face, then he picked up his bike, mounted, and rode out after Zdzblo. The Turtle Team was on its way again, while Sampson and Cooper were being treated to a Tuareg knife-show at their own expense.

When the POW and Tamasi passed by that way, Mario pointed out Sampson lying on his back in the sand with the tip of the Arab's short blade at his throat and Cooper pleading for Sampson's miserable hide. Looking baffled at the scene, but not stopping, they rode on their way. When they passed the Turtle Team, they each threw up a hand. Squat legs struggling to pump extra juice out of their bikes, Torres and Zdzblo waved back.

"Hey, you're leaning way too far over the handlebars!" yelled Tamasi. "Sit back a bit!"

"Thanks, Tamasi," said Zdzblo, and leaned up from where he had been hunching over the bars, making the tires suck into the sand. "They're great guys," he said, looking at the backs of Soldato Mario Giovanni, the POW, and PFC Giorgio Tamasi, his guard, a fellow Italian whose immediate antecedents—his parents—had emigrated to America before the Great War. "They're passionate about winning. I just wish they weren't racing today, that's all."

"Yep, good guys. Bet they'll win."

"Well, get the lead out, Torres, or we won't even get back before nightfall!"

Both laughed and pedaled harder, the sand flying up behind the tires of their Huffmans, the other well-known brand of bike on the base. As file clerks, Zdzblo and Torres found bikes very useful at Tal Yata for delivering messages and dispatches, but not for running races that the brass thought up just to keep the men under their command fit and trim!

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After three hours in the 'saddle,' having started on the return leg of the race, the jeep drivers of the LRDG found the cache of water easily enough, thanks to Moffitt's diligent pencil. He had been so precise in marking their map that they needn't have worried about not finding it. Refilling their canteens with the two bags painted with a scorpion, the LRDG symbol, they oiled a bit, tightened a bit more, and then rode on, still happily enjoying the fresh desert air—though by now the sand beneath their pedals was egg-fryingly hot!

The other eight bags they left for the remaining riders, all well-marked as to their teams. One bag had a picture of a broad-backed turtle on it, crudely drawn more for snickers than for realism.

"We should've had a desert rat on ours," called Tully, his legs now as heavy as two fifty-pound barbells and the muscles searingly hot as he struggled to get through the sandy, off the road portion of their route.

"I don't know, Tully," Hitch retorted brightly. "What's better than a scorpion? Especially a deathstalker!"

"You and your bugs," Tully joked. "How do your legs feel?"

"What a question, Tully!" Hitch sobered up. "About like yours, I expect. Like I'm wearing concrete galoshes and Al Capone has just dropped me into the East River!"

The desert Rats rode on with perhaps another hour and a half to go. They just hoped that the water held out. Perspiring copiously, they could have drunk their own sweat in the deep thirst they felt. Good thing they had canteens!

The Turtle Team duly found the water cache next, struggling to pedal in the loose sand of an old riverbed, or wadi. Seeing the turtle painted on their bags, thinking the judges were having a good laugh, they good-naturedly laughed over it, too. Refilling, they rode on.

The next team to find the water cache was the POW and Tamasi. Stopping, they hopped off their bikes. Kicking the stands down, they pulled out their oil cans, rags, and bike wrenches and merrily set to work oiling and tightening. Light banter filled the air as the two dark-eyed, curly-headed, olive-skinned men worked, the festive mood not dampened by the intense heat of the middle of the day.

"At least we're not dead last," said Tamasi, in Italian, looking at the oily mess of his chain, full of sticky sand. "If it wasn't for my chain slipping off, we'd be ahead, or at least behind Tully and Hitch!"

"Ah, no worries," said Mario, with light-hearted hand gestures. "We're free, we have friends, and the Germans are miles away!"

"Do you hate them for making you fight with them?"

Mario thoughtfully considered his answer. He didn't want to offend his new friend. "At first, I was happy to be leaving my small village, but then I saw things, things I won't even share with you, Giorgio, my new friend. I wanted to desert, run away—and here I am, in a race with my friends.'

Tamasi laughed. "A race we're sure to lose. Even the Turtle Team—that's a better name for us, not them—are ahead. Their waterbags are empty."

When it was time to fill up, they saw the empty scorpion bags, and the empty turtle bags, but couldn't find their own. They didn't really know what to look for. The bags had been placed in the rocks by men working for the judges. It was a test of skill for the bike riders to find the cache, so this was the first time the two bikers had been there.

"I can't seem to see our waterbags," said Tamasi, shoving his binoculars, hanging on a cord around his neck, around to his back as he searched. "You see them, Mario?"

Mario was shaking all over as he pulled up one of their bags from a crevice in the rocks, gazing at it. It had the face of a man painted on it with his hands raised. Little bars had been painted over his face and upper body as if he was in jail.

"I think I have," he said, chortling away. "Look at this! It's me!"

When Tamasi took a look, he too broke up into a million guffaws. Suddenly there was a loud booming in the distance. Tamasi struggled to raise his binoculars to his eyes. Jerking the cord back around, he pulled them up the wrong-way at first and found himself looking through the big ends.

"What is it!" asked Mario. "Germans?"

"I think it's a column, probably a scout column. Wonder what they're doin' this far from their lines?" He looked along the path the Germans were taking and spotted a supply convoy inching its way across the sands. "Ah, I see. They're after the supplies."

"Let me look, too," cried Mario. Giorgio slipped off the binoculars and handed them over. Mario put them to his eyes, brushing away a little sand first from the lenses. "I see, that supply convoy is in trouble! How can we warn them?"

"The probably already know what's following them. The best we can do, Mario, is get our water and get back on the trail. I have only a pistol, which I brought along to guard you, so we should try to reach the base and let them know."

"I'm afraid, Giorgio, for myself. What if the Germans capture me? I will be shot as a deserter."

"Senza senso!" Tamasi cried. "Nonsense! I'll tell them I took you prisoner!"

"And we just happened to be in a bike race?"

Both young men nervously laughed a bit and put away their things. Filling their canteens was the last operation before taking off. They rode parallel to the road below, but far enough away so as to appear only as shadows in the rocks above. The Germans would have to be expecting them to be there in order to see them.

So the race continued …