They stared at Moffitt for an awkward minute. He blinked a few times, fast growing uncomfortable. The corner of his mouth twitched as if he was trying to smile, trying to show that he was unbothered. But beneath his British resolve he looked shaken.
"Diamond's?" Troy echoed incredulously. "The Arab? But that can't be, that explosion—"
"There was a window in that room," Tully whispered.
Moffitt stared at him, gaze pale and detached in his swarthy face. "Surely not," he said blankly. "Surely not."
Logic and reasoning, things Tully knew that Moffitt swore by, dictated that no one in that room could have survived. The window was too tiny, too high, the space so cramped that even the concussion from the explosion would have been more than enough to kill. Certainly some other Arab could have taken the whip, Tully told himself—but to what end? And what were the odds it would end up out here of all places, littering the path that Hitch and his captor had taken?
Standing there, watching the uncomfortable silence between his two sergeants, Tully could recall Diamond easily enough. He'd never seen the guy, of course, only Moffitt had, and he hadn't been too eager to discuss his experience. The young Arab was some nut who had been conscripted into service by the British army, given the code name "Diamond" and sent out on reconnaissance missions. He'd deserted and fallen off the radar until he'd tried to sabotage a German column and been captured by Dietrich—someone else who had left the encounter with a haunted look on his face. A look not unlike the one that Moffitt had now as he slowly and carefully coiled the whip back up and held it out.
"Here," he said rather stiffly. "You can still see where. . ." His voice faded out. "You can still see it," he finally finished lamely.
Instinctively Tully knew what the cryptic words meant, and by the way Troy's lips pressed together so tautly he did as well. From its tapered tip to about two feet up its length, the whip's brown leather was spotted and discolored—from blood. Moffitt's and Dietrich's. And maybe Hitch's.
"That settles it," Troy said abruptly, straightening up and adjusting his slouch hat. "We aren't going back."
"Didn't know we were thinkin' about it," Tully commented. He started back toward the jeep and slid into the seat. "Y'all comin' or not?"
Troy all but scampered over and hopped up onto the jeep bed; Moffitt followed at a slower, stiffer pace. He plunked down into the passenger seat and dropped the whip into the back. His eyes lingered on it for a moment before flitting up to the horizon. His brow furrowed.
"What's that?" he demanded, and pointed to the stony hills on their left. A thick, billowing line of dust was rising into the air, a glaring signal flag that a motorized column trailed beneath it. With a metallic thud Troy yanked back the bolt on the .50; Tully could feel more than see the machine gun's muzzle dip down and he reached a hand up, jerking off the barrel tip's cowling in a practiced motion. Troy swung the Browning up and eastward, leaning back on the firing handles. As the gun barrel lined up with the rim of the hills, a tank topped the rise, a white pennant fluttering from its waving antenna. Its skin was sandy-gray, its profile squat and sloped. A Balkenkreuz was emblazoned in bold black-and-white on its flank.
"Germans!" hissed Moffitt. "Think they've seen us?"
"How could they not?" Troy tracked the Panzer with his .50 as it purred along the top of the hill. It made no move to come down onto level ground. Behind it came a halftrack, then a Kübelwagen, both matching the tank's lazy pace.
"Do you think we can outrun them?" Moffitt asked, watching the three German vehicles cruise along the ridge. Troy was silent for a long moment.
"We may not need to," he said cryptically. Then he let go of the .50, and with a squeak of protest the muzzle tipped downward.
"Uh, Sarge—" began Tully. He exchanged a look with Moffitt; the Brit seemed to think Troy was losing his mind as much as Tully did. The American sergeant was rummaging around in the back of the jeep, leaving the .50 completely unmanned. Surreptitiously Moffitt resettled his Webley more comfortably in its holster, ready to pull it out if necessary. Realizing that was a good idea if their commander had lost his marbles, Tully reached for a Tommy gun.
"Hold it," Troy snapped. "Don't fire on them." He straightened up; he had a ragged piece of cloth in his hand. It was mostly white, smudged here and there with grease and motor oil. Tully kept it around to wipe his hands on after working with the jeep's engine. Now Troy was trimming it with his pocket knife, tying it to what looked like a spare barrel for the .50, and waving it in the air for all the world to see.
"Troy, you can't be surrendering!" Moffitt sputtered, twisting around to stare at him. "Not now! Have you lost your mind?" He turned back to Tully. "Pettigrew, get us out of here before we're all killed!"
But the Germans had seen them. The Panzer ground to a halt, and a moment later the two other vehicles stopped as well. A figure stood up in the passenger seat of the Kübelwagen and lifted a pair of field glasses to his eyes. He lingered for a long moment on Troy's white flag, and then with a sharp hand signal, he sat back down and the Kübelwagen started down the steep slope of the hill. The turret of the Panzer swung lazily around to follow the car, its 50mm settling on the Rats' jeep. The gun may have been short-barreled, but the distance between itself and the Rats was less than nothing. Even if Troy had been on the .50, it wouldn't have done any good.
Moffitt and Tully, bewildered but resigned, sat stiffly in their seats, wondering what to do next. When the Kübelwagen drew near, Troy stopped waving the flag. And his two companions got a good look at the man in the Kübelwagen's passenger seat.
With slow, deliberate grace, Hauptmann Dietrich unfolded his tall frame and stepped out onto the sand. He held a Luger in his right hand, but though his finger was resting on the trigger, the weapon wasn't pointed at the Rats. He regarded them in silent wariness, his eyes narrowed and head tipped to one side. His lips were slightly parted as if he was trying to figure out what to say. Behind him on the ridge the Panzer lurked, dark against the blinding desert sky.
"Sergeant Troy," he finally said, apparently at a loss for words. Tully was inexplicably amused despite himself; he had never seen Dietrich so flummoxed. "To what do I owe the pleasure of meeting you so. . .unexpectedly. . .out here in the middle of nowhere?"
"Not nowhere, Dietrich," replied Troy succinctly. He was standing with the makeshift truce flag gripped tightly in both hands as if he was going to use it on somebody. "We've got a good reason."
"I'm sure you must." Dietrich's dark eyes flitted over the faces of the three men, taking in their one jeep and the distinctive absence of Hitch's red kepi. If he thought it was odd, he didn't mention it right away. "Another of your raids, Sergeant?" he said at last.
"Something like that." Troy dropped the truce flag into the jeep and jumped to the ground. He went towards Dietrich but stopped halfway. After a long moment of deliberation the captain made up the remaining distance in a few long-legged strides until he and Troy were nose-to-nose. Or nearly nose-to-nose; Dietrich was a head taller. He studied the American sergeant with amused fascination.
"I didn't expect to see you here of all places, Sergeant," he said. "Only Germans come to this oasis." He gave Troy a cagey look. "I probably shouldn't have told you that."
"The oasis doesn't matter, Dietrich," Troy told him shortly. "We need through here."
"Many do," Dietrich replied smoothly, "on all kinds of business. I'm afraid they have been as disappointed as you will be." He looked over Troy's head at two other Rats. Tully found himself longing for a Tommy gun so much his arms ached. Dietrich's eyes narrowed as if again he was wondering over Hitch's absence; Troy hurried on before the German could mention it.
"It's important, Captain. We need to pass by." He looked at the Panzer on the ridge, the halftrack with its bemused crew and MG-34 pointed down at him. His voice took on an almost-cajoling tone. "Just this once."
Dietrich gave a characteristically dry chuckle. "What kind of war would it be, Sergeant, if we did not try to fight each other?" He lifted the Luger, aimed it at Troy's gut. "I'm afraid I cannot oblige you."
Tully couldn't see Troy's face clearly, but he knew from the sergeant's stiff shoulders what look would be on it. Annoyance at Dietrich's stubbornness, that he would have to elaborate, that the Germans had showed up at all with their marvelous sense of bad timing. The American cleared his throat. "Hitch has been captured," he explained grudgingly. "We're going after him."
One of Dietrich's arching eyebrows crooked up. "What a pity, Sergeant. I myself have been trying to capture him for countless months. My deepest sympathies." His smooth voice dripped with sarcasm. The back of Tully's neck prickled, his hackles beginning to rise. To heck with Dietrich and to heck with his Panzer! If only Tully could grab that Tommy. . .
Neatly, uncharacteristically, Moffitt defused the situation. "It isn't the same, Captain," he blurted. He stood, snatched the whip from the back of the jeep, and approached the German with such fierceness in his eyes that Dietrich took a half-step back. He thrust the whip at the captain. "It isn't Germans. It's Diamond."
The effect was instantaneous. Dietrich's face became completely blank; the grip on his Luger tightened and his eyes dropped from Moffitt's face to the proffered whip. After a moment he reached out and took it. Studying its sleek curves, he took a deep, slow breath.
"Where?"
How quickly the two men accepted Diamond's existence. Dietrich recognized the whip too. Then again, Tully thought, a thing like that would probably be hard to forget.
"They're going that way," Moffitt answered, pointing north. "They came on foot." Wisely he omitted the part about the camp location and the Allies' lax night guards and the effortless way Diamond had been able to sneak in and capture Hitch in the first place. "We've been following the tracks since this morning when we found Hitchcock was missing."
Dietrich follows the Brit's pointing finger. His eyebrows drew together. "There is nothing that way, Sergeant," he said, puzzled. "Only old Arab ruins. What good would your Hitchcock do anyone there?"
"That's what we don't know," Troy responded crisply, doing a marvelous job of keeping his cool with a Luger jammed into his stomach. "We're going to find out, though. If we get through." His last four words were barbed in a not-so-subtle way. Dietrich looked sharply down at him, fingers tightening on Diamond's leather whip. Then he holstered the Luger, weighed the whip heavily in both hands. He sighed.
"This once, Sergeant," he announced shortly. "I make no future promises."
"Fair enough, Captain." Troy didn't turn away, only stood there. He had gotten his way, sure enough, but he was going to make Dietrich move first. The German surveyed him with an odd, icy calm. Without removing his eyes from Troy he held out the whip to Moffitt, who took it warily as if suspecting Dietrich was somehow trying to trick him. Without a word the captain turned on his heel and stalked, stiff-shouldered, back to his Kübelwagen. He got in, spoke a short command to the driver, and the vehicle rolled smoothly away across the sand. Tully let out a breath of air he didn't know he'd been holding.
"We were lucky this time," he said in a low voice as the two sergeants came back over to the jeep.
"Not lucky," Moffitt corrected him brusquely. "Dietrich understands it too well."
"So why doesn't he come with us?" Tully challenged, half-joking. He didn't want to drag a batch of Germans around with them, although the firepower of the Panzer III would have been nice. Moffitt was too tight-lipped to reply. Troy answered for him.
"He doesn't want to get into it," he said simply. He swung up onto the back of the jeep, shoved aside the truce flag to make room for his feet amongst the boxes of ammo and spent, half-chewed machine gun belts. "Thing like that, it can drag you down. Some people can't afford it."
Tully said nothing, but he understood. Moffitt thought he could afford it; or perhaps he didn't think he had a choice. And already it was starting to tug at him, turning his nonchalance into a brittle facade, reducing him to steely silence, and tinting his eyes with an odd, uneasy light.
No, sir. Tully didn't blame Dietrich. Not at all.