Chapter 2 Earthquake!

When the column arrived at the tent camp, Moffitt took a good look around. It consisted of nine tents, with various vehicles at each. Hilfer drove the Kubelwagen off, probably to service it. Moffitt himself was taken into a large tent—Dietrich's HQ—and there he was put on a cot and allowed to lie down.

By this time, the pain in his side was so intense he could forget about his bruised leg. Dietrich came in and sent his aide for the medic, then he went over to a table set up in the middle of the tent and poured a cup of tea from a metal carafe, taking it plain.

"Where's Sgt. Troy?" he asked, sipping.

Moffitt garnered enough energy to speak, swallowing hard on the dry dust he had been forced to swallow in the wreck.

"As much as I love tea, captain, I'm afraid that it won't loosen my tongue."

Dietrich laughed in his mild way. "Would you like some tea, Sgt. Moffitt?" he asked.

"As long as it doesn't come with any strings attached."

Dietrich turned back to the carafe and poured another cup, handing it to a shaky Moffitt who managed to sit up on the cot on his own. Moffitt smelled it first, prompting Dietrich to laugh again, and then took a small sip. Moffitt had a sixth sense about tea. It was the genuine article, black oolong.

"It's very good," he said, slightly smiling. "But I much prefer it with milk."

"I'm afraid the goat died," said Dietrich, with mock solemnity.

"What …?"

"Our milk goat."

"Oh, I see," said Moffitt, sipping again. "Can't you get another?"

Dietrich liked this back and forth with the college professor. "Do you see one around for a hundred miles?"

"No, I don't," admitted Moffitt. "Still, all in all it's good tea." He finished the cup and Dietrich retrieved it, setting both of theirs on the table. At about that time, a medic popped into the tent and looked from Dietrich to the man on the cot.

"Since you're standing, Herr Hauptmann, and he's not, I'll assume that he's the injured party?" asked the medic, who had brought his bag.

"Right, he had a fall from a motorcycle. I'll let you have a few minutes to examine him, but a word first, sergeant," he said, speaking to the medic, who walked over to Dietrich. "Do you have anything in there to quiet a prisoner?"

The medic nodded, hoisting up his bag and patting it. "Morphine, Herr Hauptmann. Just the ticket."

"Kills pain, too, I've heard," said Dietrich, with a faint smile of approval. "If you have any trouble with him, I'll be on the radio."

Dietrich left the medic to do his work and strode over to the radio operator whose desk with its various radios took up one side of the tent. He had a call to make to his superiors at the main base in Benghazi. They needed to know that there was a reasonable chance that the attack plan had been relayed to the Allies already, and that the Allies knew as much about it as the German brass.

Since Moffitt didn't utter a peep about the shot of morphine, Dietrich acknowledged that it might have been because he knew he really needed it.

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Troy, Tully and Hitch, altogether except for the now missing member, continued on to al-Jura, the ambush site where they had hoped to waylay Dietrich's column. But two hours into their wait, the two jeeps squirreled away in the rocks and out of sight of the road, no convoy had shown up.

Troy had fallen into fits of sneezing, what with the dust and the flu he was suffering from. His throat was scratchy, but Tully and Hitch thought he could give orders just like always. He was also beginning to shake, a confirmed set of chills wracking his body.

"Where is it?" he asked, gazing out of the rocks for the telltale dust kicked up by so many tires and treads.

"Maybe it detoured, Sarge," said Hitch, always the brave one.

"No need to detour, Hitch. al-Jura's right in the path between his tent camp and the front lines, and it's the only place to refill their jerrycans with water."

"We ought to backtrack," said Tully. "It beats sittin' here."

Troy acknowledged the truth of that with a nod, saying, "You're right. Let's go. We'll follow the route it should have been on."

In a few miles, the patrol came across a wrecked motorcycle, the Zundapp lying on its side in the sand. They circled around it, then Tully stooped, scooping up some sand. He held up his hand and showed the others. "Blood," he said. "Fresh blood, too." Tully, living in the hills of Kentucky, used to kill and skin lots of animals for his mom's table. He knew about blood, dried and drying.

"It's probably Moffitt's," said Troy. "That's the courier's bike. I recognize the dents in it. Fan out. Look for tracks."

Hitch and Tully moved away, but only Hitch was successful. "Over here, Sarge. Half-tracks!"

Troy sped over and knelt down. He was now sure of a hypothesis that had been forming in his mind.

"Dietrich must have him," he said, echoing the drivers' thoughts, "and the documents." He gazed up at the sun, seeing that it was very low on the horizon, and throwing long shadows across the desert. "It's too late to make it back to al-Qarah, so more than likely Dietrich's on his way to his tent camp near el-Abda."

Hitch spread his arms, grinning. "Well, what're we waiting for?"

Leaving the bike just as they had left its driver, on the desert sands, the trio sped off towards the German camp, a kind of transit hub for men and supplies to the front. Thirty minutes before, more or less, they had left al-Jura, the ambush site; now there remained at least another thirty before they reached the tent camp.

What might have been happening to Moffitt in the meantime was anybody's guess. If Dietrich had Moffitt, he had the documents, too. He'd want to know who Moffitt (and presumably Troy) had already relayed the information to. He wasn't the kind of man to use torture, nor was he the kind of man to forgo it, if necessary.

In forty-two minutes, by Troy's watch, they had arrived, parking the jeeps well away from the camp in the hills and making their way down on foot to the rocky valley where it was situated. A road wound down too, but they didn't want to take that and possibly be spotted. Now, ensconced in the rocks ringing the camp, they were watching and waiting and wondering, "Where was Moffitt?"

"See the big tent?" Troy asked, lowering his binoculars. "Must be Dietrich's." He spoke in as low a voice as possible, as if the wind could pick up his words and carry them hundreds of yards to Dietrich's ear. It was a good ear, but not that good. "It might not be where he's stashed Moffitt," he continued, "if Moffitt's even still there."

"My money's on that tent, Sarge," said Hitch.

"Mine, too," echoed Tully, one on either side of Troy. "Do we go in blazin'?"

"We only have one gun," Troy said, again observing the activity around the big tent. "Look," he said, passing the binoculars to Hitch. Tully had Moffitt's pair from their jeep. "He's just stepped outside for a smoke."

"A medic stepped outside, too," said Hitch, watching the two men talk together. "Must be where Doc is."

"I'll slip around and go in the back way," said Troy. "Maybe I can get Moffitt out with no bloodshed."

"Would be a change of pace," said Tully, smirking.

Troy looked at him and smiled. "You're right!" Then he sobered up. "Go get a jeep. If I'm not back out in ten minutes, you two ride through camp, Hitch on the fifty, Tully driving. Come in shooting."

While the drivers slipped away to get one of the jeeps, Troy left the confines of the rocks where they were hiding and observing the camp below and made his way through the boulders around to the back of the biggest tent. He still had his Thompson.

It took only one slit of his boot-knife and he was inside, first letting his eyes adjust to the dimmer light. The front tent flap was open and he could see the medic and Dietrich still standing just outside in the shade, one smoking. There didn't seem to be a guard. That in itself was suspicious.

Gazing around, he made out the long form on the cot and knew it was Moffitt. His leg bore a bandage and he seemed to be sleeping. Sleeping! What in tarnation was he doing that for? Had he been drugged?

Troy realized this might be a trap and carefully backed out of the slit he had made in the tent canvas. As he was straightening up, he felt a gun in his back. He slowly turned around, hands raised. The guard motioned him into the tent. Not one to argue with a carbine, he ducked through the slit again.

Once there, he knew he'd been right. It was a trap. Dietrich and the medic had entered and were now watching him. With his Walther P38, Dietrich motioned him to put down his tommy gun. Troy looked for a convenient table to lay it on, but finding none, opted to lay it on the floor, the stock facing him.

"The knife in your boot, too, sergeant," Dietrich said, gesturing to Troy's right boot with his pistol. Troy sighed, pulled it out and twisted about to hand it to the guard, who took it with all due circumspection. In the hands of a desert Rat, it would be worth the gefreiter's life to act too brazen.

Dietrich waited for Troy to turn around again. "Did you come to rescue Sgt. Moffitt?" he asked. "Or to tear holes in my tent?"

"A bit of both," said Troy, teasing him in return. "How's Moffitt?"

"We gave him a knock-out drug to keep him quiet until you showed up, which I'm sure you would. Where's Pvts. Pettigrew and Hitchcock?"

"Oh, you mean Tully and Hitch? Out of harm's way," Troy said, hoping that they showed up soon with the fifty. A bit of mayhem wouldn't be unwelcome right then.

"I'll ask you the same question I posed to Sgt. Moffitt. Have you told anyone about the attack plan for next week?"

"Sorry, captain? What attack plan?"

"Don't play coy with me, sergeant." He patted his tunic. Presumably the documents were in there. "I must know who you talked to about it."

"Can't help you, Dietrich." Troy had his arms raised half-mast, and he wanted to lower them, but Dietrich's pistol was pointed at his ribcage and he didn't dare. He also felt one of his eye-rattling sneezes coming on.

Just about then, heaven intervened in the Rats' cause and the jeep showed up, plowing through the flimsy wooden gate at the front of the camp like it was made out of toothpicks, and circling the compound with the fifty blazing. Men dashed out of the way, then as soon as they could, turned and began firing. Those at the sides of the camp, out of immediate harm's way, were already firing.

Tully swerved and dodged obstacles, including a few luckless bodies, creating a lot of dust to cloud the eyes of the Germans, while Hitch poured it on, knowing that pretty soon the barrel of the fifty would get too hot and he'd have to tap Tully to hightail it out of camp, presumably back through the same hole they had just made.

While the carnage was in progress out on the parade ground, Troy kicked the weapon out of a startled Dietrich's hand, the P38 flying under the table, useless now, and dived for his own gun. He grabbed it up, just the way he had laid it down, and trained it on the captain, while the medic, who was unarmed, raised his hands.

"Alright, captain, hand them over," Troy said, motioning to Dietrich's jacket with the tommy gun. When Dietrich didn't move, he said, more forcefully, "I want them now!"

Dietrich gave one of his "I'm resigned to this" sighs and pulled them out of his tunic. He slow-walked them up to Troy. But just before he stood face to face with the desert commando, he dropped them on the sandy floor of the tent, scattering the files, the attack plan in one of them, then he stepped back, seeming pleased with himself. At his back was the support pole of the tent and on his face was a "I got the cream" smile.

"You'll have to pick them up," he said to Troy, who bristled with anger, while the sound of Hitch's fifty and about ten carbines continued splitting the desert stillness outside the tent.

Troy knew he had only a limited time before his 'diversion' had to take off for the hills, with a too-hot barrel making the fifty unusable. Or a lucky Jerry shot took out the driver or the gunner.

"No, you do it, and be quick about it."

Obliged by the Thompson to stoop and pick up what he had dropped earlier, it grated on Dietrich to do it. He'd like nothing better than to spring himself on Troy and take the gun out of his hands. When he had the files picked up, he handed them to Troy, who stuffed them in his jacket, knowing he had to have his hands free to deal with Moffitt.

He gestured for Dietrich to step back to the tent pole again. It was going to be hard enough lifting Moffitt off the cot without interference from the German peanut gallery.

However, still clenching the gun, Troy felt that big sneeze coming on, the one he'd been trying to hold back. As he spasmed, launching it into the air, he angled his gun up. His finger pulled the trigger, just at the moment when Dietrich stepped back to the pole.

The tommy gun's three-bullet blast caught the top of the tent pole, splintering it, the pole gave way, and the tent collapsed on that side, suddenly entombing Dietrich, the radio operator, and the medic, who dropped his hands over his head and exclaimed, "Das Erdbeben!"

"Earthquake!"

Troy didn't know what he said and didn't much care. Two poles remained to keep the tent upright, one beside Moffitt's cot and the other at the entrance. Both stood for several seconds, enough time for Troy to hoist Moffitt to his feet and—sack of potatoes-like—drag him out of the tent. Hitch pointed out the pair to Tully and Tully, sending up one last prayer to lady luck, pulled the jeep to a stop just before the two sergeants.

Like a flesh and blood rubber band, Troy and Hitch folded Moffitt up, still out cold, and piled him into the passenger seat. After jumping in themselves, Hitch on the fifty again, and Troy firing his Thompson, Tully spun around in a tight turn, trying to miss a few more bodies in the way—a few shooting back from the ground—and headed for the gate.

Troy took out a couple of guards bold enough to try to stop a rampaging jeep with four determined desert Rats in it, while Hitch wheeled the fifty 180 degrees to face back the way they had come, sending a few more rounds at the Germans. Just as the jeep exited the busted gate, he could see the big tent fold in on itself. He grinned. He'd have a story to tell Troy and the others when they got out of the area.

That night, at a camp far from the scene of that afternoon's action, he did just that. "You should've seen it, it just collapsed, Sarge. I thought I saw a couple of bodies struggling inside."

Troy laughed and took a gulp of coffee. "If it hadn't been for that tent pole, Dietrich would have had me. I had sneezed so hard, I was dizzy."

Moffitt was wrapped in a blanket against the cold, though the fire in front of him was quite warm. He had slept through their whole escape, but now he began to stir. Looking up, he asked, "What …? Who?"

"It's us Jack," said Troy. "How do you feel?"

"I'm alive, just not well."

Troy handed him a tin cup of tea. He made sure that Moffitt's fingers closed around it. "Try some. I made it myself."

"Must I?" the English sergeant asked, looking at the cup as if it had a snake in it. "I love tea, and this might put me off of it for good."

"Try it!" Troy urged.

Moffitt took a tentative sip. He made a face, a monstrous face, and lowered the cup to his leg.

"You don't like it?" asked Troy.

"Well, ol' man, it's hot, I'll say that for it."

Tully and Hitch laughed, but Troy looked a bit put out.

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