The captain had vetoed a replacement driver. Troy, Tully, and Moffitt had to go it alone, he said, if they were going at all.

"We don't have the personnel to waste looking for one man," he'd informed them stonily. "There are Germans out there, looking for easy targets. We can't give them any."

"Doesn't it bother you, Captain, that we already are easy targets?" Troy asked pointedly in his blunt, wince-inducing way. "Enemy soldiers snuck into camp last night, right under everyone's noses, and kidnapped one of our men. Isn't that cause for concern, sir?"

"All the more reason you need to stay," the captain said staunchly. He didn't seem willing to be swayed by logic. "The patrols and guard shifts will be doubled until we can figure this out."

"We are trying to figure it out, sir," Moffitt broke in, sounding borderline exasperated. "If we can find Private Hitchcock, we can find the men who are with him. We'll bring them back in for questioning."

The captain eyed them all doubtfully. Tully couldn't blame him; the Rats didn't have the best reputation when it came to bringing in real live prisoners. But it was hard to aim precisely with a .50 rattling around on the back of a speeding jeep. Tully shifted his matchstick to the other side of his mouth and tried to stay unnoticed.

"If you do find Private Hitchcock," the captain finally said slowly, "and if you capture the men who took him, and if you can bring them back in for questioning—"

All of which are pretty big "ifs", Tully thought, mentally crossing his fingers.

The captain glared at them all. Troy and Moffitt didn't flinch. Tully busied himself with a grenade pin he'd found in his jacket pocket. Their commander's eyes narrowed. "All right," he decided reluctantly. "But you take one jeep. That's all."

"Thank you, sir," Troy said with a winning smile and sharp salute. Tully suspected the captain was suppressing an eye-roll as he returned the latter. Troy's charm was both infectious and efficient at relieving the tension in all manner of situations. The corners of the captain's stony mouth almost seemed to be trying to form a smile of their own when the Rats left the tent.

"Think you won that one, Sarge," Tully said in an undertone as they walked away.

"Go get the jeep," Troy told him shortly, taking off his Aussie hat and giving the Kentuckian a whack with it.

Obediently Tully loped over to the motor pool, where the Rats' jeeps were parked, gleaming in the hot African sun. The .50s' cowled muzzles pointed silently toward the ground, waiting patiently to be fired. If things turned out the way Tully figured they would, they wouldn't have to wait long.

Instinctively Tully went over to the jeep that he somehow knew was his and climbed in. It responded to his touch with the smooth purr of the motor, and it pulled out of line with barely a ripple of protest from the desert sand. He drove it around to where Moffitt and Troy waited. Automatically the Brit slid into the passenger seat and Troy swung up onto the back, taking ahold of the .50's firing handles. It felt a little awkward to have their routine disturbed with only three Rats and one jeep, and for a moment there was a brief, mutual hesitation between them. Then Troy pulled his goggles up from around his neck and settled them over his eyes.

"Let's shake it," he ordered.

Tully punched the gas.

The sun beat down with merciless intensity. Sweat lined the rim of Tully's helmet and dampened his jacket collar. For a moment he wished he'd exchanged it for a uniform shirt; then he remembered that his last shirt had been worn to within an inch of its life and he had yet to filch a new, intact one from Hitch like he normally did.

Hitch. The thought made him grip the steering wheel a little harder.

Beside him Moffitt reloaded his Webley Mk VI with the stern, casual silence that was his way. The Brit had said nothing since they'd begun driving a half-hour ago, if Tully's watch was to be believed. He instead kept a sharp eye on their surroundings, looking for any sign of Hitch's captors through his dust-spattered goggles. Behind them both, Tully could only assume Troy was doing the same.

Over the muted roar of the jeep's engine, the silence was beginning to grow deafening. Normally Tully thrived in situations where speaking was unnecessary—but that had been with Hitch, both of them waiting patiently outside an Arab city or a German camp for Moffitt and Troy to finish whatever mission they had been assigned and return for a quick getaway. He and Hitch had refined their lack of conversation to an art, conveying whole paragraphs in only a few words and a meaningful glance or two. But this silence was different; it was stiff, prickly, and uneasy. He flicked his spent matchstick out of his mouth, fished a new one out of his jacket pocket, and spoke up.

"See anything?"

There was a moment of hesitation as both sergeants checked their surroundings and tried to determine to whom he was addressing his ambiguous question. He didn't elaborate. Finally Moffitt cleared his throat.

"No," he said shortly. "Not yet."

Troy shifted, the .50 squeaking on its mount as his weight pulled on it. "We should be close," he added. "They can't have gone far. Not on foot."

"What makes you so sure they're on foot?" Moffitt asked, twisting around in his seat to squint up at Troy, head cocked back and one eye narrowed almost shut against the sun. The American sergeant gave him a look that suggested he should already know the answer to that question.

"The guards would have to have heard a vehicle drive off, even if they didn't see anyone. You know how far sound can carry over the desert at night." He looked particularly wry behind his goggles. "We discussed that earlier. Remember?"

"Ah." Moffitt turned back around and holstered his Webley. "I'd forgotten." He proceeded to look moodily at his feet, falling silent. Troy shifted again. The .50 squeaked.

"Tully," he began. "If you—"

But Tully wasn't listening. He had seen something up ahead, something that was so small and insignificant he shouldn't have noticed it. "Sarge!" he called, and slammed hard on the brakes, yanking the wheel and sending the jeep careening sharply to the right to keep it from tipping. The skidding tires kicked up a wave of sand all over his passengers and left Moffitt spitting in furious indignation with a lapful of grit. But Tully didn't notice; he was already out of the still-rocking jeep, swooping down and snatching up something small and shining before the wind could blow it away.

"What is the matter with you, Pettigrew?" burst out Moffitt, brushing frantically at his clothes before the dust stuck to the sweaty fabric and turned into sandpaper. "Have you lost your mind?"

Tully circled around to Moffitt's side of the jeep and held out what he had picked up, sheltering it from the grating wind in his cupped hands. "Hitch's," he said. "Unless the Germans have American bubblegum."

It was a wadded-up foil wrapper, and despite the fact that it had no distinguishing marks, it practically screamed Private Mark T. Hitchcock as they looked at it. They knew perhaps all too well Hitch and his gum-chewing habit—and his other habit of littering with the spent wrappers. Troy knelt on the back of the jeep, pulled his goggles down, and plucked the wrapper from Tully's hands. He studied it for a second and gave it to Moffitt, who stuck it in his pocket after surmising there was no point in staring at it after the others already had.

"That's that, then," he said. "He's out here somewhere. Close, maybe, if this wind isn't blowing too hard."

"Yeah." Tully adjusted his matchstick. "Sorry, Sarge. What were you sayin'?"

"Doesn't matter now," Troy said with grim satisfaction. "We have our lead. Which way's the wind blowing?"

Tully pointed east. "Been comin' from there since this mornin'."

"Then that's where we're going." Troy jumped down and pulled a Tommy gun from its holster on the jeep's flank. "Come on."

They followed him on foot, strung out in a line that felt odd with only three men. Tully kept half-expecting to hear the pop of a bubble as Hitch chewed on his ever-present gum, but only the rustling of sand met his ears.

They reached the base of a dune and Troy held up a hand. "Hold it." He pointed with the Tommy gun. "Take a look at that." They did, stepping up beside him. Footprints snaked through the sand, traveling up the gentle slope of the dune and disappearing over its peak. But even though the discovery was a nudge in the right direction, it was also not what any of them had expected. There was a set of prints for Hitch, all right—but not for the squad of captors they had envisioned. Instead a single, separate line of tracks kept pace with the first. Whoever had captured Hitch, he had done it alone.