"But it doesn't make sense, Troy," Moffitt said again. He'd been trying to think aloud, to puzzle through their dilemma, but without enough facts things kept going in circles. His head was beginning to ache at the temples what with all the intense cogitating he was doing in such a short period of time. "Why would a German sneak into camp and capture one man, then leave without stealing or sabotaging anything—and cover his tracks so carefully? As much as I like Hitchcock, you must admit he isn't strategically vital to have on either side. We can win the war without him."
Troy didn't reply immediately, his way of saying that was a good point. He was crouching at the dune's peak, watching the line of double footprints trail off into the distance. They were in remarkably good condition; the sand was interspersed with rock further on, allowing for some shelter from the wind. The sergeant shoved his hat higher up on his forehead and sighed.
"Could Dietrich be behind this?" he finally asked. "Could he want Hitch out of the way? Or to get information?"
Tully snorted. "What information? Hitch drives the jeep." He flung his spent matchstick into the sand, leaning against his own vehicle while he turned his knife speculatively in his hands. "He doesn't know anymore than I do. Why didn't they take me?"
"As many harebrained ideas as Dietrich comes up with," Moffitt added, "this one is too nonsensical even for him. He would have nothing to gain by kidnapping Hitch."
"Unless he didn't kidnap Hitch," Troy said suddenly. The other two stared at him.
"Hate to be the one to tell you, Sarge," Tully said slowly, "but that's why we're out here."
"No, no, wait a minute." Troy stood. He came back down the dune to where they were standing. "Tully just made a lot of sense. What if Hitch wasn't the target? What if he was just in the way? Why didn't they take Tully? Or me, or you, Moffitt, or anybody else? We've been spending all this time trying to make sense of something that makes no sense. What if the answer's too obvious for us to see?"
"Perhaps he was a victim of opportunity," Moffitt murmured thoughtfully. It was obvious—so obvious they had all overlooked it. "Perhaps he came upon whoever it was, and they took him along to keep him from telling anyone. That's perfectly possible, isn't it?"
"That would explain a thing or two," Troy agreed. "Except why just the one man came into camp in the first place."
"Commando mission?" Tully suggested in his taciturn way.
"To do what?" asked Moffitt. "There's nothing in our camp worth having. It's a temporary base held together by tent poles and your stubborn American elbow grease. Anyone can see that." He glanced up at the sun; it was shifting slowly to its noon position. He turned back to the others. "No matter what he wanted," he said, "we should find them both before they get any further. If it's only one man we should have a better chance of getting Hitch back before they meet with any other Germans."
"Unless it isn't a German," Tully piped up. He pointed with his knife in the direction the footprints led. "No camps out there. German supply line runs due west from here. They don't come this way."
"So where's he going?" Troy wondered aloud, almost as if to himself. "And what did he want in the first place?" Moffitt wanted to know the same thing, but he could feel the wasted seconds sliding by as irritatingly as the sweat that now trickled down the back of his neck. He tugged on his ascot.
"The sooner we get after him, the sooner we'll find out," he said reasonably. He gave Troy a winning smile. "Shall we?"
Troy glanced at him and grinned back. "Let's shake it," he answered, and Tully started up the jeep.
The jeep sped over the silky golden sand, tires rumbling as they hit the occasional rocky stretch. The nice thing about the desert, though, was there were rarely traffic jams or obstacles, which meant Tully could keep one eye on the way ahead and one eye on the trail of footprints he was driving alongside. Behind and above him Troy and the .50 kept watch against unwelcome visitors in the distance, and in the passenger seat Moffitt studied the gum wrapper as if it held the secrets of the world in its foil creases. Tully had long since given up on keeping track of time; the sun was high in the sky, eking slowly closer to its evening descent, but there was still plenty of light—and scorching heat—left in the day. The double row of footprints unfurled with unfailing consistency over the sizzling sand, stretching on and on for what seemed like miles already.
How long have they been at this? Tully wondered. That was a long, hard way to walk in the desert, even if they had gotten a head-start in the cooler morning hours. Where are they going?
He got his answer soon enough. They topped a dune and the desert spread out before them in a flat, shimmering sea. To their left stretched a chalky line of stone shelves forming a cross between large steep hills and a modest mountain range. And directly in front of them, in the middle of the blank, shining sand, was a ring of scrub bushes and palm trees casting their narrow shade on a wind-ruffled pool of water.
"An oasis!" exclaimed Moffitt, looking intrigued. "There are no oases on our maps in this area."
"Maybe our kidnapper knows more than we do," Troy pointed out. "Head on down, Tully."
Tully guided the jeep down the steep, slithering side of the dune and toward the watering hole. The trail of prints led straight down to the water's edge; clearer tracks and a handprint were pressed deep into the damp sand at its rim, suggesting Hitch and his captor had stopped for a drink. Tully parked the jeep and the two sergeants dismounted. Moffitt went to take a closer look at the tracks and Troy circled around toward the shade of the palm trees. Tully picked out a new matchstick and watched them from the driver's seat.
"How long do you reckon it's been since they stopped here?" he finally asked. He didn't see any sign of life other than the tracks; the shrubs were too sparse for anyone to hide in, and the shade wasn't worth resting in for too long.
"Not a terribly long time, I'd say," Moffitt murmured thoughtfully. He returned to the jeep, pulled out the map, and unfolded it, studying it with narrowed eyes. He frowned. "There's nothing in this sector. No Germans, no camps, no ammo dumps. Who would go in this direction? He must be out of his bloody mind." The last part was more of a muttered comment to himself. He fished a pencil from his jacket pocket and marked a neat little X on the map at the oasis' approximate location. "Command will be happy enough to know about this, if nothing else," he said almost hopefully.
"Unless this water's poisoned," Tully pointed out innocently, recalling the last oasis they had come across. His arm still twinged indignantly from the memory; it had been badly burned from a jeep explosion, so much so he hadn't noticed the dead wildlife arranged rather unattractively around the water's edge.
Moffitt gave him a glare; he didn't find the memory so pleasant either. "I don't think we would have any trouble finding Hitch or his captor if that were the case," he said snippily. "They would have to be dead somewhere around here, wouldn't they?"
"Not if they got a strong constitution." Tully repressed a smirk at Moffitt's disgusted look. Thoroughly finished with his wise-cracking driver, the Brit occupied himself with refolding the map. Across the oasis, Troy was bending over a patch of sand at the base of a palm.
"Tully, Moffitt!" he called over, suddenly straightening. "Take a look."
Tully hopped out of the jeep and moseyed over, Moffitt at his heels. "What'sa matter, Sarge?" the Kentuckian asked. Troy indicated the ground with a jerk of his chin.
"Look at that."
The sand there wasn't smooth or striated from the wind; it was kicked up, gouged and thrown around like there had been a fierce scuffle recently. Judging by the rust-brown spatters dotting its ruffled surface, there had been. Tully instinctively stiffened, recognizing the stains for what they were—blood—but they were few and far between. That little didn't suggest that anyone had been killed or sustained life-threatening injuries. It might not have even been Hitch's, either.
Moffitt's thoughts were running the same way. "Who's, d'you think?" he asked with a speculative squint, crouching down to look more closely at the drying spatters.
"Anyone's guess," answered Troy. "Maybe Hitch jumped the guy, scored a point or two. Anyway, it didn't work. There's no bodies around, and the footprints lead off again." He pointed beyond the oasis. "Both sets."
"More walkin'," Tully commented. "They've got to be goin' somewhere."
"But where?" Moffitt straightened, scowling. He was probably thinking back on his map and its stubborn blankness when it came to their sector. "What's the motive here?"
Troy didn't respond. He stepped gingerly around the churned-up sand and bent, reaching a hand under a pathetically scrawny bush. He pulled something loose, shaking away the silt it had been half-buried in, and held it out for inspection.
Tully stared at it a minute, glad to have another clue, but instead of giving him any answers it only offered something else to be confused about. What Troy held was a coil of braided leather, long and slender and lithe like a dark brown snake. At one end it narrowed to a flayed tip, the other widened into a sturdy metal handle. It lay, innocuous, in the sergeant's hands.
"A whip?" Tully said blankly. "Out here? Who—?"
"Search me," replied Troy crisply. "Moffitt?"
But Moffitt was silent. His face was pale beneath his swarthy desert tan, and his eyes had gone gray. Wordlessly he snatched the whip from Troy's hands and unwound it, stretching it to its full length. Moffitt was at least a good six feet, but the whip was as long as he was tall, longer even. The look on his face was so indescribable, so intense and unlike him, that Troy and Tully kept silent. They could both sense that something was up. They waited for Moffitt to make the next move.
He seemed to realize how oddly he was acting. He looked up at them, his eyes darting with uncharacteristic nervousness, and pressed his lips together. "It's, erm. . ." He cleared his throat, gave a little shrug. "It's Diamond's."