Edit: the section break disappeared so I had to put a new one in. Same goes for chapter 4. Gah!

Hitch's brain was so muddied with sleep that he only knew which way was up from pure instinct. So it took him a few seconds to register that there was a man in a mismatched mostly-German uniform standing in front of him. Holding a Luger.

The Luger was also pointing straight at him.

Very important detail.

Hitch scrubbed a hand over his eyes, squinting at the German. Well, maybe he wasn't a German. Hitch sat up and the Luger followed his movements, staying even with his heart. No, definitely not a German. He was too swarthy—black-haired, dark-eyed, distinctly Arab. The Arabs often allied themselves with the Germans, but Hitch had never seen one actually in one of their uniforms. So what was this guy's deal?

"If you make a single noise," the German who wasn't a German hissed, "I will kill you."

"But won't that make noise?" Hitch could have slapped himself for saying something so stupid. The Arab gave him a bloodthirsty glare.

"Get up," he spat.

"What do you want?" Hitch demanded.

"Get up!"

The Arab had the gun. Hitch obeyed. Scrambling up off the cot, he reached automatically for his kepi and goggles. "No!" the Arab snapped. "If you even move—"

"—you'll kill me. Yeah. I got that part." His grogginess was fading and surly sarcasm, something he had a lot of practice with, was taking its place. "So what do you want?"

The Arab considered him for a moment, eyes narrowed in suspicion, judging whether he was worthy of an answer. Evidently he was. "I want Moffitt."

Hitch started a little. He hadn't been expecting that. Arabs didn't ask for people. Guns, maybe, or money, but not people. And certainly not Moffitt. "You mean. . .?"

"Sergeant Jack Moffitt," the Arab said impatiently. "He is the reason I came here. He is the reason I've followed you across the desert."

And suddenly Hitch figured it all out. The Arab—the German uniform—Moffitt.

This man was Diamond.

He'd never actually seen Diamond—he'd been a little too busy trying not to die for that. But he'd seen, carved deep into Moffitt and Dietrich's backs, what the man was capable of. And that was enough to tell him all he needed to know: when Diamond had a gun, he meant business. Serious business. Which meant Moffitt was in serious trouble. Automatically Hitch tried to prevent whatever danger waited the Brit from ever reaching him.

"He's not here," he said to Diamond. "He's. . .he's gone back to Base to receive new orders. He left last night."

Diamond scowled. He sure looked good for a guy who was supposed to be blown up. "You're lying. Nobody left last night. He's here, American. In fact, I would wager he's in the tent next to ours. Isn't he?" He smirked at Hitch's silence. "Isn't he?"

"No." It was a pathetic lie—his voice held none of the conviction needed to make Diamond believe him. But it was evident that no matter what he said, Diamond wasn't going to be convinced. "He's gone, I swear. So why don't you just leave?"

Diamond gave him a pitying look. "Leave now after I've made your acquaintance? Oh, no, that's not going to happen, American. I can't risk you telling on me."

"I won't." The minute Diamond left Hitch was going to go running for Troy and Moffitt. Diamond couldn't get far on foot, could he?

"You will. You'll go crying to your sergeants and where will that leave me?" Could this guy read minds or something? Or was Hitch just that obvious? Diamond scoffed. "Oh, don't be like that, American. I won't kill you. I'll just have to take you with me."

"Take me. . .where?" The words were mere squeaks. Diamond gave him a disgusted look.

"You'll find out," he said. "Now be quiet and come with me."

For a moment Hitch didn't move, staring disbelievingly at the Arab before him. It was a little hard to comprehend what was even going on. Impatient, Diamond waggled the Luger at him.

"Move. You're wasting time."

That was exactly what Hitch wanted to do. If he dawdled long enough, the guard shift would change and the sun would rise and Troy or Tully or Moffitt would wake up and intervene. But Diamond apparently had guessed his thoughts—and provided a convincing argument against them. "Hurry up," he spat. "Or I will kill you right now."

Hitch hurried up.

"Troy, have you seen Hitch recently?"

The sergeant turned to see Moffitt standing there, his hands behind his back. A frown marred his tan face.

"No," said Troy. He lowered the greasy rag he'd been scrubbing at the .50 with—something that was usually Hitch's responsibility. "Come to think of it, I haven't seen him all day."

The Brit sighed. "Oh dear. Tully hasn't seen him either." He pushed his beret back and scratched his tangled black hair. "Neither has anyone else."

"He probably snuck into town," Troy suggested. "Found a girl he liked and wanted to have a good time."

"Without these?" Moffitt brought his hands from behind his back; he was clutching a red kepi and goggles. Hitch's red kepi and goggles. Now it was Troy's turn to frown.

"Where. . .?" He stepped forward and took the two items from Moffitt, inspecting them closely as if they held the answers to Hitch's absence.

"In his tent," Moffitt replied, correctly guessing what Troy's question had been. "No sign of a struggle, really. Just enough sand kicked up around his cot for one person moving about."

"Did you check with the night guards?" Troy demanded. "Did they see him slip out?"

"Nobody saw anything," Moffitt said flatly. "It seems our Hitchcock has simply vanished." He thought for a moment. "I hadn't asked the second guard shift though, the ones that came on duty this morning. I'll go hunt them down."

"Right." Troy tossed the greasy rag onto the hood of the jeep. "I'll come with you."

The guard shift was less than useless. Nobody had left and nobody had come in—not an American, not a German, not an Arab or a rock lizard or a dancing girl. Moffitt stalked away with a displeased slant to his shoulders. Troy followed more slowly.

"Come to think of it," Moffitt said after a while, "I haven't seen Tully in a while either."

"Great." Troy stopped dead, giving the desert a glare as if silently demanding it produce their two drivers. "Maybe they've both gone to town after that girl Hitch was trying to clobber Tully over."

"Oh, delightful," scoffed Moffitt. "But the nearest town is miles away. They would've had to take a jeep—there would have to be one absent from the motor pool."

"And the guards would have to have heard a jeep leaving the camp," Troy realized, disappointed his theory was filled with so many holes. Moffitt gave him a disdainful look.

"I'm not sure they could hear one of Dietrich's tanks if he drove it right over them. But surely they would have mentioned it had they noticed a jeep." He gave his ascot a displeased tug. "Well, what do you suggest?"

Troy was silent for a while. "Start from the beginning," he said finally. "They can't have gotten far."

"Sarge! Moffitt!"

"Well," Moffitt commented. "One didn't get far at all."

Tully was loping toward them, his helmet askew and a matchstick tucked in the corner of his mouth. He had a Tommy gun hanging by the sling from one hand and he was shirtless beneath his khaki jacket. He stopped beside Troy, breathless.

"You seen him today?" he asked, never one to mince words. Moffitt looked ready to throttle him for vanishing without a trace earlier, but Troy intervened.

"Not since last night. Nobody else has, either."

Moffitt interrupted him to glower. "Where the devil were you, Pettigrew? We've been looking all over the—"

"Lookin' for Hitch," Tully said mildly. "He wasn't in his tent when I got up at sunrise. I took a Tommy and went pokin' around. Found somethin', too."

"What?" asked Troy at once before Moffitt could get back into his scolding.

"Over here." Tully turned on his heel and started back in the other direction. It didn't seem as if he was planning on elaborating; they followed him.

He led them out just beyond the edge of the camp, past the guards' stations, and up a dune. He stopped at the rise and pointed with his Tommy.

"Whaddaya think?" he asked them. "Hitch's?"

"Undoubtedly," said Moffitt grimly.

Lying in the sand was a pair of wire-rim glasses, their round lenses glinting in the sunlight. They were folded neatly, facing out towards the open desert, and just past them a line was scraped into the sand, as if the toe of someone's shoe had caught and dragged for a few inches. It was half-filled with sand blown up the slope by the wind. Troy put his hands on his hips, staring down at the exhibit in silence.

"He didn't go to town," he finally said, though they all knew it. "But what's out there in the desert? Any footprints, Tully?"

"None but mine." The private flicked his matchstick to the opposite corner of his mouth. "Wind blew them away last night, I'd guess." He pointed out the line in the sand near the glasses. "Think that means anything?"

"Yeah." Troy knelt down, hands on his knees, and studied the mark more closely. "I think it's an arrow."

"If it is, it's a pretty sorry one," Moffitt scoffed. "An arrow? What would he need an arrow for?"

"To show where he'd been taken," Troy explained. He reached down and carefully fished something out of the sand with his fingertips. He straightened, held it up for them to see. "By the Germans."

It was a 9mm cartridge. Luger ammunition.