Disclaimer: I do not own these guys. Only the desert wind does. I'm only getting paid with the joy that comes with doing something I love.

Busy Day at the Office

by tallsunsine12

Chapter 1 Kidnapped!

Troy was shuffling papers around, looking for a slip of paper on which he had jotted down a colonel's name and battlefield location. He had diligently scratched out a memo to that man, but he didn't know where to send it to without the address.

Since Boggs' jeep accident two days ago, Troy had been stuck behind Boggs' behemoth of a desk amid a welter of requisition forms, orders to units in the field, reports from team leaders he had to read/sign, memoranda to the front line officers—he had lost a cup of coffee in that jumble some time ago, and if it ever turned up again, no doubt it'd be cold.

Now his fountain pen began to show signs of desertion, skipping every other letter on the page.

"I've got this," he murmured to himself as he pulled open the top drawer of Boggs' desk—the desk he had turned into a minefield of orphaned paper—and took out a bottle of ink. Forty-eight hours ago, in his first foray through the desk, he had found that bottle of ink, and he was only too glad today that he hadn't moved it at the time, or it too would have been lost.

Forty-eight hours ago, in his foray through the desk, he had found that bottle of ink, and he was only too glad today that he hadn't moved it at the time, or it too would have been lost.

Unscrewing the metal cap from the glass ink bottle, he then turned to pick up the fountain pen. It had disappeared. Shoving his papers aside, tossing them high in the air, Troy began searching for that lost pen, then he looked up as a tall man followed by two younger men entered the room.

"Hi, Sarge," said Hitch, amiable as always. "What're you doing?"

"I'm looking for something, Hitch. A fountain pen. It's in these papers somewhere."

Moffitt stood back with a bemused smile on his face while the two privates, Tully and Hitch, went up to the desk and began shuffling the papers right and left, looking for Sarge's lost pen. A few papers fluttered to the floor and Moffitt stooped to pick them up. He held them until it was safe to toss them back into the pile on the desk.

The pen had rolled off the mound of papers to the floor and Tully bent to pick it up.

"Look what I found," he exclaimed, holding up the mischief-maker.

"Give me that!" Troy grabbed for it. "I've got to finish this letter, if I could only find it again!"

Moffitt looked under the desk and sure enough a hand-scrawled letter was on the floor. He had to get on his knees this time to pick it up.

Standing back up with some effort, he asked, "Is this what you're looking for, Troy?"

Troy looked up with impatient eyes and nodded. "Yeah, it's a letter to what's his name, Colonel Somebody or other. That was the first thing I lost, before I lost the pen."

"It seems you're a bit overwhelmed," said Moffitt. How could he tell? "Can we help in any way?"

"You can tell me what you want here. I thought you and Lt. Perkins were going out on a recon mission."

"We're back. I just have to write a report and turn it into you."

"You might as well throw it away, I've got so many reports to read. It seems all of you desert rats get back at the same time, then load up my desk with reports!"

He began to try to refill his pen with the bottle of ink. The operation was not going well.

Moffitt ignored his whining and referred to his pen-filling task. "Can I help you with that?"

Troy had lifted the small lever on the body of the fountain pen and was holding the pen up before his eyes, like an entomologist with a new bug. "I haven't refilled one of these since I was in high school."

"Dip the nib in the ink, not too far. Wait ten seconds for the pen to fill and then close the lever. It's that simple," said Moffitt. "Don't forget to wipe off the stray ink."

Troy dipped the pen in, moving his lips as he counted ten seconds, and then pulled the pen out, closing the lever. After that, he took one of his papers—he didn't know which document it belonged to—and wiped off the pen.

"There, that wasn't so hard, was it?"

"Don't baby me, Moffitt. I'll assign the three of you and Lt. Perkins to G Sector, where Dietrich's base is."

"Any word on Captain Boggs' condition?" asked Hitch, fumbling around with the cap and the glass jar of ink. He couldn't quite screw it back on. Suddenly, the ink jar fell to the desk and scattered blue ink to kingdom come. Most of Troy's papers were sodden with the stuff.

Troy made a 'face.' "Ah, Hitch, see what you've done. I'll never find the colonel's name and address now."

"But we still have the letter," Moffitt said, as the two drivers were scrambling to sop up the ink with anything they could find, including more papers.

Troy just held his head in his hands and massaged his temples. "I knew it was going to be one of those days when I got up this morning," he said. "I just knew it." He blew out a huge breath and turned to regard the still-frantic efforts of the two privates. "Do you see a slip of paper with a name and address on it?" he asked, not really expecting them to find it.

Hitch was the discoverer this time. He handed a small slip of paper with an inky corner to Troy. "It looks like a name and address," he said.

"It is, I wrote it quickly as this morning's briefing." Troy looked at the faces above him. "Are you three going to the mess?"

"We thought we'd invite you," said Moffitt, "unless, that is, you're too buried in paperwork?"

Troy flashed him a grin. "I'm with you. Gotta get out of here. I just gotta. This place is killin' me."

Captain Boggs, in charge of Counter Intelligence, and the Rat Patrol's superior, was as neat as a pin, and his desk had been the tidiest in all of Libya, so well-organized he could have found a needle in the proverbial haystack.

Gazing at the ruin he had made of it in only two days, Troy slapped Moffitt on the arm. "Outta here!"

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A night or two later, returning to their quarters on base after being 'out on the town' in the Arab quarter, Tully Pettigrew and Mark 'Hitch' Hitchcock were talking freely about the fight in the bar they had just left. Knowing they had an early start to make tomorrow, they'd kept out of the fray, only downing their one drink apiece before leaving.

Their sergeants, Sam Troy and Jack 'Doc' Moffitt, were visiting Captain Boggs in the hospital. He had sprained his hip in a jeep rollover. With other bruises and cuts, he was lucky not to have been sent to Benghazi, three hundred miles away, for further observation.

Passing the end of an alley, Tully paused, then Hitch. Both heard a commotion and then a woman's scream. Looking at each other, deciding if their being heroes that night was worth it, or if they were too tired, they entered the alley cautiously at first, but then another scream like the first made them speed up. Both men only stopped when they were in the center of the alley.

The long-robed woman who had screamed twice could be seen fleeing into the dim light of the street at the other end of the alley, while in front of Tully and Hitch two Arab men in long djellabas appeared out of the shadows of the buildings and into their path. Each man held a knife before him, circling it for effect, the other hand held high for balance.

These two men of the desert individually and expertly took one of the American privates into his own orbit, forcing each man to focus only on his own attacker. That divided the force Tully and Hitch might have used together against the Arabs.

With a few deft moves of the knife, Tully's assailant put him into a chokehold, the blade inches away from his throat. Tully shot back an elbow, doubling the Arab over, then grabbed his arm and flipped him. But the Arab was up in seconds, screaming like a banshee and diving for Tully with the knife, which the red-headed private barely dodged.

A few more feints, and Tully was in the Arab's hold again. Twisting Tully around, the Arab again threatened his neck. Feeling the cold steel pressed against his Adam's apple, Tully didn't move this time.

Hitch himself was having better luck. He tossed his Arab over his back and slugged the man across the jaw when he tried to rise again. The fight between them continued, blows traded, and even kicks, the knife skittering off into the dark.

But with each success of Hitch's, Tully's man backed him up to the other street, where the woman had fled, and where two more men dressed Arab style stepped into the alley. Now the three of them forced Tully into a car. The car started noisily, and just as noisily, rattled away.

Hitch didn't hear them. He had blood in his ears from his determination to win this fight at all costs. It might mean his life, and Tully's, if he didn't. He finally knocked out his opponent with a haymaker, and then stepped over the fallen body to look for Tully, seeing no one in the alley now but the Arab lying cold in the sand.

Bleeding from a scrape over his left eye, Hitch fled down the alley and to the next street, stopping and looking in either direction. He wasn't even sure what he was looking for. There! A black Mercedes was flying away. It was the only thing moving at that time of night, so unless they were walking, Tully and his attacker had to be in that car.

Exhausted from the fight, and feeling the rush of adrenaline started to wear off, giving him an awful headache, he leaned back against the wall of one of the buildings bordering the alley and just closed his eyes. "Oh, Tully," he could have been heard to murmur, if there had been anyone nearby with ears to hear.

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Hitch caught up with Troy and Moffitt as they were coming back to their quarters from their visit with Captain Boggs. When the sergeants heard the news, all three ran to the alley. Since the Arab that Hitch had knocked out was no longer there, presumably dragging himself off to whatever hole he had crawled out of, they proceeded on to the next street, where Hitch had seen the fleeing car.

"I saw a Mercedes, Sarge, black, I think. Dark, anyhow. It was going about as fast as it could down this street."

"Hitch, how are they jeeps?" asked Troy. "Are they ready?"

"They're all gassed up for tomorrow's recon mission, Sarge. Radiators full, too. All minor repairs taken care of."

"Then let's go!"

Moffitt threw cold water on Troy's idea of going along on this rescue. "You're in charge of Boggs' office now, remember, Troy?"

"What's that got to do with Tully?"

"You can't shirk your duties. I'll go find Lt. Perkins. He should be in his quarters right now."

"No need to wake Perkins. He needs his beauty sleep."

"Troy, you have a duty to take care of all the units, not just ours."

"My duty's with my men, Doc. Hitch, here's what I want you to do."

"I'm ready, Sarge."

"Go to the hospital and let the night nurse know what's happened to Tully. They can tell Captain Boggs tomorrow. Tell her I went along, too."

"You're not taking me, Sarge?"

"With that bad scrape on your head, no?" The blood shone even in the faint moonlight.

"He's had worse, Troy," said Moffitt. "I can take care of a scratch like that easily."

"I'm not staying back, Sarge, while Tully's in trouble. I'll go by myself, if I have to."

"Then we'd have two men AWOL," muttered Moffitt.

"What about you, Moffitt?" asked Troy. "If you go, wouldn't you be AWOL, too?"

"No, Troy. On the contrary, I'd be following orders. Yours."

Troy laughed, though an outside observer might wonder what kind of humor an evening like this could possibly have. "Get the jeeps, both of you. I'll leave a note for Boggs' clerk. He'll see it first thing tomorrow."

Moffitt and Hitch sped off for the motor pool, and Troy raced the other way to the office. Picking up an inked-up piece of paper at random, he wrote a note, then left it under the stapler on Boggs' desk for the aide to find.

"I'd hate it if someone did that to one of my jeeps," he said, glancing at the devastated desk, then he hurried out into the desert night again.

Moffitt and Hitch were already in the street, the jeeps fired up. Troy climbed in beside Hitch and said, "Shake it!"

Next: Chapter 2 The North Star